by Zoe Sharp
The report was a painful crack that exploded in my tender ears, so I didn’t immediately register the two shots Gardner fired in return.
But I heard him grunt as both rounds took him in the torso, heard the dull thump of the gun landing in the dirt next to me. I fumbled at the shadowed ground, snatching the weapon up, but knew at once I didn’t need to use it.
Gardner stumbled forwards, eyes made wide and wild by the fire, found me bending over the fallen figure.
‘Did I…?’
‘Near enough,’ I said curtly, feeling my way along his body. He was vibrating with fear and pain and the rapid onset of shock. The whole of his chest was greasy with blood, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
Gardner dragged out a pen flashlight and clicked it on, cupping her hand around the bulb to keep it shielded. She panned across his body, faltering as the beam caught the shine of the blood, the rattle and the shake, and settled on his face. As soon as I saw it, I knew him. I think I probably knew him before then anyway.
Tony. Dexter’s comrade from Debacle. What he hoped to gain from this, I had no idea. Gardner’s flashlight beam clipped the edge of the weapon he’d used to clobber me and I saw it was an M16 with the M203 grenade launcher slung under the barrel. Twentieth-century weapon transformed into Neanderthal-era club in the blink of an eye.
The M203’s 40 mm projectile had an effective range of a hundred and fifty metres and a muzzle velocity of only around seventy-five metres a second. A fraction of the speed that a 5.56 mm round would have left the assault rifle the launcher was attached to. The same guns and the same launchers I’d seen stacked in boxes in the subterranean storerooms. The guns the fake-faithful Yancy was supposed to have destroyed.
‘Why?’ I asked.
Tony bared bloodied teeth. ‘The money,’ he gasped. ‘Why else?’
Noises off made Gardner and I both start, eyes raking the surrounding gloom. ‘They’re coming,’ I said, rising. ‘We have to go.’
‘But, we can’t just leave him,’ she protested.
‘They’ll take care of him,’ I said, mentally crossing my fingers as my mind put several connotations on the words. ‘Even if we could get him back to the compound without killing him, we can’t treat him there. Leave him. Now!’
And without a backward glance at the men from the two wrecked Suburbans, now advancing on our position, we ran.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
‘They’ll come for us in the dark,’ I said, snapping the magazine out of another M16 and laying it flat on the desktop. ‘In the early hours, before the sky starts to lighten, with the Bradleys up front, most likely. They’ll put down smoke for extra cover. If we’re lucky we might smell it in advance. And they’ll come soon. If not tonight, then tomorrow at the latest.’
Bane threw me a speculative glance, raised an eyebrow in Gardner’s direction as if asking for confirmation. She was loading dismantled stocks and barrels into storage boxes to be distributed around the compound, as far apart as we could place them to try and prove Bane’s non-violent intent.
We were in the little classroom where I’d found Nu’s planted fuse and the report of the oil refinery visit that had created the timetable for this tragedy of errors. There was no significance to the location – it was just a convenient place to work on the weapons.
Outside, in the background, I could hear the steady chug of the diesel generators that were providing power. The next thing Epps had done, after cutting the phones, was to cut the mains power.
‘They’ll wait,’ she said, but I heard the edge in her voice, as though she was trying to force confidence into it. ‘Try to starve us out first – break our nerve.’
‘After what Tony did?’ I shook my head. ‘No, they’re going to want to take us down quickly.’
We’d watched Epps’s men cluster round the spot where Tony had fallen, but if their lack of urgency was any indication, either he was already dead, or they’d decided that he should be. It was a cold foretaste, I considered, of what might be to come.
I glanced at Bane. ‘Sean’s with them. He knows, the more chance he gives us to dig in, the worse it will be for them.’
Bane fixed me with a long stare that slipped between the cracks of my armour like rain. ‘You mean, the more chance he gives you to prepare,’ he said, and it wasn’t a question.
I shrugged, picked up the next weapon and worked the action. The sharp, mechanical slither of the M16’s internal scales was ugly as blasphemy amid the jaunty alphabet frieze and childish writing on the blackboard.
