by Hilton, Matt
‘Fucking mercenaries, eh?’
‘Some of them are actually decent guys, trying to make a living during a difficult time.’
‘If any of them do help I’ll see that they get compensated,’ I promised. I was certain that Walter would find some cash from one of the shell company accounts that financed his Arrowsake endeavours.
There was another burp of distant gunfire.
‘They’ve already got started. I suggest we do too. You good to walk yet?’
‘Wait up.’ I staggered to the sink and hose and turned on the tap. Gratefully I slurped cool water direct from the nozzle. I threw some of it over my face and hair, scrubbing the accumulated crap from my nostrils and mouth. ‘Now I’m good.’
From inside his jacket, Marshall tugged out my SIG. ‘Thought you might want this. I picked it up off the road after you were captured. Before you check, I already cleaned and reloaded it.’
Accepting the gun from him, I nodded in gratitude. It was good to feel the familiar weight of my gun in hand. Ordinarily I’d have fed it into my waistband, but I was wearing only my undershorts.
‘Hope you’re not going to shoot me in the back with it,’ Marshall said.
‘I’d do it looking you in the eye,’ I reassured him.
His glass eye twinkled. ‘That supposed to be funny?’
‘No. Being totally frank.’
‘So what we waiting for?’
‘Don’t have a spare pair of trousers, do you?’
‘Bashful these days, are we?’ he asked, moving for the door.
In boxer shorts and a grubby sheath of dirt and blood I moved after him. He was right. My current state wasn’t important. I’d free the others bare butt-naked if necessary.
Chapter 43
How had she ever been taken in by this man? When she first met Jorge she had thought him charming, witty, handsome; how had she missed the monster lurking beneath the veneer of designer clothing, manicures and coiffed hair? She believed that she was a good judge of people – but she had not been able to read the psychotic tendencies of the man she would marry. Jorge had been playing a part with the skill of an accomplished character actor, and she’d been sucked in by the act. She understood now that he had been using her. As far as he was concerned she was a recipient for his sperm, a wet nurse for his heir, and that was where her importance ended. As he looked down at her now she could barely recognise the man who’d swept her off her feet, married her, gotten her pregnant. This was a different creature altogether. This was a monster.
He hadn’t touched her. Not yet. But it was only a matter of time before she was beaten the way he’d beaten Harvey, McTeer and Velasquez. Those three men had been dragged away by some of Jorge’s lackeys, and Kirstie feared for their lives. She had not heard their death cries, or the bullets of their executions, but she knew that there were silent ways of killing. Some of those who’d dragged them from the room had been carrying machetes.
He hadn’t touched her, no. But that wasn’t the worst torture she could be subjected to. He had taken Benjamin, and she’d no idea where her boy was, and that was more hurtful than being kicked, punched, or even hacked limb from limb with a heavy blade. Kirstie wanted to scream, beg, plead, do whatever it took to get Benjamin back, but she couldn’t. She was gagged, a tennis ball shoved into her open mouth, then a leather strap tied tightly round her head to stop her spitting it out. She could barely breathe for the constriction, and the mucus pouring from her nose hardly helped. Her hands were bound behind her back, so she couldn’t even form a supplication to him. Her ankles were also bound. The only thing she could do was kneel, peer up at him, begging with her eyes, making pitiful sounds as if he’d already cut out her tongue. Jorge was unmoved.
If anything, he had grown more detached.
When first he’d visited her he’d ranted and raged. He’d accused, threatened, and verbally abused her. He’d shown her what it meant to try to take away what was rightfully his. He’d made her watch as he beat the three men to within an inch of their lives. Then he’d come at her, wielding the heavy length of rope that still dripped his victims’ blood. But then he’d threatened again: this time taking lurid delight in describing how he’d ruin her for having sexual relations with anyone else, and his emphasis had switched to Joe Hunter. It was as if the thought of her with another man was the greatest of insults, and he swore that Hunter would die more horribly than any of them. When he’d rushed from the room, carrying the rope, Kirstie had been terrified for Joe.
