A slim figure appeared from towards the opposite end of the motel, having been concealed in an alcove housing an ice dispenser. It was a girl barely out of her teens, dressed in a skimpy top and skimpier shorts: obviously the person responsible for giving up their safe house, and she hadn’t stopped spying on them while waiting for Cahill’s team to arrive. She gesticulated wildly, wafting her stick thin arms in Harvey and Trey’s direction. All four men turned and stared directly at them.
‘Run!’ Harvey said, and grabbed Trey’s elbow to usher her ahead of him.
They were at the perimeter of the RV and trailer site, an unusual inner-city feature to Harvey. The land was generally flat, as was most of the terrain around those parts, but had been landscaped to add character and a sense of privacy to the site. There were trees and shrubs and low hedges. There were also dozens of RVs, the occasional trailer and even some tents erected throughout the site. Plenty of places of concealment, but also many innocent lives could be put at risk if they hid among them. Even as they ran they passed a family group sitting out for their evening meal under an awning. The kids gaped as they charged by, then jumped up for a better look, even following for a few steps before being hailed back by their concerned parents. Harvey hoped that Cahill’s team wasn’t trigger-happy.
A quick glance showed him that two of the men were in pursuit, already clambering over the wire boundary fence. Distantly the thrum of engines indicated that the cars were being used to cut them off. Harvey stabbed a finger at the gap between two parked trailers. ‘That way!’
Trey took the instruction without comment, merely swerving down the aisle between the trailers. She hurdled a low hedge used to conceal a standing pipe. Harvey swerved around it, encumbered by the heavy bag on his shoulders. His leather-soled shoes weren’t designed for running, and slipped with each step on a lawn recently watered by sprinklers. Mud and blades of grass adhered to his trousers as high as his knees. He was a well-groomed man but not vain. He could give a damn about his appearance when the alternative was much worse. He’d rather be a living mess than a tidy corpse. Behind him he could make out the slap of feet in pursuit. They dodged to the right around the trailer, across a gravel path and between an RV and trailer on the opposite side. With no idea of the layout of the park, there was no telling if they were heading for an exit or not. As long as it was away from their pursuers it didn’t matter, but they didn’t want to run into one of the cars speeding to cut them off.
They ran all the same. Dodging again around more parked vehicles, and pushing through a stand of shrubs tall enough to conceal them from view. Harvey caught Trey, told her to wait. They crouched, using the foliage for cover, and peered back the way they’d just run from. Their pursuers had split up, one of them following the same route that they had between the trailers and RVs, the second man moving parallel but about fifty yards further to the right, trying to reach a position where they could converge from different angles on their prey. Luckily the second man had miscalculated their direction and had gone the wrong way. He jogged directly across their latest path and between a large Winnebago and a stand of pine and palmetto trees.
Harvey checked behind them. He spotted a path that led towards some buildings forming the central hub of the site. Leading the hunters in that direction held mixed results. There would be more potential witnesses, who might deter their pursuers, but also more in the way of collateral damage should the gunmen employ their weapons. They had to be pragmatic: Harvey indicated the path, told Trey to run again. She set off and he fell in behind her, and was rewarded by a brief shout when the nearest gunman spotted them. The retort of the silenced handgun was lost on them as their feet scattered gravel, but Harvey heard the bullet smack a nearby tree trunk, saw a chunk of bark pinwheel away from the impact point. By its trajectory the bullet must have missed him by mere inches. Unfortunately the second shot didn’t miss. The bullet drilled his carryall, but thankfully it didn’t make its way through his stuffed-in belongings. Harvey barely stumbled, then picked up pace. The gunman could give a damn about witnesses to a shooting, then! He exhorted Trey to speed up, though he could tell her wind was already sapping.
They cut left, heading again for another bunch of trees, these sturdy enough to offer concealment and also protection from their pursuers’ bullets. The man who’d shot at them had lowered his gun to concentrate on chasing them down.
‘Keep going,’ Harvey urged Trey, and pointed out a blaze of lights beyond the trees. From the same direction could be heard a buzz of muted conversation and the occasional splash. He ducked low, and ran at an angle away from Trey, making as much noise as possible as he thrust aside branches. Immediately he halted, then reversed direction, this time gently easing aside the bushes as he moved through the copse. Mere yards beyond him he heard the drum of feet, then their nearest pursuer came to an abrupt halt. Harvey could hear rasping breaths as the gunman took stock of the situation, trying to determine which way they had gone. If the gunman went to his left around the trees, then Harvey’s only chance at taking him by surprise would be wasted. But he doubted the man would take that option when his pal was already heading that way. Harvey cast around, spotted a stone on the ground and reached for it. He threw the stone the same direction as he’d run a moment ago, heard its clattering trajectory even as the gunman sucked in a breath and plunged into the foliage in pursuit. Harvey waited a few seconds to allow the man to be fully submerged in the bushes, while he slipped his bag off his shoulders and then charged. There was no finesse to his attack, only daring. He hurtled through the bushes with his carryall held before him, and this time he felt the solid impacts of the bullets striking the pack. One bullet snapped by his left hip, taking a tuft of material and a sliver of skin with it. Then Harvey crashed into the gunman, the carryall jammed between them, trapping the gun against its wielder’s body. His dive took the guy down and, before there was chance for him to fight back, Harvey pounded the man’s head with both fists. Uncommonly for Harvey, he swore savagely as he continued to beat the man relentlessly.
