by Sean Black
* * *
Byron made the grove of cottonwood trees, and pushed up onto his feet. The gunfire had stopped, bathing the area in an uneasy silence. He blinked, forcing his eyes to adjust to the gloom. He could hear the rush of the river behind him, the noise signaling a fast-moving current.
Byron cursed his own stupidity. Dropping them at this crossing point, where the river was high, and the current powerful had been the pickup driver’s act of petty revenge.
To his left, he could hear someone trying to quieten a child’s cries. It sounded like the little boy he had carried on his back.
The gunfire could start again at any moment. Byron didn’t want to see a child, or anyone else, shot because he was hiding with them.
There was only one thing for it. He stepped out from behind the trunk of the cottonwood tree he’d been standing behind and took off, sprinting a hundred yards as fast as he could. Gasping for breath, he took cover behind another cottonwood.
He filled his lungs, and made another sprint, staying parallel to the fence. When he was confident he was clear of the others hiding in the grove, he pulled his Glock and fired a single shot back towards the SUV, which was still parked, headlights on, on the other side of the fence.
* * *
Lauren heard the single gunshot echo from the other side of the fence as the Escalade she and Frinz were traveling in came to a standstill five hundred yards from where the kill-team vehicle had stopped. The team leader was shouting into his mic, seeking fresh permission to keep going. Now he had a trump card.
‘We just took fire.’
That was all operational command back in DC needed to hear. The word came down a few seconds later.
‘Permission granted to continue pursuit.’
A second later a fresh barrage of gunfire poured towards the fence in the direction of the single shot that had been fired from the Mexican side, and the four-man kill team were on the move, taking turns to low-run towards the fence in pairs. One man ran while his buddy provided covering fire and then they switched.
* * *
Byron pushed deeper into the grove of cottonwoods, moving away from the others, trying to get as much distance from them as he could. It would be very easy for a round to go astray and hit one of them if he stayed too close.
He scrambled through dense riverbank undergrowth. Branches whipped across his chest and face. The toe of his right boot caught on a root. He lost his balance and fell forward, banging his knee on the ground. He took a second to catch his breath, then got back to his feet.
A round slammed into a tree trunk a few feet to his left. He ran forward, towards the sound of the river. More rounds poured in behind him, tearing up the ground. He felt one punch just past his ear, close enough that he felt the slipstream.
Byron kept his head down and his legs pumping. He pushed through a final thicket of branches and there ahead of him was the bank that led down to the Rio Grande.
* * *
The kill-team leader reached down to his chest and keyed the radio clipped to his vest. ‘I lost him.’
He waited for the others to come back with better news. None of them did. He ordered one man to retreat towards the fence in case Tibor doubled back. He and the other two would push out in either direction down the river and wait for a location from the UAVs that were still in the sky. Between them they would form a triangle that they could gradually narrow until Tibor had nowhere to go but the river.
This time a river wasn’t going to save him. Not like it had back in New York. If he tried to cross this one, they would pick him off with ease.
96
Terrified by the sound of gunfire, Hector closed his eyes and clung to his mother as tightly as he could. She sang softly to him and stroked his hair. When the loud bangs stopped, he opened them again to see a river. Some of the others were already scrambling down the bank and into the water. One of them, a man, stood waist-deep in it, and beckoned Hector and his mother towards him.
Hector didn’t want to go into the water. It scared him. But the loud bangs coming from the trees behind them seemed to be scaring the others even more. The man standing in the river waded slowly back towards the bank, and put out his hand as Hector’s mother struggled down with him still clinging to her.
His mother sang a lullaby to him as she stepped down into the cold water. She told him to keep hold of her, no matter what happened. Not to let go, no matter what. He closed his eyes and shivered as the water rose around them.
* * *
Byron watched from behind a cottonwood tree as one of the four men who had breached the fence picked his way slowly through the grove towards him. Slowly he raised the Glock. His finger fell to the trigger as he took aim, the hunted turned hunter.
From the river, Byron heard a woman screaming. Reflex caused him to turn his head a fraction. The man in his sights dove for the ground. Byron dropped. He punched the Glock out, took aim and fired a warning shot above the man’s head.
Before the man tracking him could return fire, Byron stood up again, pivoted and ran back towards the river as the woman’s screams grew louder and more persistent. A three-round burst of gunfire sprayed overhead as he cleared the trees and scanned the surface of the water.
The woman’s screams were louder. He could see people in the water. Some were wading. Others had fallen, pushed over by the rushing current, and were being carried downstream into deeper water.
The air around Byron lit up with fresh fire. Tracer rounds swept in from behind him and off to one side. He hunkered down, taking cover as best he could. As the moonlight slashed across the blue-black water, he could see the screaming woman. She was flailing wildly with one arm. The other was folded around a child. She disappeared under the surface only to reappear a moment later as the river threatened to tear the child from her. She tried to strike out with her free arm, to swim towards the bank, but it was a futile effort. There were no more screams as she went under again.
