The Redemption Man

by James Carver

  “I’m so sorry,” stuttered Fox, looking around and realizing that Devlin must not have followed her in. “I took a wrong turn and…”

  “Shut the fuck up and drop the gun,” said the tattooed guy. Fox let the Glock fall to the ground, knowing she had Devlin waiting out of sight behind her.

  “I don’t care why you’re here,” said the tattooed guy. “It’s your bad luck either way.” He had closed in on Fox and had his gun trained on her. “Now, back up through the door you came in.”

  Fox did as she was told and began to retrace her steps, walking through the doors and back into the cattle lab. The tattooed guy followed her, closed the double doors behind him, and reached a hand out to hit a red Lock button. But before his hand made contact with the button, he was hit from the side by a metal crate loaded with gas cylinders that knocked him off balance and sent his gun rolling across the floor. The force of the collision left him shaken and confused. As he lurched forward to get to his feet, scrambling in the direction of his lost gun, another collision, this time made of flesh and bone, grounded him for good.

  Devlin stood over the ranch hand, who was out cold on the ground, his long limbs crooked and limp.

  “That’s a mean right cross you got on you,” said Fox, admiring Devlin’s handiwork.

  “I used to box. A long time ago,” replied Devlin, retrieving the gun from the floor, a Smith and Wesson M&P .45, and checking the magazine. “Next time let me go first, okay?”

  Fox shrugged. “It turned out okay, didn’t it?” she replied, nodding at the ranch hand laid out on his back.

  Devlin shot Fox a stony look, then turned to the guy on the floor. “Let’s get him hog-tied so we don’t have to worry about him again.”

  Devlin and Fox hauled the ranch hand back into the main lab and got hold of rolls of bandages from the shelves of supplies that ran along the walls of the hanger, using them to gag him and tie his hands and feet.

  Then they began to explore their extraordinary surroundings properly. They moved among the beds occasionally, looking over to each other to check and share their reaction. Devlin moved his hand over some of the men’s faces, but there was no response. He lifted their eyelids and checked their pupils.

  “They’ve all been put under general anesthetic. Like an induced coma.” Devlin looked over at Fox as they both felt the same rising horror.

  “They’re not selling their fucking organs, are they?” said Fox. “They don’t even know it’s happening to them. Jesus Christ, Devlin. This is fucking madness. We have to do something. Could we free them somehow?”

  “Where would we start? What might happen if we disconnected the tubes? We have no idea what cocktail of drugs they’re on. It could send them into shock. We’d be putting their lives in even more risk. God knows what they’ve been given to keep them like this… Although it doesn’t look like any of them have been operated on…yet.”

  There was an eerie quiet punctuated by the beeps of machinery and the rhythmic percussive chorus of twelve different heartbeats. Devlin looked at the bed he was standing by and realized he recognized the young man lying in it.

  “Over here,” said Devlin. Fox joined him and looked down at the bed’s occupant. “This is Alvarez.”

  Fox reached down and unhooked a plastic folder that hung from Alvarez’s bed rail. There was a reference number, FDH 4488983, printed on the front of the folder. She flicked through the contents, and Devlin peered over her shoulder. The folder contained the same notes that Devlin had found in Lazard’s office. Measurements for blood pressure, cholesterol, blood type, and many more in-depth tests. She searched through the rest of the paperwork, and Devlin turned to the next bed and started checking through the notes on another of the men.

  “I’ll bet they’re mostly O blood type too,” he said.

  Fox flicked back through Alvarez’s profile. “Yeah, Alvarez is. Why?”

  “Because if you’re O blood type, you’re a universal donor.”

  Devlin had stopped at a page and was studying it. “It looks like they’ve made antigen matches for all of them. The more antigens that match, the better the chances of organs not being rejected. It’s a bespoke transplant service. The money they could charge rich clients for perfectly matching organs and tissues delivered absolutely to spec, it would be astronomical. It’s the very highest end of the organ black market.”

