Marked for Death

by Marked for Death (retail) (epub)

  ‘You want to burn the place with them inside?’

  ‘Don’t see as we have any other choice. Those bastards know about this place now, and it’s inevitable the cops will learn of it: we need to cover our tracks, Dan. Go get the gasoline while I finish up here.’

  ‘You going to say a few words over them?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know where to start,’ Cahill admitted. ‘I don’t even know if either of them were religious men.’

  ‘All soldiers get religion when the bullets start flying,’ StJohn quipped – at least he didn’t use the old cliché about there being no atheists in foxholes. ‘Me, I prefer to give Old Nick the wink. Don’t know about you, Sean, but I know where I’ll go when my chips get cashed in, and I bet it’ll be hotter even than this place will be in a few minutes.’

  Cahill would have preferred to remove the corpses of his men. When he said they deserved better he meant it. But what was the alternative? They would be buried in an anonymous grave out in the boonies, so perhaps a funeral pyre right there was the best send-off for them. While StJohn fetched the can of gasoline from the SUV, he stripped Hussein and Monk of any immediate identifiers, digging through pockets, removing their wallets, their cell phones, and then got down to the nastier stuff. He stomped Monk’s mouth until it was a wet hole full of ragged stumps. He had to roll Hussein onto his back to repeat the process. The fire would burn their fingerprints, and their features, and the only speedy way to identify their corpses would be through matching their dental records – he’d taken that option away now. Their DNA would finally identify the men, but that would take time, and by then Cahill and the others would be long gone. He made another quick check of the surroundings, and found nothing that would point directly at his team.

  StJohn returned, lugging the gasoline.

  ‘Make sure the guys are well doused,’ Cahill instructed.

  StJohn breathed heavily through his nostrils, a harsh rasp, but it was his only sign of sympathy towards his fallen colleagues. He was as pissed as Cahill, but he was also a pragmatist. He poured fuel directly over the men’s upper torsos and faces before widening his circle, splashing gasoline on the floor and furniture. Then, without instruction, he trailed a line through the kitchen to the open doors of the chiller and splashed gasoline in there too. He returned to Cahill.

  ‘Want to do the honours?’ Cahill offered.

  ‘Seeing as you got the messy part, I don’t mind.’ StJohn set down the gas can and pulled out a disposable cigarette lighter. He snatched up an old menu card, lit it and held it up so that a flame brightened and danced along one edge. ‘Best step back, Sean.’

  Cahill backed for the entrance corridor.

  StJohn dropped the burning paper on the sodden carpet alongside Monk’s corpse. There was a hush, a sense of time standing still, and then the fumes of the spilled gasoline ignited and flames suddenly wreathed both dead men before it popped and became a conflagration. Another ribbon of flame swept beyond the service counter, into the kitchen, and seconds later there was another significant ignition within the cells. StJohn didn’t stand around. He grabbed the gas can and retreated, joining Cahill outside in the loading yard. They shared a nod: it was a job well done for a change. Pity that the rest of their encounters with Hunter and his gang hadn’t gone so well until now.

  They left the area. It would be minutes before the fire raged enough that it would alert passers-by and it would be minutes after that before fire crews would reach the scene, a good while later before the seared corpses were discovered in the wreckage. They had plenty of time to get away, but Cahill didn’t trust their luck: it had been against him ever since he’d sent those punks after Joe Hunter and Trey at the hotel. To prove his point he spotted a MPD patrol vehicle streaking towards the restaurant before they were even two blocks north. The car went without sirens, but urgently enough to have its light rack blazing. It peeled into the kerb to the rear of the restaurant and one cop got out, talking animatedly into his radio. The cops had been dispatched to investigate the scene long before any calls went in concerning a fire.

  ‘You think those bastards tipped the cops off about what they found inside?’ StJohn wondered, echoing Cahill’s thoughts.

  ‘It sure looks that way.’ The only alternative was that somebody had spotted StJohn and him entering the building and construed their actions as suspicious, but it was unlikely as they’d been in and out of the restaurant on dozens of previous occasions. ‘Things are rapidly going to shit, Dan.’

