by Hilton, Matt
Chapter 20
‘Is it them?’
Kirstie jumped up from a wooden stool next to the breakfast counter. She’d heard the thrum of an engine filtering in through the door followed by the soft squeak of brakes as a vehicle pulled to a halt outside the motel room. The wait had been agonising, made all the more interminable by her anxiety that the van might never return. For hours now she’d been on edge, counting every repeated pattern she could find – from the designs in the curtains to the carpets, the bedding, even the tiles on the ceiling – but it had failed to occupy her thoughts. She’d been too concerned about the fate of her boy. She had been separated from Benjamin for so long, nothing mattered but getting him back. Yet another concern worried at her like a toothless old dog on a bone. If, no, when – she must be optimistic – she was reunited with Benjamin, what if he did not recognise his own mother? The trepidation slowed her enough for Harvey Lucas to intercept her dash to the door.
‘Let me check first, OK?’ Harvey went to the window and poked open a gap in the blinds. Down by his side he held a Glock, primed for action should the arrivals be unwelcome.
Kirstie watched the man’s features smooth out, his shoulders relaxing as he exhaled.
‘It’s them.’
‘Do they have Benjamin?’
‘I can’t tell. I can only see Mac in the front seat. Whoa, hold up, Kirstie!’ Harvey grabbed her to stop her from throwing open the door. ‘Give me a few seconds to check everything’s all right.’
Kirstie stood in the centre of the motel room, her hands twisting together. It was probably best that she’d left her handgun in her purse otherwise she’d have been firing rounds into the floor. Harvey returned to his spyhole and peered out once again, watching as McTeer slipped out of the van and headed round the back. Kirstie wasn’t conscious of tapping her tongue on her teeth. She started forward again.
‘No. You must stay out of sight.’ Harvey cracked the door open.
‘I need to know . . .’
‘A few seconds.’
There was a rush of footsteps, and then Harvey admitted Velasquez, carrying a blanket bundle in his arms, followed seconds later by McTeer, who came in backwards, watching outside. Kirstie’s attention was focused on the bundle in Velasquez’s arms. A cry broke from her, part relief, part tortured howl as she lunged for the unresponsive child swaddled in the blanket.
Velasquez relinquished his hold as Kirstie pulled Benjamin into her embrace and tugged free the blanket that covered his face. She feared Benjamin had suffocated and her terror didn’t abate when the boy’s face was revealed. His eyes were shut, his mouth hanging open. ‘Oh, God! What’s wrong with my baby?’
‘Relax,’ Velasquez soothed. ‘The boy’s fine. He’s just a little drowsy, that’s all.’
‘What did you do to him?’ Kirstie’s voice was full of accusation.
‘Wasn’t anything we did. You can blame his daddy for that. I think he’s had some sort of medication to make him sleep. He hardly woke all the way back.’
Kirstie wasn’t listening. Benjamin had stirred, his lips smacking together, his eyelids cracking open a sliver. His pupils were out of focus but very much alive. There were dried tears on his plump cheeks, testament to his short periods of wakefulness. Kirstie couldn’t hold back her own tears, weeping with no shame or self-consciousness before the trio of men. She began kissing Benjamin, her lips feeling the warmth of his skin, the faint tickle of his breath. She wanted to squeeze him so tightly her body would absorb his. The men were in conversation around her, Harvey stalking back and forth between her and the door. The pounding of her heartbeat muted their voices. Yet something impinged, and for the first time she thought of someone other than her child. She tuned into their voices.
‘We should go back,’ McTeer was saying.
‘No. Our instructions were to secure Kirstie and the boy and then get out of here.’ Harvey didn’t appear convinced by his own argument.
‘We could go back,’ McTeer insisted. ‘Velasquez and me. We could take the van now that the kid’s out of harm’s way.’
‘We need the van to move on from here,’ Harvey said. ‘Hunter would have it no other way.’
‘We had to use the van to ram the gates,’ Velasquez said. ‘Molina’s guys have seen it, so it’s probably best we dump it now and find some other form of transportation for Kirstie and Benjamin. I vote that we go back, make sure the guys got out alive, and then torch the fucking thing. Harvey, you could arrange another vehicle in minutes if you wanted to.’
