The Reapers: A Thriller-CP-7 (33 page)

“You was supposed to watch the fucking truck, Jackie,” he said.

“I was watching the truck. They asked me to move it, but you had the keys. I didn’t know they were going to start shooting it up.”

“You still ought to have said something to them.”

“I tried to say something.”

“Yeah? Well it wasn’t the right thing.” Tony reached out and yanked the candy bar wrapper from Jackie’s pocket. “How come you got time to finish a Three Musketeers bar but you ain’t got time to watch the truck? You can’t do both at once? I mean, the fuck, Jackie? You know, it’s just—

the fuck.”

Jackie assumed a conciliatory pose and tone. “I’m sorry, Tony,” he said. “I don’t think they were reasonable men. You can’t talk to unreasonable men.”

“Well then, you ought not to have talked to them. You ought to have killed them.”

“I can’t just go killing people over a truck.”

“It wasn’t a truck. It was our truck.”

His brother was tenderly stroking the hood of the truck and shaking his head. With a last despairing look at Jackie, Tony went over to join him.

“How bad does it look?”

“Upholstery’s ripped to pieces, Tony. There’s some holes to the paintwork, too. Lights are shot. It’s a mess.” He was on the verge of tears.

Tony patted his brother on the shoulder.

“We’ll fix her up. Don’t worry. We’ll make her as good as new.”

“Yeah?” Paulie looked up hopefully.

“Better than new. That right, Jackie?”

Jackie, sensing that the storm was already blowing over, offered his support for this view.

“If anyone can do it, you guys can.”

Paulie got into the cab, having first carefully wiped it clear of glass, and started the truck. He let it run for a minute until he was satisfied that no damage had been done to the engine. Tony stood beside Jackie. Willis was still breathing, but only barely. Tony stared down at him. Jackie thought that he looked like he wanted to finish the job.

“You think Parker will be pissed at us?” he said.

The Fulcis admired Parker. They didn’t want him to be angry.

“No,” said Jackie. “I don’t think he’ll even be surprised.”

Tony brightened. He and Paulie dumped Harding’s body in the back of the dead men’s pickup, then tied Willis’s hands and legs with baling wire that they found in the cab and left him, unconscious, beside his dead colleague. Jackie then drove the truck into the woods and left it there, out of sight of the road.

“You think those guys were related?” Paulie asked his brother, as they waited for Jackie to return. “They looked like they was related.”

“Maybe,” said Tony.

“Pity they was such assholes,” said Paulie.

“Yeah,” said Tony. “Pity.”

There was a radio on the dashboard of the truck. It crackled into life just as Jackie Garner finished hiding the truck in the woods.

“Willis,” said a voice. “Willis, you there. Over.”

Jackie nearly didn’t answer it, then decided, aw, why not? He’d seen movies in which people found out the bad guy’s plans by pretending to be someone else on a phone or a radio. He didn’t see why it couldn’t work on this occasion.

“This is Willis. Over.”

There was a pause before the reply came.

“Willis?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Over.”

“Who is this?”

Dammit, thought Jackie, this is harder than it looks in the movies. I ought to learn to leave well enough alone.

“Sorry,” he said. “Wrong number.”

After all, there didn’t seem to be anything else to say. He put the radio down, then hurried back to join the Fulcis. They looked up in surprise at the sight of Jackie running.

“Time to go,” said Jackie. “Company’s coming.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THEY DIDN’T DIE.

That was the first thing that struck Angel once they had made it to the trees: they were still alive. Running across the stretch of ground between the garage and the forest had been one of the most terrifying experiences of his life. All the time, he had been waiting for the moment of impact, the second when his body would buck as the first shot struck him, the sensation like a hard punch from a seasoned fighter, to be followed by searing pain and then…What? Death, either instant or slow. Another wound, Louis dragging him across the damp grass as he bled slickly, leaving a dark line as the life flowed from him, knowing that this time there would be no second chances, that he would die here, and Louis might die alongside him?

