We’ll see, won’t we? It would be soooo nice to have you back in harness, darling. With me cracking the whip again, like before. Mmmm. How naughty that sounds.
Lex:
Cold shower time for you.
Seraphina:
I prefer my showers hot, soapy... and accompanied.
“Who’s that you’re talking to?” It was Albertine, peering over his shoulder.
Lex flicked the phone out of text mode. “No one. My boss.”
“I thought you were self-employed.”
“Freelance, yes. She’s more agent than boss.”
“She?” Albertine arched an eyebrow as high as it could go.
“Something wrong with that?”
“Not a thing. But I could have sworn I read something about hot, soapy showers.”
“Jealous?”
“Do I need to be?”
“No.”
“Then that’s fine,” she said, sidling away. “Good enough for me.”
Lex watched her go, admiring the rollicking, insolent sway of her hips. The same hips that had gripped him so urgently, so deliciously last night.
All at once, Gable’s—Legba’s—words recurred, elbowing their way back into his thoughts.
Dead men won’ lie an’ liars won’ die. That’s the truth, Leonard Duncan, and the truth always hurts.
Maybe he had misheard. Maybe Gable had actually said his adopted name, and he had mistaken it for his true name. They sounded similar enough, and Gable’s accent was thick and he had a tendency to mumble.
In that case, setting aside the matter of a compromised identity, what did the remark actually mean? Dead men? Liars? What was all that about?
Lex knew he could keep worrying at it like a bone for hours and get nowhere. With some effort, he thrust it to the back of his mind.
BACK ON THE road, beneath the surging orange brilliance of a Caribbean dawn, with the inflatable boats bumping along behind them.
“Just come out and say it,” Lex said to Buckler. “Get it off your chest. Let’s clear the air now, before the op begins in earnest.”
“Okay,” said Buckler. “Okay. I’m all in favour of air-clearing.” He glanced round at Tartaglione and Sampson in the backseat, both of whom looked as disgruntled as their CO did. “Those boats, see, that was kind of a last-minute thing. I didn’t think we’d need them... not until I went and took a gander at your buddy’s airplane. De Havilland Turbo Beaver. Not in the best of condition.”
“It’ll fly.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it will. I’m sure it’ll get us to Anger Reef just fine, probably get us back too, nice and safe and all in one piece. I’ve been up in rattletraps far worse. The issue here isn’t so much the journey as the landing. We’re timing it so as we insert at high tide, but even then that isn’t going to afford us much clearance in the water. Turbo Beaver’s pretty hefty for its size, especially with a full complement of passengers and a load of equipment too. I reckon there’s a chance she could lose a float. Coral could rip it right off. We can’t have that.”
“Hence the Zodiacs.”
“Nice shallow draught. Virtually flat-bottomed. We’ll skim across just fine.”
“So you’re pissed off at me because I didn’t anticipate this little problem and you’ve had to resolve it yourself,” said Lex. “Well, excuse me, lieutenant, but why didn’t you tell me? I could have done something about it if I’d had a heads-up. Shouldn’t there be more to-and-fro here?” He waved a hand in the air between himself and Buckler. “A free and frank exchange of data?”
“That’s not why I’m pissed off,” said Buckler. “Why I’m pissed off is, I went and had a look at the seaplane, like I said.”
“So?”
“So, I go to this boatyard where it’s being kept, this out-of-the-way place a few miles up the coast. I make the trip there after dark, me and Petty Officer Sampson, we do it together, hire a taxi and go visit, ’cause I felt it should be done, on account of I like to double-check things and sometimes I get a gut feeling, a tingling, my Spidey sense telling me something’s off and I need to make sure about it. That’s how a guy like me gets to live as long as I have and stay as pretty as I am.”
“Debatable,” Lex muttered, barely audible even to himself above the Subaru’s growling engine.
“And what do we find when we get to the boatyard?”
The question hung over them, and all at once Lex grasped why Buckler might have a legitimate gripe with him.
