Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (69 page)

A chill wind played across the valley, drying clothes stiff and icy, forming bits of ice in hair. They each lay on their bellies, flat to the ground, hands parting tufts of dry and brittle grass so they could see the lake and the flames that still shot twenty feet high into the night.

Hell must be like this, Casey thought to himself, ignoring the cramping in his legs and the numbness in his fingers, able to see the fire but unable to partake of its warmth. In his mind’s eye he could see the guns, gone now, money the Brotherhood didn’t have and certainly couldn’t afford, drifting down in the form of carbolic ash. A haul of fifty AK-47’s, Kalashnikov rifles named for the Soviet who’d designed them. Two hundred pounds of ammunition, sharp-nosed 7.62 mm bullets, designed for the dark barrel in single shots or fully automatic spray. Simple to operate, easy to maintain, the Arab who’d sold it to him, had said. The weapon of choice in North Vietnam at present. Inferior only to the M-16 which had proved too pricey and far too risky to obtain. Gone, if indeed they’d ever been loaded onto the boat in the first place. And a man dead, one he’d never met, paid well for his averted eyes but not, in the light of events, well enough.

How long they lay in the grass Casey never knew, he was only aware of an iron-edged cold creeping up into his bones, and a terrible lassitude falling through him that warned of impending hypothermia. Seamus, thankfully, had stopped sneezing and lay silently beside him eyelids fluttering closed every now and again. Casey would reach over and jostle him before sleep actually set in. Casey didn’t see morning come, didn’t see it creep, chill-fingered and softly frosted over the hills, tumbling slowly down into the valley and putting a heavy breath over the lake. He only woke up when he felt himself being eyed so intently that the hairs at the base of his neck rose up. It took a moment to place his bearings, to focus and find himself staring eye to eye with one of their feathered friends from the previous night.

“G’morning,” Casey said blearily. The duck ruffled its feathers and quacked.

Seamus was nowhere to be seen. Casey shot a quick look over the surroundings. A fine, scudding smoke still rose off the boat here and there, parts of it already sunk and gone. The area was still, a faint light soft as talc drifting down between the bare branches of the trees, the grass crystallized and brittle. Spring’s early promise had been premature. He tried to get up on his knees and found his shirt had frozen to the ground and was now unwilling to part with it. His mind was sharply clear and from this he knew the dreaded nibbling fog of hypothermia hadn’t settled in.

“Seamus,” he hissed, loudly as he dared.

“Present an’ accounted for,” came a voice behind him, startling him into rearing back and half tearing the buttons off his shirt.

“Christ, are ye tryin’ to give me a heart attack,” Casey said irritably, moving his fingers to see if the cold had done permanent damage.

“Yer too young an’ fit for a heart attack,” Seamus replied dryly tossing Casey a warm bun and then passing over a steaming cup of tea.

“Why the hell did ye let me fall asleep, I could’ve died of hypothermia,” he accepted the stream of liquid into his tea that Seamus poured from a small hip flask.

“Ye’ve been asleep for an entire fifteen minutes.”

“Where’d ye get the food?”

“Shop ten minutes trot back that way, noticed it on our way in yesterday.”

“An’ no one mentioned the explosion?”

“Not a word, I think the hills kept the sound localized.”

“Well it’ll be discovered soon enough, we’ve got to get clear of here.”

“Ye think it’s safe now?”

“As safe as it’s goin’ to get. I still can’t believe ye left me there freezin’ to death.”

“Ye were puttin’ out heat like hell’s own kitchen, yer daddy was the same, warmth to spare.”

They ate their buns and drank their tea quickly, grateful for the small glow of warmth the brandied tea provided, however temporary.

Casey polished off the last of his drink and rose, stamping his feet to put some feeling back into them.

“Ready?”

“Aye.”

He set off downslope towards the lake, morning mist picking at his clothes and settling on his skin in clammy sheaves.

