by Matt Hilton
‘It’s worse than that, Hunter. I wasn’t party to everything that was said – unfortunately all our orders came via Gant – but what I understand is that Hicks wants something from Griffiths. And if Griffiths doesn’t hand it over then his family will pay.’
I went very still.
Vince studied me, noting the coldness slip into my face. ‘Your killer eyes are back,’ he said.
‘Yes.’ My voice seeped across to him like a freezing fog. ‘You knew that Gant was going to attack the family, yet you allowed it to happen.’
‘I didn’t have an opportunity to call it in, not with Sonya at my side every second,’ Vince said. But he knew his excuse sounded lame.
‘No. You wanted them to get what they wanted from Griffiths. You fully intended helping them. That way, Gant would trust you and then lead you back to Hicks. It’s why this FBI task force was on hand and in such numbers.’ Fisting my hands, it was a struggle to keep them on the desktop.
To his credit, Vince didn’t attempt to lie. Instead he said, ‘Sometimes small sacrifices have to be made. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.’
‘And you call me pithy.’
Vince threw up his arms. The sudden movement startled Fluffy, who instantly reverted to his former self. The tom arched his back and spat and then retreated to crouch between the protective walls made by my forearms. Wary of both the cat and the man, Vince said, ‘Well it’s all fucked, isn’t it? My cover’s blown, there’s no way I can get close to Hicks now.’ He waited a beat before saying, ‘I guess we move to Plan B and send a new man after him.’ Vince grinned. ‘We have, of course, got someone in mind. In fact, Walter Hayes Conrad endorsed the idea and says he knows the ideal person for the job.’
Chapter 29
The following morning found me sitting in a plastic chair, again sipping coffee, this time from a waxed-paper cup. The room was as utilitarian as the interior of the command unit vehicle, except this time the smell wasn’t of perspiration mingling with ozone, but the antiseptic odour characteristic of all hospitals. From beyond the closed door came the soft clinks, the hurried footsteps, the low conversations familiar to a medical facility.
I was in a small antechamber off the main waiting area of Hertford City Medical Center, twiddling my thumbs and upping my caffeine quota. I didn’t like sitting around like this.
Earlier, I’d visited Don Griffiths’ sickroom, but the old man was heavily sedated and had given away nothing save for the one answer I’d been seeking.
I’ve never appreciated the term assassin spoken alongside my name, but I wasn’t so blinkered that I’d lost sight of what my military designation had meant. I could dress it up in fancy metaphors, argue that I was simply a soldier doing his duty, but when all came to all I was charged with killing those deemed enemies of the countries under Arrowsake’s protection. However, that was then. Now I was no longer under the Arrowsake sanction, and would argue vehemently against the notion that I’d ever again become the guided missile of the past. Not that it was a serious argument: twice in the past year I’d become just that. Dantalion had been a personal kill, as had those who’d died as a result of hunting Kate Piers and Imogen Ballard, but when taking down Luke Rickard and Tubal Cain, I’d been working to some extent on behalf of the shadowy agency. Arrowsake was no more, but it seemed that its influence resonated to this day.
In previous circumstances where Walter Conrad had shown his hand, I’d convinced myself that my quest was personal, that I’d have taken on the mission without official approval, and that Walter’s help was only a means to achieve my end. Pushed into this latest situation, the same terms could apply.
Looking at the problem objectively, I’d come to Pennsylvania to help an old friend whose family was being terrorised by bad men, and though the dynamics had altered, the problem persisted. The only way that the Griffithses would ever be safe was if their enemies were stopped. Gant and Darley were the patsies of Carswell Hicks, which made Hicks the major factor in the problem. As ever, I preferred going directly for the largest bully in the gang. Without its fountainhead, Hicks’ organisation would rapidly dry up, and any remnants would blow away on the wind or be mopped up as necessary. If the FBI, CIA or any other acronym-headed organisation chose to give me the weapons necessary to get the job done, then so be it.
I’m no killer for hire, and never will be, but I’ll do it for free where need dictates: I often laughed at the absurdity of that.