Now her ex-husband had come back – without his torture implement – and the fresh specks of blood on his forearms made her fear grow tenfold. The thought that he’d murdered Joe twisted a cold blade through her heart, and placed her on the verge of total collapse. Only because Benjamin needed her to remain strong did she fight the urge to succumb to the creeping despair that attempted to dominate her thoughts and sink her into the miasma of shock-induced coma.
Jorge was weirdly silent, and the more frightening for it. He looked down at her with an expression she could only describe as disdain. Her punishment was not important to him the way it had been before. She did not believe he was showing pity for her: mercy had no place in his heart. Something had happened to alter his focus, and there was no hope that it would change her fate. If anything, his coldness, his detachment, told her he was capable of the most despicable and inhuman act imaginable.
‘Do you wish to see Benny one last time?’
His question was totally unexpected, and for a moment she was unable to make sense of it. Was this akin to offering a starving child a morsel of chocolate before popping it into his own mouth and delighting at the taste and satin texture on his tongue? Was his new strategy to tease, before denying her final wish?
‘Well? I will take you to him if that’s what you want. But understand this, Kirstie, it will be the last time you see him. Believe me, I don’t make this offer because I feel I owe you anything. You’re a whore, a thief, a kidnapper, with no rights. I do this because Benny asked to see his mom and I would not deny my child.’ He stared down at her, curling his lips back from his brilliant white teeth. ‘Your choice, bitch. Agree or I’ll make the decision for you. You can stand and walk, or I will drag you there by your hair. What will it be?’
There was only one answer. She mewled behind her gag, nodding her head emphatically.
Jorge took from his pocket a folding knife and snapped it open. He stooped and roughly cut away the ropes from her ankles. The gag and the bindings on her wrists stayed in place. With no care for her comfort, he caught her by an elbow and dragged her up.
‘Time to say goodbye,’ he said, pushing her before him.
They had barely reached the door when the rattle of gunfire sounded.
Chapter 44
James Lee Marshall shot a kid in cold blood. The guy was a young Mexican, barely out of his teens, and he was terrified. Granted, he was a footsoldier of the cartel, but I still felt pity for him. He had backed into the large and echoing space of the warehouse to escape an assault from another direction, and on seeing Marshall he recognised an ally he felt he could rely on to get him out of there alive. He had no idea that Marshall wasn’t the same man who’d travelled with him from the mountain pass, guarding their prisoner, and the betrayal was almost as painful as the bullets Marshall fired into his chest.
‘What’s up, Hunter: lost your taste for a fight?’
‘That kid could have been disarmed,’ I said. ‘He had no fight left in him.’
‘If we’d disarmed him he’d have found another weapon and then come on us from behind. Forget about it, forget about him, and concentrate on freeing your mates.’
Ignoring his words, I approached the young man who lay against some shelving units on which were stacked dusty plastic drums and cardboard boxes sealed with duct tape. Remnants left over from when this was still a thriving storage depot, I guessed. I checked on the kid, and he was gone to whatever afterlife cartel thugs made it to.
‘What are you up to?’ Marshall demanded. ‘Grab his gun and get over here.’
‘Wait up,’ I said.
The kid was wearing chinos and a baggy ‘Ramones’ T-shirt and sneakers. The shirt was holed and slick with blood, the sneakers about two sizes too small for my feet. He no longer required his trousers, and they looked to be about my size.
‘Are you a fucking grave robber? Leave him be, Hunter, for Christ’s sake!’
‘You’re not running around in your underpants . . .’
I crouched down, apologised under my breath for looting the dead, and then stripped the chinos off the kid. I quickly pulled them on. They were a few inches too short in the leg, snug at the waist, but they beat the Tarzan the Apeman look I’d been stuck with before. Moving after Marshall I already felt better, so that I could ignore the stabbing of grit through my bare soles. More comforting was the addition of another handgun: by the sounds of gunfire coming from a number of positions inside and outside the building, I was going to need the extra firepower.
