Night Strike

by Chris Ryan

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a military application to me.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’

  ‘Like how?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

  ‘I’ve heard that one before.’

  ‘Trust me, if the bad guys get their hands on this, we’re all in big trouble.’

  ‘I’ve heard that one before too.’

  Rachel shrugged, then rolled the $100 bill so it formed a tube a quarter of an inch wide and three inches long. Then she placed one end of the tube to her nose and the other at the beginning of the line. She inhaled, but not too strongly. Just enough to entice the powder up the tube and into her nostril. She hit the top of the line, then slumped back on the leather seat. Her nose was leaking blood. That meant that the purity was fucking good. Rachel smiled dreamily at Bald, pushed her face close to his. Their noses were touching. He could feel her breath tingling his lips.

  ‘Now it’s your turn,’ she said.

  Bald went to crack a smile and felt his jaw muscles lock up. He’d been putting off this moment. He’d smuggled drugs, sure. But using them was a mug’s game far as he was concerned. He believed in supply and demand, not cut and snort. Bald had only shoved Bolivian marching powder up his hooter on two occasions, and on both times he’d been operating undercover. Back then, it had been necessary to complete the mission. Now doing a bit of toot was necessary if he wanted to end up with his head buried between an ex-model’s legs.

  Rachel handed Bald the rolled-up bill and he ran it over his line. He felt the tiny grains funnelling into his nostril. But instead of melting in his nasal passage the coke sprayed the back of his throat. As soon as the coke hit Bald it sucked the moisture out of his mouth, like a vacuum. He suddenly had a hard-on that could drive a hole through a brick wall. A wave of euphoria rushed up inside his stomach, sent butterflies flapping inside the wall of his chest. He was super horny. He craved a shag. He coughed to try to clear his throat. The coke was melting under his tongue like sugar.

  Rachel laughed at him. ‘I guess you people do stuff differently in Scotland.’

  She snatched the hundred from Bald and snorted another line. Tilted her head back. She looked even more fuckable now.

  ‘So how about that surprise?’ said Bald.

  Rachel reached out and touched his wrist. He looked up at her. Her eyes were wide and wired like a pair of spark plugs.

  ‘Not just yet, cowboy. I’m still up for partying. Then you get your surprise.’

  She reached into the glove compartment and fished out a bottle of Wild Turkey. She adjusted her blouse, fiddled with her hair and looked at him breathlessly.

  ‘Walk with me to the beach?’ She was talking quickly. Bald realized where this was going. Coke made some people horny as fuck; it turned others into marathon chatterboxes. He’d have to endure a few hours of Rachel talking bollocks before the coke wore off and he could drill a hole through her. Good job she’s got the Wild Turkey, Bald thought. His mouth was dry as the arse-end of a dog and he figured the booze would wet his tongue a little. Still, his balls were aching and he fully intended to get his fuck on with Miss Florida tonight.

  The beach lay 300 metres east across the closely mowed grass of a park. Rachel guided Bald towards the beach. Palm trees were racked up along the walkways, pleasure boats moored at a brightly lit pier, Mediterranean-style penthouses painted soft shades of pink and blue and stacked like chimneys along the coastline. A cool wind fanned in from the bay. They stopped at the edge of the beach. Rachel unscrewed the cap of the Wild Turkey and handed the bottle to Bald. He took a long swig. It singed his throat and left a honeyed, spicy dew under his tongue.

  ‘You saw him go into that brothel, right?’

  ‘It looked like an office from the outside. But, yeah, I did.’

  ‘We have some intelligence. Laxman is a regular there.’

  ‘How regular?’

  ‘Clockwork. Monday to Friday. Same time, same woman. According to our sources, Laxman is closer to this prostitute than his own wife. Here.’ Rachel dug a photo out of her purse. Bald studied it. He was expecting to see a babe but it was the Chinese woman he’d met in the brothel.

  ‘Sounds like he’s in a happy marriage.’ Bald took another hit of Wild Turkey. Big mistake. Drunkenness hit him like a one-two-three combo. Somewhere through the booze he realized he was fucking tanked. A voice in his head warned, take it easy, John. Big day tomorrow. But a stronger, louder voice boomed, one more drink and she’s all yours. Bang Rachel tonight. Kill Laxman tomorrow.

