Only then did the gunfire stop, although their ears still rang from the noise. They could see them now: a line of three men in hooded ponchos, barely visible in the woods on the other side of the road. One held his rifle at port arms while the others leaned against the trees to his left and right, rifles at their shoulders, sighting down the barrel at their targets. They did not seem troubled that Angel and Louis could see them. Then more men appeared from the north and south, following the road, and took up positions among the trees. Some of them even seemed to be smiling. It was a game, and they were winning. Angel dropped the Steyr and raised his Glock, but Louis reached out and indicated that he should hold his fire.
‘No,’ he said.
They’ve strung themselves out along the road, thought Louis. They took note of where we came in, then made an educated guess at where we’d come out. The line might have been thinner a little farther to the east or west, but they knew that they could reinforce it quickly.
From somewhere on the other side of the road, he heard the crackle of a radio then it was lost in the sound of an approaching vehicle, and a flatbed truck appeared from the south and stopped thirty or forty feet away from where Angel and Louis knelt. They could see the shapes of two men in the cab. The truck idled. Nobody moved.
‘What the hell is this?’ asked Angel.
But Louis did not reply. He was performing calculations in his mind: times, distances, weapons. He tried to work out their chances of killing the two men in the truck if they used the cover of the forest to work their way south. They were good, but the chances of getting away from the pursuers who would inevitably follow were less favorable: close to zero, he reckoned.
And yet this couldn’t go on indefinitely. They were being contained for a purpose. He wondered if there were men already approaching from behind, cutting them off. They were like foxes fleeing the hunters only to find that the entrance to their den had been sealed, forcing them to turn and face the dogs.
‘We go back,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘They’ve closed off the road, for now. They also know where we’re at, and that’s not good. We use the forest while we can. There’s a house to the northeast. It was on the satellite photographs. Could be we can lay our hands on a car or a truck there, or at least a phone.’
‘We could call the cops to come get us,’ said Angel. ‘Tell them we came here to kill someone by mistake.’
Rain began to fall, large drops that made a slapping noise upon the leaves above them. Even though the sun had now almost risen, the sky above them remained cloudy and dark. The rain fell harder and faster, quickly soaking them to the skin, but the men watching from the woods did not move. The rain slid from their slickers and ponchos. They had been prepared for rain. They had been prepared for everything.
Slowly, Angel and Louis retreated into the trees.
T here was massive internal bleeding. His brain swelled inside his skull, causing more hemorrhaging. They fought for him, trying to prevent herniation, for that would be the end of him. They removed bone fragments, and a clot, and the bullet. Finally, all of their work would leave only the faintest of scars, hidden by his hair.
And while they battled to save him, Louis sat by a lake, surrounded by trees. Across the water, he could see the house in which he had grown up. It was empty now, fallen into ruin. It was no longer home. He could not go back there, and so there was no life within its walls. There was no life anywhere. The woods were quiet, and no fish swam in the lake. He sat in the dead place, and he waited.
After a time, a man emerged from the darkness of the forest to the east. His face was gone, and his teeth were bared in his lipless mouth. He had no eyes with which to see, but he turned his head toward Louis. The wounds to his face made him look as though he were grinning. Perhaps he was. Deber had always been grinning, even when he killed Louis’s mother.
To the west, a light appeared, and the Burning Man took his place by the water, his mouth forming words, speaking soundlessly to his son of rage and wrath.
North: the house. South: Louis. East: Deber. West: the Burning Man. Compass points.
But Louis was not the southern point. He heard footsteps behind him, and a hand gently brushed the back of his neck. He tried to turn, but he could not.
And his grandmother’s voice whispered: ‘These are not the only choices.’
It was the beginning of the end, the seed that would lead to the slow flowering of a conscience.
The wound took a long time to heal. The bullet had penetrated his skull, but had not passed into his brain. His mother had always told him he had a hard head. Even after his survival was assured, he had trouble forming certain words and distinguishing colors, and his vision was blurred for months. He was tormented by phantom sounds, and by pains in his limbs. Gabriel was tempted to cut him loose, but Louis was special. He had been the youngest of Gabriel’s recruits, and he still had the potential to exceed all of Gabriel’s expect ations. He responded quickly to therapy, in part because of his own natural strength, but also, Gabriel knew, out of a desire for revenge. Bliss had disappeared, but they would find him. They could not let what he had done go unpunished.
It took fifteen years to track him down. When he was found, Louis was sent to execute him.
He was living in Amsterdam as a Dutch national, under the name van Mierlo. Some surgery had been performed on him; not much, but just enough on the nose, eyes, and chin to ensure that if any of his old acquaintances crossed his path they would fail to recognize him immediately. It was all about buying time: hours, minutes, even seconds. Louis knew that Bliss would have spent the years since the Lowein incident preparing for the day when he might be found. He would be ready to run at any time. He would know his environment intimately, so that the slightest change in routine would alert him. He would always be armed. He would own a car, kept in a secure private parking garage not far from where he lived, but would rarely use it. It would be kept for emergencies, in case the airport or the trains were closed to him for any reason, or when alternative travel arrangements were denied him.
