by Matt Hilton
‘Sue, stop!’ I hissed, but didn’t get to add: “We’re here to help.”
Sue grasped my hand and twisted under it, flexing my wrist and elbow in some kind of Aikido lock. I didn’t want to hurt her, but—
My wrist was in danger of breaking. So I kicked out with my heel, slamming it into her nearest thigh, and Sue buckled with a cry of agony. I wrenched out of her grasp, and spun on her, kicking her feet from under her. She slammed down on the porch floor with enough force that I’d swear the entire house shook. I aimed the gun at her, a visual threat only, but hopefully one she’d heed.
Sue kicked at me. But I didn’t give ground. I dropped a knee onto her, and held her down. ‘Stay put,’ I growled, ‘and stop trying to hurt me!’
She must have thought she was about to die, and resolved not to make it easy for me. She neither stayed put nor gave up the fight. She batted at the gun, even as she flexed up from her hips and tried to lock her heel around my throat to force me off her. It was a reckless do-or-die attempt at saving her life, and took a liberty with my reticence to shoot.
Rink appeared behind us. I tossed the pistol towards him, freeing both hands to control Sue. I’d to dodge to avoid her heel that was dropping like an axe at my shoulder, and I swept both her legs sideways so she was forced onto her side, facing away. Immediately I grappled her and squashed her flat under my body weight. ‘Sue, for Christ’s sake,’ I snapped into her ear, ‘stop struggling and listen to me.’
‘Get off me, Joe!’ I don’t know if she recalled me from when she was Rink’s girl, or Mercer had recently told her who I was.
‘We aren’t here to hurt you,’ I tried again.
‘Liar!’ She struggled once more but was going nowhere. ‘You’re here to—’
‘We aren’t with Arrowsake, we haven’t been for years.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘If we were you’d be dead by now.’
Her struggles weakened as the truth set in. She exhaled, and all tension seeped from her body. I relaxed some of my weight too, but not enough for her to renew the fight. I glanced back at Rink. Ordinarily my struggles would have elicited a joke at my expense, but Rink looked grim. He’d collected the gun off the floor and held it down by his side.
To Sue, I said, ‘If you behave, I’ll let you up.’
‘You’ve got me, and taken my gun. What else am I going to do?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It will be good to remember that.’
I pushed up to a knee, but continued to hold her down until I’d got both feet under me. I helped Sue stand. Her red hair was awry. She glared at us both with seething green eyes. Then she purposefully rubbed at her thigh where I’d kicked her.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, staring directly at Rink now.
‘Believe it or not,’ Rink said, ‘we’re here to help you. Acting ungrateful isn’t your best idea.’
‘Help me?’ Her angry gaze switched to me. ‘You just dumped me on my ass, Joe. If that’s supposed to be helping me, thanks for nothing.’
‘You were trying to break my arm at the time.’
‘I should have broken it,’ she growled.
‘No. You should’ve given me a chance to explain. Instead you gave me a thick ear. I took you down to stop you hurting anyone, including you.’ I nodded at the gun in Rink’s hand. ‘You seriously intended using that?’
She rolled her neck. ‘We’ll never know now. But if you’re really here to help me, you can give it back.’
‘I’ll hold on to it for now.’ Rink shoved the silenced pistol into the back of his belt, covering it with his shirttail.
She appraised her ex boyfriend. ‘I could barely believe my eyes when I saw you earlier. I couldn’t think of another reason for you and Joe to be skulking on my street, other than…’ She shrugged an apology. ‘I hope you’re not going to hold shooting at you against me?’
‘You missed. No harm, no foul, I guess.’
Sue was doing OK at trying to disarm us with her geniality. But I was watching the subtle shifts of her feet, and how she’d gained a few inches of space between us. She was preparing to run.
