SAVAGE PAYBACK (Jack Calder Crime Series #3)

by Seumas Gallacher

  The rented car pulled away from the corner. Rikko Duval didn’t need to wait to be a part of any crowd massing at the dead man’s garden gate. He drove slowly, avoiding pieces of twisted metal thrown across the street. Several vehicle and house alarms wailed in unison as he turned the corner and headed south toward the port ferry terminal to Europe.

  That’ll slow the bastards up.

  CHAPTER 47

  In Vancouver, the temperature slid below freezing. In the Chevrolet, Jack and Malky’s gloves and protective jackets kept the cold at bay. A running engine might draw attention. They wore black balaclavas with only the eyes showing but sat back from the windscreen to avoid chance detection. Jack reckoned they’d only get one real shot at this tonight and they’d make it count.

  Headlights from two cars swivelled into the area and pointed in toward the warehouse. No horns sounded and the vehicles parked a few metres to the side of the entrance. Malky switched on the cargo van’s engine and eased onto the verge opposite the sliding doorway. Three men got out of the cars and waited for the last man. The bulky figure of Estrada climbed from the rear of the second car and was immediately flanked by the others. The mist from the condensing air from their breath rose in small clouds from each of them.

  “Wait,” said Jack. “Not yet.”

  The door rolled open a couple of metres and the Chinese boss appeared with two of his men. He walked toward Estrada and held out his hand to greet his visitor. The two drug bosses exchanged some words and started toward the doorway.

  “Ready,” said Jack. “There’s at least another six inside, minimum a dozen in total.”

  “Ten-four,” said Malky. He caressed the accelerator with his foot, waiting for the signal.

  The outside group reached the opening and the door was pulled further ajar. A wooden trestle table at the side of the central aisle was stacked with silvered, foil-wrapped packages. The shipment was ready for checking. The bosses reached the table, followed by the henchmen. Estrada’s men’s M16s matched the Uzis of the Chinese gang.

  Must be a shitload of value on that table, thought Jack.

  “Go!”

  Malky slammed hard on the accelerator. The sentry on the door was slow to close the sliding mechanism behind the group. At the last second he looked up at the van speeding toward him. He backed away from the doorway and screamed a warning. Malky brought the Chevrolet skidding to a halt in the doorway, smashing sideways into the left door shutter, preventing it from moving. The guard raised his weapon at the intruders. The burst from Jack’s AK 47 ripped his chest and throat and he fell across the door entrance.

  Malky gunned the van into reverse a couple of metres. Jack lobbed a stun grenade forward. When the alarm shout sounded, Estrada and his Chinese counterpart sprinted toward the rear of the warehouse. The guards had no time to aim before the explosion hit them. Jack and Malky dismounted firing rapid salvoes. Jack threw a second grenade where he’d seen Estrada go and fired through the smoke where the guards had fallen. None of them would survive the onslaught. From the rear, two figures emerged, dazed by the shock of the stun grenade.

  Malky’s round lifted the Chinese boss off the ground. The Mexican put his hands in the air, but was met with several bullets in the skull from Jack. Estrada’s body continued to twitch where it lay as Jack continued firing at him.

  Fucking overkill, thought Malky. Guess he’s gotta get it out of his system.

  The pair moved back toward the Chevrolet. Upstairs, the door to the office swung open. Two men exited, crouched and fired.

  “Upstairs, Malky,” Jack shouted, raking the assailants with gunfire. He hit the target and both men collapsed.

  “I’m hit, Jack. Fuckin’ leg, dammit.”

  Jack jumped across to where his partner sat against the front wheel of the van, blood oozing through the bottom of his trouser leg. He used his knife to cut away the lower part of the cloth.

  “Incomin’,” Malky yelled. He raised the AK 47 and fired, killing the last pair of guards coming out of the office. The blood flowed heavily from Malky’s lower limb. The bone was smashed.

  “No way you’re flying the Golden Skies tonight, lad,” said Jack. “How many hit you?”

  “I only felt one. I think I’d know if it was more. Bastards.”

  Jack used the trouser cloth as a makeshift tourniquet. The wound wasn’t life-threatening.

