The Lawless Kind

by Hilton, Matt

  If you find a gold coin on your path, it’s human nature to scan the ground for more. The same with bent pennies, and I began checking for other faces from my past. My memory wasn’t jogged, but I saw another watcher furtively steal into the doorway of a gift shop as we approached. This man I didn’t know, but I knew what he was. Even as he concealed himself behind a curtain of hanging shawls on display, I saw him touch the hidden microphone and whisper an urgent message. I took it that McAdam was filling him in on who and what I was.

  I purposely kept my face turned away, not to hide my features, but to see the man’s reflection in the window of a shop opposite. As we moved past he craned out to get a better look, perhaps checking for signs of weapons.

  ‘What do you want to do about this?’ Velasquez whispered.

  ‘We can’t forget why we’re here. This is about saving a little boy. But while we’re under surveillance by other potential enemies that makes our task more difficult.’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking. You think it’s time we lose these jokers?’

  ‘No. I think it’s time we find out what the fuck they’re doing here.’

  ‘You want to front them?’

  ‘You good with that?’

  ‘I’m good.’

  ‘Be careful. McAdam’s an ex para, so he’ll be no slouch. I don’t know anything about the other one but we have to assume he’s got skills as well.’

  ‘Could be others,’ Velasquez pointed out. He didn’t appear perturbed by the odds, but Velasquez had been a narcotics cop in the meanest districts of Miami and Tampa, so facing down a few tough guys was nothing to fret about.

  ‘There’ll definitely be others.’ We couldn’t make the mistake of going in overconfident. ‘But we only need one of them . . .’

  I outlined my plan as we walked from the square and into a narrower street, watching all available reflective surfaces – a shop window here, the chrome fender on a car there – to make sure our tails were still in place. Then at a crossroads, Velasquez went left and I went right. I was happy a few seconds later to note that only one of the men had followed me, happier still when I paused to peer in a gift-shop window and caught sight of my pursuer stumbling to a halt and then attempting to conceal himself in a doorway. McAdam never had been the shy and retiring type. He was a loudmouth, the kind who walks swinging his shoulders and with a get-the-fuck-out-of-my-face attitude. They weren’t traits conducive to good undercover work. He was struggling to keep a low profile, and why he never guessed that I’d made him surprised me. I wondered how he’d managed to stay alive all these years.

  Chapter 16

  Walking with determination, as if I had a destination in mind, ensured that McAdam tripped over himself in his haste to follow. Because he hadn’t yet crept up and tried to sink a blade in my liver, his instructions must have been to watch me, find out where I was going, and report back to whomever was in charge. That would be Marshall, because McAdam had always been sycophantic around him. Supposing that Marshall was hiring himself out as a merc these days, it was fair to conclude that he’d bring along a few of his old cronies for the ride.

  Having no prior idea of the layout of the city, I was looking for somewhere out of sight of the throng of civilians before fronting McAdam. He might not be willing to answer my questions, and the sort of encouragement I had in mind didn’t need witnesses. I was in a narrow street now, away from the tourist area, and the cafés here didn’t sell designer coffee. Locals sat inside small openings that reminded me of lock-up garages – complete with roller shutter doors – around small wooden tables on which stood bottles of unbranded tequila and whisky. As I walked past they watched me indifferently with hooded eyes. There were few people out in the street, and I bet myself that McAdam was having a difficult time now that he couldn’t lose himself in the crowds. I made things easier for him by facing forward and walking without a care.

  A doorway on my left presented the opportunity I was looking for. As if this was the place I’d been intent on reaching I entered it, then slowed as I walked down a narrow alleyway, giving McAdam an opportunity to view me from the alley mouth. Underfoot the cobbles were greasy and stained with spillage from trashcans. Fresh air didn’t enter this place that often, and the atmosphere was stuffy and foul. I rounded a bend, but placed my shoulders to the wall, listening. There was a faint mumble, as if McAdam was reporting his location to his buddies over a comms link like the other man had worn. His step was furtive as he followed me down the alley: not so self-confident now.

