by Matt Rogers
‘We didn’t touch the fucking baby,’ Dominic spat. ‘We were never going to.’
Slater flinched, expecting King to rush forward. When nothing happened, he looked over his shoulder. ‘You good?’
King bristled like thunder. ‘Let them talk.’
Slater nodded, gave him a look like, I’ve got this.
King nodded back.
Barely containing himself.
Slater faced forward. ‘Alright. Dominic. Zach.’ He let the Osprey drift through the air as he talked, using it to gesticulate. ‘Let’s get to the bottom of what’s going on here.’
‘Do what you want to us,’ Dominic said. ‘We won’t talk.’
‘I disagree,’ Slater said. ‘If you want, you could sing. You just need the right motivation.’
Zach said, ‘Go ahead.’
Slater looked from one to the other. ‘Are you bluffing?’
Dominic said, ‘Find out for yourself.’
‘I don’t think you are.’
‘We’re not.’
‘And why is that?’
No one spoke.
Slater was like a teacher positing to a class of students reluctant to answer. He continued talking into the silence. ‘Why could that possibly be?’
Zach looked over at his big brother. ‘I’ll give them Troy.’
Dominic froze at the mention of the name, then after he’d computed what Zach had said, he settled a little. ‘Yeah. Okay. We can do that.’
King reared out of the shadows, shoving Slater aside. Before Slater could stop him he’d kicked Dominic square in the chest, sending the chair he was attached to toppling backwards. Before the air had even burst from Dominic’s lungs King was on him like a rabid gorilla, one palm tight around his throat. The swollen jaw lurched as Dominic opened his mouth and closed it again, spittle flying from between his teeth. He gasped for air until his eyes turned bloodshot and his face resembled a beetroot. Only then did King let go, and when Dominic took his first gasp of air, King smashed a fist into his nose.
Dominic didn’t moan, didn’t shriek, didn’t scream.
He was in too much pain for that.
King raised a fist to throw another punch square between his eyes. It would be a colossal sledgehammer of a blow, aided by gravity, and would probably crack his skull. But before he could drop the fist, Slater caught him around the waist and hurled him back off Dominic. King spun to try to break free but Slater had the dominant position and completed the action, throwing King back. King stumbled, then found his footing.
He stared at Slater, breathing hard.
Slater raised a finger, demanding that he stay in place, then turned and yanked Dominic up by the collar, lifting the chair in turn. When the chair was upright, Slater took stock. Blood gushed from both Dominic’s nostrils and a clear handprint gleamed red around the paper-white skin of his throat. His jaw still looked bad. He was in agony, but conscious.
Slater said, ‘I can’t stop that happening again. Not forever. So tell me what you know and I can keep him at bay.’
Dominic dribbled blood, his eyes watering. He was almost in too much pain to speak, but he pulled himself together enough to whisper a sentence. ‘Why did you pull him off me?’
26
Slater didn’t respond.
Dominic’s face was a crimson mask as he said, ‘Let him keep going. I don’t care. I’m not giving you anything about the ringleaders, because whatever you could imagine doing to me, they’ll do a thousand times worse.’
Slater stood there.
So did King.
Dominic continued. ‘You’re ruthless. But you got principles. The guys we work with…they ain’t got principles. If only you knew the things they’d done…’
Slater said, ‘Tell me about them.’
Dominic laughed, and blood flowed from his lips. ‘Good try. No. I won’t. But I’ll give you Troy, because he’s a puppy compared to the big dogs, and he’ll tell you all about them. He doesn’t like pain. I don’t mind it. It’s not my favourite, but I can hold out. Far longer than you think I can. The job taught me that.’
Slater digested the words, then looked at Zach. ‘And you?’
Zach’s gaze didn’t flinch. ‘Try me.’
Back to Dominic. ‘The job?’
Dominic gave a sad smile like he was about to bring up something nostalgic. ‘Black ops. In Afghanistan.’
Slater jolted at the words, then looked over his shoulder at King, asking a question with his stare. Were you there?
King gave an imperceptible head shake. Afghanistan? No. Everywhere else, yes.
