Blood and Ashes

by Matt Hilton

  In the time I’d been in the USA, Walter’s influence had meant that my violent retribution wreaked on a gamut of killers had been looked on favourably by certain high-powered government officials. In layman’s terms, Walter had kept me out of prison by calling in favours. He’d even wangled it so that I, along with Rink and our mutual friend, Harvey Lucas, was back on the government payroll when tracking and taking out Luke Rickard, the contract killer engaged in assassinating past members of Walter’s unit.

  Perhaps it would be a good idea to earn special dispensation from Walter this time.

  I looked for Vince, my only ally in the entire compound.

  Last time I’d seen him, Vince was deep in conversation with the SAC who’d arrived to take charge of the investigation. By the way that SAC Birnbaum – who should have been Vince’s superior – deferred to the young agent, Vince had a little more clout than your average feebie behind him.

  An FBI storm trooper strode by, dressed in tactical kit as though Gant and Darley might return for a second show. I waved the man over and he adjusted his Heckler and Koch MP5/10 as though readying to strafe me should I make any unwarranted move. I did my best to ignore the weapon pointing at me. ‘Have you seen Special Agent Vincent lately?’

  The trooper sniffed. He regarded me with eyes that rolled like marbles in a storm drain. ‘I’ll tell him you were asking after him.’

  ‘If you just point out where he is, I’ll go tell him myself.’

  ‘No, buddy, you get to stay right there.’

  The feebie strode away, leaving me with the impression that he’d no intention of finding Vince.

  If you want something doing . . .

  I stood up. My leg ached, my hand ached, my entire body ached, but that was what came from sitting on your backside after a burst of sustained activity. Got to get back in training, I promised, as I arched my lower back to loosen the kinks. I stretched and yawned, not even considering the fact that this was my second full day without sleep. As I went through the motions, I scanned the camp for any sign of Vince’s give-away pompadour hairstyle.

  I spotted the young agent striding away from a hastily erected white tent near to the back of the camp. Already, now that his cover was no longer an issue, Vince had shed the trappings of his Southern racist persona. Instead of his leather jacket with its Confederate battle flag, he now wore a black windcheater emblazoned with the FBI motif. His hair was under a cap similarly marked.

  I took a step in the agent’s direction. Something bumped softly against my shins. Glancing down I saw the old tomcat twining itself about my ankles. The cat’s purr was like an idling bulldozer.

  ‘So you stuck around, huh?’

  The cat blinked at me, sat down and began licking its nether regions.

  ‘My sentiments exactly,’ I laughed. I reached down and the cat allowed me to pick it up. It sat in the crook of an elbow, eyeing me with its amber stare. I walked quickly to cut off Vince’s route through the compound.

  Vince glanced up from under the brim of his cap.

  ‘Gonna get an executive order passed so I can shoot that damn thing,’ Vince growled.

  The cat tensed, hissed at Vince.

  ‘Easy now, Vince, you’re hurting his feelings.’

  ‘Good. You’ve seen what that crazy animal did to my face?’ He pulled off the cap so that his scratches were even more vivid. When he felt the drizzle, he quickly jammed the cap back on.

  ‘He was just reacting to what he perceived as a threat. You aren’t going to hold that against him are you?’ I scrubbed behind the cat’s ears, thinking I’d found a viable metaphor for my own reaction to the two at the Seven-Eleven. Vince continued to scowl at the cat, but it was as much an act as Vince Everett had been. I laughed. ‘He’s not a bad old sort when you get to know him better. The kids named him Fluffy.’

  ‘Go figure,’ Vince said.

  I indicated the white tent. ‘Anyone in there got a flask of coffee? I think we both could do with warming up a little.’

  ‘This way,’ Vince said, but he headed away from the tent.

  We approached a large wagon parked outside the camp. A container on the back bristled with antennae. Mobile command unit, I guessed. What were the chances of the FBI having one of these on hand all the way out here? I shook the thought loose: what did it matter for now?