  I hurried down the next section, passing blank walls of once-white adobe, stained yellow with neglect. More trashcans and a larger plastic Dumpster overflowed with refuse. At the far end was a doorway, the wood cracked and flaking with dry rot. Reaching it seconds later, I pulled the door open. It resisted me, made a loud creak, then stuck where the warped wood caught on the cobblestones. That served my purpose. I left the door open, but retraced my steps and ducked in behind the Dumpster. I felt for my gun, loosening the grip of my waistband, but not yet pulling it out. Then I waited, breathing slow and easy.

  There was a moment when I thought McAdam had chickened out, unhappy to pursue me further into the warren of alleys. But then I understood that he was simply being prudent. He had to have heard the creaking of the gate, assumed that I had gone through it, but was sensible enough to check before bolting round the corner. There was the pad of feet on cobbles. McAdam was breathing heavily, panting as he spoke into his comms mike. I couldn’t make sense of the words, but I got the drift from the string of expletives that followed. He began to pick up pace.

  The last thing I wanted was for him to make it through the gate; a quick glance outside had shown that it led directly on to a street, where we could be spotted. Voices filtered into my hiding place, directly through the wall against which I crouched. It sounded like another of those drinking dens judging by the ribald voices raised in argument. I didn’t want a group of drunks spilling into the street to watch what was about to happen. I timed each approaching step, preparing for action.

  Immediately McAdam loomed in front of me I came out of my crouch, coming up silently in his wake as he hurried for the gate. If my objective was to kill him, I could have done so, without fuss, probably without him even realising I was there, but that wasn’t my purpose. I flat-armed him with both palms against his left shoulder. Thrown off balance, he had only one place to go: into the juncture between the open door and the wall to which it was hinged. He hit hard, rebounding amid a shower of flaky adobe knocked loose from the wall. I threaded my hand inside his exposed left elbow, hooking his forearm in the bend of my arm, and used the locking of his shoulder to propel him round and out of the gap between door and wall. Stunned by the collision with the wall, he offered no resistance as I bore down on his locked arm and threw him at the cobbles. He went face down, arms and legs splayed, like a starfish out of water. With one eye on him, and happy that he hadn’t been toting a weapon, I quickly thrust shut the door to block any inquisitive passers-by.

  By the time I moved back to him, McAdam had got his arms under himself and was pushing to his knees. Shoving a heel against his backside, I pushed him deeper into the alley, only then slipping out my SIG. He was relatively unhurt, but his ego had been dealt a heavy blow. He snarled and cursed as he swung over to reposition his feet. I snatched the earpiece and mike set, gave him another nudge of my boot, this time in the chest, and he went down on his backside, blinking up at the gun I held. Give him his due: he didn’t try to bluff his way out of the situation.

  ‘You going to shoot me, Joe?’ he said in a whining Glaswegian tone.

  ‘Only if you don’t tell me why the fuck you’re following me.’

  ‘That’s good of you. But what if I haven’t got anything to say about that?’

  I shrugged, aiming my SIG at his crotch. ‘Then I’ll shoot you for old times’ sake.’

  ‘You’re still holding a boner over that? Fuck, mate, that’s old news. Shit, I ha
ven’t even thought about Mel Green in twenty years. You seen her? I bet she’s fat and grey with half-a-dozen bastard kids running round her feet.’

  Actually Melanie Green had died of a heroin overdose less than two years after we’d fought over her. We were both nineteen years old at the time, young and stupid, and smitten by the perma-tanned dolly bird who served in the NAAFI bar. She’d been giving both of us the come-on and we’d fallen for her wiles. Drunk on watered-down lager we’d gone at each other, and afterwards McAdam was missing two front teeth, I’d a double indentation in my forehead, and Mel had gone off with another smooth-talking Scots lad called Graham Smith. She’d been the epitome of the camp tart and had earned the nickname of Naafi Mel, but this time the acronym stood for ‘No Ambition and Fuck-all Interest’. Yeah, she was a tramp, but she didn’t deserve the way she ended up. I decided to keep her sad fate to myself.

  I said, ‘I see you never got your teeth fixed.’

  He poked his tongue through the gap. ‘You think I’d hold a grudge because you knocked my teeth out? Shit, Hunter, are you forgetting the times you had my back in Belfast? Or I had yours?’

