by Mark Dawson
"And you were there, too?"
"I followed Hernandez. Milton was there and Mendoza came last of all. Frankly, Milton saved me a bullet. I'd already decided that Mendoza was a liability."
“And then you recaptured him.”
Hicks nodded.
De Lacey used the silver tongs in the bowl to remove a cube of sugar and dropped it into his coffee. "Where's the factory again?"
"North of the city."
Hicks picked up his cup and sipped his coffee. It was deliciously bitter. The caffeine would be useful. He had managed only a few hours’ sleep over the course of his time in Manila.
"Would you take me there?"
"Of course. But—"
"Yes, you'll want to be paid. That's fine. I don't expect favours." De Lacey stood up. "The same again?"
Hicks knew that Logan had already been paid a million dollars. He stood, too. "A million is too much. Half is reasonable."
"To include disposal of the body?"
"Of course."
De Lacey extended his hand and Hicks shook it.
"Shall we?"
"When?"
"No time like the present."
83
ZIGGY SLOUCHED against the rail and looked out at the yacht as the tender was untied. The boat turned around and sped back to the marina.
He went back to the car. Milton was down low in the driver's seat.
The window was open. "They're coming back," he reported.
"Hicks?"
"He's on it."
"And de Lacey?"
"Yes. I think so."
"How many others?"
"I saw three including the pilot."
“Four total?”
“If you include de Lacey.”
Milton started the engine.
“The tracker is working as it should.”
“Update me if they go somewhere they shouldn’t.”
"Anything else?"
"Walk back to the hotel and clean up. No prints. No sign we’ve been there. Keep your phone on. I'll call if I need you."
THE SPOT that Josie had suggested was remote and deserted. It was two hours north of the capital, down a road that led off the main Route 8 in the rolling foothills that surrounded Mount Arayat. The road was paved for the first half mile and then became little more than a track. It descended into a depression, a shallow bowl in the landscape that was fringed with large trees. It provided natural cover for the structures that he saw at the bottom of the bowl. There were rickety-looking shacks and two old trailers.
There were also two cars. Milton recognised Josie's and parked behind it. The second car was nearby. He didn't recognise it.
Josie came around a bend in the track and raised her hand in greeting.
Milton got out of the car. It was sweltering hot.
"Is this it?" he asked.
She nodded.
Milton looked at the collection of buildings. None of them were permanent: one of the trailers was no more than a burned-out shell, and three small corrugated iron huts slouched nearby. A chain had been strung up between two trees on either side of the road, blocking the way ahead.
"Will it be okay?" she asked.
"What was it?"
"They made shabu here," she said.
“Meth?”
She nodded. "The trailer caught fire. My partner busted them last week."
"No one comes down here?"
“I've just had a look. It doesn’t look like it."
“It looks good.”
Milton started to work out the best way to proceed.
"Are they coming?" she asked him.
"They're on the way. So we need to move."
"Manuel's over there."
They set off toward the trailers. Josie limped heavily on her cane, each step eliciting a wince of pain.
"Are you all right?"
"Hurts like hell.”
"You don't have to be here."
"Yes," she said firmly. "I do."
They reached the two trailers. The one that had caught fire had been completely destroyed. The windows were gone and the roof had been consumed. The second was intact, and someone had propped a shotgun against the side. The door opened as they approached and a man stepped out.
"Manuel Dalisay," Josie said. "He's my partner. Manuel—this is Milton."
Milton pursed his lips. "Just him?"
"You told me to ask someone I trusted."
"I was hoping for—"
"I trust him," she said. "I don't trust anyone else."
The man looked nervous and Milton's negative reaction was making it worse. Milton put out his hand. "I'm John," he said as they shook. "Thank you for coming."
"She said it would be dangerous," Dalisay said as he collected the shotgun. "You think we need more police?"
"More would've been better," he said, and then, when Dalisay grimaced and Josie frowned, he added, "but the man coming here thinks that he's going to find something else. There are four of them. If we're careful, we'll be able to surprise them. We’ve got enough."
"Okay," Dalisay said uncertainly.
Milton glanced down at the shotgun. "You know how to use that?"
"Sure I do."
"You got another one?"
"In the trunk."
"So we'll be just fine."
"Did you bring the other things I asked for?" Josie said to him.
Dalisay nodded back to the second car. "In back with the shotgun," he said.
Milton knew that Josie didn’t trust many people in the department, but he was not impressed with Dalisay. But no matter how querulous he looked, the man was here and willing to help and that stood for something. Ziggy had said that de Lacey was bringing three other men with him. De Lacey had four guns and Milton had three, with Hicks as a wildcard. He knew that de Lacey's men would be professionals, and they were likely to be better armed. Josie was hurt and Dalisay didn't fill him with confidence. On the other hand, Milton had surprise on his side.
He would have to hope that that would be enough.
He looked at his watch. It had taken him two hours to drive up here. Ziggy had called en route to tell him that the tracker was reporting that the Mercedes was also headed north, on Route 8, and that he had a fifteen-minute head start on them.
"When will they get here?" Josie asked.
