Her focus snapped to a disturbance in the leaves a few feet away. The old guy. He was here. Nervously, she peered through a small gap in the stonework. He was standing with his back to her, on the far side of the ruins. This close, he looked even more ancient. Pale skin and bone, with a shock of white hair sticking out from beneath a canvas bucket hat. Still, people like this you underestimated at your peril, and that large hunting rifle clutched tightly in his liver-spotted paws was nothing to be complacent about.
As he turned around, Sofia’s breath caught in her throat. She was sure she recognised him. But from where? She narrowed her eyes, racking her brain. Her best guess, he was an old-school business tycoon. A Warren Buffett type. Deep troughs ran down each side of his face but not what anyone would call ‘laughter lines’. This tight-lipped old fucker hadn’t laughed in many years. Same as every other wealth-lord Sofia had ever met. So damned scared of losing even a dime it made them sick. Sick and twisted.
She gripped the rock tight, broken fingernails and chipped nail polish digging into the hard stone. The old man was walking backwards, nearing the edge of the wall. One step closer. She imagined herself leaping forward and caving his skull in, surprised to find she felt nothing but rage. She could do this. One step closer.
The old man stopped. Straightened his back.
Come on, you piece of shit. What are you waiting for?
Every muscle, every orifice in her body was clenched tight. She raised herself up off her haunches, rising above the level of the wall where she had a clear shot at him. Right on the back of the head. Drop the frail old prick like a sack of shit. Slowly, silently, she lifted the rock above her head. This was it.
She could do this.
She was going to do this.
But before she had a chance, the old man gained a sudden surge of energy. With a guttural growl he spun around and swung the rifle butt.
“Take that, you stupid bitch!”
The hard wood connected with Sofia’s cheekbone and sent her staggering into a large bush. Keeping a hold of the rock, she swung wildly at her assailant but only glimpsed the material of his cream hunting jacket. The unspent momentum sent her tumbling over the side of the wall and she smashed her ass-bone on the hard, cobbled floor of the ruins.
Man, that hurt.
She made to get up but got instead the end of a hunting rifle shoved in her face. She raised her hands, gazing up at the old man. His eyes were pale blue, cold as ice. The sort of eyes with no soul behind them. Sofia grinned at him, joylessly. She’d remembered.
“Edward Menks,” she spat. “I always suspected you were a rotten sonofabitch.”
The backstory on Menks (the one you’d hear told on the likes of CNN or Fox, at least) had him portrayed as a self-made man from humble beginnings. After a short career as a Wall Street financial analyst he’d founded his own oil company in ‘82, amassing a fortune well into the fifty billion mark before he turned forty. Glorious capitalism in full effect. The epitome of the American Dream. But Sofia knew that was only half the story. Because a huge chunk of Menks’ wealth had come from semi-illegal weapon dealings. In fact, if the stories were to be believed, most of the militia groups of central Africa, along with Al-Qaeda and ISIS, had benefitted from Menks’ nefarious arms dealings. But of course, he was well connected. With one foot in Congress and a big arm around the military industrial complex of America, he was untouchable. But weren’t they all?
Until they weren’t.
“And who might you be?” he shrilled, in a high-pitched nasal tone.
“I’m no one,” Sofia answered. “I’m just a piece of meat. A trophy. Isn’t that right?”
Menks smiled, revealing two rows of jagged, discoloured teeth. Clearly his immense wealth hadn’t stretched as far as dental work in the last thirty years. “What can I say? I like to hunt.”
“You evil fuck.”
The old man laughed at her and raised his gun. “Come along, girly, it’s just sport. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t deserve to be. This is a cull. We’re doing the world a favour.”
“What you’re doing is sick and wrong,” she yelled. “I don’t deserve this. I’m innocent. A journalist.”
“Innocent?” Menks muttered, moving the rifle-sight to his eye and aiming at her head. “I’m not so sure about that.”