“I’ll tell you,” the SEAL commander went on. “A goddamn crime scene. Police tape everywhere. Evidence that there’s been a forensics team on the premises—chalk outlines and such. A boat riddled with bullet holes. Bloodstains on the ground. All the signs that there’s been an exchange of gunfire and casualties. Sampson and me, we hop the fence and nose around the place, carefully. Nobody there but us chickens. Cops have sealed it off and gone home. We even find blood all over the seaplane, the same fucking seaplane we’re supposed to be taking off in today. Now, either all of this is one damn unfortunate fucking coincidence, or you, Mr Dove, have some serious questions to answer.”
“I can—”
“You said—I asked you, and you said to me, you said right to my motherfucking face—there’d been no difficulties securing transportation. Was that a lie or was it not?”
“I think my actual words were along the lines of there’d been nothing insurmountable.”
“But you’re not denying you had something to do with a shootout at the boatyard? Because something makes sense to me now that didn’t at the time. When you came to my room yesterday afternoon, I thought I smelled cordite on you. Very faint, but unmistakable. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, decided maybe I was imagining things or else it was just a crappy choice of cologne. I shouldn’t have turned a blind eye. I should have called you on it right there and then. Care to tell me why someone would get involved in a small-arms free-for-all in broad daylight on the eve of a covert op? Because any explanation I can think of, it always ends in ‘gross stupidity.’
“Come on, Dove,” he said, mimicking Lex’s gesture of a few moments ago. “You wanted more to-and-fro. A free and frank exchange of data. So exchange, baby.”
Lex had to come clean. He couldn’t see an alternative.
“Wilberforce has got himself into a spot of bother.”
“A spot of bother,” Buckler echoed sardonically.
“I’ve been helping him sort it. He owes money to someone, the type of person you shouldn’t owe money to.”
“Ah. That’d explain the state of his face.”
“Yes. Some of the man’s underlings caught up with him the night before last, and he was ambushed again yesterday, along with me and his cousin, at the boatyard. On the bright side, we acquitted ourselves well, all of us. Albertine especially. As civilians go, she’s not to be underestimated.”
“Well, that makes it all right, then. You won the fricking fight. That’s all that matters.”
“I’m not apologising for what happened. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t plan on any of this. It’s shit-awful timing, that’s all.”
“Do the police know you were there?”
“I think not, or they would have paid me a visit last night.”
“And what about this guy Allen’s in debt to?”
“What about him?”
“You’re sorting it, according to you. So what’s his status?”
“Still alive and at large. For now.”
“Then it isn’t sorted.”
“He’s not an immediate threat. I’ve smacked him on the snout with a rolled-up newspaper. He should stay curled up in his basket for a while, feeling sorry for himself.”
“This is shoddy, Dove,” Buckler groused. “Real messy. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t ditch your ass. And don’t say that if I do that, your friends won’t co-operate. Your friends are in my charge now, they’re committed, and they’ll do whatever I goddamn tell them to, even if I have to stick
a gun in the back of their skulls to make them.”
“My personal situation doesn’t affect the mission or my ability to take part in it,” Lex said. “We can still take off, put Manzanilla behind us, and nothing will have changed. There’ll be no blowback, no fallout, not as far as you’re concerned. You’re not compromised in any way. The op goes ahead as planned. I can’t see what you’re complaining about.”
“What I’m—?” Buckler thumped the dashboard with a fist. “One, I don’t like unexpected developments. Two, Team Thirteen likes to stay on the down low, and you’ve jeopardised that. Three, and this is the kicker, you’re coming across as an incompetent, unreliable asshat, and the guys and me, we hate working with incompetent, unreliable asshats. Ain’t that so?”
“Damn straight,” said Tartaglione.
“Word,” said Sampson.
“So why don’t you just fucking shoot me then?” said Lex with an irritation born of exasperation. “If I’m so useless?”
“Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” said Buckler. “But I figure we’d never get anything at all out of your friends if I did. Keeping them sweet means keeping you alive, for better or worse. But you’re on probation, that’s for damn sure, Dove. Screw up again, in any way, and that’ll be it. Third strike and out.”
