In my mirrors, the gunman charged out onto the street, raising his gun, but didn’t waste any rounds. His skinny pal limped out behind him, plus a third man who I hadn’t laid eyes on before. I couldn’t determine how many pursued us. The third man could have been the same who’d fired at us on the second level then raced to join his friends, or this could be another man. Including Cahill there was upward of four hitters on our tail at the very least. And perhaps there were more coming. Our best bet was to get away from Miami Beach at first order, and that should be before the police got their act together and set up a cordon. Miami Beach was effectively a barrier island adjacent to the mainland, built on one of a series of offshore keys all interconnected by a series of bridges. If the police deemed the night’s events serious enough – considering the number of dead, they’d be fools not to – they could effectively shut down the entire island, then set up a search pattern to run us to ground.
I spun the van onto Washington Avenue, speeding north towards Dade Boulevard and the first opportunity to cross Biscayne Bay to the mainland. There was a plethora of intersecting streets we could have followed west and found access onto Venetian Way, but I was more intent on putting distance between our pursuers and us first. I was driving without lights, and still trailing a bumper that clattered and sent up a shower of sparks, so the possibility of being stopped by the police was high, but just then the lesser of two evils. Trey clambered upright into her seat and set about shedding the accumulation of glass and splinters from her hair. They tinkled softly in the footwell.
‘You OK?’ I asked, glancing across at her.
She returned my look with a startled expression, her mouth pouting. The breeze gusting in through the broken windshield made locks of hair dance around her head.
‘Some night, huh?’ I said, and squeezed her a smile.
‘I take it you’re not talking about the weather?’
It was good that she could still joke considering all that she’d witnessed.
‘I bet you’re reconsidering your decision to seek help from me now?’
‘Quite the contrary,’ she replied. ‘I’d be dead by now if not for you. Instead, I only look like I’ve been through a war.’
Despite her hair being snagged, dotted with splinters of glass and other debris, her arms and legs scraped, and her beautiful gown dirtied and torn, she looked incredibly beautiful to me.
‘This isn’t the way I hoped things would play out,’ I admitted. ‘We’ve been constantly on the move since the hotel and I haven’t had time to do much more than react. My original plan was to get you somewhere safe, though, and I suppose that hasn’t changed. Didn’t expect I’d be moving you in a van full of bullet holes.’
‘Better than us being full of bullets,’ she said, but then her features grew pensive. She was thinking of the trio of men I’d killed outside the art supplies store. She grimaced at me. ‘Back at the hotel, before your friend was killed, you said that you weren’t a killer for hire…’
‘I think the term I used was “hitman”. I’m not.’
‘The way you stopped those men…’
‘That was self-defence. If I hadn’t stopped them then they’d have killed us. Even the unarmed man tried to shoot me first, before I got his gun and turned it on him when he went after you in the doorway. My conscience is clear.’
‘I wasn’t criticising, Joe. I’m glad you’re the way you are. It’s going to take someone like you to stop Mikhail.’
‘He’ll get what he’s due.’ I recalled something else she’d said back at my hotel room an instant before all went to hell. ‘You said something along the lines of if I knew what Mikhail was planning, I’d have a different opinion about killing him.’
She nodded, but allowed her chin to dip towards her chest. She busied herself with picking some stray slivers of glass out of her décolletage. She was clearly uncertain about how to tell me. I waited her out, and she finally looked over at me. Tears welled in her eyes. ‘I’m afraid if I tell you the truth you might kick me out and leave me for Cahill to catch up.’
I sniffed. Contemplated what she meant, and was about to say ‘Try me,’ but then headlights glared in my mirrors as a Mercedes SUV rocketed in from a side street and accelerated after us. ‘OK, we’ll speak about it later. Right now you should put on your seatbelt,’ I commanded. ‘Cahill isn’t finished with us yet.’