  “Look, Devlin, there’s a list for Alvarez’s organs.” Fox showed him a page marked “Alvarez - Inventory.” It was a list of every different kind of organ and tissue: eye tissue, lungs, skin, heart, thymus, liver, kidneys, pancreas, bowel, intestines, bone marrow.

  “They’re stripping them like car thieves,” said Fox. “These men have no idea what’s happening to them.”

  “This was why the first murder happened,” said Devlin. “One of the victims must have escaped. Poor devil almost made it to the highway before he was caught and cut up. That has to be what happened. That’s why he still had ketamine in his system.”

  Fox was still reading through Alvarez’s documents. “Devlin, there’s a date here for delivery of Alvarez’s organs. It’s tomorrow at ten hundred hours. Jesus, the whole thing’s being shipped to deadlines.”

  Devlin and Fox stood motionless and wordless, grappling with the enormity of evil being done in this place. They were surrounded by a grotesque experiment the orchestrators of which had lost all human empathy.

  “These poor souls are in purgatory,” Devlin whispered.

  54

  On the far side of the ranch, Packer and the men had beaten the fire. The tree trunks were still smoldering, and the side of the field the trees bordered along was scorched and charred. But the bulls had been rounded up and moved to safety, and the men had started to fill the pickups ready to go. But Packer wasn’t satisfied. Why had a fire broken out on the trunks and branches of the trees? It didn’t make any sense at all. It wasn’t nearly hot enough for a wildfire. He inspected the charred tree trunks more closely. Among the fire damage, he could make out traces of what to him looked suspiciously like pour patterns. He put his fingers up against a trunk and rubbed up and down. Then he put his fingers to his nose.

  “Gasoline.”

  Packer looked over the field to the edge of the forest that started on the other side of the fence. He got curious and walked up to the fence. Then he climbed over and entered the woodland.

  A little way into the forest, Stevens had ditched the empty gasoline cans, crouched behind a bush, and watched the men beat back the fire. He’d planned to call Devlin and Fox when they’d put out the flames and were on their way back. He’d held out as long as possible to give them as much time as he could. But now, as Packer moved closer toward him, he was beginning to regret hanging about. He started to back off slowly, trying not to give his position away while keeping an eye on Packer’s movements.

  Packer wandered about fifty feet farther into the forest. Then he stopped and listened with all his attention to the sounds around him. He heard nothing unusual, only the hoot and song of birds and the breeze troubling the treetops. Standing still as a deer, he looked back and forth across the forestscape. Birds flitted from tree to tree, and the occasional small animal, a raccoon or squirrel, darted across the forest floor. Nothing out of the ordinary. But Packer waited it out. He waited and watched intently until finally he saw the movement he was searching for, a shadow of human height in the foliage. Packer took off toward it instantly.

  Stevens saw Packer thundering in a direct line toward him. His heart did a somersault, and he turned and raced through the woodland as fast as he dared. The branches and leaves stung and stabbed at his skin and caught his eyes, making them sting and tear up. As fast as Stevens could run, Packer’s giant strides were still making ground on him. Stevens risked a look over his shoulder. Jesus, he thought, Packer was closing in so fast. It wasn’t that Packer was quick; he just didn’t give a shit about the low-lying branches. A man of his extraordinary size and bulk, he had virtually no p
hysical fear. He just plowed the hell on through.

  Stevens could sense this was a race he could not win. It was a good mile back to his car, and at the rate he was being gained on, it would be game over long before he got there. But what could he do? He had to keep on running, though he knew it was useless. Choking back fear, he ran and stumbled on, thinking of all the time he had a moment ago. All the time with his beautiful children, the pearls of his life, with his wife that he was so stupidly lucky to have. All gone in this nightmare in which, at any moment, he would feel a pair of giant hands on his shoulders. His imagination raced with the images of the many different violent ways Packer could rip his body apart.

  And then the earth itself seemed to give way and the day vanished.

  55

  “We should go, Devlin.” Fox was by now extremely agitated.

  “We don’t need to go yet. Greg hasn’t called.”