The gunman was no slouch in a fight. He weathered the initial blows to his skull, but then he swarmed back, hoping to free himself from the encumbrance of the stuffed carryall, trying to bring his gun to bear even as more punches rained down. He yanked his left hand from under the pack and jabbed fingers at Harvey’s eyes, forcing him back. Swore a racist slur for Harvey’s sake. Then his right knee battered up, striking Harvey between the legs. Luckily, most of the impact was on his butt, but still. Harvey woofed in pain, but didn’t relent. He threw his weight on the man, again crushing the bag tightly between them, and he too drove fingers at the man’s eyes.
The fight was taking too long! Harvey knew he’d seconds before the second gunman arrived and, on the ground, scuffling with the first man, he’d be an open target. So he went for broke. He got his thumbs in the sides of the man’s mouth, bore down with all his body weight and slammed his forehead down. A flash of pain went through his own skull, but it would be nothing compared to what his target experienced. Harvey reared back, then arched forward again, and this time their foreheads didn’t clash; his found the bridge of the man’s nose and crushed it. Still the gunman clung to consciousness and his weapon, but Harvey wasn’t done either. A third time he butted the man’s face, and he heard a deep-throated groan escape him, felt the spray of bloody saliva on his face. Harvey pushed up onto his knees, wrenched aside the bag and caught hold of the gun. He yanked the pistol out of the spasming hand, and stood. Aimed it at his foe’s beaten head, and was seriously tempted to pull the trigger. At the last second he pivoted slightly and, instead of ending the man’s life, took away his ability to chase them any further. He shot him once in each foot.
He checked that the second gunman wasn’t near, but couldn’t tell by sound alone because the man he’d shot was making too much racket as he thrashed in semi-delirium among the shrubs. If he were in a gun’s sights he’d probably be dead by now, he decided. Harvey snatched up his
holed carryall, slung it over his shoulder and rushed after Trey. Before he broke from the cover of the trees, he heard a commotion ahead.
Without any concern for his own wellbeing he crashed from among the brush, trying to make sense of the clamour of movement and noise he’d burst into the midst of. Despite the late hour, the swimming pool was still in use. Other people had gathered at the poolside to share beers and stories. Those people were scattering, seeking cover, hollering in fright and confusion. Deckchairs had been upended, and an impromptu barbecue had been knocked down, spilling glowing coals on a paved patio next to the pool. People in shorts and T-shirts ran along the far side of the pool to get away from the gunman standing directly opposite. Amid the chaos it took Harvey a moment to differentiate Trey from the others running for their lives. But she became evident when she halted, turned towards the gunman and held out both palms in attempt to dissuade him from firing. The gunman snapped a response that was harsh and loud, but it was swallowed by the cacophony going on around them. Harvey saw him settle his aim, prepared to shoot and take Trey down in one bullet to her central mass.
‘No!’ Harvey charged forward, shooting as he ran.
The gunman flinched in response, just as his suppressed pistol discharged. But Harvey caught sight of Trey folding and tumbling into the pool even as he continued forward, emptying his pistol’s magazine. Shooting while running was no easy task, and most of his bullets were wasted on the branches of trees beyond the shooter, but two hit. One low in the man’s side, the other in the muscles of his upper right arm. The gunman twisted from his original target, gun swinging on Harvey, and he fired at almost point-blank range. Harvey experienced the impact as a dull thud to his upper chest, but his momentum wasn’t slowed. For the second time within minutes, Harvey relied on his football skills to tackle his enemy and they too pitched over the edge and into the pool.
There were lights beneath the waterline, and the glow from them turned scarlet as their blood spread and mingled.
31
‘So who do you think the friggin’ buck nigger was?’ Dan StJohn asked in his usual intolerant manner as he drove Sean Cahill across MacArthur Causeway towards Miami Beach.
Cahill didn’t flinch at his friend’s inherent racism, because he was used to hearing much worse. Anyone who wasn’t a heterosexual WASP was to be derided, in StJohn’s opinion. He didn’t bother replying at all, because he hadn’t a clue. It didn’t take much figuring out, though. Joe Hunter had more friends in town than they had first assumed, and all were proving dangerous foes. Trey had obviously been left in the black man’s care while Hunter and Rington left on another errand, and since he hadn’t heard from either Monk or Hussein in the past hour he’d grown to fear the worst for them. And now Craig Parkinson and Jed Frost were down and out of the coming battle. Parkinson would recover from his smashed-up face long before he could hobble further than a few yards on his severely injured feet. Frost had almost drowned, and had taken two rounds. The bullet in his side was minor – a flesh wound that would soon heal – but the one to his upper arm was troubling for a man who made his living handling a gun. He’d been fortunate that he still retained the strength in one arm to drag himself from the pool and backtrack to where Parkinson lay like a crippled dog in some bushes.
