by Andy Maslen
“Damn him! Where is he? I said six and that’s what I meant.”
Gabriel shook the image of Shaun’s splayed body from his head and answered.
“I’m sure he’ll be here. Maybe he stopped for a coffee. Anyway, it’s five fifty-eight. He has a couple of minutes.”
“I beg to differ. This is a Rolex Submariner and it’s extremely accurate.”
“I’m sure it is. But a couple of minutes either way won’t make any difference. We can make it up during the day.”
“Hmm. Well, Gabriel, I suppose I did bring you on board for your military experience as much as anything else, so I will bow to your superior wisdom. But that thing over there needs to be loaded by two o’clock next to the D-Type on a plane I’ve chartered. And you and I have to be at O’Hare for four. So let’s not waste any more time than we have to.”
Gabriel was just considering pointing out that killing Shaun had “wasted” more time than any nominal delay caused by the transporter driver, when the distant sound of a big diesel power-plant rendered his point moot.
The Mack truck that rolled into the yard a minute later was vast. The tractor alone loomed over them like a cliff face, the morning shafts of sunlight bouncing off its acres of chrome plating. It was pulling a trailer mounted with a forty-foot container. The gigantic windscreen wore an external chrome visor like a peaked cap, below which someone had stencilled “Earl Wilson Trucking”. Twin exhausts just aft of the cabin sported perforated heat shields that reminded Gabriel of the hand guards on assault rifles. Except these were over a foot in diameter and covered in a thick layer of chrome plating. The driver blipped the throttle before cutting the ignition, sending two gouts of smoke jetting skywards. The door opened and out stepped the man Gabriel assumed was Earl Wilson. He descended the drilled steel steps backwards, as if getting onto a boat from a dock, then turned to face them. He was fortyish, lean and tanned like a cowboy from a cigarette poster.
“You Maitland?” he said, offering his hand to Gabriel, who shook it reflexively.
“That would be Sir Toby Maitland,” Maitland said. “And no, I am he.”
“Oh. Well, forgive me. Sir Toby Maitland. Look, I’ve had a long drive to get up here. You folks got any coffee on the go? A man could die of thirst.” He jerked his chin towards the kitchen door.
“Of course. Where are my manners? Gabriel, perhaps you would be so kind as to show Mr Wilson where the harvester is and I’ll make him a cup of coffee,” Maitland said. “One for you?”
Gabriel stared hard at Maitland.
“No thank you. I’m fine.” He turned back to the trucker, who was stretching his arms over his head and facing the other way. “Come with me. I’ll show you the load.”
They walked over to the barn where only yesterday the man whose bloody corpse now lay in the kitchen had been welding and spraying as his father had taught him to. Maitland would pay for Shaun.
He pulled the door across on its greased track and hit the lights. Earl wandered over to the harvester and walked all the way round the big machine, occasionally running a gnarled hand along a rail or conveyor belt part, then thrusting it back into the pocket of his Levi’s.
“You don’t have these over in Britain, then?” he said.
“Not like this. The boss says it’s the best in the world. I’m not much of an expert.”
“Well, he sure as hell don’t look like no farmer to me.”
“He’s what we call a gentleman farmer,” Gabriel improvised. “Owns the land, plans it all out, but has farm workers who do the ploughing and stuff.”
“Huh. That figures. Man don’t look like he’s done an honest day’s work in his life. Anyway, that ain’t my concern, I guess. You want to give me a hand with this? I saw you got a tow-ball on the back of that Lincoln out there. I’ll fetch a rope from my rig then you can pull it out of here.”
“OK, but how are you going to get it up into that container?”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that. I got a nice little setup in there: ramps ‘n’ a winch. She’ll go up sweet as a nut once we get her lined up properly.”
Gabriel reversed the big car until the back end was a couple of yards inside the barn, in line with the front end of the potato harvester. As he got out of the Lincoln, Maitland fell into step alongside him as he walked to meet Earl at the harvester.
“Mr Wilson? Your coffee. I made it black with sugar – I somehow feel that’s your preference. Am I right?” Maitland said, holding out the mug as if it contained something distasteful.