‘He knows you,’ Bane said.
I set to work, practised enough now that I didn’t have to watch my hands. ‘Not as well as he thinks he does,’ I said. Or we won’t survive this night.
‘And you know him.’
I looked up then, caught both the stillness in him, and the pace. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I know him at all.’
***
By the time Gardner and I had reached the main entrance, sweating and breathless, the fire from the two vehicles was a fierce bright light in the near distance. Half of Fourth Day seemed to be outside waiting for us, including Bane, with Dexter alongside him.
‘What the hell did you do, kiddo?’ Dexter demanded. I looked down, saw I still had Tony’s gun, a Ruger P89 semi-automatic, clutched tightly in my bloodied fist.
Taking it from the scene was a grave mistake, I acknowledged. When Epps’s people searched his body, there was nothing to show he’d been armed with anything other than the RPG, and yet he’d been taken down in a clinical way that suggested execution rather than self-defence.
Ah well, too late for regrets now.
‘Not us.’ Gardner shook her head, bent over, one hand braced on her knee while she caught her wind. ‘Your pal, Tony.’
‘What?’ Dexter backed a step, and for a moment I thought it was guilt rather than denial that caused his instinctive retreat. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Oh, no.’
‘Oh, yes,’ I muttered, indicating the conflagration. ‘He blew the vehicles Epps sent in.’ Bane’s face was shocked. ‘Used an M203 grenade launcher. Yancy obviously didn’t quite follow your instructions regarding their disposal.’
‘How do you know it was Tony?’ Dexter said, voice rough. ‘It couldn’t be. I’ve known him for… Why, for God’s sake?’
‘We saw him, Dexter,’ Gardner said flatly.
‘Well, where is he? I want to see the sonofabitch. I want—’ And then his eyes flickered to my hands again and an awful understanding came over him. Ann put a hand on Dexter’s shoulder, but he twisted out from under it, shouldered past us and ran.
I thought he meant to go to his friend, but when Gardner and I charged after him, he was heading in the direction of the underground storerooms where Yancy had been safely locked away.
By the time we caught up with him, Dexter had the door to Yancy’s cell flung open and was inside, staring down at the ex-Marine as he sat, apparently unconcerned, on the hard mattress.
‘Tell me why, you bastard!’ Dexter yelled, breathing hard through his nose, jaw thrust forwards.
Gardner grabbed Dexter’s shoulders and, when he would have resisted, casually twisted one arm into a standard lock behind his back.
‘OK, Tyrone,’ I said, aware of people crowding in behind us, of more in the corridor outside, ‘how many more are there?’
He eyed us all with something akin to slow amusement on his face. ‘I already said way too much.’
I glared at him. ‘Tony just fired a forty-mil grenade at Epps’s guys on their way in.’
Yancy’s gaze drifted over the blood drying on my hands. ‘I’m guessing that didn’t go well for him.’
‘Bane was going to give himself up,’ I said with a burst of useless anger. ‘As it is, Epps’s guys will be coming in here with all guns blazing. You think you’re likely to survive if they do?’
‘Say I do.’ He shrugged. ‘Where’s that gonna get me? Next twenty years in San Quentin, waiting for a needle in my
arm.’
Dexter stopped struggling and Gardner released him. He flicked her a poisonous glance as he pointedly stepped away from her. ‘I thought Tony was my friend,’ he said in a pathetic little voice. ‘What the fuck happened?’
Yancy threw him a look of contempt, but said, ‘The kid was broke and desperate. Same old story. He sees you rich kids playing at being eco-warriors, and still drawing on your monthly allowance from mommy and daddy. Playing at it. And he wants his share.’
‘And in return, he tries to take out two armoured Suburbans with a short-range grenade launcher – on the move, in the dark?’ I queried. ‘Come off it, Yancy. He was an amateur and he missed. That should have been your job.’
Yancy shook his head, gave a low chuckle. ‘You ain’t worked it out yet, have you?’ he asked. ‘Tony? He’s been on the payroll for a long time. Making sure nobody say nothing about no oil shale find in California. You get me?’
