Cut and Run (37 page)

‘He must have figured it out himself.’

Rickard shook his head slowly. He leaned down so he was staring deeply into Wetherby’s face. ‘You were at the centre of this, Ken. It was you who fed Jimena Grajales the information on Hunter and his team and who directed my movements on her behalf. You’re the only person who knew the connection between me and Gutierrez, and with Jimena. Hunter didn’t just turn up at Cesar Calle’s place by chance: someone gave him the tip-off.’

‘Why would I do that? I wanted him dead as much as Jimena did.’

‘Because you’re a coward, Ken, and you’re afraid of Hunter. You were the only person who knew I was going to Colombia. You hoped that by sending him after me we’d end up killing each other. You didn’t expect either of us to come back.’ Wetherby tried to sit up, his hands coming up imploringly. Rickard placed the toe of his boot to the man’s chest and pressed him down again. ‘You must have hated Joe Hunter a great deal to decide you’d set me up as well. Did you not consider what that would mean if I survived?’

‘I did hate him, Rickard. He threatened to close my business down, I couldn’t let that happen. So, yeah, I jumped at the chance to have him murdered. When Gutierrez contacted me looking for someone to do the job, you were the first name that came to my mind. I knew you were better than him. I knew that you could take him wherever you met.’

‘I thought you said you had nothing to do with sending him after me?’

‘Jesus, Rickard, you’re putting words in my mouth.’

‘No, Ken, I’m putting
this
in your mouth.’ He jammed the end of the suppressor against Wetherby’s teeth. ‘Say aah!’

Wetherby cried now. Rickard thought it strange that someone could screw their eyes so tight and still produce tears. His lips were equally puckered.

Rickard pulled the gun away.

‘Open your eyes, Ken.’

Wetherby couldn’t. The prospect of a horrible death had such a powerful hold on him that his brain function temporarily rebelled. He just lay there mewling like a broken-backed cat.

‘Open your freakin’ eyes. Look at me like a man, not crying like a little girl.’

Rickard kicked Wetherby in the backside, toe digging painfully into the bullet wound. The pain did the trick and Wetherby’s eyelids shot open. His pupils remained unfocused for a few seconds afterwards, but he finally looked up at Rickard.

‘Jesus . . . God . . .’

‘Shut up, Ken. You’re embarrassing yourself. You’re beginning to sound like my goddamn wife.’

‘Don’t hurt me . . . please!’

‘Well,’ Rickard said, ‘I’ve nothing else I can come up with. I was going to let you take the Fireblade back, but I can’t have you bleeding over such a beautiful piece of machinery.’

Rickard smiled, making the ill-concealed lie even more obvious.

‘Please . . .’

‘Can’t allow it. You betrayed me. Goodbye, Ken.’

He shot Wetherby in the chest.

The life went out of Wetherby like a tyre with a slow puncture, his arms flopping in slow-motion by his sides, mouth drooping open.

Rickard ejected the magazine from his gun, checked how many rounds he’d used. Still plenty left, so he pushed it back in place. While unscrewing the suppressor, he looked down at Wetherby dispassionately.

He thought that killing the man might cause more of a reaction. Wetherby had been his major source of income over the last few years and for most of them they’d been friends. It was a shame that Wetherby had allowed his hatred of Joe Hunter to come between them.

‘You should have just hired me to kill him straight off, Ken, kept things simple, instead of allowing a woman to call the shots. Do you see where a scheming bitch has got us now?’

Chapter 43

I’d been meaning to take an air-boat ride for the last couple of years, ever since I’d taken up residence here in Florida. Riding the air-boats with their huge rotating fan on the back has always summed up my idea of seeing the beauty of the Everglades in style, but I hadn’t got round to it yet. In the time I’d been here, other things just seemed to get in the way. Too often those things had meant violent death to too many people. A lot of those people should have still been around, but some of them deserved exactly what they got.

‘We get out of this alive,’ I had told Rink earlier, ‘I’m gonna hire an air-boat and go and look at the ’gators.’

‘Keep your eyes peeled, buddy, or you might see ’em sooner than you think.’

He wasn’t kidding.

Rink then slipped away through tall grass, heading in a circuitous route round the back end of the hospital grounds. We had our mobile phones to communicate by, but that was the last I’d heard from the big guy in the last few hours.

Instead of careening through the swamp on a flat-bottomed boat, the huge propeller whirring behind me, my view of the swamp was from a raised hummock of limestone. I’d built an observation post there, scraping a narrow furrow in the earth to make lying down a little more comfortable. I had my carbine propped in a natural V between two rocks, the DPM sheet spread over me with tufts of grass strewn over it to aid the camouflage.

Oddly enough, I wasn’t hiding from Luke Rickard. My reason for remaining so still and silent was so that the men in the grounds of the hospital were unaware of my presence. The men – Hubbard’s HRT troopers – would see my being there as a interference in lawful process worthy of my being arrested and thrown in chains. We were on the same side; it was just a pity they couldn’t see things that way. They wanted to arrest Luke Rickard, hurl the weight of the Federal Court system at him and lock him away for life, while I just wanted to bury the asshole.

