shook like a wet puppy. Under the circumstances perhaps he didn’t deserve to die. Maybe I would have spared him, but his fate was taken out of my hands. Baron moved, lightning fast, but not for his gun. He grabbed Charters by the back of his neck and propelled him towards me.
Charters wasn’t a major threat. Terrified, he didn’t even try to get me. But he was blocking my view of both Hendrickson and Baron and there was no way that they were standing still. If I attempted to manoeuvre around Charters, he would definitely grab at me, halt me long enough for Baron or Hendrickson to finish me. That made up my mind. I shot him in the throat. The force of the bullet took him off his feet and I now had a clear view of the others.
Hendrickson had swung away from me, but Baron’s hand was going for his gun. At the same time he went into a crouch, making him a smaller target. I fired and knew immediately that I’d missed. Baron’s hand was coming up again. I dipped on one hip, swerving my upper torso to one side, and I felt the air buffet my cheek as Baron’s return fire cut through the space I’d just vacated. Motherfucker was fast.
Trying to keep an eye on both of them, I deemed Baron the most immediate threat. Hendrickson still had his back to me and seemed to be leaning on a counter. Baron had taken two steps further to my right, his arm swinging towards me. I shot at him. My bullet struck his side and threw him against a wall. But he wasn’t dead, and I saw his finger pull on the trigger of his gun. There was no way to avoid his shot but go down. His bullet cracked the wall above my head. I’d saved my life, but given up my stability. Down on one knee, off balance, I tried to track Baron but he had already danced a few steps and was parallel to my position. To kill him I’d have to bring my arm fully around. He was as quick on his feet as he was with a gun: he leaped past me and was now almost at the door. I turned, trying to get a bead on him, but it was hopeless.
Baron fired a final round, but he was too busy fleeing to care where it struck. It missed me and hit the inert form of Charters where he lay on the floor. I started to rise. But Hendrickson was also moving, swinging round, and in his hand was a large Colt revolver that glinted silver in the overhead lights. The old-fashioned gun must have been the source of the clunk I’d heard earlier. It had been behind Hendrickson all the time, concealed from my view by his sturdy body.
Shit. I’d wanted to force Tubal Cain’s whereabouts from him before he died. But given the choice of letting him get the drop on me and shooting him there was only ever going to be one outcome. Even a disabling round through his body wouldn’t be enough, because while I dealt with him, Baron might return. As I told Harvey I would, I shot Hendrickson in the face.
The Colt slipped from his fingers and clattered on the floor between his feet. For a second or two Hendrickson defied gravity, then his knees gave out and he toppled forward. The splash of blood reached all the way over Charters to my boots. For all that he was the source of my woes, I gained no satisfaction from his death. Possibly because the way he went was too easy on the bastard. Justice would have been better served if I’d hobbled him as I’d threatened and left him to rot in jail.
Hendrickson couldn’t help me find Cain now, and I barely glanced at him as I moved to the edge of the door. Baron was still up there and the last thing I desired was to start up the stairs and have him fill me full of holes while confined between the two stone walls. Yet I couldn’t stay there. The brief gunfight was bringing Hendrickson’s men running from all corners of the house.
Chapter 29
Deadened by the walls of the basement, the racket caused by our shoot-out wouldn’t have carried beyond the house, so there was no fear that the police would come with blue lights blazing. However, Baron must have found where I’d dropped the Galil because suddenly the house rattled to the clamour of machine gun rounds. I was trapped in the cellar, and even if Baron or the others didn’t have the bottle to come down and finish me off, the cops would be here soon. That’d be me done for: without the backing of Walter I’d be seen as the aggressor and dealt with accordingly. Either I’d be put down or carted off to prison for the remainder of my life.
The cops would have to be a concern for later, I decided.
Some of Baron’s rounds made it all the way down the stairwell and into the basement. They cut chunks out of the floor, throwing shards of concrete and red-hot metal everywhere. Something scored my left shin, and I jumped, slapping down on an oozing wound. I hobbled a few steps away, shoving bodily into a corner nearest the door. The rebounding bullets were still a concern but less likely to hit me now. The last time I’d been in a similar situation my enemy had lobbed a hand grenade at me: this time there was no steel hospital bed and mattress to save me. However, I did still hold an ace card.
‘Harvey, I need your help now!’
‘Wondered what all that hullaballoo was about,’ Harvey said in my ear.
From above there came the retort of a rifle. Someone screamed and I hoped it was Baron. It wasn’t very likely, but at least the machine gun fire stopped as the flow of battle surged to a new front. I didn’t wait to make sure, just bolted up the stairs and into the kitchen. A man was dead on the floor but he was too big to be Baron. The window was smashed. From outside I heard the repeated crack of Harvey’s rifle as he tracked fleeing men through the windows of the house. Someone fired back, but their bullets came nowhere near to him. He continued laying down cover and I went through the kitchen. Didn’t bother with the door, just hurdled out through the broken window and on to the gravel path.
‘I’m out,’ I said.
‘See you, brother.’
I looked for targets but saw none.
‘OK, start falling back.’
We pepper-potted out of there, taking turns to cover and run as we retreated through the garden. The lawn mower had fallen silent, but a new sound carried through the air: sirens from responding police cruisers. From further back in the grounds there was the roar of an engine, and the squeal of a vehicle making a harsh turn. I assumed that, like us, Baron wanted no part of the police investigation that would follow. I would have liked to take him out there and then, but at least this way Rink might get his wish.
We went over the wall with little finesse, just ran at it and leaped, caught the upper edge and swung over. Our rental had gone undiscovered and we clambered inside. Harvey drove, I sat in the front passenger seat, and we talked calmly. We kept to the speed limit; just two guys on a drive. Cop cars screamed past us heading for the front gates of the Hendrickson estate. By the time they arrived, gained entry and discovered what had happened we were well out of range of the cordon they set up around the crime scene.
Apart from Baron, nobody had any idea who was responsible for the slaughter, and it was reasonable to expect that he’d keep his mouth shut. That he’d made his escape was a given, so the chances of the police searching for Harvey and me were very slim. We headed out of town and pulled in at a hotel that was more upper- class than anything normally favoured by those fleeing justice. Cops tended to target the seedier flophouses first; they didn’t expect felons to lie low in five-star comfort. Forward planning meant that Harvey had pre-booked — under false details — so we weren’t like a couple of desperadoes when we turned up and locked ourselves in our room. Harvey even set up a charge account on a credit card, further enhancing our hide-in-plain-sight ethos. He requested a wake-up call and newspaper for the morning.
Our room was on the ground floor and we could come and go without having to bypass the checking-in counter. From the window we could see where we’d parked our rental. There was also a second vehicle that Harvey had ordered via a different rental company: just in case our first car had been noticed near to the shooting we’d planned to leave here in the second.
When the investigation got underway, it was probable that any mobile phone usage in the area would be scrutinised, so the mobiles we had would have to be dumped. Nevertheless I knew how the gears of bureaucracy could grind an investigation to a snail’s crawl so thought my phone was good for a while yet. Phoning Walter directly from it was foolish, because the numbers would show on the call log, but not when I went through the relay stations that filtered and encrypted the route. Ensconced in our rooms, I rang the CIA man.
‘You can strike Kurt Hendrickson off the list,’ I said when Walter picked up.
‘He’s dead? Hell, son! The Justice Department isn’t going to be happy when they find his trial won’t be going ahead. They were looking at a real media coup with this one.’
