in my chest, and was steeling myself to give Millie the terrible news when something else caught my eye. Stooping down, I pulled Don’s rifle from limp fingers.
‘The hell you doing?’ Vince demanded from the doorway. ‘You’re still under arrest, you can’t just…’
I indicated the place where Gant had fallen. The mud was churned up, mixed in with copious amounts of blood, but of the tattooed man there was no sign. Drag marks along the road surface showed where he’d been hauled away.
‘Son of a bitch!’ Vince breathed as he heard the black van burst to life.
His curse was echoed by mine as I took a couple of steps out into the road. I lifted the assault rifle and fired, but already the van was being reversed at speed through the camp and the bullets failed to slow it. After a couple hundred yards the driver hit a one-eighty skid then gunned the van away.
‘I hope your back-up’s coming up that mountainside or they’re going to escape,’ I said. Vince was too busy staring at the gun in my hands as though it was about to be turned on him. I grunted, and held out the assault rifle. ‘Relax, Agent Vincent. We’re both on the same side here.’ I pointed at the SIG in Vince’s hand. ‘Trade you? My gun’s no good to you anyway, not with no bullets in it.’
‘Son of a bitch,’ Vince said again.
The assault rifle was slipped on to the young FBI agent’s arm, at the same time as I plucked the SIG away and shoved it down the small of my back. ‘I’d like the knife, too, if you don’t mind?’
‘You’re my prisoner,’ Vince said, quite stupidly even to his own ears.
‘Am I?’
‘Aah, for God sakes!’ Vince handed over the KA-BAR.
Behind us, Millie hugged Don. The children had come to the door and Beth was cradling her sobbing brother in an echo of her older relatives’ pose. We shared a humiliated glance, and went to help them.
All of us were stunned to hear Don ask, ‘Is it over?’
Don’s eyelids fluttered and some lucidity came back into his face. Millie and the kids let out squeals of delight as they all threw themselves at the old man. I stepped back to give them clearance, smiling at them in turn when they glanced up at me in wonder. Between their hugs and questions and the general confusion Don’s gaze fell on me. ‘Is it over?’ he demanded again.
‘Over,’ I said with a curt nod. But I kept my next words to myself. Not by a long shot.
Vince was watching me. The young man had lost the cocky persona he’d carried as Vince Everett and I guessed that the agent was thinking the exact same thing. Both of us turned and scanned the area where the black van had disappeared moments before.
We were still watching twenty minutes later when the first FBI vehicles began entering the compound.
Two minutes later and I was again face down while men held me under guard. From this prone position, I heard Vince say, ‘Let him up, will you. He’s one of the good guys.’
Chapter 27
‘There’s a guy behind the third cabin along, another two out in the trees,’ I offered to the group of FBI agents tasked with making sense of the war zone. ‘Some others are down at the base of the hill where you turned off the road, and there’s more back at the Reynoldses’ house.’
‘Is that it?’ an agent asked, his face showing that he was actually serious.
‘Isn’t that enough to be getting on with?’ They didn’t know about the men from the Seven-Eleven yet, but it was best to let those two lie for a while. Everyone else I could put down to reaction under duress and argue self- defence. Some might see the first two as murder, albeit I was now thinking of them in terms of a pre-emptive strike. It eased my conscience that way.
‘It’s about twenty too many,’ the agent said.
‘I think you’ll find that’s an exaggeration.’
‘Is it?’ The agent looked me up and down, taking in the scraped knuckles. ‘You seem to have come out of this relatively unharmed. You sure you were the only one responsible for killing them all?’
‘Can’t claim them all,’ I admitted, rubbing at the red mark on my neck. ‘Don Griffiths bagged one of the arseholes. You’ll find him over by that flat-bed.’
The agent was scribbling on a clipboard, mapping the area and making notations with a black cross for where the bodies lay. He handed off the notes to one of his colleagues who ushered the others away to begin a more detailed search. The first agent looked at me again. ‘You said two of them got away.’
‘Sadly, yes. Two pricks who went by the name of Gant and Darley.’
The agent recognised the names, repeating them back to himself. ‘That would be Samuel Gant and Darley Adams.’
I filed both names away for later. ‘Are you going to tell me about them?’
‘No.’ The agent walked away. ‘You haven’t got clearance.’
Shaking my head, I sat on a stoop outside one of the abandoned cabins, away from the buzz of activity. I looked around, taking in the scene, reminded of when I took down the serial killer, Tubal Cain. On that occasion it was as if most of the available government agents in the South-West had turned up at the killer’s hidey-hole in the Mojave. Then, they were there to recover bones, whereas here in the Alleghenies the corpses were much fresher. The number of agents was on a par, though, as was the proliferation of vehicles turning up. A medi-vac chopper had arrived earlier, but with nowhere to land in the hills it had diverted to the wide space on the road below. Don had been rushed away in the rear compartment of a government SUV to meet the chopper, medics working furiously to keep him alive. Millie, Beth and Ryan kept him company down the mountainside. The others required medical assistance too, chilled to the core as they were and were suffering from shock.
I hadn’t been offered the same consideration.
Goes with the territory, I suppose. Some of the FBI personnel still weren’t sure that I should even be at liberty. My weapons had been taken from me, bagged and sealed, but I still caught the occasional suspicious glance as though I was about to go off on another killing spree. Thankfully Special Agent Vincent — or just plain Vince as he’d told me to call him — had a lot of clout and had won me my freedom. Maybe Vince was making up for almost taking my head off with that bloody garrotte.
Could’ve done with getting to a telephone. My first call would be to Rink, the next to Walter Hayes Conrad. On second thoughts, maybe I should call Walter first.
When I worked for Arrowsake I was part of an experimental coalition of Special Forces operatives. Due to their world-ranging scope, Arrowsake had controllers in each Allied country and on this side of the Atlantic Walter Conrad, a sub-division director of the CIA, was my handler. More importantly than that, he was my friend and confidant, sometimes a mentor and father figure. My real father died when I was a child, and though my stepdad, Bob Telfer, was a decent enough man, he just never seemed to gel with me the way he did with his own child, John. As a young soldier, fresh to Arrowsake, I had found the paternal replacement I’d been looking for in Walter.
In the time I’d been in the USA, Walter’s influence had meant that my violent retribution wreaked on a gamut of killers had been looked on favourably by certain high-powered government officials. In layman’s terms, Walter had kept me out of prison by calling in favours. He’d even wangled it so that I, along with Rink and our mutual friend, Harvey Lucas, was back on the government payroll when tracking and taking out Luke Rickard, the contract killer engaged in assassinating past members of Walter’s unit.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to earn special dispensation from Walter this time.
I looked for Vince, my only ally in the entire compound.
Last time I’d seen him, Vince was deep in conversation with the SAC who’d arrived to take charge of the investigation. By the way that SAC Birnbaum — who should have been Vince’s superior — deferred to the young agent, Vince had a little more clout than your average feebie behind him.
An FBI storm trooper strode by, dressed in tactical kit as though Gant and Darley might return for a second show. I waved the man over and he adjusted his Heckler and Koch MP5/10 as though readying to strafe me should I make any unwarranted move. I did my best to ignore the weapon pointing at me. ‘Have you seen Special Agent Vincent lately?’
