Kill - Two

by Blake Banner

  I heard a cry of pain. The room was dark. The three guys stormed in, spraying left and right. I scrambled into the corner and lay flat. There was one guy in front of me. He had stopped firing and was directing the beam from his flashlight at the shattered rocking chair. Beyond him was another guy, shining his flashlight down the passage to the kitchen, and past him was a third, who I saw almost in slow motion, swinging around to where I knew Timmerman and Njal were. One thing was clear. Omega did not care whether they brought Timmerman back dead or alive. And that made him more valuable to me than to them.

  I took aim and squeezed as I heard the kitchen door explode and boots storm in. My Glock spat and the far guy seemed to nod, once, emphatically and stumble. Then there were voices shouting in French and the kitchen passage was full of stamping boots and beams from flashlights fanning out across the room in the growing darkness.

  The boozy smell of whiskey was strong in my nostrils. I flipped my Zippo and touched it to the floor. Ghostly, blue flames erupted from the tiles, licking at the wooden armchair and the shattered rocker, racing toward the kitchen passage.

  There was a moment of stunned silence. Then wild shouts as I emptied four rounds into the two guys at the front door. One of them went down. The other withdrew, swearing violently. Then, as the passage filled with eerie light from the dancing spirit flames, Njal opened fire wildly into the crowd that had stormed in from the kitchen. I joined him and they fell back, firing erratically, forcing whoever was at the front door to take cover.

  I watched the flames dance around their retreating boots and then lick under the bathroom door. I screamed at Njal, “Flashbang!” dropped flat and covered my head with my arms. The detonation was savage. It was a flat, hard, stinging wall of noise that slammed the house, slammed the walls and slammed us, leaving my head ringing and my legs shaking. I staggered to my feet, ran unsteadily to Njal and dragged him upright. Between us, we grabbed Timmerman and I pulled them both toward the bathroom.

  The door had been blown clean off its hinges and lay splintered against the far wall. The door frame had been blown off, too, taking with it part of the wall. Inside the bathroom, everything was rubble and a six-foot, circular hole had been punched through the far wall. Water was spraying from ripped pipes and the floor was slippery with mud. I pushed Njal toward the hole, shouting, because I knew he was deaf:

  “Get in the back. Put Timmerman on the floor!”

  As they clambered through into the garage, I covered the devastated door. I could hear movement from the kitchen and from the living room. I scrambled through the hole in the wall, ran half-blind through the dark garage, clambered in behind the wheel, fired up the big SUV engine, drove the revs up to six thousand, let in first and hammered through the wooden doors.

  There was no one outside waiting for us. As I fishtailed toward the gate I saw five dancing light beams come charging out of the house. Then I saw the flicker of flames and heard the stutter of automatic fire. But the shots went wide and were lost among the trees in the gathering night.

  I kept the speed steady at thirty MPH, jolting over the potholes and the rocks, focusing on the road ahead, ignoring the fact that they would soon be after us in their own vehicles, racing, speeding to catch us before we reached the town. I knew that one slip, one slide off the road, one miscalculation in the dark could be more lethal than anything else right now.

  Njal said, “They are coming.”

  In the mirror, I saw the fanning glow of headlamps reaching out behind us. I kept my own lights off, guiding myself by the darker, looming shadows of the trees, setting a course between them.

  Then we were out onto the broader, beaten earth road and I was accelerating, speeding toward the asphalt I knew lay just ahead. Now I put on my headlamps and floored the gas pedal. We hit the blacktop with a jolt. In the mirror, I could see four lights. They were small and distant, but I knew they’d be closing. We were approaching La Torre and Njal said, “Timmerman is hit.”

  “How bad?”

  “Is hard to tell, but in his condition, everything is bad. He needs a hospital.”

  “He can’t have a hospital. Not today. Not tomorrow.”

  “Yuh, I know. But if he doesn’t get a hospital, probably he will die.”

  In the distance, I could see the lights of Torre de Olvera. I knew that was where the main road was that led toward Cadiz, and the airport of Jerez.

