Trade-Off

by Trade-Off (retail) (epub)

  ‘Newsmen, TV people, FBI, other cops. Anybody who might have taken a real interest in the case.’

  Reilly mulled that over for a few moments. ‘Who gave you your orders?’ he asked.

  ‘Harris was in charge.’

  ‘No. I mean, who gave Harris his orders?’

  Wilson shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you that,’ he said.

  ‘You mean you can’t tell me, or you won’t tell me?’ Reilly asked

  ‘OK, I mean I won’t tell you.’

  Reilly looked at him across the room and picked up the steel truncheon again. ‘I think I have to explain the facts of life to you, Agent Wilson,’ he said. ‘When you and your boyfriend climbed in through my window, you both died. Your buddy, he died quick. You’re dyin’ slow. How slow, and how much it hurts, is up to you.’

  Wilson cringed back in the chair as Reilly walked over and stood in front of him.

  ‘I guess your arm’s throbbin’ pretty good, now?’ Reilly asked, almost conversationally. He lifted the end of the baton and prodded it sharply at the left sleeve of Wilson’s jacket. The injured man howled in pain, his head slumping forward onto the back of the chair.

  Reilly waited a minute or two for Wilson to recover, then he pushed the muzzle of the SPAS-12 under the chin of his captive and pushed his head back.

  ‘I don’t like doin’ things behind people’s backs,’ Reilly said, ‘so you can watch this.’

  The baton hissed through the air and slammed into the left side of Wilson’s chest. Almost before the thud of the impact had died away, Reilly had swung the weapon up again and repeated the blow.

  Wilson’s face went white and he gasped for breath. His chest felt as if it had been hit by a truck.

  ‘Probably got a coupla ribs broke there, Agent Wilson,’ Reilly said, in the same sort of tone as he used for ordering donuts at the Diner. ‘Dare say there’ll be another few broke on the other side in a minute or so. Unless, o’ course, you wanna change your mind and talk some more.’

  Wilson could hardly see – when he opened his eyes it was like looking down a narrow, circular red tunnel, and the blood roared in his ears. But he heard enough, and as Reilly moved round to his right side with the baton, he nodded feebly.

  ‘That a yes, is it?’

  Wilson nodded again.

  ‘OK,’ Reilly said, and walked back to his seat. ‘Let’s try it again. Who gave you your orders?’

  It was nearly five minutes before Wilson could speak coherently.

  ‘It’s called Omega Control or Rolver Systems, or sometimes just Roland Oliver,’ he said, finally. ‘And before you beat the crap out of me again, I’ve never been there and I don’t know anything about it. All I know is it’s based somewhere in Nevada. We’re just a quick-reaction team, permanently on alert.’

  ‘You done this kind of thing before, then?’

  Wilson nodded, almost imperceptibly. ‘Never quite like this,’ he said, ‘but we’ve cleaned up other incidents, yes. It doesn’t always involve termination, but we’ve done that as well. We just do whatever we’re told.’

  ‘Just followin’ orders, eh, Agent Wilson?’

  Wilson leaned forward, then eased back as pain flooded his senses. ‘I’ve spent my entire adult life serving this country, sheriff,’ he spat. ‘I was a SEAL for twenty years. I was recruited to work for Roland Oliver when I left the military, and I was proud to be selected. I love this country and I’ve always served it to the best of my ability.’

  Reilly nodded. ‘Don’t seem to have a stars and stripes on me right now,’ he said, ‘but soon as I find one I’ll run it right up the nearest flagpole and salute it.’

  Wilson glared at him. ‘It’s easy to make fun of a patriot,’ he said.

  Reilly shook his head. ‘I don’t think you’re a patriot, Wilson,’ he said. ‘Patriots don’t go ’round the country killin’ American citizens just ’cause some secret squirrel outfit in Nevada tells ’em to. I think you’re just a hired killer. You may have been hired by Uncle Sam, but that don’t make a whole heap o’ difference, far as I can see.’

  ‘I’m doing my job, sheriff,’ Wilson said, ‘the best way I can. I don’t care what you or anyone else thinks of me, and I know that what we’re doing is right for America. You know how I know that?’

