by Matt Hilton
‘You must still have influence, even if it’s as an advisor. You should tell them they’ve nothing to gain from making war on us, and lots to lose. Maybe you’ve lost your footing in the hierarchy, but surely your experience still means something to them? What about with Vince? He’s still loyal to you, right?’
Walter laughed scornfully. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me! Vince has no loyalty to me whatsoever. Why’d you think it was you and Joe I came to when I needed help getting Benjamin back? Vince doesn’t give a goddamn hoot for me, or for anyone else. In fact, if ever I escape Arrowsake, I said I’d have to keep one eye over my shoulder; it’s Vince and his damn garrote I’m most fearful of.’
‘Maybe Hunter will do you a favour and put the frog-gigger down,’ Rink said. ‘But I’ll say again, if things go the other way, there’s gonna be hell to pay.’
‘Not by me though?’
‘Didn’t say I believed you yet.’
Walter grunted in mirth. It was apparent from Rink’s change of tone that he’d accepted Walter’s word on the matter – a paradigm shift for Rink, admittedly.
‘Look, son, I’ll make contact, see what I can do about having Vince stood down, but as I pointed out, I have little influence these days. I will, however, do my best.’
This time, Rink allowed Walter’s misguided term of endearment to slide. It didn’t pay to alienate Walter further when he was probably the only ally in an otherwise hostile camp.
‘Thank you,’ he said, with sincerity.
Rink ended the call. He was undecided: should he disassemble the cell phone again or not? He left it intact. He hadn’t agreed a timescale with Hunter, but if he’d evaded pursuit, he should’ve made it there to Port St. Joe by now. Several scenarios went through his mind: Hunter was still on the road but was unable to find a clear route to their rendezvous site; Hunter was pinned down and unable to escape; Hunter was in police custody; Hunter was dead. Whichever way he looked at the possibilities, none of them was good, and getting no better while he idled there at the deserted marina. Walter had meant it when he’d offered to do his best to call off the hounds, and Rink believed him more than he’d have admitted before; sadly, he also believed that Walter’s influence over Arrowsake was waning, and probably next to zero. He glanced over at the pistol on the passenger seat, came to a decision, and aimed the Ford at the highway back to Mexico Beach.
18
The upturned hull of the boat offered shelter, but if we stayed hidden by it, it could become our tomb. It had absorbed a couple of potshots taken at us, but wouldn’t protect us from a sustained assault.
‘We can’t stay here,’ I said, blinking crud out of my eye.
‘They’re moving in around us,’ Sue said, adding validation to my words.
Though I couldn’t pinpoint their exact positions, I could hear movement, and understood how perilously close we were to being flanked, or worse still encircled. While the opportunity presented, I shucked out of my backpack and delved inside for extra ammunition. While Sue covered me, I quickly reloaded. My SIG currently had a ten rounds magazine; I’d enough bullets to kill all of our pursuers if they did the honorable thing and came at us one at a time. As if that would ever happen.
I squirmed into my backpack. Sue was hunkered down, her tapestry tote bag between her knees as she scanned the woodland for movement.
‘We’re going to have to move fast,’ I warned her, ‘maybe you should dump the bag; whatever you need, we can replace later…if we make it.’
Sue didn’t acknowledge my words. Instead she grasped the bag with her left hand, protectively, as if I was about to snatch it.
‘It’s too heavy and cumbersome,’ I said. ‘It will slow you down.’
‘It hasn’t slowed me down yet.’
‘Your choice.’
She drew it tighter between her knees.
‘Okay,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘Any minute now, the shit’s going to hit the fan. The cops can’t be far off, and that means the window of opportunity for these fuckers is closing. They’ll assault us or they’ll be forced to leave. We’ve hurt them, and we’ve embarrassed them, so it’s my guess they’ll go for broke rather than run with their tails between their legs.’
‘If we hold them off long enough for the cops to arrive—’
‘No. I’m not prepared to risk the life of a cop, just so we can get away. We have to keep moving, draw them out into the woods until they realise we’ve reduced their opportunity of escape. They’ll be forced to abandon the chase then, and will concentrate on evading law enforcement rather than get into a shoot out.’
‘If we leave cover, we’ll probably be gunned down.’
We required a diversion; one that’d work better than the ad hoc plan Rink had come up with earlier.
‘Do you smoke?’ I asked.
When Sue replied with a look of confusion, I held up my fist and rolled my thumb over my index finger. ‘Got a lighter?’
‘No.’
I looked around.
When the boat had been thrown here by the high winds it had spilled most of its guts along its tumbling path through the trees. It was unlikely I’d find a flare or anything else I could use to ignite a fire. My initial idea was to set the boat ablaze, making a beacon to draw the police to the area that much faster, forcing our enemies to abandon the fight. Ironically, without a lighter, my plan had gone up in smoke seconds after I considered it.
‘Do you see that, Joe?’
Sue indicated an object wedged under a fallen branch approximately ten feet away. I’d no way of knowing if it had fallen off the tumbling boat or had been blown here from another source, from one of the nearby demolished houses, perhaps. It was a propane canister, the type used in camping stoves.