“Some kind of battlefield accident, is that what you mean?”
“Things go wrong during ops all the time,” said Tartaglione. “Heat of combat, bullets flying—friendly fire.”
“Tragic but true,” said Sampson, mock-mournfully.
“Just watch your back, sport, is all I’m saying,” said Buckler. “Watch it real close.”
TWENTY
EYES ON THE PRIZE
BREAKING INTO THE boatyard was a simple matter of clipping through the padlocked chain securing the gates. Team Thirteen had a set of bolt cutters in one of their duffel bags.
“Amazing the cops haven’t posted a guard,” Buckler remarked as the cars drove in.
“The cops don’t have the manpower,” Lex replied. “And I’m betting they didn’t anticipate anyone coming here today of all days.”
“Why not?”
“Sunday, remember?”
“Christ. Is it?” Buckler was genuinely taken aback. “I’ve lost track. All the travelling...” For a moment his mask of gruff self-assurance slipped and he looked bewildered, even haggard. Team Thirteen relentlessly traversed the planet back and forth, crossing time zones as though they were cracks in the pavement. Lex was familiar with that exhaustion, that sense of perpetual dislocation. He had known it only too well.
“Shee-it,” said Sampson, making light of it. “Looks like we’ll be missing church, then.”
“Grandma’s going to kill me,” Tartaglione chimed in.
They bundled out of the cars, and Team Thirteen got straight to work unhooking the Zodiacs and letting the air out so that the boats would fit aboard the Turbo Beaver.
“It’s going to be a tight squeeze,” Wilberforce observed to Buckler. “Eight people, those bags of yours, the boats, and that.” He gestured to the large cylinder of compressed CO2 which the MDF soldiers had supplied to reinflate the Zodiacs.
“So it’ll be a little cramped,” said the SEAL commander, shrugging. “Plane’s got a useful load weight of two thousand pounds. By my reckoning we’re under that, which is all that counts. You just worry about flying her, ace. Leave the rest to me.”
Wilberforce made his way over to Puddle Jumper. Lex accompanied him. They stepped onto the dock, ducking under the strand of police tape cordoning it off from the rest of the boatyard. The planking was dotted with numbered plastic markers denoting the locations of spent shell casings from Lex’s gun. The police had done a thorough job here, and Lex wondered whether they had yet linked this incident involving known accomplices of Garfield Finisterre with the incident at Wilberforce’s house last night. It was only a matter of time before they did. Virgil Johnson could not be relied on to keep from blabbing, and as for the piratical henchman with the broken leg, he would no doubt clam up to begin with – fear and criminal solidarity would see to that – but if the cops offered to cut him a deal, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t start to sing.
The Manzanillan police were as corrupt as any institution on the island, but even they knew the value of justice being seen to be done. Garfield Finisterre was beyond their reach. Any attempt to indict him, with all his political connections, was doomed to failure. Going after an unconnected British expat, on the other hand, stood a fair chance of success. The wrong man would end up on the wrong side of the law, while the Garfish would be left free as a bird and laughing.
Seraphina had said she had the power to make it all go away, but that would work only as far as officialdom was concerned. It wouldn’t keep Finisterre himself off Lex’s back. Lex was coming to the conclusion that the only practical solution to this mess was Finisterre’s death. Sooner rather than later, the gangster would have to suffer a fatal and inexplicable mishap. An unsanctioned Code Crimson. One more name added to the list of pariahs and parasites whom Lex Dove had deleted from the world.
Wilberforce stiffened appreciably as he neared the seaplane. The propeller blades were striped with dried blood, like sinister barbershop poles. Blood also dotted the windshield, droplets so dark red they were almost black.
“I didn’t mean to...” he began, then stopped.
Lex waited for him to continue, letting him work through it.
“I was just trying to rattle the man,” Wilberforce said. “I expected him to dive out of the way, not—not the opposite.”