  Reilly shook his head. ‘Why don’t you tell me,’ he suggested.

  ‘Because of the people who are involved with Roland Oliver. You saw the ID we carry. All those identifications are genuine, because the heads of all those agencies are a part of the programme. That’s how I know we’re right.’

  Reilly grunted, but didn’t comment. Instead, he charged tack. ‘Who was on your kill list?’

  Wilson said nothing, and looked away. Reilly hefted the baton again and slapped it sharply down on the arm of his chair. ‘Talk to me, Wilson,’ he said, the threat unmistakable in his voice.

  ‘OK,’ Wilson said, reluctantly. ‘We were ordered to eliminate you, the two FBI agents and the pathologist.’

  ‘I heard the pathologist got himself killed in a car wreck.’

  Wilson smiled grimly. ‘That’s what you were supposed to hear. Anytime we have to terminate somebody we try to make it look like an accident.’

  ‘What sort of accident was I going to have?’ Reilly asked.

  ‘Harris told us to make it look like a burglary that went wrong.’

  Reilly grunted. ‘You got that bit right, Agent Wilson. It definitely went wrong. What about the FBI agents? They had some kind of accident already?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Wilson said. ‘Harris and Morgan set off for Helena early this evening. They may have taken care of things already.’

  Still covering Wilson with the shotgun, Reilly walked sideways across the room to the telephone on the wall.

  ‘That won’t help, sheriff,’ Wilson said, watching Reilly. ‘We cut the wires before we broke in here. Standard procedure.’

  Reilly picked up the phone anyway, but got no dial tone. For the first time in his life, he wished he’d brought his mobile phone home with him from the office. He sat down again, but he knew he had to end this quickly, and get to a phone that worked.

  ‘You got anybody else on your kill list?’

  ‘We had discretionary authority.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘It means we had clearance to eliminate anybody else we thought necessary. The decision was left to Harris – he was in charge of the operation.’

  ‘And what did Harris decide?’ Reilly asked. ‘Who’d he put on the kill list?’

  ‘As far as I know, nobody. He didn’t think anybody else knew enough about the case to be a real danger.’

  Reilly rested the shotgun across his lap, lowered his head and rubbed his eyes. Wilson watched him closely, and then seized the moment. He dived forward, reaching for his right ankle and simultaneously lifting his leg. The sudden movement twisted the broken bones in his left arm, and he cried out as his fingers closed around the butt of his .32.

  Dick Reilly had a code, and he could never have shot an unarmed man. He’d seen the ankle holster when he’d checked Wilson’s handcuffs, and guessed that Wilson was going to try to use it, which was the reason he’d laid down the SPAS-12.

  As Wilson brought his pistol to bear, he found himself looking straight down the barrel of the shotgun again. He knew he was too late, but he was committed and he had absolutely nothing to lose. He squeezed the trigger of the Smith as he pushed his body to the right. The last image his mind registered was the slight smile on sheriff Reilly’s face, and the whitening of the joint of the first finger of his right hand as it tightened on the trigger of the SPAS-12.

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  The ambulance with Utah plates drove up to the main gate of McCarran Air Force Base, just outside Las Vegas. As requested by the sign on the gatehouse, the driver switched off his headlights as he approached. The armed guard leaned down, and the driver handed him an authorization chit.

  The guard c
hecked it carefully against a printed list on a clipboard, and signed the chit.

  ‘Know where you’re going?’ he asked.

  The driver nodded. ‘Yup,’ he replied. ‘This is a regular run.’

  The ambulance drove on into the base, following the line of the main runway, until it reached an unmarked building set a little apart from its neighbours, and close to an aircraft hardstanding.

  While his partner opened the rear doors of the ambulance, the driver pushed the buzzer beside the door to the building, then stood in full view of the security camera until he heard the door unlock. A man in a white coat, wearing a badge with the word ‘Evans’ on it, opened the door, checked the documentation carried by the driver, then walked over to the ambulance and looked inside.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Bring her this way.’