17
The van was an old workhorse – the only reason I’d been able to hot-wire it – but it wasn’t built for the demands of a high-speed chase. It was weighty enough that it wasn’t easily rammed off the road, but wasn’t infallible either. A smaller vehicle could push a bigger one all over the place when strategy and tactics were applied. Some police drivers trained in how to stop a moving vehicle during a pursuit by the application of tried and tested techniques, as did various military and private security personnel. Cahill’s man knew his stuff. Twice already he’d almost had our van fishtailing as he applied his front fender to the van’s opposite rear side. Luckily, I too had undergone training in defensive driving tactics and, coupling them with luck and daring, I managed to keep us on the road as we sped onto Dade Boulevard. Unfortunately, we were headed in the opposite direction than I’d originally planned, and were being pursued further into the interior of the island. Or was it fortunate? I didn’t really want them pursuing us to the mainland, so perhaps it was better that I tried to lose them in North Beach or elsewhere, before making an attempt to get Trey off the island via one of the bridges.
I pushed the van to its highest speed, which topped out at a little over seventy miles per hour; the Mercedes we competed with was a flying machine by comparison. On the highway, staying ahead of it became a task in itself, and I’d to swerve across lanes to prevent it speeding past. If they got in front of us, we’d be forced to a rolling stop and would be under Cahill’s and another passenger’s gun sights. The trouble with swerving was that it offered fresh opportunities for the Mercedes to ram us at an angle and cause the van to spin out.
Earlier, when stealing the van, I’d had to put down my weapons, but I’d since had Trey wedge the Glock between my thighs while she held on to the silenced pistol in reserve. On the two occasions that the Mercedes had already attempted to blast past us, I’d snapped up the Glock and dissuaded them with a couple of ill-aimed shots – the bullets had failed to hit the Mercedes but the flashing of the gun had been enough to discourage them from driving alongside me. I knew it was only a matter of time before they attempted to force a path by on Trey’s side.
Dade Boulevard became Pine Tree Drive as we hurtled past the Miami Beach Fire Rescue HQ. Intersecting streets offered ways for others of Cahill’s team to join the pursuit, but my hope was that they had only two cars, and one of them was currently out of commission where my flung rock had sent it ploughing into the stationary vehicle outside the art supplies shop. We passed a high school, and I thanked an unheeding God that it was still the early hours and no kids were in our path. A golf course flashed by on our left, and then the road made a couple of kinks and I hauled the old van through the chicanes like a seasoned rally driver. The Mercedes slammed into our back end and the van jumped a little, the tyres losing traction and skidding one way and then the other before I could get it fully under control. I dropped a gear, stamped the gas pedal and gained a lead of a few precious feet on the Mercedes.
A major intersection loomed dead ahead where 41st Street bisected the island. During the day I’d be risking a collision if I didn’t obey the lights, but there were very few vehicles on the road so the risk of mangling us in a wreck was worth it. I shot through a red and across the intersection without slowing. Behind us the Mercedes followed our lead, so close to our back end that I briefly wondered if they’d got caught up on the trailing fender – but more likely the fender had been ripped loose following their first attempt at ramming us.
We were fortunate that most of the cops in Miami Beach were tied up at the two homicide sites we’d left b
ehind, otherwise the competing roars of our engines would have alerted plenty of patrol cars who’d join the chase. As it was, we largely had the roads to ourselves. The surface water stood in wide puddles and sheeted up behind us as we plunged through. The Mercedes caught our spray, deluged by it, forcing the driver to back off a little so he could see beyond the wipers battling to clear the screen. But I didn’t have a much cleaner line of sight: droplets stung my face, made me squint, as did the wind blasting inside the van through our shattered windshield. Trey huddled, as much from the cold as the threat of a bullet through her side window.
