Judgement and Wrath

by Matt Hilton

  He lifted the H&K.

  Pointed at me.

  He fired but I was already on the move. The problem was I had to dodge away, so could no longer rush at Dantalion.

  Seagram didn’t see me. Not as Joe Hunter. He was looking into a gulf into which he was about to fall on a one-way trip. The human body is miraculous. It can take horrendous wounds and survive and learn to function in new ways. Pity our minds aren’t as resilient. Seagram was gone from inside his own head, and whether it was terror or hatred or sheer instinct to come out shooting, that was all he was capable of. He pulled the trigger again and again.

  I was loath to shoot the man, but I wasn’t about to take a blind shot. I lifted my SIG and squared it on his forehead. I paused for a fraction of a second, then watched as a tiny rosebud blossomed in the centre of his face while the back of his head exploded in a welter of blood, skull and brain matter.

  Dantalion had his arm extended over Bradley’s shoulder, and there was smoke coming from the barrel of the Glock.

  Then he was swinging it towards me, and I had no option but to look for cover. I got to the front of the station wagon and hoped that the engine block would be enough to save me.

  In the few seconds I’d kept my head down, Dantalion had moved backwards and I saw then what he was aiming for. The silver Lincoln was the only car in a driveable condition. He opened the driver’s door and shoved Bradley inside, encouraging him to move faster with slaps to the face. Bradley scooted over into the passenger seat and then Dantalion was starting the car. He must have taken the car keys from Seagram.

  I rose up from my crouch.

  I could fire, but I was afraid that I’d hit Bradley.

  So I had no recourse but to watch the Lincoln screeching away up the road.

  ‘Knowles? Knowles!’ Kaufman came over the wall like an Olympic hurdler. He lunged forwards to pick up his service revolver and raced towards the house. I took a last look at the Lincoln powering towards the exit drive, then at my Audi and the station wagon. Both had deflated tyres. No way was I going to catch Dantalion now.

  I followed Kaufman inside. The trail of blood led us into the kitchen and what I saw broke my heart. A man was on his back, eyes fixed in a cataract stare. The agent – Knowles – that Kaufman had been concerned about. Bad enough that this man had died, but he was a professional and death was sometimes a downside of the job. What made my heart shrivel was the elderly lady lying across her table. Her mouth was crooked in an eternal bow. She had been no threat to anyone. Dantalion had done it from a thirst for blood.

  Earlier, I’d told Walter that it wasn’t personal. Well, I was wrong. When Dantalion killed that old lady he’d ensured that I wouldn’t give up until I tore the last breath from his throat.

  Kaufman was gingerly probing through the dead agent’s clothing. Looking for his cell phone to call for back-up, no doubt. I took out my own phone and called all the back-up I required.

  ‘Rink.’

  ‘I’m here, Hunter.’

  ‘Change of plan, buddy.’

  I told him what had gone down and he swore. I stood by the window, staring out across the lawn towards the bright sea. A dark silhouette hunkered on the lawn.

  When I was done giving my instructions to Rink, I looked back at Kaufman. He was still yelling animatedly into Knowles’s phone.

  ‘Kaufman,’ I said loudly.

  It was as if he’d forgotten I was there.

  My finger pointed out the window.

  ‘Can you fly that thing?’

  37

  Jean-Paul St Pierre – despite what everyone said – wasn’t a sickly child. His vitiligo condition was purely external, and though it earned him cruel taunts from other children, even the occasional beating, it had never affected his physical boundaries. So long as he was careful under the Louisiana sun and took his medication at the dosage prescribed he could live a normal life. His mother loved him dearly, cherished him. Her little angel boy. She gave him all the kindness and support he needed. And he loved his mother in return.

  He never knew his father. In a drunken stupor he’d been flattened under the wheels of an express train when his alcohol-addled brain told him he had right of way at a rail crossing. It wasn’t much of a loss. He’d got on fine without him.

  He blamed his father for his condition. It was his father’s seed that had cursed him. But his father’s curse was also responsible for making him the man that he would become.

