Blood and Ashes

by Matt Hilton

  That single phrase was what had snapped inside him earlier: for the first time the blindfold had been lifted from his eyes and he’d seen Hicks for the pathetic, greedy fool that he was. We don’t need their money, Carswell! We need them all dead, he’d wanted to scream. Standing in the way of that was his mentor, his pseudo-father. Instead of screaming, Gant had shot him. And each time he’d fired his vision had grown clearer.

  That he had actually murdered Hicks didn’t come as a surprise to him; he’d boarded the boat expecting that might be the outcome. Yet now that he had Hicks’ blood spattered down his shirtfront he couldn’t help but wish it had ended differently. In a more agreeable scenario, they would have gone through with everything they’d plotted together. He felt no anger at Hicks, didn’t blame him as he’d assured Darley, he was only sad that Hicks had been lured from their true path by the same greed that had infected this great country. The love of money, the Bible warned, was the root of all evil, and he couldn’t agree more. You didn’t need cash to succeed: just the will, the guts and the sheer determination to keep on fighting.

  And it seemed there was only one man around here with those traits.

  Out on the Hudson a motor growled. Gant straightened from the rail, scanning the water, but couldn’t see another vessel there.

  Disappointment struck him anew.

  He limped across the deck, slip-sliding on the wet planks, and leaned out over the dark water again. The boat on which he’d arrived here was gone. He caught a sleek shape moving away at speed. Darley, the chickenshit son-of-a-bitch, making off the second his back was turned. He must have sneaked aboard the motorboat and let it drift away on the current until he was sure he was far enough away before firing up the motor.

  He knew he shouldn’t have trusted the little turkey-necked freak. Darley didn’t like it that Hicks had targeted his old neighbourhood, or that Gant planned further destruction of Manhattan. If it wasn’t for the fact that Darley had been the one to brain Vince Everett when he’d tried to usurp command, or that it was Darley who’d dragged him away from certain death in the logging camp, he’d have kerb-stamped the little punk to death when first he’d shown his doubt on the ride back to New York. He pictured it now, bundling the little man out of the van, forcing his open mouth on a raised kerbstone and then hammering down with the heel of his boot until his face was mush.

  That wouldn’t happen now, but it wasn’t enough to stop Gant from trying to kill the little puke-ball. He snapped out his handgun, firing at the source of the engine sound. It was a waste of .22 shells. At this distance he wasn’t close enough to kill the man, but Gant kept on firing and yelling in wordless fury as the engine sound receded into the distance.

  Worn down by the betrayal of his two closest allies, Gant allowed the gun to drop to his side. He stood there blowing hard, trying to steady himself. The wound in his ear pulsed like a drum beat, keeping rhythm with his heart. He glanced around, saw the shore off on his left, then across the broad channel the lights of the Manhattan financial district. He watched for search lights flicking on, seeking out the source of the gunshots, but nothing stirred. Luckily he was too far out on the water for anyone to have heard, or if they did, they’d no idea where the noise originated.

  There was a growl coming from somewhere and it took him a moment to locate where. The sound was in his throat; anger taking shape again in a building curse. He spat it out, turned quickly from the rail and went back into the large cabin. It was pointless dwelling on the failure of others.

  The two men that Darley had killed were in the corner where the buckshot had thrown them. Carswell Hicks still sat propped up against the silver lock-box. The smell was overwhelming. Too soon to be putrefaction, the stench was a pungent mix of spilled blood, voided bowels and opened bodies. Gant was familiar with the stench. It had been a constant companion when he’d fought against the Iraqis and the Taliban. Still, he threw a forearm over his nose as he stooped down over Hicks’ body. With the barrel of his gun, he flicked open Hicks’ jacket. Darley had stripped the two minders of their weapons, and because he wouldn’t risk leaving Gant anything larger than the .22 to shoot at him with, he would have taken them with him. Gant hoped that Darley had forgotten about the Ruger MP9 that Hicks carried concealed in a shoulder rig.