  ‘That’s what’s bothering me, McAdam. Why are you my enemy now?’

  He squirmed to a better position, so that he could hold out his open palms. ‘Who said we were enemies? Do you see a weapon?’

  ‘Don’t play me for an idiot. You were following me on your buddy Marshall’s orders. Don’t deny it.’

  ‘Marshall was your friend, too.’

  ‘Only until he tried to blast me with a sawn-off shotgun. See . . . stuff like that makes me question the validity of old friendships.’

  ‘In Marshall’s defence, he didn’t know it was you until things got out of hand.’

  ‘So he did recognise me then?’

  McAdam grimaced like a tourist with too much salt round the rim of his tequila glass.

  ‘If he did, he didn’t make an effort to call off the attack,’ I went on. ‘Kind of suggests he didn’t give a fuck for our old friendship.’

  ‘What would you have done in his shoes?’

  ‘I wouldn’t take a job where an innocent woman was caught in the crossfire.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I forgot. You always were the holier-than-thou type, weren’t you? Don’t talk shit, Joe. You’ve killed women before.’

  Sadly it was true. When taking the war to terrorist strongholds it was an unfortunate fact that women – and occasionally children – caught a bullet or piece of shrapnel. I wasn’t proud of the fact, but I’d never willingly have sighted either in my crosshairs. There were evil women, as murderous as men, dangerous with weapons and their wiles, but since I left the military I’d never come across one that I had to kill. Jimena Antonia Grajales a year or so back was a blemish on my tally card, but it was her pet hit man, Luke Rickard, who saw her off.

  ‘You’re admitting that it’s the woman Marshall’s after?’

  ‘You’re putting words in my mouth.’

  ‘Would you prefer a bullet?’

  ‘C’mon, Joe, we both know you aren’t going to shoot me in cold blood.’

  ‘Want to bet?’ I aimed directly at his face. His mouth slid open, offering me the gap between his teeth as a target. ‘If Marshall isn’t after the woman, why attack us? Why have us followed now?’

  McAdam showed me his palms again. ‘You know I can’t tell you that, Joe. There’s a code us guys work by, and you never give up your sponsor.’

  ‘That depends on the motivation.’

  I didn’t shoot him, just kicked him again, but it was enough to put him on his back. He blinked up at me, realising that the good ol’ days were well and truly behind us.

  ‘Now,’ I said, aiming my gun at his gut, ‘start talking or so help me . . .’

  ‘Fuck you, Hunter. I’m telling you nothing.’ McAdam scrambled to stand up, and I allowed him to get halfway before pressing the muzzle to his forehead. ‘Fuckin’ shoot me then,’ he snapped. ‘Just fucking do it! If I tell you anything I can expect much worse than a clean bullet in the skull.’

  I’d learned some of the atrocities the cartels employed to punish people – disembowelment, beheading, immolation, limbs hacked off and the victim left on a railway track, where you would hope to bleed to death before the next train came through – so it didn’t surprise me that McAdam would have a fear of his masters, yet something troubled me about that scenario. Basically, I believed him when he said that this had nothing to do with Kirstie Long, but if Marshall and McAdam weren’t working for Molina then whom?

  The question took me back to our suspicions about tracking devices and who could have placed them on our vehicles. At last I’d figured it out.

  ‘Get up, arsehole.’ I withdrew my gun, took a couple of paces back.

  ‘Why, you going to make me run so you can shoot me in the back?’

  He had made it to his feet, turning his left side to face me, trying to hide the movement of his right hand at his side.

  ‘Maybe they’re your tactics, McAdam, not mine. Now take your hand away from your weapon or you’ll be sorry.’

  He lifted both hands again, completing a pirouette so that his shirt hitched up to show he didn’t have a concealed gun in his belt. ‘I told you I was unarmed.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I lowered my SIG. ‘But I told you I was going to shoot you . . . so we were both lying.’

  The pinching of his eyelids told me he was absorbing my words, and coming to the wrong conclusion. He thought I was softening, that old friendships outweighed new enmity. It showed how different we were. He snapped down his right arm, and from his sleeve jumped a gleaming blade, a spring-assisted Gerber knife. In the next instant he lunged, the knife spearing at my throat.