  “Okay. Into the van,” said Jack.

  Malky looped his arms around Jack’s neck as the big man lifted him into the passenger seat. The blood flow had stopped. Jack reversed the Chevrolet and spun it around to face the roadway. He got out of the vehicle and walked to the side of the warehouse and tossed a grenade into the stack of oil drums. He retraced his steps to the front door as the oil drums exploded, and lobbed another under the table with the cocaine stacked in expensive piles.

  The van headed out toward the fallback rendezvous earmarked in case of any slip-up.

  “Unless they can filter cocaine dust out of fresh air, they won’t make any fucking money out of that load,” he said as the second detonation obliterated the dead Mexican’s shipment. The rear mirror captured the flames racing up the timber walls of Jodlowski’s Freight Forwarders warehouse. Jack glanced across at Malky. His partner had slipped into unconsciousness. He flipped the mobile phone open, dialled the back-up number and got an immediate response.

  “I’ve a man down. Leg bleeding from a bullet wound. He needs a hospital in a hurry.”

  “Ten-four on a man down. We’ll be with you in six minutes.”

  The promised six minutes matched Jack’s arrival time at the secluded rendezvous. The Mounties’ Drug Squad men helped Malky out of the van and into the ambulance which drew up within a further one minute.

  “Thanks guys,” said Jack. “Look after him for me. He owes me a drink.”

  The Canadians smiled at the universal gallows humour peculiar to law enforcement officers and military.

  “He’ll get the best attention the RCMP can offer. Where you heading now?”

  “Got a plane to catch. Oh, and by the way, you guys just busted a ton of shit at Jodlowski’s warehouse. And your morgue’s gonna be a bit crowded tonight. See you later.”

  He shook hands with the lieutenant-in-charge and drove off toward the airport.

  Two down, one to go.

  CHAPTER 48

  Donnie chauffeured Jack from the airport direct to May-Ling. The injury to Malky had already taken the shine off the success in Vancouver. The news of Paul Manning’s murder hit Jack hard.

  “Bastard. I fucked up. I should’ve gone after Duval first,” he said.

  “Cut it out, Jack,” said Donnie. “Nobody’s got a clue where he is. Not you, not me, not Marcel, not Alan Rennie, none of us. The old needle in the haystack bit. Now his paymaster’s gone. His money’s not in Gibraltar. The man could be anywhere on the planet.”

  “So what do we do? Sit and wait until he blows us all away one by fucking one?”

  “Calm down. You’re not gonna help any by losing your cool every ten minutes. I want to nail this guy as much as you do. Chasing shadows isn’t the way go.”

  “Then what do you have in mind?”

  “Right now, priority’s on protecting ourselves,” said Donnie. “And our people, Jack. They’re at risk too. I ordered the office in London closed until further notice. We’ve done that before, and can operate out of Amsterdam without too much disruption. I reckon because we senior guys are the main targets in this nutter’s head, London’s the most likely target centre.”

  “Do we have any idea where he is?”

  “Yesterday, while you were in the air, Marcel’s people traced a CCTV image of a man with a limp disembarking from the ferry in Ostend. The close-ups show a guy with a beard and glasses. Not an infallible identification, but Marcel’s ninety-nine percent certain it’s him and he’s in Europe. They’re scouring the Netherlands, Belgium and France as we speak.”

  “The problem with that is so long as h
e doesn’t go walking around in public much, the man’s so fucking ordinary-looking,” said Jack.

  “By the way, Alan’s stepped up the security again at the hospital. Look.”

  Donnie parked the car and they walked toward the entrance. The police presence included officers in the parking area. The receptionist nodded recognition and waved them through to the private ward area. They turned the corner into the long corridor leading to May-Ling’s room and Jack stopped dead in his tracks. His wife, assisted by a nurse on either side, was making her way along the hallway.

  “Hello, darling,” she said, with a lop-sided smile. “I told you I’d be out of here soon.”

  Jack hugged her gently.

  “You go and sit inside. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Let me finish my exercise,” she said.