  Vince led the way inside the container through a door at the back. It was a cramped space of desks and computer monitors, alive with electrical static and a background hum of fans. There was also the welcome aroma of strong coffee. Two support staff looked up at us, both unconcerned by my appearance or by the cat in my arms. Vince greeted them, then asked them for a few minutes’ privacy. They took Styrofoam cups with them as they clumped down outside.

  Vince poured cups of steaming coffee from a silver thermos. I sat down on one of the vacated office chairs and began pulling at the plastic bag beneath my shirt, releasing a trickle of moisture that darkened the floor. Then I scrubbed rain from my hair. I allowed the cat to slink away and it snuffled at a paper bag on a work desk. It must have found a juicy morsel inside, because it hunkered down and started chewing appreciatively. Hunger pangs dug at my insides, but the coffee was a more welcome prospect. I accepted it gratefully as Vince handed over a cup. I left the cream and sugar on the desk top: it was pure caffeine I was after.

  ‘Probably tastes like dirty water,’ Vince said.

  Under the circumstances, it was just about the best cup of coffee I’d tasted in a long time. The steaming brew went down in two gulps. ‘I wouldn’t say no to another.’

  Vince set about pouring again.

  While he busied himself I studied the command unit. There was nothing in the makeshift office that gave a clue about what the bigger picture was, and the support staff had had the presence of mind to turn off their monitors before leaving. I caught my reflection in one of the darkened screens. Jesus, what a mess. My two-day-old beard was dark on my chin, hair plastered to my head from where I’d wiped the rain away. Streaks of mud and a spray of blood marked my shirt. No wonder I was getting suspicious looks from the FBI agents.

  Vince delivered a second coffee and I savoured this one, cupping it between both palms and allowing the steam to trickle over my face. In the warmth of the command unit my clothing began to steam as well.

  ‘I thought all you Brits drank tea?’

  ‘I’ve been Americanised,’ I said, smiling whimsically. ‘I’m thinking of buying shares in Starbucks, I spend so much time there.’

  It was small talk as a way into the weightier issues. I took a sip of the hot brew, then launched directly into what was bothering me. ‘There are a couple of things I don’t quite understand about you, Vince. I was wondering if you were going to enlighten me.’

  ‘Could say the same about you.’

  ‘You’ve already had me checked out,’ I said.

  Vince shrugged. ‘Standard operating procedure. The problem is we kept on hitting brick walls. Most of your files are sealed.’

  ‘You needn’t worry. Like you said to your buddies, I’m one of the good guys.’

  ‘The way you went through Samuel Gant and his goons, I’m inclined to challenge you on that.’

  ‘I just did what anyone in the same position would’ve done.’

  Vince laughed without humour. ‘No, Hunter. Most people would have bent down, put their heads between their legs and kissed their butts goodbye.’

  ‘I’m not the type to lie down and die, Vince.’

  ‘SAC Birnbaum did a little checking of his own. His opposite number over in Maine speaks highly of you.’

  ‘Hubbard,’ I confirmed. It surprised me, because SAC Hubbard hadn’t been my biggest fan when first we met. It didn’t help that I was a suspected cop killer at the time, but clearing up the Luke Rickard mess must have endeared me to the FBI man.

  ‘He told Birnbaum to give you his best regards . . . and to cut you some slack.’

  ‘Nice of him.’

&nb
sp; ‘He said you’ve proven helpful to the FBI on more than one occasion.’

  Could have told him about Tubal Cain, but my involvement there was buried even from the FBI, courtesy of Walter Conrad. I guessed that Vince was referring to Jean-Paul St Pierre, the contract killer who went by the name of a fallen angel. Dantalion had murdered a handful of FBI agents including Kaufman, an SAC from the Miami field office, before I finally stopped him. ‘I’m not a FBI groupie, if that’s what you’re thinking?’

  ‘So what exactly are you?’

  ‘I’m just someone who cares. I’m not going to stand around while children are being terrorised.’

  ‘Donovan Griffiths hired you?’

  ‘I didn’t come for the money. I just wanted to help. Nobody else seemed to be doing much.’

  ‘I was on the case.’

  ‘I couldn’t sit around waiting for the cavalry to come to their rescue, Vince. What do you think I should’ve done?’

