by Blake Banner
His brain might have been going crazy, screaming at his body to shout, turn, run, fight—at his lungs to breathe and his heart to pump. But the lines of communication had been cut and all he could do was sway for the couple of seconds I needed to raise the Maxim 9.
Meanwhile his buddy had emptied five more rounds into the cushions under the quilt. I guessed these guys really did want Diana dead.
The guy with my knife in his neck sagged gracelessly to the floor, leaving me a clear field of fire. Nobody really noticed at first. When they did it was too late. The Maxim spat and the 9mm round punched a one-inch hole in the shooter’s left temple. It kicked a four-and-a-half-inch hole out of his right temple and sprayed his brains across the floor. There was a moment of extreme confusion. There were two guys now between me and the collapsing body of the shooter. As far as they were concerned the shot that had killed him had come from where the guy with the knife in his neck should have been, but wasn’t. There was only an empty space, because I had stepped to the side and gone down on one knee, into the deeper shadows.
They were pros and they were not slow to react. The guy nearest me swore violently and rushed at the place where I had been. He tripped over his buddy, with my Fairbairn & Sykes in his neck, and fell headlong into the wall. Meanwhile his pal was twisting and turning this way and that, saying, “What the hell! Pete! Get the fucking lights!”
I didn’t hesitate. I aimed for his middle and let off four rounds in rapid succession. He made a soft squeak and carefully got down on his knees and one hand, holding his belly with his left. I heard him say, “Oh, shit…,” and then he lay down.
There was a scrambling noise. I reached out with my left hand and switched on the light. Pete, the fourth guy, was lying on his back, scrabbling away from me. He had his left hand on the floor and his right was holding a Glock 19, waving it wildly while his feet pushed against his dead pal.
High precision is not the Maxim’s strong point. It is accurate, but not minutely so. Added to which he was waving his weapon about, making it impossible to aim at. But his elbow, though moving, was only moving half an inch this way or that. It was a split-second decision, but I put a round through his elbow. He dropped the Glock, went very pale and passed out. I took his bootlace and made a tourniquet just below his bicep.
After that I put out the light again and peered out through the drapes for a slow count to one hundred. Nothing happened. I went to the door and opened it, and stood listening for thirty seconds. There was no sound of sirens. I went back inside, put on the light and went to the bathroom door. I knocked.
“It’s me, John. How squeamish are you?”
Her voice came muffled. “Not. How can I be sure it’s you?”
I sighed. “I wonder if you can help me. My car has broken down and I need to telephone to my son, Graham, who is an aeronautical engineer to see if he can help me.”
After a moment the door opened a crack and part of her expressionless face, with one blue eye, looked out at me. I said, “We’re in a hurry. We need to move fast.”
She opened the door and stepped out, and stood looking at the bodies. I took a hold of her shoulders. “Take your clothes off. All of them.”
Her eyebrows climbed high on her brow. “Really?”
“Yes. Put on a pair of my pants and one of my shirts. For now you’ll have to go without shoes and without socks. Give me your cell phone.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Check it for bugs.”
She handed me her bag and as she stripped I dumped the contents on the bed. Her cell was an iPhone 11. I picked it up. “How long have you had this?”
She stood, completely naked, staring at me. “Six months.”
“Who bought it?” She was about to answer but hesitated. “Did you buy it personally at a store or was it bought for you?”
“It was bought for me.”
“By the people you worked for?” Barely perceptibly, she nodded. I swore softly under my breath and switched off the phone. “Get dressed,” I said. “Fast. My clothes. No shoes, no socks. Leave everything behind. Everything!”
“But my makeup, my clothes…”
“Leave it!”
As she dressed I retrieved my knife, gathered up her stuff and put it in her case, then carried it to the Audi outside. I dumped it on the back seat, took a pair of jeans and, using my knife, cut a long, thin strip. I opened the gas tank and fed in the strip. Once it was saturated to over halfway, I pulled it out again and fed it in the other way, so the whole strip was soaked.
I went back to the room and she was sitting in the chair again, staring at me in my clothes. They were very baggy. I noticed her makeup bag on the bed.
“No makeup, no lipstick, nothing.”
She nodded. “I get it.”
I rummaged through the bodies’ pockets and, to my surprise, found IDs and car keys. I put the IDs with Diana’s phone in my pocket.
The guy I’d shot in the elbow, Pete, was beginning to moan. Diana frowned at me. “You didn’t kill him?”
I ignored her and went to the bathroom, where I filled both tooth mugs with water. The first I threw in his face and, as he came round, blinking and spluttering, I propped him up and gave him the second to drink. When he’d finished the glass he stared up into my face.
“Bob, DJ…”
“The colleagues on your team are all dead, Pete.”
He frowned for a moment, then tears spilled from his eyes. All he said was, “God damn…”
“I didn’t kill you, Pete.”
He searched my face with wet eyes. “You?”
I nodded. “I was waiting for you.”
“How…?”
“That’s not important now. What is important is what happens to you next. If they get to you in time they can save your arm. Right now your wound is not life-threatening. You can still have a full life. You married, Pete?” The pleading in his eyes told me he was married. I said, “Kids?”
