by Matt Hilton
I fitted the SIM and inserted the battery and replaced the cover. After switching it on I’d to wait for it to power up. The tiny display screen was in grey-scale.
‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘I’d an Etchasketch when I was a kid that was more sophisticated than this thing.’
‘Yep, it’s barely a step up from two tin cans joined by string.’
The inexpensive model phone was what was often termed a burner: something to be thrown away or destroyed after use, usually untraceable to the users. I’d last used phones like it back in the late 1990s, and took a few seconds to get my head around the buttons. I found the menu and brought up the contacts list. As I’d expected there was only one number programmed in its memory. My thumb hovered over the call button.
‘You sure we should go ahead with this?’
Rink sucked in his bottom lip and chewed down on it. Finally he nodded. ‘If we’re gonna save Sue, we need to use every tool in our box.’
I pressed the button.
22
It was a number of hours since the brief, but lethal gunfight in the backyard of Sue’s house in Panama City. Law enforcement, and the media, had arrived en masse and the activity had barely diminished since. Sue’s house was cordoned off behind police tape and a couple of stern-faced officers kept nosy onlookers back with curt commands. At the front of the house a van was being loaded on a trailer to be transferred to a secure compound where further forensic investigation would be completed. Sue’s Mercedes-Benz sat on the drive at the side of the house, and would probably be next to be hauled away for examination. There were uniformed officers and also plain-clothed detectives in and outside the house, and several crime scene investigators were controlling the area where a man had been shot dead: the corpse had most likely have been recovered by the coroner’s department by now. People had gathered in small groups on the sidewalks, local residents all gossiping about what had happened on their street, raising conjecture and probably concluding bullshit theories. Jason Mercer had inserted himself behind one small bunch, close enough to be mistaken as one of them, so that he didn’t stand out as a stranger to any of the investigators. Still, it was risky being there.
He’d gained from attending the scene though, enough to temper his concern that Sue had been murdered. He’d overheard snatches of conversation, and the consensus was that the man that ended up dead had arrived in the van, whereas Sue had left with two different men in a dark coloured car. The descriptions he’d heard regarding Sue’s abductors were that one was Caucasian, of average size and build, whereas the other was taller and muscled like a pro athlete. Two witnesses were in conflict as to the latter man’s ethnicity, one claiming he was white while the other said Asian – they were both correct in part as Rink’s mother was Japanese, his father Scottish-Canadian. Even without Sue’s warning call Mercer would’ve been under no illusion about who’d taken Sue.
He was also reasonably assured that the dead man was an Arrowsake goon, although the manner of his death perplexed him. If Hunter and Rink were still puppets of their old masters, why the hell had they killed Sue’s would-be assassin? Yeah, he was jumping to conclusions, but he was confident there was only one reason why that man had gone to the house, and it wasn’t to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He had all the hallmarks of a hired gun, albeit, until now his weapon hadn’t been recovered, although the box he’d transported it in had — if Sue’s next door neighbours were to be believed. Mercer had concluded that Hunter and Rink were already on the scene when the killer had turned up, and they’d killed the man and taken Sue with them. Why? Perhaps they wanted the kudos for the capture, maybe there was a reward to be claimed they didn’t wish to share, but neither scenario rang true.
Mercer caught a couple of fleeting glances aimed in his direction. A big man, florid-faced, and splayfooted was paying too much attention to him. The guy was probably wondering who he was, and why he’d almost ingratiated himself into his group of gossiping friends. He saw the man bump the elbow of another man next to him, and they exchanged whispers. The second man looked fully at Mercer.
Mercer realised why.
He was lathered in cold sweat, and visibly shaking.
‘Hey, buddy.’ The red-faced man took a step closer, holding out a hand. ‘You okay there? D’you need a doctor or something?’
Mercer shook his head, trying to divert attention away with a lie. ‘Low blood sugar,’ he said. ‘Just need to eat some candy and I’ll be fine.’
