by Blake Banner
“What’s on your mind, Emily?”
She glanced at me and took a long pull of her drink before answering.
“I said I’d drop in. Maybe I’m just visiting.”
“But you’re not.”
She looked at the moonlight on the water. “I knew you were SAS.”
I frowned, hard. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“JD told us you were back three weeks ago. Harry was so happy, couldn’t stop talking about you. He loves you like his own family.” She paused as though she expected an answer. She didn’t get one, so she kept talking. “He said you’d been in a special ops unit in England. I figured it had to be the SAS.”
I sighed and tried not to sound blunt. “You’re not making a hell of a lot of sense, Emily. Why does it matter that I was in the SAS?”
“I’m sorry.”
She went quiet and stared at the deck with her hands clasped between her knees again. I repeated my question.
“Why is it important, Emily, that I was in the SAS?”
“I’m in trouble, Lacklan.”
A wave, slightly larger than the others, slapped hard on the beach, and then there was a deep sigh as it withdrew. I said, “I’d figured that out already. That’s why you left New Jersey.”
“Yes.”
“You thought you’d got away, but the trouble followed you here.”
She nodded. “Yes. I guess it always does, right?”
I smiled at her. “And you figure the SAS can solve your problem. You don’t think small, I’ll give you that.”
She smiled, but didn’t quite make it to a laugh. “I have no right to ask. I’ll pay…”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Tell me what the problem is first, then we’ll see what the best way to tackle it is.”
She straightened her back and took a deep, shaky breath through her mouth. “I am going to be murdered. If somebody doesn’t help me, I am going to be killed.”
“Who by?” I think she expected me to be shocked, because she looked at me sharply, like the lack of emotion in my voice was offensive to her in some way. I said, “I stopped being surprised by killing twelve years ago, Emily. It’s a job, like any other. Who do you think is going to kill you?”
She shuddered. It may have been the breeze off the ocean. It was getting colder.
“His name is Gregor.”
“Russian?”
“Yes.”
“Mafia?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t say any more and I sat and watched her for a while, trying to read her face and her posture. Finally, I said, “I am struggling here, Emily. I am struggling to visualize any kind of situation in which you would be involved with the Russian mob.”
She puffed out her cheeks and I caught a glint in her eyes that might have been tears. “I haven’t told Harry everything about Mom. I kept it to the kind of stuff he would want to hear. But there was more. She really had to struggle after he left, to survive, and raise me on her own. Sometimes, when things got really hard, she…” She stared up at the moon for a while, then spoke in a rush, forcing the words out. “Sometimes she had visitors: men. When I was small, I didn’t realize what that meant. But as I got older, it slowly dawned on me that they were clients.”
She picked up her drink and turned it around in her hands for a bit, then took a long pull. After she had swallowed, she started talking again, but there was a repressed sob in her voice now.
“When she died, I kind of cracked up. I went to pieces. She was young still, and we were close, like friends. I really depended on her, we shared everything, talked about everything. I was holding her, cradling her head, when she passed.”
Another shaky breath. I didn’t say anything. I knew where this was leading, and I let her talk.
“So, I lost my job because I took too much time off work, nursing her and then recovering from her death. Grieving. Consequently, I was really hard up. I simply didn’t have enough to pay the mortgage, the bills, insurance… let alone buy food.” She paused. “This is so humiliating. In the end, in desperation, I did what I knew Mom had done. I went to a club where I knew girls went to pick up clients. Almost straight away, Gregor approached me. He owned the club. He told me if I wanted to work there, he would take a cut.” She shook her head. She wouldn’t look at me. “He is the most terrifying man you can imagine, Lacklan. Huge, bald, and his eyes…” She paused, frowning, searching for words. “They are dead. You look at him and you know he has seen and done the worst things the human mind can possibly conceive, and it has left him cold. He is a horrific creature. He terrifies me.”