  StJohn’s eyebrows rose towards his hairline. Again he repeated that harsh exhalation through his nostrils. This time it wasn’t an expression of sympathy. ‘I already gave you my thoughts on the matter.’

  ‘You did. And I gave you mine. Going to shit or not, we’re still committed to our side of the bargain.’

  ‘We’re down to three now, Sean, and I doubt Frost will be able to hold an assault rifle let alone fire one. I hope Mikhail will do the right thing and recompense the team for our losses.’

  ‘You mean recompense you, Dan, for going above and beyond the original agreement?’

  ‘I think he needs to up the payment, yeah. Our fucking workload has trebled in the past forty-eight hours.’

  ‘Put it this way,’ Cahill reminded him. ‘The fee I set was for the team, the team has shrunk dramatically, and there was no agreement from me to send their pay to their next of kin… ergo your share of the pot has grown exponentially because of it.’

  StJohn rocked his head. ‘Well, when you put it that way…’

  Cahill grunted in mirth. ‘I knew I could win you around, buddy.’

  ‘Like you said, even if we weren’t being paid millions there’s a matter of getting even with those bastards that killed our pals.’ StJohn shrugged without taking his hands from the steering wheel. ‘But being paid even more is like putting a cherry on the icing on the cake.’

  ‘You and your crazy metaphors,’ said Cahill. ‘But yeah, I tend to agree.’

  Another police cruiser swept past them, lights flashing. ‘Looks as if they might’ve discovered the bonfire we set,’ said StJohn.

  ‘When you said things were going to get hotter than hell, you weren’t kidding. Don’t know what you think, Dan, but cruising around waiting for somebody to spot Trey isn’t the best thing we can do. Let’s go join the boss man and make sure he’s aware of the clusterfuck his bruised ego has caused.’

  32

  First Jim McTeer, and now Harvey Lucas had been shot because I’d offered protection to Tracey Shaw, while Raul Velasquez was possibly being put through the mill wherever he was being held: his interrogation wouldn’t involve bright lights and rubber hoses, but it’d still be unpleasant. As a group we’d already paid sorely for getting involved on Trey’s behalf, but I didn’t hear any complaints. Harvey had done enough muttering and under-his-breath cursing since we’d picked them up but his admonishment was as much about his ruined clothing as for the pain in his body. He’d been shot twice. One wound to his side was little more than a graze, while the second was more troubling. Thankfully the wound to his chest was a through-and-through of his left pectoral muscle, the bullet glancing off his ribs and exiting below his armpit. If it had penetrated the ribs, no doubt about it Harvey’s lung would have been torn apart and he’d be as dead as our friend McTeer.

  In pain, saturated, and running for their lives, it was Trey who had grabbed a cell phone from another fleeing woman and pressed it into Harvey’s hands so he could call Rink for an immediate extraction. We’d already been making speed back towards Flagami from the Chinese restaurant when he’d given us directions to a church wedged between an elementary school and Cooper Park, eight or so blocks south of the motel they’d escaped from. Police had swarmed all over the area, responding to the reports of gunfire, but we made it through the cordon and collected them without raising any alarm. With no other destination in mind, we headed south of Miami; at least it was away from the hot zone. Both Harvey and Trey were soaked through,
and Trey had made fun of the irony that twice since she’d met me she’d almost drowned, but at least this time she stank of chlorine instead of brine. In the back seat of Rink’s rental car, she helped staunch the blood from Harvey’s wounds, using a spare shirt pulled from his equally sopping carryall bag, while between them they related the details of their recent near miss with Cahill’s team. We heard how in Trey’s case she’d tumbled headlong into the water after a bullet came so close to killing her that it lifted a lock of hair off the side of her head. Unhurt, and determined to help her saviour, she’d dragged Harvey from the pool, and got him moving again, mingling with the fleeing campers, from one of whom she’d stolen the phone.

