DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten (the Charlie Fox crime thriller series)

by Sharp, Zoe

“It was him or me,” Baptiste mumbled. “He had a gun, too. He’d been threatening me. I promised to pay him. Told him I still needed the stuff. He thought he had me beaten. He thought—”

  Castille cut him off. “He thought your word was good—that he could trust you.”

  Baptiste said nothing.

  Castille turned to Sean. “Is that how it happened, cher?”

  Sean gave a slight “don’t know” twitch of his shoulder. The man stared at him for a moment longer.

  I tightened my grip on Baptiste’s arm. He flinched, rose on his toes as if that might lessen the way his bones and tendons were being prised apart.

  I said, “What then?”

  “He was down but he wasn’t dead. I thought he’d die, but he didn’t—just lay there, looking at me. I ran. What else could I do? And then Meyer came in with his gun out. He’d heard the shot. He was gonna call the cops. I mean, Jesus! I shouted at him to kill the son of a—to kill the guy,” Baptiste amended. “To put him out of his fucking misery. But he wouldn’t do it.” His voice turned plaintive. “He was supposed to protect me.”

  “He wasn’t supposed to cover up your foul-ups,” I said. “That’s not part of the job description.”

  “Then he should have stopped me before I ever got there,” Baptiste complained.

  How could you let me make this mistake? I shook my head. We were guardians of their physical well-being but half the time a principal also expected us to be the keeper of their soul.

  “So your bodyguard finished him off, is that what you are saying?” Castille demanded.

  “He wanted it!” Baptiste said, almost a shout. It took me a moment to realise he was talking about the man’s brother, not Sean. “He was crying and shit, begging for it.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, incredulous. “The guy you shot asked to die?”

  Baptiste nodded, his own throat filled with tears—for his own loss, I suspected, not anyone else’s. “He . . . he knew he was paralysed, couldn’t move his arms and legs, could barely breathe. He said he couldn’t live as a cripple. Said if I was a man I’d finish what I’d started. I–I couldn’t do it.”

  “So your bodyguard did it for you,” Castille said, and his tone was quieter now, subdued. “In the back of the head?”

  “He didn’t want to, but he did it. So’s your brother could have an open casket,” Baptiste muttered, shame flooding his face. “For his mother—”

  Castille lifted an abrupt hand, silenced him. For a moment he said nothing, fighting for control. When he met Sean’s eyes his voice was calm again, almost light. “Will you accord me the same honour?”

  Sean rolled his shoulder a little into the stock of the gun, looked for all the world as if he was going to comply. Then he straightened slowly, let the muzzle drop.

  “No,” he said roughly. “I won’t be your bloody executioner.”

  Castille looked downwards, pointedly, towards the man with the broken neck lying at Sean’s feet. He raised an eyebrow. “You have grown soft, cher.”

  I let go of Baptiste, gave him a shove. He staggered away clutching his wounded arm to his chest. I stepped forwards alongside Sean, a united front.

  “If you don’t get your thugs off this damn boat you’ll find out just how soft we are.”

  The man’s gaze lingered for a while on Sean, then switched to me. “You—you I think would kill me if you could,” he said at last. “You have the eyes for it, chérie.”

  “Try me.”

  The man glanced at Tom O’Day, still standing with another of the M16s in his hands. “What about you, old man?” he asked. “If I try to leave are you going to shoot me in the back, also, like my brother?”

  O’Day shook his head. “Like Charlie said, all we want is for these people to be safe and you to be off this damn boat.”

  Castille inclined his head, gave a smile that I did not entirely trust. “Do not worry,” he said, “as soon as—”

  Gunfire cut his words short. A short staccato burst from somewhere below and aft of us. We all reacted instinctively, according to temperament and training.

  Baptiste dived under a table, his arm miraculously forgotten. Jimmy disappeared back behind the bar. Sean and I both moved for the nearest main bulkhead, knowing it was made from steel plate.

  Even as we did so I saw Castille twist lightly on the balls of his feet, heading back for the stairwell. Saw the way his hand slid under his jacket.

  I shouted, “Gun!” even before he’d cleared the weapon. Before I saw that I was wrong.

  In his hand was not the gun I’d been expecting. Instead he gripped a short narrow-bladed knife.

  My warning should have made Tom O’Day and Blake Dyer head for cover. It should have made them leave him alone, think of their own safety and let him go.

  It didn’t.

  Instead, buoyed by his earlier success, Tom O’Day moved to block the other man’s escape. He started to bring the M16 up. I could tell he was tracking too slow to fire and stand a chance of hitting his target.

  But Blake Dyer suddenly seemed to come out of stasis. He stepped in close to Castille, the golf club unwinding into a low blow aimed straight for the man’s shins. Hard enough to put him on the ground and make sure the only way he was getting up again was to be lifted onto a stretcher.

  It never landed.