“I usually take it with cream but, hey, coffee’s coffee, am I right?”
“Indeed you are. I’ll leave you to it. Gabriel, come and get me when you’re ready. I shall be inside.”
With Maitland gone, the two other men hooked the harvester up to the Lincoln with a length of polypropylene rope they found hanging from a hook on the workshop wall. Then Gabriel drove out of the barn, left foot over the brake pedal to allow the Lincoln to creep forward without jerking, and stopped it when he judged he’d got the front of the harvester level with the back of Earl’s truck.
He stood back as the older man opened the back of the container and swung himself up. Then he slid two wide ramps out and motioned for Gabriel to grab them and pull them all the way out. Once the ramps were set to the same width as the harvester’s wheels, Earl walked to the front of the container and unhooked a thin steel cable from a built-in winch. He pulled it off the reel as he walked back towards Gabriel. With the winch’s gears in neutral, the reel made a high-pitched whine as forty feet or so of twisted steel wire unrolled and snaked across the floor. Earl handed the curved steel hook to Gabriel.
“OK, so hook this over that bar there and just guide her onto the ramps, then I’ll pull her up on the winch and you can just stand back and watch.”
Gabriel did as instructed, and soon the big green harvester was inching up the ramps, Earl controlling the winch with a delicate touch on the power lever. As it passed him at eye level he could see one of the long gun barrels inside the opposite rail. With the duct tape and the paint, it didn’t stand out, but it didn’t look like it played a functional role in the machine’s operation either. Nothing to be done now except hope. Then Gabriel caught himself. What the hell? Why was he praying that the two .50 cal heavy machine guns would make it through UK customs and into the country where they could be used to assassinate the Prime Minister? The seduction of efficiency, one of his old instructors had called it. Sometimes it became more important to see a bad operation through to completion than to figure out a better one.
“Hey, buddy. Wake up! We’re done.”
Gabriel looked round. The harvester was snug inside the container, and Earl had tied it down with two-inch wide blue canvas ratchet straps.
“Give me a hand to stow those ramps and I’m out of here.”
Gabriel bent to grab hold of the ends of the ramps and shoved them into the container. They scraped along the steel base, screeching and grinding their way to the front wall. Earl locked them in place with a couple of plastic star knobs that spun down onto threaded studs sticking up from the floor.
“OK, that about wraps it up. All I need’s the cash and you can get back to discussing beets with your gentleman farmer friend.”
“What did you agree with Sir Toby?”
“A grand for this trip. And another five hundred to go pick up that sports car he bought over in Glencoe.”
“OK, do you mind waiting here? I’ll go and get your money.”
“Sure, no problem. I’ll be up front warming her up.”
Gabriel headed inside while Earl climbed into the tractor unit. The starter motor whined as the crankshaft laboured to turn the big pistons inside their cylinders. Then, after a couple of rotations, the diesel ignited and the truck roared into life.
Maitland was sitting at the kitchen table counting wads of ten- and twenty-dollar bills into neat stacks, arranging them between the gobbets of flesh and blood spatters. The smell was nauseating, but he appea
red oblivious to it, and to the ruined corpse of his former employee. He looked up.
“Gabriel, good man. I’m almost finished. There. One thousand, five hundred dollars. Cheap at the price.”
He picked up the fifteen piles of bills, one by one, and stacked them into a single block. Then he knocked it on the tabletop to straighten the edges and handed the cash over to Gabriel.
“Once Wilson’s out of the yard, we’re moving. Pack your things and be ready to leave in twenty minutes.”
The dismissal was something Gabriel had become used to in his short tenure as Maitland’s hard man-cum-operations consultant. He turned and left, avoiding the sight of the body hanging over the back of the chair.
Gabriel strode over to the truck cab and climbed up the steps on the driver’s side. Holding onto a grab rail, he knocked on the window. It whirred down; as it reached its stop, a warm blast of heated air rolled over Gabriel, a combination of pine from the little fir tree-shaped air freshener dangling from the rear view mirror, cigar smoke and fast food. Earl turned to face him.