  “I don’t know, it feels like we’re pushing our luck. We’ve found out what we needed to know.”

  “I want to know who these organs are going to be delivered to.” Devlin walked to the station at the head of the beds and began searching through the drawers beneath the worktop.

  “They’re not gonna write that kind of fucking information down.”

  “Maybe not deliberately, but maybe it’s buried here somewhere.”

  “Devlin,” said Fox anxiously. “I got a bad feeling. We should go.”

  “Just give me a minute longer.”

  56

  Packer stood scratching his head. It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t possible. There was someone there. A person. He’d seen them, he swore. And now they were gone, like they’d been lifted out of the forest. A shout came from behind him. It was Campbell.

  “Packer! What the fuck are you doing? We’re going back.”

  Packer turned and walked back to the pasture, shaking his head and glancing back every so often, as if he might catch whoever it was by surprise. As if he were playing Red Light/Green light.

  The truth was that the earth itself had given way. Stevens was lying in a shallow, sloping lift shaft that gave on to an old mining tunnel. Surface mining that’d been covered over he’d bet. He looked up. The disturbed earth where he fell through now mostly covered the way in. He could just about make out a narrow chink of daylight. But no Packer. Then he looked down along the gradient of the tunnel he’d fallen into. He wondered how far it went on for. This forest must be riddled with these old mines, he thought. Maybe deeper ones than this. And then it dawned on him. How someone could have got through the police search to Earl two nights before. Someone who didn’t have to be a cop. Who might not be Miller or Walker even. Of course! For God’s sake, why hadn’t it occurred to anyone that there would be old mines running underneath them? Someone could have walked into the forest underneath the feet of hundreds of unsuspecting police officers.

  Stevens got to his feet. The shaft itself wasn’t so deep. There were rocks and branches in the wall of earth that he could use to get out. It wasn’t time for the dirt to claim him yet.

  57

  “Come on, Devlin!” Devlin had lifted out a pile of papers from one of the desk drawers and was frantically rifling through them. Fox was beside herself with panic.

  “Wait, Fox. Greg hasn’t called yet.”

  Fox was getting angry. Finally, she gave up. “Fuck this. I’m going to go start up the car and bring it to the ranch entrance. Throw me the keys.” Devlin fumbled in his jacket pocket and flung them over to Fox.

  “Stevens hasn’t called yet,” he repeated without looking up.

  Fox sprinted out of the lab entrance and was gone. Devlin continued to work through the papers he’d found, scanning each sheet from the pile and then throwing them to the floor. They seemed to be mainly receipts for supplies from Freedom Dayton Hospital and older medical tests dated from a couple of weeks back that had been kept. He’d got about three-quarters of the way through the paperwork when he hit oil. A list of names Devlin figured had to be the recipients of the organs, the main reason being that none of the names were Hispanic. The other reason was that the list included names with titles: a Lord Selwyn, a General Belinsky, a Sheikh Mansour Sajwani. Rich people. Alongside the names were dates and the numbers of suites in Freedom Dayton Hospital’s premier wing. That was it, the final piece.

  He was about to congratulate himself when Devlin heard the crunch of feet on concrete. He dropped the clutch of papers in his hand, which fluttered to the floor around his feet, and looked up. A massive figure loomed in the doorway, dipping his head to get into the lab. He glowered back at Devlin, a shaft of light illuminating his right eye.

  A cold realization ran through Devlin that he was completely unarmed. Fox had taken the Glock, and he’d left the Smith and Wesson on one of the supply shelves on the other side of the hangar when they’d bandaged up the ranch hand. He cursed himself for getting so engrossed in the medical paperwork and not thinking more clearly.

  Packer’s attention had been caught by a muffled sound and movement down to his right, Packer looked to the floor and saw Reeves tied up, squirming and moaning.

  “You fucking prick, Reeves,” hissed Packer. Then he looked back up at Devlin.

  “Okay, priest. This time is the last time.”