"Fifteen minutes," he said. "Twenty minutes maximum."
"Then we need to set up. Where do you want us?"
DE LACEY WAS in the front with the driver, the man with the ponytail. Hicks was in one of the back seats, with the shaven-headed man on one side of him and another similar specimen from the security detail on the other.
The driver turned around. "Where now?"
They had been driving for nearly two hours. Mount Arayat had started as a rumple on the horizon, but now it dominated the way ahead. Hicks had told them to take Route 8 and head for San Fernando. He had never been to the site that Josie had chosen, but she had described it in detail and then Ziggy had ‘driven’ him there with the benefit of Google Street View.
“You’re going to come up to a road on the right,” he said. “Goes to Magalang. Take it.”
The driver grunted his understanding and returned his attention to the road.
Hicks heard the sound of a phone's chimes.
De Lacey reached into his pocket and took out his phone. He looked at the display, his expression inscrutable.
"Everything all right?" Hicks asked.
"Just business," he said. "I have rather a lot going on, as you might imagine."
The men on either side of Hicks reached down and collected metal carrying cases. They each took out a Heckler & Koch MP5 and set about checking them.
De Lacey noticed in the mirror that Hicks was watching them. "Milton is dangerous," he said.
"He is. But he's chained to a wall."
"Nevertheless. No chances."
84
IT WAS dark in the undergrowth between the trees. Milton stayed
low, trying to ignore the cramping from muscles that had taken a beating over the past few days. He shifted his position a little, stretching out his legs. He was painfully aware that if his muscles locked up now then he would be seriously reducing the odds of him—and everyone else—walking out of here alive. Dalisay had brought a second shotgun and Milton had it. It was old and battered, but he was confident that it would fire when he needed it to.
There was only one way that de Lacey could approach them and, with that in mind, he had arranged the three of them very carefully. First, he had instructed them to drive the cars between the trailers and then farther down the track until they were well out of sight. He was in the vegetation to the right of the road, with a clear view along the track as it climbed out of the depression. Josie was on the same side, thirty paces to the north of him. Dalisay was opposite her position.
Milton's instructions were clear: they were to let de Lacey, Hicks and anyone else that came with them get out of their vehicle and make their way to the clearing where the trailers were. Then, on his mark, they would declare themselves and call for them to surrender. If the plan proceeded as Milton hoped it might, they would catch them within a crossfire. Provided Josie and Dalisay followed his plan, Milton was hopeful that the confrontation could be brought to an end without violence.
Twenty minutes passed. He listened. He could hear the steady chirruping of nearby cicadas and then the sound of a larger animal as it crept through the deeper vegetation behind him.
He froze. He thought that he heard the sound of an engine.
He watched as a Mercedes crested the hill and started to descend toward them.
It slowed and stopped, and, after a moment, the doors opened.
Two large men armed with submachine guns stepped out from either side of the passenger compartment.
Hicks came next.
Then the driver.
And then, finally, Fitzroy de Lacey.
Milton stayed low. He clutched the shotgun and waited.
De Lacey called over to Hicks. "Here?"
"Yes. The trailer."
One of the other men spoke. "I don't like it, sir."
"It's fine," Hicks said. "Nothing's changed. It's as I left it."
There was a pause.
"He's tied up?" de Lacey said.
"Wrists and ankles, shackled to the wall with a bag taped over his head."
"Thank you. Now—get on your knees, please"
Milton tensed. He parted the fronds before his face so that he had a slightly better view. Hicks had turned back to de Lacey and Milton couldn't see his face.
"What?" he said.
"Knees. Now."
Milton squinted between the branches. One of the men, a broad-shouldered thug with a shaven head, had stepped up to Hicks, his MP5 aimed squarely at his chest. He jabbed his finger toward the ground.
"What are you doing?" Hicks said, doing a good job of maintaining his composure.
The shaven-headed man closed quickly and struck Hicks with the butt of the pistol. He stumbled back and dropped down to one knee. The other man, a heavy with a long blond ponytail, trained his MP5 on Hicks.
"Milton," de Lacey called out. "Where are you?"
Milton held his breath.
De Lacey pointed to the trailer.
"Shoot it," he said to the man with the shaved head.
He aimed the MP5 and pulled the trigger. The submachine gun fired on full-auto, a barrage of rounds striking the thin metal walls of the old trailer. The glass blew apart and fell with loud crashes, and the metal popped as the rounds passed through it.
The man stopped firing.
JOSIE WAS well placed. Both she and Dalisay were adjacent to the Mercedes but, most importantly, behind the five men who had emerged from it. They all had their backs turned to her: de Lacey was in the middle; the driver of the car and a man with a ponytail were on either side of him; the man with the shaven head who had just fired into the trailer was several paces beyond them, standing next to Hicks and, although he couldn’t know it, nearer to Milton. Hicks was facing in her direction. He was on his knees and covered by the weapons of the two men next to de Lacey.
"Milton!" de Lacey called.
Josie glanced into the tree line, trying to see where Milton had hidden himself; she was pleased to note that she couldn't, that it was too gloomy, and assumed that de Lacey and his men wouldn't be able to see him, either.