I sighed. “So you told him you’d changed your mind, and he told you it was too late.”
She nodded. “That night he made me do things… and then again, afterwards.” She looked away and wept silently for a while.
I handed her a handkerchief and she blew her nose. I asked her, “So how long ago did your mother really die?”
She gave a small laugh. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
“No.”
“Three years ago. After a year of working for Gregor, he’d got bored with me, and there were a couple of new girls he liked on the scene anyway. So I asked one of his lieutenants if I could take a few days to go and visit my dad in Seattle. I told him he was ill and dying. I guess he thought I might inherit something, and he could get his hands on that. Anyhow, he said yes, and I came out here. For a couple of years, it was idyllic.” She gave a little laugh. “I guess they were looking for me in Seattle.”
I smiled.
She went on. “Harry is a wonderful man. We became real friends and—more than that—family. I look after him and he looks after me.”
She stopped and went silent again for a while. Then she said, “I have no idea how they tracked me down, or why they bothered. I am not valuable to them. But a couple of weeks ago, they turned up.”
“Was Gregor with them?”
“Yes, and four of his men. He said I had broken our contract. He wanted a hundred thousand dollars for the memory cards with the photographs and videos, or he would show them to my father, and publish them online. It would destroy Harry. It would destroy his standing in the community, and it would break his heart.”
“Do you plan to pay him?”
“I have no choice. But I know that when I do, when he has the money, he will kill me.”
“What makes you say that? Right now, you’re the golden goose. Digital pictures and films can be reproduced to infinity. He could have you paying over and over for the next twenty years. And he must know your father has money.”
She gave her head a small shake. “I managed to convince him that Harry is not all that paternal, and we have a very tentative relationship. I told him I’m on a kind of probation, that he would drop me like a hot brick if they tried to blackmail him. I also convinced him that a hundred grand is all I have. It’s not a lie. It’s all I have left from the sale of my house. So once I pay him, I will no longer be any use to him. Also…” She looked at me across the table for a long moment. A chilly breeze made her shudder. “There’s the location. The place he’s chosen, he can kill me, drop me in the bayou and there will be no trace of me.”
I nodded. “When is this exchange due to take place?”
“I told him I needed a couple of days to get the cash together, and I would contact him tomorrow to fix the date.”
“Good. Fix it for tomorrow night. Tell them you want to see the cards, disks and any other material they have. They may or may not bring them, but it’s worth a try. You get out of town first thing. Go to Houston. Spend the day there. I’ll call you when it’s over.”
She gave a small laugh that sounded almost hysterical. “Just like that? What are you going to do?”
“It’s best you don’t know. But I’ll persuade them that they should take the money and leave you alone.”
She laughed again. “You make it sound so easy.” I didn’t answer and she asked, still smilin
g, “How much will this cost me?”
“I don’t want payment, Emily. Your dad’s an old friend. Just promise me you will never get into anything like this again. I don’t want the Colonel getting hurt.”
“I promise. Neither do I.”
I stood and she stood too, and came close to me. She put her hands on my chest. “Is there no way I can thank you?”
I took her hands and held them between mine, looking hard into her eyes. “I’m going through a divorce right now, Emily, and I am not somebody you want to get involved with. But if we ever do make love, it will not be payment for services. It will be because we like each other. You are not a negotiable commodity.”
She withdrew her hands and took a step back. “I’m sorry.”
“Where is the drop due to take place?”
“On the Old Angleton Clute Road. When you pass under the FM 2004, you find you’re in a forest. Follow the road straight for a mile after the bridge. You’ll come to a clearing where there’s a kind of parking space, just before that there’s a track that leads into the woods. Follow the track for two hundred and fifty yards and you’ll come to a clearing. You’ll know it because there is a large tree on the right that collapsed in a storm a couple of years back, and on the left there is a large, swampy bayou.” She hesitated a moment. “What time shall I tell them to be there?”