‘OK,’ Marshall said as I moved alongside him, ‘are you good now?’
‘Better.’ My voice echoed from the high walls and ceiling. The place was cavernous; behind us I could see where Marshall’s SUV had been driven inside via a roller shutter that was now firmly closed.It was far enough away to look like a toy car.
‘So let’s do this?’
‘I’m with you. Marshall, what the fuck is this place? I thought I was in the back room of a butcher’s shop. This place is massive.’
‘Who gives a fuck what it used to be. If we don’t get out fast it’s going to become a death trap.’
Marshall was right. We had moved from the room in which I’d been tortured and down a short corridor that allowed access to the huge warehouse we now strode through. Judging by the layer of grit underfoot, it hadn’t been used for some months, not for its original purpose. I could only assume that the cartel had seized the building and kicked out the original tenants. Whatever. It wasn’t important; navigating a way through it was. Marshall wasn’t familiar with the place; he’d been here only as long as I had, and hadn’t traversed the building beyond the first room where I’d been strung up and the corridor and rooms next to it. He was simply following his nose and he’d no idea what waited for us on the other side.
‘How many men are with you, Marshall?’
‘Five. Would have been eight if you and that Jap hadn’t been so trigger-happy.’
‘How good are they?’
‘Not as good as me.’
‘What about Molina’s men?’
‘Some of them are ex-military, the rest are punks.’
‘How many?’
‘Dozens.’
‘Shit,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he replied.
He pulled the door open a sliver, and leaned close so he could peer out into the space beyond.
‘Who was that kid running from?’ he wondered aloud.
‘One of yours? Has to be.’
Marshall shook his head, indicating his earpiece. ‘My lads are all under fire at the front of the building. Haven’t heard from Freeman for a minute or two; I guess he’s dead.’
‘So you only have four men left. If your boys are at the front, who was the kid fleeing?’
‘Maybe it was Regis. I don’t know where that piece of shit has got to, but you can bet your life he’s trying to find a bolt-hole.’
‘Yeah, that’s the nature of rats.’
Marshall held up a fist, demanding silence.
The slap of running feet reverberated along the corridor. I readied my gun, as did Marshall. Then the footsteps faded, but there followed a rattle of machine-gun fire from some distant corner of the building.
‘Clear,’ Marshall said, and he went into the corridor ahead of me. Covering his back, I moved after him, watching back the way we’d come. The corridor made a sharp bend to the left. We went around it carefully.
Gunshots rang out closer by.
The stench of cordite hung in the air, and in the dull overhead lights there was a ribbon of blue smoke writhing in the space before us. Marshall brought up his gun, edging forward now. The corridor was long, narrow, and there was a sequence of four doors, two to each side marking entrances to other rooms. The second door on the left was open, the others closed. Someone had gone through that door recently: the lock had been smashed from the frame by a shoulder charge. Boots had scuffed the dust on the floor, more than one pair.
‘Easy,’ Marshall whispered. He approached the door.
A yell made him pause.
The shout had come from the room, but sounded quite distant.
A gun fired on automatic. To my ear the shooting sounded uncontrolled. There followed a solid thud and the gun fell silent. Marshall glanced my way, his right eyebrow steepling.
‘Sounds like someone’s hunting Molina’s lot down . . .’
Experiencing a tiny leap of the heart, I checked the boot prints once more hoping that I could identify the wearer from their size and imprint. There was nothing to confirm that it had been Rink, yet I felt that my friend was out there, and it gave me the strength to push on. We entered the room and found ourselves in another storage area. In there the racks were empty. The shelves lined the two parallel walls on either side, another freestanding set running down the centre of the room. Some footprints went to the right, and a single set to the left. They would, I assumed, converge at the far end.