Slater said to Dominic, ‘That’s what this is about?’
‘No. Not even close. But we have that in common, at least.’
‘We weren’t in Afghanistan.’
‘You didn’t have to be.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘You want to know about Troy?’
Slater slapped him in the jaw, right where the skin was most bruised and mottled. Almost black and blue.
Dominic didn’t flinch. Stared up at Slater with an expression that was almost serene. ‘Now you understand what I am. Where I came from. I’ve taken “resistance to interrogation” a dozen times over. You gotta, to reach the heights we did. You’d know all about that.’
Slater said nothing.
Dominic said, ‘We gave you our names because we wanted to. Not because you made us.’
King spoke from behind. ‘Tell us about Troy, then.’
Slater didn’t wheel around, and tried not to let his surprise show. If King was conceding, then he was looking past his impulse emotions, searching for what was true. It seemed he’d realised that Dominic and Zach weren’t giving away anything without egregious torture, and, deep down, that wasn’t a place he or Slater wanted to go.
They had families.
And even if they didn’t, they’d never revelled in inflicting unnecessary pain.
Dominic seemed surprised, too. A fat drop of blood dripped off his chin into his lap. ‘He’s the weak link, if that’s what you’re after. He’ll tell you what we won’t.’
Slater hated hearing those words — ‘what we won’t’ — but he refused to react. No matter how little he liked it, this might be a case of taking what they could get.
Zach said, ‘Troy’s been told to wait at one of our safe houses. I’ll give you the address.’
And he did.
Read out a South Roxbury address like he was reciting it off a sheet of paper, so both King and Slater had ample time to commit it to memory.
‘There you go,’ Dominic said. ‘You’ve got what we wanted you to have.’ He gave his brother a long and poignant sideways look, then turned back to King and Slater. ‘At least we spiced things up in case…’
Trailed off.
Slater bristled. ‘In case what?’
Zach said, ‘In case this doesn’t work.’
He shifted in his chair, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out he was free of his bonds. When his weight pitched forward, the electrical tape fell away, having been weakened by tiny incisions. As Zach moved, a glint reflected off a small piece of steel attached to the inside of his jacket.
Maybe a razor blade, sewn into the cuff of the sleeve.
Didn’t really matter what it was, only that it had worked.
Slater whipped his aim around but Zach was ready. He launched himself out of the seat and threw himself forward with all the athleticism he had to give. The chair came off the ground and followed him, the chair legs still fastened to his ankles.
He wasn’t ever going to achieve anything, not unarmed, not against two adversaries with some of the fastest reaction speeds on the planet.
But he never expected to.
Slater shot him three times, stitching a line of entry wounds across his chest, before Zach crashed into him.
Zach’s body hit Slater and knocked him back off his feet.
Slater collapsed under the deadweight and heaved th
e body off himself, but it carved out a crucial portion of time — only a couple of seconds, but that was all it took — for Dominic to burst forward at the hips, ripping apart his own bonds, similarly sliced. He leant down and used the little blades sewn into his cuffs to cut upwards from floor to ceiling. He sliced his own ankle in his haste and blood jettisoned from the wound, but the end result was that by the time Slater made it back to his feet, Dominic was completely free from the chair.
Dominic charged.
King roared, ‘Don’t shoot!’
But Dominic was coming like a freight train. He knew his brother was dead and there were no mental restraints left to slow him down. Existence had become nonessential, and it showed in the way he sprinted full pelt at Slater, at the gun. Slater knew in that moment there’d be no getting information out of him, not even if they successfully subdued him, and that’d be no easy feat.
So despite King’s urgent request he raised the Glock and its enormous suppressor and put a round square between his eyes.
Then stepped aside.
Dominic’s body fell and he face-planted the concrete floor at full speed, landing right where Slater had been.
King said, ‘Idiot.’
Slater stared at the corpse and shook his head. ‘We weren’t getting anything out of them.’
‘Weren’t we? You’re sure about that?’