‘You want me to—’
He turned away before the man could offer to fetch him something. He was conscious of being observed as he walked away. He kept going, avoiding the urge to glance back, and believed that the man’s attention would shift within ten seconds. Mercer returned to his Toyota, which he’d left parked along the street, well distant of the bubble of activity around Sue’s house. He leaned on the car, light-headed and trembling, and snuck a glance back to where the group of neighbours stood. Nobody was interested in him any more. He sat in the driver’s seat for some minutes, gathering his strength, counting his breaths and settling his juddering vision so it would be safe to drive.
When he got that way, he sometimes suffered pins and needles in his extremities. He opened and closed his fists, wiggled his fingers, but didn’t detect the numbness that occasionally afflicted him. He realised something important: this wasn’t due to one of his neurological responses as before, but through a rush of endorphins. He was a battleground for a mixture of conflicting emotions.
By now he could have been safely aboard a flight out of Mobile, Alabama. He’d gone against their own strict escape plan to return here to try to rescue Sue from her abductors. He hadn’t stopped to consider what returning to Panama City actually meant, only that he must if he was going to find out where she was being held. As a soldier he’d faced death on numerous occasions, and as Arrowsake’s patsy had literally skated at the edge of the abyss after Jared Rington shot him, and he’d no great desire to confront it again, but returning here was akin to placing himself in the firing line. During the months he’d spent recuperating from his wounds, he’d suffered almost daily, his nightmares brimming with screaming terror, his waking hours filled with the soul crushing promise of the hell to which he’d go when death finally took him. As the years passed, his nightmares had grown less frequent and he’d been able to shuck off his illogical fear of burning for all eternity. It had suddenly struck him that by trying to save Sue, he could speed his own demise. Was his probable sacrifice worth it to save her life?
Yes. He owed Sue. If not exactly for his life, she’d helped him return to something equating normality. After being gunned down by Rington, Mercer had been left to rot amid the ruins of a scorched town in Sierra Leone. Local villagers discovered him, clinging to life. In a show of humanity they had carried him to a nearby Médecins Sans Frontières field hospital. The volunteer doctors were more used to assisting amputees — Sierra Leone was in the midst of a terrible civil war at the time, where groups of men travelled between villages chopping off the arms of residents, raping women, murdering entire families and razing villages to the ground — but were no strangers to gunshot wounds either. His life had been saved, and to which he’d be eternally equally grateful, his anonymity was also protected. He travelled throughout northern Africa and into Europe, and finally was repatriated stateside, where to his surprise he found Sue Bouchard — more correctly, she found him. Sue was also in hiding from Arrowsake, having faked her drowning he’d learned, after discovering Mercer’s ‘execution’ had been ordered to conceal their dirty secret, and therefore fearing for her own life. It turned out that she was in the process of setting up a network to assist those in similar positions to her, and to Mercer. She’d recruited him, and brought him into the fold, giving him a new life and purpose. Without her support, he firmly believed that he’d have succumbed by now, maybe by putting the barrel of his pistol between his teeth and ending what Jared Rington started.
He loved Sue. She
was attractive, smart and intelligent, but more so she was beautiful in her heart and soul. However, he convinced himself, his feelings for her were purely platonic. Another blow due to the damage to his neurology was that he’d lost any sexual desire, but that wasn’t it. He regarded Sue more as the little sister he’d never had, and what kind of brother would put his life before hers?
It was obvious why a killer had been sent after her, but not why Hunter and Rink had then snatched Sue. Clearly they wished to keep her alive for now, and the only reason he could think of was to use as leverage against him. Where would they take her? Earlier when Sue had rung to warn him his old nemesis was in town, she’d surmised that they must have been spotted while out earlier that day, and she’d assumed it was during their trip down to the storm ravaged town of Mexico Beach. Was it likely they’d returned there after whisking Sue away?
He must check it out.
