Dead Men's Dust (21 page)

SNAPSHOT.

On first perusal, it was a nice home.

Reminded me of my grandparents’ bungalow.

On deeper reflection, the memory of their home told me everything I was afraid of.

There was a cancer at this house’s core.

To maximize the sunshine, all these beach houses had been built so that their fronts were to the ocean. Therefore, through the door I shattered was a vestibule leading directly to an open-plan living area on one side and a bedroom on the other. Toward the back of the house would be a kitchen and perhaps a utility area, but these were of no interest to me.

Kick-start the world.

I moved.

My entire attention was skewed to the left as I swung into the living area. I say living area; I could already see the corpse of some hulking dog lying alongside its ceiling-staring master. The man was indisputably dead judging by the mess of his throat and the cataract-glaze of his eyes. His mouth hung open in shock, and pink spume clung to
his contorted lips. Another thing I took in during that nanosecond of horror; his left hand was missing, shorn off at the wrist. The Harvestman was living up to his name.

Apart from the corpses, the room was as ordinary as any home supported by a modest income. There was the obligatory TV, settee and chairs, trinket-type ornaments, and photographs in frames. The thing that stood out was the large piano that took up most of one side of the room. Then there were the three people standing around it.

Perhaps standing around it isn’t the most apt way to describe the scene.

One figure, an elderly woman, was being helped off the piano stool by the tug of a man’s arm around her throat. As she stood in an awkward spasm, her fingers clawed at the piano keys and a deep-throated note vied for dominance over an equally harsh one. The man pulling her backward stared at me over the woman’s shoulder, his lips split in a feral snarl.

My SIG came up. Ordinarily I’d have fired, but the man placed the muzzle of a gun to the side of the woman’s face and I stayed my hand. My gaze flicked to the nearer side of the piano. Immediately I saw my brother.

At the time, I can’t honestly say if I was pleased to see him. I think, deep down in my soul, I’d secretly hoped that John was dead, that the possibility that he’d become a monster had been removed.

John turned his face to mine, and shock struck his dull expression. Then a bit of hope flared. That look was all I needed to confirm that John wasn’t a consenting player in this game. Immediately my attention skipped back to the man holding the woman.

“Drop the gun,” I shouted.

The man’s snarl broadened ever wider and I saw ice behind his pale green eyes. Using the woman as a shield, he pressed the gun under her jaw.

“I think it’s you who’d better drop the gun,” he said.

My SIG didn’t waver. I took a step closer. Finger pressure increased on the trigger. Calmer, I said, “Drop the gun.”

In answer, he thumbed back the hammer on his own gun. “Think you can drop me before I kill this old bitch?”

“Yes.” I stared at him along the barrel of my gun.

He shook his head. “I don’t think you’re as confident as you’re making out. If you could do it, you would’ve done so by now.”

“You’ve got another five seconds to comply,” I told him.

The man laughed. His captor whimpered in terror. Her arthritic knees threatened to dump her on her backside, and only the dragging arm around her throat held her up. She was no lightweight, but the man didn’t seem to be struggling to control her. The arm looped around her throat bulged with lean strength.

“One,” I counted.

“Aw, cut the dramatics, will you,” he taunted. As he did, he shuffled sideways, putting himself in a corner of the room. It wasn’t an attempt to find an exit, but to ensure he couldn’t be triangulated. His back to the corner of the room, he took away any opportunity for Rink to get a bead on him. I glanced to my left and saw Rink standing outside the open window, his shotgun trained on the man. My friend gave a subtle shake of his head. No line of fire.

“You’re cornered,” I told the man. “Let the woman go and you’ll live. Harm her and we’ll shoot you like a mad dog.”

“No. What you are going to do is put down your weapons. I leave with the woman.” He glanced over at a briefcase I only now noticed on the lid of the piano. “And that.”

“No deal. You’re going to let the woman go first.”

“Uh-uh. Maybe I’ll just shoot her face off and take my chances, huh?”

He pressed the barrel of his gun into her left eye socket, eliciting a shriek from the woman. Again my finger tightened but didn’t follow through.