His mouth had gone dry again and he spoke with a thick tongue. “If there is any way… If there is some arrangement…”
I nodded and smiled like I was a bank manager granting a loan. “There is. I know who you work for, Pete. You were careless. You thought the target would be a woman alone. You thought you’d cruise over the border, track the phone and neutralize the target. You should have allowed for the possibility that she’d have employed a bodyguard.”
“But who are you?”
“You really don’t want me to tell you, do you?”
He shook his head. “No…”
“So now I need you to tell me two things: Why is the Firm hunting this target, and why does the Firm want her dead?”
His breathing was becoming shallow and his skin looked waxy. “We received orders. It was another cell, the Clandestine Service, who had identified a target. She was a top priority, which usually means a terrorist or somebody assisting terrorists. We received the orders, we were told it was maximum urgency and to execute without delay. By the time we got to the location she had moved. So we tracked her phone here and no way were we expecting to be met.” His eyes swiveled over my shoulder a couple of times. “I really need a doctor. Are we done?”
“Almost, but not quite. I have two more questions. First, where did the request come from?”
“A cell that has been operating in southern Europe for the last year.”
“Head of the cell?”
“I honestly have no idea.”
“OK, one last thing. Four guys for one small woman. This was more than just an execution. What else were you supposed to do?”
“We had to search…” His eyes went over my shoulder again. I saw the fear in his eyes and turned too late. The Glock exploded two feet from my head, shattering my eardrums and making me fall back and to the side against the wall. I shouted and clenched my hands to my ears. In the ringing, singing world, Pete lay with a neat hole in his forehead and the back of his head blown off. I heard myself shout aga
in, far off, and looked up at Diana standing staring at me, with a semiautomatic held in both hands. There was still no expression on her face, but deep in her eyes I could see defiance and amusement, and a glint that said, Fuck you!
Five
I scrambled to my feet, levered the gun out of her hand and backhanded her across the face so she staggered and fell onto the bed.
I shouted, “What the hell is wrong with you?” but it sounded like somebody else shouting inside a giant Tupperware box. Diana’s face was crimson where she lay on the bed, and her eyes were bright with tears of rage. She shouted something but I couldn’t make it out. Then realized I had my hands clamped over my ears. A wave of nausea washed over me. I took away my left hand and heard a high-pitched ringing. But I also heard Diana screaming at me:
“I told you! I told you! No information until we get to DC! What part of no fucking information do you not understand?”
She kept the bed between us because she could see from my face that she was qualifying for a second backhander. I never hit women, on principle. But right then I did not see her as a woman. She was some kind of diabolical manifestation.
She heaved my bag onto the bed and pulled out the bottle of the Macallan. She poured a measure into a glass and handed it to me across the bed. I scowled at her for a good five seconds before I took the drink and downed it.
Doctors around the world will tell you that alcohol is the last thing you need when you are in shock. Those same doctors will tell you that if a 9mm Glock has just gone off two feet from your right ear, whisky won’t help. And that’s why I never go to the doctor, because half the time they don’t know what they’re saying and the other half they don’t know what they’re talking about.
After a second slug my heart had slowed and there was a gentle numbness to my ears. The high-pitched ringing was still there, and I still had the feeling somebody else was saying my words inside a muffled box, but I could just about ignore it. I grabbed Diana, took her to the Range Rover and bundled her in the back. Then I drove to the gas station at the bottom of the road. Diana didn’t speak. She just watched me in silence.
I was having trouble judging distance, and I still felt nauseous, but I managed to park at a pump, filled up the tank and also filled two five-gallon jerry cans that I keep in the trunk. While I was paying I bought a packet of Camels and a disposable lighter. Then I drove back to Frontage Road, a few yards from the Audi. I got out, crossed to the car with the two cans and doused Diana’s things on the back seat and left one canister on its side, gently spilling gas, with the door partly open. I spilt most of the other on the front seat and then made a trail to Frontage Road, put the sealed can back in the trunk and lit a butt. I took a drag for old times’ sake and dropped it on the trail of gasoline.
As I accelerated away to join the highway, in my rearview mirror I watched the trail of leaping blue flame reach the car. It reached up, danced, found the soaked back seat and the cabin full of fumes, and then there was the brilliant flash as they caught and another as the flames found their way into the Audi’s own gas tank.
Diana had turned in her seat and I saw the light of the fire dancing on her face and reflected in her eyes. Just for a moment there, she looked alive.
It was four AM by the time we arrived at Brandon. It wasn’t the first time I had been there. I had passed through a couple of times and knew the places to go, and the places to avoid. This time I was looking for the places to avoid.
I turned North onto 18th Street and in at the Canada Inns parking lot. It was practically empty at that time of the morning and I found a spot opposite the Hell’s Kitchen, where I had had coffee just a few hours earlier. I killed the lights and sat thinking. From previous experience I knew the place would probably be open “behind closed doors,” because one AM to six AM was when they really made their money, selling weed, hash and coke.