“Wrong way, man,” Seamus said uneasily.

“Not leavin’ here without checkin’ for the guns.”

“They’ll not have survived the explosion.” Casey continued down into the water, ankle deep in it in the frigid morning.

“Daft bugger,” Seamus muttered and then followed.

Little remained. Charred hunks of wood, the steering shaft, melted and twisted into grotesque sculpture had been thrown to shore along with a piece of rope liquefied until it resembled a blob of plastic.

Seamus saw that Casey had removed his shoes, socks and pants and left them on dry ground, he was stripping his shirt off now, tossing it back where it floated down like a blue cotton cloud onto the shoes.

“What the hell are ye doin’?” Seamus demanded, the small heat the brandy had given fading already.

“Humor me man, this’ll only take a minute.” Casey dove under the water, leaving only a faint ripple in his wake. He was under a long time and Seamus could feel his nerves begin to jump in protest. Twice Casey’s head emerged and twice it went back down again. Minutes ticked by and Seamus felt the prickle of imaginary eyes on his back. On the third dive Casey stayed down so long Seamus began to think he’d have to go in after him. However just as he was taking his shoes off Casey emerged, streaming and blue with cold, skin marbled in the gray morning light.

“Well?” Seamus’ voice was tight around chattering teeth.

“Well nothin’, which is what I thought.”

“What the hell do ye mean?”

“Nothin’, no goddamn guns to be found. There weren’t any on the boat to begin with.”

“How can ye be certain of that? The explosion an’ the fire could have melted them down.”

Casey eyed him with a bemused look. “Ye must think me a rank amateur. I gave very specific instructions that the guns were to be crated in a box that was to be built into the boat, so that should something unforeseen happen,” he paused to yank his pants up over goosebump stippled legs, “the guns would stand a chance of survivin’ or not bein’ discovered. The box is there alright, but it’s empty an’ always was.”

“Christ,” Seamus said in a whisper that sounded like the last of the air hissing from a balloon. “All that money.”

“Money’s fine,” Casey said giving his shoelace a vicious yank, “it’s in place with a middleman who wasn’t to move with it until I gave the go ahead. We’ve got bigger problems than that now. The gentlemen who sold us the guns will be expectin’ the money for goods delivered, regardless of who has the weapons in their possession.”

“Do ye mean to say—” Seamus stopped, horrified suddenly at the scenarios that seemed to be presenting themselves.

“Aye, the question we need to answer is who has those guns, how did they find out we were expectin’ delivery on them an’ why exactly did they want to kill us?”

“Christ,” Seamus said again, the full ramifications of the situation threatening to drop him to his knees where he stood.

“Aye,” Casey did up the last buttons on his shirt, “ye’d best say all the prayers ye know Seamus, because we need any help we can get. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

They followed a rift between two hills whose tops were shrouded in mist. Seamus cast a glance over his shoulder to where the fog still rose in vertical lines off the face of the water, for a moment it seemed as if some of it clung to the air, took form and drifted towards them, shifting, shaping, warning. He shivered, a convulsion of nerve-endings that had nothing to do with the cold. But when he looked back again, it was only fog.

Sedition, Jamie had long ago decided, was a most exhausting business and the complexities of it were best followed by a glass of whiskey, a volume of Keats and a stretch out on the sofa by the fire. He was barely thus employed when the long and annoying peal of the doorbell rang through the house. The staff was off for the night and he himself expecting no one. He resolutely closed his eyes, intent on unconsciousness but the bell continued to toll. He glanced irritably at the clock, just the wrong side of midnight, hardly the hour for innocent doings, which only made it the more likely that the business that lay on the far side of the door was of a nature he most devoutly wished to avoid.