‘I could, but Hunter would have my balls in a sling if I did. You knew what the mission was before we came in, guys: it’s about getting Kirstie and Benjamin safely across the border.’
Still hugging Benjamin, Kirstie peered at the Hispanic man and his rugged-faced companion, McTeer. She knew she should thank them for bringing her boy back to her, but those weren’t the words that slipped from her mouth. ‘You left Joe behind?’
‘Not out of choice.’ McTeer scowled at the ground, as if by meeting her gaze he’d invite further scorn. ‘Rink was trapped inside the compound and Hunter went back to help him. Nothing we could say or do would have stopped him. If you know Hunter and Rink, you know they’re attached at the hip. Hunter made us leave, and it’s probably best for the boy that we did. Fuckin’ gunfight was going crazy by then.’
Kirstie blinked in astonishment. Not at McTeer’s explanation, but at how hard his words hit her. Hell, she barely knew either man, and though she’d shared an intimate moment with Hunter, well, that shouldn’t mean much. It was just a moment of weakness where perhaps she’d have sought comfort in anyone’s arms. Nonetheless, the thought that she’d never lay eyes on Hunter again twisted a sharp blade through her heart. ‘He . . . uh, they’ll be OK though, won’t they?’
‘They’re tough hombres,’ Velasquez didn’t meet her eye. ‘If anyone can find a way out of a hornet’s nest it’s those two. Still, I’d prefer it if we went back to check.’
‘You’re not the only one, but we had our orders, and if we don’t do as we were asked, then Hunter and Rink staying behind would’ve been for nothing.’ Harvey was the only one thinking with his head over his heart. He stared at his friends, unflinching.
Velasquez shoved a palm through his dark hair. It glistened with sweat. ‘OK. So we follow the plan.’ He turned to Kirstie. ‘You ready to go?’
Kirstie checked on Benjamin. His eyelids flickered again, his grey irises rolling side to side in sleep. ‘I’ve everything I need right here,’ she said. ‘I’m so relieved to have my baby back. Thank you . . . Thank you all,’ she said, meeting each man’s gaze in turn.
‘Thank us when we’ve got you both home,’ Harvey said. Then, to his colleagues: ‘Grab all the stuff you can carry guys, we’re out of here in two minutes. We can only hope that Joe and Rink made it out alive. We won’t know until they fail to meet us at the next rendezvous.’
Chapter 21
‘This way,’ Rink called, taking a left bend at speed.
I was charging along behind him, scattering shards of glass in my wake as the vigorous exercise shed them from my clothing. Pounding round the same corner, I barely escaped a bullet that clipped stone chips from the front of the building.
‘Shit, they’re determined fuckers,’ I muttered to Rink.
‘And indiscriminate about where they’re shooting . . .’
He had that correct. All the way down the plaza we’d evaded a storm of bullets as Molina’s men pursued us. We were fortunate that we hadn’t been torn to ribbons, and only the fact that the men were running as they fired had saved our arses. This early in the evening, most of the daytime sightseers had gone back to their hotels, preparing to return later when the bars were in full swing. Revellers were few, as was traffic on the main routes. Probably a good thing because if the crowds were as tightly packed as earlier then there would have been numbers of casualties from the bullets whipping through the air after us.
Now that we had
a building blocking the view of our pursuers there should have been a cessation of gunfire, but it didn’t slacken. Men furious at our escape still rattled off rounds from pistols and machine-guns alike. I considered going back to the corner, dropping a few of the scumbags with pinpointed shots, but didn’t. I kept on running as hard as I could.
This had never been part of the plan.
We had hoped to spirit Benjamin out of the way undetected. The guys in the van would drop us back at our car, parked midway up the hillside behind Molina’s compound. Now we had a long run uphill with a swarm of maddened hunters after us. Time for Plan B. The problem was, there wasn’t a Plan B as such. How can you plan for the unknown? It was all about making decisions on the run now.