The police were seeking the wrong person for now. They were still of the mistaken assumption they were looking for Suzanne Carter, but once her neighbours returned home and saw the face depicted on the news bulletins, they’d put the story straight. Her neighbours knew Sue as Suzanne Carter, but not as the scarred woman from whom Sue had taken her bogus identity. Once they dug deeper the police would learn that Suzanne Carter had died years ago, that his Sue was another woman entirely, and the mystery of the shooting and her abduction would deepen, and attract further interest. He could of course go to them and throw his and Sue’s fates at the feet of the police, but he feared that the cops couldn’t protect them from Arrowsake. Sue’s only hope of survival was for him to take the fight to the son’s of bitches and hope his aim was steady enough.
He started the Toyota and made a turn in the street, heading away from the crime scene. He hadn’t made it more than a couple of blocks before the burner phone in his shirt pocket began ringing.
23
My greeting was met by silence.
It was understandable. Probably the last person Jason Mercer wanted to hear from was the best friend of the man who had almost killed him. No, scratch that; he’d prefer speaking to me than directly with Rink.
‘Don’t hang up, Mercer,’ I reasoned with him. ‘Hear us out, for Sue’s sake.’
‘If you’ve hurt her I’ll—’
‘It isn’t us hurting her you have to worry about. The opposite, in fact.’
‘What do you mean? You have her. Don’t try lying to me. I know you were here and took her. You want me, you can have me, but you let her go. Do you hear me? Let. Her. Go.’
‘Trust me, Mercer, you’ve gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick.’
He laughed, a sarcastic bark. ‘Well, haven’t we just been there before? Oh, wait! It wasn’t me that got things wrong that time, was it? It was Rink who handed me the shitty end.’
‘Rink’s here beside me.’
‘Like I give a fuck about him?’
‘Just laying our cards on the table, Mercer, so there’s no misunderstanding. Rink’s here beside me, and I speak for us both. We don’t mean Sue harm, and we don’t mean you harm.’
He clucked his tongue. ‘So let her go, let us disappear.’
‘If it was in our power, we’d do that.’
‘You’re still working for those bastards.’
‘No. You’re wrong. We are working against them.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘You said a minute ago that we were there and took her. You’re talking about Suzanne Carter’s house in Panama City. If you’re there, then you already know that we stopped the man they sent to kill her.’
He snapped out another sarcastic bark. ‘Only because he was in your way and you wanted the prize all to yourselves.’
‘You know that’s rubbish.’
‘Then why take her?’
‘We took her for her own protection.’
‘So let me speak with her; let Sue convince me you aren’t the murderous bastards I think you are.’
‘We can’t.’
‘Ha! There you fucking go then!’
‘We can’t because we no longer have her.’
‘You killed—’ His voice was a squawk of rising anger.
‘No,’ I cut in to forestall him. ‘We didn’t. Sue was taken from us.’
‘You handed her over?’
‘I told you she was taken. We fought to stop them, but things went south and Sue was grabbed.’
‘You handed her over to your goddamn bosses, you mean. Now what? You’re trying to trick me into surrendering too? Well fuck you, Hunter, and fuck Jared Rington!’
For a second I thought he was about to blow. He was on the verge of hanging up, and perhaps throwing the burner phone away. The single conduit we had to him would be lost. He didn’t though. I could hear him breathing, ragged, loud exhalations. There was a mutter after each breath, a word…no a number. He was counting, and it made me wonder if he was using some kind of mantra to keep his emotions under control. I gave him time.
‘OK,’ I said, ‘now you’ve got that off your chest, are you going to listen to me? Sue’s life depends on our mutual cooperation.’
‘Don’t take me for a fool, Hunter.’
‘I’m not. I’m hoping you care enough about Sue to let what happened in the past slide.’
‘That’s easy for you to say. You weren’t the one with the two bullets in your skull.’
Beside me Rink growled something about Mercer being a whining punk. His curse didn’t carry to Mercer’s ear though. ‘You were being manipulated back then, we know that now. The same went for Rink – Arrowsake used him too, lied to him, and had him carry out their dirty work. You’ve got to see that, Mercer.’