I was right. The single trail joined the others, following their passage through another door at the far right corner. Marshall continued to lead the way, totally at ease as I followed close by with a gun in each hand. He was taking much on faith that we were now allies, but he’d nothing to worry about. We entered an office. A large teak desk dominated the space. The Sheetrock walls were pockmarked with bullet holes. A couple of orange plastic chairs were stacked in one corner, a yellowing newspaper folded casually on the uppermost seat. A corpse lay in the other corner, in front of another open door. There was a single wound in the man’s chest, and it appeared to be from a knife as opposed to a bullet. That would explain the thud we’d heard just before the shooting stopped: a heavy blade had been driven deep into his heart and the man fell dead without a cry.
Gunfire shook the office walls. A stray round actually punched into the room, trailing a cloud of plaster dust from the wall. Instinctively we both crouched to avoid the ricochets. Marshall went forward, placing the heavy desk between him and the wall, and I took the opportunity to rush by him and approach the next door.
‘Slow down, Hunter,’ Marshall rasped.
Ignoring him, I checked outside the room. The space beyond was open plan, filled with work cubicles and old touch-button telephones. Gunfire had torn a swathe through the room. Another body lay sprawled across a cheap desk in one of the cubicles. His blood dripped freely so he couldn’t have died long ago. Although his heart had stopped pumping, his wounds were large enough to be leaking blood from his exposed innards. I was glad to see that the corpse was that of a small, dark-skinned guy and not a big Asian-American.
The gunfire had ceased in the adjacent room, but two handguns contested further on. Without waiting for Marshall, I slipped quickly through the office, swerving past cubicles. Behind me the soldier followed, and I could hear him muttering. At first I thought he was cursing my impulsive ways, but he was demanding a status report from his mercenaries. By the harsh expletive that followed, the news wasn’t good.
He caught up to me as I braced myself against the wall next to a doorframe. He leaned in close to my ear, whispering. ‘Three down. Freeman, Albertson and Garretty are all dead. Mitchell and Paulson are the only ones left. They’ve had to retreat from the fight, but are in position to offer cover if we make it outside.’
The names meant nothing to me. They should have been branded in my psyche, because all five of them had given their lives – or were about to – for me. Not that any of them knew it. As far as they were concerned th
ey were fighting for Marshall alone, and for the money they’d earn from him.
‘Before he died, Freeman told the others to avoid firing on your pal. Seems I underestimated your mate Rink. He made it here after all.’
‘Yeah.’ That was already apparent to me.
The gunfire had stopped again. I placed a silent bet that it wasn’t Rink who’d fallen, though I couldn’t be sure how long that would last. Rink was a terrific soldier, but he was wholly outnumbered, outgunned and in unfamiliar surroundings. The odds were stacked against him surviving much longer.
‘Come on,’ I said, and went through the door.
Give Marshall his due, he didn’t question the sudden switch of command.
Chapter 45
‘You must get him out of here, Jorge. For God’s sake, he’s only a baby!’
‘You do not tell me what to do!’
Molina backhanded Kirstie across the face and knocked her to the floor. She landed heavily, unable to check her fall because her wrists were still bound behind her back. The collision with the floor made her head ring, but over the pounding in her skull she heard the terrified scream of her child as he watched her being beaten. Kirstie ignored Molina’s next threat. She blinked away tears so she could check on Benjamin. The woman who’d taken him from her when they were captured was struggling to hold on to the boy, who squirmed violently in her grasp.
Kirstie craned up to meet the volcanic gaze of her ex-husband. ‘Please, Jorge! This place is a war zone. You have to get him away from here. Please . . . if you love him . . . get him safely away.’
‘He is a Molina. He must learn what it means to be a Molina. He must be brave and fearless, or he is no good to me or to his name.’
‘He’s only a child, a baby! Please, Jorge . . .’
Molina kicked her, sending her sprawling on the ground. He scowled down at her, perhaps considering retying the gag he’d pulled off her minutes ago. But it seemed he was happier to hear her complaints, as if it gave him more power to deny her most plaintive arguments. In the next instant he lunged down and grasped her by the hair, so she had to scramble up to avoid having her scalp torn off. Molina was holding the knife he’d cut her bonds with. For a second she thought he was going to slash her throat, but he used the knife as a pointer, aiming it at Benjamin.