  Bald took a third gulp and was mildly surprised to find that half the bourbon had already transferred from the bottle to his liver. Now he felt the reverse effects of the coke. His dick started to shrivel up. Rachel started nibbling his ear and said, ‘All this talk of killing is making me horny.’

  Bald sobered up a little. He was about to kiss her again when a voice at his back, male, officious, said, ‘You OK there, ma’am?’

  Rachel pulled away from Bald.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’

  Bald steered himself 180 degrees. It was like trying to get off a spinning roundabout. He clocked a pair of cops. The nearest guy was white and shaven-headed, his calloused hands resting on his utility belt. He was wearing Ray-Bans and Bald wondered how the fuck the guy could see anything in shades at this time of night. His partner was a Hispanic guy. Buzzcut, small eyes and a BMI in the high thirties. He had residual muscle around the shoulders and neck, and Bald reckoned he had probably been a gridiron footballer or boxer in high school.

  ‘What about you, sir?’ Ray-Bans said to Bald. ‘Been drinking, huh?’

  ‘Just a couple of beers,’ Bald tried to say. His gums and lips were numb, a side effect of inhaling the coke too deeply into the back of his throat rather than leaving it up his hooter. His lips were bulbous and unwieldy. Ray-Bans swiped the bottle from Bald and shot it a disapproving look. He handed his partner the bourbon and stepped into Bald’s face.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Scotland.’

  ‘Is that a joke?’

  ‘It’s a place north of England.’

  Ray-Bans and Hispanic swapped glances. Then Ray-Bans looked back at Bald and said, ‘You look intoxicated, sir. And from the look in your eyes I’d say it’s not the only substance you’ve been abusing tonight. Am I right? Sir?’

  Bald acted like he had lockjaw.

  Ray-Bans lowered his shades and stared at Bald.

  ‘If there’s one thing I hate more than a drunk asshole in my town, it’s a drunk foreign asshole. You’ve got ten seconds to get the fuck out of my sight or I’m booking you for being drunk and disorderly.’

  Bald was about to say something he’d regret when Rachel was thrusting an arm around him. ‘It’s OK,’ she said to Ray-Bans. ‘I’ll take him home. Sorry for bothering you, officer.’ She sounded sober. Sensible. Bald asked himself how the fuck that was possible. She’d downed as much booze as Bald and she was half his fucking size.

  Ray-Bans raised his shades. ‘Keep him out of trouble,’ he shouted to Rachel. ‘I’ll remember his face.’ The cops departed, Ray-Bans muttering under his breath.

  Rachel escorted Bald back up the beach, towards the Chrysler. A hundred metres from the Monkey Bar parking lot he stopped short and shrugged off her arm. The Fear was taking hold of him, digging its claws into his bowels. What if the redneck at the bar wasn’t a redneck after all? the Fear asked.

  What if all this time he was someone sent to kill you?

  ‘Something the matter?’ Rachel said, concern playing on her face.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Bald didn’t reply. Couldn’t. His world was suddenly blurred and distorted. He shook his head. The giddiness didn’t clear up. Actually, it made things worse. He fumbled through his lopsided world in search of Rachel.

  Then he tripped up, and everything went vertical.

  Then black.

>   twenty-six

  The next day. 1449 hours.

  Bald woke to a harsh, relentless drilling noise somewhere close by. He had no idea where he was, or why. He rubbed hard, waxy balls of sleep from his eyes and got his bearings. He was lying on a double bed. Bollock naked. For a second he figured he’d got lucky with Rachel. But then he looked at the space beside him in the bed. The pillow was smooth and undisturbed. He felt a slow release of confusion through his system.

  Where the fuck am I?