“Tell them to be there at twelve midnight.” I frowned. “The way you describe it, you know this place pretty well. You’ve been there before.”
She nodded. “Of course. I went to have a look, to see if I could set a trap for them. But I was too scared. I couldn’t do it.”
I grunted. “What about the money?”
“I withdrew it from the bank this morning. I’ve been driving around with it in my trunk.”
“OK, give me the money. You go home, make the call. Tell them you’ll have the cash tomorrow night. You going to be OK?”
She shrugged. “Can’t I stay?”
“No, you can’t be seen with me again until this is over, Emily.”
I walked her down the steps to her car. She opened the trunk and handed me a small, black sports bag. I unzipped it and looked inside. There was a sealed paper parcel, about eighteen inches long, six inches deep, twelve inches across. It was heavy. She said:
“It’s all there. They counted it out in front of me, twice.”
I nodded. “OK. I’ll take care of it.”
She kissed me on the cheek. “I don’t know how to thank you. I am so grateful I could cry. I can’t believe that you would do this for me, Lacklan. It seems incredible…”
“Let’s talk when it’s over, OK?”
She gave a small nod and I watched her climb in her car and slam the door. The engine whined and she reversed toward the road with her headlamps blinding me. Then she turned and for a moment, the amber funnels picked out the twisted trees on the far side of the road before she accelerated away, back toward Freeport. As her red tail lights disappeared into the darkness, I stood for a while, thinking. I shuddered. The night was growing cold. I turned toward my car.
When I had decided to come to Galveston Island from Erick Redbeard’s place in L.A.[12], I’d had Kenny bring me the Zombie from Weston with a full kit bag, but I hadn’t looked at it since it had arrived. I went now and opened the trunk. The kit bag was my old green canvas bag from the Regiment. I opened it and pulled out my hickory take down bow, twelve aluminum arrows with razor-sharp broad-heads. There was a Heckler and Koch 416, two Sig Sauer p226 with the extended magazines, a Maxim 9, a Fairbairn & Sykes fighting knife, my Smith & Wesson 500 in case I needed to blow down any walls, and four cakes of C4, because you never know when plastic explosives are going to come in handy. He had also packed a variety of detonators, a box of listening bugs and a pair of night-vision goggles.
I smiled at the recollection of him when he handed over the vehicle. He’d raised an eyebrow and said, “When you mentioned you aimed to relax and recuperate, sir, I thought it best to prepare a full kit bag, just in case.” He was a kind of extreme Jeeves on steroids. The only thing he’d left out was the rocket launcher.
I took out the knife, slipped it into the sheath in my boot, rammed a magazine into one of the Sigs and slipped that into my waistband. I had a feeling that before long, I might be having some visitors. Then I closed the trunk, looked around and sniffed the air. The only sounds were the surf and an owl somewhere, calling for a mate. I told him he was a fool and that he was better off on his own, but he ignored me and kept on hooting.
As I climbed the stairs back toward my terrace, I thought about Gregor, and wondered if he would be at the drop. I hoped so. I wanted to talk to him. I dropped the bag on the table, poured myself another Bushmills and stood holding my glass, chewing my lip and staring at the moon.
After a bit, I put down my glass without drinking, opened the bag and took out the parcel of cash. I carried that inside and put it on top of my wardrobe. Then I went back out, drained my glass, locked up the house and went down to the Zombie again, whistling softly through my teeth. The first requirement for a successful operation is good preparation; and the basis of good preparation is good reconnaissance. So I climbed into the Zombie and headed silently through the night toward Freeport, the Old Angleton Road, and the woods.
Three
The next day I spent mainly lying on the beach, swimming and doing not much of anything else. At nine A.M., she phoned me to say she was on her way to Houston. I told her not to call me again until it was all over, and she hung up without saying anything, like she was mad at me.
