Authors: Matt Hilton
‘The Jaegers: are those the two brothers you were with at the house?’
He stiffened slightly. Alarmed that I knew about the men in the van? Or maybe he was more surprised that I’d admitted to being at the farm when they’d searched it.
‘You should fear them,’ he said.
‘I don’t.’
‘Just let me call ’em, and we’ll see.’
‘Once you’re back in your car and driving away, you can call who the hell you want. In fact, do that. And tell them what I just told you.’ I grasped his collar and hauled him up, transferring the gun to his eye socket. ‘Are my instructions clear enough for you?’
Behind me there was a gasp. Shit! I’d told Billie to keep her head down. But her curiosity had got the better of her again. I glanced quickly at her. She was standing alongside the rental car. The guy spotted her too. He laughed to himself. He was a big man. Solid. On his knees. Nobody of his size should have been able to move as fast. Yet he contradicted everything in a split second. With one hand he butted my gun over his head, with the other he snapped round my right ankle and yanked upward, even as he bounded up. He didn’t release my leg and it was snatched off the ground and I’d no way to go but backwards. I tried to realign my gun on his body, but his free hand swept my hand aside and he shouldered me in the chest. I went down on the gritty road. Distantly I heard Billie’s squawk of alarm.
I wasn’t hurt, not if you discounted my ego. But things were about to change. The man kicked my gun out of my hand. It skittered away across the road. He looked as if he was going to go after Billie, but thought better of it. I was a long way from being out of commission. He reached to grasp me by my jacket front and hauled me up. If I’d tried to fight free of him, he’d have kicked me stupid while I was attempting to scramble up: I went with the flow. He set me on my feet, but kept hold of me. He was bigger, stronger, had the upper hand now that my gun was lying in the dirt across the road.
‘Let’s just go through those instructions of yours again, shall we?’ he said, grinning at my expense. I feigned defeated as he pulled me in close.
‘Let’s not.’ I head-butted him, and felt his nose cartilage collapse under my forehead. He reared back, blood flooding over his top lip, and his eyes screwed tight. He didn’t release his hold, but that was good. It meant he couldn’t punch me. I butted him again, this time against his left cheekbone. We both fell against his car and the door slammed shut. The man used the body of the car to support his weight, then he swung me round and thrust me over the hood. Pain flared through my lower back, but it was muscle pain; my spine was still intact. I still didn’t fight his hold, I actually allowed him to push me further up and as my hips popped over the curve of the SUV’s hood, I lifted my legs and braced my heels in his pelvic girdle. I used the power in my legs to force myself out of his grip, but not so far that he fully let go. Immediately I wrapped my left leg over his arms, and bridged up with my hips. The move painfully locked his right arm at the elbow. Now he wanted to let go, but I gripped his right wrist in both hands, allowing no escape, even as I transferred my foot from over his arm to under his chin. He fought to free his left hand to get a good punch at me and it was the moment I was waiting for. I pistoned my leg, kicked his head back, yanking in the opposite direction on his arm.
He grunted in pain, but shook off the kick. He chambered his free arm to power it into my chest.
So I kicked him harder.
There was a crack like a gunshot.
I released his trapped arm and the man slid backwards, no strength in his knees, or anywhere else from the way he flopped in a boneless heap on the road.
‘Oh my God!’
I heard Billie’s exclamation, and it echoed the words that went through my mind. I slid off the hood and stood over the man. He didn’t move. He was too still.
‘You’ve killed him,’ Billie said.
‘Stay there,’ I warned her. Not for one second did I believe the guy was playing possum, but it wasn’t a chance I was going to take. I crouched, pushing aside his head so I could feel for a pulse. His flesh was warm, clammy, but there was no life in it. ‘Jesus, they make bad guys too brittle these days,’ I murmured. My intention had been to knock him unconscious, not snap his vertebrae!
Billie again chose to ignore my instructions. She stood at my shoulder as I checked the guy a second time.
‘He’s dead.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘You didn’t have to kill him, but you did.’
‘Trust me: I wasn’t trying to.’ I stood up, frowning down at the mass of inert humanity. ‘How many bloody warnings does one man need? I tried to avoid this.’
‘This complicates things, doesn’t it?’
‘Very much so,’ I sighed.
I stood looking down at the corpse, hands fisted on my hips. This did indeed complicate matters.
‘I suppose we
have
to call the cops now,’ Billie said glumly.
Ordinarily she’d be right. His death was an accident; he was the bad guy who’d intended kidnapping a woman. But it’d be me who’d end up locked in a jail cell until things were cleared up. Billie would be defenceless against his friends. ‘Go and get in the car,’ I said.
‘We can just walk away from this?’ Billie’s stare was locked on the dead man’s face. ‘What are you planning on doing?’
‘What’s going to happen is this: you’re going to have to start listening to my instructions, and not challenging them. I’m here to protect you, and I can’t do that if you’re forever second-guessing me. Now go on. Get in the car, and this time keep your bloody head down.’
Billie transferred her stare from the dead man to me. I held her flinty gaze. No more messing around.
