Dead Men's Harvest

by Matt Hilton

  ‘You have one more hour,’ Cain had said. ‘If Telfer isn’t there by then I start cutting.’ The fact that Cain himself wouldn’t be at the rendezvous by then was academic; he wouldn’t allow Conrad the three extra hours he’d pleaded. Those three hours weren’t in order to arrange John Telfer’s arrival but something else.

  Cain knew that the CIA were resourceful enough to have pinpointed his location by now and would be organising some sort of assault on the ship. He had warned the CIA man of what such action would bring. First sign of any kind of military presence, he promised, and he would slaughter his captive. Cain was pragmatic enough to guess that he was a more valuable prize to the CIA man than the life of a nobody from England. The assault would be coming and it was time to move. The location where he’d requested John Telfer to meet him was equally dangerous, but so long as he got his blade into Telfer’s body before the attack began he’d be happy enough. He didn’t fear death, but he did fear dying without taking his nemesis to Hell alongside him. His legend depended upon it. To the world Tubal Cain, the Harvestman, was a hapless fool by the name of Robert Swan who’d died in the Mojave Desert. It was time that the ridiculous lie was rectified and everyone knew the truth. Slaughtering Telfer under the watchful eye of the world would ensure that he would finally earn the credit he was due.

  Before leaving the bridge, he smashed the satellite phone repeatedly against the control panel of the ship’s guidance system, breaking both. Light crackled and pulsed from the starred radar screen. The damage assuaged some of the anger he felt towards Walter Conrad. A stairwell led down through the tower to the lower decks, and he went in search of Baron and the crew members who’d given him their service since their old captain had perished. Down there he hoped that they’d readied the equipment. Captain Grodek had been a filthy-minded wretch, and he’d delighted in filming his own skin flicks that were uploaded directly to the World Wide Web. Well, it wasn’t only human-trafficking pornographers who could use digital technology to spread their message via the click of a mouse. Cain had discovered the room where the girls had been abused, found the cameras and wi-fi compatible laptop computers, and realised that he too could televise his own prime time show.

  He found Baron waiting for his return.

  ‘Everything’s in order?’

  ‘Everything’s in chaos.’

  Baron’s lips pinched, having no idea what he was alluding to. No, there was only one Prince of Chaos here, maybe even in the entire world. It didn’t matter; Baron was still a valuable ally.

  ‘Jennifer Telfer, she’s ready?’ Cain looked past Baron, peering into the room beyond. It was the ship’s galley, the place where the crew had spent their downtime, and was as ugly as anywhere else on the ship. The air was putrid with the stench of old grease, hand-rolled cigarettes and the fumes of strong spirits. Sailors allegedly drank rum, Russians vodka, but it appeared that this crew enjoyed anything as long as it was alcoholic. There was a double row of tables down the centre of the room, chairs parked under them, and at the far end a separate table at a right angle to all the rest. The captain’s table was as grimy as the others. Behind it sat Jennifer Telfer, staring back at him, the whites of her eyes stark in the dim light.

  Baron neglected to answer: what was the need? Instead he anticipated Cain’s next question. ‘The crew are readying the lifeboat, bringing the video equipment you requested and loading it before we take her up. Some of the idiots are grumbling about how you intend paying them once this is over with. They didn’t anticipate abandoning the ship and are afraid that you’re going to renege on the deal first chance you get.’

  ‘Then they’re more astute than I thought,’ Cain smiled. ‘Don’t worry about them. If it takes killing a couple as an example I’ll do that. The others will beg to be allowed on the lifeboat.’

  ‘Why are we even taking them?’

  ‘The currents are notorious around here. Who knows where we’ll end up? If we’re marooned on a desert island I want to make sure we’ve got something to eat.’

  Baron blinked.

  Cain grinned, showing even white teeth. ‘I’m joking, Baron. Jeez, don’t you ever laugh?’

  ‘I’ll laugh when we’re off this damn ship and I know that Joe Hunter’s out of the picture. I owe that bastard. When he killed Hendrickson he cost me a lot of money, not to mention shooting me. He ruined everything I’d built up, and it’s going to be a long time before I can recoup my losses.’

  ‘You’ve picked up the reins of Hendrickson’s organisation, you’ve probably gained a thousand times what you lost.’

  ‘But with Hunter around, how long will I hold on to it?’