* * *
Nick Frinz grabbed Lauren’s sleeve as she opened the door of the Escalade. She wrenched herself away, and ran towards the fence. He called after her. She kept running. She found the gap Byron and the others had used, peeled back the wire, cutting the palm of her hand on a jagged edge, and dove through, landing face first on the ground. She got to her feet and ran towards the sound of the gunfire. Through her earpiece she could hear someone at the command center ordering her to stop and return to the vehicle. Reaching up, she tore out her earpiece, snapping the wire, and threw it away.
* * *
The Glock lay abandoned on the riverbank. Byron powered through the water, arms tearing ahead of him, driving him forward, legs scissoring frantically, as he struck out for the spot where the little boy and his mother had got into difficulties. He choked as he caught a mouthful of river water. He spat out what he could and looked around, treading water as he caught his breath.
On the far bank he could see the people who had made it. He shouted to them, ‘Where are they? You see them?’
When he didn’t get a reply, he struck out again on his own, moving with the current, heading downriver. Every twenty yards he would stop and scan the surface. Still no sign of them.
Every second that ticked by felt like an hour. He could no longer see anyone on either bank. As far as he knew, there was only him and the Rio Grande.
He pushed the water with one hand, turning slowly a full 360 degrees. He caught a glimpse of yellow.
Yellow? What could be that color and floating on the surface?
The answer came to him.
He could see a small shape floating about fifty yards downstream. The flash of yellow was something only Byron could see. Yellow equalled fear.
Byron reached Hector with a series of powerful strokes. He grabbed him, turned onto his back and, with his hand under the child’s chin, kicked towards the far bank. The little boy’s eyes were shut. His face was blue with cold, his body limp and seemingly lifeless.
Pushing aw
ay any thought that he might already be dead, Byron focused on reaching the bank. There was no sign of the boy’s mother. Byron already feared the worst. She wouldn’t have left her son to fend for himself in the river.
Finally, Byron made the riverbank on the Mexican side. He hauled Hector out of the water, carried him up the muddy slope and laid him on the ground. ‘Stay with me,’ he said, opening the little mouth and checking for an obstruction.
* * *
Lauren stood with two members of the kill team on the opposite side of the river. Using one of the team’s night scopes, she watched Tibor, bent over the little boy. The boy’s legs kicked out suddenly. He was alive. Tibor had spent the past two minutes administering the kiss of life, at first, it had seemed, with no results. But he had kept at it regardless.
She watched as he helped the child sit up. Next to Lauren, the leader of the kill team spoke. ‘Well?’ he asked.
He was asking whether he should take the shot or not. Lauren no longer knew what the answer should be. Tibor was supposed to be a killing machine, a creature devoid of feeling whose only concern was his own survival. She watched through the scope as Tibor picked up the child, slung him over his shoulder and began to walk away from the river.
Next to her, the kill-team leader lowered his rifle. ‘He has the kid. It’s too close. I had him too.’
* * *
Byron could almost feel the guns trained on his back as he kept walking. From the shadows of the grove the other men, women and children joined him. In less than five hundred yards they would reach a road used by the Mexican authorities to patrol their side.
There was already a Mexican federal authority chopper overhead. Its spotlight slashed the ground in front of them before circling back to catch them in a pool of light.
Next to his ear, Byron heard Hector ask for his mother. Byron held him a little tighter. ‘It’s gonna be okay,’ he told him.
Epilogue
Seven months later
Fidelius Kelsen pulled his Mercedes S-Series into a spot at the back of the country club. For these late-night meetings, they had taken to using an entrance that led through the kitchen and out into the main members’ dining room. His brother Billy’s Lexus was already there, which surprised him. Billy was rarely the first person at any event. Among the family, he was notorious for being late. Fidelius had always figured it was a passive-aggressive show of power from his being a judge that had carried over into his regular life. He usually kept people waiting for no other reason than that he could.
Getting out of his car, Fidelius took a moment to reflect on how far they had come. Even with a small battalion of high-priced lawyers, and a lot of even higher-priced favors called in, it was a minor miracle that he was a free man. There were plenty of civil lawsuits to come, but the threat of criminal conviction and jail time seemed to have receded. It had been the fight of his life, but he had come through it, as he always did. Survival gave him no small measure of satisfaction.
He stepped past a metal dumpster full of kitchen waste and pulled open the side door. He walked down a narrow service corridor and emerged into the club’s kitchen. When called upon, the club’s chef could produce a six-course meal for over five hundred guests and the kitchen’s size reflected that. Fidelius skirted a wheeled laundry basket full of staff uniforms, his head down, his mind on what needed to be arranged at this meeting. There were so many seemingly minor details to contend with that it was hard to keep track and they avoided writing anything down, even a simple note on the back of a cocktail napkin.
Looking up, he stopped dead in his tracks. It took him a second to process what was ahead of him. Billy was lying on top of one of the large kitchen ranges. His hands and feet were bound and, apart from a pair of white briefs, he was naked. His hair was soaking wet.
A cooking pan rattled and a man stepped out of from behind a metal storage shelf. He had a white kitchen towel in one hand and a bucket of water in the other.
