Liberation Day (33 page)

Ponytail moved forward while she stood her ground, covering him. He had a couple of days’ stubble to go with his hair. He thrust his ID at me with his left hand. A National Police badge, looking very much like a sheriff’s star with the word
Police
set in a blue center.

“Police,”
he said, in case I had trouble reading.

He flicked the fingers of his right hand upward, but at first I didn’t understand the gesture. Then I got it; he wanted my hands out of my pockets and up where he could see them. His eyes never left mine, looking for signs that I was going to try something. This guy was really experienced; he knew that eyes give away an action a second before it happens.

He gestured upward again with his right hand.
“Allez, allez.”
He wanted my hands in the air, or on my head, I wasn’t sure which.

What the fuck was I going to do? Jump into the water and swim for it? To where?

He was just a pace away as my hands went up onto my head. He was pleased with that and continued to talk to me in confident, subdued tones as he closed his ID and shoved it between his teeth.

She was still static at the water’s edge, behind him and to my left.

Ponytail closed in and ran his left hand over the front of my jacket. His right hand was still free to draw down if necessary. Encountering the Sony, his eyes narrowed. He breathed through his nose, kept the ID in his mouth, and gave a muffled but calm,
“Pistolet.”

Even I knew what that meant, and the woman moved in closer until she was at right angles to me. I could almost feel her tongue in my ear as she whispered something along the lines of “Move and I’ll kill you.”

She was too close. You should never be within arm’s reach. I had to do something, anything, before he got down to the Browning.

He started to pull on the zipper of my jacket, yanking it with such force that it snagged about a third of the way down and I got tipped forward.

It was time to act.

His eyes were still staring into mine. My hands were still on my head and my left elbow was level with her pistol. Taking a slow, deep breath, I counted to three, then forced my arms forward to push the muzzle away from me. She shouted out, as if Ponytail didn’t know what was happening. I made a lunge to the left and body-checked her, toppling her into the water.

Ponytail came at me. I tucked my head in and got my forehead into his face. There was a crunch of bone on bone and he dropped to the ground. I followed, my head flashing with pain. It felt like I’d headbutted a wall.

He arched his back, trying to draw the weapon, which he had holstered behind his right kidney, as Leather Girl splashed about below us. His jacket fell open. I saw a cell phone clipped to an inside pocket. It was quicker to get to than my Browning or his pistol hand. Grabbing the phone upside down in my right hand, I knelt astride him and stabbed at him, using the stubby antenna like a dagger blade, stabbing into his shoulders and chest. I didn’t want to kill him, but I needed to mess him up for long enough for me to get away. He screamed in pain and I felt his blood warm on my hand as my own ran into my eyes. The pain in my head was a nightmare. I kept on stabbing, maybe six or eight times more, I wasn’t counting. Fuck him and his weapon, I just wanted to make some distance between them and me. Scrambling to my feet, I ran toward the concrete steps.

Ponytail cried out in pain as he writhed on the ground behind me, and I could hear people calling out from the boats in a cocktail of languages. I wasn’t too worried about the girl. When she got out of the water, she’d stay with him, fixing him up. It might have been worse. I might have gone for his face or throat.

I was taking the steps two at a time when Lotfi’s voice burst in my left ear. “Hello, N—N, radio check.” Almost simultaneously, I saw headlights coming from the direction of the town, down toward the marina entrance. I jumped over the “I fuck girls!” bench and hit the Sony pressle as I stumbled into the scrub. “Keep going, we have a situation, do not stop. Go to H’s vehicle. You’ll see mine there, wait there, wait there. Acknowledge.”

Click, click.

Mud caked my bloodstained right hand, as well as the cell phone. Lotfi’s lights continued on by the entrance and passed me as I grabbed the towel and the OP gear and scrambled along the hedge, leaving the screams and lights going on in boats behind me.

As soon as I was out onto the road I started to sprint uphill as fast as I could, ready to leap back over the hedge as soon as any vehicle came along the road. My throat was bone-dry and my lungs hurt as I sucked in oxygen and pumped my free arm to get me up the hill and past the bend. I found Hubba-Hubba and Lotfi waiting in the Focus, lights off and engine on. Lotfi unlocked the doors as he saw me approaching.