And so he had run hard, fighting the instinct to make himself as small as he could, knowing that to do so would slow him down. Be smaller, or be faster, that was the choice. In the end, he had opted for speed, every muscle in his body tense, his face contorted in expectation of the bullets that must inevitably begin to fly. He knew that he would be hit before he heard the shot that had taken him, so the silence, broken only by the sounds of breathing and footfalls, was of no consolation.

Both men zigzagged as they crossed the open ground, altering their pace and direction unexpectedly to throw off any shooters. The tree line began to loom closer, so close that, even in the murk, Angel could pick out details of bark and leaves. Farther back, the forest faded into shadows and gloom. There could be any number of men in there waiting for them, drawing a bead on the moving targets or holding their aim on a single spot, waiting for the target to come to them. Perhaps Angel would see the muzzle flash in the shadows before he died, the last flicker of light before the final darkness to come.

Fifteen feet. Ten. Five. Suddenly, they were among the trees. They dropped to the ground among the bushes, then crawled slowly away from where they had landed, careful to make as little noise as possible, avoiding undergrowth that might move and give away their positions. Angel glanced at Louis, who was about ten feet to his right. Louis raised a palm, indicating that he should stop. Something flew high above their heads in the dark, but neither man lifted his eyes to follow its progress. Instead, they waited, their attention fixed on the forest before them, their sight now adjusted to the darkness.

“They didn’t shoot,” said Angel. “How come they didn’t shoot?”

“I don’t know.”

Louis searched the woods for movement, for any sign that they were being watched. He found nothing, but he knew that there were men out there somewhere. They were being toyed with. He indicated that they should move forward. Using the trees as cover, they made slow, careful progress, each taking his turn to move, then pausing to cover the advance of the other, conscious that they needed to watch not just what lay ahead of them, but what might appear from behind. They saw nothing. The forest appeared to be clear, but neither man fooled himself into thinking that this meant their presence was unremarked. The bodies had been left in the trunk of their car for them to find, and the car itself had been put beyond use. A message had been sent. They were alive, but only on the whim of others.

Louis thought again of the woman at the window. Was it too much of a coincidence that she should have appeared at just the moment that he and Angel had fixed their sights upon the house? Perhaps they had been permitted to see her, and then they had responded exactly as anticipated: they had aborted their plan and returned to their vehicle, but by then the trap had been sprung. Now they had no choice but to keep moving and wait to see how events played out, so they continued through the forest, never allowing their guard to relax even slightly, constantly turning, watching, listening. They were exhausted by the time they had gone only three-quarters of a mile, but by then the trees had begun to thin, and there was open ground visible in front of them. It sloped upward to the inner ring road. Beyond it was more forest. They stopped while they were still hidden, the road a raised spine before them. They could see no sign of movement upon it. Louis sniffed the air, trying to pick up any hint of cigarette smoke or food that might have carried on the breeze, indicating the presence of men nearby. There was none.

He and Angel were almost within touching distance.

“I go on three, you go on four,” he whispered. The slight delay would make them harder targets if the road was being watched, the second man distracting from the first, sowing just enough confusion to give them an edge. He raised his right index and middle fingers, spreading them apart to form a V. “I go left, you go right. Don’t stop until you get to the trees.”

Angel nodded. They stayed low until they reached the edge of the forest, then Angel watched Louis’s lips make the count. One. Two.

Three.

Louis sprinted for the road. A second later Angel was moving, veering away from his partner, zigzagging once again but not as violently as before, intent only on getting across the open road, where he would be most vulnerable, as quickly as possible.

They did not even make it to where the ground began to rise. The first shot sent a spume of dirt into the air a couple of inches from Angel’s feet. The second and third struck the road itself, and then the scattered shots became a fusillade, forcing the two men back into the forest. They flattened themselves on the ground, and returned fire with the Steyrs, aiming at the muzzle flashes, keeping to short bursts in order to conserve their ammunition. Louis saw a figure running low, wearing a green combat jacket. He fired, but the man kept moving. He was beyond the limited range of the Steyrs.

