Sharks, p.8
Sharks, page 8
Slater was the only one thrown off by the layout. ‘Someone’s going to stroll right in off the beach.’
Violetta said, ‘You wanted an actual fort? So we could draw more attention to ourselves?’
Slater shook his head. ‘When you said you’d handle it, I thought you’d handle it.’
‘I’ll leave you in charge of booking in future.’
‘Please do.’
King said, ‘This place doesn’t matter. We won’t be here long enough.’
Slater watched the waves roll in and gave his head another shake.
King said, ‘You lost the ability to defend yourself or something?’
Slater held out his bare hands, his bag at his feet on the grass. ‘With what, exactly?’
Someone knocked on the brushwood fencing out front.
Violetta said, ‘Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.’
A grizzled fifty-something man walked straight in through the open gate like he owned the place. Judging by the redness of his skin and the thick veins rippling up his exposed arms, he looked to be taking full advantage of testosterone replacement therapy. He was bald, with a lean surfer’s frame, and the deep tan all over almost masked his crimson complexion. His eyes were sharp. He was carrying a giant Samsonite case in each hand, each one made of rippling aluminium. They looked to have cost a couple of grand apiece, and that wasn’t taking into account whatever was inside them.
Slater ignored him, turned to Violetta and said, ‘Should we be concerned?’
She said, ‘No. Alonzo set it up.’
‘Relax, yeah,’ the guy said.
He lowered the cases to the grass. Each one impacted with a heavy thunk. King realised the man was far stronger than he looked, and he looked strong.
He said, ‘Any friends of Alonzo are friends of mine.’
‘What’s in the mystery boxes?’ King said.
The guy popped the catches and levered the top off each one, and King got an immediate sense of déjà vu. He and Slater had intercepted a similar shipment off the Hudson River before they’d ever met Violetta or Alexis.
What was in the mystery boxes were guns.
Lots of guns.
18
The man introduced himself as Wayne and left it at that.
He turned to leave.
King stared down at a pair of HK assault rifles, four Glock 9mms, and an amalgamation of attachments and ammunition. All brand new, all clean. No serial numbers. He was staring at tens of thousands of dollars worth of munitions.
He said, ‘Are these free?’
Wayne turned back. ‘Of course not. I gotta pay the bills, buy new boards. You ever heard of bank transfers?’
He gave a mock salute and strolled out the gate.
‘Pleasure doing business,’ he called over his shoulder as he left.
Violetta said, ‘Don’t worry, he’s fiercely independent. He won’t rat us out. I did my research.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Did a couple of tours of the Stans, took an honourable discharge and got on the first flight here. Now he surfs and smokes weed and carefully acquires high-powered weaponry on the black market.’
‘Sells to all sorts of characters, I’m sure,’ Slater said.
Violetta rolled her eyes. ‘You going to go after him, too? Be my guest.’
Slater held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘I’m good. Feel a little better about the ocean view now.’
‘Enjoy it,’ she said. ‘While you can.’
King stared at the guns. ‘Best we get these inside before we get sprung.’
Slater was deep in thought.
Alexis noticed. ‘What?’
‘How many payloads this size do you think that Wayne guy drops to people on Grand Bahama?’ Slater said. ‘Got to be an anomaly, right?’
Violetta shrugged. ‘Maybe. Why?’
‘If he makes one slip-up, one wrong move, Walcott might find out. Everything you were telling us before we flew here suggests the guy controls most of the organised crime on the island. You think Wayne has that sort of attention to detail?’
Violetta said, ‘I trust him.’
King said, ‘I trust him, too.’
Alexis turned to Slater. ‘Do you?’
He couldn’t take his eyes off the guns.
He mulled it over.
Realised he couldn’t reach a definitive conclusion either way.
Eventually said, ‘I don’t know.’
19
Wayne Portis was thinking about dumb shit.
That’s always the case in hindsight, isn’t it?
He never thought he’d spend his last moments as a free man weighing up which IPA he’d take off the shelf that night. The Island Pirate Ale was always reliable, and he figured he’d down six tall ones just to wipe the memory of those Americans from his mind. It wasn’t where they were from that rubbed him the wrong way, it was that look in their eyes. In fact, now that he thought about it, all four of them had it, not just the two bodybuilders with faces like ice. He didn’t know what their deal was, only that Alonzo had vouched for them, and that was good enough.
Besides, cash was cash.
Now he covered the eight blocks to his small shack on foot, weaving in and out of side street traffic. He knew the roads like the back of his hand, like arteries weaving through the backwaters of Freeport.
Then someone came up behind him and pressed a blade to an actual artery.
Wayne froze, nearly choking on his own gulp. That was what most people didn’t understand — you do a couple of tours of the Middle East, everyone thinks you become superhuman, immune to fear. Really, it almost makes you more paranoid. He’d seen throats cut. He knew what it looked like, how much horrid pain and terror came with it, how gruesomely you died. So where a civilian might pass the whole thing off as a bad dream, Wayne knew it was very real and very serious, and the blood drained from his face.