  Castille leapt to the side, lithe as a dancer. He elbowed Dyer aside with contemptuous ease and was through the doors and away before you could blink.

  I glared at Sean. “What the hell—?”

  “Charlie,” he said, already letting the muzzle of the weapon drop and moving forwards fast.

  I turned, just in time to see Blake Dyer let go of the golf club. It rolled out of his open fingers and dropped to the deck. He folded both hands very slowly and carefully against his abdomen.

  Through his fingers, the blood welled out in a vivid, violent rush.

  Sixty-three

  “This is going to hurt.”

  Blake Dyer gave a breathless little laugh. “What do you mean, ‘going to’?”

  I’d eased the tails of his dress shirt out of his trousers. Underneath, just below the level of his belt, was a small slit in the wall of his abdomen. It was maybe two or three centimetres long, but the blood oozed from it as fast as I could wipe it away.

  Not a good sign.

  Neither was the colour of the blood—very dark, almost black. Nor the way his stomach had already begun to swell.

  The blade of the knife had been long enough to reach deep into Dyer’s body. From those two indicators it was almost a certainty that he had internal bleeding.

  He needed a paramedic and a hospital—fast.

  I doubted we could provide him with either in time.

  So I improvised as best I could with what remained of the duct tape we’d used to bind Sullivan and serviettes from the dispensers on the tables. I wished I still had my evening bag, long since jettisoned in the casino. The tampons I’d put in it would have made ideal dressings shoved into the wound to stop the external bleeding at least.

  Not much I could do about the rest of it.

  I remembered a time when I’d watched my father, a surgeon of considerable skill, save a man’s life by the side of the road using a pair of pliers from a vehicle tool kit to clamp off a severed artery.

  What I wouldn’t have given to have him here now.

  We’d dealt with the fallen men—the survivors, anyway. They were all going to need their legs splinting before they could move, so the threat they presented was static at best. We still searched them, and roughly taped their hands. I made the guy I’d dealt with improvised dressings for the wounds to his eye and throat. He didn’t thank me for it.

  Dyer shivered as the shock set in. Jimmy found some spare tablecloths folded behind the bar, brought a couple over and draped them around his godfather’s shoulders. I gave him a brief nod. He looked as if he might speak but eventually just shook his head mutely and turned away.

  He�
��d been about to ask a question he already knew the answer to.

  “Bet you’re glad you . . . got that dismissal . . . in writing, huh?” Dyer said now, struggling for breath. His abdominal cavity was slowly but steadily filling with blood from some punctured organ. It was compressing his lungs, suffocating him.

  “I’m counting on you to rescind that,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. “It will look bad on my record.”

  He gripped my sleeve, fingers suddenly strong, leaving greasy stains on the material.

  “Tell my wife . . . I love her. Tell her . . . I’m sorry . . . for being such a damn fool.”

  I should have said, “You can tell her yourself,” but we both knew that wasn’t going to happen. I said nothing. After a moment Dyer nodded as if thanking me for not continuing the lie.

  “Tom . . .” Dyer said. “My grandkid . . . was going to ask you . . . to be godfather.”

  “Of course—if you stop talking like a damn fool,” O’Day said briskly, but his voice was filled with sorrow. He’d seen enough wounded to make his own judgement.

  “Uncle Blake,” Jimmy said. “I—”

  It was as far as he got before his voice gave out.

  Dyer gave him a lopsided smile. “Walk tall, Jimmy,” he said. “Gotta come . . . out of the shadows.” He coughed, every breath a violent drag of air now. “Always thought I’d have . . . more time with you.”

  Jimmy turned away, hands to his mouth as if to hold back the sobs.

  I glanced at Sean still braced behind the M16. There was nothing in his face. Was that good or bad?

  “Hey, people! We need to get off of this goddamn boat!” The words burst from Baptiste. I shot him a vicious glare. Baptiste swallowed but hardly missed a beat. “Um, ’cause we need to get Mr Dyer some help, yeah?”

  Dyer gave a single shake of his head. “Go,” he said. “Save the others.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed. He gave a faint smile. I turned away from him, asked Sean, “How many left guarding the casino?”

  “Two,” he said. “We should clear the hostages before we take the bridge.”

  “Was anyone else separated out?”

  “Apart from Mrs van Zant, just Miss Sinclair and Vic Morton—I don’t know where they were taken.” He glanced at Jimmy as if seeing him for the first time. “He should know.”

  I indicated Tom O’Day. “Tom suggested we try the meat locker in the galley.”

  Sean nodded. “Good idea,” he said. His eyes shifted across Blake Dyer’s figure. There was a hollow note to his voice I recognised as guilt—guilt that he hadn’t killed Castille while he had the chance. “Someone should stay here.”

  Baptiste said quickly, “I’ll stay.”

  “Someone Blake knows,” I said, ignoring him.

  Someone he loves—someone who loves him.