  The mattress stank of urine and had cattle wire for bedsprings. His eyes adjusted to the light seeping through a single curtain thin as an old pair of tights. A fourteen-inch cathode-ray TV squatted in the corner of the room, snow static scrolling down the screen. A voice cut through the drilling: you’re in some kind of low-grade motel. His wrist bones ached. He rubbed his wrists and tried to remember last night. It was like someone had clicked on his short-term memory and dragged it into the trash bin. He couldn’t recall anything after blacking out near the Monkey Bar.

  The coke, a voice pickaxed at the base of his skull. Mixing blow and booze had been a bad fucking move. The drilling was now so loud and piercing he couldn’t be sure if it was coming from inside his head or somewhere outside. He crawled out of the bed and staggered into the bathroom. Sink unit, toilet, shower stall, all fitted into a space so tiny you’d have to leave just to change your mind. Generations of pubic hair clogged the shower’s plughole. Something brown and viscous had congealed in the basin. Bald ran the cold tap and sloshed water over his face.

  A memory rushed back at him. Last night.

  He filled a chipped glass with water and drained it in three gulps. Then two more glasses. He seemed to have an unquenchable thirst. He remembered puking up onto a lime-grass verge. He examined his hands in the sink. His fingers were painted in dried blood. Not his own.

  The drilling quietened in the bathroom. A little more of the fog cleared from behind Bald’s eyes, and he recognized that distinctive drilling noise.

  The burner.

  Bald stumbled back into the bedroom. There, lying on a carpet so worn it looked like goats had been chewing on it, was a pile of clothes. Bald knelt beside them and groped at the T-shirt and jeans. He found the burner in the back pocket of his jeans. The battery was low: two crappy bars. He had six missed calls, all from Cave. Bald sat on the edge of the shitty mattress. A sharp pain was announcing itself in his right hand. He stared at the display and let the phone ring. The display darkened.

  He sat there in the semi-darkness. Then the burner trilled again, and this time he took the call.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Cave snorted between each word, barely able to suppress his rage. ‘Everyone here is going fucking ballistic. It’s almost time for the birthday party.’

  ‘I overslept,’ said Bald. ‘Haven’t slept for two days.’

  Another snort came down the line and blasted Bald’s eardrum. ‘Bollocks. You’ve been out on the piss, John Boy. I know.’

  ‘Rachel?’

  ‘Yeah. She said you were in a proper state. Got into a fight with a bouncer. The cops are looking for you. That motel you’re in was her idea. Better make sure you stay out of trouble, unless you want to spend the next thirty years of your life in a steel cage.’

  Bald was gasping for more water. Felt like someone had Scotch-taped his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

  ‘Just over five hours to go,’ said Cave. ‘That’s all you’ve got. If I were you, I’d get off the line and pay a visit to birthday boy before it’s too late.’

  Cave ended the call. Bald sat on the edge of the bed, listening to dead air. He didn’t move for longer than a little while. He was angry with himself for pissing away all his preparation time.

  Five fucking hours.

  His training voice kicked in over the pulsing between his temples. No margin for error, pal. One chance to slot the prick, or you kiss a painful goodbye to your retirement fund and your villa on the Riviera.

  The pain in his right hand was getting worse. So was the throbbing in his head.

  A knock at the door. Three heavy, urgent raps of knuckle on hardwood. Bald froze. He was about to search for his Colt Delta Elite, then remembered that he’d left it in the Buick outside the Monkey Bar.

  Rap-rap-rap.

  A familiar voice said, ‘It’s me.’

  Relief flushed through Bald’s system. He unlocked the door – he couldn’t recall locking it, but old habits die hard – and jerked the handle. Rachel barged her way inside. Bald expected her to look the worse for wear. He was wrong. She looked like she did last night. Waxy and spankable. She was clutching his gym bag. She ran her eyes over his naked torso.

  ‘We need to leave. Now,’ she said.

  Bald grabbed his jeans from the pile. ‘You don’t look so bad this morning.’

  ‘Compliment me later,’ Rachel said. ‘The cops are on their way here.’

  ‘Someone tipped them off?’

  ‘I don’t see how. I paid the motel manageress to keep her mouth shut.’

  ‘Maybe you should have paid her more.’

  Rachel slow-burned at Bald as he slipped on his T-shirt. ‘Well, maybe you shouldn’t have put a bouncer in a coma.’