Before she could jerk away to leap inside, maybe with the idea of slamming the door on us, I too shifted. Without warning I grabbed her elbow, and drew her further outside. If she was going to run, it’d have to be through the garden, and we’d catch her before she could scale the far fence. Sue grumbled at me for spoiling her plan, but she settled her feet and faced Rink again. ‘Why are you here, Rink? Don’t give me that story about being here to help, because I don’t buy it. When we laid eyes on each other earlier, you were as surprised as I was.’
‘Having a gun pointed at me tends to do that,’ he said. But she was owed an explanation of sorts. ‘I didn’t expect to find you here, Sue. But once I did, I knew you’d need help.’
I said, ‘You must’ve been expecting us.’
‘Why would I? It’s been years since—’
‘Since you supposedly died,’ Rink finished for her.
She shook her head. An explanation why she’d faked her death wasn’t forthcoming yet.
‘Jason Mercer didn’t warn you about us?’ I asked.
‘Jason? How would he know you were here?’
‘We crossed paths earlier,’ I said, ‘in a building in downtown Panama City, after I followed you both from Mexico Beach.’
Her dumbfounded expression looked genuine.
‘You guys were in the elevator,’ I prompted, ‘and I was in the lobby. Mercer met my gaze when the doors opened. He didn’t tell you about me?’
‘He didn’t. No offence, Joe, but it’s a long time since any of us saw each other. We’ve all aged. We are all different people these days.’
Rink studied her. He didn’t comment on her looks, though I could tell he found her as attractive as ever, despite the passing years or maybe because of them. Sue had been a great looking girl, but she’d become a beautiful mature woman. He spoiled the moment by saying, ‘Mercer shouldn’t have aged.’
Her teeth were bared as Sue snapped, ‘You have no idea the torment Jason has gone through since you shot him.’
Rink snorted. ‘He deserved to suffer worse.’
‘Why?’
‘He was a murderer, Sue.’
‘Says the man that shot him in cold blood.’
‘Twice,’ Rink corrected. ‘I shot the bastard twice.’
Even I winced at his words.
Sue shook in anger. ‘What makes what you did any different from what Jason was asked to do?’
‘Asked to do?’ Rink replied, incredulous. ‘I was a soldier, I acted under orders; Jason killed for the hell of it.’
Sue turned away, shaking her head in disbelief. Arguing semantics was pointless; there really isn’t a moral high ground when it comes to the role of an assassin, state-sanctioned or otherwise. I took her arm again, but this time to calm the situation.
‘Sue,’ I said softly. ‘Let’s leave the past behind us for now. What’s more important is to get you somewhere safe from harm.’
She pulled out of my grasp. ‘Thanks, but I can look after myself. I have done for years, and don’t need either of you now.’
‘No offence,’ I said, to partially echo her words from earlier, ‘but I’m guessing it’s a long time since you were in the field. Don’t deny it. There’s no way I’d have taken you down as easily if you were still active. You do need us. Arrowsake are coming.’
‘You told them where to find me?’
‘No, but I did mention spotting Mercer. We had no other option. You understand what that probably means now.’
‘I have to warn him.’
‘No. It’s too risky. For now, Arrowsake has no idea you’re still alive, I’d prefer to keep things that way.’
‘Then you must warn Jason.’
‘Uh, no.’ Rink had been acting on orders when trying to execute Mercer, but it had been a task he’d had no qualms about. He wasn’t wrong when he’
d said Mercer had killed for the hell of it. Shooting him had been a service to humanity. ‘Mercer is fair game. You, on the other hand, are not.’
‘I’m not deserting him—’
Rink frowned so hard that his nostrils flared. ‘Don’t tell me that you and him are—’
‘What? Lovers? And what if were are, what the hell has our private lives got to do with you, Rink?’
He shrugged. ‘Just thought you’d a better taste in men, Sue.’
‘If that was true, then we’d never have gotten together.’
‘Ouch,’ I said to my friend, ‘I bet that stings?’
Except it had the opposite effect. Rink’s features softened, and a grin blossomed. At the same time, Sue turned away to hide a sly tightening of her lips.
