Keeping with Killers (The Salingers Book 1)

by Adam Nicholls

  'I did. I screwed it up good and proper, huh?' Blake felt like he had failed a test.

  'Impressive. There's hope for you yet.' He smiled and wondered back to where Rowboat Ron had been, flicking a humoured look over his shoulder.

  Blake stood in the empty room, called after Greg. 'So, how do you suppose we find my father? He could be anywhere by now.'

  'I told you,' Greg stopped and turned, looked at him with a smile that said you should really be damn impressed by me. 'Matthews spilled the beans. I know exactly where Val is. Now blow out that candle. We have work to do.'

  Chapter 22

  Val had never intended to get back in the game. It was a temporary contract that The Boss had forced upon him. He had no control over it and, hopefully, it would be his final job. His grand finale. Though he would have to live with his ex-partner's blood on his hands, and that was never an easy thing.

  Since the incident at the airport, he had been careful, clever, and most important of all, patient. Getting everything together had been a last-minute job, and a tough one. He had worked alongside this man for years and knew that it would not be a simple job to stop him.

  But those years were merely a distant dream now. A memory from a life that didn't feel like his own. He wondered where the years had gone, but he knew; travelling the world to fulfil contracts, killing those who needed killing, and stealing what needed stealing. It had all been for the greater good. And although his partner had saved his life on more than one occasion, he could sometimes make things difficult too. Not too long ago, they had had to pay a visit to the outskirts of Virginia, where the Russians had been kidnapping women and selling them to the sex trade. That had been his final mission with the man.

  But that was back in those days. Back in that life, where a man named Val Salinger did bad things for the right reasons. Back when The Agency were the good guys.

  The radio crackled on the shelf beside him, snapping Val out of his reminiscence. His ears had popped and his eyes were dry with fatigue. Reminding himself that it would all be over soon, he snatched up the radio, cranked up the volume and listened to the kid whom he had hired for this job.

  'Mister Black, the sniper is in position,' the voice spat through the ageing radio.

  Mister Black was a name that he had used before, but not in this city. Not even in the United Kingdom, for that matter. He wasn't so much an expert at assigning random names as his partner had been, but he was always willing to give it a shot. There was always a worry for him that - because people travel, talk, compare peers - his identity would become confused. The six degrees of separation had too few degrees for his liking.

  'Very good. Remember; no shots fired until I say so. Under any circumstances,' he told the kid again. He had no idea if his team were competent, only that they were all he had.

  'Understood, sir. Over and out.'

  Val clipped the radio to his belt and, through the glass, looked out across the water. The night was black but the moon was full and white, spreading its glorious light across the rippled water. He had considered purchasing a boat like this for himself someday, maybe when his retirement came. If it ever came. He had borrowed this one from The Agency, who put up no fight in lending what needed lending to stop the rogue agent.

  And the boy.

  Had he been hurt? If all had gone correctly, Blake should have been kicking back on a beach somewhere with his inheritance. A couple of million would do the trick. He had never been a good father - that is, he hadn't been there when he was needed - but if financial support was of any consolation then Val considered himself redeemed.

  It wasn't long now. His partner - Daniel, as Val recalled was the used name in this area of London - would already know where to go. That was what had made him such a damn good Agent. Although he sometimes acted alone, it would only be to recover intelligence and get The Agency a step ahead of where they needed to be. So, Val understood, if Daniel wanted to know where he was holed up, he would only have to wait.

  Soon, they would soon come through that gate and the war would begin. Val had always known his ex-partner to be quite the strategist, and if he still had a silver-haired head on that scrawny neck of his, he would leave the boy elsewhere. Although Val still clung onto that little thread of hope that he would get to see his son one more time. If not just to get a chance to say how sorry he was that he had abandoned him–how pitifully ashamed he was for not being every bit the father he had wanted to be. Maybe - just maybe - he would tell Blake about his mother, and that the details of her death had been a lie.

  But that was for another day. The boy had been through too much lately.

