Gamma Blade

by Tim Stevens

  “I’m a doctor,” said Beth.

  “Sure you are.” The woman looked her up and down. “Still gotta go outside to make personal calls, though.” She took Beth by the arm and guided her toward the doors.

  As Beth turned, not wanting to provoke a scene, the doors swung open.

  Four men walked in.

  They were of varying height and build. All of them were Latino. All had shaved heads.

  Beth thought of the row of five men on the pier last night.

  One of the men caught her stare, and slapped the guy next to him.

  “No!” she shouted.

  As one, the men’s hands slipped into their jackets.

  Came out with handguns.

  Beth broke free from the nurse’s grasp and ran.

  She sprinted back up the ward, though the central aisle between the rows of beds, as the shouts started behind her.

  She ran, because anyone who’d pull a gun in a public place like a hospital ward wouldn’t have any qualms about using it.

  She barged past a trolley laden with equipment, swabs and packs of gauze and IV bags, and sent it clattering onto its side, the contents flying.

  And she stopped, as the aisle turned a corner round the nurses’ station where horrified faces were yelling, because there was another man right there, aiming a gun toward her.

  She had time to make out that he wasn’t shaven-headed, wasn’t Latino but African American, before he shouted, “Police, get down, get down,” and she flung herself sideways and to the floor, crashing into the base of the nurses’ station and wrapping her arms round her head as the gunfire opened up.

  Chapter 22

  James Harris saw the blur of the head against the small window in the door of the side room and lay perfectly still.

  Five seconds earlier, he’d raised the shard in his hand and touched the tip against the corner of his mouth and nicked it. The blood had flowed immediately, spilling down his cheek in a thin trickle. He slid his hand with the dagger back under the covers.

  He heard the muttered holy shit from the other side of the door and watched the door swing open and saw the man dressed as an orderly burst into the room with his handgun drawn and aimed.

  Harris didn’t blink. Held his breath.

  The orderly - the cop - stepped into the room, the gun still trained on Harris. He looked appalled as his eyes searched Harris’s face, stared at the blood.

  In a second, he’d call for medical help.

  With a backhand sweep of his arm, Harris flung his hand from under the blanket and sent the glass shard arrowing across the gap between them.

  His aim was true and the point of the fragment embedded itself in the cop’s right shoulder, the crimson bloom immediately staining the white scrubs. At the same time Harris rolled out of bed, landing on his left foot and using it to pivot so that he swung his right fist into the cop’s face.

  The shock of the blade penetrating the cop’s shoulder had caused his gun arm to jerk aside and Harris grabbed that wrist and twisted it so that the fingers opened and the gun dropped. He let go the wrist and caught the gun before it hit the floor.

  The cops reeled back against the door, which had swung shut. Harris landed another punched in the dazed face and the cop slid down the door and crumpled at its base.

  Harris checked the gun - a Glock 17, fully loaded - and stepped to the door. He peered out the window.

  Flashing lights and the almost simultaneous crash of small-arms fire caused him to flinch back, just for an instant. But the shots weren’t aimed at him.

  He raised his head once more, saw chaos in the ward beyond. Patients were spilling out of bed, uniformed staff were flinging themselves to the floor, screaming.

  The gunfire appeared to be coming from opposite ends of the ward.

  Harris gripped the door handle, pulled it open. He put his head round.

  Three men with guns, at the end of the ward near the door. And a single weapon, returning fire, at this end, though the ward curved here and he couldn’t see who was shooting.

  He saw movement to his right and looked down. A man was running at a crouch alongside the row of beds on Harris’s side of the ward. Trying to outflank whoever was shooting back at the group near the door.

  The man was Cuban, with a smooth-shaven head.

  Harris squatted down and aimed and, as the guy looked up and began raising his weapon, fired the Glock. His shot caught the man in the face, the exit wound spraying gore across the polished linoleum floor behind him.

  A nurse cowered on the floor nearby, holding her hand up to fend Harris off, screeching incoherently.