But now, having looked at the old man, who – even through a heady cloud of anaesthesia – still moaned in agony, I wasn’t laughing.
I’d decided I was going to accept Special Agent Vincent’s offer: help him to take out Carswell Hicks and my slate would be wiped clean.
Under congressional ruling, the CIA was no longer allowed to conduct their activities within the United States, and torture and assassination were strictly forbidden. I knew otherwise. Walter was like a surrogate father to me, but sometimes even the most loving father uses his children for his own selfish ends. I was under no illusion. This was a case of plausible denial: in other words, if I fucked up it would be on my own back. The government would deny all knowledge of or involvement with my actions.
In one sense this was good. It meant that they’d keep the hell out of the way. Red tape and bureaucracy were always a stumbling block to the fulfilment of a mission. I’d use their resources to find Hicks, but once I’d found him, it would be down to me.
Not that I was above accepting help, especially when the offer came from my friend, Jared Rington, who had answered the call to arms without question. The questions would come later, after Rink verbally kicked my butt for getting us into another mess. My big friend liked to think himself the voice of reason, but he was as much up for action as I was. The kick in the backside would be followed by Rink’s toothy grin and the query, ‘So when do we start, brother?’
There was a knock at the door, bringing me back to the present. I stood up, subconsciously putting my back to the wall and facing the entrance, as though meeting the advance of an enemy. It was too soon for Rink to have arrived, and for a moment I didn’t recognise the man standing on the threshold.
He was clean-cut, with short hair in a side parting, a pristine white shirt and steel-grey tie under a flawlessly tailored dark suit. His shoes were polished to a mirror-perfect sheen, as black and glossy as the attaché case he carried. The only thing that spoiled the preppy good looks was the stripes down his cheek where Fluffy the cat had marked him.
‘You going for the DiCaprio look this time?’
‘This is the real me,’ Vince said, stepping inside the room. ‘You don’t think I’m really into that old-time stuff? Jesus, Hunter? Elvis is dead, haven’t you heard?’
‘Not true,’ I said, straight-faced. ‘His death was a cover-up; didn’t you know he was an undercover DEA agent? He had to go into hiding after making some nasty enemies in the Colombian cartels. I know . . . I’ve met the man.’
Vince stared and I shook my head ruefully.
Vince surprised me by shrugging. ‘Maybe you have a point. The world thinks Carswell Hicks is dead, but really he’s still running around. Those stories about the King flipping burgers at a joint in Seattle might not be as crazy as they sound.’
I’d been suckered by the old double-bluff. The kid was as sharp as his new look. I made a point of keeping that in mind.
Vince was still grinning when he placed the attaché case on one of the plastic chairs. He flipped open the lid, pulled out a blue zip-lock bag, and then held it out like an offering.
I wasn’t surprised to find my SIG SAUER P226 and KA-BAR inside. I’d demanded their return as part of my side in sealing the bargain. The stack of money and credit cards raised an eyebrow though.
‘I know that morally you won’t accept payment, but don’t look on the cash that way. Call it expenses if you want, Hunter, because you’re going to need money to see you through.’
No complaint from me. I had m
ilitary pensions, savings I’d stashed away over the years, my wage from the periodic work I conducted for Rington Investigations, but I didn’t have an infinite pot of disposable cash to fall back on. I jammed the wad of notes into my jeans pocket, before looking over the credit cards. ‘Who the hell comes up with these names?’
‘Sounds English at least,’ Vince said.
I flicked the cards. ‘Danny Fisher was Elvis’s name in King Creole. You aren’t concerned that people won’t put two and two together and get the connection with Vince Everett?’
‘It’s not a problem. You aren’t going to be using the name anywhere near Hicks or the others. They’re just for further expenses when you need them.’
I shoved the cards into the pocket alongside the cash.
Vince looked me up and down.
‘Maybe your first purchase should be some new clothes. You look like a bum.’