‘You want to shoot it?’ I asked. ‘If you expect it to explode, don’t. You still need a flame to ignite the escaping gas.’
‘Yeah, but it’ll still make a big-assed noise, right?’
She was correct. The sound of an exploding propane canister wouldn’t carry to the ears of the cops on the highway, but it might force an exaggerated response from our attackers.
‘Cover me.’
Before she could reply I ducked out from under the boat and crawled for the pile of debris. Thankfully I went unobserved and I drew out the propane canister, and found to my satisfaction that it was heavy with gas. As I turned to retreat to the boat, Sue began shooting. The boat’s hull acted like a resonance chamber, so her silenced shots sounded like a series of echoing claps. From the far side, somebody returned fire. I wormed my way back on my belly, the canister clutched in one hand, my SIG in the other. As soon as I was under cover I put down the canister and clutched Sue’s shoulder.
‘Go out the way I just did. There’s none of them back there yet. Beeline into the trees so I know where to find you after.’
She gathered up her tote bag, and did as instructed. I watched as she crawled the first ten yards, before she rose up to a crouch, hugged her bag under one armpit and darted among the fallen trees. I wondered if I should forego a distraction in favour of stealth, but couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t be spotted, despite Sue getting clear unobserved. I leaned to see from under the boat, and heard the crackling of branches breaking underfoot. Somebody was out there, less than fifty feet away and moving in under cover. I fired at the source of the noises and heard a curse in response. The gunman went to cover, but from near the front of the boat someone took up the fight. Bullets drilled the capsized prow. Good, I’d caught their attention. I squirmed back to where Sue had just left. I checked my anticipated route through the trees, then lined up the propane canister. I backed out on hands and knees, keeping my eye on my target. As I retreated, I hoped nobody had slipped around behind me, or my arse would make too resistible a target to miss.
Twenty feet out I stopped, rose to one knee and aimed at the canister.
For a nanosecond I paused, worried that Hollywood was correct; that a gas canister shot with a bullet would exp
lode, and I’d be scorched. I caressed the trigger and my SIG kicked in my hand. The propane exploded, but not with flame. There was a tremendous pop and a wail of escaping gas! The upturned hull of the boat amplified the racket, and hanging precariously on some branches before, it shifted, gained momentum and canted on one side with an even larger crash. Immediately the escaping propane clouded the scene, almost glowing with luminosity against the darkness. The result was greater than I’d imagined. To anyone watching, they’d be forgiven for thinking we’d blown ourselves up.
I heard the gunmen’s startled responses. Heard the clatter as they moved through the brush and debris. They were converging on the boat, though with some trepidation, perhaps expecting a second explosion. I moved away as stealthily as possible. Once I was a hundred or so yards deeper into the forest I checked behind, and was satisfied we’d momentarily given Vince’s crew the slip. Also, I heard a siren grow louder and thought the cops were on their way. Hopefully Vince and his team would run, and not risk a pointless showdown.
19
We made good progress once we were on the service road, though I saw neither hide nor hair of the water tank it was named for. The going was mainly good, except every now and again we’d to climb over or circumnavigate trees strewn across our path. Alert to the possibility that Vince’s team might chase us in their surviving SUV, I kept one eye on our back trail, another ahead incase they somehow anticipated our plan to circle back towards town once we were clear of the area. The road went around the back of Mexico Beach. We hurried through several dogleg turns and the further we progressed the less maintained it was. We reached a point where the hardpack gave way to ancient tire tracks in the sandy earth, and the trees loomed closer on each side. Here the hurricane had brought down branches but most of the trunks had withstood its ferocity. We made better time, and found ourselves approaching the city lights once more, probably a full two miles downtown from the City Dock.
We emerged from the forest trail onto the aptly named Joe Drive. I’d jogged most of the forest trails around town, and was familiar with Water Tank Road, and the one that we came out onto. It intersected with 15th Street, from where, with a strong arm, I could throw a stone and hit the police department building on 14th. It wasn’t an ideal location to show our faces, but it was what it was. Hopefully every cop in town had converged on City Docks by now and we’d have a free run back to the main highway. We couldn’t take the most direct route, not when the hotel where I’d stayed — and the scene of the recent gun battle — was only a few blocks southeast of the police station. At 15th Street, I directed Sue to go to the left, and follow the circuitous road until we were clear of the crime scene. Mercifully, most of the neighbourhood had survived the storm, and there were still residents at home. Unfortunately that meant there was the potential for witnesses. We were muddy, soaked to our waists, and could draw attention. We’d both hidden our pistols, mine down my belt at the small of my back, Sue’s in her tote bag, but were ready to draw them in an instant.
We took several left and then right intersections, side-stepping our way back to the coast rather than take a direct path, and finally approached US Highway 98 near the demarcation point with Gulf County. I’d shopped at a Seafood Grill at the intersection on numerous occasions over the years, where they served an excellent shrimp po’boy sandwich, but one of my favourite take out spots had disappeared, all but for a pile of rubble and a low cinderblock wall that’d survived. The lot at the rear was currently devoid of the trailers and RV’s usually to be found when I’d parked there on previous occasions, though there was a jumble of wreckage. I checked for observers, and when I saw none, urged Sue to enter the back lot and we hid from view, crouching in the lea of the cinderblock wall. Above us, the power lines had survived, but the poles themselves leaned drunkenly and some of the wires sagged perilously close overhead. I wondered if they’d affect my cell phone as I took it out and switched it on. They didn’t.
