Night Strike

by Chris Ryan

  ‘He must be on his way to the handover,’ said Bald.

  ‘But there’s still four hours to go. It’s way too early.’

  ‘Unless he’s heading out of town?’

  Only Laxman didn’t head east, out of town. Instead he threw a curveball by flying west on South Keene Road in the direction of downtown Clearwater and Tampa Bay. Rachel followed him onto South Myrtle Avenue and Chestnut Street and after six blocks the Church of Scientology HQ was mushrooming out of the horizon.

  Now the Infiniti skipped right onto South Fort Harrison Avenue. Bald suddenly understood where Laxman was headed. Nine blocks on South Fort Harrison and the Infiniti eased off the gas and joined Pierce Street for three blocks, then slid onto South Garden Avenue. Two blocks down South Garden Laxman pulled into a parking lot.

  ‘Fuck’s going on?’ said Bald.

  Rachel said nothing.

  They were both looking in the direction of the brothel.

  It wasn’t there.

  twenty-seven

  1809 hours.

  In its place stood a burned-out shell of a building. The windows were all blown out, the red bricks above and below all charred, like giant fists had given the windows black eyes. The front doors slanted off to one side, giving Bald a line into what had been the brothel. He could see the corridor, a lake of ashes. The top two storeys had melted into each other. There was no roof. Lumps of broken plaster littered the ground like mortar shrapnel.

  ‘Maybe someone didn’t want Laxman coming back,’ said Bald.

  ‘Could be coincidence. There’s a lot of hookers in Clearwater. A lot of pimps. Competition can get out of hand, you know what I mean?’

  Then Laxman did something that confused Bald. He stepped into the smoke-blackened corridor.

  ‘What the hell’s he hoping to find in there?’ said Rachel.

  ‘Only one way to find out.’

  ‘I’ll wait here.’

  A perfect place to finish the job, thought Bald. He got out of the Chrysler and walked briskly towards the shell. Raindrops sporadically chopped at the air and sluiced water across the blacktop. The handover was scheduled for 2000 hours. That gave Bald an hour and fifty minutes to settle it for real. He felt the reassuring pistol grip of the Colt Delta Elite stashed under his T-shirt, its finger-grooves lightly pressing against the wall of his once-hard abs. He felt the violence in his fingertips.

  Bald now noticed a second car in the parking lot. An SUV he recognized as a GMC Denali. It was way over at the other end, in the shadow of the warehouse.

  Ten metres from the brothel Bald heard a loud growl at his six o’clock. He spun around. Rachel was pelting off towards the main road. Bald stared angrily at the tail lights. What was going on? Now he was alone, with no getaway vehicle.

  He entered the corridor a minute after Laxman. Calmly withdrew the Colt from under his T-shirt. He used both thumbs to cock the hammer so he’d need to apply less pressure to the trigger for the initial shot. A gentle squeeze on the trigger mechanism and the round would tear out of the barrel and put Laxman out of business. He pulled back the slider just a fraction and checked the chamber to make sure there was a round inside. He caught that reassuring slither of chambered brass. The gun felt solid and cold.

  The corridor reeked of charcoal and burned fabric. The air was heavy with damp. Bald felt moisture drizzle his face, his shoulders. There was a couple of inches of water on the floor, a gunmetal flotsam of nails and papers and glass. One of the smoke detectors had fallen from the ceiling. Now it was lying on the floor half submerged, its wires exposed and its red alarm light glaring amid the debris. Bald crept into the reception area and mentally readied himself. Took in deep breaths that flooded his body with oxygen and pumped his muscles, preparing them for the task ahead.

  The leather on the seating in the booths had burned away, exposing yellow foam innards stained black in patches. The Buddha candle-holders had shattered in the heat, sprinkling the floor with shards. Bald didn’t see Laxman. The staircase was fundamentally intact. Bald walked towards it.