  His sneak attack would have been successful had I not noticed the rig attached to his forearm when I’d first knocked him down. The fact that he tried to rip out my throat vindicated what I did next. As I reared back, taking my throat away from the blade, I snapped a kick into his testicles that brought him to his knees, emitting a deep low moan from the depths of his guts. His arms lost the will to stab as they folded instinctively to cover his injury. I allowed gravity to pull down my foot, and this rocked my upper body forward, adding weight to the barrel of my SIG that chopped into his mastoid like an axe. McAdam went down, out cold.

  I stood over him for a few seconds, wondering if allowing him to live was a mistake I’d later regret. But my mind flitted back to those times when we’d fought as comrades, and how, after I’d been shot by an IRA sniper, it was McAdam who’d laid down covering fire, then risked his arse to drag me clear of a second attempt on my life. I owed him one. But now he’d received payback.

  I crouched over him, careful of the blade in his outstretched hand, and slapped him awake. He moaned, his lids flickering, then he opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a hacking cough that sprayed bile over his shirtfront.

  ‘We’re even, McAdam. You saved my life once, now I just saved yours. You can go back to Marshall and whichever fuckwit he’s working for, and tell him how hard a fight you had with me before I escaped. That bruise on your neck and the swelling in your balls should be enough to convince them. But hear me . . . come at me again, and nothing will save you.’

  Chapter 17

  ‘Good to see you alive and well, Hunter. How’d you get on with your old buddy?’

  ‘McAdam was always a big mouth, but he didn’t have much to say this time,’ I said.

  Over his cell phone, Velasquez had directed me a few blocks across town from where I’d left McAdam nursing his wounds and contemplating his future. Velasquez hadn’t come to blows with his tail, having lost the man as we’d agreed, before seeking a common meeting point from where we could continue our original walk towards Jorge Molina’s home.

  I told him what had happened in the stinking alleyway, but left out my assumption about who was actually behind Marshall and McAdam. If I was correct then now was not the time or the place to confuse the issu
e. We were here to liberate a child from his abductor; everything else could wait.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Rink,’ Velasquez said. ‘He offered to come on over and help bang a few heads together but I told him you had it under control.’

  ‘Bet that pleased him?’

  ‘Harvey and Mac have practically stripped the panel van back to the chassis, but they haven’t found a tracking device. They think the van’s still good for when we get out of here.’

  ‘Good.’ Actually it would have been better if they had found a bug, one that could be destroyed; because it meant the one in situ was too cleverly hidden. That confirmed my suspicions about who was directing Marshall and his men. ‘Did Rink source another vehicle yet?’

  ‘Yeah, he was able to purchase a car with cash, no questions asked.’

  ‘Great, we’ll need two vehicles. I trust the car isn’t an old junker?’

  ‘Don’t worry; Rink knows his stuff when it comes to cars.’ Rink had a weakness for flashy models, and usually tooled around the streets of Tampa in a Porsche or something equally classy.

  The streets were filled with shoppers and the lunch-hour crowds sitting at pavement cafés indulging in cold drinks and snacks. It was a scene similar to the one where we’d picked up on McAdam and the other tail, but nothing untoward was triggering my radar this time. We had to be careful, because within another block we’d be in sight of Jorge Molina’s home turf. We walked on, talking through our plans for infiltrating Molina’s house by this afternoon.

  ‘Take a look and see if you think it’s achievable.’ Velasquez gave a subtle nod of his head, and I glanced where he indicated.

  Jorge Molina’s house was in a walled compound on the south-facing side of one of the rock islands that rose above Hermosillo. It stood where Spanish Colonial-style buildings faced each other across a wide plaza. Once horses and carriages would have made the ride up the incline, important residents of Hermosillo attending functions in the big house at the head of the street. Now the plaza was a pedestrian zone, the only vehicles in evidence a utility truck parked at the lowest end where workers were digging up a section to get at duct pipes, and, nearer to the top of the hill, a motorised road sweeper cleaning the gutters with its whirling brushes. I wondered if Molina – or more correctly his father – had influenced the local council to control public access to the house, making it more difficult for enemy vehicles to approach undetected.