‘This thing with Jason,’ she said, ‘we are friends, colleagues…we work together.’
‘Like you said, nothin’ to do with me,’ Rink said, ‘but it doesn’t change my opinion of him. I don’t regret shootin’ that frog-giggin’ sumbitch, an’ I’ll do it again if I have to.’
‘You don’t have to. He’s not the man he was. In fact,’ she looked earnestly back at Rink, ‘he was never the man you were told he was. That was lies, fed to you by evil men who wanted him dead.’
‘I saw the proof of his crimes,’ Rink countered.
‘You saw what Arrowsake wanted you to see. Jason was following orders, exactly the same way as you did. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but was too afraid to disobey. He was afraid for his life. Ha! He was damned either way. I’m surprised that either of you has been allowed to live, knowing what you know about Arrowsake.’
She had a point. Walter Hayes Conrad had become a surrogate father to me, and it’s only through his protection that I’ve never been on the wet end of a hit. Because Rink was more than a brother to me, Walter had extended his protective shield over him too, and that’s despite Rink’s obvious hatred for our old masters. But Walter couldn’t protect us if we actively defied him and Arrowsake: we’d be making an enemy of the only man that could keep us alive, or out of prison.
7
Back in the day we were soldiers. I was 1-PARA, while Rink was a US Army Ranger. We were already near the pinnacle of our particular trees, special operatives in our right, and it might have been expected of us to aim next for selection with the British Special Air Service and US Navy SEALS respectively. Those weren’t the obvious routes we followed. We were handpicked instead for the grueling selection process with an experimental coalition of allied Special Forces operatives, codenamed Arrowsake, and packed off to a secret base on the northwestern Scottish coastline — Arrowsake’s codename was derived from a mispronunciation of Arisaig, the fabled home of the Special Operations Executive, the forerunner of the modern MI5. At its inception, and for many years, Arrowsake operated under noble intent. We fought terrorists and tyrants, destabilized cartels and international criminal networks. We were idealistic and blindly followed orders. Then the rot inevitably set in. Instead of soldiers we became something else entirely; we became assassins. The world changed following the terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of September 11th 2001, and with it the face of modern counterterrorism. Rough men with big guns were out, superseded by tech nerds and drone strikes.
Post 9/11, Arrowsake was disbanded, and those of us that’d survived went our separate ways. It was a few years later before Rink and I hooked up again, and inescapably fell under the influence of our old controller, Walter Hayes Conrad. Asking for help from Walter was akin to selling our souls to the devil. He scratched our backs and we had to scratch his, but where we’d tried to sever the relationship the manipulative old bastard still had his claws buried deep. There’d been a few occasions in the latter years where he’d used us to accomplish his personal agenda, and one time where we were pawns of a re-emerged Arrowsake. This Arrowsake was different to the one we’d belonged to, led from the shadows by a cabal of influential and self-serving people, one of whom, it turned out, was Walter. Rink had sworn off any further dealings with them, and I echoed his sentiment, but what could we do when they were once again heading in our direction? Especially when, this time, we’d be deemed stumbling blocks in their way, ergo their enemies. It might sound as if the only way to save us was to leave Mercer to Walter, as instructed, but that would also mean sacrificing Sue, and that didn’t sit well with either Rink or me.
With the lack of a plan, we urged her back inside her home, gathering in the kitchen. Not for fear we were imminent targets, but that we might attract unwanted attention from her neighbours. It was already surprising that our brief scuffle hadn’t brought out the neighbourhood, but for now we’d gone unnoticed. I wondered if Sue had chosen to live there because people minded their own business. I asked if there was any danger of Suzanne Carter returning home and discovering us. Sue smiled at the notion.
‘I’m Suzanne Carter.’
‘Yours isn’t the face on Miss Carter’s social network profiles,’ I said, although I already suspected where this was going.
‘I’m hardly going to use my own picture, what with facial recognition software being all the rage.’
‘So Carter’s a legend?’