  The two men lifted out the gurney, dropped its wheels, and pushed it into the building.

  Inside, Evans led them into a large open area containing about fifty closed aluminium caskets. He stopped beside one, checked its number and pressed a button to open the lid.

  ‘Here,’ he said.

  The two ambulance men carefully lifted the woman off the gurney and placed her inside the casket. As they gently lowered her head onto the pillow, she moaned slightly, and her eyelids flickered.

  Evans grunted in annoyance, and pushed the lid down firmly. Then he walked to the end of the casket and adjusted one of the gas flow-control knobs.

  ‘A little more nitrous oxide for a few minutes,’ he said, almost to himself.

  The other two pushed the gurney back out of the room and over to the ambulance. Six minutes later they were driving through the main gate at McCarran, heading for Las Vegas. They had less than thirty minutes before the next pick-up was due, at a hotel on the outskirts of town.

  Helena, Western Montana

  At his apartment, Hunter emptied his overnight bag, tossed the dirty washing into a pile in the bathroom, and selected clean clothes. He checked his answering machine for messages and picked out a couple of novels. Less than half an hour after he’d arrived, he picked up his bag, locked the apartment door and headed for the elevator.

  Four minutes after he’d walked out of the apartment building, the phone started to ring in Hunter’s flat. It rang for thirty seconds, stopped and then rang again. Then it fell silent for the rest of the night.

  Chapter Eight

  Thursday

  Helena, Western Montana

  Hunter sat in the Bureau Ford on a deserted street in downtown Helena, waiting on a red light. In reality, he could have done without the trip to Utah, but Christy-Lee’s obvious concern about her sister was quite enough to persuade him to accompany her.

  His mobile phone, when it rang, startled him. Hunter pulled it out of his pocket and swiped the screen. ‘Christy?’ he said.

  There was a silence from the caller, then a familiar low fruity chuckle. ‘I was still a guy last time I looked, Mr. Hunter.’

  Hunter recognized the voice immediately. ‘What can I do for you, sheriff?’

  ‘This time it’s more what I can do for you, and you gotta move fast,’ Reilly said. ‘First, where are you?’

  ‘In Helena,’ Hunter said, ‘sitting waiting at a red light. Why?’

  ‘OK,’ Reilly growled. ‘You got anyone else with you at the moment?’

  ‘No,’ Hunter said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Nobody at all?’

  ‘No, no-one. Look, what is this, sheriff?’

  ‘Best you get over to Agent Kaufmann’s place then, soon as you can,’ Reilly said, ‘and then the both of you get the hell away from there. I’ve just had a visit from two guys in this here special investigation team. They bust in through my living room window ’bout an hour ago wavin’ pistols, and they definitely hadn’t come for a beer.’

  ‘What?’ Hunter exclaimed. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I had an exchange of views with one of them,’ Reilly said, ‘but they was both out-gunned. Anyway, it ain’t an investigation team at all – it’s a clean-up squad. They’re takin’ out everyone who got deep involved with the Billy Dole thing. That’s Doctor Parker, you, me and Agent Kaufmann. Maybe even the mortician and photographer and my deputies. The other two guys in the team are on their way to Helena right now, maybe there already.’

  ‘What do you mean – “taking out”?’ Hunter asked, but he knew the answer even before Reilly started speaking.

  ‘What the guys in the CIA used to call “terminate with extreme prejudice”, Mr. Hunter. The simple word is “kill”. These two guys is under orders to kill you and the lady.’

  McCarran Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada

  It was a busy night at the base. At various intervals during the early hours of the morning, three different ambulances ferried unconscious patients to the unmarked building near the aircraft hardstanding.

  The routine was always the same: the documentation was checked, and then Evans supervised the transfer of each new arrival to one of the aluminium caskets. Once the patient was secured inside, the flow and percentage of each gas was carefully regulated to ensure that the occupant didn’t regain consciousness.

  The only characteristics shared by the occupants of the caskets were that they were all female, all very healthy, and all between the ages of eighteen and thirty.