Instinct had Sofia raise her hand to her face. A pointless gesture, she knew, but she had nothing else. She was done. Finished. She was going to die here at the hands of this bitter old man, hundreds of miles away from Mike and her friends and her beloved New York. She scrunched up her eyes. Waited.
Get it over with, you miserable prick.
She heard a click. A surprised gasp. Then an ear-blistering crack reverberated through her skull. For a second she thought she was dead. Then she opened her eyes to see Menks slump to his knees and fall, face first, into her lap. The left side of his head and most of his jaw had been blown away, leaving a mess of bone and blood and brain matter.
She screamed.
Or at least, she opened her mouth and went through the usual motions of what screaming entailed. Only she couldn’t tell whether she was making any sound due to the intense ringing in her ears. Next she felt a calloused hand close over her mouth and a large, broad-shouldered man loomed in front of her. On seeing the hunting vest and rifle, she leapt back, ready to scream some more, before the man held a thick finger to his lips. His eyes were almost bulging out of their sockets, pleading with her to shut up. But even in her heightened state of confused panic, she could tell they were kind eyes.
The sort of eyes with a soul behind them.
“Can you hear me?” he mouthed at her, his full lips over-enunciating the words. “Are you hurt?”
She gasped for air. The panic subsiding some as her hearing returned. “Who? What?” she spluttered. “You saved me.”
“Let’s not get complacent,” the man barked, helping her up. “We need to move. Now.”
He hurried her away from the relative open of the clearing and ruins into the dense vegetation beyond.
“Who are you? Where are we going?” she blustered, tripping over an exposed root as the man dragged her into the undergrowth.
“My name is Andreas Welles,” the man replied, coldly. “I’m FBI.”
“No shit!” she exclaimed, trying to avoid getting swept away by the sense of hope washing over her. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ll explain more when we’re clear of danger,” he said. “There’s four hunters heading this way and they mean business. Tough guys. Not like Mr Burns back there. So stay close to me and don’t stop until I say so.”
“No problem, sir,” she gasped. “Lead the way.”
Thirteen
Andreas Welles had hit the ground running after touching down on the island. Quite literally. He’d unclipped his parachute and was already making a bee-line for the relative cover of the rainforest as the man he’d parachuted down behind was still trying to work out which way was north.
Like, who gives a shit, man?
This isn’t some fishing expedition.
Welles had tried to get the guy to follow with him. But he was panicking and being weird, so he left him to it. You can’t save everyone. Welles had spent twenty years as a detective in Lincoln Heights before joining the Bureau, so he knew if danger reared its head you didn’t wait around to talk nice or brainstorm how to best proceed. You got the hell out of there. Fast. Actions first, questions later.
Still, time spent as a uniform in one of the most dangerous areas of LA had prepared him well. Despite his age, Andreas Welles was still a fit and guileful sonofabitch, make no mistake. Six-two in his stockinged-feet and almost as wide, he’d handled himself well so far on this hellish island. Day two and he’d already taken out three of the bastards, four including Mr Burns back there. How many more of them there were, he wasn’t sure. But he was damned certain he wasn’t going out without a fight.
“Wait, please. Can we hold up a secon
d?”
Welles slowed his pace, coming to a halt next to a large fig tree. He waited, fighting the urge to give this girl some less-than-friendly advice. With both barrels. Like, no, we can’t damn well hold up a second. People are trying to kill us.
He turned around, the hard trapezius muscles in his neck knotted tight. “What is it?”
“I just need to rest a second.” The girl panted. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
She was red-faced, and her thick hair stuck to her face with sweat. She leaned over, dry retching as tears streamed from her eyes.
Welles scanned the area, listening for movement. Over to the south of the island (Welles could have told that dithering fool where north was if he’d only listened) he could hear the flow of water. A river, perhaps. But that was all.
“Okay, miss,” he snarled, throwing the rifle over his shoulder. “Let’s get to the water and we’ll rest for a while. Ten minutes. You can handle that?”
The woman’s mouth hung open. She nodded wearily. “Thanks.”