And suddenly I did get him. A final piece of the puzzle, one that had shown no signs of fitting, suddenly rotated and fell into place.
‘It was Tony who was in Alaska, wasn’t it?’ I said slowly. ‘Tell me, did he kill Liam himself, or just deliberately compromise him?’
Yancy grinned, deep-cut lines appearing around his eyes as they crinkled. ‘You got it,’ he said. ‘Takes you a while, but you get there in the end.’
Now, close to midnight, I walked through the hastily barricaded rooms of the main building, shoulder to shoulder with Randall Bane, the man I’d once been sent to betray. We stayed away from the windows, knowing who was out there in the darkness, watching.
Bane walked slowly among his people, radiating calm, touching a shoulder here and there, and I watched something of the fear go out of them, as if beneath a blessing. The glances they stole in my direction were darker, but if they felt I should have been thrown to the wolves by way of sacrifice, they held their tongues. Bane had spoken for me, and for most of them that was enough. And without Yancy, without Nu, they knew they needed me. What I stood for. What I was.
We’d collected everybody into the very centre of the main structure, reinforcing the walls with sandbags, hastily concocted using earth shovelled up from under the floorboards, into pillowcases and backpacks and sports bags. Anything that would hold it.
It wouldn’t be enough to stop the kind of rounds our attackers would be using, of course, but it was better than nothing. Better than doing nothing, too.
Dotted at points around the room were fire buckets and piles of sopping blankets against smoke or gas, and bottled water.
It was a surreal situation. The thing that brought it home, even though it was my own suggestion, was that each person had their blood group written in large clear letters on the skin of their forearm, in indelible marker.
The children sat in a huddled group in the centre of the room, where the illusion of safety was strongest. The older ones had been organised as runners. There weren’t enough medical kits to go around, so we’d located them at several centralised points to be distributed according to need. The children would carry them, like powder monkeys on a Napoleonic man-o’-war. I hoped they would make less tempting targets for the SWAT team.
Now, Bane approached and crouched to their level, murmuring reassurances. They watched him with frightened eyes in pinched faces, innocently accusing. I ignored the way my heart contracted, shrivelling in my chest at what I’d helped contrive they be a part of.
Maria was there, cradling Billy in her arms. She’d taken no chances with her son’s blood group, writing it on both arms and across his neck. Universal donors, I knew, could only receive blood from a like source. Would Epps’s people take the trouble to find a match for him, if it came to it?
I turned away. ‘You should have got them out while we had the chance,’ I murmured.
Bane glanced at me, and his gaze was heavy. ‘I doubt they would have agreed to go,’ he said.
‘They shouldn’t have been given the choice.’
‘But it’s all about choice, Charlie,’ he said gently, and his eyes lingered on the little girl holding Billy’s hand – she of the seahorse knickers. I vaguely recalled her name was Maisie. She had AB+ scrawled along her arm in jerky lettering and I wondered if Bane knew that, with that type, her chances of survival were markedly better than his grandson’s. ‘We didn’t start this.’
‘And you won’t finish it, either,’ I said, brutal, watching their tightly intertwined fingers. ‘How does that square with your ideals and your choices?’
He didn’t answer. We passed on, out of the flickering, diesel-generated light and into a dimmer passageway. I put my hand on his arm.
‘You’ve got to get to Epps, face to face,’ I said. ‘Convince him what’s really going on, however it’s been made to look.’
‘You think he’ll listen to reason?’
I let my breath out. ‘You think he’ll listen any better if you wait for him to come through the walls with CS gas?’
Bane walked on another few paces, then said, ‘What do you propose?’
‘Epps has set up a mobile command post out on the main road. Gardner and I passed it on the way in.’ I paused, smiled faintly. ‘You’re probably the most persuasive bastard I’ve ever met, Bane. If I can get you to him, can you stop this?’
His mouth quirked slightly but his face was thoughtful rather than surprised, as though he’d known what I was about to say, if not quite the wording. ‘It’s unlikely they will let us simply walk in,’ he pointed out.
