‘You reckon? Time was they wouldn’t have taken me.’ He swiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
Careful not to touch him anywhere it would hurt, I placed a comforting palm on his good shoulder. ‘Not alive anyway. It’s better that things turned out the way they did. At least this way you get a chance at payback.’
‘He’s a sneaky one, that Baron. We gotta keep an eye out for him in future, Hunter.’
Recalling the speed with which he’d shot at me — luckily with a blank cartridge — I knew that Baron could prove to be a deadly foe. But he wasn’t my main concern at that moment. Another more potent killer was out there, someone more dangerous than ten of the likes of Baron. Tubal Cain was seeking my brother, but he was also standing between me and a reckoning with Kurt Hendrickson. I’d decided that Petoskey, for all his faults, had been correct about one thing: my argument now was with Hendrickson. He was the current force behind all our other enemies. Stopping him would fracture their alliance, weaken them, and then we could take them all out.
To Harvey, I said, ‘Can this thing take us where we need to go?’
Harvey shook his head, indicating a dial on the controls. ‘The chopper wasn’t refuelled after travelling here. We’re only good for a few more minutes, then we’ll have to set down. But don’t worry guys. I’ve got things under control.’
He piloted the helicopter towards a distant copse of trees, swooped over it and then set down in a clearing on the far side. At my estimation we were barely ten miles from the house where Rink had been held. Harvey indicated another, smaller helicopter resting in the moonlight. Harvey must have made his way here via this route, so the appearance of his personal craft was no real surprise.
‘There could be a tracking device on this bird, so I suggest we don’t hang around, guys.’ Harvey clambered from the chopper, then went to help Rink out the other side. Grabbing the sniper rifle Harvey had brought with him, I decamped by way of the side door through which Petoskey had exited a few minutes earlier. When my friends were safely out of the way, I shouldered the stock and fired a few rounds into the engine housing. Apart from the clatter of shredding metal and the occasional spark there was nothing as dramatic as an explosion, but this helicopter wouldn’t be capable of following us. A waste of a good machine, but anything to slow down Baron and the rest of his gang was a help.
Hendrickson’s chopper was a Bell UH-1N Twin Huey, whereas Harvey’s was nowhere near as flashy. His was the more familiar Bell Jetranger that was the mainstay of many commercial helicopter companies. It wasn’t as big or as intimidating as the modified military aircraft we’d ditched, but it would get us where we were going. Harvey once told me all about his little pleasure craft, stating it could go for three hours and still have fuel in the reserve tank. At over one hundred miles per hour, it would get us to our destination with no need for a refill. Again Harvey took the pilot’s seat, but unlike on the first trip I moved Rink into the back with me. As we lifted into the sky, Rink reached across and took my hand. ‘Thanks for coming for me, brother.’
‘Did you expect anything different?’
‘You shoulda told the frog-gigging muthas to go fuck themselves.. just like I said. You shoulda went after Cain. It’s more important that you kill him. He won’t stop until he’s stripped the rest of John’s hide from his back.’
‘I couldn’t do that without you beside me, Rink. Cain’s unfinished business for the two of us, remember?’
He ran a palm down his face, lingering a moment just below his bottom lip. On Rink’s chin was a livid white scar, a token of the last time we’d fought Tubal Cain. I had a similar scar but mine was only an inch or so from my heart. Cain had almost finished the two of us before we’d managed to stop him. So I wasn’t kidding when I told him I wanted him there when next I faced the killer: it might very well take the two of us to stop him again.
‘John’s safely out of harm’s way,’ I said. ‘Walter has him surrounded by armed guards. I think we should be proactive, take the fight to Hendrickson.’
From the front, Harvey called back. ‘We should get Rink to a hospital is what we should do.’
‘Told you,’ Rink said. ‘I’m fine. Let’s just go get the fuckers and have done with it.’
‘You need medical help and you need rest.’
‘Need a stiff drink is what I need,’ Rink grunted.