He stuck to taxis, catching them on the street instead of calling for them in advance, and never taking the first that came along, always waiting for the second, third, or even fourth. Once each month, he visited his lawyer in Rotterdam, taking the train from Centraal. He was renting a four-story building on Van Woustraat, but appeared to have done nothing to the first floor, living on the second and third. Louis guessed that both the first and fourth floors would be booby-trapped, and that a bolt hole of some kind existed in Bliss’s living quarters, providing access to one of the adjoining buildings.
Louis wondered if Bliss knew that he was still alive. Probably, he thought. In the event that he was found, Bliss would expect Louis himself to come. He would be anticipating a knife, a gun to the head, just as Deber had so many years before. Perhaps he even feared an attempt to capture him and return him to the US for Gabriel to deal with as he saw fit. But Louis would be present; of that Bliss was certain, because Bliss did not know Louis, not as Gabriel did and not, in his final, agonized days, as Deber had.
Louis left the Netherlands without Bliss ever catching sight of him, and another man took his place for the final days, but during Louis’s time there he tracked Bliss, using Gabriel’s assistance as well as his own initiative. They found bank accounts. The office of his lawyer was searched. Business interests and properties owned were identified. Even his car was found.
Then, during Louis’s final days in Amsterdam, relations between the Dutch government and the transport unions deteriorated. A series of strikes was anticipated. One week later, Bliss went to his garage to pick up his car in order to drive to Rotterdam. There was a cassette player in the dashboard. He turned on the stereo as he maneuvered out of his space, the nose of the car angling upward with the slope, but instead of the anticipated Rolling Stones he heard a woman’s voice. Connie Francis, he thought. It’s Connie Francis singing ‘Who’s Sorry Now?
’
But I don’t own any Connie Francis.
Oh, you clever boy.
He already had one foot on the ground when the mercury tilt switch activated, and the car, and Bliss, were engulfed in flame.
‘He survived,’ Gabriel told Louis. ‘You should have found another way.’
‘That way seemed appropriate. Are you sure he’s not dead?’
‘There were no remains found in the car, but fragments of skin and clothing had adhered to the garage floor.’
‘How much skin?’
‘A great deal, apparently. He must have been in considerable pain. We traced him to a doctor’s surgery on Rokin. The doctor was dead when we found him, of course.’
‘If Bliss lives, he’ll come back at us someday.’
‘Perhaps. Then again, it may be that all that is left is a charred husk with the man we knew trapped inside.’
‘I could find him again.’
‘No, I don’t think so. He has money, and connections. This time, he’ll bury himself deep. I think we shall have to wait for him to come to us, if he comes at all. Patience, Louis, patience . . .’
22
Bliss sat in the dining room of Arthur Leehagen’s house, the table at his back and an empty Hardigg Storm case at his feet. He wore a raincoat, and he held a soft waterproof hat in his hands. In front of him was a window, but until a short time before he had been able to see nothing through the glass and had, instead, focussed entirely on his own reflection. He was not weary. He had come so far, and the moment for which he had long wished was almost upon him.
He recalled those first hours, when he was convinced that all of the skin had been seared from his body, the agony as he had stumbled into the night, his mind clouded entirely by pain. It had taken a great effort of will to compartmentalize his suffering, to clear a tiny corner of his consciousness so that reason could take over from instinct. He had made it to a phone, and that had been enough. He had money, and with money you could buy anything, if you had enough of it: a hiding place, transport, treatment for one’s wounds, a new face, a new identity.
A chance to live.
But such pain. It had never gone away, not truly. It was said that one forgot the intensity of one’s former agonies as time went on, but that was not true for Bliss. The memory of the pain that he endured had been seared both in and on him, in his spirit and on his body, and even though the physical reality of it had faded, the memory of it remained sharp and clear. Its ghost was enough to evoke all that had once been, and he had used that capacity to relive it in order to bring him to this place.
He heard footsteps behind him. Michael Leehagen spoke, but Bliss did not turn around to acknowledge his presence.
‘There’s been contact,’ he said.
‘Where?’
‘The inner ring, close by the southern intersection.’
‘Did your father’s men do as they were told?’
There was a pause before Michael answered. Bliss knew that the reminder of his father’s authority would rankle. It served no purpose other than to amuse Bliss. It was a reminder that Michael had overstepped his authority in ordering the attack on Gabriel. Bliss had not forgotten it. There would be a reckoning once the job was done. Benton, the man who had pulled the trigger, would be the sacrificial lamb on the altar of Bliss’s atonement for the shooting. It was for Bliss, and no other, to decide if Gabriel lived or died. Bliss understood that Gabriel could not have let his treachery go unpunished, and he bore him no animosity for the long hunt that had ensued. It was Louis that Bliss wanted. Louis had burned him. Louis had made it personal.