Pine Tree Drive curved sharply to the left, and just beyond the bend there was another intersection, this time with two streets converging on the main route. On the approach to the intersection the opposing lanes of the road were separated by a beautifully maintained median, green with grass and sculpted trees. The Mercedes suddenly took an unexpected move, shooting across the median into the oncoming lane, missing a tree by inches, and then the driver hit the gas. It flew past us, and I’d no clear shot at them. But I caught a brief glimpse of Cahill’s face and the smug wink he offered me. The Mercedes could easily outrace the van, but we weren’t competing for pink slips: this was more a demolition derby than a drag race. As they reached the convergence of the three roads, the driver braked, hitting a controlled skid that brought the Mercedes directly in front of the van. I could plough into them or I could swerve. We might survive an impact, but probably not. Instinct forced the latter response. As I yanked down on the steering wheel, I again got a brief snapshot glimpse of Cahill and the gun he fearlessly aimed at me despite the probability we were all going to die in a rolling wreck. He popped off a round. It caromed off the frame of the windshield and I flinched, expecting to be drilled by the ricochet.
The van, peeling right, still caught the back end of the Mercedes, shunting it around in a half circle in a manner the driver had attempted to spin us on a number of occasions. But my grip on the steering wasn’t firm, and I felt the wheel spin under my fingers. The van darted up the sidewalk and crashed through a temporary fence erected around a construction site. Corrugated metal sheets flew as we slammed through a pile of stacked timber. The van almost went airborne. Cursing, I fought for control, eyes darting for a clear path through the site. I couldn’t see one, but the van was uncaring. It smashed through another pile of timber, and I expected to be impaled at any second. Trey shrieked beside me and, with no other way of trying to save her, I grabbed her and forced her down. She wrapped her arms over her head. The concrete foundations of a building were dead ahead, and if we hit them that’d be it. At the last second I spotted the only thing that might save us from being pulped against the concrete. A ramp had been constructed to allow trucks to reverse onto the edge of the foundations, in order for them pour their loads of concrete. I tore down on the steering and got three wheels on the ramp. Before we took flight, the back right wheel clipped the edge of the foundation wall, tore chunks of cinder block off, and also blew out the tyre.
The next few seconds were dominated by a cacophony of sound – bumps, squeals, creaks, thumps – as the crippled van bounced and smashed a path through recently laid cinder blocks and rebar. The van began coming apart. I felt the driver’s seat twist beneath me, and knew I was seconds from being hurled through the open windshield. I held tightly to the steering, bracing for the final impact. But it didn’t come. We went airborne once more, the van making a lazy barrel roll as it finally gave up the race.
Time slowed, and everything was crystal clear to me. I had a sense of direction, and Trey was above me, the centrifugal force of our roll working to throw her against the passenger door and up towards the roof. I was pushed down and against the driver’s door. At least I wasn’t being forced towards the shattered windshield any more. We obliterated a second temporary wall of corrugated steel sheets, and I gritted my teeth against the imminent impact with the earth beyond.
There was no earth, only a flat sheet of deep sapphire dotted with myriad colours where it reflected the lights on Collins Avenue, which was about a hundred yards distant.
The van slammed into Indian Creek, and I experienced the impact as a shock wave that passed through my body like a cannon blast, and it continued through the van, warping and twisting and tearing it apart. Foaming water blasted into the interior of the van, totally blinding and overwhelming. There was no lazy settling of the van on the water. It plunged beneath the depths even as it exploded, throwing open the rear doors and allowing the creek to flood in at all angles. I was hammered, my brain was whirling in shock as I choked on briny water, fighting for breath that wouldn’t come, and… shit, I was drowning.
18
Stripped to his boxer shorts, Mikhail Viskhan swore at his cell phone, and was a second from throwing it across the room. He caught sight of his reflection in a wall mirror, his fattened lip drooping: he looked like an idiot! Instead of smashing the cell phone against the wall, he stabbed buttons again and redialled Sean Cahill’s number. The son of a bitch was purposefully ignoring his calls, growing too big for his friggin’ britches – a term that Dan StJohn was fond of. Cahill would have to be reminded that they weren’t peers; Cahill was an employee and he must respond when his boss hailed him.