  He wasn’t a sickly child. No.

  He was strong and resilient and he looked after his mother as a good son should. When it came time to grant his mother her greatest wish he’d had the fortitude to do so, willingly and without an ounce of selfishness or self-pity. She had longed for it, asked for it, begged her uncaring god for it. So he couldn’t understand why he’d been taken away and placed under guard at Juvenile Hall. They called him a monster. They did not understand him. He’d only been doing what his mother had begged for whenever he’d found her crying. His mother had been sad since the day of his father’s death, and Jean-Paul had only wished to make her happy. He was even mindful to cause her as little pain as possible when he shot her in the back of her head with his grandpapa’s old ’coon rifle.

  Sociopathic, his doctors had called him. Psychopathic. Others called him worse names. More personal and hurtful. But he wasn’t any of those things. He wasn’t sick. Physically or mentally. Couldn’t understand why they’d kept him locked away for eight years.

  ‘I know the pussy name you hide behind,’ Joe Hunter had said to him. ‘What is it with all you deadbeats, huh? Why the stupid name? All you sick-in-the-head motherfuckers do that.’

  He had smiled at the inanity of it. He’d been hearing similar accusations all his life. They had been his bread and butter. They sustained him, nourished him, made him even more determined to show his doubters just how much further up the evolutionary ladder he was than they. They could not understand his singular take on reality, because they were blind. No one seemed to see it but him.

  He had shown Hunter.

  He was better than Hunter.

  Primarily because he did not share Hunter’s base weaknesses.

  Where he would not have faltered in shooting through another person’s head to kill his enemy, Hunter had paused. That was the difference between them, what made him better at killing than Hunter would ever be. Hunter was trained. His military masters had ingrained in him the technicalities of killing, but they had never fully eradicated that human foible: the reluctance to murder in cold blood another human being. Empathy and guilt are stronger than the finger that pulls the trigger.

  That was why his doctors had proclaimed Jean-Paul a sociopath. No empathy. No guilt, they said. Just like his father, he supposed.

  Hunter on the other hand did have empathy. He had it in bucket-loads.

  Dantalion could use Hunter’s weakness to bring all his targets to him. And he would kill them all. He would leave Hunter until last, so that his guilt was magnified tenfold. And, he thought, looking sideways at his hostage, he would start with Bradley Jorgenson.

  His escape from the island was easier than he’d thought possible. When Hunter and the FBI agent had turned up, things had looked like they were stacking against him. Only the fortuitous arrival of Seagram stumbling around like something from a zombie movie had allowed him to get away. The bullet he’d fired through Seagram’s head had diverted Hunter long enough for him to make it to the Lincoln. Then the Lincoln had given him the speed and power to ram his way out of the metal gates. They were designed to keep intruders out, not in. The cop who’d tried to halt him by standing in the way and pointing his gun should actually have fired the thing, although his skull had starred the windscreen as his body was catapulted over the hood and on to the roof of the sedan.

  Now he was ten miles north, travelling at high speed, slaloming in and out of traffic heading up the coast towards Jupiter. He was enjoying the freedom that the huge town car demanded from the other ro
ad users. A Dixie Highway turnpike was somewhere ahead, he recalled. He had to get off the coast on to the main route, then find a way across country. The FBI agent would set all available manpower on his trail. Roadblocks would be in place somewhere ahead of him, and a convoy of blue lights and sirens rushing in his wake. There was no sign of it yet, but the pursuit would definitely come.

  Within half a minute he found the turnpike. Cars were backed up on the off ramp. He just went round them, forcing the car along the shoulder and leaving several vehicles minus their wing mirrors behind him. He swung into cross traffic and cars swerved and braked, and a refrigerated truck jack-knifed into oncoming traffic, effectively closing the road behind him. Dantalion watched the carnage in his mirrors, wondering what tally he should add to his book from the pile-up that ensued.

  He sped up the highway, found a second exit on his left and blasted his way through the meridian across the path of more traffic at over sixty miles an hour. He almost lost control of the vehicle, but steered into the slide of the rear tyres, righted the sedan and took off at speed. The road went under another highway, swung north and then west, then he was rocketing along a single-lane blacktop, headed out into the swampy lands of the Floridian interior.

