by Mark Dawson
He felt the bonds on his sobriety start to loosen, a notch at a time.
Milton thought back to what had happened in London, after he had told Control that he was going to retire. He thought of Elijah Warriner, a boy who had been teetering on the edge of a gang life, throwing away his future, and how he had tried to help him. How had that turned out? Milton had been arrogant, thinking that his intervention would be enough to solve Elijah’s problems, but his involvement had just made them worse. He had fled to South America, eventually did some good in Juarez, and then to San Francisco and the Upper Peninsula. He was trying to learn, to teach himself the limits of intervention, what he could and couldn’t do. Should and shouldn’t do.
He thought that he had been getting better at it.
He thought that he had done good work in New Orleans.
Really?
Perhaps he had been wrong.
Hubris.
Ziggy was going to pay for his conceit.
For the first time in weeks, his resolve was weak. The urge to take a drink was strong.
“What’s happening?”
It was Izzy. She sat down on the porch next to him.
“I have to go.”
“Where?”
“Doesn’t matter where.”
She was close enough to him that he could feel the heat of her body. Milton fixed his stare ahead, not trusting the strength of his determination should he give in and look at her.
“Where, Milton? What did he say?”
“No, Izzy.”
“Six Flags?”
He turned, quickly. “You were listening?”
“Don’t get sanctimonious. All the lies that you told me, you’re not in a position for it.”
He turned all the way around, put his hands on her shoulders and looked straight at her. “You’ve got to stay here. You have to let me deal with him myself.”
“Deal with him?” Her face said she knew exactly what that word meant.
“I don’t know. Hopefully not. But he might not give me a choice.”
“So, call the police.”
“You already told me that was pointless.”
“But this is—”
“Even if they’d come, they’d make things worse. He’ll see them coming.”
“Then let me come with you. I know Six Flags. I’ve been there dozens of times.”
“No, Izzy. No way. He’ll see you, too. I’m not putting you in harm’s way.”
“I could stay outside—”
He shook his head and replied with complete conviction. “I have to go alone. If he sees anyone else, if he even sniffs anyone else, he kills Ziggy, disappears, comes after someone else when I can’t predict it. He could come after your parents. Alexander. You. All of you, just to get to me. It’s me he wants. Just me.”
“But you go, and, what—he kills you? Right?”
Milton shrugged. “He’ll try.”
“You can’t just walk into that. I can’t let you just walk into that.”
Milton squeezed her shoulders. “Yes, you can. One way or another, it will end. If he gets what he wants, he’ll leave.”
“Gets what he wants—”
“And if I get to him first, there’s no more threat.” He held her shoulders between firm hands. “You have to promise me you’ll stay here. You can’t help me, not for this. If you go, I’ll have to worry about you, too. You’ll make it worse, not better. More dangerous for me and Ziggy. For you. Stay here with your parents.”
“I can’t—”
“Izzy, look at me. Look. I can take care of myself. You know that, right?”
She raised her head and looked into his eyes. He saw fire and passion and a film of wetness.
She didn’t answer him.
He didn’t think that he had reached her.
“Izzy.”
She stood, anger flashing.
“You have to promise me.”
She didn’t. Instead, she brushed his hands away and stood. “When is this going to be over?”
“Tonight.” Milton stood, too. “One way or another, it’ll be finished tonight.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
MILTON DROVE northeast to Michoud Boulevard. The entrance to the park was marked by a huge red and yellow sign. It had been jolly once, but the colour was faded now, and some of the letters had been prised off by the greedy fingers of the wind.
S X F LGS – CLOS D OR STO M
A ticket booth stood beyond that, the glass long since gone from the windows and yellow graffiti sprayed all across it. He saw the skeletal track of a big roller coaster in the middle distance and, behind that, a Ferris wheel. The road ahead was blocked by a chain-link fence, but, as Milton drove slowly through, it didn’t take long to find a weakness that he knew he would be able to broach without difficulty.
He parked the Corolla and got out. It was still hot, even as late as this. He put on the ballistics vest, slipping his shirt over the top of it. He had the Sig Sauer and two spare magazines. He kept the pistol in his hand and shoved the spares into his pockets. He doubted that he would get to use the gun, but he was damned if he was going to a meeting with Avi Bachman without one. He thought about the MP5 in the trunk, but decided against it. He doubted the night would proceed in such a way that spray-and-pray was going to be a legitimate, useful option. Avi Bachman was in control. Milton knew that he wouldn’t let that happen.
Milton approached a spot in the fence where it had been sliced open. The opening had been yanked back, folded back onto itself so that the ends of the jagged wires were hooked onto the stretches that remained intact. Milton bent down and slipped through the opening.
He scouted the park beyond. The whole area had only been sheltered by an eight-foot earthen berm, and Katrina had made short work of that. It had been one of the first places to be overwhelmed and, since the pumps had flooded within hours, it had stayed that way for weeks afterwards.
The place was completely empty. There was enough moonlight for Milton to make out the buildings that had once housed attractions, circular booths that had dispensed food and drink, and, above all of them, the rusted stilts of roller coasters. The walls had been daubed with graffiti, screeds that decried the city council, FEMA, the federal government, anyone who had anything to do with what had happened here.
