by Mark Dawson
“I saw what you did,” Higgins grunted.
Hicks tried to resist, but the general was strong for a man of his age. Hicks’s strength was failing.
“Traitor. You betrayed the men.”
The blade shot down and it was all Hicks could do to divert it from his neck. The point pierced his jacket and then his flesh, lancing down into the flesh of his left shoulder until it scraped off bone. The pain was severe, dimming his vision, but he fought it.
“You betrayed me.”
Now they changed roles: Higgins tried to pull the knife out, and Hicks tried to hold it in place. Hicks’s left hand remained locked around the general’s wrist. Hicks pulled down, holding the knife there, biting down against the pain, his teeth chewing into his lip until he could taste fresh blood. Higgins jerked, trying to free the knife, the blade widening the incision as the two of them struggled. Hicks tried to free his right hand, but it was pinned firmly, and he couldn’t manage it. Higgins changed tactics; he pressed down with his left hand while his right went to the shoulder holster where he wore his Browning.
Higgins pulled the pistol free. Hicks closed his eyes. There was nothing else that he could do.
The shot did not come. Instead, Hicks heard the sound of something crashing through undergrowth and then a loud curse. Higgins heard it too and pivoted to the right. There was a man there, a shotgun in his arms. Higgins swivelled his hips, brought the pistol up and around and fired at the newcomer.
Hicks couldn’t see whether the general’s shot had hit or missed, and he didn’t have the luxury of time to check. The moment presented him with an opportunity. The general’s weight had fallen back onto Hicks’s knees and his right hand was suddenly free. Hicks sat up, the knife still in his left shoulder, clenched his right fist and put everything he had into a wild haymaker that caught the older man flush on his cheekbone.
Hicks tried to extricate himself from the tangle of legs and stand, but the struggle had brought him right up against the top of the gradient that sloped down to the lake. His boots slipped through the wet mud and he overbalanced, thudding down on his back and sliding down the slope. He tried to arrest his descent, but it was impossible. He shot off the edge and into the water. It was deep here, and he plunged all the way beneath the surface without any indication of where the bottom might be.
The water was ice cold, and it forced its way into his mouth and nostrils and stung his eyes. He put out his right arm and used it to slow his momentum until he was able to correct his positioning and kick away from the bank. His lungs burned, desperate for air, but he stayed beneath the water and kicked again and again. When he finally had no choice but to break the surface, he found himself in the middle of the lake, several metres from the slope. He searched for Higgins or the man who had disturbed them, but could see neither. He took a breath and sank beneath the surface again, kicking for the opposite bank to the one from which he had entered the water. He came up for a second time and realised that he couldn’t hear gunfire. He stroked to the bank, gentler at this side of the lake, and clambered out, each jarring motion sending a spasm of pain through the stab wound in his shoulder. The shoreline was quiet, with no sign of movement, but Hicks hurried across the mud and through the straggled reeds until he was in the cover of a spray of ferns.
Hicks looked back at the house. The night sky was lit with flames that reached high above the structure of the building. The blaze was hopelessly out of control now; it would stop only once it had exhausted its fuel.
If Milton was still inside…
Hicks put the thought out of his head. He should have been dead, yet he had been given a reprieve. There was nothing he could do. His shoulder was badly injured and he was losing blood. He needed medical attention.
He had to get away, as far and as quickly as he could.
Chapter Sixty-Three
MILTON LED THE WAY. The smoke was pouring up from the ground floor now, a thick column that pooled against the ceiling and then dispersed into the two connecting corridors. The roar of the fire seemed to be growing louder, but Milton realised that something was absent: the staccato punctuation that had been supplied by the small-arms fire. The Feather Men had served their purpose and Hicks had done what he needed to do. Milton hoped that meant that the general was out of commission, too, but that wasn’t his problem. Hicks was on his own with Higgins.
Milton had Olivia’s hand in his left hand as he advanced down the corridor. The Sig was in his right hand.
“John,” she said, tugging him to a halt.
Milton paused.
“I’m scared.”
He had started to turn to face her when he glimpsed the dark shapes of two figures approaching from the corridor to his right. The men were facing him, one of them with a shotgun lowered and ready to fire. Light from one of the windows fell upon them: Frankie and Marcus Fabian.
Milton launched himself backwards as the boom rang out through the house. He felt the scrape of the shot as fragments ripped into his shirt and clawed across his skin. He landed on his shoulders and instinctively aimed the Sig with a double-handed grip. He returned fire back into the other opening.
He heard a shriek of pain. He had hit at least one of them.
He scrambled to his feet. Olivia was behind him, on the floor. He hauled her back, too.
“Smith!” came a voice.
“Olivia?” Milton said. “Are you hit?”
“No,” she said. She scrabbled her feet beneath her and followed him back along the corridor.
Milton backed up, aiming back to the landing.
“Smith! I know it’s you.”
It was Frankie Fabian.
“You’re not going anywhere, Smith.”
They reached the door to the room where he had rescued Olivia. Milton pushed her back inside again, shrugged his pack from his back and unzipped it. He reached down for the second bottle. It was unbroken. He turned it upside down, holding onto the neck, and lit the tampon. The finger of flame cast an orange and yellow glow into the darkness.