  The nurses brought her back ten minutes later. Instead of getting back into bed, she sat in the armchair. The cards and get-well messages surrounded the room. Only flowers brought in by Alan Rennie himself were allowed. Donnie waited outside with the guards.

  “How’re you feeling?” asked Jack.

  “That’s the third time they’ve let me walk the length of the hall and back. The first time was terrible, but today felt good. I need to keep the muscles moving.”

  The bruising on the left side of the face was fading, but the bandages still covered her damaged eye. Medical dressings adorned the left leg and shoulder, with added strapping around her knee.

  “What’s the doc saying about the eye?”

  “Still too early to predict how it’ll be, but the blood clot at the back of the retina’s cleared. They do the checks a couple of times a day. When they take the bandage off, things are still blurred, The specialist says it won’t be clear until the internal bruising subsides. We have to wait and find out whenever they say I’m ready.”

  “The baby? What about the baby?”

  “Everything’s normal, Doctor Spencer says.”

  Jack reached across and hugged her again.

  “And of course, we’ve lost Paul,” he said.

  May-Ling looked puzzled.

  “Paul? What’s happened to Paul?” Her face showed nobody had told her yet. Donnie had forgotten to warn him.

  “Oh, shit. I’m sorry, darling. Paul was killed yesterday morning.”

  “How? Duval? Oh, no,” she whispered.

  Jack held her. Her body shook. Not telling her had been the right thing to do, and he’d messed that up.

  “I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t know they hadn’t told you yet. I guess it’s better coming from me, anyway. On the plus side, we nailed Estrada, but Malky took a bullet in the leg. The Canadians are looking after him.”

  “Jack, this won’t stop until you find him. You know that don’t you?”

  “Yes. We’re working on it. Donnie’s trying to keep me cool. He says the priority now is to protect ourselves. You, me, the rest of our people, and he’s right. On all counts. We think he’s back in Europe, but we’re not sure.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “First things first. I’m going home to get some sleep. I’ll catch up with Donnie later. We’ve closed the office for the rest of the staff meantime. They can operate from home for a few days until we work out what to do next. I’ll be back tonight, sweetheart.”

  She walked with him to the door and kissed him goodbye.

  Donnie headed the car toward Beckenham to drop his partner home.

  “You never told me she didn’t know about Paul,” said Jack.

  “Oh, hell. Sorry, mate. Mea culpa. Major slip up. We kept the news from her, thinking she doesn’t need any extra stress worrying about the rest of us. I fucked up.”

  “Don’t worry, she’s strong enough.”

  Hell. Stronger than me, thought Jack.

  “Catch you up later this afternoon. I need some sleep. I’ll call you when I’m awake,” said Jack, retrieving his hand luggage from the back seat.

  Donnie waved and pulled away from Jack’s gate.

  The suburban semi-detached had been a big step-up from his bachelor flat in St. John’s Wood. A married man with a family needed something more practical than the pad he’d used more as a parking slot to sleep in than a home. The search for value for money meant moving out to a locale favoured by the professional set. Beckenham ticked all the boxes for him and May-Ling when they returned from Hong Kong with a ten-year-old son. Now, eight years on, it would soon welcome a new baby. He pushed open the gate and dug in his jacket pocket for the front door key. A meowing sound at his ankles distracted him from putting the key in the lock. The Siamese cat from next door, a regular visitor to the Calder household, purred and rubbed against his leg.

  “Hello, Mimi,” he said and bent to stroke the animal’s head. “Nice to get a welcome home.” The cat’s ears flapped back and the purring increased.

  “You’ll take any amount of that, won’t you?”

  Jack froze. From the lower angle, he sighted a thread-thin cord looping from the bottom of the door. He picked Mimi up and backed away to the end of the pathway. The cat continued to purr. The mobile phone fast-dial flicked to Donnie’s number. It rang several times without answer.

  “C’mon, answer the bloody thing, man.” Now Mimi nestled at his chin. Donnie’s voice came on line.

  “Sorry, Jack. I was at traffic lights. What’s up?”

  “Duval’s been here.”

  “What? How?”

  “I haven’t touched the front door, but there’s a thread coil at the bottom corner,” said Jack.