  ‘The FBI doesn’t look favourably on vigilantes.’

  ‘Vigilantes take the law into their own hands, Vince. Off the record? There aren’t too many laws that govern what I sometimes have to do.’

  ‘Sounds like you’ve practised that speech, Hunter.’

  I grinned. ‘It’s good guy one-o-one.’

  Vince regarded me over the top of his coffee, while I stared right back. ‘I suppose you have a point; what I sometimes have to do isn’t FBI procedure either.’

  ‘The old quid pro quo game, huh?’

  ‘I guess I owe you an explanation, seeing as I almost strangled you to death.’

  I touched my throat. It was still hot from where Vince’s garrotte had sunk into the flesh. ‘Explain away.’

  Chapter 28

  ‘Did you ever catch that TV series on the Fox network? Twenty-one Jump Street?’

  Couldn’t help but smile at the reference. It was almost as if I’d been expecting it. ‘You know, Vince, from certain angles you remind me a little of Johnny Depp.’

  The agent attempted to conceal the smugness, but some of Vince Everett’s swagger returned. ‘So I’ve been told.’

  ‘Ever seen Edward Scissorhands?’

  Vince made a noise in the back of his throat but my smile helped show I was only joking. I had in fact been thinking of another movie Depp featured in where he played a 1950s juvenile delinquent, the one with Ricki Lake and Iggy Pop.

  ‘If,’ Vince went on, ‘you’re familiar with the concept of Jump Street, you’ll know that it followed a group of undercover cops who infiltrated youth gangs. Well, I’m part of a similar FBI operation. Only we target home-grown militant groups.’

  ‘So you posed as a racist to get inside Gant’s mob? Odd that neo-Nazis would welcome someone with so much hair.’

  ‘It was a conscious decision to use the Vince Everett cover. It would have been too difficult carrying off an act that I was a Nazi. Sooner or later, my cover would have been blown. But you know what they say about birds of a feather?’

  ‘They accepted you through your common hatred of everyone who wasn’t a WASP?’

  ‘Yeah, but it wasn’t easy. The only way I got in was through Sonya Madden.’

  ‘The punk rocker girl?’

  ‘Yeah.’ For a second Vince’s eyes clouded over.

  ‘You regret that she came to harm. I hope you don’t hold her death against me?’

  ‘I can’t really do that, Hunter.’ He flicked a glance around, checking for the electronic ears that were more than likely in existence in the command unit. He lowered his voice to a whisper and mimed a nudge of his elbow. ‘Not when I helped her out the window as we crashed. Couldn’t really allow her to harm anyone else, and it was the first opportunity I got.’

  Accepting what he said without comment was difficult; the thought of murdering a woman was abhorrent to me . . . usually. Having the woman’s death on my conscience would have been terrible if she wasn’t trying to kill those under my protection. Instead I said, ‘Vince Everett had to have been a real person. Gant would have checked.’

  ‘Yeah, Everett was real. He was a young junkie who murdered his grandfather during a bungled robbery. He was also suspected of beating a cop to death with a PR24 baton, not to mention a number of rapes where he first throttled his victims within an inch of their lives with a guitar string. He was as heavy a white supremacist as any in Gant’s outfit. Shame he turned up dead after overdosing: he should have gone to prison for a long time, maybe in a cell alongside some brothers.’

  Yes, that would have been justice, rather than the relatively easy way that Everett went. ‘The FBI kept his demise a secret, I’m assuming, and you slipped right into the role.’

  ‘The name helped. I’ve been called Vince by all my friends since kindergarten, so I was never going to mess up and forget to answer someone calling my name.’

  ‘There was more to it than that.’

  ‘Of course there was. I had to get into his mind, become Vince Everett in every way. I had to think like him, act like him, do what he would do. It wasn’t nice being in his head like that, but I had to show those assholes that I was a worthy ally. Plus there was the fact that Everett was just the kind of guy Sonya Madden found irresistible.’ Again the agent’s eyes clouded. ‘Madden by name but mad by nature. It’s a shame she was such a psychopath, ’cause underneath it all she was quite a girl.’