“That my money?”
“Yes. Do you want to count it?”
“You know what? I think I do. Why don’t you come round and take a seat.”
The truck was luxurious; the seats were upholstered in soft, tan leather, with armrests containing the ubiquitous cupholders, and there was a sophisticated looking stereo system in the dash. Although the smell of burgers and fried food was stronger inside, there wasn’t a scrap of litter anywhere. Gabriel had to admit to himself he’d been expecting a more slobby environment – empty soft drink cans and greasy waxed paper wrappers, maybe a couple of tabloid newspapers scrunched up on the floor. Just goes to show you shouldn’t make assumptions.
Earl was dealing out the notes into tidy piles of a hundred, just as Maitland had done moments before. Gabriel waited as he worked his way through the bundle of notes. He’d read somewhere that more than nine in ten of all banknotes had traces of cocaine on them. He didn’t know if it was an urban myth or not, but he was sure these particular bills would get a perfect ten. Seeing as they’d passed through the hands of Davis Meeks, they’d probably score highly for crystal meth, gunshot residue and nuclear fuel for all he knew.
“There we go!” Earl said. “Fifteen hundred. Your boss might be a tad stuck up but he’s a straight arrow when it comes to business, at any rate. I’m good to go. I’ll see you at O’Hare.”
They shook hands. Gabriel opened his door and dropped down from the cab onto the concrete, landing on the balls of his feet. He stood back as the rig jerked forward, air brakes hissing, then pulled out of the yard, leaving a thick trail of diesel fumes in the air. He turned back to the house. All of a sudden it felt like they were entering the endgame. He thought back to his conversation at the gravel pit with Shaun. How he’d suggested blackmailing Maitland. And what Shaun had earned instead of his “quarter mil”. He wiped his forehead. Another man’s blood on his hands.
Chapter 32
Before they left for good, Maitland instructed Gabriel to throw the Glock into the gravel pit. It was a handsome weapon, but in it went to join the ruined Harleys deep below the weedy surface. They drove out of the farm at 07.59. As he pulled out of the yard, sitting in the luxurious, sculpted leather driver’s seat of the Lincoln, Gabriel counted up the bodies they’d left behind. Meeks and his gang members. Six. Seven if you counted the guy with haemophilia, who he’d never meant to kill. Bart Venter. Eight. Shaun. Nine. He hoped to God there wasn’t a local Roscommon PD officer being converted into pork chops somewhere, too. Maybe Lauren would be able to check on that last point for him.
Maitland sat next to him. A way to show that while Shaun was a mere hired hand, Gabriel was, if not an equal, then at least an integral member of Maitland’s team.
“Is the money in the back again? I didn’t see it.” Gabriel said.
“No. I left it in a root cellar. If I’m ever passing back this way I might try to retrieve it but it’s not worth bothering about.
Maitland’s left hand, swathed in bandage, was resting on his lap and the pale fabric caught Gabriel’s eye.
“How are your wounds? Are you in pain?”
“Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little stiff. But Venter’s morphine is wonderful stuff. I borrowed a few more ampoules and a syringe on my way out. I wonder if there’s a needle-exchange programme at O’Hare?” A loud laugh cracked from Maitland’s throat. “We should have killed Meeks and his whole gang before they even reached Roscommon. But then,” he paused, “perhaps a few bullet wounds sustained fighting an organised crime gang will play well with the public. You know, a Prime Minister who has fought crime on the ground, not just from a sofa. They’ll lap it up, don’t you think?”
“Makes you look strong. Decisive. Battle-hardened.”
The last phrase was a masterstroke. Maitland swelled, puffing out his chest and thrusting his chin forward. Gabriel wondered why the arrogant pose was so familiar. Then he remembered. Mussolini.
“Battle-hardened. Tempered in the fire of combat. I like it.” He turned to Gabriel, making him swerve a little and earning a long blast on a car horn from the driver in the next lane. “You see, Gabriel! That is why I hired you. You have this way with words that is going to smooth over any difficulties I encounter with some of my policies.”