Rink answered after the first ring, and I was relieved he’d had the presence of mind to switch his phone back on. I say he answered, though not in words. I could tell he was waiting for me to speak, to confirm I was the caller.
‘Rink, it’s me.’
‘Good to hear you’re alive, Hunter. Sit-rep?’
‘We’re in a bit of a pinch,’ I told him. ‘We lost the car and are on foot and exposed.’
‘Where?’
I described our hiding place, and reminded him of the times we’d grabbed po’boys from the grill and sat on the beach watching the pelicans as we ate. ‘I know it. Fact is, I’m only a few minutes away. Shouldn’t have a problem gettin’ to you, unless the cops have shut the highway between us.’
‘I don’t think they’ve the manpower.’ Right then the beleaguered cops had two crime scenes to contend with, one of them at the far north end of town. ‘I doubt you’ll run into trouble.’
‘Vince’s team have been chased off?’
‘Couldn’t say.’ I didn’t have time to go into the events at the dock or in the woods afterwards culminating in exploding my improvised smoke bomb. ‘I did what I could to alert the cops, and hope I forced Vince and the others to run. One of their SUV’s are out of commission, but it leaves the other. They’ll probably rendezvous with it once they’re clear of the cops.’
‘Yeah,’ Rink said, ‘it chased me a mile or two but gave up and headed back your way.’
‘Your diversion worked at first, but Vince spotted us and called the troops back.’
‘I guess I wasn’t important enough to chase.’
‘They’re only interested in getting their hands on Sue.’
‘Yeah,’ Rink answered. ‘Strange thing is, I talked with Walter. He can be deceitful at the best of times, but I got the sense he’d no idea that Sue was involved.’
‘So it wasn’t him that sent Vince after us?’
‘Swears he wasn’t involved.’
An icy sensation inside my chest began to melt: I’d carried it since spotting the SUV’s prowling towards the hotel, and surmised that Walter had betrayed us.
‘Seems there’s been some kinda power shift in Arrowsake, and the old fart has been shoved out to pasture. He said he’ll do what he can for us but didn’t sound too hopeful. In fact, the way he put it, he’s worried he could be next on Vince’s list.’
‘Not if I have anything to do with it. I’ll—’
Sue stirred. She craned, trying to pierce the darkness beyond a nearby pile of debris.
‘Hold on, Rink.’ I turned my attention to Sue. ‘What is it?’
‘I thought I saw movement.’ She aimed a finger, indicating a patch of ground near a collapsed shed. I watched, but saw nothing. Sue drew her tote bag closer, and draped her hand inside: probably feeling for her pistol.
‘How far away are you now, Rink?’
‘I’m just passing the memorial park.’
He was talking about Gulf County Veterans Memorial Park, and depending on his speed, should arrive at our hiding place within the next minute.
‘Joe!’ Sue stabbed towards the darkness this time.
A figure morphed out of the surrounding darkness, and I was under no illusion: this was not an innocent local out for a midnight stroll among the wreckage. It was a man wearing a baseball cap and dark jacket, and he darted from one pile of wreckage to another.
‘They’re here,’ I said, for both Sue and Rink’s ears.
We were exposed to gunfire.
Immediately I shoved away my phone, and grabbed for my SIG, and urged unnecessary action from Sue who’d clutched her bag to her chest and was already lunging to get around the cinderblock wall. But already it was too late. Distracted by my call to Rink, I’d allowed Vince to creep up on us.
Except, Vince wasn’t the man sneaking up on us from the darkness. He’d crept in from the opposite side, and used his lackey’s distraction to his benefit. As we scrambled to defend ourselves, he stood up from behind the cinderblock wall and snapped his garrote down over Sue
’s head and yanked it tight.
20
I had firsthand experience of Vince’s guitar string garrote. I’d come close to death when I’d fallen foul of it, and only because Vince relaxed the pressure had I survived. A little tighter pull on it and the guitar string would’ve cut through my flesh right down to the vertebra. He’d only exerted enough pressure to throttle me unconscious, and there had been nothing I could do to stop him: almost instantly my mind had turned black and my oxygen-starved brain had refused my urge to fight back.
The bastard literally hauled Sue off her feet with one quick wrench, and dragged her bodily over the low wall before she could even drop her bag to claw at the noose. He pulled her in tightly to him, so that I could only see one side of his face peering over her shoulder. Sue’s tongue protruded, and her eyes bulged. Her feet scrabbled wildly for purchase.
I didn’t hang around; I immediately aimed my pistol, but couldn’t shoot. I had another armed man to my right, and besides, there was no clear shot at Vince. I adjusted my SIG towards the gunman, but for the moment understood that Vince had beaten me.
‘Don’t try to be a hero, Hunter,’ he said as he took a couple of steps backwards, dragging Sue with him. ‘It will only take a little pull on this thing and Sue’s head will come off.’