Think of damp ashes, that was the color of John’s face as he turned to me. He supported his weight against the piano, body racked with pain. Weak and hurting. “He means it, Hunter. He’ll do it.”

My gaze jumped between him and the gunman. A smile flickered at the corner of the gunman’s mouth, a tensing of his eyes. Did he recognize my name? How could he, I told myself, it’s not as if I’m James Bond. To John I said, “Get over here behind me, John.”

The gunman grunted. “You two know each other?”

Neither of us answered, but the silence was palpable.

“Wait a minute. Hunter?” The man searched my face. Lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes as though something amusing had struck him. “Not Joe Hunter?”

Unbidden, my face pinched. My teeth ached as my jaw tightened. Some secret I turned out to be. Maybe I should have worked under a code name after all.

“Well for the love of all that’s holy! Who’d have thought they’d have put
you
on my trail?”

Again I didn’t answer, and the man turned his attention to John.

“Wait a minute…I see it now. The family resemblance. You’re so full of surprises, John. You didn’t tell me you were related to such a notorious assassin as Joe Hunter…” He squinted across at Rink, who remained statue solid at the open window. “And don’t tell me…not Jared Rington as well?”

John’s face puckered. It can’t ever have occurred to him before just who—or what—his big brother really was. He was aware that my work involved hunting terrorists, but I don’t think he appreciated what that actually entailed. To him, I was just a soldier killing other soldiers. Now he was probably wondering,
Aren’t assassins the bad guys?

I don’t appreciate the term
assassin,
but I suppose, at the end of the day, it all comes down to your perspective. Rink and I were either saints or sinners. At that moment, I saw myself as the saint; the man with the gun shoved in an elderly woman’s eye socket assured me of that.

“Let her go,” I commanded.

The man wasn’t interested. My identity seemed to please him in a way I found troubling. His next words went some length to explain his apparent pleasure. “I guess I should be honored. Does that mean I’ve finally won the notoriety I deserve? Huh? I suppose that means you know who I am now?”

“I don’t give a shit who you are, or what insane reason you have for murdering innocent people. All I’m interested in is you dropping your gun before I put a bullet in your head.” To assure him of my intentions, I took another half step toward him.

In return, he giggled. Said, “If I’m going to die, I’m taking her with me. Maybe one or two of you, as well.”

I drew back again. Inwardly I cursed myself. I’d just made the mistake of showing him that I wasn’t in charge of the situation. One up for the
real
bad guy. He moved the barrel of his gun so it was under the woman’s ear now. Once more the woman murmured in fear. Her eyes rolled my way, beseeching. I had to do something.

“John,” I snapped. “Get yourself over here.”

He staggered over, one arm tight against his chest where his sodden shirt clung to him. I moved a step to my right, giving him clearance to gain the doorway. At my shoulder, John came to a stumbling halt. Something bothered me about the abruptness.

Without thought, I pivoted on my right foot, smacking against the near wall, eyes still on the gunman to my right, but my peripheral vision searching out what had stopped John. I saw the gunman’s eyes widen in surprise, saw him flinch, and I knew that there was new danger in the house. Danger to us both. I was caught between two equally vicious enemies, and it was a split second’s decision on my response. Even as I swung to my left, I gave a silent prayer that Rink would cover the killer I couldn’t keep my eyes on. My gun swept the air, and I fired without pause.

Even as he was stepping into the living room, my first bullet caught Hendrickson’s hit man in his right shoulder, spinning from his fingers the gun he’d pointed at John’s head. I’d seen this man before—testament to that was the wound on his ear. Even if I’d never had the privilege, I would’ve recognized him for what he was: a stone-cold killer. Something else: he was an apt stalker in his own right, and he’d used Rink and me to lead him to John. The memory of the speedboat racing toward us after we’d disembarked from the skipper’s launch came to mind.

Injured, the Latino dropped low. He grunted, but he was already reaching left-handed for a second weapon concealed in an ankle holster. My gun boomed again, but even as I fired, I snatched the barrel up so that the bullet swished above his head to splinter the door lintel. I’d missed him, but it was a good job I did. It meant I also missed John, who’d chosen that moment to stagger into my line of fire.

Things were rapidly turning to shit.