Fidelius recognized him immediately. It was Tibor.
Tibor ignored Fidelius. He walked to where he had staked out Judge William Kelsen on the range, and placed the soaking wet towel over his mouth and nose. He lifted the bucket of water. Billy thrashed around as Tibor slowly poured the water onto the towel.
Billy gagged and choked, screamed and pleaded for Tibor to stop. He twisted his neck from one side to the other, but there was no escaping the water. Tibor made sure of that.
Finally, Tibor stopped. He placed the bucket on the floor and turned towards Fidelius. ‘Your brother has already spilled his guts,’ said Tibor. ‘This last bucket was just for demonstration purposes. To give you a little insight into what the next few hours might hold for you.’
Fidelius took a step to one side. There was a wooden knife block on a counter next to him. He could easily grab one of the knives before Tibor could stop him. He placed his hand on the counter. ‘Why did you come back?’ he asked.
‘Unfinished business,’ said Tibor.
Fidelius inched his hand along the counter towards the knives. Tibor didn’t seem to notice.
‘You and Billy killed Thea.’
Fidelius wasn’t about to admit it. Not now. Not ever. ‘I think you’re mistaken,’ he said to Tibor. ‘And if my brother said we did, it’s hardly a surprise.’
‘It doesn’t really matter what I do or don’t believe,’ Tibor replied.
Billy was gurgling and groaning. He twisted his neck, staring wild-eyed at his brother. He was trying to say something, but Fidelius couldn’t make out the words through all the coughing and choking. He took a step along the counter so that his hand was behind his back. His fingers felt for the handle of the biggest knife. His hand closed around it. He eased it gently from the block.
A hand grasped his wrist and twisted it. The knife clattered onto the tiled floor. Fidelius spun round. Sheriff Martin was standing on the other side of the counter, still holding Fidelius’s wrist. He let go without saying anything. He didn’t need to speak. The way he was staring at Fidelius told its own story.
‘You don’t believe this crank, John, do you?’ Fidelius said to him, with a nod towards Tibor.
Sheriff Martin plucked one of the smaller knives from the same block. He tested its sharpness with his thumb. ‘I didn’t. Not at first. But why would a man come back here to tell me he didn’t kill my daughter if he’d done it?’
Fidelius made a lunge for one of the knives. Sheriff Martin was faster. He leaned over, raised his arm and stabbed the smaller knife through Fidelius’s hand, skewering it and pinning it to the wooden block. Fidelius screamed.
‘Billy’s told us everything already,’ said Sheriff Martin. ‘He had details that only someone who was there when Thea died would know.’
‘Bath time’s over, Billy,’ said Tibor.
Fidelius watched as Tibor began to free Billy from the kitchen range. He helped him back to his feet.
Sheriff Martin grabbed the knife handle and yanked the blade. Fidelius yelped. He clutched his hand as blood poured from the wound. Billy was bundled into a ball on the floor, his knees up at his chest.
Tibor walked towards Fidelius, who backed away, only to run into Sheriff Martin. He struggled as they dragged him towards the kitchen range, kicking and screaming.
His screams grew louder as, between them, Tibor and the sheriff lifted him onto the range, still fully clothed, and staked him out on top of it.
‘John!’ Fidelius screamed. ‘Don’t do this. Please. I’ll give you anything.’
Fidelius heard the click of the gas burners being turned on.
As the first ignited, Sheriff Martin asked, ‘Can you give me my daughter back?’
There was another click. The second burner caught. The pain was beyond anything Fidelius had ever experienced. He kept screaming and pleading as, one after another, the burners ignited and his clothes began to melt into his skin.
* * *
Byron walked across the parking lot. The sickly sweet smell of burning fle
sh still hung in the air. He had no idea how Sheriff Martin was going to explain what had happened to the Kelsen brothers. They hadn’t discussed it.
The answer came as Byron reached the car Sheriff Martin had given him. It was one of many confiscated over the past few years by the Sheriff’s Department. What Sheriff Martin did next took the form of a single gunshot that was followed by silence. Byron started to turn back, then decided against it. He already knew what he’d find. Without his daughter, Sheriff Martin didn’t want to go on. He had already told Byron as much. But before he departed the earth, he had wanted the Kelsen brothers to experience a little of his torment. With that done, he had made good on the final part of his plan and taken his own life.
Byron climbed into the driver’s seat, turned on the engine, and pulled out of the parking lot. Fifteen minutes later, he reached the outskirts of Kelsen County. Glancing in his rearview mirror, he saw a sign welcoming visitors. He stepped a little harder on the gas. The car lurched forward. A few seconds later, the road sign was nothing but a dot in his rearview mirror.
Other Books by Sean Black
Byron Tibor Series
Post
Ryan Lock Series
Lockdown
Deadlock
Lock & Load (Short)
Gridlock
The Devil’s Bounty
The Innocent
Fire Point
Budapest/48 (Short)
Malibu Mystery Series
(with Rebecca Cantrell)