Hubbard’s men were highly trained – probably the cream of all SWAT teams in the country – but they weren’t the right men for this job. They were specialists in hostage rescue, not standing guard against a determined assassin. I’d counted half a dozen storm troopers up until now, intimidating in their black Kevlar armour and helmets but no deterrent to someone like Luke Rickard. Maybe Hubbard thought he could frighten off the killer with this show of force, when instead all he was doing was showing his hand and allowing the planning of countermeasures. He should have brought only a small hand-picked team of undercover agents, men and women who could blend with the hospital staff. That way Rickard wouldn’t find it so easy to determine the strength of his enemy. That would give him more pause, make him worry that everyone inside the hospital was a potential threat and that this was neither the correct time nor place for a hit. That would slow him down more than any skirmish line of heavy artillery would. To stop an assassin you had to think like one.

It had been a long day.

Rink can sit for days without moving, but I felt the need for action like a case of hives all over my body. There was the possibility that Rickard had seen sense and had made off to some remote corner of the world where he could concentrate on rebuilding his trade as a contract killer. Lying here, watching the grounds of the hospital over the top of the fence could be a supreme waste of my time, but I didn’t think so. I’d told the others as much: Rickard was coming, and I still stood by my words. More than anything, he had to be stopped. Everything about him was exactly what I hated – especially the face he’d stolen from me: it reminded me too much of the dark things I’d had to do in the past.

As I’ve said, Rapid Intuitive Experience is the designated military term for that sixth sense you get when you feel you are being watched. I’ve felt the cold prod between my shoulder blades on too many occasions to ignore it. Going very still, I listened, used my peripheral vision to pick out any subtle movement a direct stare would miss. But I found nothing out of the ordinary.

Not until my mobile phone vibrated against my chest.

The old
spider sense
had picked up on the urgency of the incoming call.

‘You got your face on, Hunter?’

Rink says that I have some sort of stone-cold expression that I wear on missions. I’ve tried to catch my reflection to see what he sees, but I’ve just looked the same to me. Nonetheless, Rink is adamant and he calls it my
face
. Maybe that’s what I’d recognised in Rickard’s features and was why I hated him so much.

‘What’s up?’

‘Unless the feebie on this side has just had a major cardiac arrest, someone just shot him with a silenced gun.’

‘He’s dead?’

‘Hasn’t got up again.’

‘Someone with a high-powered rifle,’ I said. ‘Has to be to go through his armour.’

‘Wait up . . .’

There was a few seconds of silence. When Rink came back on he was whispering lower than before. ‘There’s another feebie who came out of the trees and is checking on his buddy. Now . . . hmm, that’s strange.’

‘It’s him.’

‘Think you’re right, Hunter. He’s dragging the dead man into some bushes.’

‘Think you can take him, Rink?’

‘Not from here. Gotta move in.’

‘Hold tight. I’m coming, OK.’

‘He gets inside, we’ll be hard put to differentiate him from the other HRT guys.’

‘He gets inside, he’ll be going for Alisha. We’ll catch him there if needs be.’

Ending the call, I came up to a crouch, pulled back the DPM sheet and then jumped down from the limestone outcrop. Angling left, the fence gave me cover as I moved in, but then I headed for the gate. As soon as I was through it I had to cross open lawn that offered only sporadic cover by way of shrubs and flower beds. I zigzagged between the bushes, stopping at each while I scanned for the FBI troopers. One of the HRT men was about fifty yards away, but he had his back turned. Silently I ran to the next cover, going down on my belly in a flower display. Through the leaves and blooms I searched for the trooper. He still stood cradling his gun and staring off into the distance. His shoulders were slumped, disillusioned by many hours of standing eventless guard duty. Coming to my feet I hurried on. I reached the side of the hospital building without raising the alarm.

My phone vibrated again.

The building came with a crawl space. A lattice frame stopped animals larger than snakes or rodents from getting under the building, but it was brittle, dried out by the Floridian heat. I grabbed and tugged loose a five-foot-long section and then swung under the crawl space. I pulled the frame back up, just in case anyone came along while I spoke to Rink.

‘He’s just standing there, Hunter. Like he’s taken the place of the dead man.’

I told Rink where I was. Then I said, ‘Maybe I can get him as he makes his move for the hospital.’

‘Too late, he’s on the move now. Taking it easy, heading for the front door.’

‘You still in a bad position?’

‘Don’t trust the carbine to hit him from here. I can fire on him, but all hell will break loose. He might run. You want to take that chance?’

‘No. Looks like we’re going to have to take him inside.’

‘Feebies might fire on us.’

‘Yeah, that’s a problem.’

‘The
problem
is we can’t shoot back at them.’

‘Going to be difficult,’ I agreed. ‘But we can’t let them stop us. Rickard’s not getting away this time.’

‘OK. Hunter, he’s at the steps now. He’s going in. Better hustle, buddy.’

I hustled.

But I still had to be careful. Pushing over the lattice frame again I peeked outside. The trooper was oblivious to what was going on, which meant that his team-mates were equally ignorant that Rickard had launched his attack. Rolling from under the building, I came to my feet and ran towards the front corner. Snatching a quick glance around the wall, I just caught the blur of movement as someone went in through the front door. Looking past the façade of the building I saw Rink moving in. We acknowledged each other with a nod, and then I ran towards the door through which Rickard had entered a moment ago. Rink covered me, dipping to a knee as he searched the grounds through his sights.

Steps led up to the front door, a large expanse of white oak. I went up them and pressed myself to the wall, hips against the discreet sign bearing the acronym AKMC. From there I covered while Rink moved up to the steps. No one was aware of us and I again concluded that Hubbard had the wrong team on this case: Walter’s people would have taken us prisoner out there in the swamp. There was a large brass push-button bell but I’d no intention of advertising my arrival. I pushed down on the handle and the door swung inward silently.