  He was ten metres from the bottom step when he spotted a shadow coming down the stairs, coming his way. He ducked into one of the booths, crouched behind the seat, and observed the Chinese woman. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and lit a cigarette. Then she picked her way towards the reception, her high heels cracking debris underfoot, taking long drags on her cigarette and checking her BlackBerry. Bald manoeuvred around the seat so she wouldn’t catch him in her peripheral vision. He watched her stop again by the entrance to the building. Thought for a second she’d seen him. Then he clocked her BlackBerry screen. The woman hit the green key and spoke to the person on the other end of the line in snappy, aggressive bursts that sounded to Bald like someone being stabbed repeatedly, but he guessed was her native tongue. The call lasted around thirty seconds. Then she hung up. The screen dissolved. The woman dashed her cigarette in a puddle and walked out into the night.

  Bald started to count to thirty. His Regiment training taught him to always consider that the enemy was smarter than you. That way, you never get caught off guard. Maybe the woman had gone outside just for a moment? Perhaps to meet somebody? Bald could feel his eyes beginning to water, could feel smoke particles swirling in his throat.

  Thirty.

  He stood up, saw Laxman descending the stairs and shot back down again.

  Laxman seemed in more of a hurry than the woman. He walked fast across the reception area and along the corridor, headed outside. Bald moved out from his cover cautiously, deliberately, careful not to make a splash or tread on glass. He stilled his breath in his burning throat. Now he was at the entrance. No sign of the woman. Laxman was making his way towards the Infiniti. Bald was fifteen metres away from Laxman . . . then less than ten metres from his target. His body was working on muscle memory now. That was what training was for. Not to make you perfect, but so that in the middle of a situation about to go fucking noisy, you didn’t have to think about what you were doing, or how, or when.

  He brought the Colt level with Laxman’s head.

  Five metres.

  Fucking finish it, he thought.

  Bald’s index finger was pressed halfway down on the trigger when he felt cold metal on the back of his neck. He froze. Laxman carried on unaware towards the Infiniti. Four metres became eight, then twelve. The metal dug harder into Bald’s flesh and rubbed against his upper spine. Sixteen metres now, and Bald watched the Infiniti’s lights flicker as Laxman hit the unlock button on his key. He was getting away.

  An American voice, hard as rock, whispered, ‘Move and I’ll fucking kill you.’

  twenty-eight

  1907 hours.

  Bald didn’t move. He watched Laxman hop into the Infiniti in blissful ignorance. Five million quid catapulted into the Florida night. Just like that. Bald and his new best friend were left in the lot.

  ‘Drop the piece,’ the American said.

  With his arm outstretched and finger clearly off the trigger, Bald bent to his knees and placed the Colt flat on the ground. The American swung a foot and side-kicked it. The pistol spun as it skated across the blacktop.

  ‘Get in the fucking car,’ said the American.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The Denali, dumbass.’

  The American again jabbed his pistol into the knotted flesh at the base of Bald’s neck. Bald got the message and started for the SUV, forty metres away. The sun was making a slow loop down towards the guts of the earth. Sunset wasn’t far off. This time of year, autumn, it came around eight o’clock. Bald was getting to grips with the idea that no one could help him now.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother to ask.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Any plans you got beyond the next thirty minutes, cancel them.’

  They reached the Denali.

  ‘I have money,’ said Bald.

  ‘You think I’m a criminal? Turn around,’ the A
merican said.

  Bald did a one-eighty and came face to face with the guy. First thing he noted was the gun. An FN Five-Seven semi-automatic. Not the weapon of choice for a mugger. The Five-Seven was a military-grade weapon and had the evolved look and feel that were the hallmarks of its Belgian manufacturer. It was like the Aston Martin of guns. The Five-Seven was used by the US Secret Service and law-enforcement agencies, but had been on the civilian market only since 2004. Guns were like dogs, Bald believed. They told you a lot about the owner. The gun told Bald that the shooter was a firearms fanatic, someone who appreciated the finer aspects of weapon design.

  Then Bald noticed the American’s face. The same one he had seen in the Monkey Bar. The redneck who had tried to kill him at the Mexican border. But of course he didn’t really look like a redneck. He lacked the cross-eyed look. Redneck or not, Bald felt an urge to smack this dick-licker so hard he’d be pissing blood for the next ten days.

  ‘Your name’s Bald,’ the American said.

  ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘I don’t have one.’ Definitely not redneck. Texans talked slow, they drew words out like clothes on a line. This guy spoke fast and had an accent on him. East Coast. Too harsh and mellow for New York. Upstate, maybe. Or Maine.