  The radio made a screeching sound on his belt. He flicked it up and pushed in the button. 'What is it?' It couldn't be them, could it? It was too early. He wasn't quite ready.

  'Sir, there's a problem. You should really come and see this.'

  Val could almost feel the blade at his neck. He knew it would have been too easy. 'Well?' he pressed. 'What is it?'

  'I think you need to see this for yourself, sir.'

  Val huffed, scratched at his spiky stubble and tossed the radio onto the desk. Sighing, wondering what the problem could be, be made his way to the bridge of the yacht. When he reached the rail, he had to squint his eyes to make sure he was seeing right.

  In the distance, blue-and-red lights flashed in vibrant contrast to the black sky. The police car seemed to be at the gates, so it seemed unlikely that they would see the sniper from there. And if this bunch of amateurs had any sense about them, they would have ducked out of sight as soon as they saw the police.

  Val walked down the sloped jetty, wondering if he knew the officers. Whether or not he did would make a huge difference in the outcome of all this; The Agency owned most of the police. But now was not the time for some medal-seeking rookie to kick the dust into everyone's faces. If God was on his side, he would not be recognised. After all, Val Salinger was a dead man, as far as the world was concerned.

  'What can I do for you gentlemen?' he asked, his hip aching in the cold and causing him a slight limp. As the shorter officer turned, Val suddenly recognised that she was female. A pretty one too, save for the broad shoulders. 'Miss–I apologise.'

  'That would be Officer Lang to you, sir,' she said, cutting through the pleasantries. Her partner, a tall balding man lurked behind her, leaning against the car and looking around him nervously. 'May I ask if you're the owner of this yacht?'

  A newbie, thought Val. She must not know me. 'Yes ma'am.' He glanced at the two guards who stood at the gate. If the officers searched them, they would find their firearms. It may not lead to conviction, but it could certainly cause unnecessary hassle for The Agency, and he wanted to avoid that if at all possible.

  'Do you have the documentation?' the male officer suddenly piped up, still having not introduced himself. From the looks of it though, he was a nobody. It seemed that Officer Lang was in charge of this one.

  'Not right now, I'm afraid. I keep all of that at home. Silly of me, really.' Val chuckled, as genuinely as he could muster. He needed to be convincing.

  'Yes, it is.' Lang took a black pad from her breast pocket, flicked it open and clicked a pen to it. She cleared her throat. 'Can I take your name, sir?'

  'My n-name?' He shuffled closer, leaning in to see the pad. 'What do you need my name for?' This was getting far too much for him. The officer seemed to be challenging him, and he didn't like to be threatened. 'What is this about, Miss?'

  'Officer,' she corrected. 'We've had reports of a domestic disturbance upon your craft.'

  A domest–? It was becoming clear that this woman was not on The Agency's payroll.

  'Well, do you have a search warrant?' he tried.

  'Not yet, but you'll find that we don't need one if all we aim to do is take your details. Are you refusing to cooperate? If you are, then that's even better.' She smiled with a wry devilishness, flipped the pad closed and looked him dead in the eye.

  Val
could sense a hostility, a knowing with bitter intent.

  The officer reached one hand behind her back, presumably reaching for her handcuffs.

  After years of experience, Val's reflexes told him not to flinch. 'Of course not,' he said with a smile. This woman was pushing her luck, and he was concerned that he may have to take action. 'My name is Vincent Black. I'm a zoologist from the city.' He had always wanted to be a zoologist. This was probably his only chance.

  'Sounds like a superhero name,' she said without the faintest hint of humour.

  'Well, I'm no superhero. Just an old fart who likes to fish.'

  Lang glanced around the yard, up at the platforms where the snipers were hiding, and then back at Val. 'Mister Black, do you have any identification with you?'

  The male officer still hung back, as if he didn't want to get involved.

  The woman, however, was simply asking for trouble.