Finding his team in disarray, and in need of immediate extraction before the police arrived, Cahill had been forced to give up on the pursuit of Trey and her new minder. From what he had patched together from Frost, he’d shot both of them but they’d got out of the pool before he’d dragged his sorry ass to dry land. They had fled, along with the civilians in the area, so Frost had no idea where they’d gone. Cahill had hauled his injured men into his SUV, and made it out of the trailer park with the sound of approaching sirens howling nearby. StJohn had prowled around the edge of the campsite, but with no luck in finding their prey, before making off and barely escaping the secure cordon the police were throwing up around Flagami. Conversing over their phones they’d arranged a rendezvous in downtown Miami, where Cahill had already called in a ‘no questions asked’ medic to perform emergency field medicine on his crippled men. Parkinson and Frost were stitched up, but only the latter was still standing: in his current state Parkinson was good for nothing. Frost was in a mixed state of mind, both ashamed that he’d been gotten the better of, lost their target, and carried injuries certain to slow him down, but also determined to finish what he’d started with the black guy.
But Cahill was tempted to call off the hunt.
During a brief status update on the phone he’d suggested as much to Mikhail Viskhan, and been rebuked.
He’d also tried to convince Mikhail that the impending operation in South Beach should be aborted. His argument was simple: his team had been severely compromised, and with Trey still at liberty it was only a matter of time before she told the cops what she knew of their plans. Mikhail’s counter was also simple: ‘So find and shut the bitch up!’
Cahill acquiesced.
He’d alerted his street-level watchers to be on the lookout for Mikhail’s estranged wife, and now added the description of the black man to the list of targets along with Hunter and Rington. He wasn’t hopeful that his prey would make the same mistake a second time: luck had placed the young hooker in the correct place at the right time when Trey had first been brought to the motel in Flagami. The odds were that a similar serendipitous whore wouldn’t be around where they’d fled to this time.
It was unlikely that they’d go to their operating base in the SoBe restaurant, but Cahill wanted to check the place out. He didn’t believe for one second that Monk and Hussein had decided they’d be better off a continent away and skipped out after he asked them to fetch some heavier armament from their stash. They had run into trouble of the worst kind, proof of which was their continued silence. He regretted sending them for the machine pistols now, when it had become patently obvious that the heavier firepower wasn’t necessary at the motel, whereas a couple of extra bodies involved in the chase would have helped catch Trey and her bodyguard. As StJohn parked the SUV in the loading area behind the restaurant Cahill had a fatalist’s sense of what they’d find inside, but he wanted to take a look. Whatever, there was clean-up to be done.
After alighting from the vehicle, they withdrew their sidearms. They kept to the side of the building, out from under the scrutiny of any potential witnesses on the main street, and approached the same entrance Monk and Hussein would have entered via earlier. They communicated with nods and gestures, and then StJohn led the sweep. He entered, darting inside with Cahill following suit, and they cleared the corridor then the room beyond within seconds. Hunter and Rington might still be there, Cahill thought, though it was doubtful. They entered the dining room with the same professional calm, immediately saw their comrades lying dead, but continued their sweep and clearance of the building before going to them. StJohn checked the crawl space in the basement; Cahill went upstairs and moved from room to deserted room before he was satisfied there were no nasty surprises waiting for them.
StJohn moved on to check the area behind the kitchens, paying close attention to the open doors of the walk-in chiller compartment and its bare cells and torture chamber. Those doors had been shut tight last he knew. He rendezvoused with Cahill back in the dining room.
Cahill hunkered over the body of Ernest Monk, checking his vital signs. It was a wasted gesture because Monk was dead – cut and shot through in various places – but Cahill felt he owed the man that small consideration. He glimpsed up at StJohn. ‘Earlier I was for giving up, but even if we weren’t being paid for our trouble I’d happily hunt those bastards to the end of the earth now.’
‘Omar has bought it too, huh?’ StJohn asked pointlessly.
‘And then some,’ said Cahill.
Hussein was face down, arms and legs akimbo, and on first perusal his only visible injury was a single puncture wound to his upper shoulder. Cahill recognised its mortality, though: a blade had been forced do
wn behind Hussein’s clavicle and pierced the upper chambers of his heart. If that had been Hussein’s only wound he still would have perished, but then they began discovering other bloody holes in his side, and a pool of dark blood had leaked from a gut wound. Both their comrades had been put through the meat grinder before they died, and judging by their differing wound patterns it hadn’t been instantaneous. The piercing of Monk’s hand almost smacked of torture. What had Hunter and Rington learned of their plans from their dead brethren? One thing Cahill was certain of: neither of his friends would have easily given them up, but enough had been forced from them to wreck their surprise element when it came to storming the motel.
‘The guns are gone,’ StJohn announced.
‘Yes.’
‘The fuckers know about the holding cells in the back.’
‘Hard to miss.’
‘So what now, Sean?’
‘I think it’s time we got out of here, Dan.’
StJohn peered down at their fallen comrades. ‘What about these guys?’
‘They deserve better, but there’s not a lot we can do for them now. May as well leave them here.’
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