I’d long ago got rid of the garbage bag body-warmer, but still wore the denim shirt and jeans I’d been dressed in while fighting in the forest. The use of a sponge in one of the hospital bathrooms had removed a lot of the mud, but my clothing was still stained, and blood-spattered. A few eyebrows had been raised by the hospital staff, plus the civilians who were there, but worse sights were commonplace in an A&E waiting room. To all intents and purposes, I could have come directly from the scene of an accident, so nobody commented. When I was offered the use of the antechamber, it wasn’t the look of me that was disturbing the others in the room.
‘I smell like one, too,’ I admitted.
Vince dug a plastic key card from his pocket. ‘Once you’ve got yourself kitted out, I’ve booked you an overnighter in that motel. You can take a shower there.’
I read the hotel’s address off the card. ‘Walking distance?’
‘Got you a car sorted out.’ Vince held up some keys. ‘You’ll find it in the parking lot outside. I know you prefer a stick shift, but . . .’
The military had taught me to adapt, so an automatic gearbox wasn’t going to be a problem. It was the FBI adaptations I wasn’t too keen on. Doubtless Vince’s words of ‘a car sorted out’ held more meaning. At the very least it would have a transponder fitted so that they could trace my every move. Chances were there’d be hidden microphones and wireless CCTV, so they’d see and hear everything, too.
Playing dumb, I accepted the keys.
‘One more thing,’ Vince said. He tossed a cell phone over. ‘My number’s pre-programmed. Check in with me every four hours.’
‘Night time as well, Vince? Won’t that cramp your style?’
Vince grunted. ‘Night time, I’ll call you.’
‘Not a good idea.’
Vince grimaced at my scruffy appearance. ‘Well, I don’t think I’ll be cramping your style any time soon.’
‘No, but you could compromise the mission.’
Packing the SIG and knife back into the zip-lock bag, I stuffed them under my left arm. Vince shuffled from one foot to the other, waiting while I drained the vending-machine coffee. Ready, I nodded affirmative.
‘Four hours, remember,’ Vince said. ‘I’ll give you a location to meet. Bring you up to speed on what we know.’
‘I’ll bring a friend.’ Before Vince could object I stepped past him and reached for the door handle.
‘Danny!’
I turned with a smile.
‘Just checking,’ Vince grinned.
‘Vince, I was doing this when you were still chasing cheerleaders for your first kiss.’
The agent spread his hands, gave the raffish curl of his lip. ‘What do you mean? I still chase cheerleaders every chance I get.’
I left the hospital, found the car, a plain, three-year-old Ford, and drove away, still smiling about Vince’s parting shot. Despite having got off to a strange start, I had to admit to liking the young agent. There was much in common with the young Joe Hunter who’d joined the Parachute Regiment over twenty years ago. Back then, I was also the devil-may-care type who laughed a lot. It came from the sense of immortality that went with acceptance into one of the toughest military regiments in the world. I learned a valuable lesson when shot by a Provo sniper while touring Northern Ireland. Didn’t laugh so often after that. Being devil-may-care and staying in the red zone were at opposite ends of the spectrum. Thinking of when Special Agent Vincent would learn this life-changing lesson brought a scowl to my face.
I found a strip mall, with a men’s outfitters wedged between a bail bondsman’s office and an estate agency. After surreptitiously signing them, I used the Danny Fisher credit cards to purchase T-shirts, over-shirts, underwear and socks, each in multiple packs. I also selected a couple of pairs of jeans and two jackets, one lightweight, the other more suitable for the northern Pennsylvanian weather, which I pulled on. I dumped the purchases in the car, then wandered along the mall to an AT&T store where I purchased a pre-paid mobile phone.
Inside a thrift store I used the pre-paid to call Rink and tell him where to meet.
When I came back out of the store the same white panel van, marked with a local plumber’s merchant motif, which had followed me from the hospital was parked in a lot across the way.
I pulled out the phone given to me by Vince. Pressed the call button.
‘Vince?’
‘I wasn’t expecting your first call for another three hours.’
Ignoring the young agent, I said, ‘Call your bloodhounds off. If Gant or any of his boys are around, they’ll spot the FBI tail as easily as I have.’