  Straight across from him, Harris saw the front of the nurses’ station. He saw, crouched on one side of it, the woman, Dr Colby, rolled tightly into a ball.

  A flurry of shots erupted, and he heard a shout of pain from somewhere to the left, and the sound of a body hitting the floor.

  And the shooting stopped.

  The screaming continued, everywhere around him.

  He could see the three remaining gunmen advancing down the center aisle, toward the nurses’ station.

  Harris waited till they were almost level with him.

  He stood and in the same swift movement fired, once, twice, three times.

  The first and second men fell instantly. The third was fast, and was bringing his gun to bear, when Harris shot him through the chest, hurling him back across one of the beds.

  The aftershock of the gunfire rang through the ward, providing a counterpoint to the sobbing and whimpering.

  Harris ran at a lope across the aisle and reached Colby.

  She cringed away from him, tried to scramble free.

  He said, “Dr Colby. We have to get out of here. Now.”

  He could have left her. Made his escape on his own.

  But the men had been after her.

  And besides... she was his link to last night. She’d been there when he was attacked.

  He needed her.

  He grabbed her under the arms and hauled her upright and, when he was sure she was both able to bear weight on her feet and not about to lash out at him, he seized her hand.

  “Come on.”

  Ignoring the moans of the patients around them, the terrified yells of the few members of staff who weren’t too stunned to make a sound, Harris led Colby toward the doors.

  Chapter 23

  Estrada had wanted to take Carlos Fuentes back to her office, but he protested vehemently.

  “I cannot be seen to be associated with the police in any way,” he pleaded. “Brull may have his men anywhere. If I am seen near a police station, word will get back to Brull. Hector will be killed.”

  “He’s got a point,” said Venn.

  “Okay,” Estrada said, after only a moment’s hesitation. “We’ll do this in the car. But we need details from you, Mr Fuentes. Every single thing you can tell us about the day of your son’s disappearance, and about Brull and the people he associates with. Do you normally deal with him directly? Or does he use one of his people as liaison?”

  Slowly, haphazardly, Fuentes began to piece together a picture.

  There was little more he could tell them about yesterday, when Hector had been taken. The boy had set off for school on his own, and had simply never arrived. Nobody in the neighborhood had seen anything. And even if they had, most of them were well aware of what would happen to them if they came forward to the police.

  “Helena, my wife, wanted to call the cops at once,” said Fuentes. “She almost did it. I had to grab her and fill her mind with stories of what would happen to Hector if she did so.” His eyes were wet. “Dear God. I was cruel.”

  “You had to be,” said Venn.

  Fuentes said that sometimes Brull contacted him directly, but more usually he relayed messages to him via two of his men. Elon and Pedro. Fuentes didn’t know their last names.

  “Yeah,” said Estrada. “Elon Castro and Pedro Rodriguez. They’ve been picked up for a few thi
ngs before. Low-grade stuff, nothing to keep them in jail all that long. But I know they’re involved with Brull.”

  Venn asked if Fuentes had any idea about the connection with a boat, specifically the Merry May. He got the impression Fuentes had already racked his brains about this.

  “I am sorry,” the man said. “I have never heard Brull mention a boat. I do not know anything about this Merry May. I myself have no connection with sailing, other than that I first arrived in this country by sea.”

  They went on for close to an hour, shifting in their seats from time to time to stretch their cramped muscles.

  At last, Estrada looked at Venn.

  He said, “I guess that’s about all for now, Mr Fuentes.”

  He looked from one to the other, his anxiety rising once more.

  “What do I do now?”

  “Nothing, Carlos. I mean, go about your daily business. There’s nothing more you can do. We’ll take it from here.” He took out his phone. “You got a cell number?”

  Fuentes gave it to Venn. Venn and Estrada provided him with theirs.

  “If you think of anything that might help us,” said Estrada, “anything at all, however minor it seems... call, okay?”

  They waited for Fuentes to open the door. He sat there, as if paralyzed.