Which wouldn’t help him.
Keeping his head right where it was, his eyes went haywire in every direction.
Bad tactical awareness on his part.
Perfect awareness on his abductor’s.
They were in a desolate stretch of unpaved road with perimeter walls of larger properties on either side. This lane was practically an alleyway, but it led to the beach. He had to hope that a tourist would stroll in off the sand and—
A car screeched to a halt beside him, and a hand forced the back of his head down into the rear seats.
He sprawled across them, twisting onto his back so he could get a look at—
The kidnapper didn’t have a knife anymore. Now he had a Ruger, brand new and sleek black, aimed at Wayne’s forehead. A gun so pristine and reliable that Wayne might as well have sold it to them himself.
But looking up at the guy, trapped in the back of the car, Wayne realised that wasn’t a possibility.
He didn’t sell to Dylan Walcott’s thugs.
Wayne said, ‘Where we going?’
The thug was big, strong, like a pitbull in human form. His bones looked thicker than the average man’s, and his aim was steady. He said, ‘Nowhere. You’re staying right here until you talk. You think you can lay off an arsenal like that and Dylan wouldn’t find out?’
‘Tell Dylan to go to hell.’
‘Wrong call, bud.’
The passenger and driver piled out of their seats. The passenger rounded to the door Wayne was leaning against, threw it open, and held him down by the shoulders. The driver came next to the thug with the gun and took his ankles. They held tight, like they were trying to pin down a wild tiger.
They thought he’d start thrashing.
They were right.
The thug held the pistol one-handed and came up with an acetylene blowtorch.
‘No,’ Wayne said, clenching his teeth so hard he thought they might shatter. Now he was ghost-white. ‘No, come on, you know I’m just a—’
‘I couldn’t give a shit what you think you are,’ the thug said. ‘Start talking.’
‘They’re some Americans, I don’t know.’
‘You know more than that, at least.’
‘Come on—’
The guy fired the torch to life.
Blue flame seared hot.
He started lowering it.
Wayne thrashed. He was stronger than each of the men holding him down, but not both of them together. They pinned him to the cheap seats. The material was sticky, ripping up his back as he jerked his way half out of his open Hawaiian shirt.
The torch lowered further.
Wayne went deep into his own mind and put up a barricade. Old military tactics for resisting interrogation — detach yourself from your body, make pain something physical that doesn’t encompass you. Separate yourself from it. He watched the blue pulsing flame tickle his ankle and figured all of that was complete bullshit. He didn’t know whether he’d make it through this without going into cardiac arrest.
He closed his eyes and stifled a sob.
But only for a moment.
Milliseconds after his world went black he flared them open again, unable to resist taking a look at what the thug was about to do. The hairs on his ankle started to singe as the torch kept lowering…
But now there were five men around the car, not three.
Wayne blinked.
The dark-skinned guy from the waterfront bungalow pointed his new Glock at the head of the pitbull with the torch and put a bullet in his skull from behind.
The small guy holding Wayne’s ankles let go and jerked around like he’d been shot, but it was just shock at the unsuppressed gunshot in his ear.
The big white guy from the bungalow grabbed the small man’s head like it was a bowling ball and smashed it into the top of the rear door. Wayne thought he’d killed the guy. There was no way the blow hadn’t caved his skull in.
The guy holding Wayne’s shoulders let go immediately and fumbled for a gun.
The dark-skinned man leant into the car, aimed over Wayne’s body across the rear seats, and shot the last thug in the gut.
He doubled over, nearly headbutting Wayne as he buckled at the knees, and his face fell into the line of sight perfectly, like it was framed. A second bullet smashed his face and he jerked backwards and lay still.
Blood covered Wayne Portis.
Not his own.
He sat up, rattled. The gunshots hadn’t deafened him thanks to the suppressors he’d delivered to the Americans along with the Glocks. The attachments were now firmly screwed onto the barrels.
Wayne said, ‘Lucky I armed you when I did.’
‘Lucky I didn’t trust you,’ the dark-skinned man said. ‘Otherwise we never would have followed.’
The white guy said, ‘It’s our lucky day all round.’
Wayne clambered shakily out of the car.
20
There were bullets in the heads of two of the three kidnappers, but the last guy was alive.
King and Slater threw the bodies in the rear seats and slammed the doors on them, sealing them in, then King hauled the half-conscious survivor to his feet.
The man was barely with it.
Swaying all over the place, his ankles shaking, his jaw slack. King held him upright by the collar and pressed the Glock discreetly into his ribcage to prevent him going anywhere. Not that he could if he tried. He could be armed with an assault rifle and King could be bare-handed and he’d still win, given the guy was barely lucid.
Wayne straightened up, flecked with blood all over, a look on his face like he couldn’t believe he was alive. His bare ankle had the faintest scorch mark on it, but no real damage had been done. There’d be pain to go along with the broken skin, but it would come later. For now, adrenaline kept it at bay.
Wayne looked around, but there was no one in sight. The alleyway was deserted, the suppressed gunshots passed off as a car backfiring, or simply ignored altogether.
