“Where was this?” Dutch asked.
Morano shrugged. “Corner of Maple Street. By the launderette there.”
“What were you doing?” asked Scott.
Morano hung his head. “Well, I ain’t proud to say, but like I said… things ain’t been too good for me lately…”
“So you were panhandling?” Dutch said.
“I was asking for assistance,” replied Morano, with such pride and indignation that Scott almost felt sorry for him.
The coffee arrived. Scott tasted his and grimaced. In spite of the face he had pulled, Morano gulped at his as if it was the first hot drink he had had in a long time.
“So you were… asking for assistance and these two guys came up to you,” Dutch said. “What did they look like?”
“Smart. Dark suits. Expensive coats. Nice haircuts. First I thought they were Mormons, come to save my immortal soul. Then I thought they were cops, or something like. But then one of ’em says, ‘How’d you like to earn some real money?’ Course I was wary. Then he takes somethin’ from his pocket and hands it to me. He says, ‘You know what this is?’
“Well, I did. Sure I did. It was money. A lot of money. All rolled up in a tight little package with an elastic band round it. He says, ‘You know how much money that is?’ And I didn’t know, not really. So I says, ‘A thousand dollars?’
“Well, the man, he laughed, and he says, ‘There’s three thousand dollars there, friend. Hold it. Put it in your pocket.’ So I did, and he says, ‘I bet that sure feels good, don’t it?’ And I had to admit it, yes it did. It felt real good.”
“So how did you feel when the men told you that in order to keep that money, you had to kill a man?” asked Dutch.
Morano looked both ashamed and fearful. He dropped his eyes to his lap. “Like I say, sir, I ain’t never hurt no one before. But those guys, they said you…” he faltered.
“Go on,” said Dutch.
“They said you were a bad man. Real bad. And that you deserved to die. They said you were a child killer. That you had raped and killed ten children. They said they were acting for the parents of one of the victims, but that they couldn’t be seen to be involved. They said it would be easy. That I wouldn’t get caught, wouldn’t get in trouble.”
“And you believed them,” said Dutch. “With that money in your pocket you were prepared to believe whatever they told you.”
Morano looked up at him, suddenly more fearful than ever. “You ain’t gonna take the money back, are you? You ain’t gonna hurt me and take the money?”
“No,” said Dutch. “I’m not going to take your money. But if I were you, I would use that money to get out of town. Go far away from here and don’t look back.”
Morano looked like a man who had just spotted a chink of light after being hopelessly lost in the darkness. “You’re gonna let me go?”
Dutch scowled. “I’m not the man those guys told you I was. They lied to you. They’re the bad guys, not me. You understand that?”
“Yes, sir,” Morano said.
“And if they see you again after finding out you failed to kill me, not only will they take their money back, but they will kill you. You understand?”
Morano glanced fearfully around, as if believing the men in suits were even now standing in the shadows, waiting for him. He nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“So these guys who spoke to you,” Scott said. “They knew we would be here tonight?”
Morano nodded. “They tole me what would happen. They said there’d be a fight, and in the confusion I was to shoot the big guy. They said to make it count, to get him in the head or chest. Then they said to get out quick before anyone knew what was happenin’.”
“And you honestly thought you’d get away with it?” Scott said.
Morano looked shamefaced. “Sorry, sir. Guess I didn’t think. It was a whole lot o’ money.”
“Money you can’t spend if you’re in prison,” Dutch retorted.
“No, sir.”
“What bugs me is how they knew we’d be here,” Scott said. “I mean, who did you tell you were coming here tonight?”
“No one. You?”
“Just Marcus. But I would trust him with my life.” Scott thought about it. “Who delivered the note?”
Dutch shook his head. “Can’t have been that. No chance anyone could trace that to me. And the details were too vague for anyone to have planned all this off the back of it.”
Scott stared at Morano, who looked alarmed at the level of intensity in his eyes. “When did the two guys speak to you? Was it tonight?”
Morano nodded. “Yes, sir. Right before I came here.”
“And was Dutch already here when you walked in?”
“Yes, sir. He was sittin’ in that booth yonder.”
“Dutch, can you remember whether the pool players were here when you arrived?”
Dutch shook his head. “I got here early. About a half hour before you walked in. The Dukes of Hazzard turned up about… fifteen minutes after I got here.”
“And fifteen minutes before I did,” Scott said. “Which means someone must have got to them too.”
“They had me under surveillance,” said Dutch bitterly. “I should have been more careful.”
“They must have guessed you were here to meet someone, and saw that as a perfect opportunity to get you out of the way. But like you say, they’re skilled at covering their backs. They never compromise themselves. So instead of doing their own dirty work, they decided to stage a little… incident.”
“A fatal one,” said Dutch, looking at Morano.
“They were chancing their arm,” said Scott. “If their plan worked out, great for them. If it didn’t, no big deal. Either way they wouldn’t lose anything by it.”
“Except a few thousand dollars, which they can afford to piss down the toilet.”
“And let’s face it, neither of us are in a position to report this. By rights we probably shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Dutch nodded and drummed his fingers on the table. “So the question is, are they still watching us?”