‘Yes. It was a clean skin invented for me, so I could safely live here. Don’t forget, Joe, Suzanne Bouchard drowned while scuba diving off the coast of Tenerife.’
Rink made a sound in his throat.
Sue smirked at him. ‘You sound as if you actually missed me, Rink.’
‘I did.’ He rolled his neck. ‘We had a falling out, Sue, but I didn’t stop caring for you.’
‘Sweet,’ she said, sounding insincere. But then she shrugged. ‘But it’s academic now. Who was it that said, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated?”’
‘Elvis Presley?’ I quipped. ‘Rumour is he’s flipping burgers in a Seattle diner.’
‘It was Mark Twain,’ Rink corrected me, and turned his attention back to Sue. ‘Why was it necessary for you to go off grid? You didn’t make the grade for selection, why would Arrowsake care if you were dead or alive?’
‘Who says I didn’t make the grade?’
Rink eyed her spuriously.
‘What? You don’t think I had it in me? That’s not what you said when you were supposedly consoling me after I rang the bell.’
‘You were the one cryin’ on my shoulder. You tellin’ me that was all an act?’
‘Arrowsake recruited me, just not through the normal channels. And no, before you damn well ask, I wasn’t recruited to be a honey trap.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘I was recruited for this. When they wanted to fill their quota of hairy-assed grunts, they chose the likes of you guys.’
Rink and I exchanged a look, and after a moment of feigned ignominy we broke into grins. To be fair, she’d hit the nail on the head with her description of most of Arrowsake’s paramilitary wing. I took it that she’d been secretly enlisted for one of the supporting logistical roles because not all Arrowsake operatives got their boots on the ground in foreign conflicts. Back then there were international, national and regional controllers, each with a support team at their disposal: a case in point being Walter Conrad, who in his official role as a CIA Sub-divisional Director of Black Ops, also helmed one of the US-based Arrowsake task forces. The likes of Rink and me were the ones to pull the trigger, but behind each bullet there was an army of helpers — most with no idea whom they were actually assisting — ensuring it reached its target.
‘To escape them you felt it necessary to fake your own death?’ Rink asked.
‘I had to.’ She gave us an earnest look apiece. ‘Arrowsake is still pulling your strings, right? I bet neither of you are happy about that.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ said Rink.
I massaged my hot ear. It was still a bit swollen, but the pain had subsided to a dull throb. I used it as an excuse to avoid answering her. Whatever Walter was, he was still a father figure to me, and in a fashion I ev
en loved the bastard. My relationship with our old controller was the one point of acrimony between Rink and me. Didn’t mean we couldn’t respect each other’s personal opinions.
Sue sat at the breakfast counter. She folded her hands in her lap as she bent at the waist to regard Rink. ‘So don’t let them rule you now.’
‘They don’t rule me,’ he growled.
‘Then leave Jason alone. In fact, leave me alone. Get on with your life, and leave us to ours.’
‘I do that,’ he countered, ‘and I’m leavin’ you to die. It ain’t somethin’ I’m prepared to do.’
‘You said Arrowsake don’t know about me. Is that the truth?’
‘Yes.’
She opened her hands in silent question.
‘You’ll go to warn Mercer, and you’ll get caught up in his crap. You’ll die, Sue.’
‘I disappeared once before, I can do it again.’
I’d stood idle for too long. ‘Not if they learn you’re alive. They’ll move heaven and earth to find you, especially if they learn of your connection to Mercer.’
‘If they come at us, I’ll go to the press. I’ll blow the whistle on all their dirty secrets. If we are out in the open, how can they touch us without incriminating themselves?’
‘That,’ I pointed out, ‘is the exact attitude that’ll get you killed. Going public won’t make you untouchable. An organisation like theirs can influence the media any way they desire. They’ll publicly discredit you, destroy your reputation, make you the villain, and once they’ve done that you’ll either die in a freak accident or be made to look as if you’ve taken your own life.’