“I do want to know more about your policies, Toby, but I just have to ask you one thing. What are you going to do with the .50 cals?”
“I suppose now is as good a time as any to reveal the next stage of the plan. We will use them to take out the Prime Minister.”
Gabriel wasn’t sure which amazed him more, the outlandishness of the idea or Maitland’s insouciance as he planned to smuggle two military weapons back into Britain disguised as a piece of farm equipment.
“Seems sensible,” was all he said. “And what about those policies you mentioned?”
“Well, you didn’t think I was going to take over and then run the shop according to the old rules, did you?”
“I hadn’t given it much thought,” Gabriel lied. “I’m just a soldier-turned-negotiator, not a politician like you.”
“Have you ever studied military history?”
“A little. They made us at Sandhurst. I was always more interested in the practical side of the job.”
“Well, I have. Now, take Hitler, for example. Have you heard the word blitzkrieg before?”
Once again, Gabriel felt it would wiser to let Maitland show off, and refrained from giving the correct answer.
“World War Two. Bombing raids on London.”
“That’s what most people think. ‘Spirit of the Blitz’ and all that. In fact blitzkrieg means ‘lightning attack’. Hitler’s genius was to replace the slow, plodding, drawn-out battles of the First World War with short, sharp decisive actions based on speed, surprise and coordination between tanks and dive-bombers. You disorientate your enemy then strike while he’s confused. He achieved great things with it.”
“He lost the war, though, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did. But we can learn much from his mistakes as much as his victories. Blitzkrieg will work for us too. A fast and effective attack to disorientate the vested interests, then we strike hard, and fast.”
“Strike who?”
“Your pretended naiveté is touching. I’ve seen your record – your dossier – I know we think alike.”
“That was a while ago. I was a young hot-headed Army officer.”
“An idealist! A patriot!” Maitland grabbed Gabriel’s right arm with his bandaged hand – the painkiller obviously doing its job. “Let me give you a snapshot of my first hundred days, Gabriel. First, borders. We close them to all new immigration. Second, expulsions. The new ones from Eastern Europe. The dark-skinned rabble trying to sneak in on short-term visas or through the Channel Tunnel. Illegal immigrants are called that for a reason, and because our current government – all previous governments – have been too spineless to act on
that single word, they’ve grown confident. Like rats invading a grain store. Well, no longer.”
Gabriel kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, signalling and changing lanes as the traffic ebbed and flowed around him. Inside, he was reeling. All along, he had somehow managed to ignore the reality of what a military-backed coup would mean for Britain. He’d imagined Maitland as a new Prime Minister, albeit one with no need of a democratic mandate. But the torrent of hatred now spilling out of his mouth was something else entirely. He tuned back in. Maitland was still speaking.
“… then we will take a long, hard look at the resident non-whites. Some have been here too long to be kicked out on the spot. I will need to think about them in more detail. But recent arrivals can be repatriated without too much of an outcry, I’m sure. A few well-chosen words from my Director of Public Engagement will see to that.”
“I imagined I was going to be more focused on the military.”
“Oh, to begin with, of course. But once I am established as head of state, I will need you in a more proactive role with those how might not see eye-to-eye with us. And I’m sure there will always be opportunities for forays back into the world of action.”
“You’re the boss.”
“Indeed. On which note, we will then move on to other groups of people who are tainting our island’s purity. Our Hebrew friends, for example.”
“What? The Jews? You’re not going to…?”
“Build camps? Don’t be silly, Gabriel. Israel will welcome them all with open arms. It’s official policy. And there’s always here. Or Canada. It’s a global village now, hadn’t you heard?”
“Doesn’t sound like there’ll be many people left when you’ve – we’ve – finished.”
“Which won’t matter once the displaced original inhabitants of Britain realise that I have established an untainted place for them to return to. I anticipate a surge of applications to return once we have created the necessary conditions.”
“It’s a lot of work. Do you have the right people? It can’t just be me and hired hands like Shaun and Venter.”