“Don’t give it another thought,” Lex said. “You saved my neck, Wilb. Things might have gone very differently, for all of us, if you hadn’t done what you did. It was a horrible accident, but without it we might not even be alive to have this conversation.”
“I can still see him, up here.” He tapped his temple. “Getting sliced apart. I don’t know if I’m ever not going to. How do you manage it?”
“Manage what?”
“Yesterday I watched you kill people. I’m pretty sure they’re not the only people you’ve killed in your life. I’m responsible for just one man’s death—”
“No, you’re not.”
“—and I feel sick to my stomach just thinking about it. How do you cope with this stuff? The memory of taking a life? The knowledge?”
Lex looked his friend in the eye. “I’m going to level with you. The truth is you don’t. You carry on as best you can, and try to console yourself that you did what you had to, what needed to be done. If it’s a them-or-you situation—and no question, yesterday afternoon qualifies as that—you have to be thankful that you’re the one who survived it and just get on with living the rest of your life. You can’t change what happened, but you mustn’t let it change you.”
“I don’t know, man. Not sure I’ll ever be able to do that.”
“I’m not saying it’s easy. But if you don’t make the effort, there’s a chance you’ll wind up dead yourself. Guilt’s a killer.”
“That why you quit what you used to do and moved here?” Wilberforce asked.
“You mean was it all getting on top of me? Oh, yes. I wasn’t handling it well any more. I had no peace of mind. Couldn’t sleep. Questions just kept going round and round in my brain, relentlessly, like a hamster on a wheel. It got the point where...” He had begun; might as well finish. “Where I was close to this, you know?” He put two fingers in his mouth, aiming upward into his soft palate. “Just a trigger pull away from ending it all.”
“Seriously? But you’re so... together. I’ve never known anyone as cool, calm and collected as you.”
“On the outside, maybe,” said Lex. “But coming to terms with what I’d done, with my past—it’s been hard. Damn hard. Getting any kind of equilibrium back. A struggle. Seven years in Manzanilla has helped. Just being removed from where I used to be. Having you for a friend—that’s been good for me, too.”
“Stop
it. You’ll make me blush.”
“I’m rarely tempted to put my gun in my mouth these days. Most mornings I wake up and I’m feeling pretty optimistic about the day ahead. I’m in a good place, by my standards. I’m as happy as I think I can reasonably ever be. A long, hard road, but I made it. You will, too.”
“And you’re not worried that all this”—Wilberforce waved to indicate Team Thirteen, bloodied Puddle Jumper, the boatyard, the mission—“is going to ruin things? Set you back to where you don’t want to be again?”
Lex weighed it up. “None of this has been my choice. Force majeure. That’s French for ‘tough shit,’ more or less. It’s a hand that’s been dealt me, not one I asked for, but one I’m having to play nonetheless. And it’s going to be worth it, in the long run. I suppose now’s as good a time as any to tell you that I’m in this for the money.”
“Me too. Buckler’s named a fee. It’s enough to pay off the Garfish and more.”
“Yeah, but in my case we’re talking enough for me to buy us a Sealine F-series.”
Wilberforce gaped. “No, man. Don’t do this. Don’t be bullshitting me. Don’t you dare.”
“I’m not kidding. Second-hand, not brand new, but still. We can do it, set up that fishing business. You won’t need to be in hock to anyone. We’ll own a boat, free and clear, and all the gear we need.”
Wilberforce’s eyes sparkled. His dream, suddenly, tantalisingly achievable. “I don’t believe it. For real?”
“A couple of weeks from now you could be captaining a sports cruiser out to sea, with First Mate Dove on deck setting up the rods and handing out the cold beers.”
Before Wilberforce could say anything else, Buckler’s voice rang out across the boatyard. “Yo, ladies! I appreciate you’re having a lovely time gossiping, but we’re on the clock and high tide waits for no one. Allen, you should be running pre-flight checks, and Dove, you should be getting your ass out of the way and letting him do that.”
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