The John Milton Series Box Set 4

by Mark Dawson

  “Afternoon,” Beau said.

  She smiled tightly and turned to Milton. “What’s happening?”

  “Beau has suggested a place that might be suitable for the exchange. We’re just going to go and see it.”

  “I want to come,” she said.

  “No,” Milton said.

  “I want to be there when you meet them.”

  “No,” Milton repeated. “Absolutely not.”

  “How many of you are there? Just the two of you?”

  Milton realised that he hadn’t even asked Beau whether he would be prepared to help. He glanced over at him and saw a nod of assent.

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “And Delgado will have more than two?”

  “Probably.”

  “I know how to shoot. My father used to take Mason and me out to the range when we were younger. I was good.”

  “I’m sure you were,” he said, “but this isn’t going to the range. These are dangerous people. And your father will be there.”

  “That’s why I’m coming,” she insisted. “What happens if they get the jump on you? They’ll kill you, right? And then they’ll kill him.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  She put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m grateful,” she said. “I’m grateful for everything you’ve done, and I’m incredibly grateful that you’d even think about doing this for me. I’m grateful to both of you—you don’t even know me or my family, and I know it’s dangerous. But—and please don’t think I’m being disrespectful—this isn’t your decision to make. You can’t stop me from coming.”

  “I can call it off,” Milton said.

  “And my father will be killed.”

  Milton couldn’t disagree with that.

  “Is this because I’m a woman?”

  “No,” Milton said. “It’s because this is dangerous.”

  “It’ll be more dangerous for you if you’re outnumbered. You need someone else who can fire a weapon. I can. I’m good. I can help.”

  “They’ll have more than two of ’em,” Beau said. “Can’t say those are odds I’m all that fond of.”

  Milton exhaled. On the one hand, the idea of taking Jessica seemed like the greatest folly. It would be perilous; he had no idea whether she was being truthful about her ability with a weapon; and, worst of all, she was emotionally involved given that it was her father they were going to bring back. On the other hand, he knew that she and Beau were right. Delgado would bring more than two gunmen with him. An exchange in those circumstances was possible—Milton had pulled off swaps like that before—but it would have presented the kind of situation that involved razor-thin margins, the kind of circumstance that could go one way or the other. Much as he was loath to admit it, there was some sense in what she was suggesting.

  He turned back to Jessica. “You would have to do everything that we say. Everything. If you make a mistake, we all get killed—your father, too. Understand?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Is that a yes, then? I can come?”

  “You can come with us now to take a look at where Beau thinks we might be able to do it,” he said. “I want to see you shoot.”

  “Fine.”

  “That’s not a yes, Jessica. I haven’t made up my mind about later. I need to think about it.”

  “I can live with that,” she said.

  41

  They took Beau’s rental and headed south out of the city. The satnav directed them onto the Las Vegas Freeway, paralleling the Strip for the first couple of miles before they cut through the traffic and picked up I-15. Beau was driving with Milton alongside. Jessica sat quietly in the back, lost in thought. No one had very much to say, so Milton turned on the radio and skipped to KCYE. It was a country music station, and a song that Milton didn’t recognise was playing.

  “This your kind of music, English?”

  “Not really,” Milton said. “I thought—”

  “You thought it was the kind of thing the old redneck would be into?”

  Milton smiled and gave a helpless shrug. “Just trying to be thoughtful.”

  “His taste is much worse,” Jessica piped up from the back.

  “That so?”

  “All this British stuff from the sixties.”

  “Classics,” Milton corrected.

  “Whatever,” she said, and as he looked up in the mirror, he saw that she was grinning at him.

  The road was clear and Beau put his foot down.

  Beau turned off the interstate at Jean and headed west, following the signs toward Goodsprings. They drove on for another ten minutes before he slowed the car and pointed.

  “Over there,” he said.

  Milton saw the shapes of the buildings ahead: the canopy of the gas station, the pumps long since removed; the outline of the attached store; power lines that ran along poles that had been planted in the desert beyond it. There was no sign that the building was occupied.

  Beau hit the brakes and turned the wheel, bumping the car off the road and onto the rough track that had once served drivers stopping for fuel and provisions. He drove onto the forecourt, passed between the concrete piers that would have mounted the pumps, and continued around to the rear of the building. They were sheltered from the road here, the remains of the store blocking them from anyone who might be passing along the quiet road to Vegas.

  Milton opened the door of the Yukon and stepped out. The cabin was cool from the air conditioning, but the mid-afternoon heat quickly overwhelmed it. It was a dry heat, without humidity, and Milton would not have liked to have been outside in it without protection for too long. He shielded his eyes with his hand as he moved away from the car and started to check out the immediate vicinity. The desert surrounded them on all sides, split by the highway and prickled by a single row of utility poles. The landscape ascended to the north, the desert rising into the low foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

  Jessica got out of the back of the car and walked over to the station, sheltering in the shadow cast by the building.

  Beau came over to stand next to Milton. “What do you think?”