  “He doesn’t need a hospital,” I snarled. “He needs a doctor.”

  I glanced in the mirror again and saw Njal frowning at me like I had lost my mind. “This difference is important right now?”

  “Yeah, it’s important. Because we can’t get him a hospital, but we can get him a doctor.”

  I came to the junction with the main road to Cadiz and Jerez. On an impulse, I turned toward Torre de Olvera, accelerated hard and took the first left as we entered the town. It climbed a steep hill and at the top plunged steeply down again. There, it veered to the right and I followed it past gardens and terraced cafés till I came to a quiet side street where I turned in, found a parking space, pulled up and killed the engine.

  I checked my cell. It was turned off. I checked Timmerman’s. That was off, too. I glanced at Njal in the mirror.

  “Mine is also off.” He was quiet for a moment, then said, “Somebody in England compromised you, Lacklan.”

  “The chopper was searching for us. That means they couldn’t pinpoint our location. Which means we haven’t got a bug. They must have searched the general area and decided that house was the most likely spot. All the other farms probably have goats, tractors…”

  “OK, that’s true. But still, it also means they are following your phone. They have your number. Is your phone registered to your name?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then somebody gave them the number. Who has the number?”

  “You made your point.”

  “Yuh, OK, I made the point. You need to deal with it.”

  “How bad is Timmerman?”

  He was quiet for a bit, then said, “He is unconscious. The round has made a big hole in his shoulder. I think no organs are damaged, but he has lost blood. He is still losing blood. We need a…” He looked at me in the mirror. “We need a hospital.”

  I started the engine, put it in gear and moved off. We wound through a few dark, cobbled back streets till we came to the town’s brightly lit main street. Then we drove through the center of the town, where the terraces were beginning to fill up and the traffic was slow-moving. From there, we moved into the suburbs to the south of the town. The suburbs became a small, industrial estate; the tall, steel streetlamps petered out and then we were among fields, in the dark.

  “We cannot use satnav or the phones. You know where you’re going?”

  “Yeah, I’m going south and west. We’re going to find a doctor.”

  SIXTEEN

  It didn’t take us an hour and a half to reach Cadiz. It took two hours of winding through interminable, unlit country back roads, using only instinct and the stars to guide us. Often, we had to stop and get out to check the heavens and get a bearing on our position. Eventually, after forty-five minutes, we saw headlamps ahead, moving fast in a straight line. We moved in that direction, found an intersection with a sign that said Jerez, and joined a main road. It wasn’t a highway, but it was going somewhere that wasn’t a farm.

  Timmerman was still unconscious and though Njal didn’t say anything, I knew he was worried. I was worried, too. He had taken a lot of punishment. The worst of it had been mental and emotional, but that can kill a man just as effectively as a slug in the temple. Combine it with bullet and knife wounds, and it’s lethal.

  We eventually reached a sleepy town called Espera—Wait—with a single road headed south toward Arcos de la Frontera. It was a six minute drive, and outside Arcos, we picked up the 384 freeway toward Jerez and Cadiz, and I allowed myself to accelerate to 80 MPH. Everybody else was doing 90, and I was pretty confident that we ha
d lost our tail.

  It took just half an hour to reach the city of Cadiz. But getting through the city to the Avenida Cayetano del Toro, where the hospital was, took another twenty minutes. The city of Cadiz is an island that sits about a mile off the southeast tip of Spain. Access is by three bridges and a narrow, artificial spit of land that supports a railway link.

  We crawled over the Via Augusta Julia, a hybrid between a bridge, a Roman emperor and a calendar, and then crawled through heavy traffic along the avenue. We traversed a complicated, counterintuitive intersection and finally came to Cayetano. Another ten minutes of stop-start and we arrived at the University Hospital, a big, white, modern edifice on the right hand side of the road. I pulled over and parked with my hazards on. Njal said, “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll be right back. Stay here. Don’t move.”