I ran around John, expecting the killer at my back to put a bullet in my spine.

I cleared John just as the hit man came up from his crouch. His gun fired. Instinctively I’d already twisted, but a searing coldness snapped alongside my ribs. Wind whooshed out of me, but I couldn’t allow the thought of the hit to stop me.

Before he could fire again, I struck his gun hand with the barrel of my SIG, knocking his aim wide. His bullet lifted keys from the piano with a tympani of discord. Moving swiftly, as though it were a rapier, I swept my gun under his forearm and snaked my arm up his back.

In close and dirty, we went to town. I ground him against the wall, both our guns momentarily scraping and rasping against wallpaper. His gun went off, further marking the wall. With his free hand, he grabbed at my testicles. I stabbed my fingers into his eyes, tore at his damaged ear, and he forgot all about squeezing my balls. Instead,
he punched me in the mouth. The tricky bastard.
Right back at you,
I thought, as I smashed his nose into a new position on his face.

He was slippery, even shot in three different places—he had a wounded thigh that I was only now vaguely aware of, plus the two I’d given him. His nose was broken and he was bleeding, but the adrenaline-charged flood of endorphins gave him the strength of desperation.

He fought back, tried to head-butt me, but instead found the point of my elbow as I rammed it into his cheekbone. His eyes rolled upward. Before he could recover from the ringing concussion, I pulled his head down, straight into the path of my up-rising knee.

It was like a mallet pounding a watermelon, and the tendons in the backs of both knees failed him.

As he dropped, my gun followed him, and even as he sprawled out, I put two bullets into the rear of his skull.

“That’s for Louise Blake,” I hissed through my teeth. Then I shot him again between the shoulder blades. Touching my ribs where I could feel the first sting of contact, I added, “And that one’s for me.”

Captain Fairbairn once wrote that the average armed fight is over in seconds, it is literally a matter of
the quick and the dead
. I had acted instinctively, relying on speed and the extension of the gun in my hand. Now the hit man was dead. Once again my mentor’s ghost spoke volumes. But it wasn’t over.

No other guns had barked during the few seconds it took to dispatch Hendrickson’s man. The threat of Rink blasting him had likely stayed the Harvestman’s hand. Allowing the Latino to lie in his own blood, I shifted again, reaching down and clawing John from the floor even as I swung my gun to find its next target.

Coming up with John clutched beneath one arm, I eyed the man who still grasped the elderly woman as a shield. But he wasn’t pressing the gun to her head so forcefully.

“I couldn’t have done a better job myself,” he said.

“I’m not interested in what you think,” I snapped back at him.

“I remain impressed nonetheless. If my hands weren’t so full I’d applaud you,” he said. “I’m leaving now. I’m taking the woman as insurance. If you stay put, I promise you she’ll be released unharmed. If you follow me she will die.”

The deal wasn’t an option. I knew the only way the woman would be returned to us would be without significant portions of her anatomy. I slowly shook my head. Prodding the dead assassin at my feet I said, “You know what I can do. You’ve seen it with your own eyes.”

“I don’t doubt that you’re good. But are you really prepared to put this dear old lady at risk?” His smile was that of the Antichrist. “Even if you shoot me now, are you certain that the trauma of a bullet in my skull won’t make me jerk this trigger? Are you willing to take that chance?”

Reluctant to give him an edge, I said, “We’ll just have to see.”

Again the old woman mewled, and a torturous pain shot through me at having to subject her to such terror. Unfortunately, I had no recourse. To allow the Harvestman to take her was out of the question. If she didn’t die now, she would certainly die later. And it wouldn’t be at the mercy of a quick and painless bullet through her brain.

On the grand scale of things, if this woman were to die, then it would be best if the murderer died along with her. It would be a supreme waste of life, but her sacrifice could mean the difference between life and gruesome death for many others if the psychopath was allowed to live.

Surprisingly, John came to my rescue.

Cradled in my armpit, I felt him shift. Then he clawed at my shirtfront, as if drawing himself upright.

“Let me go with him,” John said. His voice was as brittle as month-old crackers.

I shook my head.

“You have to let me go, Joe,” he said. “Cain, let the woman go and I’ll be your hostage.”