  “I guess that would be either me or Jimmy,” Tom O’Day said. He glanced at his son. “Jimmy, I think—”

  Jimmy must have known what was coming. “You should stay with Uncle Blake,” he interrupted, voice firm and calm. “I–I need to find Autumn—see that she’s safe.”

  Tom O’Day rocked back a little. He nodded, swallowed as if unable to speak.

  “OK, son,” he said quietly. “If that’s what you want.”

  He flicked the safety onto the M16 and handed it across. Jimmy took it gingerly. He rolled his shoulders and covertly copied Sean’s stance.

  I sighed, picked the gun out of his hands and held it so he could clearly see the fire selector. “Safe. Single shot. Full auto,” I said. “Stick to single shot—one round at a time. Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire, and don’t point it at anything you’re not prepared to kill. OK?”

  Jimmy glanced at Sean again, as if hoping for more advice.

  Sean shook his head. “That about covers it,” he said.

  Most beginners, I remembered, fared better with a long gun than a pistol. I could only hope Jimmy fell into the majority. Probably best not to have him behind us, though. Just in case.

  “What about me?” Baptiste demanded.

  Sean checked over our captured weapons supply, gave one to me and left one on the deck next to Tom O’Day where he sat with his dying friend. He turned back to Baptiste and shook his head.

  “No way,” he said coldly. “The last time you had a gun in your hands, you shot a man in the back.”

  Sixty-four

  In the end we gave Baptiste a couple of the unbroken bottles from the bar. After all, he’d proved numerous times on the baseball field that he could pitch a fast ball at close to a hundred miles an hour, and hit a target as small as a catcher’s mitt more than sixty feet away. What better weapon to give him than something he could throw?

  Sean led us down the service staircase towards the casino deck. Baptiste followed, then Jimmy, still nervously clutching the unfamiliar M16. I brought up the rear, checking up and back to make sure nobody came down on top of us.

  The casino was on the lowest deck. We reached the bottom of the staircase unmolested. Sean made a closed-fist “hold” gesture as we gathered outside the double doors leading through into the bar area at the back of the casino floor. We waited, straining to hear what was going on inside. Noises, voices, confusion.

  Sean indicated that Jimmy and Baptiste should wait. He signalled me low right while he would go high left. I swallowed, just once, then nodded.

  I’d been through doors before with Sean but this time was different.

  This time he was different.

  I tried not to let that matter, moving at the same instant he did, diving through the door the second he pushed it aside. I hit the deck, rolled, landing on my belly with my elbows spread into a firing stance, anchored, tight.

  Even as I went in, as fast and aggressive as Sean himself, my eyes were searching for the first target. The first man with a weapon in a room full of non-combatants. In a fraction of a second my eyes fed information and my brain processed it.

  Two armed assailants, in two locations with hostages behind them.

  I tracked the one on the right, knowing Sean would automatically target the other. The man half-turned and froze at our explosive entry, presenting me with a near perfect sight-picture. I would have normally aimed for low centre body mass, but I had a solid opportunity for a head shot with no clutter behind him. I let my body drop to raise my aim a fraction, took up pressure on the trigger.

  The butt of the M16 kicked into my shoulder. I had time to see the hijacker jerk from the impact and start to fall. There was no need for a second round.

  In my peripheral vision I saw the second gunman take a couple of solid hits to the body but he didn’t go down. Some of the security guys had elected for body armour, I recalled. It was clear our assailants had done so as well.

  I twisted onto my side, sweeping the gun round fast. The hijacker was already lining up on Sean, a snarl of pain and fury on his face. I knew there was no way Sean should have let him get that far.

  Come on, for God’s sake, take him!

  Still he hesitated that vital split-second.

  I couldn’t afford to wait. I squeezed the trigger for another head shot, feeling nothing but frustration. The shot was clean, and all animation abruptly left him. Part of me knew I should have let Sean counter his own demons.

  And part of me was afraid he wasn’t going to.

  The sound of gunfire inside the casino was raucous. Into the artificial silence that followed the sounds of the room returned slowly to my bruised ears. Muffled sobs and sounds of fright. As it equalised I saw one of the bodyguards rise. He’d thrown himself over an elderly man in a tuxedo as soon as the shooting started.

  “Meyer?” he said in disbelief, coming up out of a crouch. “Hey, man, we thought you were fish food. How d’you pull that one off?”

  Sean didn’t say anything, just jerked his head sideways. The man followed his gaze across to me, lying behind the gun. After a moment, he nodded.

 
“Ah . . . good work,” he said, and if the praise was cool the fact it was offered at all meant more.

  Then, with sudden force, the doors to the casino were shoved open. I rolled over onto my back, lifting the M16 up and ready.

  Baptiste and Jimmy came in, hurrying. Behind them, as if using them as a shield, came another man with a gun.

  I lined up on him instinctively, sights on his mouth where he would drop fast and clean. It was all smooth and automatic now, drilled in. I started to take up the trigger.