It was apocalyptic.
Milton walked, scanning ahead carefully, but aware that his caution would be pointless if Bachman decided to take him out now. He was a sitting duck, and he knew it. But he didn’t think that he would snipe him from a distance. He remembered a conversation that they had had, a lifetime ago and on a different continent, when Bachman had explained how he liked to get up close when he killed a man. Milton remembered one phrase in particular: Bachman had said that he liked to “experience” the moment when “hope drained” out of the eyes. Milton had thought there and then that Bachman was a psychopath. He had met many men and women who would have fitted the description during his bloody career—and he, himself, had merited it—but Bachman, maybe, was the worst.
Even the Mossad had wanted him dead in the end.
He headed deeper into the park.
He skirted the huge, disembodied, fibreglass head of a circus clown. It was resting on its side, a horizontal tideline of scurf from its flamboyant ruff to its blackened nose. Milton eyed it warily, knowing that his fear was foolish, yet still unable to ignore the sensation that its dead plastic eyes were following him. He reached the Mega Zeph roller coaster, the struts stretching a hundred feet above him, vines clasping halfway to the top as if they were trying to drag it down into the earth.
Milton walked down Main Street, with devastated buildings on either side, passed the Big Easy Ferris wheel, and then, finally, he reached the carousel. It was tall, eighty feet high, and constructed at the far end of a wide square. The seats were suspended at the ends of long chains, dozens of them, and they rattled and clinked as the gentle breeze bumped them against one another. It was eerie, other-worldl
y, and Milton knew that he was being watched.
“Bachman!” he called out.
Nothing.
“Bachman! I’m here!”
He had only taken another few steps into the square when his cellphone vibrated in his pocket.
He took it out.
“Drop the gun.”
“Let him go. I’m here.”
“The gun.”
Milton knew he had no choice. Bachman would already have something aimed at him. He swivelled, scanning the buildings that would once have been a restaurant, a ticket booth, the entrance to a gift shop. Doors stood open, some creaked in the wind, impenetrable inky blackness within. He couldn’t see anything. He held up both hands, the gun in his right and the cellphone in his left, and then, slowly and deliberately, rested one knee on the asphalt and placed the gun there.
“Step away from it.”
Milton did.
“Wearing a vest?”
Milton gritted his teeth.
“Take it off.”
He took off his shirt and then removed the ballistics vest. He dropped it onto the ground beside him.
“Leave the shirt off,” Bachman said. “I don’t want any surprises.”
Milton dropped it onto the ground next to the vest and the gun.
“Good. Now—keep going. The carousel.”
Milton walked over to it.
“Bachman?”
The call went dead.
Milton was thirty feet away from the pistol before Bachman emerged from a ticket booth. He had his own pistol in his right hand, aiming it with loose and casual confidence in Milton’s direction. He dragged Ziggy Penn out after him, his left arm looped around his torso. Milton could see at once that Ziggy had been badly beaten. His head hung limply between his shoulder blades, and his shoes scuffed and caught on the ground as he tried to keep his feet beneath him. Bachman hauled him all the way out into the square and then dumped him there.
“Had to rough him up a little,” Bachman called over, no need for the phone now.
“Of course you did.”
Milton was very aware that Bachman still had his gun.
He came closer, twenty feet away, saw that Milton was looking at it and held it up. “What? This? Sorry. I forgot.” He tossed the gun aside. “We won’t need guns, will we, John?”
Milton tried not to give away his surprise. “So how do you want to do this?”
“A nice fist fight, sort this mess out, get things straight. Man to man.”
Milton blinked hard. This was unexpected. He looked at Bachman and weighed him up: maybe an inch taller than him, ten pounds heavier. They were evenly matched. Milton watched as he came in close, ten feet away, unbuttoned his shirt and dropped it behind him. He was wearing a vest. His arms were solid with muscle, coloured by full sleeves of tattoos. His chest was thick, his waist tapered, his legs powerful.
Milton laced his fingers, stretched them, unlaced them and let his arms fall loose to his sides.
“Ready?”
#
“SIX FLAGS?”
Izzy had stayed just inside the door and listened to Milton’s side of the conversation with the man who had taken Ziggy. His outrage at being eavesdropped on would have been funny in different circumstances. He, after all, had lied to her about the most fundamental things, including who he was. He had tried to get her to say that she would stay behind, had tried again and again to get her to say that she would, to swear it to him, but the most she had conceded was a small nod of the head. Just a nod? She hadn’t sworn it. She hadn’t promised, hadn’t even said it. And she wouldn’t have paid any attention even if she had. After everything Milton had done for her and her family, how could she let him take off to be shot?
She could not.
She watched as Milton drove away, and then hurried to her own car. She drove north on Franklin Avenue and then turned to the east, following I-10, and caught sight of him as he passed the turn-off for Lakefront Airport. She knew that he was careful, and guessed that he would be looking out for signs that he was being followed. And, in the event that he was, she turned left onto Morrison and followed the route of the interstate one road removed. She turned back on I-10 as she reached Gannon, but, as she stared frantically ahead and then back in her mirrors, there was no sign of his Corolla.