  Looking at Venn, he said: “You will find my son?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Venn said, quietly. “We’ll find him.”

  After Fuentes had left, scurrying nervously across the street, Venn climbed into the front seat beside Estrada.

  She said, “If we find the boy -”

  “We will.”

  “If - when - we find him, it’ll be the smoking gun I need.”

  Venn looked at her. Although her expression was as grim as ever, there was an intensity in her eyes that put him in mind of a big cat locking in on its prey.

  “Child kidnapping,” she said. “Nobody walks away from that. We can forget about the gang stuff. We’ll get him on this crime alone. Like Al Capone getting busted in the end for tax stuff.”

  “Yeah,” said Venn, after a pause. “You sound excited.”

  Her head snapped round and she stared at him.

  “What the hell you mean by that?”

  Venn shrugged. “Nothing, really. Just that I guess we have different priorities. You want to get Brull. I want to get this kid back.”

  She was in his face immediately, jabbing her finger. “Hey. Hey. Don’t you dare try guilt-trip me. I’m a mother myself. You think I don’t feel for that guy, and his wife? You think I find it difficult to imagine what they’re going through right now?”

  She stared at him, her face so tense the skin looked stretched to breaking.

  More quietly, she said: “But does this make me any less committed to take down Brull? No. It doesn’t. It makes me hate him even more, and yeah, it gives me a thrill to know that I’ve finally got something on him. Something concrete.”

  Venn held her gaze. He said: “Okay. No offense intended.”

  She sank back in her seat and stared through the windshield.

  Venn murmured, “But if, as you say, this is a lead, something to hang on Brull... wouldn’t it make sense to go to your superiors? Get them involved?”

  She looked at him. Her eyes were wondering. And a little contemptuous.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “I think,” said Venn, “that we can’t do that. You saw how scared Fuentes was. And he’s probably right. The moment he gets wind of the fact that the Miami PD is after him en masse, he’ll kill the kid. Or make him disappear so that he’ll never be found.” He glanced at her. “We together on that?”

  “Yeah,” said Estrada. “We do this alone.”

  They sat in silence in the car for a few moments.

  Then Venn said, “You want to hear my idea?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Brull wants me,” he said. “Whatever else he’s cooking up, he’s the kind of guy who won’t let an insult pass. And I insulted him just know. Seriously pissed him off. It might not divert him from whatever he has planned that involves the boat, but it’ll be a sore tooth he won’t be able to keep from poking.”

  “So what do you have in mind?”

  Venn said: “We use me as bait to draw him out.”

  Estrada shook her head, as if she’d already considered it. “Won’t work.”

  “It’s dangerous, sure, but -”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, what happens if he comes after you, you turn the tables on him, and we bust him for attempting to kill a police officer? The kid stays missing. We gain nothing. And he’ll probably walk from any charge you bring against him, anyhow. He’ll cite provocation or whatever.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” said Venn. “Listen.”

  He told her.

  Chapter 24

  They spent the rest of the morning back in Estrada’s office, discussing strategy. Estrada checked in with the officers she’d told to look into O’Reilly’s background. They’d come up with nothing.

  Venn rang Fil Vidal back in New York.

  “Anything?”

  “Zilch,” Fil said gloomily. “I gotta tell you, boss, I have a feeling about this guy. He’s too squeaky clean. Not so much as a traffic violation. It’s not natural.”

  “Huh,” said Venn.

  “The problem is, his records go back only a few years,” said Fil. “He made several trips to the US over the last decade, but he’s been a citizen only since . So for all we know, he may have a record as long as my arm back in Ireland.”

  “He’s not from Ireland,” Venn said. “He’s from Belfast. That’s Northern Ireland. Part of Great Britain.”

  “Yeah?” said Fil. “You know, I never understood the politics of that place. The whole Irish-British thing.”

  “I don’t think anybody really understands it,” said Venn. “But my point is, he may have a record in the UK. You know anybody who has access to the British police databases?”