‘I’ll deal with that.’ I made a gesture of impatience. ‘Sagar has engineered it so that you won’t get another chance to come quietly. What’s the alternative?’
‘And what if it’s Sean who stands against you?’
My face hardened. ‘I’ll deal with that, too…’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
It was a long time since I’d ridden a quad bike. Astride one now, struggling to follow Bane’s tracks in the dark, I rapidly came to the conclusion that I preferred two wheels over four. The quads, it seemed, combined all the ungainliness of a car, with the vulnerability of a bike.
Just because I’d had a road bike licence for years did not make me a good rider on the rough stuff. Bane, of course, piloted his machine over the loose dirt with a natural agility born of long practice.
I could see him ahead of me now, standing up on the footpegs to absorb the jolts and letting the quad do all the work underneath him as he picked his way around the larger rocks.
The Kawasaki quads were the ones I’d seen the day Maria and I had made our abortive trip out into the wilderness, parked alongside the Jeep. Both Bane and I wore NVGs and kept the headlights switched off. We had taped over the rear brake lights, which made finding our way even more alien in the green-tinted gloom.
Gardner had not been in favour of letting the two of us go alone, but even she couldn’t fault the logic of it. Bane was the one Epps wanted. And if Epps couldn’t come to us, we would have to go to him. Preferably before he C4’d the main door off its hinges and ransacked the place.
‘Keep them safe, Ritz,’ I said as she watched us mount up.
‘Same back at you.’ She leant over and gave me a quick hug, patting my back awkwardly around the rucksack I wore, then drew back with a smile that contained more than its share of bravado. ‘If the worst happens, my stamp collection goes to my niece,’ she added. ‘She always loved the ones of the waterfalls.’
‘It won’t come to that.’ Not if I can help it.
Now, thumping across the uneven surface with a warm breeze blowing grit into our faces, I wondered what I had to bequeath, and to whom I’d choose to leave it. It was a sad reflection on my life, I thought, that nothing immediately sprang to mind.
I had my bikes, of course. The Honda FireBlade, laid up under dust sheets and layers of protective grease in the back of my parents’ garage in rural Cheshire. And the Buell in the underground parking garage beneath the apartment in New York. What else? The majority of the la
st year’s salary stashed away in an investment account, a decent watch, a good pair of boots, a few handguns. Not much to show for nearly twenty-nine years on the planet.
Sean and I shared a travel-light mentality. We didn’t collect mementos of our time together, weren’t big on stuff and clutter. When we had managed to get time to slip away together for a holiday, we’d brought back no souvenirs and taken no happy snaps. I couldn’t remember the last picture of just the two of us together.
And if a good number of people were still alive because of us, in circumstances where they might otherwise have perished, there were possibly an equal number who had died by our collective hand.
Someone once said that people are remembered by the shape they leave in the world. When I looked back at my life so far, all I could see were holes.
We travelled north for perhaps half a mile, slowly enough for tension and effort to bathe me in sweat. Then we turned directly west until we hit the road Gardner and I had initially travelled in on. In the distance, south of us, we could see our objective, the faint neon-lit bar, its car park suddenly a blaze of halogen that reached far into the night sky. We did not make the mistake of heading directly towards it. I remembered the SWAT guys who’d materialised alongside Gardner’s car and knew we wouldn’t get within five hundred metres of Epps before they took us down.
Traffic on the road was sporadic, but we could guess its nature and did not want to risk being seen or challenged by anyone else, either. I was prepared to fight if I had to, but doing so would serve no tactical purpose. In fact, it would actively work against us. It was going to be difficult enough to convince Epps we came in peace, without arriving with yet more blood on our hands.
So, we hung back, beyond the periphery of the headlights until there was a large enough gap, then crossed quickly, keeping the quads nose to tail and plunging rapidly into the scrub on the far side. We struck out west for a distance, until the lights from the road were obscured by the terrain and barely visible, and then headed south, running parallel.