  Devlin stood across the lab, diagonally opposite from Packer. He had a clear chance across the row of beds to take another look at this strange, giant man. Not many people had this opportunity before getting to grips with him, so Devlin used it to his full advantage. He was the biggest he’d ever gone up against. He’d take some damage, but it wouldn’t be impossible. Packer’s reach was longer, and his strength was greater. But he was human. And if he was human, for all his strength, Devlin had one good option: fight dirty.

  Packer moved over toward Devlin, weaving through the beds. Devlin moved from side to side, threatening to move one way, then another, using the beds as an obstacle. Packer closed in until he was a bed apart from Devlin. Devlin took hold of the bed and started to move it on its wheels. Packer froze. He knew that Devlin was wheeling around millions of dollars of merchandise. Whatever happened, no harm could come to that asset. Devlin started using the bed as a shield. When Packer went one way, so did Devlin and the bed. When Packer attempted to reach over, Devlin pulled the bed toward him, putting Packer in danger of toppling over on the bed and patient. The movement of the bed meant the wires between the patient and the monitors were being stretched to their maximum.

  Devlin’s tactics were enraging Packer, who’d had enough and pulled out his knife. He reached over and swung it in arcs, trying to cut Devlin. Devlin saw the steel blade coming toward him and rammed the bed into Packer, causing a monitor to let out a high-pitched alarm. Packer panicked and leaped away from the bed, stumbling backward and giving Devlin a couple of seconds’ advantage. It was enough time maybe to make the exit but not enough to try and retrieve the Smith and Wesson in the half-light of the hangar. Devlin took off toward the door. He had to take the fight out of here. It couldn’t happen in the lab; he’d taken enough chances already with the men lying there in comas, prone and vulnerable.

  Devlin ran through the doorway, turned, and saw Packer lumbering after him. Then he caught sight of the scanner and a red Lock button. He closed the doors and pressed the red button, activating the locks. On the other side, Packer pushed at the shut doors and realized what Devlin had done. He looked down to his side and placed his finger on the exit scanner. The display flashed up “Access Denied” in red. He roared in frustration and wiped his hands on his chest and tried again. The display flashed up “Packer. Access Granted” in green. He pushed against the door. It didn’t give. Something was stacked up against the door on the other side.

  “Fuck! Fuck!” Packer bellowed in anger.

  He pushed again but no dice. He stepped back and took a run-up, shouldering into the doors, which gave only a little. On the other side, he could hear the jangle of metal rattling. Packer forced the doors ajar and
could see that Devlin had pushed as many cages of liquid nitrogen as he could up against them, rows upon rows. Packer pushed his way through, clearing each cage one by one with his great muscular span. Eventually, he stamped out of the lab into the light. But it was too late. Devlin was gone. Packer could barely contain his rage.

  The next time he’d catch that bastard priest and rip off his face, arms, and genitals with his bare hands.

  58

  Devlin had skirted the other way around the ranch house from the way he and Fox had got in. He could see that the ranch hands had parked and were back at the trailers. He moved around unseen, over on the opposite side of the clearing from the cluster of trailers and barns, and got to the fence along the highway unnoticed. He climbed the fence and ran along the roadside to the parked Ford Explorer, puzzled that Fox hadn’t got the car started and ready to go. He opened the door expecting to find her at the wheel. But she wasn’t there. As traffic whooshed past, he sat with the engine running and waited, looking anxiously in his side mirror at the road behind him and the entrance to the ranch. Fifteen minutes passed and nothing happened. No Fox.

  Devlin slammed a fist against the window and growled, “Come on, Fox. Where the hell are you?”

  Then his phone buzzed. He’d got a text from Fox’s number. But it wasn’t Fox.

  The text said, “Meet me at the coffee shop on the corner of Oakland and Main in an hour. We met your girl and asked her to stick around. Clay.”

  An electric pulse of shock and terror lit up Devlin’s heart.

  “No. Not Fox… Please, God…” First Ed and now Fox. Before that, Jane. Devlin was close to despair.