A hundred yards or so further along I dropped to one knee as Molina’s men sprinted round the corner. I allowed three of them to charge from cover before firing, and caught the backmost high in his left shoulder. He slapped a hand to his wound even as he crumpled, letting out a cry that echoed between the buildings of this narrower street. By the time his buddies realised they were under fire they had committed themselves to the chase. I shot each of them, not sure where I hit but clearly in places guaranteed to take them out of the fight. One of them howled, but the other fell silently.
Another gun barked close by. Rink had made his way to the opposite side of the street and crouched behind a parked car. He aimed so that his bullets struck the wall at the corner, in an effort at halting any further pursuit. I got up and continued running, then another hundred yards further along I turned and knelt, covering him as we pepper-potted out of range of their guns. On foot we had a good lead on them, but it was a matter of moments before they’d find a vehicle to continue the chase. We also required transportation but all the vehicles on the street were newer models and no way could we hot-wire them the way we could older cars. At a cross street there was moving traffic. For a second I entertained the idea of hijack, but that wasn’t in my nature and I kicked the idea loose. Instead we ran.
To slow the chase further Rink led us into a narrow alley, not unlike the one where earlier I’d confronted McAdam. Vehicles couldn’t follow, but Molina’s men would have greater knowledge of the layout of the streets than we did and might be able to cut us off. We spurred on, and burst from the alley into another street running parallel to the plaza a few blocks over. The rocky mound loomed above the rooftops, lights from the homes up there egging us upward.
Just as I entertained the notion that we might make it back to our car an SUV came tearing down the slope towards us. Molina – or one of his men – had called in back-up from the watchers who ringed the streets beyond his house. Worse, from some distance came the wail of sirens as police responded to the sounds of gunfire. One thing I was certain of was that the local cops – whether in Molina’s pocket or not – wouldn’t look on us favourably.
Rink ran right, and I went the other way, jogging up the sidewalks, placing parked vehicles between ourselves and the SUV speeding towards us. In the middle of the road they could simply have run us down, but now we’d taken that option from them, we forced them to have their eyes on separate targets.
A trio of innocent bystanders stood on the sidewalk above me. They looked confused by the roar of the engine and the gun-wielding man running towards them. Panic took hold, and a middle-aged couple clung on to each other, even as their younger friend tried to tug them to safety. Seconds later, a man in the SUV poked his gun out of the window and fired at me, careless of the civilians in the way. The woman shrieked, while her husband rattled off a curse of alarm. Thankfully none of the trio was hit, but that could change any second.
‘Get inside, now,’ I yelled at them, pointing to a nearby doorway. Receiving only terrified looks, I tried out my meagre Spanish. ‘¡Entra ahora! Get in there. Now! En ese país. Ahora, ahora!’
The trio scattered, but not for the door I indicated; they ran up the hill before me. They had no idea that I was the good guy here: to them, blood-splashed and holding a pistol, I must have looked like the one they must escape. With no choice left, I dodged between two parked cars and on to the road, drawing the gunfire away and allowing them to flee. Rink shouted but I couldn’t hear his words for the roar of the SUV and the banging of gunshots. Probably he thought me loco too.
The SUV was ten yards away, two men inside. The driver was furthest from me, placing the gunman and the most immediate threat on my side. I dropped low to one knee, sighting him, but before I could get off a shot the driver hit the brakes, and the SUV skidded, turning side on. I had to leap backwards to avoid being crushed as the back end swung violently towards me. I went down flat, my head snapping back and striking the road. Inky whorls edged my vision, but I didn’t have time to absorb the shock, instead rolling into a space between two parked cars. Pushing up with my left arm, I fired blindly at the SUV, but it was continuing to spin away and all I hit was the rear fender. Pain blazed through my left leg, my knee pulsing in agony. Biting down on the pain, I shuffled back on my buttocks, trying to get the stationary car to my left to act as a barricade.