  I got out and ran up the steps and pushed through the glass doors into the main entrance. There, I stood for a moment, looking for somebody wearing a white coat and a stethoscope. Not surprisingly, it didn’t take long to spot one. Not all doctors wear or even carry a stethoscope, and lots of them don’t use white coats anymore either. But if you see one with both, two gets you twenty he or she is in the ER unit: that’s where you’re going to need to listen to hearts and lungs alot, and it’s where your clothes are going to get stained.

  She was mid twenties, short, cute and bossy. I approached her with my right hand in my jacket pocket and a smile on my face. She didn’t smile back, she frowned like who the hell was I. I said, “Do you speak English? Are you Doctor Sanchez?”

  “I speak English, but I am not Doctor Sanchez. If you need help…”

  “I don’t need help. I have a gun in my pocket, and unless you do exactly what I say I am going to start killing people. You’ll be first. I have a patient who needs immediate help. Come with me and come with me now.”

  She went very pale. She drew breath but didn’t move. I shook my head and said, “No. Don’t do it.”

  “Where your patient is?”

  “In a car outside.”

  “I need to get my equipment.”

  “You need to understand that if you don’t do what I say, I will kill you. Where is your handbag?”

  “In the office…”

  “Let’s go get it.”

  I took her arm and noticed she was shaking badly. There was a security guard across the lobby. He glanced at us curiously. I grinned at her and said, “Smile and laugh or I shoot the security guard.”

  It must have been hard for her. But she did it.

  We pushed through a door into a functional office. I stood leaning on the doorjamb, blocking the entrance. She went to a locker, pulled a key from her pocket and stopped, leaning with one hand on the locker door, staring down at the floor.

  “You cannot do this. I cannot come with you.”

  I pulled the Glock from my pocket and cocked it. “How many doctors are there in this hospital? If I shoot you in the stomach, how many will argue with me when I tell them to come with me?”

  “OK.” She made a placating gesture with her hands, unlocked the locker and pulled out her handbag. She said, “Please, keep calm.”

  I grinned. “Smile and walk with me to the exit, now.”

  She left the office and moved toward the main entrance on short, strutting legs. I fell into step beside her and put my arm around her shoulder. I smiled like we were old pals and said, “Make this the day you save a life, not the day you lose one.”

  As we stepped through the big doors, she muttered, “Hijo de puta…”

  “I speak Spanish, sister.”

  “Yeah? You speak Spanish? Then hijo de la gran puta!”

  “Cute. It’s the Toyota. Get in the back.”

  Njal climbed out as we approached. She pushed past him, muttering, “Tío mas largo que un día sin pan!” and climbed in the back of the truck. She was trying to be brave, but she was close to tears.

  Njal said: “What are you doing, Lacklan? Have you gone crazy?”

  I smiled. “She just said you were longer than a day without bread.”

  “Yeah, that’s funny. Now you wanna tell me what the hell you think you are doing? I don’t wanna spend the next twenty years in a Spanish prison.”

  “Get in the truck. Don’t let her out.”

  He got in the back and I got in behind the wheel. I started the engine and we pulled into the traffic. The doctor started to protest, but Njal showed her the Glock and put a finger to his lips. I glanced in the mirror.

  “How bad is he?”

  Her face went through six or seven expressions ranging from rage to exasperation. She put her fingertips to her temples and her lips moved silently on Spanish words.

  I said, “Relax, take a minute, breathe.” We were moving down the avenue, among bright lights with crowds flowing slowly along the sidewalks, cars inching ahead of us, turning off into side streets, falling behind us. I said, “By tomorrow, we will be out of your life. Just try to relax and tell me how he is.”

  Her face went crimson and she finally found the English words she was looking for. Her voice was shrill. “You stupid fuck! This man is badly injured. He is going in coma. So imbécil! What you have done him? He need a hospital! What shit you think I can do in a car, with no equipment?”

  “What do you need?”

  “Alcohol, suturas, crema antiséptica, vendas, suero, analítica…! Ah! Fuckin’ English!” I got the impression she was talking about the language and not the people. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Alcohol, stitches, bandages, cream antiseptic, blood, analytics of his blood in case of infection, maybe he needs epinephrine…” She spread her hands like she was trying to explain two and two to a moron who didn’t get it. “He needs a hospital!”