  ‘He’s remorseless, I’ll give him that.’ Cain touched the scar tissue in his throat. ‘I owe him, too. But I’d rather kill his brother. You can have Hunter all to yourself, Baron.’

  This was no magnanimous gesture. Cain doubted that Baron was man enough to stop Joe Hunter, but he’d slow him long enough to let Cain finish his own task. Then he would turn his surgical skills on Hunter. Christ but he hoped that both brothers would appear for the final showdown.

  Baron shook his head. ‘Remorseless. Yes, but I’m not afraid he’d hunt me down, Cain. It’s just that I couldn’t concentrate on setting myself up again if I was distracted by him. This way I can finish things once and for all.’

  Cain didn’t think that Baron would ever become an underworld boss. Even if by some miracle he did take Hunter down, Cain wasn’t going to let Baron walk away intact. The Harvestman had coveted something of him since the first time he’d looked on his smooth face and wondered how delicate the lines of the skull beneath were.

  ‘You are both going to die.’

  Cain turned to the source of the voice. Jennifer was staring at him, her expression that of a she-panther protecting its young.

  ‘Be quiet, will ya? You should be afraid of what’s going to happen to you if Hunter does show up.’

  ‘I’ve known fear for years,’ Jennifer said. ‘What makes you think you can terrify me any more than all the others?’

  Cain dipped his hand into his pocket and came out with a small plastic bag. He walked the length of the galley and tossed it on to the captain’s table, then flipped it open and dumped the contents on the pitted surface. Grimy pink lumps scattered across the table, and Jennifer recoiled from the collection of fingers and toes: mementoes from the crewmen who’d refused a new captain. Her shriek of disgust was loud but driven by anger. She swept Cain’s trophies from the table with her forearm and they were distributed in a horrifying pattern on the floor.

  ‘Would you just look at the mess you’ve made,’ Cain said, as if he was scolding a child.

  ‘You are sick!’

  ‘You’ll be sicker,’ Cain said. ‘Pick them up.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I said to pick them up.’

  ‘No. I won’t touch the filthy things!’

  Cain placed both hands on his hips. ‘Hmmm. Then we have a problem.’

  Jennifer didn’t see him move before he’d snapped his left hand around her wrist and dragged her forward. He was already drawing his Bowie knife before self-preservation kicked in and she tried to flinch away. She screamed, understanding what he intended, and tried to wrench Cain’s grip loose, but she might as well have been attempting to rip a tree up by its roots. Cain shook her savagely. ‘Sit still,’ he snapped.

  Baron swayed in the wings as he watched with fascination. Cain glanced over at him. ‘Get over here, Baron, and hold her down while I replenish my stock.’

  Baron took hold of Jennifer’s other arm. Jennifer hollered, tried to fight the men, but all she achieved was a laugh from Cain. He bore down on her arm, crushing it to the tabletop. Then he guided the Bowie to her fingers. Jennifer scrunched her hand in a tight fist, but it was no deterrent to Cain. He jabbed the tip of his knife between the knuckles of her index and ring fingers and instinctively her hand shot open. Cain transferred his grip, holding her hand flat as he positioned th
e cutting edge of his knife over the second joint of her little finger. ‘Are you afraid yet?’

  Jennifer screeched. She bucked and squirmed in their grasp. Both men grinned.

  ‘I see some things do make you happy?’ Cain said and Baron winked back at him.

  ‘You like pain, huh, Baron?’ Cain switched his attention back to the woman. ‘What about you, Jennifer? Do you like pain?’

  Cain grunted as he pressed down on the blade, and Jennifer’s eyes widened in disbelief as the tip of her finger shot away from her trailing a thin ribbon of blood. ‘Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, my God!’

  ‘As good as sex, eh?’ Cain said, retrieving the dismembered joint and stuffing it in the plastic bag. ‘Pity we didn’t have the cameras rolling, we’d have been an instant hit on You Tube!’ Jennifer doubled her efforts to escape, but Cain wouldn’t release her hand. He placed the knife over her second finger. ‘One down, nine to go.’

  ‘Let me go!’ Jennifer went wild, and even made it out of her chair, Cain struggling to control her until he swung the Bowie towards her face. The tip slid into the flesh just below her right eye, and the pain was enough to halt her in her tracks. She stood, her chest heaving, but it wasn’t for fear of being blinded.

  ‘Do anything you want to me,’ she said. Her voice was an octave below menacing. ‘But where’s the bait for your trap then?’