I shut the phone down and dropped it in a pocket, giving the men in the white van a little goodbye wave.
Less than a minute later the van peeled out of the parking lot and drove away. If a white van could look abashed, then this one did.
As soon as they were gone, I pulled out the FBI phone and opened the battery compartment. True to form there was a tracking device under the battery. I slipped it into the grocery bag of an elderly woman walking past. The phone I switched off. I knew that the phone could still be traced by virtue of its internal programming, but that would require time to organise, and maybe they wouldn’t realise that I’d dumped the transponder until they figured out that Joe Hunter wasn’t the type to attend a cribbage league at the local community centre.
I was being obstructive simply for the hell of it, but I didn’t like the feeling that my every movement was being observed, even if it was by a supposed ally. And that was where the problem lay: supposed. I liked Vince, but I didn’t trust him. Even when hunting the most dangerous terrorists in the world, I would never have slept with a woman, then nudged her out of a window to her death, whether or not she was a psycho-killer. I had to keep Vince in mind at all times.
Chapter 30
At face value Jared Rington was an anomaly. He was built like a pro-fighter, but he was no brain-damaged pug. His features had more in common with those of his Japanese mother than his Scottish-Canadian father, and yet he spoke with the drawling twang of a country and western singer. He was an imposing man whichever way you looked at him, but he was also quick to smile and carried gentleness within him that was belied by his capability for extreme violence which smouldered beneath his surface like a lit fuse. Like me, he was an Arrowsake alumnus, a graduate of that school of hard knocks, but following his demobilisation he’d managed to integrate himself back into society without carrying the same baggage that weighed me down.
I was damaged. I’m well aware of that fact. On leaving the military, I also had tried to settle back into the mundane life of a civilian, but the impulse to atone for what I perceived as a black mark on my soul ensured that I’d never know peace. Diane left me, though we loved each other, because she didn’t want to see her husband die. Diane knew I wouldn’t – couldn’t – change, and I was the first to admit that she was right. Often I’d reasoned that morality made me a good person, but my knack for embroiling myself in trouble argued against that. The saving grace was that I was helping decent people, and by that virtue
it made me decent, too. That was my lot in life. My creed was simple: I didn’t like bullies and I’d go down kicking and screaming before I’d let them have their way. The only problem with my creed was that those loyal to me were dragged into my personal quest, and there was no one more loyal to me than Rink.
Rink would probably love to shake some sense into me, but at the same time whenever I stepped into the fray I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know that my friend was standing right there. That was a given.
I’d just done showering, shaving and pulling on fresh clothing when the big man proved the point. He grabbed me in a spine-cracking bear hug, told me how happy he was to see me, then set me down. His face was like a thunderhead growing on the horizon.
‘Hunter, most guys take off to Vegas, play the slot machines, maybe hook up with a gal for some no-strings fun, but not you. They come back with empty pockets and a shit-eating grin on their faces. When you told me you were taking a couple days out, I thought, great, go an’ do some fishing or hiking or whatever. ’Specially when you headed off to the ass-end of the Alleghenies, I thought, surely he can’t get himself in trouble up there . . .’
Rink gave me the eyeball.
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘For a start, you can tell me why you didn’t even mention why you were coming up here. I shoulda known when you asked me for a copy of Brook’s file, but I thought you were just planning to make peace with her old man. If I’d’ve known you were gonna get in this kinda shit, I’d’ve come along with you from the start.’
‘I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure if I’d even make it here. I almost turned back, Rink, more than once.’
‘Goddamnit, Joe! I know you, there was nothing gonna hold you back.’
I touched my thigh unconsciously, but the gesture wasn’t lost on Rink.
‘Hunter, you’ve nothing left to prove. ‘Specially not to yourself. You can spout all that bullshit you want about feelin’ whole again, but you’re not feared of the wound in your leg, it’s the hole in your heart you’re trying to fill. The things you’ve done to atone! Shit, man, you’ve done more good than anyone I ever knew.’