‘Remember what you told me in Mexico?’ Slater said, meeting King’s gaze. ‘Recognise which battles are worth fighting.’ He regarded the bodies with disappointment. ‘And which aren’t.’
27
Their safe house was a hole.
When it had just been Ronan and Otis and Troy together in that back room with the curtains drawn, it’d been easy to ignore the state of the place, to hide things in the fog of ignorance.
Ronan had to leave the room after chain-smoking half a dozen cigarettes and clouding its dim atmosphere with smoke. When he stepped out into the main space, no amount of nicotine or bourbon could distract him from what awaited. Fast food wrappers littered the floor, greasy and scrunched. Cold cigarette butts lay strewn over the furniture and the carpet. Small circular burns were clustered in hotspots. Empty fifths of Jack Daniels were knocked over like bowling pins.
At times like these, in moments of stark realisation, Ronan thought, We may have problems.
Thankfully the next Newport was always waiting to clear his mind.
He lit his seventh cigarette of the hour and dumped himself on the sofa, but first he had to knock aside several fifths of Jack and a scattering of used butts.
He’d clearly spiralled in the wrong direction, but he’d been something once, and somehow he still had the mental faculties. He considered the Dominic and Zach situation from all angles. Looked at it objectively. Weighed up odds, possibilities.
He kept coming to the same conclusion.
Before he could make a decision, Otis came out of the room, eyes bloodshot and jittery. His cheeks were drawn, pale, and he kept looking all around like he was paranoid of what lay in the shadows.
Ronan sighed. ‘Christ, stop hitting the dust. It’s not gonna do you any good.’
Otis sniffed and wiped his running nose. ‘It’s got me this far.’
He had a point, and if Ronan was honest with himself, he’d accept that the man was a superhuman. The degenerate had been taking PCP, or angel dust, since 2006, when they first touched down in Afghanistan. You just don’t do that. Regular users fall prey to mania, extreme fear, anxiety, and delusions, often culminating in suicide. In comparison, Otis was relatively sane.
Otis, and by extension the whole squad, had defied the odds since they’d first all banded together.
They weren’t about to stop.
Ronan said, ‘I got a theory.’
‘Yeah?’
The front door slammed open.
Ronan had his gun in hand in less than a second. He somehow still had the reflexes of years prior, despite doing nothing to maintain his skillset or live a productive lifestyle. Some things just stick.
It was only Troy, though. The man’s belly swung against the wife-beater under his open shirt as he lumbered inside. He was wide-eyed, panting. He spotted the gun in Ronan’s hand and patted the air in a disarming gesture. ‘Sorry to scare y’all. But I been thinking the whole way back here. And I needed to tell ya what’s on my mind.’
Ronan tucked the gun away, sucked deep on the last puff of his Newport. ‘Shoot, Troy.’
‘I don’t think Dom and Zach ran away. I been remembering the way they looked at me. Looked at the van. Y’know, from the mouth of the alley. It was like…they wanted to come home. And I think this was the home they wanted to come back to. They were just worried about someone getting to them first. I parked the van in the shadows like an idiot and maybe they thought I’d been compromised or something. And maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part, but—’
Otis said, ‘Shut up, Troy.’ He looked at Ronan. ‘Kid’s rambling again.’
Ronan said, ‘I agree with him.’
Otis hesitated, spinning the knife in his palm. Then held both hands up, conceding, and took a step back. Your call, bossman.
Troy’s face was alight with relief. ‘You do?’
‘Yeah.’ To Otis, who’d parked himself on an armchair in the corner of the living room, he said, ‘That was my theory.’
Otis said, ‘I’m all ears.’
‘It’s simple. They wouldn’t have called if they were gonna run. It doesn’t make any sense.’
Otis actually gave it some thought. ‘Yeah. I agree.’
Troy dumped himself down on the sofa beside Ronan, his relief still palpable. He seemed grateful that his opinion hadn’t been derided, that no punishment had been dished out for wasting everyone’s time.
Otis said, ‘The question is — what are we gonna do about it?’