  In turn we told them what we’d discovered at the restaurant, the awful containment and torture cells. Shamed by her association with her husband, Trey had wept. When I tried consoling her, she reminded me that she’d endured similar physical and mental torture after being forcefully coerced into the sex trade in Eastern Europe. In the years that she’d been held prisoner, first as a plaything for brutal men in Bulgaria, then as the unwilling wife of a more brutal man, she’d been aware that hundreds of other women and girls suffered a similar fate. It pained her that she had not turned on Viskhan before now and saved all those others their terrible maltreatment at his hands, though she swore she’d no knowledge of what was happening in the restaurant – she’d eaten there, for God’s sake! The thought made her feel sick, and we had to pull over while she purged her guts onto the kerb. When we continued, Trey was as bleary eyed as Harvey, and it didn’t help her state of mind when we related our violent encounter with Monk and Hussein. We didn’t go into the goriest of details, but she got the message, especially when she figured out our warning to get out of the motel came only after we’d forced the info from our prisoners. If she wondered what kind of monsters she’d traded Viskhan for, she didn’t mention it, but I caught the occasional glimpse of her where she frowned and bared her teeth.

  In first order we needed to find refuge, next Harvey’s wounds required attention, and he and Trey must get dry and dressed in new clothing. Everything else could follow. Rink directed us to a mall where he visited a couple of different stores, using cash to buy dressings, antiseptic creams and painkillers, and also gathering what clothes he could: he was better at shopping than me, and even thought to grab underwear and socks. I snagged a pair of boxers from the pack he bought for Harvey; I was still wearing the same ones I’d taken a dunk in when the van crashed into Indian Creek last night and by now they felt like cardboard. For Trey he went for practicality over style; the costume he bought her wasn’t too dissimilar to the one I’d chosen early that morning. Then we went to another hotel in Coral Gables – this one more upmarket than the last motel, and less likely to be the hangout of observant prostitutes.

  Safely in our room, we cleaned and dressed Harvey’s wounds, while Trey showered and then got into her new outfit of jeans and shirt. I then took to the shower and when I emerged, feeling fresher and more comfortable, I found my friends holding an impromptu war council. Someone had turned on the TV, selecting a local news channel: I thought it was to check out what was going on in Flagami, but the reports were more concerned with the heightened state of alert happening in South Beach. The cameras showed police cars, uniformed officers, and even police helicopters buzzing overhead. It seemed that our warning had been taken seriously after we delivered Jeff Borden and his videoed confession to the Chief of Police’s office.

  That Mikhail Viskhan was the subject of an intense manhunt was both good and bad for our purposes. How could he now go ahead with his planned attack while every stone was being turned to find which one he’d crawl out from under? But if he was keeping out of sight that’d make it more difficult for us to find and stop him once and for all, which happened to be the consensus we’d all come to. We held an ace card in that respect, though, because Trey was more familiar with Viskhan’s boltholes than the police would be. Though it was soaked through, Harvey had brought with him the list they had collated concerning Viskhan’s potential hiding places while they were at the motel. While I’d showered, the three of them had been going through and striking off the most obvious places.

  They’d shortened the list dramatically, and those that I could see remaining I thought would be difficult for us to check on with the police activity so high.

  ‘Isn’t it safe for us to go to the police now,’ asked Trey hopefully, ‘now that they know who the real bad guys are?’

  ‘Sadly they won’t differentiate – we’ll all be the bad guys until we can clear things up good and proper,’ I said. ‘They’ve taken our tip-off seriously, but they still won’t understand the full implication of the attack from what we’ve been able to tell them. Your testimony will mean a lot more than any half-truths they’ve gotten from Borden since we dropped him off, but there’s nothing more you can add to what you already recorded in your statement, right?’

  ‘There are these locations we’re going through. Where they might find Mikhail before it’s too late.’

  Rink interjected. ‘I’d rather we take a look at his hiding places before the cops start sniffing around.’

  ‘Isn’t it more important we stop the attack than you get revenge on Mikhail?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Rink, ‘but even better is if we can do both.’