The Firm had been tracking Diana’s phone, which meant they either had her number or they had bugged it somehow. There was a fifty-fifty chance that on turning the phone off they’d no longer be able to track it. That meant there was a fifty-fifty chance they could, and I needed to lose the phone as soon as possible. The trouble with that was that it was, potentially, too valuable to destroy. Because neither the brigadier nor Diana would tell me a damned thing about what I was dealing with. So I had to assume that the cell phone contained vital information.
Given that I could not destroy it, and working on the principle of preparing for the worst, I needed to lose the phone that morning, and then disappear. And for anyone who has ever had to disappear, that means, first and foremost, acquiring untraceable cash. In the Hive World, credit and debit cards, and cell phone payments, leave a clear, distinct path that shows exactly where you have been and what you have done.
And then I needed to lose the Range Rover.
Right now, Diana was asleep in the back. She was going to be a pain in the ass and a liability every step of the way. But on the way into the lot I had seen a Ford F-250 that looked about twenty years old. I climbed out of the Rover and crossed the lot to where it was sitting. Peering through the window, I didn’t see an alarm light winking. I took my Swiss Army knife, opened the screwdriver and punched it into the lock. The alarm went off.
That was not necessarily a problem. Most people—even Canadians—ignore car alarms, especially if they stop soon after they start. I twisted, opened the door, reached under the dash and disabled the alarm. I waited five minutes. Nothing happened. So I climbed in, rammed the knife into the ignition, twisted and started the engine.
It needed gas, it had just a quarter of a tank, but other than that the truck seemed to be fine. I left the lights off, rolled up to the Range Rover and parked on the far side. After that I took my Swiss Army knife and removed the plates. A brief walk around the lot found me another truck of a similar age. It took me ten minutes to switch the plates and another five to put the new plates on the Ford. I checked through the window of the Range Rover. Diana was still asleep.
I shifted my bag to the Ford and shook Diana awake. She didn’t blink or ask, “Where am I?” She just looked at me with that same, expressionless face and said, “What?”
“Come, we’re changing vehicles.”
She followed without arguing, but muttered, “My stuff…”
“We’ll get you more. Lie down in the back and go to sleep.”
I didn’t bother removing fingerprints. The car was registered to me and minimal inquiry would show it was mine. Instead I left the door open and the key in the car. Human nature and logic dictated that within a few hours the car would be full of prints other than mine. I’d report it stolen when I got back.
I put it in drive, pulled out of the lot and crossed the empty, silent highway to the mall on the other side. The signs were illuminated in red and blue and white, but all the buildings were dark and silent, aside from one. The Hell’s Kitchen bar had its door open and light was spilling out onto the asphalt lot outside. There were eight or ten bikes parked outside. I could make out the soft pulse of music and there were people, guys and girls in denim and leathers standing about outside drinking, smoking and talking. I didn’t see many face masks.
From the back seat I heard Diana’s voice, sullen and sleepy.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to save your ass,” I said absently. “Get out, we’re going to have a beer.” But even as I went for the door handle I saw what I had come for and said: “No, don’t move.”
A guy had stepped out of the bar onto the wooden porch. He had a blue bandana on his head, a goatee, a black T-shirt with the AC/DC logo on it and a black leather jacket. The guy’s name was Wolf. He was one of the main suppliers of hash, weed, heroin and cocaine in Brandon. I had established that much on my way to collect Diana. Go to the right bar, keep your mouth shut and your ears open, and you can pick up the essential, need-to-know information about who moves what, and who makes the most cash.
He stood talking to a small grou
p of bikers, then went down the steps lighting a cigarette. He climbed on a Harley, kicked the starter and rolled out of the lot and turned left onto 18th Street. I gave him thirty seconds and went out after him. There was no traffic, and he would have had a clear view of me in his mirror. So I slowed and allowed him to pull ahead.
After half a mile he turned left into McTavish Avenue. By the time I turned in and passed the school, he was just a small, red light disappearing into the darkness. I accelerated and closed the gap in time to see him turn right into 24th Street, where he slowed and pulled into the front yard of the last house on the row. I rolled past and parked in the dirt lot next to the house. I looked over my shoulder at Diana.
“Don’t move. Stay out of sight. This won’t take long.”
I got out, locked Diana in the truck and walked around the wooden fence onto the biker’s lawn. His house was plain cream, with a gabled roof and five granite steps up to the front door. A window on the right showed no light. The one on the left showed traces of light from behind the drapes. I figured it was the kitchen.
I pulled the Maxim from my belt and climbed the steps.
I saw the drapes move on the window and a voice shouted, “Yeah! Who is it?”
I pushed open the letterbox and spoke through it.
“My lady needs some help, man. Barman at the Kitchen said you was the guy to see. She’s in a bad way. I don’t want her to die.”
There was a long silence. Then heavy boots on the wooden floor. The door opened an inch on the chain and a pale blue eye peered out at me. A voice like gravel in a grinder snarled.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I need a fix for my lady, man.”
I tried to look anxious, like I was pissing my pants. “My name’s Dean. She’s in a real bad way. I think she’s gonna die. C’mon, dude. I can pay. I got money.”