  “Tough one,” said Fil. “I’ll need to think about that. Let me get back to you.”

  The morning dragged, painfully. Estrada had sent the few cops she trusted to go hunt around the neighborhood where Fuentes’ kid had been snatched. They were undercover guys, experts in discretion, so they had a good chance of not tipping off Brull’s network. But neither Estrada nor Brull expected much in the way of results.

  Estrada sent out for pizza at lunchtime, and they ate it in her office.

  “It’s O’Reilly,” said Venn. “He’s the key. We can assume those guys on the pier last night, Brull’s men, were either waiting for something that was coming off the Merry May, or they were waiting for Brull to arrive so they could escort him on board and keep a lookout for him. We know this because O’Reilly’s two goons claimed not to have seen the men on the pier, when there’s no way they could have missed them. Maybe Brull is dealing with O’Reilly in some way. Maybe he’s threatening him. Either way, O’Reilly’s involved. Bust him, and we’ve got Brull.”

  “Maybe,” Estrada allowed, around a mouthful of cheese and crust. “But we’ve got nothing to bust him for.”

  “We could harass him,” suggested Venn. “Break his balls a little. Do it discreetly, so there’s no witnesses, nobody who’d back him up if he complained.”

  Estrada shook her head. “He’s the kind of guy who’s got where he is by keeping his nose clean. If he’s involved in something big, he’s not going to give it up unless he’s sure we have a case against him. We can slap him around all we like, and we probably won’t get anywhere.”

  “So let’s go with my plan,” said Venn. “The one I told you about earlier.”

  Back in the car, Estrada had listened to Venn’s idea and said: “No.”

  Now she said: “My answer’s the same. It’s too damn risky.”

  “You got a better idea?” asked Venn.

  Estrada chewed pizza. “Not yet. But there’s got to be another way.”

  Venn checked his watc
h ostentatiously. “It’s one fifteen. That kid has been missing almost thirty hours. Every second that passes, his odds of surviving shorten. Brull will probably kill him in the end, anyway. He sounds like that kind of asshole. So: our priority is to get him out. And the quickest way is to offer an exchange.”

  Estrada gazed into the middle distance, her brow furrowed. Without looking at Venn, she said: “Talk me through it again. Just so I can be clear how dumb it really is.”

  Venn pushed away his empty pizza box and wiped his mouth. “Brull wants me. He wants me because I insulted him, in front of his henchmen. And because he knows I’m right, that he should’ve killed me last night when he had the chance, and he blew it. It makes him look stupid. So he wants me dead – and probably tortured and dead – for personal reasons.”

  “Okay so far,” said Estrada.

  “But what I also told him,” Venn continued, “is that I know about the Merry May. That touched a nerve, when I mentioned it. He’s cool, but he’s not that cool. I saw it in his face. So quite apart from any personal reasons of revenge, he needs to find me because I know something. I actually know very little, but that’s beside the point. I represent a potentially fatal threat to him and whatever operation he’s involved in.”

  Estrada nodded.

  “So we propose a swap,” Venn said. “I contact Brull and tell him I’ll give myself up in exchange for the release of the kid.”

  Estrada finished her own pizza and took a swig of soda from a can. “See, that’s the problem part. First, as soon as you tell Brull you know he’s got the kid, he’ll know Fuentes ratted on him. He could kill the boy then and there, just to punish Fuentes. Second, he’ll know you’re up to something. He’ll suspect you’re trying to lure him into a trap.”

  “So we set it up that he can be confident he holds all the cards,” said Venn. “We arrange the transfer in such a way that he’s guaranteed to take me into custody without any immediate repercussions.”

  “But in that kind of a set-up, why would he let the boy go?”

  “We arrange the rendezvous in some remote place, where Brull can be reasonably sure there aren’t hordes of cops hiding nearby, ready to jump on him,” said Venn. “But we let him know there’s a single sniper, covering the exchange. If the boy’s safely transferred, Brull gets me. If he reneges, the sniper takes him out.”