  The road hadn’t been designed for speed. It was ridged at its centre and there were more bumps and potholes than there were smooth patches. He could afford to slow down now that he’d lost any possible pursuers. He looked over at Bradley Jorgenson. The young man was oblivious of all that had occurred since Dantalion had jabbed him with the needle.

  Dantalion backhanded him across the face.

  ‘Wake up, Brad, you aren’t going to be any help with your head in the clouds.’

  Bradley’s eyes opened but there was no recognition in their depths. He was mindless of the blood trickling from his nose and into the corner of his mouth.

  Sodium amatol is sometimes inaccurately referred to as a truth serum. Movies show those who are drugged answering probing questions in a dull monotone, unable to deny their interrogators. Dantalion knew that was ridiculous. The drug did reduce a person’s resistance to suggestion and had the effect of lowering their inhibitions, but it would never cause someone to give up their most closely guarded secrets. At a higher dosage it was no different than any other anaesthetic: it put you to sleep. Dantalion wanted answers, but he had other ways of forcing them from the man. He wanted Bradley awake and able to recognise the dilemma he was in.

  He slapped him again.

  Bradley muttered, turned his face away and promptly fell back to sleep.

  Bradley would have to be woken by pain. Maybe the amputation of his extremities followed by a meal to remember.

  On either side of the road scrubland was interspersed between the occasional irrigated fields. Tributaries of a swamp lying to the north were like the twisted fingers of an arthritic crone. Mangrove grew in dense clumps on hillocks standing above the streams. Birds broke from cover, startled by the passage of the Lincoln. Not the most densely populated area, but less wild than the swamps along the flooded banks of the Mississippi.

  Bradley stirred beside him.

  ‘Back with us?’

  ‘Mmmmff!’

  ‘Not yet, huh?’

  Up ahead was a crossroads, giving him three choices. South, north, or continue heading west. Dantalion was all for choices, but occasionally you just had to throw the dice and go along with fate. He sped through the junction, the tyres kicking up gravel. The road ahead was as straight as an arrow’s flight. Grass tall enough to conceal an elephant grew at both sides of the road, the upper reaches hanging over to create a natural tunnel.

  The grass tunnel went on for the best part of a mile. Claustrophobia wormed at the base of his stomach, making him nauseous and out of breath. He was relieved when the Lincoln emerged into open space once more. A lake came into view on his right-hand side. Thousands of birds, myriad species he could not name, made the lake their home. Something splashed beneath the surface and moved away through the lake, leaving a wide wake on the surface.

  There were trees ahead, then another one of those damn grass tunnels. Dantalion slowed the vehicle down and brought it to a halt. He’d seen something to his liking across the marshy field on his left. A collection of large red cubes surrounded by metal masts that glinted gold in the sunlight. Huge pylons made a forest of steel in the background. Power cables streaked away into the distant haze, and also towards him and over the Lincoln and across the lake. He could see another pylon on the far bank, standing tall above the slowly undulating marsh grass.

  Dantalion nodded to himself, pushed the vehicle into drive and headed for the next grass tunnel. He had barely entered the green twilight when he nosed the Lincoln off the road and down the slight incline to the field of tall grasses. A flimsy wire fence was crushed under the tyres as he pushed the sedan into the grass’s embrace. He didn’t get far, feeling the car settling down almost immediately in the boggy earth. But he made it far enough into the tall grass so that the car wouldn’t be immediately evident to anyone passing along the road. To make sure, he clambered out, wading through twisted stalks towards the road. His feet sank into the loam and were snagged by the tough grass, but he made it back to where he’d pushed over the fence. He righted the fence, even though it sagged from the nearby posts. Then he grabbed armfuls of grass and stood them upright against the wire. It wouldn’t fool a determined tracker, but was good enough.

  When he got back to the car, Bradley was gone.