  “How close are we to a town?”

  Beau pointed to the southeast. “You saw Jean when we turned off,” he said. He turned and pointed to the northwest. “You got Goodsprings there. We’re a good mile away from anyone. Nothing else. What you think?”

  “I think it’ll do,” Milton said.

  “How you gonna play it? You don’t want them knowing where we’re gonna do the swap in advance, do you?”

  Milton had been considering that. “We passed a gas station at Jean. We’ll arrange to meet them there; then they can follow us out here. We park up behind the building, like now, keep them at a distance—over there—and then we get them to bring Russo out. We give them the money and then we get out that way.”

  He pointed to a dusty set of tracks that led around the other side of the building, back to the road. A set of motorcycle tracks was still visible; someone had turned their bikes off the highway here to ride out in the desert.

  Beau nodded his approval. “Nice and quiet. Shielded from traffic. What about practicalities?” He gestured out to the open plain. “Would sure be nice to have a shooter out there.”

  “You got a rifle?” Milton said.

  “No.”

  “Me neither. And we haven’t got time to sort that out.”

  Beau squinted into the bright sunlight. “So?”

  Milton looked out onto the plains, too. There was nothing there. “Are you still sure you want to do this, Beau?”

  “I don’t want to,” he said, “but I’ll do it. You’ll get shot to shit if you come out here on your own.”

  He knew that Beau was right. There would be no chance of getting out alive without at least another gun as backup.

  “I’m going to owe you,” he said.

  “Damn straight you are.”

  “What about a firearm? What do you have?”


  Beau reached into his jacket and took out a pistol. He handed it to Milton. “Springfield XD-M.”

  Milton hefted the weapon. It was the competition model, with the 5.25-inch barrel that offered good sight radius and made the pistol easier to shoot at longer ranges. Nineteen-round capacity. He handed it back to Beau.

  “What do you have?”

  Milton took the Ruger from the waistband of his jeans. “Took it from one of the bad guys at the Russo house,” he said. “Could do with a few more rounds, though.”

  “What is it?”

  “The Security. Takes nine-millimetre parabellum.”

  “I got some you can have.”

  Milton pushed the Ruger back into his waistband. “You got a backup weapon?”

  Beau grinned. “Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

  He bent down, reached his hand to his boot and hiked up his trouser leg. He was wearing an ankle holster with a second weapon. He pulled out the little snub-nosed revolver and handed it to Milton. It was a Colt Detective Special, a classic concealed-carry weapon. Milton opened it up and spun the cylinder, revealing six .38 Specials. It was a good weapon and Beau had kept it in excellent condition. Milton ran his finger across the brass, then snapped it closed.

  “Mind if I let her take a look at it?” he said.

  “Be my guest.”

  Milton turned to Jessica. She had wandered away from the building, about twenty metres into the desert. She was looking back at them, framed against the spectacular backdrop behind her.

  “Can you come over here for a moment?” Milton called over to her.

  She made her way back to them, her feet slipping on the loose dirt and scree.

  “You want to show me how good you are with this?”

  “Little piece like that?” she said. “Easy.”

  She put out her hand and Milton gave her the Colt. She hefted it, opened the swing-out cylinder and checked it out, then snapped it closed once again.

  “What do you want me to hit?”

  Milton pointed at the stump of a long-since-dead Joshua tree out in the desert. It was around ten metres away and on the same level as them. “How about that?”

  “No problem,” she said.

  “Just point and shoot,” he said. “Be ready for the recoil. Nice and re—”

  Jessica thumbed the hammer back, took aim, and fired. The impact of the round was marked by a puff of dust in the old trunk. Milton was about to congratulate her when she fired again, hitting the target in almost the same spot.

  “I can do this all day,” she said with a grin.

  Beau gave a whoop. “Where’d you say you learned to shoot?”

  “My dad,” she said. “We used to go to ranges all the time. I had a Taurus PT111 back then. I must have sent a thousand rounds downrange, one way or another. I got to be pretty good.”

  “I can see that,” Milton said, his natural caution preventing him from being too effusive in his praise. “But shooting a tree is one thing. Shooting a man is another.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’ve never shot anyone before. I don’t ever want to. But if my dad is in danger, and there’s no other choice, I will. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  “You’d follow my instructions,” Milton said.

  “You open fire,” Beau added, “and the lead isn’t going to be going just one way. They’ll fire back.”

  “Does that mean I can come?” she said, handing the gun back to Beau.

  “I’ll think about it,” Milton said.

  They needed every gun they could get, and she had demonstrated that she was able. He was reluctant to involve her more than she was already involved, but, on balance, perhaps there was more good to be had by having her with them than the harm that would be caused by going up against cartel shooters at a numerical disadvantage.

  He would consider it.

  42

  It was six in the evening when Beau parked the Yukon into the hotel lot and killed the engine.

  “What do we do now?” Jessica said.

  “I’d try to relax for a bit,” Milton said. “Go and get something to eat, maybe.”

  “What about you?” Jessica said.