  Cain loosened his grip, nodding at Baron to also let go. Jennifer slumped in the chair, cradling her injured hand. Blood trickled from the stump, pooling in the cup of her palm, but it went unnoticed by both men.

  Her release wasn’t a show of pity. Cain had heard something even over the din in the galley.

  The bland-faced man had heard it too.

  ‘Gunfire.’ Baron grinned, looking like a leering sideshow freak.

  Cain addressed Jennifer. ‘Get up, and no goddamn nonsense this time.’

  Jennifer’s face was an empty plane formed from shock.

  ‘You said that Joe Hunter would come,’ Cain said. ‘It seems you were right, after all. Let’s go up on deck and meet him, shall we?’

  Chapter 41

  We took it easy as we descended into the bowels of the ship. I took point, with Hartlaub moving slowly behind me, watching back the way we’d come. He had his gun in a two-handed grip, pointing it at every shadow. I chose to carry my gun propped against my hip, a preferred method for shooting in confined spaces. At each landing, we opted to continue down. If Jenny was being held, it would be far from prying eyes and ears. The first two decks were mainly given over to work space, and I believed that Cain – or whoever was in charge of the ship – would want his prisoner nearer the crew quarters where she could be kept an eye on.

  ‘Hunter. Over here.’

  Hartlaub was peering through a porthole in a door. His whisper was very low, but his words held enough urgency to send a chill down my spine. I looked through the dirty glass at what lay within. Even in the dimness I could make out the forms of bodies stacked in the otherwise empty room.

  Dear God, no!

  I pulled open the door and stepped inside, fearing the worst. The coppery smell of congealing blood made the air viscous. Now that I was inside, I relaxed. The bodies were all male. There was no need to check to see if any of them had survived, because as well as bullet and knife wounds, they’d had fingers and toes removed and none of them still bled. A man with epaulettes at the shoulders of his once-white shirt had had his throat opened up, but his killer hadn’t stopped there. The shirt had been ripped open and I could see a deep cleft in his chest where a rib had been carved out. That was all the proof I needed that Tubal Cain was up to his old ways.

  Hartlaub muttered under his breath, and I hushed him with an upraised hand. Gesturing him back out of the room, I hurried after him. Outside in the corridor I leaned close to his ear. ‘It’s Cain all right. But at least Jenny isn’t in there. We still have a chance.’

  ‘This Cain’s a real piece of work.’

  ‘He’s a monster.’

  He nodded sharply, swung his head to peer along the corridor. We’d both heard a cacophony of high-pitched screams emanating from further back towards the rear of the ship. Hartlaub took a step in that direction, but I rushed past him, taking the lead.

  We came to the cargo hold that we’d forgone when on the top deck and entered it warily. It was an open space that echoed to our footsteps, and groaned with the movement of the ship. I almost fancied that the ship was a living breathing thing. We traversed the hold, heading directly for a door at the far side. We hadn’t reached it when we heard more screams. But closer to us were the voices of men. They spoke foreign languages, Russian being the dominant one. Having been a soldier after the Cold War, I wasn’t schooled in Russian, but I’d learned enough in my time to judge that the men were almost as disturbed by the screaming as I was. That didn’t make them my friends, but I wondered how much these men were involved in Cain’s schemes and if they deserved to die. Fuck ’em, I decided, they were human-trafficking scum all the same.

  Plus, they were between me and saving my loved ones.

  I spurred across the hold to the door and eased it open.

  Directly outside was another stairwell, one that must have exited via those sheds I’d earlier discarded as a way inside. Above me on the stairs were two men, hauling armfuls of computer equipment. As long as they continued upwards, they weren’t a barrier to us, but it looked like both men had paused there, waiting as they discussed the screaming which came from farther back in the ship. Every second they stood there, Jenny was suffering. I came out the door, drawing my Ka-bar, intending finishing them in silence.

  I took the first step gently, but both men must have felt my presence and they turned my way. I could still get to them, take them down, and their deaths would be covered by Jenny’s screams.

  The problem was, in my urgency, I’d missed the third man on the stairs below. He too was carrying something – a case of some kind – but in his other hand he held a gun.

  ‘Derzhite yego!’ the man yelled. I didn’t need a translator to tell me he was commanding me to hold it, but his next words were lost in the rush of action. ‘Kto ty? Chto vy zdes’ delaete?’