Had he turned off? Accelerated away?
She drove on. She thought about what had happened over the course of the last few days. Joel Babineaux, Jackson Dubois and their cronies were in custody, their reputations shredded, with just jail time to look forward to once the scale of their corruption became obvious. And who knew how deep down the rabbit hole that would go? The police, certainly. Detective Peacock was just the first domino to fall. The mayor. Who else?
Salvation Row was safe, and the way was clear for the charity to continue with its work. There would be no mall now.
Alexander was back in rehab, and he had seemed happy to go.
All of those things had looked so desperate before Milton had arrived. He was a complicated man, and she knew there were depths to him that she did not want to disturb, even to know about, but without him things would have been very different. Babineaux would have driven his bulldozers straight through the middle of all of their hard work.
And Alexander might have been dead.
She couldn’t get that out of her head.
She couldn’t abandon Milton, no matter what he had said.
She drove on, nudging seventy and then eighty as the roads cleared. She headed to the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge. The spectral silhouettes of the park’s taller rides were limned in silver by a half moon and, as she drew nearer, she saw Milton’s Toyota Corolla parked at the side of the road.
She slammed on the brakes, rolled up behind it, killed the engine and the lights.
The chain-link fence rattled in the breeze. She looked through it and into the darkened park.
She remembered. The place was like an open sore, a reminder to those who had the temerity to thumb their nose at Nature. The city was here at the whim of the ocean.
Deserted.
Eerie.
They called it Zombieland now.
Izzy stepped through the gash in the fence and hurried inside.
#
THEY FENCED for the first few moments, each firing out exploratory jabs, keeping a safe distance between them. A couple of Milton’s right-handers slid between Bachman’s defences, cracking off his cheek and chin. They had no effect. Bachman moved with studied ease, his weight balanced perfectly so that he could dodge left and right without having to think about it. Milton had been a decent regimental boxer when he was younger, and he still recalled much of it, but he remembered again that the Mossad trained their agents in Krav Maga and he knew that would be a very big problem. The discipline eliminated all superfluous movements. You never turned your back on your opponent, there was nothing fancy, each strike delivering maximum power. He remembered that Bachman was good at it and, if he allowed him to get too close, he would be at a severe disadvantage.
He didn’t want to get in too close.
“Your wife,” Milton said between breaths.
Bachman didn’t reply.
“—didn’t kill her… didn’t shoot her.”
Bachman’s face darkened and he threw out a big roundhouse that Milton took on his shoulder, the blow sending a spider web of pain along his nerves. Bachman used the momentum of his body, using the hips rather than the torso, to generate quick and effective force. The power of it took Milton by surprise, staggering him a half-step to the right.
“—not lying.”
Bachman grunted, firing out Muay Thai elbows and knees. Milton caught a knee strike against his side and responded with a stiff left hand that knocked Bachman back again.
Milton stood away, gasping for breath. “Your shot—ricochet—killed her.”
Bachman roared and rushed him. Milton tried to sidestep, but his foot caught against a loose plank that had bee
n discarded in the square and he could only stumble. Bachman grabbed him, both hands around his shoulders as he drove him back. Milton managed to pivot as they collapsed and he fell atop him. He tried to wrestle Bachman down, to hold him against the ground, but he was strong. He butted Milton in the face, a dizzying blow that gave him enough space to strike up with his elbow. Milton lost the grip with his right hand, opening up more space between their bodies so that Bachman could strike him again, and then again, with his elbow. Milton felt the bones in his nose snap and the blood rushed down to run across his lips. He tried to fire out a left-handed punch, but Bachman jerked his head aside and his fist glanced against his temple and hit the concrete. Pain flared again. A broken knuckle?
Bachman swung his elbow again and Milton fell off, rolling onto his back.
Bachman sprang to his feet with a nimble kip-up.
Milton’s vision darkened, a black fringe that fell down like the drawing of a curtain. Bachman’s face was concentrated and his eyes glittered with black fury. Milton rolled his neck as Bachman stamped down on his head, the treads of his boot scraping down the side of his crown. He scrambled upright again, his feet slipping and sliding on the mossy cobbles. He was still too dazed to get his arms up in time as Bachman swept out a wide kick that crunched into the junction of his neck and shoulder, whiplashing his head to the side.
Bachman hammered down a big right. Milton recovered just in time, blocked it on his forearms, rolled away, and tottered to his feet.
He floundered back until there were ten paces between them.
There was blood in his mouth. He spat it out.
Bachman shook out his arms. There was the first purpling of a contusion around his right eye socket, but that was it.
They both circled warily.
“Want to know something?” Bachman opened and closed his fists, rolling his shoulders. “When we were in Egypt, before the operation, I thought you were an arrogant prick. Big reputation. Full of it. I heard it from the others, even the fucking Americans were scared of you. But I wasn’t. Nothing to back it up, Milton. All hot air.”
He was barely out of breath. Milton was gasping.