  Bald hauled himself into the Denali. The cab was big enough to host the fucking Oscars.

  ‘Budge over. You take the wheel,’ the American said. ‘Now drive.’ He held the Five-Seven below the dash, out of sight, the business end six inches from Bald’s chest. ‘Keep her under fifty. Try anything stupid and three hours from now a paramedic will be scraping your brains off the sidewalk. Comprende?’

  Two cop cars bombed past. For the first time in his life, Bald wished the police would pull him over. But they carried on, oblivious to the shit unfolding in the Denali.

  ‘Head east on Jackson,’ the American said.

  Bald studied the guy in the rear-view mirror. Early forties. Possibly late thirties. His skin had a rugged texture and he had hands that worked fields rather than lifted weights. A jaw shaped by frosty nights and rough sleeping. His eyes were flat and black and dull. He didn’t have an ounce of body fat. His face was unreadable. Bald remembered from somewhere that the human face has around fifty-two muscles. The American wasn’t engaging more than one at a time.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ Bald tried again.

  ‘I’m the guy you wish you’d never fucked with. I’m that guy.’

  Suddenly Bald felt ants crawling along the surface of his brain.

  Shit. Not now.

  Ever since he’d crossed the border from Mexico, he’d managed to keep a lid on the migraines. The adrenaline, the mission, the alcohol and the prospect of shagging Rachel. Now he knew all they had done was bury the migraines. Not kill them. They’d been biding their time in the background. Sharpening their teeth.

  ‘If you want to do what’s right, then let me go,’ Bald said.

  ‘And leave you free to terminate a vital intelligence asset?’

  The migraine jolted through Bald. Like someone had clipped a pair of crocodile clips to his temples and flicked the juice switch. Electricity surged through his jawbone.

  ‘Shylam Laxman isn’t an asset. He’s a fucking terrorist.’

  ‘Be that as it may, my orders are to protect him at all costs.’

  ‘Look, mate, I don’t know who you work for. But it’s not just me who wants to do in that fucker. It’s your people too. The CIA want that cunt dead.’

  The American chuckled. ‘I am the fucking CIA,’ he said.

  twenty-nine

  1948 hours.

  They descended into the slums. Unseen dogs yapped. Unseen voices hurled drunken insults at each other. The America no one saw, and no one wanted to see, a square mile of crackheads, welfare families and desperation. A warren of alleyways intersected the streets. Shadows scurried up and down the alleys.

  They passed a bungalow where five black guys were squatting on the porch dressed in the gangbangers’ uniform of loose, low-hanging jeans, hair in cornrows and trainers white like bleached skin. The bungalow was wood-framed with a corrugated metal roof and a porch that wrapped around it like a moat. It looked a bit like the shotgun houses Bald had seen in Louisiana. The windows were boarded up. The boards were sprayed with gang tags. The gang tags were partly obscured by rival gangs’ IDs. A crack addict in threadbare slacks stumbled out of the bungalow.

  ‘Pull the fuck over.’

  ‘You’re out of your fucking mind.’

  ‘And you’re a washed-up British fuck who’s about to find out what it’s like to have a bullet shot up his asshole. Now pull over.’

  Thirty metres beyond the bungalow Bald hit the brakes. The five guys who’d been squatting in front of the crack house stood up as one. The American pressed the Five-Seven into Bald’s chest.

  ‘Ladies first,’ he said.

  Bald clambered out. The gang guys were swaggering towards him. One of them was decked out in a Miami Heat replica basketball jersey. He was wielding a Beretta 92 semi-automatic, the old hard-chromed version, not the more modern polymer type. He waved it dramatically in the air. On the back of his jersey ‘3’ and ‘WADE’ were emblazoned in big gold letters.

  ‘Yo, nigga!’ ‘Wade’ shouted at Bald.

  The American debussed. Bald had the unmistakable sense that things were about to turn ugly.

  ‘Nigga! I’m talking to you. Answer me, bitch.’