“Stop firing,” he told Angel after each of them had exhausted a magazine, and instantly Angel did as he was told, reloading with his face pressed hard against the ground. The shooting from the other side of the road did not cease, but neither did the shots draw any closer. Instead, the shooters seemed happy to knock bark from the trees behind them, too far over their heads to do any damage as long as they stayed down, or to send clouds of dust and gravel spurting from the surface of the road. Slowly, Angel and Louis moved back into the cover of the trees.

Only then did the gunfire stop, although their ears still rang from the noise. They could see them now: a line of three men in hooded ponchos, barely visible in the woods on the other side of the road. One held his rifle at port arms while the others leaned against the trees to his left and right, rifles at their shoulders, sighting down the barrel at their targets. They did not seem troubled that Angel and Louis could see them. Then more men appeared from the north and south, following the road, and took up positions among the trees. Some of them even seemed to be smiling. It was a game, and they were winning. Angel dropped the Steyr and raised his Glock, but Louis reached out and indicated that he should hold his fire.

“No,” he said.

They’ve strung themselves out along the road, thought Louis. They took note of where we came in, then made an educated guess at where we’d come out. The line might have been thinner a little farther to the east or west, but they knew that they could reinforce it quickly. From somewhere on the other side of the road, he heard the crackle of a radio, then it was lost in the sound of an approaching vehicle, and a flatbed truck appeared from the south and stopped thirty or forty feet away from where Angel and Louis knelt. They could see the shapes of two men in the cab. The truck idled. Nobody moved.

“What the hell is this?” asked Angel.

But Louis did not reply. He was performing calculations in his mind: times, distances, weapons. He tried to work out their chances of killing the two men in the truck if they used the cover of the forest to work their way south. They were good, but the chances of getting away from the pursuers who would inevitably follow were less favorable: close to zero, he reckoned. And yet this couldn’t go on indefinitely. They were being contained for a purpose. He wondered if there were men already approaching from behind, cutting them off. They were like foxes fleeing the hunters only to find that the entrance to their den had been sealed, forcing them to turn and face the dogs.

“We go back,” he said.

“What?”

“They’ve closed off the road, for now. They also know where we’re at, and that’s not good. We use the forest while we can. There’s a house to the northeast. It was on the satellite photographs. Could be we can lay our hands on a car or a truck there, or at least a phone.”

“We could call the cops to come get us,” said Angel. “Tell them we came here to kill someone by mistake.”

Rain began to fall, large drops that made a slapping noise upon the leaves above them. Even though the sun had now almost risen, the sky above them remained cloudy and dark. The rain fell harder and faster, quickly soaking them to the skin, but the men watching from the woods did not move. The rain slid from their slickers and ponchos. They had been prepared for rain. They had been prepared for everything. Slowly, Louis and Angel retreated into the trees. There was massive internal bleeding. His brain swelled inside his skull, causing more hemorrhaging. They fought for him, trying to prevent herniation, for that would be the end of him. They removed bone fragments, and a clot, and the bullet. Finally, all of their work would leave only the faintest of scars, hidden by his hair.

And while they battled to save him, Louis sat by a lake, surrounded by trees. Across the water, he could see the house in which he had grown up. It was empty now, fallen into ruin. It was no longer home. He could not go back there, so there was no life within its walls. There was no life anywhere. The woods were quiet, and no fish swam in the lake. He sat in the dead place, and he waited.

After a time, a man emerged from the darkness of the forest to the east. His face was gone, and his teeth were bared in his lipless mouth. He had no eyes with which to see, but he turned his head toward Louis. The wounds to his face made him look as though he were grinning. Perhaps he was. Deber had always been grinning, even when he killed Louis’s mother. To the west, a light appeared, and the Burning Man took his place by the water, his mouth forming words, speaking soundlessly to his son of rage and wrath. North: the house. South: Louis. East: Deber. West: the Burning Man. Compass points. But Louis was not the southern point. He heard footsteps behind him, and a hand gently brushed the back of his neck. He tried to turn, but he could not.