He tossed the bottle back onto the landing. The glass shattered against the wooden floor, the fuel spilled out and the fuse lit it. There was a loud exhalation, audible even through all the noise, and fire ran in all directions.
There was another scream. More urgent this time. Sharpened with pain.
Milton shut the door. The new fire would buy some time, but if Fabian was out there with a shotgun, then the odds were against them. They would have to get out of the building another way.
#
FRANKIE FABIAN cracked open the shotgun, ejected the two spent casings from the chamber and thumbed two more cartridges inside. Marcus was on the floor, five feet behind him, cursing from the pain. One of the rounds Smith had fired had hit him in the thigh; his leg had gone from underneath him and he had dropped to the floor. Fabian didn’t know whether he had hit Smith with the spread that he had triggered. It was dark and he couldn’t be sure. He brought the barrel back up and snapped the shotgun shut.
“My leg!”
Fabian ignored his son. He pressed the butt of the shotgun into his shoulder and took a step toward the corridor that led from the landing to the bedrooms. The angle of the wall provided him with cover.
“Smith!” he called. “I know it’s you.”
He thought he heard the sound of a door opening.
“You’re not going anywhere, Smith.”
Fabian took another step ahead, coming up to the entrance of the corridor. He was sweating. The fire below them was shimmering in the air, but the perspiration was from fear as much as the heat. It was in his eyes, running down his spine, on his hands, his index finger sliding against the trigger.
He saw the pinprick of flame emerge from the dark mouth of the corridor. It was rotating, round and round, and he didn’t know what it was until it passed through a shaft of dim light. Then he knew: it was a bottle. The flame was a fuse. It was a Molotov cocktail.
The bottle shattered. Fabian felt s
omething wet splashing against his clothing, and, as he stumbled back to the stairs, he saw flame and heard the gasp of a sudden conflagration. He held out his arms and saw, to his horror, that the sleeves of his jacket were thick with oily flame. He dropped the shotgun, took off his jacket, staggered back to the stairs and overbalanced. His foot slipped off the tread and he fell back, crashing halfway and tumbling down to the half landing.
Fabian was dazed, but the shock jolted him quickly back to awareness. He scrambled away, putting the turn of the staircase between him and the top landing. A new fire had started up there, the heat from the flames above joining with that from those below, squeezing him like a vice.
He stood and put out his hand to steady himself against the balustrade; he quickly jerked it away, the wood so cooked that it burned to the touch.
“Marcus,” he croaked. “Marcus.”
There was no reply.
He stumbled down the stairs.
Chapter Sixty-Four
MILTON DRAGGED a dresser across the room and jammed it against the door. He went to the window and carefully parted the curtains. He had memorised the layout of the building from the estate agent’s plans, but the events of the last twenty minutes had him doubting himself. It was with relief, then, that he saw that he had been correct: the window faced toward the rear of the property. The area was lit up by the fire, orange light that stretched across the outside kitchen, a swimming pool, down a sloping meadow to a series of farm buildings and then, finally, a wood.
Milton unlatched the window and pushed the sash up. The wood was rotten, and it crumbled in his hands. He looked out again, glancing down. The window was three metres above the ground, but there was a drainpipe within reach to the right-hand side.
Milton opened the window all the way.
#
THE HEAT was unbearable on the ground floor. The smoke was dense and disorientating, and, for a moment, Frankie Fabian didn’t think he would be able to find the boot room. He was light-headed, dizzy with the heat and the smoke that he had inhaled, and he reeled as he crossed the room to the door. The door was already open. The cool air was a balm on his face as he stumbled outside.
Fabian couldn’t hear the gunfire that he had heard earlier, but the darkness was full of the roar of the flames as they continued to eat away at the house. He saw the barn, next to the outbuildings at the bottom of the meadow, a hundred yards from the house. If he could get there, he could use the Land Rover. There was a track that he would be able to follow to the north gate.
He checked left and right, then set off.
#
MILTON WENT down first; if Olivia slipped, he wanted to be below her so that he might break her fall. He sat on the windowsill, turned around and then reached out for the drainpipe. It was old and the fixings were corroded and weak, and, as Milton descended, the brackets that fastened it to the bricks snapped and the drainpipe tore away from the wall. Milton was halfway down as he started to fall back; he released his grip and fell the rest of the way. He looked back up and saw that the drainpipe had detached so that the portion nearest to the window was now at a forty-five-degree angle to the wall.
He looked over to the window. He saw Olivia there, her face white. “Jump,” he said.
She clambered out of the window, her legs dangling over the sill.
“Smith,” she called down, pointing behind him.
Milton turned. He saw the figure of a man hurrying through the meadow that led down to the outbuildings and the wooded area beyond. It was darker there, the light weaker, but he recognised Frankie Fabian.
Milton looked back up to her. “Come on,” he said. “Jump!”
She paused there, daunted by the drop beneath her, until there came a tremendous impact from the direction of the kitchen. Another beam, Milton guessed, the roof coming down bit by bit. It was enough to focus Olivia’s mind and, her eyes closed, she allowed herself to slip forward from the sill. She dropped quickly and Milton caught her, scooping one arm beneath her knees and the other around her back. He set her down and then set off with her into the meadow. There was no sign of anyone else. Fabian’s men, if they were still alive, were around the other side of the building.