  The gun was there and Gant reached for it. He trembled as he neared the body of his friend, expecting Hicks to snap out his hands and go for his throat, seeking vengeance from beyond the grave. It was a fanciful thought. He unsnapped the holding strap and withdrew the Ruger. It was a compact machine pistol that Hicks had adapted for concealment under his suit jacket. The folding stock had been removed, making it not much larger than any other handgun, but the firepower was awesome in comparison to Gant’s weapon. Under Hicks’ other armpit he found three extra magazines of nine mm hollow-point rounds.

  Gant studied the gun and smiled for the first time in hours. With this he could take the war to his enemies. But there was something infinitely better.

  He placed the weapon and ammunition on the desk and returned to Hicks. His aversion to touching the man had fled, and he grabbed Hicks and dragged him away from the lock-box. A broad smear of blood and urine stained the boards before he was finished, but the lubricant helped him slide the heavy box from concealment. He jostled it over to the centre of the cabin and threw back the lid. Inside were the two flasks that Hicks had shown him earlier. They had been packed into slots in the foam interior. He thought they’d be heavier, but when he lifted one of the flasks free it wasn’t much weightier than a two-litre bottle of Coke. The flasks looked like elongated eggs, nine inches from rounded tip to rounded tip. One end was capped with a screw-down lid. He unscrewed it, peered inside. Some sort of viscous liquid was pooled at the bottom of a glass vial. He was no scientist, but judging by its heaviness the lock-box had to be lead-lined, which assured him these things were the real deal.

  Radioactive isotope.

  He screwed the lid back on and replaced the flask in its foam enclosure. Then with the lid shut he grasped one end of the box and hauled it off the floor a few inches. He could manage it, but it would be a struggle to cart the entire box off the boat with him. He could take the flasks themselves, but the lead was there for a good reason. Last thing he wanted was to damage the flasks and kill himself before he was through. He stood there a moment before the solution struck him. Why even remove the box from the boat when he could take the boat directly to his target?

  Chapter 45

  ‘Pity we missed him, huh? I would’ve liked to kill Carswell Hicks. What about you, brother?’

  Rink had to shout over the roar of the engine as he angled the speedboat out into the deep channel between Ellis and Governor’s Islands. He was at the controls while I braced myself in the belly of the craft. Hanging on to the back of Rink’s seat, I squinted through the darkness.

  ‘We can’t complain,’ I said through clenched teeth. ‘Sam Gant might be hard enough to kill for the both of us. I missed him last time, but at least we’re going to get a second chance.’

  ‘Going to have to do this quick, brother,’ Rink said.

  ‘Yeah, real quick.’

  The news that Darley Adams had run to the police, throwing himself at their mercy with a plea bargain in exchange for leniency, caused a ripple of activity. He swore that he was an innocent dragged into this against his will, and that he’d have come forward much sooner if he hadn’t been terrified for his life. Wide-eyed, with drool pooling in the corner of his mouth, he told his captors how he’d been forced to accompany Samuel Gant and Carswell Hicks. He even swore he’d tried to stop Hicks detonating the bomb in Lincoln Square, his old neighbourhood. He was adamant that he’d only gone to the boat with Gant in the hope that he could snatch the canisters of radioactive waste so he could hand them over safely to the police. He said that Gant had murdered everyone on board, going crazy with a shotgun and an automatic weapon. He tried his hardest to get away with the plutonium but had to abandon it wh
en Gant came after him. He should be treated like a goddamn hero, not a piece of crap!

  No one believed a word he said, other than his closing statement. ‘Gant is crazy! He’s going to blow up a target in the city and there’s no way you’ll stop him.’