‘Pick up, damn you!’ he seethed at the ringing phone, but then relented with a sigh.
You should remember that Sean is not a dog at your beck and call, but your second in command, he thought. You ordered him to complete an important mission and now you complain that he has fully submerged himself in its completion?
‘He should still answer when I damn well call him!’ he snapped aloud in his native tongue.
You allowed your hot head to get the better of you, his internal voice argued, so you can only blame yourself. Like he’d said, Sean’s time would be better served here, finalising plans and preparations than off hunting your bitch of a wife and her protector. Why have you not learned the value of Sean’s counsel when it has proven so beneficial in the past?
‘Because he does what I say, not the other way around!’
The phone continued to ring unanswered.
Mikhail threw the cell phone away in disgust, but took care that it landed on the plush bedspread so was undamaged. The naked woman beneath the sheets peered back at him wide-eyed, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. Mikhail’s annoyance at Cahill found a new target. ‘Get up,’ he spat, this time in English, ‘and get the fuck out of here, you filthy whore.’
The woman blinked at him in astonishment. Minutes ago they’d been in each other’s arms, and he’d been an aggressive but fulfilling lover. She still wore a sheen of perspiration from their exertions. She had believed him a satisfied customer.
‘I said get out!’
Before the woman could comply, he lunged at the bed, grasped the sheets covering her nakedness and yanked them in a bundle onto the floor. The woman squeaked in alarm, and pulled inward defensively, arms across her breasts, thighs crossing. Her pose had nothing to do with modesty, because she’d already proven she’d perform the most depraved of acts at his instruction. Mikhail snarled the fingers of his right hand in her hair, while his left snapped down on her upper arm. He yanked her as violently off the bed as he had the sheets. His phone clattered onto the floor along with her.
‘Get out,’ he growled again, then kicked her away so he could snatch up his phone from under her.
‘What about…’
‘Payment? You dare to ask me for money?’ The ligaments in Mikhail’s throat worked like plucked strings. ‘Do you forget who the fuck you work for too? Now go, before I have to remind you.’
This time the woman obeyed with haste. She scrambled to collect her discarded clothing, and had barely grabbed enough to protect her modesty when Mikhail emitted a growl like an enraged beast and chased her through the door. She fled along the corridor naked, her clothes bundled in her arms. The whore didn’t know how fortunate she was: she got to run away in a manner that Trey had n
ever been allowed to. He felt like chasing her down and beating her until she bled from every orifice, but resisted the urge. Disposing of her corpse would be an inconvenience he could do without. If Sean was there, he could be given the task of clearing up the mess, but Sean wasn’t… where the fuck was he?
The sound of the front door slamming echoed through the otherwise empty house.
Mikhail instantly forgot about the whore.
He inspected his cell phone. The screen had darkened, but as he swiped his thumb across it he again saw Sean Cahill’s details, though the call had timed out.
He thought about hitting the call button again, but instead a weary sigh washed through him. He placed the phone down on a bedside nightstand, and went to select fresh clothing from his walk-in dressing room. Dawn was fast approaching, so he selected appropriate daywear. He was about to dress, but could smell himself. He stank of whore.
He showered.
Returned dripping to his room, and saw that a faint glow was in the process of fading from his cell phone on the nightstand.
He’d missed a call from Sean Cahill.
He was tempted to ignore it, let Sean wait, the way he’d been forced to wait like a mongrel begging scraps from its master’s table. But he stabbed at the call button.
‘Mikhail?’
He ignored the inquiry. ‘Why the fuck didn’t you answer me sooner?’
‘I’ve been busy.’
‘Too busy for me?’
‘Yes, even for you, Mikhail.’
A snort of derision blasted from Mikhail’s nostrils. ‘Then you’d better have a fucking good reason, Sean. I do not like to be ignored.’
‘It’s done. Is that reason enough?’
Marked for Death Page 11