‘They forced them back. They didn’t aim to kill.’
Bliss blew air through his nose, like an amused bull. ‘Even if they didn’t, they probably wouldn’t have hit anything, unless it was in error.’
‘They’re good men.’
‘No, they’re not. They’re local thugs. They’re farmboys and squirrel eaters.’
Michael didn’t dispute the accuracy of the description.
‘There’s something else. We lost contact with two of our people, Willis and Harding, on the outer ring. A stranger came on their radio.’
‘Then I suggest you deal with the problem.’
‘We’re doing that now. I just thought you should know.’
Bliss stood, turning now for the first time but still ignoring the man who stood at the door. On the table behind him, resting on its Harris bipod, was a Chandler XM-3 sniper rifle with a titanium picatinny rail and recoil lug, and a Nightforce NXS day optic sight. The Hardigg case also contained a universal night sight, which Bliss had not fitted in the hope that there would be enough light for him to track his prey. He stared through the window at the spreading dawn, masked somewhat by the rain that had begun to fall. Day was coming in earnest.
Beside the Chandler was a second rifle, a Surgeon XL. Bliss had been torn between the two, although ‘torn’ was an exaggeration of the relative equanimity with which he now made his choice. Perhaps unusually for a man in his particular line of work, Bliss had no excessive fondness for guns. He had encountered those for whom the tools of their trade exerted an almost sexual attraction, but he felt no kinship with them. On the contrary: he considered their sensual regard for their weapons as a form of weakness, a symptom of a deeper malaise. In Bliss’s experience, they were the kind of men who gave amusing names to their sexual organs, and who sought a similar release from killing as they found in the act of congress. Such beliefs were, for Bliss, the height of foolishness.
The XL was a .338 Lapua Magnum, with a Schmidt & Bender 5-25x56 scope mounted on its rail and a multi-port jet muzzle brake to tame the recoil. The stock was fiberglass, and altogether the gun weighed just slightly more than 20 pounds. He lifted the rifle, put his left arm through the sling, and let his left shoulder take the weight. He had always preferred his right, but since that day in Amsterdam he had learned to adapt in this matter as in so much else.
‘You’re going now?’
‘Yes.’
‘How will you find them?’
‘I’ll smell them.’
Leehagen’s son wondered if the strange, scarred man was joking, and decided he was not. He said nothing more as he watched Bliss leave the house and walk across the lawn in search of his prey.
IV
For some of these, it could not be the place
It is without blood.
These hunt, as they have done
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,
More deadly than they can believe.
James Dickey (1923–1997),
‘The Heaven of Animals’
23
Their retreat from the road was conducted in the same way as their approach to it had been: steady progress using the trees for cover, one moving while the other kept vigil, both constantly watching, listening. They waited for the hooded figures to advance upon them from the road, judging the distance so that any pursuers would be within range of the Steyrs, but they did not come.
The rain didn’t look like it was going to ease up anytime soon, and they were already soaked. Angel was shivering, and his back hurt. The pain of his old wounds tended to come and go, but exposure to cold or damp, or long periods spent walking or running, exacerbated it. Now he could feel a tightness where the grafts had taken, as though his skin were being stretched too tightly across his back.
As for Louis, he kept returning to the standoff at the road. It was clear that Leehagen’s men wanted to keep them contained, and to kill them only as a last resort. Yet he couldn’t see a way that he and Angel would be allowed to leave here alive. They had been drawn north for a purpose, and that purpose was to wipe them from the face of the earth. The Endalls had been killed, and Louis could only assume that the other teams had also been targeted. They were all good at what they did, but they had not expected that their every move would be known in advance. Leehagen had second-guessed them at every turn. He had anticipated their coming, and the presenc
e of Loretta Hoyle at the house suggested that her father had been involved in the betrayal.
But the task of finishing them off had not been assigned to the men on the road, or to others of their kind. It seemed to have been gifted to another; it remained to be seen who that might be, but Louis had his suspicions.
To the southwest lay the cattle pens, the barn containing their car, and Leehagen’s house. Was that where they were supposed to have died, taken unawares as they entered the property, believing their presence to be unknown to those sleeping within? If so, then their intended executioner had been waiting there for them, and would ultimately have to come after them if they did not go to him. Louis had almost abandoned any intention of trying to get to Leehagen. He would be protected, and the element of surprise had been lost, especially as it seemed that it had never been there to begin with. But now he had begun to reconsider. To move on Leehagen would be unexpected at least. They were being contained primarily to the east, where the main road lay, their captors anticipating that they would try to make a break for it and find a way out of the area. Louis didn’t know how realistic their chances were on that score. It was a lot of ground to cover on foot, and even if they found a car and tried to bust out of the cordon, they were looking at a well-armed and mobile pursuit, and a series of raised roads that could easily be blocked. Their best chance in terms of transport lay in taking out one of the truck teams and hoping communications weren’t so tight that any break in protocol or routine would be instantly noticed.
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