  Although we wanted to interrogate Darley further, we would be the last people allowed to enter a police station and have access to a prisoner. As a sub-division controller of black ops Walter Hayes Conrad’s power was finite, so on this occasion even his influence was swatted aside. The FBI, the NYPD, Homeland Security, every other federal agency drafted in to contain the threat to New York City, had jurisdiction over him when it came to domestic problems like this. The CIA was forbidden from conducting clandestine operations on the mainland and by rights their involvement in the case was restricted to investigating Kwon’s part in the plot to detonate a dirty bomb in Manhattan. Still, with that said, Walter wasn’t the type to let jurisdictional hierarchy impede him. He didn’t get us in to speak to Darley Adams, but he fed us the information bleeding from the interrogation room like a gushing wound. With so many agencies involved, the flow of information was easily tapped, and while orders and instructions were flying up and down the chain of command from the lowliest uniformed officer to Capitol Hill and back, we were already on the speedboat appropriated from a berth near to Battery Park and streaking out into New York Harbor.

  Darley had explained about the big old boat that Samuel Gant was aboard. Navy blue, with all its lights extinguished it would be difficult to spot; it would be a dark slice of shadow against the night. It didn’t help that the rain had returned with a vengeance making visibility little more than a few boat spans in any direction.

  The likelihood was that a take-down team was being assembled at this very moment. The Coast Guard, the Port Authority, maybe even the US Navy would be on high alert, and launching a flotilla to surround and contain the boat that Samuel Hicks had commandeered. There was even the possibility that gunships were on their way with teams of Navy Seals on board. They’d be under strict orders to stop the boat at all costs. As far as any of them were aware the potential of a cataclysmic strike on the city was imminent. The cadre of nodding men must be rubbing their hands in glee at the effect that Darley’s confession had caused.

  Not that I believed we should downplay the threat. In his mental state, Samuel Gant could engineer massive destruction. Even if the effects of the contamination didn’t cause a no-go area for decades afterwards, he had a vessel, fuel, and a means of detonating both. A bomb delivered to the right target could cause massive structural damage and numerous deaths, and that was what we couldn’t allow.

  Chances were if Arrowsake knew that we were heading out to intercept Gant, they would try to stop us. For Arrowsake to regain their seat of power they would prefer the madman to succeed. The thought of that was enough to motivate us to stop Gant or die trying.

  I had to stop thinking of them as Arrowsake. This was something different; this was not what I was part of for fourteen years. This modern incarnation was an evil-minded offspring, a seething, roiling, muddy reflection of the past – the personification of everything that I’d stood against all my life.

  ‘Heads up, buddy,’ Rink shouted. ‘Over there, you think that’s him?’

  Snapping out of my thoughts, I followed where Rink pointed. At first I couldn’t make out anything against the oily depths. The lights of Jersey bled on to the water, refracted and twisted by the undulating surface, the streaking rain making it difficult to pinpoint anything. I caught an image of a turquoise figure rearing into the night sky. Concentrating on the pale glow of light on verdigrised copper I saw a bulky shape at its base. It looked out of place, an unfamiliar addition to a world-famous landmark.

  ‘Man, I hope not.’ I cast my gaze back across the water towards Manhattan. I was sure that Gant would’ve taken the boat that way, maybe at ramming speed towards the financial district where he thought he could cause the most disruption. What the hell had made him turn the other way? ‘Jesus Christ! I think he intends attacking the Statue of Liberty.’

  ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me!’ Rink swung the speedboat towards Liberty Island regardless of the rhetoric he blurted.

  ‘I wish I was.’ Maybe Gant’s plan wasn’t as out there as it first appeared. The Statue of Liberty was a symbol of freedom from oppression; to a person who thought he was the victim, that he was one of the downtrodden, the statue would stand for something else. Maybe Gant saw Lady Liberty as the beacon that had attracted the many races of the earth to these shores, her beckoning torch waving at allcomers to enter the country and despoil his race. I could be wrong, maybe the island was just the nearest target he’d latched on to and there was no hidden meaning for the attack. But it was as plausible a reason as any. If he desired to strike against the US government, then what greater target was there out here on the water?

  A hundred yards out from shore and I recognised the battered old yacht that Darley had described. The term ‘yacht’ didn’t fit the boat very well: it was more like an industrial barge that had been converted to include living quarters. It was eighty feet long, almost half as wide, a blunt ugly-looking thing that wasn’t helped by the poorly applied coat of paint.