She heard a noise from the other side of the track. She looked across and saw movement: Dalisay was making his way slowly through the bushes toward the men.
Stop.
She wanted to call out to him, but she knew that she couldn't.
Stop!
They were to wait for Milton's signal. That was what they had agreed.
Dalisay was low down, trying to minimise the noise that he was making.
She could hear him, though. Surely that meant that they would be able to hear him, too.
She had to do something.
There was a narrow path through the bushes just inside the cover that shielded her from the road. She parted the overhanging fronds and branches and started along it, trying to stay level with Dalisay.
85
HICKS LACED his fingers together and put his hands against the back of his head. The man who had shot up the trailer was a step away from him. Hicks could have reached out and touched him. He ached with the urge to do something—anything—and fought to control his breath. He had to wait. There were three men just a handful of steps away from him who would turn him into Swiss cheese if he made a move. He had to trust Milton. He couldn’t be far away.
De Lacey walked over to him.
"What's your real name?" de Lacey said.
"Logan. You know what my name is."
"No," he said. "I don't know what your name is, but it certainly isn't that."
De Lacey knelt down and took his phone out of his pocket. He tapped on the screen and then turned it around so that Hicks could see it. There was a picture of a man there: late twenties, glasses, his hair already thinning a little.
"Who's that?" Hicks asked.
"That's William Logan. What happened to him?"
"What are you talking about—"
"Did he tell you that he never met his clients face to face? He told us that, too. It was one of the reasons I thought your offer was a little strange. Bit of a radical change of policy. It made me think, so I had a word with the lads I've been working with at MI6. Good lads, they are. Helpful. When I started working with them, one of the things they did for me was to vet Mr. Logan. It was hard to find anything much about him, but they went back into the archives and dug out what they could. They found this. It was taken when he joined the SBS. And you don’t look very much like him at all."
De Lacey's jacket fell open and Hicks saw the pistol in its holster. De Lacey noticed that he was looking at it, smiled, and took it out. He held it up so that Hicks could see it better.
"Nice, isn't it?"
It was a Browning Hi-Power, but, rather than the usual matte black, this one was finished in titanium gold.
"I love guns. They made me what I am. This one is special. It belonged to Gaddafi. They found it after he was captured. I expect you saw the pictures. They found it when they dragged his body out of that filthy sewer he was hiding in. It went underground, but I had a man find it for me. It cost a quarter of a million. I had Bertie buy it for me while I was locked up. This'll be the first time I get to use it."
"You're making a mistake."
"Am I? I don't think so."
He stood and pressed the muzzle of the gun against the top of Hicks’s head.
"Last chance. Where's Milton?"
"I don't know."
De Lacey pushed down; the muzzle of the gun pressed hard against Hicks’s scalp.
"Milton!" de Lacey called out. "You've got until I count to five to come out or I'm going to shoot whoever the fuck this is. And then, when I've done that, I'm going to find everyone wh
o helped you escape and kill them, too. Starting with the policewoman. What was her name? Hernandez?"
"One."
Hicks closed his eyes.
"Two."
He started to doubt himself. Was this the right location?
"Three."
Had he made a mistake? Had he taken a wrong turn?
"Four."
Where was Milton?
Hicks heard someone crash through the undergrowth between the trees. Hicks didn't recognise him; he was a Filipino, and he was toting a shotgun.
The man yelled out. "Get your hands up!"
One of the men still near the Mercedes spun around and brought his weapon up in a smooth and practiced motion.
Hicks watched in dumb horror: the newcomer stumbled out from between the trees, his feet tangled in a stray vine. The shotgun suddenly jerked down to the ground as he fought to maintain his balance.
The MP5 chattered and jumped in the first man's hands as he pulled the trigger.
It was too close to miss. The spray caught the man in the stomach. He fell to his knees and then over onto his side, the shotgun tumbling out of his grasp.
"No!"
Josie burst out of the greenery from the other side of the track, the despairing cry still on her lips. Her Glock was raised and aimed.
She fired.
The shooter was facing to the side, away from Josie, and she shot him.
Hicks felt the muzzle of the pistol pull away from his head.
De Lacey had left his side. He had started to run.
The shaven-headed man who had shot up the trailer started to turn.
Now.
Hicks seized the moment. He surged to his feet and tackled the man, wrapping his arms around his body and forcing him down to the ground. The MP5 was caught between their bodies, and Hicks held it with his left hand and punched with his right, driving down with his fist and then striking even harder with his elbow.
MILTON POUNCED.
De Lacey was running at full speed in his direction. Milton came out of cover and clotheslined him. The older man's attention was distracted, and he saw Milton much too late. Milton's forearm landed across de Lacey's windpipe and turned him inside out. His legs flew out from beneath him; he corkscrewed in the air and slammed down on his stomach. Milton lunged onto him, grabbing his right wrist and forcing it behind his back and then sharply up, ensuring that the Hi-Power was pointed away from his body. He yanked up and twisted at the same time, forcing de Lacey's face down into the mulch on the ground.