The two of them headed south, following the noise of the running water, whilst all the time Welles kept one eye and one ear on the surrounding area.
“Andreas, huh?” the woman asked, once she’d gotten her breath back. “Where you from?”
Welles side-eyed her as she trotted along beside him, trying to keep up with his large strides. “Born and raised in City Terrace, Los Angeles,” he told her. “Moved to Lincoln Heights when I joined the force.”
“Heavy. But you can obviously handle yourself. Big guy for a Latino.”
He gave her a look. Didn’t reply.
“Hey, I didn’t mean nothing,” she spluttered. “All I mean is most of the Latinos I’ve ever known have been kind of short. Not that it’s a bad thing, just a thing, ya know, and—
“My father was white,” he mumbled. “Okay?”
“Right, gotcha. Makes sense,” the woman continued. “Well, good to meet you, sir, and thank god you showed up when you did. My name’s Sofia Swann. I’m a journalist from New York. Brooklyn. I’m immigrant stock too. Italian.”
“No fucking shit,” he muttered to himself. Up ahead, through a gap in the trees, he could now make out a river. It was fast-flowing and seemed deep in places. He stopped and turned to Sofia. “We can rest here under these trees.”
“Awesome. Thanks.”
The two of them settled down, Welles positioning himself with his back against a large boulder that stuck out of the ground below a bunch of low-hanging vines. He closed his eyes, gave thanks for the imposed rest. Truth was, he hadn’t stop moving since he’d arrived on the island, but he’d fared well. Had the answers he wanted. Had firepower, too. The evil bastards weren’t getting away with this.
“Hey, I just realised,” Sofia called out. “The rifle. I thought they didn’t work unless you were one of the bad guys. Fingerprint technology, or something?”
Welles smiled to himself. That’s what he’d thought too. But he’d spent long enough in law enforcement to know there was always a workaround. He held up his hand, waving his fingers at her.
The shrill New Yorker stared at them, unsure what she was looking at. Then slowly her confused expression turned to realisation. Turned to disgust. “Oh my god, are you kidding me? That’s gross. Gross, but fucking genius.”
He let out a laugh that emanated from the depth of his throat and didn’t travel much further. “Thanks. Pretty pleased with my handiwork. Excuse the pun.”
It hadn’t taken him long to realise the hunting rifles worked with the smart gun technology he’d been reading about on GunBuyer and other forums for the past number of years. It would herald a new era in gun ownership, they all said. Only no one had mastered it up to now. Or so he thought. After ambushing his first target (some wet-behind-the-ear hedge-fund prick who lasted all of one second once Welles had cut the blood supply to his brain), the idea had come to him. He hadn’t always lived in downtown LA. In fact, after his parents’ divorce he’d spent a few summers with his uncle up in Santa Clarita. He had many fond memories of the two of them shooting and skinning rabbits. Using the skills his uncle had taught him (along with the aforementioned hedge-fund prick’s pristine hunting knife), he’d removed the skin from the guy’s hand in one piece and stretched it over his own. Fit like a glove. All fingerprints intact.
“So now I can use his rifle,” he growled at Sofia. “Good thinking, huh?”
“Fuckin-A.” She grinned. “Now I really am glad you came along when you did. Makes me think I might have a chance of getting off this island in one piece.”
“You know why you’re here? You know what this place is?”
Sofia raised her eyebrows. “Oh yeah. I know everything.”
Over the next few minutes, she relayed to him everything she knew. Everything that had happened up to the moment she said she expected Menks to turn her head into a firework.
“Quite a tale,” Welles mused once she was through. He leaned forward, contemplating what he’d just heard. “Don’t think I’ve ever met a real-life assassin.”
“Really?”
“Cartel hitmen, sure. Sicarios. Plenty of those vicioso bastards. But not the sort you’re talking about. That’s crazy. And her name’s Acid Vanilla? That for real?”
“She said so. She was odd. British, so…”
“Why didn’t you stay with her? Sounds like she might have been a useful ally. On this island at least.”