“If they are, they’ll know we’ve met,” said Scott.
“Judging by tonight’s escapade, I doubt they’ll try anything direct, but that’s no reason to make it easy for them.” Dutch beckoned the bartender over, and when he appeared at their table, he said, “Is there a back way out of here?”
The bartender’s face hardened. “Sure, but it’s for staff use only.”
“In that case, tonight we’re honorary staff members. And so is our friend, Dennis, here.” Much to Morano’s alarm, Dutch clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Remember what I told you, Dennis. If the men who gave you that money find out I’m still alive, they will find you and they will kill you. So as soon as that back door opens, you start to run. You head north. And don’t you stop until you get to Ohio. You understand me?”
White-faced and wide-eyed, Morano nodded.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
2013
“The guys and I have decided,” said Marcus, “that from now on you don’t get to choose our holiday destinations.”
Scott looked indignant. “You don’t like this place?”
Marcus made a dismissive “pffft” sound. “When you’ve seen one Amazonian rainforest, you’ve seen ’em all.”
Scott chuckled and brushed yet another big flying bug off his arm. In truth, there was nothing fun or funny about their current location. The Venezuelan rainforest was a wet, humid, murky place, the ground squelchy underfoot, water dripping constantly off the canopy of vine-festooned trees overhead.
“At least there are no land mines here,” he said.
“No,” said Marcus, “just Orinoco crocodiles that grow to over twenty feet long. Step on one of those and you’ll still die. It’ll just be a whole lot slower.”
The chopper that had brought them here hadn’t been able to land any closer than seven klicks from their destination, so
for the last two hours they had been tramping through thick, boggy jungle, alive with insects and the cries of exotic birds. They were here to investigate the disappearance of Team Indigo, a small task force sent out to investigate reports of drug and people trafficking by a gang who apparently used the rainforest as a means of access to contacts in Colombia and Brazil. Money from these various criminal operations, it was said, was finding its way to terrorist organizations throughout the world. It was a tangled web that counterterrorism teams in the US, Canada and throughout Europe had been attempting to pick apart for years.
Scott’s team on this occasion consisted of twenty-four men. Team Indigo, whose remit had simply been to investigate and report back, but not to engage the enemy, had consisted of ten men, who according to intel had set up their camp in a clearing less than two klicks from where Scott and his team were now. Another thirty minutes of walking and they should be there – by which time, Scott thought, each of them would probably have shed around half their bodyweight in sweat.
For the past two years, since his meeting with Dutch Schaefer in O’Reilly’s bar in downtown Viner Hill, Scott had been waiting for the ax to fall – which, for him, was not an uncommon feeling. He had hidden the USB stick more carefully than he had ever hidden his little red book, and he had checked intermittently that it was still where he had put it – wrapped in plastic and taped to the inside of a hollow tree within the grounds of the base that was on one of his regular run routes. He kept remembering that word Ellison had used, “repercussions,” but so far there had been none – for him, at least. Were the MIBs watching him? he wondered. And if so, did they regard him as enough of a threat to take action?
If so, they were playing the long game – though in truth, in the past couple of years his and their areas of interest had not overlapped. Once again Dutch and his team had dropped off the radar. There had been not a whisper of them since Scott and Dutch had parted company with a brief handshake after crossing the badly lit, litter-strewn yard behind O’Reilly’s and scaling the fence at the back of the property. Scott knew the general feeling among the men was one of relief that they had had no further dealings with the “bug-hunters,” as Havana had come to be named. Most of the guys preferred dealing with homegrown threats, ones whose parameters they knew and understood. Scott, though, albeit fiercely committed to the work he was doing, found he had a constant itch that no amount of scratching would soothe. In idle moments – which admittedly and thankfully were rare – he found himself going through files he had looked through dozens of times before, wondering how many further incursions there had been that he and the rest of the world knew nothing about, and what Dutch and his team were doing right now.
Another fifteen minutes of tramping and bug-swatting, and then Vanes, who was at the head of the group navigating their route, dropped back and said, “I think we’re nearly there, sir.”
Scott turned and raised a hand, and the men bunched in to listen to what he had to say.
“We’re close now,” he said, “so proceed with caution. We have no idea what we’re going to find when we reach our destination. Corporal Vanes?”
Vanes told them that after passing a waterfall on their right, the ground would drop away on their left to a clearing, and that that was where they should expect to find the camp. Radio contact with Team Indigo had ceased with no explanation almost eighteen hours earlier, so what they would discover when they got there was anyone’s guess. Best-case scenario would simply be that the comms equipment had been damaged, but as Team Indigo had more than one line of communication at their disposal, a technological fault that affected all their devices seemed unlikely.
The team began moving forward again, more quietly and cautiously this time, and in a tighter formation. Already they could hear the rushing and splashing of water, and less than a minute later the waterfall that Vanes had mentioned appeared on their right. It gushed over the top of the far side of a rocky valley, the silvery cascade framed by a thick accumulation of moss and foliage. The valley was so steep and narrow that the pool or river fed by the waterfall could not be seen through the trees, bushes and other plants growing in wild profusion on the near-side slope.