She finally pushed her hands through her hair. ‘OK. You’re right.’ She walked away cursing under her breath, but I was happy to note her displeasure was aimed at her husband for placing her in this hellish situation. I retrieved my SIG, checked it over for damage and found it worked fine. I pushed it away in my belt at the back, then bent to deal with the dead man. He was heavy, felt even more so in death, but I got my hands under his armpits and dragged him to the SUV. I then got the door open and hefted him up and into the driver’s seat. By the time I was done I was bathed in sweat. I put his hands on the steering wheel, then clasping mine over his used them to twist the wheel sharply to one side. At the edge of the road was a deep gully where a stream poured off the mountainside, under the road and downwards to the lake. The trees on the gully’s embankments had been felled in recent years but new growth had sprung up in their place. The saplings wouldn’t halt the plunge of the SUV. I was about to turn on the engine and set the SUV on its course when I spotted a cell phone in a holder on the dash. It still glowed from recent use. Actually, for all I knew, it was still turned on and had an open line to the Jaegers. Could my unlucky streak get any worse?
With no other recourse, I started the engine, slipped the gear into ‘drive’ and stood aside as the SUV began rolling across the road. It dipped off the shoulder, and bumped up again over a small mound of earth. Then it hung there for a long moment, while I considered going and putting my shoulder to it to help it on its way. Maybe the mound of dirt gave way beneath the weight, because in the next instant the SUV plummeted out of sight. It made a lot of noise crashing its way into the depths of the ravine.
15
‘I can’t believe what happened back there.’ Billie rocked forward, her head thrust between the front seats as I drove for Hope End. She spoke so close to my ear I felt her breath on my neck. It was hot. There was a tremor in her voice, but it wasn’t through fear or revulsion. Her excitement was palpable.
For my part I felt numb.
I genuinely hadn’t intended killing the man. My heel must have struck him just right – or just wrong for that matter – so that instead of the impact knocking him out it had transferred to the fragile vertebrae of his spine. If I’d tried to kill him like that I just bet that the opposite would have applied. The guy had been too full of himself, a grade one ass, but killing him was more than he deserved. But what was done was done. I’d killed many times before, and might be called upon to do so again. I couldn’t dwell on his death or it would slow me down if the time came when I must choose a fatal option again. I’d seen other soldiers sickened by violence, who grew reluctant when it came to pulling the trigger, and it was them who ended up in a grave.
‘Things weren’t meant to go down like that,’ I explained. ‘I hoped to frighten him off, not send his corpse to the bottom of a valley.’
‘He asked for it,’ Billie said. Her forthrightness surprised me.
‘He was just a guy earning a wage,’ I countered.
‘If you hadn’t stopped him, he would have hurt you. Maybe even killed you. Then where would that have left me?’
Jesus, talk about reverse psychology.
That was the only thing that gave me any sense of peace. But it surprised me to hear Billie say as much. I thought that she’d be horrified to learn that the man supposed to protect her was a killer. On the other hand she seemed excited by the prospect. Except, once she thought about it, and her heartbeat had slowed some more, then I expected she’d see the man’s death for the horrible thing it was.
‘How far to Hope End?’ I asked, trying to focus her mind on something else.
‘About fifteen miles. But on these roads it could take half an hour or more.’ She rocked forward and back, barely able to contain her fidgeting. ‘Do you think we’ll make it?’
‘We’ll make it, I’m just not sure it’s a good idea to go there now.’ I told her about the cell phone in the SUV and how I suspected that the man had contacted his friends before I’d had chance to confront him. ‘They could already be after us.’
She sucked in breath, but again it sounded more like anticipation than fear. She was thoughtful for a moment before saying, ‘They’ve no chance of catching us before we get to town. Once we’re there we’ll be able to hide out.’
‘They’ll find us. To be honest I don’t really want to get stuck in a small town with a bunch of mercs. They might not be too particular about who they hurt while trying to find us. I don’t want to put anyone else in danger because of what I did.’
‘Maybe once they learn how easily their friend was killed they’ll back down. It’s like you said, they’re just guys earning a wage. Who’d want to die for a few dollars?’
She obviously didn’t understand the world of mercenaries and soldiers of fortune.
‘They won’t,’ I said.
‘How can you be certain?’
‘I know their type.’
‘Your type?’
I glanced at her. It was enough to see her face was set, her eyes steady as she peered at me from between the seats. I returned my attention to the twisting road, but could still sense her perusal. ‘Unlike my type,’ I corrected. ‘I’d never take on a job that threatened an innocent woman.’
She laughed. It was short and sharp. I’m not sure what it meant. Billie didn’t explain. She sat back in her seat, and I was relieved because her perusal had been uncomfortable.
Something struck me as important. ‘Is there a more direct route from Hill End to Hope End, or is this the only road?’
‘There’s another way north of these hills,’ Billie said. ‘Why?’
I’d followed the road from Hill End to Baker’s Hole, travelling more or less south-east. Now we were travelling north-east. I’d driven the two longer sides of a triangle. A direct road from one town to the other would be much shorter. ‘How far?’
‘Ten or eleven miles at most. Oh!’
Billie had got it too. If the man whose neck I’d broken had given our direction of travel to his friends, our destination would stand to reason. Anyone coming from Hill End could get to Hope End before us. Cut us off.
‘We should turn back,’ Billie said.
Perhaps we should’ve, but anyone with sense would send men along that road too, in case we did so. I wondered how many men Procrylon had sent after Billie. I couldn’t assume that it was only the four I’d seen. What was it that merc said when I asked how many people were with him? ‘Enough for you to know not to mess with us.’ I took it that he was referring to more than another three then. Unless the respect he held for the abilities of those Jaeger brothers wasn’t as overblown as I first suspected.
I pulled over at the side of the road. The drop off to our right was steep, wooded, pitch dark.
‘What are you doing? They’ll catch us if we sit here.’