  ‘Forgetting that she was part of a radical extremist network, as well?’

  ‘Yeah, there was that.’ Vince straightened his cap, winning a few seconds to compose himself. While he ordered his next words, Fluffy sauntered across the desk beside him. The cat glowered at him like he was something to be utterly and contemptuously destroyed. Vince broke open a carton of cream and offered it to the tom. ‘Peace offering?’

  Fluffy sniffed and sashayed, but then settled down to lap the cream from the tub. Its occasional glance my way demanded to know what I was worrying about, now that Vince was his new best friend.

  ‘Traitor,’ I called the cat. It turned its back on me.

  Vince grinned at the cat. ‘He has a lot in common with me, I guess.’

  I squinted at him, not quite getting the reference. Vince said, ‘To Gant and Carswell Hicks I’m a traitor to their cause.’

  ‘Little notice Hicks will take. Last I heard he was dead.’

  ‘You and millions of others . . .’

  I didn’t like the undertone of Vince’s delivery.

  ‘What exactly are you saying, Vince?’

  ‘Carswell Hicks is as alive as you or me. The death story is just that.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘Why would I lie to you?’

  ‘You’re a feebie. You’re undercover. You have your own agenda. Take your pick.’

  ‘Christ, you’re a cynic, Hunter.’

  ‘It tends to keep me alive.’

  ‘And you’re full of pithy sayings.’

  ‘Good guy one-o-one, I told you.’

  Vince sipped coffee. I mirrored him. The cat nudged the empty cream carton along the desk, unaware of or indifferent to the silence between the two men in its presence.

  Finally I placed the empty Styrofoam cup down. ‘Carswell Hicks. Where is he?’

  ‘Sure wish that we knew. As you probably heard, an attempt was made to break Hicks out of prison when he was transferred to a less-secure hospital wing. The hospital’s medi-vac chopper was hijacked but later went down off the coast with no apparent survivors. Hicks’ body was never found, although the general public wasn’t informed of that in case it caused a furore. It was while Obama was running for president, and his supporters wouldn’t take kindly to someone possibly back in the public arena who’d make it his mission to destroy a black presidential candidate. You could say Hicks earned a modicum of protection from the same government he’d tried to disrupt all those years. Go figure, man!’

  ‘Sounds ridiculous, but not unheard of,’ I said, as disgusted as Vince was. ‘The British government released IRA murd
erers, and actually settled them on the mainland, under the Good Friday Agreement, gave them new identities so that no one would know who was living in their midst. Talk about pandering to your enemies.’

  ‘As far as everyone’s concerned, Hicks is dead and no threat to the president or the stability of our country. The reality is that the corpse they displayed was that of a homeless John Doe who bore a passing resemblance to Hicks. The guy had fallen into a river and drowned, so he fit the part. But to further disguise him, the JD was liberally doused in aviation fuel and burned.’

  ‘Jesus, that’s brutal.’

  ‘Had to make it look real, Hunter.’

  ‘OK. So what happened? Hicks took his freedom but that wasn’t enough for him? He has reinitiated his old hate campaign?’

  ‘Yes. He laid low for a while, but then . . . Bam!’ Vince waved his arms like the flourish of a magician. ‘Suddenly he’s back and people are beginning to die. We’re concerned that he’s planning something big.’

  ‘But you’ve no idea where he’s currently hiding, so it’s difficult to check?’

  ‘It’s why I infiltrated his group, to try to get a lead on his location.’

  ‘And when you find him he’s going to be taken right back to prison?’

  Shaking his head, Vince smiled, and it was like a reflection of the smile I often view in mirrors. ‘Don’t forget, Hunter, he’s already dead. Can’t suddenly dump him back in the system, can we?’

  ‘Your job is to take him out?’

  ‘What I sometimes have to do isn’t FBI procedure.’

  ‘Assassination isn’t even CIA procedure these days,’ I said, though I knew differently. Another thought struck me. ‘The attacks on Don Griffiths and his family have nothing to do with revenge, have they? Don found him first time, and now Hicks is making sure that history doesn’t repeat itself.’