In the humid atmosphere, walking past the waterfall afforded each man a moment of bliss. Scott closed his eyes briefly as the cool, wet mist that rose from it swept across his face. He didn’t think he had ever experienced anything more refreshing, but a few seconds later the stifling humidity engulfed him again. Once past the waterfall, the ground dropped away as Vanes had predicted it would, and in the draining atmosphere, Scott – who, at forty-three, was still incredibly fit for his age – began to feel the strain in his thighs and knees as he plodded downhill.
A minute later they had their first sight of the camp, a few glimpses of drab olive-green canvas between the more vibrant green of the trees below. Marcus, who was on Scott’s right and just a few feet ahead of him, faltered, then lifted his rifle.
“What’s that?” he hissed.
Scott glanced at him. “What?”
“Up there in the trees. Something white and red.” Then his face changed as realization set in. “Oh, shit.”
Another step forward, and Scott saw it.
It was a naked body, hanging upside down from a tree farther down the slope, but so high up in the branches that they had to strain their necks to see it. The arms dangling down were white, but the rest of the body had been stripped of flesh. The head resembled an anatomical diagram of red musculature, the one eyeball that hadn’t been pecked out by birds glaring from a lidless socket. Without lips, the teeth were fixed in a manic grin. The body itself had been sliced open from breastbone to navel in a T shape, and the flaps of skin on either side now hung open like wings, revealing dangling innards that were black with feasting insects.
Scott felt a tingling sensation, akin to superstitious dread, run up and down his body, causing his fingers, toes and scalp to prickle.
He tore his eyes from the gruesome vision in front of him and looked at Marcus.
“You know what this means?” Marcus said.
Scott nodded. “It’s a hunting ground.”
“So what do we do? Do we stay here or…”
“What? Leave?”
“I don’t know. Can we deal with this? Without Havana, I mean?”
Scott nodded. “If we have to.”
Behind him some of the men had caught them up, and they too were now looking up at the skinned body, most of them with expressions that ranged from stunned to fearful.
Scott said, “Okay, guys, I think you all know what this means. Many of you were in the team in New Mexico five years ago, and those that weren’t I’m sure have heard the stories. What you see here is the handiwork of an extraterrestrial Hunter, or Predator, which adds an extra complication to our mission here today.”
“I’ll say,” someone muttered.
“What we know about the Hunters is that physically they’re faster and stronger than we are, and that they’re extremely intelligent and resourceful. They’re just at home up in the trees as they are on the ground, so watch out for attacks from above. They have superior technology to us, which includes weaponry and a shielding or cloaking device that allows them to become virtually invisible.”
“You got any good news, sir?” asked a soldier with coffee-colored skin, a smattering of freckles across his nose and black hair so short and neat it looked tattooed onto his head.
Scott smiled, acknowledging the ripple of nervous laughter that the question evoked. “Yes I do, Barnes. The Hunters may be tough, but they’re not invincible. Sustained gunfire will kill them, as will explosives. Also, they don’t tend to travel in big groups – in fact, they mostly travel alone, so there’s a high likelihood that we will have a considerable numerical advantage. I know I don’t need to say it, but I’m going to say it anyway. Be hyper alert, hyper cautious, stick close together and don’t panic. If we do that we’ll get through this just fine.”
“S
ir?” The voice came from Scott’s right. He knew without looking who had spoken.
“Yes, Lau?”
Lau was staring almost defiantly at the skinned body. It was not the first time he had seen a Hunter’s handiwork.
“Sir, the victim appears to have been here for some hours. Isn’t it likely the Hunter has been and gone by now?”
Lau had always been a hard man to read, but Scott suspected his old friend would secretly welcome the opportunity to avenge his best buddy Flynn’s death five years earlier.
“I’d say it’s possible, but we mustn’t assume anything. Until we know otherwise, we should treat this area as an active hunting ground.”
“So we head down to the camp as planned?” Marcus said.
Scott nodded. “Fundamentally nothing has changed. We’re here to find out what’s happened to Team Indigo and to respond to any hostile action that we may encounter.”
Weapons raised, heads constantly turning as they tried to look in every direction at once, the men crept down the slope toward the camp. Aside from the birds in the trees and the constant buzz of insects – both of which Scott saw as a potentially positive sign – all was quiet. The closer they got to the camp itself, the more evident it became that a battle had taken place here. There were scorch marks on the ground, and what Scott guessed must have been the mess tent, due to the area it had taken up, plus a couple of smaller tents next to it, had been reduced to shreds of canvas, a few shattered posts that were still somehow standing upright and a fused mass of matter so blackened and melted it was impossible to tell whether it constituted beds, tables, provisions, technological equipment or human remains.
It wasn’t until they were right down in the camp itself, some of the men patrolling the periphery, heads tilted back to scan the trees, that Marcus turned to Scott and said, “Hear that?”
Scott halted and listened. From somewhere nearby came the concentrated droning of insects.
“Where’s it coming from?” he asked.
Marcus turned slowly, like a human radar dish, then indicated the last tent on the right. “There.”
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