That was when the driver got the SUV under control. The rear lights flared like a devil’s fiendish glare, and I realised what the driver had in mind. The tyres spun as he hit the gas and reversed towards me. Frantically I backed away, my twisted knee shrieking in pain. The SUV slammed the parked cars and I was caught between two crushing shapes that bucked and lurched as the SUV powered them up on to the sidewalk. The back end of the car to my right lifted high in the air, the SUV pressing it up and over, and were it not for the one to my left that jammed hard to the front of a building I’d have been squashed beneath the SUV’s tyres. As it was, the tilted car threatened to crush me if the driver of the SUV thought to pull away quickly. I searched for an escape route, and my only chance was to go beneath the back of the car to my left. The problem there was that it had been compressed, concertinaed in on itself. For the second time in a few crazy minutes I was covered in raining glass as the car’s rear windscreen exploded. Luckily the glass was in chunks and not razor-sharp like the first lot.
I searched for a shot. Didn’t have one.
But I scrambled up, ignoring the burning in my knee as I was filled with the red haze of battle. The driver was still going heavy on the gas, trusting the vehicles to imprison then crush me to a pulp. I fired directly through the back windshield. I heard a corresponding shout of pain, but the curse that followed told me that I’d failed to kill either of the bastards. Bullets began punching through the glass as the gunman inside returned fire, even as the driver threw the gear and pulled away. Forced down again, I was barely missed by the car on my right as it slammed down to earth. More glass and bits of twisted metal clouded my vision, and I felt the rush of displaced air as I collided with the crushed trunk of the other car, my sore knee taking the brunt. Fresh pain shot through me.
I went after the two in the SUV, but Rink was already there. While they’d been intent on turning me into a red smear on the sidewalk, Rink had run up unnoticed. He lifted his gun, and without remorse shot the driver point-blank in the side of his head. The SUV had already been moving across the street, but now it was out of control. At speed it continued towards the buildings on the far side. The gunman, seeing his immediate future, tried to leap from the car, but before he’d got the door even part-way open, the SUV crashed through the façade of a store, wedging itself tightly among the collapsing masonry and wood beams.
‘You OK, Hunter?’ Rink asked as I limped over the road.
‘No . . . I’m fucking pissed!’
I went to the SUV, my SIG raised, murder in my heart.
‘Ayúdame . . . por favor. Ayuda . . .’
I heard the plaintive cries of the gunman trapped between the frame of the door and a splintered beam. Suspecting a trap, I moved in with my gun centred on his ashen face, inviting him to lift his gun. Then I noticed the blood frothing from between his lips, so dark it looked like oil against the pallor of his feat
ures.
‘Ayúdame . . .’ he repeated. Help me.
Suddenly the rage left me. I’d killed men in similar positions, but that was in the heat of battle where their continuation of life might mean a bullet in my spine as I walked away. This man was in no position to fight. He was crushed. I could tell that his ribcage was mush and that the blood bubbling from his lips and nostrils was filling his throat. He was in no shape to do anything but beg. I lowered my SIG.
Struggling for the correct words, I told him his friends were coming and they would help him.‘Tus amigos están por llegar. Ellos te ayudarán. No puedo hacer nada.’
‘Por favor . . . ?’ he beseeched.
Shaking my head, I walked away. ‘No puedo hacer nada,’ I repeated at a whisper: I can do nothing.
He didn’t agree, damning me to hell.
‘Usted puede ir al infierno, hijo de puta!’
‘There’s gratitude for ya.’ Rink smiled grimly. ‘Maybe he’d have preferred you to shoot him in the face?’
I wasn’t in a joking frame of mind. As a parting insult the gunman had called me a bastard. It was how I felt, too. I had to keep reminding myself that moments before this man had been trying his hardest to murder me, but as we jogged away up the hill I was still picturing the blood bubbling out of his mouth. I very much doubted he’d hang on long enough for his friends to help him.
The pain in my twisted knee was a hindrance, but the endorphins flooding my system numbed the worst of it. If I was to rest now my leg would stiffen and I’d struggle to get moving again. So I ploughed on, loping behind Rink as he headed for the high ground. A quick check over my shoulder told me that our other pursuers had momentarily lost our trail, but they couldn’t be far away. The trio of civilians had disappeared off the street, but there were other faces watching from windows and doorways, drawn to the fight now that the immediate danger was over. Any one of those witnesses might direct the police – or even Molina’s men – after us at any time. They couldn’t be expected to understand that we were actually the good guys, not after what had just happened.