I jumped into the back. “Let’s go! Drive toward Monaco and get off the main drag—quick as you can, come on, let’s go, let’s go!”

The Focus revved up and we screamed away from the curb as I tried to catch my breath.

I shoved the cell phone with the OP gear into the towel, wiping the mud and blood from my hands as I did so.

“The boat—it’s gone. At least, I think so. I only got to check two piers. The van, it was definitely the police. I’ve been stopped by them.”

They didn’t look at all happy.

“It’s okay, I think they just want to know what the boat is up to. The guy who owns it is a drug smuggler, small-time, that’s all.”

I finished wiping my hands as the Focus hit the first of the hairpin turns, and stuck the corner of the towel on the split in my forehead, just inside my hairline.

Hubba-Hubba’s mind was already jumping ahead. “The device…if they are on their way to Algeria, we must stop it now.”

“It’s an option. We could make the call, if it’s still in range. But we’ve got other things to consider first. It could have moved to a marina along the coast, so the Romeos can still make their collections. As far as they’re concerned, yesterday was a success.”

Lotfi shifted down to get up the incline.

“Look. Maybe the alarm and the police scared them last night. Maybe Greaseball is wrong and they move each day…maybe it is still down there….”

I had regained my breath now. Letting go of my head, I fished inside the towel and brought out some water to finish cleaning my hands and face as well as getting some down my throat. “Maybe they’ve spotted us and moved, hoping to shake us off for the next two collections. Maybe they’ve even prepared an ambush in case we find them again.”

I much preferred the first two possibilities. Lotfi’s face was set in a frown as he concentrated on the road. “If we call in the device now, we might stop them getting to Algeria. But what if they’re still here? Not only do we fuck up the mission, we might kill real people, and that’s something we’re here to stop. So, I reckon, forget about the police, forget about the boat missing. These things can be dealt with. We’re here for the
hawallada,
remember? One down, two to go.”

I leaned back in the seat. “Look, we are in the shit, and right now checking the marinas seems the best way of getting out of it. What do you think?”

It was pointless me telling them what I wanted to happen. Playing the dictator always leads to a gang fuck. You’ve got to bring people along with you. They looked at each other, mumbling away in Arabic, then both nodded.

“I have already been to the bins and got more information about the guy I saw with Greaseball on Wednesday night and on board last night. The
Ninth of May
belongs to him. He’s a small-time dealer and another pedophile. Him and Greaseball are mates.”

I could hear heavy, angry breathing from both of them.

“I know how you feel, but we have to forget about that and get on with the job. Remember what we’re here for. We’ve got to find the boat. If we have that, we have
hawallada
. We have to keep focused.”

I let it sink in, which gave me time to think. There wasn’t really a plan: it was just a matter of getting out there and finding the boat. If not, we were going to have to stake out both Nice and Cannes tomorrow, and hope they came to us.

“Okay, we have to check every marina in our areas. I’m going to see what Greaseball knows. We’ll meet at six
A.M.
in the parking area Hubba-Hubba uses to cover me at the DOP. I want to get together while it’s still dark, so if we’ve found the boat again, we can get an OP in to trigger the Romeos before first light.”

They nodded.

“If anybody doesn’t make it to the meeting place, for whatever reason, the other two must carry on with the job.”

I continued my quick change-of-plan briefing as it bubbled up in my head.

“Anyone who doesn’t make the meet this morning is to stake out the Nice address. See if you can raise anybody on the net. If not, tough. We all meet up again, twelve-thirty tomorrow morning in the same parking area, whether or not we’ve dropped another
hawallada
off first.

“If we don’t find the boat, we’re going to have to put triggers on the Nice and Cannes addresses and hope they turn up to collect. We do that for two days, and if no luck, that’s it, we’ll have fucked up. Any questions?”

Lotfi raised his right index finger. “What if only one of us makes the meet tomorrow morning?”

My stomach rumbled. “The one who makes it has the choice. Put a trigger on the Nice addresses and carry on as before, or just can it and go home, accept the failure.”

Hubba-Hubba’s eyes scoured the coastline. “It’s got to be here, it’s got to be somewhere,” he muttered. “We can’t let the money leave.”

