Dead Men's Harvest

by Matt Hilton

  Hunter and his friend must have arrived here by boat. They hadn’t just teleported aboard the frickin’ ship like this was a cheap TV sci-fi show. So, who the hell was out there? Jared Rington, the Jap who’d gone and spoiled everything last time? He hoped so: two birds with one stone, and all that.

  Forget what’s out there, he told himself. Concentrate on Hunter.

  He continued, steadying himself with one hand on the rail. Through the shifting veil of rain he saw the bulky outline of the lifeboat as it swung on its ropes. It thumped against the wall of the ship with a resounding boom. On the deck directly to the right of it he could see the pile of shattered humanity, all the dead sprawled in various poses, as though positioned by the hand of a deranged choreographer of violence. Standing over the pile of corpses was another figure. Dressed in a black jumpsuit, an equally dark cap pulled over his hair, there was no mistaking him. He looked strange, a stark shadow amid the spray, shoulders hunched, his fists clenched by his sides, swaying with the pitch of the deck as he peered down at his dead friend’s corpse.

  Cain moved closer.

  The man had his back to him.

  Perfect.

  Cain allowed the Tanto blade to swing forward and held it primed for a killing rush.

  He was ten feet away now, and Cain held his breath. He wanted to leap in, but he recalled Hunter’s catlike reflexes and thought he’d only make it halfway before the man twisted round and shot him dead. He squeezed rain from his eyes.

  Another step.

  Another.

  Then Cain could no longer contain the urge for slaughter, and he launched himself at Hunter’s back. He looped his left arm around the man’s neck, driving the Tanto under his ribs with all the weight of his body behind it. He twisted the blade, seeking the liver, howling a shout of triumph in Hunter’s ear.

  He stepped back, pulling out the knife, and readying it for another plunge.

  Hunter didn’t fall.

  He didn’t even react.

  He just swayed with the motion of the ship.

  Cain wasn’t one for swearing, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  Then he saw it, the thin wire supporting the man, and he followed it up to where it was fixed to one of the overhead cranes. He looked at the back of the corpse’s skull, saw where he’d recently jammed his Bowie knife through it.

  Down on the deck, the other black-suited figure sat up and pointed his gun at Cain’s face.

  ‘Drop the knife, Cain,’ Joe Hunter snapped.

  Chapter 47

  Using a friend in that way seems callous, but I believed that given the choice, Hartlaub would have said to go ahead. He’d given me his life, and now the means to draw Cain into a trap. The idea had come to me when I’d shouted my challenge at Cain. He was the type who couldn’t refuse an easy kill when my back was turned. I’d seen the winch and the hook and had fed it under Hartlaub’s armpits and hauled him off the deck. I’d positioned him so that he looked like a man stooped in grief, and it seemed to have done the trick.

  It was difficult lying there among the dead, waiting as Cain crept forward, and more than once I’d wanted to leap up and shoot the bastard before he could reach Hartlaub. The ruse would only last so long, and I hadn’t honestly thought he’d spring on to my dead friend’s back like that. I’d waited, held myself lax, ready for my moment.

  And then it had come.

  ‘I told you to drop the fucking knife,’ I said.

  Cain shook his head sadly as I came to my feet.

  I stood with my feet planted, one slightly in front of the other, toes turned inward to grip the deck, the butt of my SIG supported in my opposite cupped palm. Only ten feet away, I could shoot Cain in either eye without stirring his lashes.

  ‘That wasn’t very sporting,’ Cain said. ‘Tricking me like that.’

  ‘It isn’t a game.’

  ‘Oh, but it is. Don’t say you don’t agree. I know what you’re like.’

  ‘No, Cain. You don’t. You can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to be me. You aren’t human.’

  ‘I’m not?’

  ‘No. A human has a soul. Your soul died the day you picked up a blade and became Tubal Cain.’

  ‘Maybe. But we’re alike in so many other ways.’

  ‘I’m nothing like you are, you murderous bastard.’

  ‘Sigmund Petoskey. Kurt Hendrickson. Need I continue the list?’

  ‘They deserved everything they got.’