At one P.M., I barbecued a sirloin steak on the beach and ate it between two hunks of fresh bread with a cold beer. Then I slept for an hour in the shade of the stilts, had another swim and spent the afternoon reading a book on my sofa, about a world where it was always raining, and the elite were trying to escape to Mars. Two years ago, I would have thought it was stupid. Now I wasn’t so sure.
As evening fell, I went for a two mile run along the shore to warm up, spent an hour training in the sand and then at nine, I climbed in the Zombie and went to the drop point. My advantage was surprise, and I was going to exploit that every step of the way.
I took it easy and arrived at nine forty-five. I had found a place the previous night, off the track and just before the designated exchange point, and now I backed the Zombie in among the shadows and killed the lights. After that, I spent an hour carefully inspecting the area for traps and snipers. It was an unnecessary precaution because they thought they were going to meet cute, vulnerable Emily there. But unnecessary precautions can often turn out to be life-savers.
At eleven, I got back in the Zombie, cocked my Sig and settled to wait.
They arrived at eleven forty-five. They were in just one car, a dark Ford Explorer. They rolled past me, maybe ten feet away, passed the fallen tree, came to the edge of the bayou and turned to wait. They killed the lights and got out. The closing doors were a staccato volley in the darkness. I slipped on the night-vision goggles and the world became a strange green and black place. I counted four men. One of them leaned against the radiator and lit a cigarette. He was six feet, big but athletic. He had a goatee and short hair, black jeans and a black T-shirt. He also had an air of authority. I pegged him as the leader of the operation.
Beside him with his arms crossed was a fair-haired man in his early twenties. He wasn’t smoking, and he looked gym-fit. A third guy had gone to piss by a tree. He was well over six feet, with a huge back and a long, black ponytail. He was wearing what looked like an Italian suit. He had a big gut and something about him told me he ate people for breakfast. He wasn’t gym-fit. He was a ruthless son of a bitch.
The fourth guy was holding an assault rifle and was staring out and up into the trees. He was also dressed in black jeans and a T-shirt and had the air of a combat-hardened soldier. None of them was Gregor, but they were all dangerous men. I had to use the element of surprise, and keep it coming.
The Zom
bie is totally silent. So when I fired her up, the first thing they knew about it was when the headlamps came on full beam. I pulled off the goggles and watched the four men for a moment, squinting and shading their eyes. Then I rolled out silently and moved up the path toward them until I was thirty or forty feet away. They were still shielding their eyes and had gathered around the hood of the Ford. I dimmed the lights and climbed out, holding the sports bag in my left hand.
I heard the assault rifle cock, the other three guys pulled automatics and there was a click, click, click. I raised my hands, with the sports bag dangling from my left thumb. Where I was standing, behind the door, behind the headlamps, all they could see was my silhouette, but it must have been clear I wasn’t Emily.
The guy with the goatee trained his automatic in my general direction and, squinting in the light, said, “Who are you? Why you are here?”
I said, “Take it easy. I’m here for Emily. She thought the forest air would be bad for her health. Where is Gregor?”
He spat on the ground. “The arrangement was Emily comes. This is bullshit!”
I shook my head and put a smile in my voice. “No, not bullshit, tough shit. Now, do you want to do business or do you want to talk?”
There was some cussing in Russian followed by some consulting in Russian. The big guy with the ponytail and the Armani suit jerked his chin at me and growled, “Kill little piece of shit.”
But goatee snapped, “You bring it?”
I said, “It’s in the bag. Now, what about your part of the deal?”
The big gorilla went to the back of the truck and pulled out two bags similar to mine, only bigger. They were full and looked heavy. He brought them to the front of the truck and raised them for me to see. I studied them a moment, thinking hard. I shrugged and spoke, half laughing.
“Are they all there? I don’t want to come back again next year. How can I be sure that’s all of them?”
As I had expected, they all looked at each other and frowned. Goatee said, “What the fuck? Don’t play fuckin’ games! What you fuckin’ talkin’ about?”