  Wade paraded around the Denali until he was standing shoulder to shoulder with Bald, and flashed a gold-toothed grin. Two of his mates were brandishing guns, ageing but effective 1911 single-fire semis. Introduced in 1911 by John Browning, and used in every war up to the mid-eighties, they were possibly the only firearm in the world that had seen more action than Bald. The fourth and fifth guys seemed unarmed. They were a good four or five years junior to Wade. Fifteen, sixteen. Not yet trusted by the elders to pack a piece.

  ‘You ignoring me, son?’ Wade asked Bald.

  ‘Back off,’ the American said. ‘This doesn’t concern you.’

  ‘Sure it does.’

  ‘How’d you figure that?’

  ‘You trespassing.’

  ‘It’s a free country.’

  ‘Not here it ain’t. You got to pay the toll, muthafucka.’

  ‘Fuck your toll.’

  Wade pulled a screw face at the American. ‘Fuck my what?’

  ‘You deaf as well as stupid? Get out of my fucking way.’

  Bald’s abductor had a blank expression that suggested he was capable of anything you might imagine, and more than a few that you might not. He looked like he would butcher a family if the job called for it, and only pause for a moment if the family was his own. Wade lost the stare-down. Gave his back to Bald and the American. Wade and his gang buddies strolled macho-like back to the bungalow, chanting cuss-words as they retreated.

  ‘Cracker-ass bitch.’

  ‘Honky piece of shit.’

  ‘Bitch-ass.’

  The American stared at their backs. ‘Black bastards. Can’t get them to work, can’t get them to stay out of trouble,’ he said.

  ‘This way.’ He prodded the Five-Seven into the small of Bald’s back. He forced him down an unlit alley sandwiched between a couple of crack houses. The passage wasn’t clearly defined but was no more than a strip of grass worn down to a nub. The only light came from the half moon, and overhanging pines and palms obliterated most of its rays. Bald couldn’t see more than eight or nine metres in front of him. The world was a cola fizzle of blackness pockmarked by distant house lights.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Bald demanded. But, deep in his coiled guts, he knew the answer.

  ‘It’s a bad idea for white folk to venture into this neck of the woods,’ the American said. ‘Especially Brits. They don’t much care for Brits around these parts. All that slave history leaves a bad taste in the mouth.’

  Pain rippled through Bald’s skull. What a fucking shit way to end it.


  ‘Last British guy that came down here? They fed him to the dogs.’ Bald was having a hard time tuning in to the American. ‘Weren’t nothing left of the poor son of a bitch except some hair and bones. Folks said he was looking to score some dope, asked the wrong guy . . . bam.’

  Twenty metres down the alley, the American said, ‘Here is good.’

  Bald stopped.

  ‘On your knees,’ said the American.

  Bald sank to his knees.

  ‘Open your mouth.’

  Bald opened his mouth.

  ‘You should have stayed in Scotland.’

  ‘I didn’t like the weather.’

  The American shoved the Five-Seven’s muzzle into Bald’s open mouth. Put it in deep and at a fifteen-degree angle, so the tip of the muzzle was pushing into the roof of his mouth. He tasted the stainless steel. He eyeballed the American.

  Closed his eyes.

  thirty

  2019 hours.

  He heard the shot before he felt it. A split second later he could smell it. Smoked gunpowder and hot brass, flaring in his nostrils. Another half second after the shot and Bald could still feel his face, and he wasn’t dead.

  He opened his eyes. He could see moonlight on the edges of the palm trees. He could hear the thunder of distant traffic. The American was glancing across his shoulder. Back down the alley, to the direction of the shot. Bald put the shooter at fifty metres. Maybe a little more.

  The gang, Bald thought.

  ‘On your feet,’ said the American.

  But the gang was converging at the dark lip of the alley, fifty metres away. Three of them. The American turned to run. He reached out to drag Bald with him, Bald grabbed the Five-Seven with his left hand, turning his palm facing up and directing the pistol away from him. But the Yank still had his fingers wrapped around the grip and Bald countered with a bunched fist that landed solidly in the American’s balls. Air windrushed out of his mouth, slack with shock. The blow had knocked him off balance. His bad right leg was throwing him backwards. He automatically relinquished the Five-Seven. It fell to the ground with a metallic clatter. The American dropped to his knees. Now Bald properly seized the Five-Seven.