  ‘Where’s the difference? You enjoy killing, I enjoy killing. There’s this Hemingway quote I’m fond of. It goes something like, “Those who’ve hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else.” That’s us, Hunter. We’re both hunters of armed men. We are alike.’

  ‘No, Cain.’ I shook my head. ‘You don’t care if they’re armed. You hunt anyone . . . including defenceless women.’

  Cain’s gaze slipped to the rail. ‘Aah, I see now why you’re pissed with me. But I had nothing to do with that. Jennifer chose her fate. She jumped overboard, I didn’t push her. You can’t blame me for that.’

  ‘I can,’ I said. ‘And I will. Now drop the knife.’

  He dropped the Tanto.

  ‘And any others you’re carrying.’ I wiggled the gun barrel to show him I wasn’t taking no for an answer. ‘Take it real easy, Cain. The rain’s making my finger a little slippery on this trigger.’

  He sighed, then dug in his pocket and pulled out what looked like a Stanley knife. He tossed it away from him.

  ‘Anything else?’

  He shook his head. ‘You can search me if you want.’

  ‘Isn’t going to happen, Cain.’

  ‘So you’re just going to execute me? Just like that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I held the gun steady, aiming for the point directly between his eyes. Give him his due, he wasn’t a coward like many notorious killers turn out. He didn’t flinch, just stood there. Maybe I’d been correct: what did a man whose spirit had already been slain have to fear? I drew the moment out, and finally I noted his gaze slip slightly.

  ‘So what are you waiting for?’

  ‘Before I kill you I want to tell you something you might not want to hear.’

  ‘Oh, God! Save me the sermon, will ya!’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to play psychiatrist. You’re a sick-headed bastard, we know that already.’

  Cain snorted, but the derision was tinged with humour.

  ‘John’s dead,’ I stated.

  The words sounded wrong even to my own ears. But it explained Walter’s reticence every time my brother’s name was mentioned, and why John hadn’t come to bait a trap as I’d requested. I’d denied what common sense had been telling me all along, but to voice those thoughts was still an alien sensation.

  ‘Liar. I’ve been speaking with your old pal, Walter Conrad. He told me that John was on his way.’

  ‘He was lying to you, Cain. The way he’s lied to me since Jubal’s Hollow. You remember what you did to my brother there? How could he survive that?’

  ‘The medics saved him, the way they saved me.’

  ‘So why isn’t he here?’

  ‘Because Conrad sent you instead.’

  ‘We’ve both been played along. John’s dead.’

  ‘You’re only saying that so that I stop chasing him.’

  ‘No, Cain,’ I corrected him. ‘That isn’t necessary. Not when I’m going to kill you. I’m telling you so that you realise what a total fuck-up all of this has been. You’ve been chasing a trophy that you’ll never get your hands on. All the pain, all the suffering that everyone has gone through, it’s been for nothing.’

  ‘Lies.’

  ‘Truth,’ I countered. ‘You’re going to Hell with the knowledge that you’ll never get to John. You already missed your opportunity.’

  ‘Nooooo . . .’

  Everything about him changed in that instant. His shoulders rounded, his head di
pped, and he flicked out with his right arm. From his sleeve projected the item I was certain he’d disclose at this last moment. The fiendish bastard had been busy during his downtime aboard the ship, whittling and paring the rib bone taken from the ship’s captain. Cain had planned to spear me with it, the way I’d rammed a rib bone through his trachea back at Jubal’s Hollow. Well, I’d also something to pay him back for: my brother.

  I allowed him a moment, and he took it. He launched himself at me.

  Calmly, I shot him.

  His forearm was shattered, and the horrifying weapon went spinning across the deck alongside chunks of his arm.

  Cain kept on coming, teeth bared like a wild beast’s.

  I shot him again, this time through his left thigh.

  He staggered against the rail. Clawed hands held him upright. He twisted to look at me, his eyes squinting as I shoved the gun away, replacing it with the Bowie knife I’d jammed down my belt. I thought it only just that I use his own weapon to punish him. He watched me load up like a javelin thrower, and barely reacted as I swiped the blade across his face with all the power I could muster. His jaw shattered under the force, and he stood there with a glazed expression, blood spewing from the open wound. He tried to say something, but it was difficult speaking with a mouthful of broken teeth and blood frothing between his lips.