  Val began to sweat, his skin getting hot under his collar. It wasn't the threat of the law that bothered him, but more that she was pushing at him to slip back into his old ways. He tried to tell himself that it would be okay to become that person one more time–that she was forcing his hand. He thought about his passport on the boat - the one under the name of Oscar Wales - and suddenly wished he had given her that name instead. He sighed. 'You don't really want to see it, do you? If it's a simple noise complaint, we'll keep it down. I promise.' It was a desperate attempt at abruptly ending the conflict. He turned on his heel and barely made two steps before she called him back.

  'Mister Salinger, do not walk away from us!' she screamed at him. As he glanced back he saw the short - and short-tempered - young officer storming towards him.

  She called me Salinger. He could feel his heart ready to rip out of his chest.

  Officer Lang met his gaze. 'That's right. Your face is all over the papers.'

  Val looked up at where the sniper was. He knew he had done everything he could to prevent this, but that didn't make it any easier. With a simple nod of the head, a dart whistled through the air and punctured her neck. For a second, she reached for it, but then her lights went out and her knees gave way. Val caught her just before she hit the ground, and gently lowered her to the floor.

  The other officer - the man, if you could call him that - stood in surrender with his hands above his head. 'I couldn't stop her, Mister Salinger.' It was a confirmation that he had known who Val was all along, ever since they had arrived.

  Val raised a hand to call off the next shot. 'You shouldn't have let her come this close.' He turned to the guards, who had their hands in their jackets and looked ready to take action. 'Put them in the booth and cuff them. We'll let them go as soon as we're done here.'

  The policeman almost laughed with relief. 'Thank you, Mister Salinger!'

  Val's guards moved straight forward, obeying their order. One of them hauled Lang to her feet and dragged her away, the other escorted the policeman to the gatehouse. Neither put up any resistance, which made Val pleased that he had made the right decision.

  With no more time to waste out here in the open, he turned and headed back to the yacht's cabin, where he would ready himself for the inevitable war.

  Chapter 23

  They were laid on their bellies in the wet dirt, surveying the yacht from a distance with the use of binoculars (for Blake) and the scope of a rifle (for Greg). Blake was getting into the swing of this. That is, he was beginning to feel a bit more comfortable at a distance, and there wasn't a doubt in his mind that he was becoming more observant.

  'It doesn't look like he's in trouble,' he said to Greg, watching his father walk down the gangway and towards the gate. The police car's blue-and-reds whirled around desperately and lit up the entire gating area. Two officers got out and walked straight to him. 'He looks a bit like he's in charge. What exactly is going on?'

  Greg was silent, observing, and then finally grunted. 'He probably is. The Boss doesn't want anybody to see his face, so he gives everyone else the power. Limited power, o'course. Anyway,' he rubbed his eyes for better clarity, 'those cops are dirty. He is, at least.'

  'Hmm.' Blake continued to inspect the situation, feeling ever the less trusting. Something was off, and he would be damned if he didn't find out before it was too late. But his father was a distraction to his thoughts. Blake pictured seeing him again. Not from a distance like he was now, but face-to-face, in the same room. Until then, he would only be an image through the lenses of the binoculars. But what would he say? How would he tell him about Marcy? Blake didn't want to be the one to tell him. Why should he?

  'Look here; you're about to see something special.' Greg was fidgeting, looking far too excitable. Like a kid seeing his first horror movie and marvelling at all the gore.

  'What is it?' Blake strained his eyes.

  'Just watch, kid. If you would only open your eyes and observe a little more, you could acquire more knowledge in a single day than most people do in an entire year.' He shifted his gaze to Blake. 'And what is knowledge?'

  'Scarce,' Blake jested.

  Greg gave a cold stare. 'Power, kid. Knowledge is power. Perhaps you should read a little more too.' He turned back to his sniper's scope. 'Now look.'

  Blake tried to suck up the insult to his intelligence. He had known the quote - of course he had - but if he wasn't allowed to lighten the mood from time to time then they were in more trouble than it had first seemed. He bit his tongue, peered back through the binoculars and patiently waited for something spectacular to happen.

  Much to his surprise, it did.