  “I’m going to set this up.”

  “You need me?”

  “No,” Milton said. “I’ve got it.”

  Beau nodded and swung around so that he could look back at Jessica. “There’s a nice pizza restaurant down the way. We could go and order some pies.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  Beau turned to Milton. “What do you like?”

  “Whatever’s good,” he said.

  “Come over when you’re done. It’s called Evel Pie. As in Evel Knievel.”

  “What?” Jessica said.

  “Who,” Beau corrected. “He used to ride motorbikes.”

  She shook her head, perplexed. “Never heard of him.”

  “Kids,” Beau observed with an exaggerated roll of the eyes.

  Milton smiled. “I’ll see you in there.”

  They got out. Milton watched as Beau and Jessica walked to Fremont Street, turned the corner and disappeared. He reached into his jacket pocket for his burner phone and held down the button to power it up. He gave a moment’s thought to what he was going to say and then tapped the number for Oscar Delgado.

  The call connected after just four rings.

  “Señor Smith,” Delgado said.

  “Are you ready?”

  “I am. Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So when will it be?”

  “Tonight. Ten o’clock. We’ll meet you in the gas station on I-15, just after Jean.”

  “That’s forty minutes away. Let’s do it closer to Vegas.”

  “We do it where and when I say we’ll do it or not at all.”

  “All right.”

  “You’ll need to follow me.”

  “To where?”

  “The place I have in mind is out of the way and quiet. We won’t be disturbed.”

  “You expect me to trust you?”

  “I know who you work for, Oscar. I know what happens if this goes wrong. Your organisation’s reputation is your insurance. All we want is for you to get your money and for the girl to see her father again. That’s it.”

  “What then? We go our separate ways?”

  Milton heard the sarcasm in the flippant suggestion. “That’s right. We each get what we want. Everyone’s happy.”

  Delgado chuckled. “You are either very naïve or very stupid—I can’t work out which.”

  “Yes or no?”

  There was a long pause; Milton clutched the phone tightly.

  “Ten o’clock. We will be there.”

  “There are a couple of other requirements,” Milton said. “You come with a driver and no one else.”

  “I’ll come with whoever I want.”

  “If I feel like we’re outnumbered, we’re not going to stick around. It’ll be a waste of everyone’s time.”

  Delgado grunted; it might have been assent, it might not. “Bring my money.”

  “Bring Russo.”

  He ended the call.

  43

  Evel Pie was more than simply inspired by the famous stuntman; it was more like a shrine to him. A life-size bronze statue had been erected on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant and, as Milton went inside, he saw that the large room had been stuffed full of memorabilia. Photos of the stuntman had been hung along one long wall, including one that showed him jumping over the fountains at Caesar’s Palace in the sixties. A Knievel-branded kid’s bike was suspended from the ceiling and a vintage ‘Stunt Cycle’ arcade game blared out from next to the restrooms.

  Beau and Jessica were at a table near the bar and waved him over.

  “What does Evel Knievel have to do with pizza?” Milton asked as he sat down.

  “Who knows?” Beau said with a grin. “It’s Vegas. There’s an Eiffel Tower and a pyramid. It don’t have to make sense.”

  Mi
lton poured himself a glass of water and drank it down in one draught.

  “What did he say?” Jessica asked.

  “It’s on,” Milton said. “We’ll meet at ten and lead them to the meet.”

  “All right, then. We need to be out of here by eight thirty at the latest. We got a couple of hours to kill.”

  “I’m going to eat and then get an hour’s sleep,” Milton said. He turned to Jessica. “You should probably do the same.”

  Beau stood. “I need to use the little boys’ room.” He crossed the restaurant to the restroom.

  Milton poured out another glass of water.

  “You thought about what I said?” Jessica asked him.

  “About?”

  “About me coming.”

  “I’m reluctant,” he said. “Delgado is dangerous. I don’t need to be worrying about you and your father and him.”

  “Don’t patronise me,” she said. “I can shoot. You saw.”

  “I’m not saying you can’t,” Milton said, on the back foot. “I’m just saying…”

  “What? What are you saying?”

  Milton started to speak, then stopped. He realised that she was right: he was patronising her.

  “Look,” she said, her tone a little more mollifying. “You said it yourself—he’s dangerous. Right?”

  Milton nodded.

  “You don’t know how many people he’s going to bring with him, but you know it won’t just be him. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s you and the old guy. I don’t mean to be rude—I’m grateful for what he’s done for me, and all—but he’s pretty old.”

  Milton allowed himself a smile as he thought how Beau would react to his age being used to diminish him. He was old—that much was right—but he was as tough as old boots and still more capable than many of the operators whom Milton had worked with, especially in an environment that he knew and understood. He’d thought Beau’s competence was obvious, but perhaps he was allowing his past experiences to colour his view. Jessica did not have those same experiences.

  “All I’m saying,” she said, “is that I can help even out the numbers. I’m good with a weapon. You need me there. It doesn’t make sense for me to sit on my hands here.”