At length the bell ceased its plaintive chorus and Jamie, with a sigh of relief, sank deeper towards oblivion allowing the day’s events and oddities to scroll off into the whiskey’s fog like ticker tape unfurling across an empty floor. A moment later, when disjointed lines of poetry were beginning to replace columns of numbers and myriad pages of convoluted code in his mind, he was jolted upright by a sharp knock on the window some six feet from the sofa. Uttering a few carefully chosen and none too poetic words he made his way over to the window and slit the curtain slowly, then seeing what was on the other side, blinked in surprise and motioned towards the door. The apparition shook its head and jabbed one large hand in indication towards the window. Jamie merely raised his eyebrows and unhasped the lock.

Muttering curses that even Jamie found impressive, the apparition heaved itself over the sill to stand dripping on a 12,000 pound Persian rug, loomed by hundreds of dark-eyed women who knew far drier climes.

“And what the fock,” said the apparition flinging off rain like a waterlogged St. Bernard, “if I may be so bold as to ask is a summons at this unholy hour all about?”

“I might ask you the same,” Jamie said dryly “if indeed I had any bloody idea what exactly this is all about.”

“Ye sent me a note,” the apparition said exasperatedly, “said it was urgent that we meet, here, tonight. Now granted it’s hardly subtle summoning me like the friggin’ lord of the manor but then I figured if the shoe fits, a man is likely to wear it. “

“If I may be spared your profundities for a moment,” Jamie said “I will repeat for the benefit of all listeners that I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

The apparition looked at him suspiciously, sniffed and then said rather succinctly, Jamie thought, considering the pickle they now found themselves in, “Shit.”

“Indeed it would seem we are up to our hipwaders in said substance,” Jamie replied without a trace of amusement to leaven his voice.

“How much time do ye think we’ve got?” asked the apparition, looking hopefully over his shoulder at the still open window.

“Not enough I imagine,” Jamie replied and barely got the words out before feeling the gust of air that preceded a great walloping thump on his head. As he sank to the carpet, he found to his surprise that he really wasn’t very surprised at all.

“Finished yer nap, then?” said a voice, disembodied and floating somewhere above his head. Not God this time, unless of course God was Belfast Irish, working class with just a hint of west country underneath.

Two fingers, without the gentleness one could have expected of God or even one of His lesser minions, pried open an eye that Jamie really would have preferred to keep shut.

“Ow,” he said as slowly his vision began to clear and he realized that hell suddenly seemed an attractive option. The figure before him certainly bore no resemblance to any harp playing angel and the devil was likely, Jamie thought closing his eye again, to have a much better wardrobe.

“Come on it’s time to wake up.” There came a sharp tap to the side of his face and then another sharper still. “We haven’t got a lot of time and I could use some help here.” This last was said with no little sarcasm, Jamie noted before slowly and painfully opening his eyes. The world, for an endless moment, looped off its axis, did a pirouette and seemingly leaped over the moon before settling somewhat blearily down into the shape of large, freezing cold room made of some strange bubbling material, which in another moment reconstituted itself into large gray stones. A barn, deserted and likely miles from any sort of help, he thought slowly raising himself up off the floor until he was in a sitting position and swallowing back the nausea, found himself inches from a glowering countenance.

“I think after the fiasco of the last hour we rank in the top five stupidest people in the world,” said a voice, that instead of floating up near the rafters, was only a foot or two away from its owner whose face slowly pulled itself together until it became the nose, mouth, eyes and ears of Casey Riordan.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Jamie said muzzily, awkwardly patting at Casey’s face.

“Blame myself,” Casey snorted, “it’s not likely I would man as it’s yer own tender hide they were after. I was in the way of a bonus, I believe.”

“Me?” Jamie echoed in disbelief, “I’m not the one with the lifetime subscription to Republican Weekly now am I? What on earth would those men want with me?”

“That,” Casey said, “is the exact same question I’ve been asking meself these last two hours.” He gave him a burning look that did nothing for the state of Jamie’s head.

“Well it’s a question that will have to remain unanswered because I’ve no idea what the answer is,” Jamie said a trifle too calmly.