  “Damn. You know the drill. Touch nothing. I’ll call Alan and get the bomb squad moving pronto. I’ll be back with you in a few minutes.”

  Jack put his luggage bag on the ground to sit on. Mimi was in no hurry to leave him.

  First to arrive, Donnie checked the doorway and eased back down the pathway as Alan Rennie and DCI Bob Granger appeared.

  “Classic trigger cord, Alan,” said Donnie.

  “Duval must’ve tracked your movements, Jack. He knew you weren’t here,” said Alan. “I’ve sent a team over to your place, too, Donnie. Better safe than sorry.”

  Several police vehicles pulled up, including the bomb squad specialists. The back-up team went into a well-rehearsed containment drill.

  The police asked the occupants of several houses either side of Jack’s place and those across the street to leave for their own safety. Blue and white tape stretched across the roadway at both ends. The neighbouring couple who owned Mimi both worked in the daytime. The cat stayed in Jack’s arms.

  “You’ve a key for the backdoor too, I presume?” said Bob Granger.

  “Yes,” said Jack, handing the key to the detective. “For fuck’s sake, tell these lads to be careful. We don’t need any more losses to that bastard.”

  “They know what they’re doing, Jack. Relax,” said Bob, walking away to talk to the bomb squad leader.

  The rear entry to the house held no traps, but the two specialists moved cautiously through the hallways, checking the floors for pressure springs. The hall rug behind the front door lay crumpled to one side. At the bottom of the door frame a metal canister pointed forward. The coil ran from the base across the upright wooden support and taped on to the door itself. Any movement inward would trigger the mechanism. The same type of device had killed Jules Townsend. The leader checked for any decoy phantom wire and found none. The wire cutter snipped the coil clean to deactivate the bomb.

  “Roger. Clear one,” he said to his partner. “Let’s check the other rooms.”

  Jack waited in the police van with Alan Rennie and Donnie. Someone rustled up some coffee and doughnuts. Mimi found a new parking place in Donnie Mullen’s lap.

  “If Mimi hadn’t been here, you’d be picking bits of me off the road,” said Jack.

  The Assistant Commissioner smiled. “Wasn’t meant to be your time,” he said.

  “The lads at Donnie’s place’ve called in all clear. For the next week or so I’m postin
g officers at both your homes. I’ll get them over to Malky’s place too.”

  “That’s not necessary,” said Jack. “We can look after ourselves.”

  “You just acknowledged, if Mimi wasn’t here, neither would you be,” said Alan. “I have a duty to protect the rest of the public here as well, Jack. The officers stay.”

  The television cameras turned up halfway through proceedings. By the time the specialists satisfied themselves the entire house was safe, it was already late afternoon. The police allowed the other inhabitants to return to their homes, but not before the newshounds had milked the story dry.

  “Let’s can the meeting for today, Donnie. Catch up early tomorrow. I’ve gotta sleep.”

  “Sure. Goodnight.”

  A brief call to Canada assured Jack his buddy was receiving the best of medical attention. He’d be on a plane back to London in a week. Dusk settled on the street as he drew the bedroom curtains closed. Outside his front gate an officer stood watch. He thought he imagined a few curtains opposite twitching as he looked out. He walked to the back bedroom and gazed out on a second policeman on duty at the rear gate.

  What the hell’s wrong with this picture? he asked himself.

  A long, steaming-hot shower took away some of the fatigue of the past few days. He collapsed into bed and fell asleep in seconds.

  For many years before meeting May-Ling, Jack had recurring nightmares, a throwback to visions of his late father’s suicide in a filthy, flour-bagging cellar in the slums of Glasgow. Jack had been seven years old, but forty years later he couldn’t shake the taste of dust and the riveting death stare from his Da’s eyes. Interchanged with these came horrific re-casts of barbaric scenes encountered during under-cover assignments in the jungles of Africa and Indo-China. May-Ling had helped him exorcise these by sharing how she’d coped with her own horrendous nightmares after the untimely killing of her first husband in a street battle with triads in Hong Kong. They had been in the force together. His death had been a tragic example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.