‘We know who we’re dealing with,’ Ronan said. Heart palpitating away in his chest, he lit his eighth cigarette. ‘You know damn well that if they’ve been taken it’s too late for them. I suggest both of you cut your emotional losses right now, if you have any…’
Troy mumbled, ‘I liked them. They were my friends.’
Otis didn’t say a word.
Ronan said, ‘But I’m about done playing these stupid games.’ He stood up, sucking the cigarette like an asthma puffer, draining it as fast as he could. ‘You two wait here.’
Otis said, ‘Why? Where you going?’
‘We’ve got their addresses, and all the supplies are in the truck.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘No. Babysit Troy.’
Troy didn’t even register the insult. Just stared vacantly into space.
Otis stood up. ‘I’m coming.’
‘You’re not,’ Ronan said. ‘Your way isn’t the way I want this to go. Not yet.’
‘And who put you in charge?’
‘Brad.’
That shut everyone up. Troy stiffened like he’d been electrocuted, but kept staring into space. Otis froze at the mention. It took him a good ten seconds to snap out of it. When he did, he said, ‘Yeah.’
Ronan eyed Otis carefully. ‘You want to disobey his wishes?’
Otis stood in cold and calculated silence.
Ronan said, ‘Do you?’
‘No.’
‘Good. I’ll be back soon. After it’s done.’
He walked out, leaving the pair to themselves. Troy remained tense, his posture tight, looking at the floor. Like a student in the principal’s office.
Otis said, ‘Not yet.’
There was no harm in Troy hearing that.
Troy wouldn’t dare betray Otis.
If he did, he knew what’d happen.
28
First port of call: Seafoam Avenue.
Then Pleasant Street.
Ronan drove the pickup truck one-handed, lighting a fresh Newport with the other. It was only a couple of minutes past eight p.m., but it brought him great relief to be abl
e to class the smoke as the first of the hour. Nine in sixty minutes would be … unbecoming.
These fucking street names…
He knew enough about King and Slater to understand they were trying to escape their pasts. Their cute little families and their cosy suburban homes — it was a pathetic sideshow. If it wasn’t Ronan’s crew ripping the bandaids off, it’d just be someone else.
The pickup lurched into Seafoam Avenue. It was a gamble: if King and Slater had snatched Dom and Zach, they wouldn’t have brought them back to their homes. After all, the only reason they were here in Winthrop was to try and carve out a life for themselves, separating work from play. It would do no good to bring hostages back to suburbia. No, they’d go somewhere industrial and abandoned in an attempt to pry secrets out of the brothers. They’d get nowhere, and it’d only waste their time.
But if Dom and Zach had run away of their own accord, then there was the chance of King and Slater being home.
Ronan wasn’t stupid. He had supreme self-confidence — you had to, doing what he used to do — but he wasn’t winning a fight against the pair of them. Not if what he’d read about them was to be believed.
So if they were home…
He laid eyes on the first destination. Jason King’s abode was a gorgeously renovated condo halfway down the avenue, surrounded by large and airy residences with big lawns pale under moonlight. Ronan had spent days reading a summarised re-telling of King’s unofficial career. He knew the man’s every accomplishment, of which there were hundreds. This house, with all its bells and whistles, was a stain on King’s reputation. It was so beneath him — a man of his calibre — that Ronan felt sick just looking at it.
Or maybe that was the nicotine.
Ronan reversed the pickup into the condo’s driveway, parked it next to a Dodge RAM. All the lights in the house were off, but that didn’t mean anything. Ronan wouldn’t see King until he surged out of the dark, drew a blade across his throat. It sent shivers down his spine, but made him feel alive.
The dichotomy of war.
He hoped Dom and Zach were being tortured, right this second. Maybe that made him selfish, but he’d long ago stopped caring about that. He leapt out of the driver’s seat and quickly scanned for neighbours, but all he saw was warm light glowing behind drawn curtains, all the way down the street. He lugged two jerrycans from the rear bed, veins straining along his arms as he carried them up to the house. His heart thrashed in his chest, a potent mix of adrenaline, nicotine, alcohol, and exertion. He was red in the face by the time he got to the front door, and he kicked it in.