It was the age-old excuse: Someone else’s problem. Nothing to do with me.
Wayne said, ‘I can’t believe this guy’s still alive.’
King said, ‘I didn’t put my full weight into it. If I had, he wouldn’t have a skull anymore.’
The guy seemed to acknowledge he was the topic of conversation, and his dazed eyes swum murkily left and right, finding no fixed target. He wouldn’t be back to normal for a long time, maybe ever.
Wayne seemed to recall the guy’s face cracking off the top of the door. He shuddered. ‘That wasn’t your full weight?’
King didn’t answer that. Any response he could give would only be for the sake of puffing his own chest out. He wasn’t interested.
Slater had the gun tucked under his shirt, staring at Wayne.
Wayne relented. ‘I’m guessing you want to know more about me.’
‘No,’ Slater said. ‘What I want you to do is get behind the wheel of this car, drive those bodies somewhere discreet, and dump them. Then I want you to stick your head in the sand and never contact us again.’
The arms dealer hesitated, thrown off. ‘What—?’
‘You heard every word, Wayne.’
‘I don’t even know either of your names.’
King said, ‘Good.’
‘I deserve that much, at least. You saved my life.’
‘You didn’t do your due diligence and it nearly got you killed. We would have been next.’
A vein in Wayne’s neck throbbed, aggravated by all the emotions of a near-death situation. ‘Listen, if you think this job is easy—’
Slater said, ‘We didn’t make any comment on how easy or hard your job is. Whatever the difficulty level, you failed to do it properly. Shouldn’t have bitten off more than you can chew. Now get rid of these bodies and we’ll see you never.’
Wayne made to square up. ‘You got some lip on you, kid.’
Slater looked at him like a disappointed father scolding his toddler. ‘Don’t.’
Wayne didn’t.
He had the common sense to know when enough was enough.
He jutted his chin at the semi-conscious kidnapper. ‘What are you going to do with him?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘Then the bodies stay right here.’
Slater shrugged. ‘Okay.’
Wayne said, ‘You’re making things harder for yourself than they need to be. One nugget of information in exchange for clean laundry service. Come on.’
Slater relented. ‘We’re going to ask him a couple of questions about who sent him and then we’re going to do what you should have done a while ago.’
‘You don’t need him for that,’ Wayne said. ‘I can tell you exactly who sent him. Dylan Walcott.’
‘We know that,’ King said. ‘We’re looking for a way to get to him.’
Wayne laughed. ‘Good luck with that. I could have delivered every gun on planet Earth to your doorstep and you still wouldn’t get within ten feet of him unless he wanted you to. Believe that.’
He rounded the hood, got behind the wheel and gave a mock salute out the window.
‘See you never!’ he shouted, and spun the car away from the sidewalk.
King pushed the Glock a little harder into the kidnapper’s gut, and he doubled over and winced. The gesture almost toppled him. His equilibrium was gone.
King said, ‘Should we take him back and show him the view?’
‘It’s a short walk,’ Slater said. ‘No reason not to.’
21
Within an hour of touching down on Grand Bahama they had a hostage.
From the side porch Violetta watched King and Slater return from their paranoid quest to follow Wayne. She hadn’t approved it, but she hadn’t stopped them from going either. Anything they shared a suspicion of was worth a second look, and it didn’t hurt her either way. Now they had a special guest in tow.
She closed the laptop on her knees and lowered it to the wooden slats beneath her feet.
The hostage was a small man, both in height and frame, with tiny hands and rounded shoulders. He looked awfully sorry for himself, and the horizontal cut across his forehead didn’t do him any favours in that department. Blood that had previously streamed down his face was now dry from the sun, crusted to his nose and cheeks. He was European — maybe Italian, if she had to guess — but his skin was pale. This was a man who avoided the sun at all costs.
King and Slater shut the gate behind them and dragged the guy across the lawn. He offered no resistance.
Violetta got to her feet. ‘Who the hell is this?’
‘One of three people we caught trying to snatch Wayne off the street.’
She didn’t react, but inwardly everything sunk. Finally she managed to form words. ‘Jesus. You two really are magnets for trouble, aren’t you?’
‘Better that than the alternative,’ Slater said.
‘How’s that?’
King answered for him. ‘Best we catch everything than miss everything.’
Alexis stepped out of the bungalow, taking a break from unpacking the bags to check out the source of the commotion, and she froze in place. Like she’d been struck right in the heart. Violetta could see the fear plain on her face.
Because now it was real.
Alexis said, ‘Who’s that?’
‘A cooperative young man who agreed to an interview,’ Slater said, holding the guy by the back of the neck. ‘Isn’t that right?’
The guy mumbled something.
Slater slapped him. ‘What was that?’
Alexis said, ‘Stop.’
Slater looked up.
Alexis said, ‘You’re hurting him. He looks harmless.’
Slater was about to fire a retort but he refrained. His gaze wandered to Violetta, beside Alexis on the porch.