‘Best I can do is this.’ Harvey slung a drinking canteen back towards us and I snatched it out of the air. Carefully I dribbled tepid water into Rink’s mouth. My big friend didn’t have the strength to steady the canteen, didn’t even attempt to lift his hands. Harvey was right. First stop was a doctor.
‘Where’s the nearest hospital?’ I asked. It only then occurred to me that I’d no idea where on the Eastern Seaboard we were, let alone the location of a medical facility.
‘South-west of here, we have a choice between Raleigh and Greensboro. We go north into Virginia, nearest city I can think of is Richmond.’
We were somewhere in North Carolina? That surprised me as my initial thought on waking earlier was that we were further north: Maryland perhaps.
Rink stirred, leaning forward in his seat so that Harvey could hear him. ‘You think you can find Selwin, Gates County?’
‘There’s a hospital there?’ Harvey asked.
‘No. But there’s a cute veterinarian that can patch me up.’
‘That sounds about right.’ I smiled. ‘I always said you were a bloody hound dog.’
‘Nah, Hunter. What you’re thinking of is, I’ve got animal magnetism. That’s why that pretty little vet will be over the moon to see me.’
‘Where the fuck is Selwin?’ Harvey’s grumbling was followed by tapping on instruments and I guessed he was accessing a sat-nav system. A moment later the helicopter shifted and we began streaking due east.
‘You gotta find somewhere just north of town. Moulder has her practice about a mile out.’ Rink smiled at the memory of when he’d last been out at the veterinary centre. He closed his eyes, perhaps savouring the moment, and I waited and waited for them to open again. His soft snores told me I might have a long wait. I studied his fatigue-loosened features and a pang of melancholy went through me. Rink was now in his early forties, but never before had it looked like age was beginning to creep up on him. There were deep lines around his hooded eyes that I’d not noticed before, and even a few errant grey hairs peppered throughout his raven hair. Jesus, I’d always seen Rink as being invincible, so this was a real lesson. There were more than a few grey strands in my own hair now… a reason why I kept the damn stuff cut so short these days.
Using a lap-belt I strapped Rink into his seat, before clambering over and into the co-pilot position. Harvey nodded back towards our friend. ‘He’s OK, just sleeping,’ I said.
‘He needs more than a shot from a goddamn veterinarian. I think we should head for a hospital while he’s out of it, get him some real help.’
‘Ordinarily I’d agree, but do you think the big guy would be happy if we did that? Probably he’d kick both our arses.’
‘He’s a stubborn son of a bitch.’ There was only fondness in Harvey’s words.
Normally it’s me who’s accused of being too stubborn, usually by Rink, but Harvey was right. Rink would see it as a personal failure if he was holding up our mission and I wasn’t going to be the one to cause him any further shame than he’d already endured these past couple of days. ‘Let’s just go see Vet Moulder and get her opinion first.’
‘That Rink, he seems to have a lady in every town.’
Yeah, but just like me he had never been lucky enough to find someone he could spend his impending old age with. Maybe it was my sigh of regret that swung Harvey’s gaze upon me. He said, ‘You should call her, you know.’
He wasn’t talking about Vet Moulder.
When I didn’t immediately respond, Harvey went on, ‘She deserves more than a goodbye in the middle of the night, Hunter. That woman, she’s been around for you this past year, like you’ve been for her. Just my opinion, but I don’t think you should sever all ties.’
I thought that the best way to let Imogen get on with her life would be to do exactly that. Being around her was always going to be a reminder of how we’d both failed her sister. Phoning her wouldn’t help.
Harvey’s a handsome man. He has that very black skin that’s as smooth as silk, spread evenly over a finely shaped bone structure and a slightly aquiline nose. Yet, right now, his features were set, his lips stretched taut over his teeth. His face was almost skull-like in its intensity. It wasn’t my failure to acquiesce in his opinion that made him angry. We shared a moment that was statically charged before Harvey looked at me. His eyes were twinkling