  Helena, Western Montana

  Hunter snapped the mobile phone closed and tossed it onto the seat beside him, then gunned the engine of the Ford. The lights were still red, and Hunter checked both directions before he powered across the intersection.

  The Ford surged forward as he pushed the speed up to sixty-five. He reached over for his mobile phone, held it against the rim of the steering wheel and pressed the speed-dial code for Kaufmann’s number. He wedged the phone between his chin and shoulder because he needed both hands to control the car. The number was busy.

  Two minutes later he tried again, just in case, but with the same result. He snapped the phone closed and dropped it onto the seat.

  The Ford was still doing nearly sixty miles an hour as Hunter approached Christy-Lee Kaufmann’s apartment building. Three blocks away he dropped the speed down to twenty-five, then took a turn that brought him around the back of the building. He switched off the engine and lights, left his mobile phone on the seat and got out of the car, closing the door as quietly as he could.

  Every fiber of his being told Hunter to run, to hurry, but his mind was working the way it had been trained to work. He walked to the corner of the apartment building, peered cautiously round the corner and checked the street, looking for anything unusual. A car parked with people inside it, a parked car with lights switched on or the engine running. Anything out of the ordinary at that hour of the morning.

  There were cars along both sides of the street, but he saw nothing suspicious about any of them. Hunter checked twice, then walked swiftly towards the building entrance. The lobby was dimly illuminated, with just the emergency lights showing, and he could see no-one inside. He pushed open the outer door, and the lobby lights flared on, triggered automatically by the opening door. Still nobody.

  Hunter fumbled for his key – Christy-Lee had given him copies of her front door and apartment door keys months ago, and he kept them on the same ring as his own. The inner door clicked open, and Hunter stepped inside.

  He paused for a moment and listened. The elevator lights were out, and there was no sound from the stairwell. Christy-Lee’s apartment was on the third floor. The fastest way up was the elevator, but Hunter never even considered using it. There is no better way to advertise your arrival than to climb into an elevator. He’d take the stairs.

  He pulled his Glock 17 from the belt holster, chambered a cartridge from the seventeen-round magazine, and took up the first pressure on the trigger. Pistols manufactured by the Austrian company Glock GmbH are unique in that they have no conventional safety catch. The first pressure on the trigger cocks the striker and disengages the trigger safety, and at the sam
e time releases the firing pin lock and the safety ramp, two other internal safety devices. All it takes is a further pressure on the trigger to fire the weapon.

  Hunter took a deep breath, held the pistol out in front of him, and began to climb.

  At the first floor, he stopped and peered left and right down the corridor before stepping onto the landing. Nothing. He did the same on the second floor, with the same result. Approaching the third, he thought he heard something, something metallic, and stood motionless for a heart-stopping thirty seconds, pistol held out in front of him, ready for he knew not what.

  He heard nothing else and continued, taking infinite care to step silently on the concrete treads of the stairway. Kaufmann’s apartment lay to his right at the end of the corridor, so that was the direction he looked. He peered around the corridor wall for less than half a second, then withdrew his head. Outside her door, he had seen a bulky shape.

  Beaver Creek, Western Montana

  Sheriff Dick Reilly put down the mobile telephone he’d found in Wilson’s pocket and picked up his address book. He was sitting in his den again, going through the numbers he knew he had to call.

  First he’d called Hunter. Then he’d called his office and set the wheels in motion to sort out the two bodies still lying in his living room. Then he’d noted down the names of everyone who’d come into contact with Billy Dole’s body and started ringing them.

  Four of his deputies had been involved in the Billy Dole case, and he wasn’t prepared to take Wilson’s word that they weren’t on the clean-up squad’s kill list. Then there was the doctor, the photographer and the mortician. Reilly knew them all, knew them all well, and wasn’t about to risk any one of them.

  Helena, Western Montana

  Hunter mentally reviewed what he’d seen in that brief glance. He realized that there had to be two figures. One crouching by the door, the other standing, watching and waiting. Even as he listened, Hunter heard a faint metallic clink. It sounded like one of them was using a twirl – a lock-pick. So they couldn’t have got inside yet, which meant he had a chance to stop them.