  ‘Save the sermon,’ I taunted, and backhanded the knife across his chest.

  His jaw was opened up, his chest gushing, but still he was alive. Good, because I’d intended that the slashes of the knife were debilitating without taking his life. The knife was his weapon, mine was the SIG. I lifted it. ‘This is for John, you piece of shit.’

  I aimed directly between his eyes.

  I fired and his skull snapped backwards, and his body went with it. He collapsed over the rail, then very, very slowly his weight eased forward and he slipped over the side and into the night. Over the roaring wind, I heard the slap of his body as he smacked the waves.

  Normally I feel no satisfaction in killing.

  But Cain had been right about one thing. There was nothing in the world like the hunting of armed men like him. I cared for nothing else than to see them dead. A long time ago Tubal Cain had been slain in the spirit; now he’d been slain in the flesh and I couldn’t have been happier.

  I stood alongside the railing where he’d gone over, watching the pale blur of his corpse as it rode the pitch-black tide. Within seconds, a wave rolled him over on to his back, and he sunk beneath the surface, his wide open eyes staring accusingly at me. They were like they’d always been: dead and soulless.

  Chapter 48

  Hartlaub was my first priority. I unhooked him from the winch and laid him out on the deck, away from the other dead men. His eyelids had peeled apart, and I gently pressed them shut with the pads of my thumbs. All the while, I listened for anything that would warn me of an impending attacker. As far as I could tell, though, everyone here was dead, and the Queen Sofia was indeed a ghost ship. Looking down on the dead agent’s face, I whispered my stepfather’s wise words, ‘Mocking is catching, Hartlaub.’

  They weren’t exactly true. Hartlaub hadn’t invited bad luck, it had been forced on him the moment he’d turned up at Imogen’s house in Maine. From that time on his days had been numbered. It’s what came of being dragged along in my undertow.

  I loaded him into the lifeboat and set the winch-motors running so that it was lowered to the sea. The fury of the storm had passed by then, and the boat only made a faint knocking sound against the hull of the ship. I went down a rope ladder. Before I could start the outboard, a different engine roared and from around the stern of the Queen Sofia came another vessel. It was low in the water, with inflatable cushions and a single cabin perched near the front.

  ‘Hunter! Over here, buddy!’

  I recognised Terry’s voice. I stood up in the lifeboat and watched as he steered the inflatable boat towards me. Someone was at the prow; at first I thought it was Lassiter, but then I noted there were two heads watching from inside the illuminated cabin.

  I looked again at the figure in the prow, and couldn’t believe my eyes. Standing there, hugging a hand to her chest, was my sister-in-law. Lassiter and Terry had done exactly as promised: they’d been there waiting for when Jenny got off the ship, and had plucked her safely from the water.

  I’m not a praying man, but at that moment, I closed my eyes, leaned back and thanked God in heaven for all of my good friends, old and new.

  Terry steered the inflatable alongside the lifeboat, and I pulled them close and tied the boats up to each other. I scrambled over the side, to be greeted by Jenny as she threw herself into my arms. We held each other for a long time, and it wasn’t just Jenny who cried.

  ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ I said to her. ‘I wish I could have got here sooner.’

  ‘You came, that’s what’s important,’ Jenny said.

  Something in her voice told me her words held a deeper meaning. ‘If he could have, John would’ve come too,’ I said.

  She looked up at the freighter towering over us, as if expecting John to come scrambling down the ladder at any second.

  I took her face in my hands and tilted it up. She had a cut under her eye, but it was the least of what she’d gone through. She had suffered enough for now – or for any lifetime – and I decided to spare her my conclusions about John’s fate. I just looked at her, and by the way her face folded in on itself she knew. I pulled her into my embrace, whispering in her ear, ‘John told me he still loved you and the kids, Jenny. Very much.’