  I nodded in agreement. Turned my attention back on Trey. ‘Stopping the terror attack is on the authorities now, they’ve the resources and the manpower.’ I gestured at the TV screen, and again saw helicopters swooping over South Beach, aiming searchlights down on the streets. There was no hope of catching Mikhail Viskhan in their lurid glare; the lights and show of force were more about a visual deterrent designed to dissuade anyone foolish enough to tempt the wrath of Miami PD. ‘Stopping Viskhan is on us. We can’t afford for him to escape, not when we’ve thwarted his plans. For as long as he lives, he’ll hunt you… and us. You said the cops know who the bad guys are now, but sadly that isn’t true. We’re criminals to them and will be treated as such, unless there’s something we can give them as a bargaining chip.’

  Rink scowled: he’d heard Walter Hayes Conrad in my voice. ‘He’s not getting handed over alive.’

  My words were only partly for Rink, more so for Trey. I gauged the reaction to the death sentence I was placing on Viskhan’s head, and saw only relief as she returned my perusal. It was unnecessary adding, ‘It has to be done if you’re ever going to enjoy a normal life again.’

  She inhaled deeply, sat on the hotel bed alongside where Harvey had gotten himself propped against the headboard. She looked Rink and me each in the face before nodding to herself. ‘Then let’s go get the son of a bitch,’ she proclaimed.

  I held up a steadying palm.

  ‘We go get him.’ My finger waggled between Rink and I. ‘You and Harvey are staying put.’

  Harvey’s face clouded at my announcement, but he didn’t argue. He knew his limitations. Bearing a chest wound, he would only slow us down, whereas he could still offer protection to Trey right there in the hotel room if the worst happened. He was armed this time, and though injured could still shoot one of the MAC-10 machine pistols we’d taken from Monk and Hussein. Trey momentarily looked as if she would argue, but she wasn’t stupid. The coming battle with her husband and his henchmen was no place for her. She wanted to be more proactive, though, and I understood. So I gave her an out. ‘We need you to look after Harvey for us. He’s injured and needs to rest. Somebody will have to stay alert so a repeat of what happened at the last motel doesn’t happen again. After you pulled him out of that swimming pool I’m sure he trusts you to save his ass a second time.’

  Harvey took my jest in good humour, and even Trey found no offence at what could have been misconstrued as patronising. ‘Maybe it’s best I don’t join you. Being almost drowned twice already, the third time might be the charm. I think I will stay here where it’s nice and dry.’ She indicated the current view of South Beac
h displayed on the TV screen. The cameras had centred on a female news presenter who stood before a backdrop of yachts and cabin cruisers as she reported on the latest news. ‘I’ve just thought of another place where Mikhail might be hiding.’

  33

  The view across Biscayne Bay shimmered gently, a tidal surge pushing rolling waves northward. The lights of the cities on both sides of the bay were reflected in the deep turquoise water, dancing and jiggling as the sea contorted with metronomic regularity. On the nearby bridges that spanned the bay traffic came and went, some of them emergency vehicles denoted by their flashing red and blue lights. Helicopters were a regular feature in the skies overhead, but there were more than normal – police and news choppers – dancing and swooping, rotors chattering incessantly, some of them beaming down searchlights: it almost looked like aliens had arrived to subjugate the earthlings to their command. Out on the water the coast guard and police patrolled the bay, and probably the easternmost shores of the barrier islands too.

  Mikhail Viskhan fumed.

  He was under no illusion what the heightened cause of activity was about, or whom the authorities were seeking. He firmly suspected that by now the FBI and other federal agencies were involved in the hunt and had mobilised teams in the area. His operation was severely compromised – though he was not yet ready to call it off – and all because of his whore of a wife. He had trusted to Cahill the task of silencing Trey, and had entertained full trust that his right-hand man would get the job done. Instead, Cahill had proved an abject disappointment: in his magnificent failure he’d even managed to lose most of the professional soldiers required to ensure that his operation went without a glitch.

  And the son of a bitch had the cheek to point the finger of blame at him! Cahill took some smug pleasure in reminding Viskhan that he had argued against punishing Joe Hunter, as it was a complication they could all do without and a problem firmly of Viskhan’s making.