Lotfi babbled off in Arabic and I got just one of the words.
Allah
. He turned to me as Hubba-Hubba shrugged his shoulders and looked back out to sea. “I’m sorry, Nick, I forget. I was saying that he is not to worry. If God wants us to find them, we will, and he will protect us, believe me.” His eyes shone with conviction.

I hoped like hell he was right.

40

T
he Focus drove around for another twenty minutes up on the high ground. At one point the autoroute was visible in the distance; white light, not too much at this time of the morning, moved in both directions.

We came back down the mountain to the cars. We had to get on with the search, and had to take the chance of getting closer once more to the marina, no matter what was happening down there now.

Lotfi shifted down again as we took a steep right-hander.

“Anyway, the Audi.” I chanced a smile in the silence. “How did it go?”

I drank some more water as Hubba-Hubba gave a grin that glowed in the light from the instrument panel. “We burnt it near the incinerator.” By the look on his face, Lotfi had enjoyed himself too. “There was another dead vehicle already burning there, so we just joined the party.”

The main road was clear and we parked where we had started. As I gathered up my towel, the smell hit them. Lotfi quickly opened the door to get out. Hubba-Hubba thought it was funny but got out all the same, for health and safety reasons. He turned back and whispered, “Is that, how do you say, a ‘silent but deadly’?”

I got out of the car on Lotfi’s side. As he locked up he muttered, “He really has been watching too much
BB and Blockhead
.”

Hubba-Hubba shook his head slowly. “Butthead—
Beavis and Butthead
.”

I checked traser and it was three-fourteen as I drove through Cannes, stopping two or three times after turning a corner to see who followed. Just short of Greaseball’s apartment off Boulevard Carnot, I turned three sides of a square, but nobody came with me. Finally, I parked about half a mile from his flat and walked in.

I pressed the buzzer for about two minutes and eventually got a groggy, crackly answer. I knew exactly how he felt.
“Comment?”

“It’s me. I want to talk to you. Open up.”

He was confused. “Who? Who’s me?”

“Somebody you met in Algeria, remember?”

There was a pause. “What?” He coughed. “What do you want?”

“Open up and you’ll find out.”

The speaker went dead and was replaced by the high-pitched buzz of the electric latch. I moved toward the stairs, taking my time to minimize the squeaking of my Timberlands on the fake marble, and didn’t push the light switch to help me up the stairs. The Browning came out and I pulled back the hammer to full cock and pushed the safety catch up with my thumb, ready to take it off at a moment’s notice as I slowly climbed.

Standing in the stairwell on the fourth floor, I listened with my right ear at the doorway out into the hall, my mouth open to lessen the noise of me catching my breath. There was nothing. I moved into the hallway with the pistol at my side. I got to Apartment 49 and tapped gently on the door, standing to the left of the frame so I could see into the apartment as soon as it opened. There was the rattle of a security chain, then the squeak of hinges.

He looked scared but a bit out of it, with dark rings beneath his glazed eyes. He staggered a little as he led me into the living room. The glass patio doors and blinds were closed, so the smell of cigarettes was overpowering. Fully dressed, he stood by the coffee table, taking nervous sips from a small bottle of Evian. A used syringe lay on top of the table, next to a foil card of oblong-shaped pills.

His hair was greasy as always, but now sticking up. His red-striped shirt was creased, with the tail hanging out. Judging by the scrunched-up pashmina on the couch, that was where he’d been sleeping.

“Is there anybody else here?”

“No, there’s no one. What do you want? I have told you everything—”

I put the Browning muzzle to his lips. “Shut the fuck up.” I nodded toward the door that divided the living area from the hallway into the bedroom and bathroom, then stepped back and closed the front door with my ass. “Go on. You know what to do.”

“I tell you, there is no one here. Why would I lie to you? Why?”

He held out his arms in submission and swayed a little.

“Just do it.”

After two attempts he recapped the bottle, chucked it onto the couch, and walked into the hall. I moved behind him, clearing the apartment. Nothing much had changed: everything was still in a shit state. We came back into the living room and he sat down, slumping into the cushions.