  Rink headed towards the yacht. It was moored at a crazy angle and we could see now that Gant had beached the boat on the pilings at the base of the island. The dock was never made to accommodate a vessel as large as this, usually being the domain of pleasure boats and the small water taxis that transported day-trippers back and forth. Gant’s boat had rammed the pier, partly demolishing it, then slewed round and into the concrete wharf. It had then ridden up on to it before settling down a few feet as concrete and hull crumbled under the impact. Over it all, the statue reared her head in lofty disdain.

  I looked down at the SIG in my fist. Somewhere along the way I’d withdrawn it and manipulated the slide. Instinct was overtaking my capacity to keep up and I experienced a slowing of reality as adrenalin shrieked through my system. I only gave it a second’s thought, trying to recall the last time I’d felt like this. Nothing since the near-fatal battle with Luke Rickard had got my blood pumping so fiercely. Even the stirrings I’d felt while hunting Gant’s crew back in the Alleghenies hadn’t approached this sense of impending action. I’d felt alive then, but now I felt supercharged.

  ‘Take us in on the far side of the yacht,’ I said.

  ‘Looks like he’s ditched it. Maybe he’s already on the island.’

  ‘We have to check. I don’t want him up on that deck shooting at us as we cross the open ground.’

  ‘Good point.’

  Rink swung the boat round the stern of the yacht, cut the engine and allowed it to drift in for the last few yards. He stood up, pulling out his Glock. ‘You going up here? I’ll take the front, OK?’

  ‘Yeah, but take it real easy.’ The cautionary words were for us both. Supercharged was one thing, but it didn’t make you superhuman. Charging in full of spit and venom would only get the two of us killed.

  I jammed the barrel of the SIG between my teeth, reached up to the gunwales of the yacht and hoisted myself up. Rink steadied the speedboat, then jammed his palms against the hull, used a walking motion powered by his thick arms to manoeuvre the speedboat towards the shoreline. By the time I’d slipped over the rail and on to the deck, Rink had clambered on to the prow of the speedboat and leapt the final few feet to shore. I swung round and brought up my gun, sweeping the deck for a target.

  It was too quiet. Rain still pattered down, and the river lapped at the boards and the pilings, sloshing and chuckling, but I could hear neither footsteps nor any other movement from inside the boat. Didn’t mean that Gant wasn’t on board, just that he could have heard us coming and was preparing an ambush.

  From the vantage on the deck, I scanned the approach to the statue. The eleven-pointed plinth that Lady Liberty stood upon was lit with spotlights, but the angles offered plenty of shadows to hide in. I couldn’t pi
ck out any movement and searched to the right. The trees that swathed the northern end of the island were bare of foliage, but their trunks could easily conceal a man. Distractedly I wondered what security precautions were taken on the island. Was there a police or Port Authority presence here? I didn’t know, and it was too late to worry about the consequences of law officers mistaking me for the crazy man who’d beached his craft. I looked for Rink, couldn’t see him, but knew that he’d be there watching my back.

  First thing first. Find the plutonium. I’d a good idea that Gant would have it and then I could finish what we started back in the Pennsylvanian logging camp. The old yacht boasted a large cabin-cum-galley structure in the centre of the deck. Perched on top of it was a bridge that was open to the elements at the back. I reared up on tiptoe to get a clear view but there was no one at the wheel. Headed for the galley. At some point someone had been creative with a brush here as well, and everything including the circular windows had been painted over in the same navy colour. Maybe whoever had once owned this vessel was severely agoraphobic.

  The only way to check inside was to go in through the double doors. If Gant was waiting then I’d be shot the second I poked my head inside, and I didn’t relish the idea. Could have done with Rink joining me up there; together we could launch a one-two assault on the cabin and at least one of us would get an opportunity to kill the tattooed man. Still no sign of Rink, though, and the clock was ticking. Not the best choice of words, true, but fitting nonetheless. Gant could be preparing an explosion now and I didn’t want to be caught on the boat when it went supernova.