  Hartlaub was an undercover CIA agent; his grasp of Russian was better than mine. He said, ‘We’re here to kill all you pricks!’

  Everything went to hell. The two above me dropped their loads, going for concealed weapons inside their jackets at the same time as the first swung his gun towards Hartlaub. Shit! I’d wanted to do them quietly.

  Hartlaub shot the first man. I didn’t see it, just heard the bang of his gun and the corresponding howl and crashing fall. I was too busy dropping into a crouch while over-handing my Ka-bar at the man nearest me. Up the stairs the man furthest away brought his gun to target and fired. Luckily my drop had caught him out and his bullet went over my head, but my knife hit his friend in the gut. The wounded man forgot about his own weapon as he tried to pull the six inches of steel from his body. It was the opportunity I needed to snatch out my SIG and shoot him in the head.

  Hartlaub fired again, but he was making sure the one he’d hit stayed down. I still had another armed man to contend with. He was yelling gibberish to my ears, what I guessed was a Russian curse of some kind. He fired, but he couldn’t decide which of us he wanted to kill and his bullets missed us both. I came out of my crouch, levelled my gun at his central mass and squeezed the trigger. The first shot took him in the solar plexus, and it would have proved fatal in itself, but I shot him two more times higher up in his chest. There was no more cursing after that, and the sudden silence rang in my ears as heady as the sharp tang of cordite in my nostrils.

  That only lasted as long as it took for me to round on Hartlaub. ‘Jesus Christ!’ I hissed. ‘Do you think you can try to be a bit quieter in future? Cain will know we’re coming for him.’

  Hartlaub offered a shrug. ‘Would you rather I’d let that punk get the drop on you?’

  My anger was misguide
d. My frustration wasn’t at Hartlaub’s lack of subtlety but at the knowledge that any chance of getting Jenny free was now going to be a hundred times more difficult. That was if Cain didn’t slaughter her immediately. Judging by the screaming, he had started already.

  Stealth now wasn’t the issue: it was all down to speed and aggression. I charged away from Hartlaub, heading for the back of the ship. The screaming had stopped abruptly, hopefully because of the intrusion of gunfire and not because Jenny was already dead. The corridor I followed ran straight as an arrow’s flight, doors on each side, but I ignored them all, just headed for the far end where I could see another door with a round window in it. For the briefest moment I thought I saw a face at that window, a pale blur. Perhaps it was just a trick of the light, but I wanted to find out quickly. My haste was almost my undoing.

  A man came out of a door on my left. He was shorter than I, but stocky, with a weightlifter’s arms and shoulders. He wrapped me in a bear hug, lifted me off my feet and slammed me bodily into the door opposite. The door was no barrier and crashed open under our combined weight, and we spilled into a small cabin with a bunk and chair. His momentum carried us across the floor and we rammed up against the base of the bed. The man was on top of me and he bore down with his weight, crushing my shoulders to the ground as he raised a meaty fist to pound my head. Would have been fine if that was all he intended, but then I saw the meat cleaver. I snatched at him with my left hand, bucked up with my hips, making a bridge of my spine, and the man was bumped off me so that the meat cleaver veered away from my head and clashed on the metal floor. I still had my SIG but was in an awkward position to shoot, so instead I backhanded it at him and slammed the butt into his chest. A few inches higher and I’d have got his chin, but the strike to the chest still hurt.

  He snapped something at me, and for the first time I saw that his pinched eyes had nothing to do with his anger, but with his heritage. He looked Mongolian, perhaps Siberian, with his round features, narrow eyes and dark saffron skin. Didn’t matter that he was a long way from the Russian steppes, he was determined to protect his territory with his life. He struck at me with the meat cleaver again. Luck intervened, the mattress on the bed having slipped off and got in the way of his aim. While he twisted the blade free of the mattress, I got an ankle under my opposite leg and flipped on to my side. He reared back for another cut and I jammed my right knee into his side. As he cut down, I dropped my gun and grabbed at his arm, even as I brought my left leg up and booted him in the chin with my heel. If he’d have reared back then he’d have probably got me, but he’d no real concept of ground fighting. Retaining hold of his arm, I pushed my left leg all the way past him so I could hook his throat in the crook of my knee, and I once again arched my spine. His arm was hyper-extended, and the fulcrum point of his elbow was over my pubis.