“With long, graying hair?”
“No, no. Greased back.” He coughed, and I heard liquid in his throat. “I had to do what I did. Surely you understand that? Just tell me your price and let me go. I’ll pay you money, more than you can imagine. No one will know what happened. You can say I escaped. How much do you want?”
My mind was on other things. I’d heard all that crap a million times before, over the years. I thought about the first time I’d been to Greaseball’s flat. He hadn’t been expecting me, and that was why he’d tried to hide the tennis bags. I’d thought he was trying to stop me seeing the syringes when he kicked them under the bed, but that wasn’t it at all: he was going to collect the money in them. There were even a couple of rackets out on the landing. Their plan couldn’t have been simpler: they were even prepared to sacrifice this collection so they could hang on to the other two, Monaco and Cannes.
I opened up the cell phone once more, mentally reciting the pager number. The first four numbers toned out from the phone, then I stopped. What if they were still in the harbor, or anywhere near real people? I couldn’t do that. I had to stop the money movement, but it was my anger dialing, not the job. I could get something organized from the warship. After all, they had enough technology on board to find anything, anywhere.
I kept the phone in my bloodstained hand as Goatee stirred again. “Please tell my wife…please call her.”
I thought about lying to him to make him feel better. Then I thought about Hubba-Hubba’s charred hand reaching through the wrought-iron gate. I turned to face him again in the darkness. “Fuck you.”
He didn’t reply, just coughed up even more blood than I had and started to breathe very quickly and shallowly. I forced myself up on my ass to relieve some of the chest pain, and felt myself breathing out of rhythm. I cupped my hands over my nose and mouth.
Another vehicle roared up the hill and I checked traser. It was eight-twenty-seven.
I slid my way down again, and lay next to Goatee.
All I could do was wait now, try to control my breathing, and hope that we were going to get picked up before both of us were dead.
Chapter 56
Another vehicle swept down the hill, but this time slowed as it neared the entrance to the track.
Whoever it was came to a complete halt, with his engine turning over. I heard the high-pitched whine of the vehicle backing up; then a mixture of red and white light swept across the bank of garbage bags beside us. There was just a second’s silence before the doors swung open. There was something about their echo that made me think van, not car. It must be them. Then the crunch of footsteps headed my way as red light now fought its way past the collapsed chain barrier.
I didn’t move a muscle. Maybe it was just somebody about to do some late-night garbage dumping. If it was Thackery, he’d know where to find us: I didn’t want to spook him, in case he and his pal were armed. I wanted to get into the back of that van in one piece.
Goatee stirred, and I leaned over and cupped my hand over his mouth. I realized that I still had the phone in my other, and slipped it into the pocket of my jeans.
Two silhouettes appeared in front of the gentle red glow, weapons already drawn down, and picked their way through the garbage. The one on the right saw us first. “Shit! We’ve got two!”
The other one closed in and gave Goatee a kick. I didn’t know whether he was looking for a reaction, or if it was just for the hell of it.
The hawallada responded with a dull moan and curled up even more. I didn’t want any of that: I didn’t know if my rib cage could take it. I looked up and kept my voice very low. “He’s the one you’re here for. He’s got a gunshot wound to the abdomen.”
The shadow leaned toward me.
“I’m the one who delivered him. The man—”
The punch flattened my nose against my face. My eyes watered, and white stars flashed inside my head. I lay there, just trying to get my breath back, as a hand ran over my body, checking for weapons. The phone was found and confiscated.
The other did the same to Goatee, then they both picked him up and carried him by his arms and legs to the van, beyond the bushes. I hoped they were going to come back for me, but just in case, I struggled up onto my hands and knees and started to follow.
My route was paved with rusty cans and broken glass.
I got to the track as the two shadows reappeared. I held up my hands, taking the pain in my chest. “I’m one of you,” I gasped. “I need to get to the ship.”
They closed in and I got a very thick New York growl in my left ear. “Shut the fuck up.” Hands gripped me and half-lifted, half-dragged me into the back of the van. The pain was unbearable but I wasn’t complaining. One of the shadows got in with us and the door closed. In the gentle red glow from the rear lights, I could see him ripping apart the Velcro fastenings on a trauma pack. As we started to move, he turned on the interior light and I saw Thackery’s face at last.
He completely ignored me, concentrating on Goatee in the mix of white and red light from the rear units exposed in the back as we bounced our way back to the road.
He was wearing much the same gear as he had in Cap 3000. I tugged at his jeans. “It’s me. Cap 3000, remember? The brush contact, the color was blue. It’s me….”
He ripped open the plastic wrapper of a field dressing with his teeth.
“Do you recognize me?”
He nodded. “You okay?” He sounded like one of Dolly Parton’s backup group.
“Not sure.” I dribbled some blood down the front of my sweatshirt, as if to show him what I meant. We headed steeply downhill and encountered the first of the hairpins.
Thackery held the dressing in place over Goatee’s gut, and manhandled him over to look for the exit wound. Not finding one, he started to wrap a bandage aggressively around the hawallada’s stomach. “What the fuck’s going on here, my friend? Some buttons got pressed and we were told to do the pickup quick as we could.”
The driver hit the brakes. Thackery held Goatee in place and I put my hands on the floor of the van to steady myself as we took another sharp right-hander, and I lost some more of the now drying top layer of skin from my palms. “There’s been a fuck-up. I need your help.”
He continued bandaging, checking Goatee’s tongue wasn’t blocking his airway. “Hey, man, I don’t know what this is about, and I don’t want to know. We know nothing, we just do what we do.”
More red light bled into the white as the driver hit the brakes for the next hairpin.
“I need you to go to the port at Vauban.”
“All we do is pick up and drop off, man. Don’t even have comms with the guys down the hill.”
“Look, the men who killed the rest of my team — they’ve got the money, they’ve got the boat. We have to stop them, or all this has been for nothing. They don’t know it yet, but the guys down the hill need to know where it is. That’s why I’m here, that’s why you got the fastball for an early pickup. We need your help, there just isn’t time!”
He finished dressing the injury and stared at me intently.
I explained about the Ninth of May. “I need to know if it’s still there. If not, bang on other boats, wave our weapons around, shout — do whatever we need to do to find out what’s happened to it.”
He hesitated, and got back to checking Goatee. “How do I contact you?”
“You got a cell?”
He nodded. “In the front.”
“Keep mine, and I’ll take yours. Find out what’s happening in Vauban, then call your own phone.”
He nodded and slid back the hatch on the bulkhead. “Hey, Greg, we have a situation here. We have to kick ass in Antibes after the drop-off.”
I looked through the hatch as we continued downhill. We’d already crossed the main drag, and were heading into Villefranche. People were out and about, restaurants were open, neon was flashing.
Then, to our left, I saw the warship, still lit up like a Christmas tree in the center of the bay.