  ‘I’m sure on some level he deserved it.’

  She sighed her disapproval and dropped the gym bag at her feet. Reached around to the back of her skirt, and for a second Bald thought she was going to show him her birthday suit. But instead she whipped out his Colt and chucked it to him.

  ‘You really don’t get it, do you?’

  ‘Get what?’

  ‘The world doesn’t play by your rules any more, John. Jesus Christ, you could’ve jeopardized the entire mission.’

  ‘I don’t seem to remember you stopping me from hitting the tequila last night.’

  Rachel turned away and left the room. Bald followed, hoisting the bag over his shoulder and stuffing the Colt into the top of his jeans.

  They emerged into an apron of blacktop parking lot flanked by an L of universally depressing rooms. Seventies-style architecture that hadn’t been renovated since Jimmy Carter got elected. The motel looked like the kind of place where sex pests and serial killers lived out their sick fantasies. Bald spotted Rachel’s Chrysler 300C gleaming in the middle of the lot. He heard the howl of police sirens.

  ‘They’re almost here,’ Rachel said, doubling her stride towards the Chrysler. Bald upped the pace too. The afternoon sun was lasering white-hot light over the blacktop. Sweat rolled down Bald’s forehead and into his eyes, blurring his vision. Rachel started the Chrysler and filed into traffic. In the rear-view mirror she saw the police cars screeching into the motel lot. Cops crawling out of them like insects, piling into the room they had vacated thirty seconds earlier.

  Rachel headed west, darting through the traffic, switching lanes at speed. She bust through a red light at a junction, narrowly skimming past a truck rushing along in the other direction.

  ‘Mind telling me where we’re going?’ Bald asked.

  ‘Lance-Elsing.’

  ‘What’s there?’

  ‘Laxman.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You can kill him there. When he leaves work.’

  Bald made a face. ‘Shooting the cunt outside the Lance-Elsing office is suicide. The place is riddled with cameras.’

  ‘You got a better idea, now’s the time to share.’

  Bald fished out the Colt from the waistband of his jeans. ‘Just follow the prick. We still have a few hours to play with.’

  Rachel worked her face into a slant. ‘And what if we don’t have a chance before the handover? What if we’ve already missed our window of opportunity? What then, John?’

  Bald didn’t dignify the question with a reply. He grabbed the gym bag and removed the cardboard box of HSM bulk 10mm ammo. Then he hit the eject button on the side of the Colt. The clip sprang loose from the underside of the pistol’s grip and he rhythmically thumbed rounds into the empty clip
. He gently loaded the clip into the bottom of the pistol grip. The Colt made a definite click. Now he abruptly pulled the slide mechanism back then forward again, to chamber the first round. He performed this action quickly, because if you shunted the slide mechanism back and forth too slowly the first round would get jammed in the chamber, and you’d have an instant stoppage. The mechanism jerked back to its original position.

  They drove on in silence, both half-listening to a local radio station. The forecaster excitedly warned that the Tampa Bay area would get blitzed later that same night by a nearby hurricane. There were a few perfunctory words about the civil war in Libya. America, thought Bald, always intent on making the rest of the world a footnote.

  ‘You know, it’s a shame you got so wasted last night,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I really want to fuck a Scottish guy.’

  ‘You know what they say. Aim high.’

  ‘Maybe later you can make it up to me.’

  ‘Later sounds good.’

  But Bald pushed thoughts of sex to the back of his mind. They reached Prosper Avenue and Gateway Industrial Park. Rachel slowed the Chrysler to twenty per as she neared the entrance. Bald’s neck muscles tightened like tension rope. They were forty metres from the entrance and craning their necks beyond the fence when a black Infiniti, licence plate 504 XKW, bounced over the speed ramp and rocketed into traffic.

  ‘Shit!’ Rachel said, upping the Chrysler to seventy-five and racing after Laxman. The speedometer flicked past eighty-five. They were going so fast that every other car on the road seemed static. ‘We cut that pretty fine,’ she said. ‘A minute later and we would have missed him.’