“Get into the woods,” Milton said, pointing away from the outbuildings to the nearest fringe of vegetation. “Don’t wait. There’s a track that goes through the grounds to the north. I think there’s a gate, but, if there isn’t, just get over the wall.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll catch you up.”
“Come with me now.”
“Not yet,” he said. “Please—go. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
#
MILTON DESCENDED the sloping meadow down to the outbuildings. There was a barn, a stable block and, beyond that, a fenced-off riding school. Trees fringed the paddock beyond the school, a line of ash and fir that were cast in golds and oranges by the fire that had taken hold of the house. Fabian had gone into the barn. It was a derelict building, with gaps in the roof where the clay tiles had been lost and a jagged crack across the facing wall.
Milton made his way ahead, the pistol in his hand. He was aware that he had only very limited tactical information as to the results of the gun battle that had taken place at the front of the house. He did not know, for example, how many of Fabian’s men were still alive. He had to proceed carefully.
Milton reached the yard just as he heard the sound of a starter engine whining. The engine spluttered, whined again, spluttered and fell silent. Milton heard the sound of a man cursing.
The entrance to the barn would, at one time, have been fitted with two large double doors. It had one now, and that was hanging from a single hinge and was propped back against the wall. Milton edged forward. The barn looked as if it might have been a cattle shed, with brick cobbles on the floor and cattle mangers fitted along one of the walls. A Land Rover was parked inside. It was old and beaten up, with mismatched bodywork and without its windshield.
Frankie Fabian was in the driver’s seat, turning the engine over and trying to get it to start. The starter motor coughed and choked, but the engine did not start. Fabian cursed again.
“Frankie,” Milton said.
Fabian looked up, his eyes wide and fearful.
“Hands,” Milton said, gesturing with a flick of the gun. “And get out of the car.”
Milton watched Fabian as he shifted his weight, his upper arm visible as he reached out for something—the shotgun, maybe—that Milton couldn’t see.
“Don’t,” Milton said, holding the Sig out straight and nodding down at it.
Fabian ignored him, his hands remaining out of sight below the dash. “What are you doing this for?”
Milton put pressure on the trigger. “Hands, Frankie. Let me see them.”
His hands stayed where they were. “Who are you?”
“You know why, and it doesn’t matter who I am. Last chance, Frankie. Hands.”
Milton didn’t want him to raise his hands. Not really. He wasn’t going to let him walk out of the barn. Perhaps Fabian could see that, too; he brought up his right hand in a flash of sudden motion. It held a pistol. Milton was at medium range, five metres away from his target, and the Sig was held in a steady and unwavering hand. Milton squeezed the trigger, and then, half a second later, he squeezed it again. Milton had aimed into Fabian’s body, right down the centre line, in a neat square between the top of his sternum and the line of the dash. Both rounds found their mark. Fabian was punched back into his seat by the first shot, and then his arms flailed as the second round hit.
Milton approached, the Sig held out in front of him, still covering Fabian. He came around the side of the Land Rover and looked into the cabin through the open door. The shotgun was wedged in the foot well, barrel down. The pistol was on the seat next to it. Fabian was still alive. He had dropped the weapon and now his hands were pressed to his chest in an attempt to staunch the blood that blossomed on his white shirt. It was futile. The crimson
pumped through his fingers.
Milton eyed him, the discarded pistol and the shotgun. “I warned you,” he said.
Fabian tried to speak. His mouth opened and closed, but all he could manage was a series of gasps. His lungs had been punctured by the two rounds. He couldn’t hold in any breath. The air hissed out as if from pierced balloons.
Milton said, “I gave you a choice.”
Fabian looked up as Milton took aim through the window. There was no hope in his eyes, no entreaty. Perhaps he saw something in Milton. A kindred spirit. A killer, like him.
Milton squeezed the trigger a third time. Fabian’s head jerked to the left, and then his body fell limply sideways over the brake lever and across both seats.
Milton turned.
Olivia was in the doorway of the barn.
He didn’t need to ask her how long she had been standing there. Her expression was answer enough.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Part Five: The Ninth Step
Chapter Sixty-Five
IT WAS A BRIGHTER DAY than it had been for what seemed like weeks, and Milton looked up at the rooftops and the blue sky beyond them as he walked to the bus stop. He decided, as he approached the stop on Redchurch Street, that he was being lazy. It was only twenty minutes from here and, with the weather much more pleasant than it had been for days, he decided that he would walk.
He followed the road and, as he turned onto Shoreditch High Street, he allowed his thoughts to drift. He had been thinking about the Ninth Step for several days. That stage of the program was always close to Milton’s thoughts, but he had been thinking about it more than he usually did. He couldn’t help but compare his own cursory attention to that requirement of the program against what Eddie had been prepared to risk in order to wipe his slate clean and fully embrace his sobriety. Milton knew that he would never have the courage to do the same thing himself, and the certainty of that had plunged him into a funk that had lasted for a week.