‘So what? I’m supposed to forgive him? You want us to hug it out, have a few beers and sing Auld Lang Syne?’
‘No,’ I answered, ‘I want you to put the past behind you if you want Sue to have a future.’ Even to me, I sounded trite. But I also meant what I said.
‘I still have trust issues.’
‘You needn’t have.’
‘Who says you’re not lying to me, and you’re only trying to draw me out so you can finish the job for Arrowsake?’
‘Arrowsake are our enemies now.’ As briefly, but emphatically as I could, I related what had happened, culminating with Sue’s abduction by Vince.
He absorbed my story, and it was apparent that my words rang true to him, but he was understandably cautious.
‘I don’t recall anyone called Stephen Vincent,’ he said, ‘or what else was it you called him: Vince Everett?’
‘Let’s just call him Vince to avoid confusion. You won’t recall him; he wasn’t around in our day. He’s one of a new breed…a different breed. They sing from a different hymn sheet than ours.’
‘I’m not sure we were ever in harmony. Can’t see as how we can work together now.’
Rink had heard enough. He muscled in beside me, so he was clearly understood. ‘Listen up, Mercer. Quit the goddamn bullshit. You don’t trust us, well the feeling’s mutual. But I’m prepared to put aside my distrust of you for the sake of savin’ Sue. You’re in or you’re out. We are goin’ to try to get her back with or without you. If you care for her, you’ll join us. Your choice, pal.’
Again Mercer grew silent, but there was no hint of his mantra this time. Finally he came back on the line. ‘We need to meet. Somewhere neutral, somewhere—’
‘Somewhere public,’ I ended for him. ‘Not sure as how that can work, Mercer, seeing as I expect my face to be plastered all over the news networks before daybreak.’
‘You’ll have to make it work, Hunter. It has to be someplace public,’ he emphasized. ‘There’s no way I’m putting myself in your sights without plenty of witnesses.’
‘Call it, then,’ I said.
‘How well do you know Panama City?’
‘Barely.’
‘Barely will have to do. Come here. Keep that cell handy: I’ll be in touch.’
‘The longer you make us wait,
the longer Sue’s in Arrowsake’s hands.’
‘I get you. But there’s no way I’m showing my face til I’m certain Rink isn’t gonna try and blow it off again.’
‘You’re going to make us wait til morning?’
‘That’s the way it has to be.’ Mercer ended the call.
24
The following morning Mercer directed us to a sprawling shopping mall on Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard. He’d chosen it because it offered several escape routes, and plenty of potential witnesses should we try visiting violence on him. There were security patrols, and CCTV cameras in abundance, so it was risky enough entering the building without us causing any kind of drama. Rink parked the company Ford — now in possession of a different set of license plates we’d lifted off a similar model Ford down in Port St Joe — in the spacious lot adjacent to a Sears’s department store, and we entered the mall and made our way to the central hub. Rink was a distinctive guy, whichever way you looked at him, but he also had a knack for stillness, for adopting a Zen-like tranquillity, so he could go unnoticed when he wished. For my part, I’d elected to wear a baseball cap and inexpensive reading glasses purchased at a gas station earlier to disguise my face, though I was still unsure if it had made it onto the news networks yet.
We checked our fastest exit routes, the most obvious being the four walkways radiating from the central hub, but we also took note of service and fire escape doors. It was lost on neither of us that Mercer might have decided it was too risky joining forces with us, and deeming us enemies, he’d laid a trap for us with the local PD, naming us as the perpetrators of last night’s shooting at Suzanne Carter’s house. Rink sat alone on a bench situated for the convenience of weary shoppers, while I moved fifty feet away and stood as if checking out the tasty wares through the window of a shop selling cookies and brownies. I used the reflective window to look for counter-surveillance and spotted nobody suspicious. We’d arrived twenty minutes prior to the agreed meeting time, allowing an opportunity to check for a trap before Mercer showed up. There was nothing alarming but I still remained at high alert.