She twisted her mouth to one side. “Yeah. Maybe. Like I say, there was just something about her made me uneasy.”
“If she’s on this island, someone rich, powerful and evil wants her dead.” Welles shrugged. “I don’t know, miss. Maybe she’s on the right side of whatever this is.”
Sofia ran her fingers through her matted hair, pulling it back from her face and letting it drop over her shoulders. “Well, you found me. Thank you. I was starting to give up hope.” She closed her eyes, a bitter smile spreading over her face. “I kept telling myself I was done for. Maybe I’ve seen too many movies. Situations like this, it’s always someone like me who gets it first.”
“Someone like you?”
She shrugged, coyly. “I’m due to get married in a month’s time, and ain’t that always the way? The one with the sweetheart back home or whatever, something good on the horizon, they usually end up dead before the end of act one.”
Welles coughed through another deep laugh. “You think you got problems. I’m an ageing cop of ethnic origin. Due to retire in six weeks too.” Her mouth dropped open. A no fucking way kind of look on her face. “I’m not kidding you. Looks pretty shitty for me, doesn’t it?”
The two of them stared at each other for a moment before simultaneously breaking out in fits of laughter. They laughed long and hard, until their jaws ached and tears streamed down their faces. It was a release, but as quickly as it started, the laughter stopped. A strange atmosphere hung heavy in the air between them.
“Should we make a move?” Sofia asked, wiping a hand across her cheek.
Welles was about to respond in the affirmative when an alien sound broke the relative calm. He froze, the noise now distinguishable as a PA system crackling into life. He jumped to his feet as the static crunch turned into high-pitched feedback and then a voice boomed through the trees.
“Security team three needed in quadrant four. Repeat – security team three needed in quadrant four. We have a Code One security breach. Subject AW is armed and dangerous. Proceed with extreme prejudice.” Sofia moved to Welles and grabbed his arm as the voice’s tone changed. You could almost hear the malevolent grin over the speaker as they continued on. “To the prey in quadrant four. That’s you Mr Welles and you Ms Swann, don’t think you’ll outrun our security team. Look in the trees. In the sand. In the bushes. We have eyes and ears everywhere.”
More static as the voice let out a shrill laugh.
“There’s nowhere for you to go. It’s over. Goodbye Mr Welles, Ms Swann. It’s been enjoyable w
atching you fail.”
The speaker clicked off. The jungle silent once again.
“Motherfuckers,” Sofia snarled, squeezing his arm tighter. “What does that mean?”
He snorted angrily down both nostrils. “Means this whole thing is worse than we thought. Those sick bastards. This isn’t just a hunt for them. It’s a goddamn spectator sport.”
Fourteen
Beowulf Caesar reclined on the black leather couch and took another sip of Champagne, smiling to himself as he drank.
“I’ve got to hand it to you, dear boy,” he growled. “This really is some set-up you’ve created here.”
He cast his gaze around Thomas Engel’s impressive office, taking in the tiger-skin rugs, the matching desk and drinks cabinet in dark mahogany with gold and leather embellishments. The appearance was more in keeping with an old-fashioned gentleman’s club than any office. But Caesar liked that. He’d come a long way since his days as an East End thug, and he relished any time spent with bona fide billionaires. People like Engel. So above and beyond even the upper echelons of polite society. Shadowy and untouchable. Plus, they all seemed to have a certain air about them he found enchanting. A deep confidence that came from knowing you could do whatever the hell you wanted with zero reprisals. Screw financial security and all that poppycock, that’s what real money brought you – freedom to do whatever you wanted. One day Caesar too would be part of this world. He was sure of it. Told himself often. The deal with Engel had helped. The most money Caesar had ever earned from a hit, and all he had to do was deliver him his ex-protégé and her pathetic girlfriend. Easy money.
He glanced at Raaz Terabyte, who was sitting beside him and nursing a glass of fizz with a face like thunder. He angled his head to one side, giving her a look he hoped she’d understand.
The Acid Vanilla Series Page 57