  38

  Back in the day, I’d frequently been a passenger on various helicopters: primarily Sea Kings and Chinooks, AH-6 Defenders and Huey Cobras. On those occasions I’d been on missions, usually in hot zones where I’d rappel from the guts of the choppers alongside Rink and the rest of my team on reconnaissance or seek and destroy. I’d never been in a Jet Ranger before, and this helicopter was the equivalent of a sleek limousine next to some of the cramped flying buses I’d experienced.

  The FBI chopper was a five-seater, two up front and three in the back. When we’d clambered inside, with Kaufman reaching for the controls, we’d discovered the pilot dead across the back seats. His undressed state explained where Dantalion had got his disguise from. I couldn’t find any obvious injury on the man’s body, but located a small puncture wound in his neck.

  Kaufman had once been familiar with helicopters, but – like his on-the-street days – it had been some time ago.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he told me. ‘It’s like riding a bicycle – you never forget.’

  ‘Don’t mind falling off a bike,’ I replied as I settled into the passenger position next to him, ‘only not from hundreds of feet in the air.’

  Kaufman laughed.

  Then he was flicking buttons and pulling levers and I heard a whine that grew rapidly to a shriek. Over our heads, the rotors began to turn lazily, scything the air as though cutting through molasses. Then the engine noise changed and the rotors became a blur before our eyes, then they were above us and we were lifting off the floor. I experienced a moment of weightlessness before I felt my stomach press down into my pelvis, and we were going straight up.

  Kaufman banked to the right, and the world tilted on its axis. The sea was a blue wall over his shoulder, while the Florida sky stretched away into the hazy west over mine. Then we banked left and the view was reversed. Next moment we were past the house and the bird righted itself and we were streaking towards the highway about fifty feet up in the air.

  ‘See, I told you. Piece of cake,’ Kaufman crowed.

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  We flew past the village, then used the exit drive as a locator for the gate. Before we even got there I knew which way Dantalion had taken Bradley. The traffic was backed up on both sides of the highway, but I could see a broad smear of blood where some hapless cop had been hit by the fleeing car. People were crowding round the dead officer. The TV crews encamped on the layover opposite the gate were charging across the road poi
nting their cameras at the victim. He’d been dragged about ten yards along the carriageway to our right.

  ‘North,’ I told Kaufman.

  He was already turning the Jet Ranger in pursuit of the Lincoln. The nose of the chopper dipped, and then we were scooting along at top speed in pursuit of Dantalion. He had a good lead on us, but not for long.

  When first we’d boarded the chopper, Kaufman had grabbed the co-pilot headphones. It left me without ear protection, and the sound was terrific. But I was fine; my head was ringing loudly with a jumble of chaotic thoughts anyway. Rather than recording Bradley’s testimony on paper, the dead FBI agent, Leighton Knowles, had been conducting a taped interview with Bradley Jorgenson. When Dantalion had burst in on them, the recorder bore witness to the murders. Dantalion had neglected to turn off the recording device. Probably deliberately, as he’d spoken directly into it and said, ‘The thunders of judgement and wrath are numbered. As are you, Bradley. Pretty Marianne Dean as well. All numbered. The same goes for your turncoat bodyguard. Hunter and Rink too. Do you hear me? Come to me, bring Marianne. Let’s get this over with.’

  When I’d first heard the recording I’d been taken aback. Dantalion had called me by name earlier, but I didn’t at first understand how he could have known either my or Rink’s name. It didn’t take too long to draw conclusions. Your turncoat bodyguard, Dantalion had said. Seagram had obviously been involved with the plot to kill Bradley and Marianne. It explained why he had been at Petre’s house when Dantalion had gone off on his initial killing spree. I’d known the man couldn’t be trusted, that I should have had him cut loose the first time I saw him. It was apparent then that he was bitter about us usurping his status in the Jorgenson household. Worst, I’d missed taking Dantalion down because of his arrival, and maybe he hadn’t been so blinded by impending death when he’d started shooting at me. The only thing I regretted now was that it was Dantalion and not me who’d put a bullet through the asshole’s head.