  She sobbed against my chest, and I allowed her to. I would have cried as well, but the tears wouldn’t come again, maybe because the truth had been troubling me for so long now. Perhaps Jenny was crying for her children, that they’d never again see their father, or maybe, for all that he’d put her through, she still loved John too. After a while she stood back, mopping her face, but it was awkward for her. I took Jenny’s hand in mine. I was very gentle, because she was in pain. ‘Cain did this?’

  She’d swaddled the stump of her finger in a dressing supplied by one of the crew. Her bottom lip trembled, but her eyes were drier now. ‘He told me that he’d go after my children. For them, I’d have given both my arms.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘So would John given the chance.’

  ‘I know that, Joe.’

  I kissed her on the forehead, gave her a hug. ‘C’mon. Let’s get you home to your kids.’

  Chapter 49

  After her wounds were tended to and she’d undergone a thorough debriefing, Jennifer went home to Jack and Beatrice and I would have preferred to have gone with her. I owed my parents that much: they should hear from me that my younger brother was dead, not from some anonymous cop turning up at their home. Of course, I had to face the music in the US first, but I promised Jennifer that I’d follow in a few days’ time, supposing I wasn’t locked up for the next fifteen years.

  The Navy and Coast Guard, ATF, FBI, CIA: they all wanted a piece of the action concerning the Queen Sofia and they were welcome to it. Grodek’s ship was towed to port at Hampton Roads and the official line offered to the media was that the suspected human traffickers on board had been involved in a power struggle that had erupted into violence. Jennifer’s name was never mentioned, but then again neither was mine or Hartlaub’s. Also left out of the story was the inclusion of a certain Tubal Cain. That didn’t surprise me, and I was happy to play ignorant. Jeffrey Baron disappeared too, literally.

  It struck me that a mystery surrounded the nearby Roanoke Island, where once an entire community of settlers disappeared: it was an enduring legend, and now others had slipped from the face of the earth and no one would ever have a clue as to their passing. Another myth for the conspiracy theorists to fret over.

  There was nobody left alive who would attest to my involvement in the deaths of either Sigmund Petoskey or Kurt Hendrickson and their passing would remain an equally contested mystery. The fact that
both my and Harvey’s fingerprints were discovered at the motel where we’d holed up after the assault on Hendrickson remained, but without Baron’s evidence, all they had were charges of dangerous driving, theft of an automobile and criminal damage, and they were covered easily enough. The weapons we’d used had already been spirited away into the same empty place where everything else of consequence went. I have often railed against the fact that Walter has kept me on a loose leash, and manipulated me for his own ends, but, what was the alternative? I was lucky to have him covering my arse. Yes, I owed him, but he had some explaining to do before I’d ever trust him again.

  When the naval helicopter touched down outside Walter’s fishing cabin, I had a small crowd waiting to greet me. Some of them I didn’t know; they were officials working with Walter to tie up all the loose ends, a job I didn’t envy them. Then there were the people that mattered to me. First to come forward was Rink, who bulled his way past the others and grabbed me in a bear hug. I was glad to find that his shoulder wound wasn’t troubling him as much now, judging by how tightly he squeezed me. When he put me down, his eyebrows worked like a couple of thunderheads.

  ‘He’s really dead this time. You’re sure, Hunter?’

  ‘I shot him in the head and watched him sink to the bottom of the ocean.’

  ‘Good, it’s what the frog-giggin’ sumbitch needed. What about that other asshole, Baron?’

  ‘I got him as well, Rink. I got them all.’

  ‘I’m glad, but I wanted Baron for myself.’ He knuckled me in the chest. ‘You shouldn’t have run off like that, goddamnit! You should’ve given me a couple hours to get my shit together and I’d’ve come with you.’

  ‘That’s exactly why I left when I did. You were in no shape, and if I’d told you I was going you’d have never stayed behind. I’m happy to see that Rene Moulder worked her magic on you.’ The veterinarian was standing in the crowd, but she hadn’t come forward. I winked my thanks at her and she smiled.

  Rink leaned close to my ear. ‘It was me that was working my magic, brother.’

  ‘So rank’s no longer an issue?’