  The policewoman fell to the ground, but Val caught her limp body just in time. It reminded Blake of his first swimming lessons with that same man; he would never let him fall. Not until he needed to. 'Is she… dead?'

  'Not likely. Your papa is something of a goody-two-shoes. Probably just a sleep dart.'

  Blake began to sit up, but Greg gripped his arm tight, keeping him in place and burning his skin. 'My back hurts,' he protested. 'I need to stretch.'

  'Then stretch low.' Greg let go and kept on looking through the scope.

  'I still don't understand…' Blake wriggled onto his back, lifted his arms above his head and stretched his taut muscles, '…why we called the police. They didn't exactly prove very useful down there, did they?'

  Greg turned to stare at him, breathing heavily with a short-tempered look in his eye. 'Nothing?' He huffed. 'Have you not taken in a single thing that I've tried to teach you?'

  Blake cowered his head, slightly nervous of this man. He thought about all the possible reasons that they could have called the police but, sadly, came back with nothing. He shook his head in shame, certain that he was about to learn.

  'Look, it was never my intention to train you, but I like to think you've absorbed something into that thick bloody skull. What do you know about the layout down there, that you didn't know five minutes ago?'

  Blake had no idea. He gnawed on his fingernails while he ran through the string of events. The images flickered through his mind like a film reel; the guards patrolling, his father coming off the yacht, and then… 'The sniper?' he ventured.

  Greg grinned, his smile a dull white in the moonlight. 'Good. Now we know that there's only one, and that they're armed primarily with darts. so they don't want to kill us. Don't you see how important that information is? Like I said, kid: knowledge is power.' He climbed to his knees, shifted away from plain sight. When he knew he was in the clear, he stood. 'You ready for this? You know what you're doing?'

  Blake gulped. 'I do.' As he slipped the backpack over his shoulders - with the black box and a spare gun inside - he thought to risk one more question. 'Do you think he will be pleased to see me?'

  'Your dad?'

  'Yeah.'

  Greg handed a pistol to him, rolled his black sleeves down his arms. 'I would think so.'

  They climbed down and around the rocky terrain, Greg leading the way and Blake trailing behind him with a terrible case of
the shakes. It wasn't the gun that made him so damn nervous - wasn't even the danger that he was facing for the third time in as many days - but if he got as far as seeing his father, what would he even say to him?

  They got to the bottom of the rocks and stepped onto the flat road that led to the gate. They were just short of a half-mile away, surrounded by the hills that lowered as they sulked towards the docks. That was where they stopped.

  'You know the plan. Let's do it,' Greg said, and raised his hands above his head.

  Blake lifted the gun and aimed it at him. He didn't trust himself not to squeeze the trigger–not because he wanted to, but because his body often did things that he didn't consciously tell it to. So he tucked his finger in behind the trigger. At a distance, it would look the same to anybody else, he figured. Nobody had to know.

  They walked like that, Blake taking Greg as his hostage–his gift to The Agency.

  When they reached the gate, both of the guards by the chain link fence raced into their jackets for their guns. They spread their legs, straightened their shoulders. One of them shouted: 'Stop right there! What the hell is this?'

  Blake caught sight of the abandoned police car. He shivered, tried not to show it. 'Get in touch with Mister Salinger,' he demanded. His confidence was nothing but an act, though he thought it was somewhat convincing.

  'Per'aps you're lost, boy,' said the bigger of the two guards.

  'Yeah, there's nobody here by that name. Even if there was, he wouldn't want to mix with civilians. So turn yourself around and march back up that road, and I may not shoot you dead.' He looked to the other guard and laughed, as if Blake's gun meant nothing to them.

  'I won't ask again,' said Blake. 'Radio Val Salinger and tell him that his son is here. This man is a rogue agent and he is wanted by your employer.' He shoved Greg forward and stepped up close behind him. 'Would you like me to tell him that he escaped because of you?'

  Blake could feel himself slipping and was hoping that Greg would step in, take control. But he didn't; he stood still with his hands held high.