  Njal nodded. “Is what I said.”

  I turned right into a side street and kept going. “How much of that stuff can you get at your house?”

  She shrugged. “Alcohol, stitches I have, antiseptic, nothing more…”

  “How much can we get at a chemist?”

  She hesitated. “Blood, is no blood is…” She made a motion with her fingers.

  I said, “It’s a drip. I know.”

  “But analytics of the blood, epinephrine…”

  “Where do you live?”

  “What?” She shook her head. “No, nonono…!”

  Njal put the Glock to her head. She swallowed.

  I said, “What’s your name?”

  “Carmen.”

  “I like you, Carmen. You have character. I believe you are a good doctor. But that won’t stop me or my friend from killing you. There are eight hospitals on this little island, and we can easily find a doctor who has less character and is willing to help us without being a pain in the ass. Now, I am going to ask you again. Where do you live?”

  “San Fernando.” She said it quietly.

  I took two more rights and wound up back at Cayetano. I turned left and headed south toward the mile and half long spit of land that connects Cadiz to the mainland. Where it connects, that’s San Fernando.

  It was pretty much a straight run, and after ten minutes, we were peeling off the highway and cruising through unattractive suburban houses concealed behind high, gated walls, and low apartment blocks whose entrances were protected by high, iron gates. Eventually, we moved from the suburbs into the city proper. We followed the Avenida Al Andalus, turned down the Calle Huelva. Outside a parking garage, she said, “Stop here.”

  She fished in her handbag and pulled out a set of keys. A button opened the electronic doors and they started to swing back as the lights flickered on inside. We went in and she directed me to a parking space.

  Between her and Njal, they supported Timmerman to the elevator and she pressed the button for the seventh floor. When it came to a halt and the doors hissed open, we climbed out into a marble-tiled passageway, passed a stairwell and came to a dark, mahogany door. She opened it with a key and we went inside.


  There was a big, bright living room on the left. On the right was a kitchen. A corridor led between them to a bathroom and two bedrooms at the end. I closed the door and immediately Carmen was muttering instructions to Njal as they dragged Timmerman into the living room and laid him on the couch.

  I took her keys from the stand by the door, where she had dropped them, locked us in and put the keys in my pocket. She was saying to Njal, “Take off his shirt. I will get…”

  I interrupted her. “Where is your cell phone?”

  “What?”

  “Your mobile?”

  “In my bag.”

  “Phone the hospital. Tell them you have a family crisis. Tell them you will be away for maybe twenty-four hours.” I grabbed her bag and shoved it at her. “Then call your mother, your sister, anybody else you need to call. Tell them you’re going to be out of town for the next day or two. Tell them not to come around.”

  She had tears in her eyes. She snatched the bag and made the calls. There was a lot of confusion and a lot of questions, but from what I could make out she managed to convince them, just about. When she’d finished, she threw the phone on the table and marched out to the bathroom. Njal watched her go.

  “She’s cute.”

  “Fall in love with her and I’ll shoot you both.”

  “I believe you. Longer than a day without bread? What does it mean?”

  “You’re tall. Spaniards like bread. A day without bread is a long day.”

  He blinked a couple of times, then gave a short, deep Nordic laugh.

  She came back with her arms full of stuff and dropped it on a glass coffee table in front of the sofa. There were towels, flannels, cotton wool, scissors, other stuff. She gestured toward the kitchen with her whole arm. “Water, warm, not too hot.” She saw Timmerman still had his shirt on and scowled at Njal. “Pero quítale la puta camisa! Cojones!”

  I said, “Take off his whoring shirt,” and went to get the water.

  When I got back, they had cut his shirt off and Njal was grinning at her like an idiot. I put the warm water on the table and she began to wash away the blood. Njal was saying to her, “I am longer than a day without… beer. I am longer than a day without… oh, yeah, smoked ham. I really like smoked ham.”