At the base of the stairs he paused. The door to another passage lay open. He could hear voices from within a room at the far end. Two or more men were waiting for him there and if he approached along the passage they’d cut him down instantly. Problem being: there was no other way inside.
Turning back to the stairs, Rickard loosed a barrage of bullets into the empty space at the top. He shouted, then fired a couple of single rounds. He followed that by another burst, shooting at the stairs this time. The volume of gunfire was horrendous, but in the hidden chamber it would echo even louder, serving to confuse those within. Immediately, he spun on his heel and pounded along the passageway. As he ran he was shouting full voice in fluent Spanish. ‘Señor Calle! Señor Calle! You must get away. Silva is here. He’s in the house!’
His bullets and his frantic shout did the trick: they confused the men into thinking that he was one of their own defenders. It was a charade that would last only as long as it took for them to cast their gaze on him, but that was enough for him. He made it along the passage and into the room without being cut down, whereupon he immediately lifted his rifle.
Staring back at him in incredulity were three people. Two of them were armed with handguns and he indicated that they drop them. Cesar Calle and a henchman both allowed their guns to fall to the floor and they raised their hands in surrender. Rickard eyed them in disdain, then he shot them both as though they were paper targets beneath his contempt.
Calle dead was a promise fulfilled to Alvaro Silva. Maybe Rickard hadn’t made him scream but he didn’t care. What he was here for was his prize. Rickard smiled at the figure propped in the hospital bed.
‘I bet you weren’t expecting me?’
Chapter 34
‘So much for plans,’ I muttered over my shoulder.
Nunez didn’t look happy at the sounds of gunfire ringing in our ears but he was pragmatic enough to shrug and then follow me. Charles, bringing up the rear, swore quietly under his breath, but he moved after us. Neither man had bought into a full-on war, thinking they had nothing better to do than play chaperone to the ones who were really going to pick up all the shit. But they were there and experience told them that they would most likely have to kill men if they were going to get out of this alive.
Both Jungla troopers were good men. I knew that the first time I looked at them. They would be top notch warriors – no one who wasn’t made it into the Junglas, even men placed there by the CIA – but they were still cops and they were governed by a different rule book than me and my friends. I only wished that it was Rink and Harvey watching my six, except they were up on the cliffs. I trusted them to make the correct decisions based on what was happening in the valley below us: they wouldn’t be hiding and watching for Gutierrez to arrive now.
At the end of the cleft was a jumble of boulders that had fallen from the cliffs across the years. The jungle had got its hooks in and bushes and vines made a tangled maze between the boulders, but Nunez pointed out a trail under the foliage that he’d used last time he was here. I had to go down on my belly to slither through, but then I could stand with the rocks obscuring me from anyone down below. As my Jungla friends joined me, I peered around the rocks and tried to take in the chaos below.
Five vehicles had made it all the way across the valley and had parked in a scattered formation before Cesar Calle’s house. Men in paramilitary uniforms used the jeeps and trucks to shield them from the bullets of other men defending the buildings. Those with the vehicles had the edge on firepower, but Calle’s people held the advantage of position. From up on the clifftops the sentries were firing at the exposed backs of the attackers, forcing them to fight a battle on different fronts. Suddenly, above me, the guns of the sentries went silent and I guessed that Rink had decided to take them out of the equation.
Nunez nudged my elbow.
‘That man there.’ He indicated a soldier on the back of a jeep, a round-faced man with black wiry hair, who was manning a M240 machine gun with devastating effect. ‘That is Manuel Cervantes. Known as Guarapo. He is an officer of
Organizacion Halcón de Roja
, one of Alvaro Silva’s top killers.’
The Red Hawks I’d heard of, but Alvaro Silva’s name meant nothing to me. ‘I take it they’re enemies of Calle?’
‘Not that I was aware of. But who knows? Since the break-up of the AUC many factions have been jostling for power and for control of the narcotics industry. It looks like Silva’s decided to bring the fight directly to his nearest competitor.’
‘Just because they’re Calle’s enemies, it doesn’t make them our friends.’ No, it was probable that every man down there would lift guns against us. Some of them – Guarapo for one – appeared to be competent fighters. A tall, fair-haired man looked like an anomaly, but when I started to look further he wasn’t the only Caucasian. Mercenaries, I realised, had been drafted in by Silva to help him wipe out the opposition.
I’d come here to find Jorge Gutierrez, the man playing go-between with Luke Rickard and his employer, and to force that name from him. But if Silva’s army managed to kill everyone then that route would be closed to me. No information had come in to say that Gutierrez was at the Calle house, but he could have been missed for all we knew. The prospects of having to intercede in this war between opposing military factions was beginning to look like a real probability.
The Junglas were probably wondering how the hell they were going to explain their reason for being here, but that was for them to worry about. Still, I offered them a way out. ‘The plan’s changed. Stay here. I’m going in alone.’
‘We can cover you,’ Nunez offered.
‘You can do that from here. If I’m killed, get away. No one needs to know that you were ever helping me.’
Before they could argue, I slipped round the side of the boulders and negotiated the slope at a jog. Below me to my left was an outbuilding. A pile of logs was stacked beneath a lean-to and I headed for them. At the woodpile I crouched, using the timber as cover while I spied along the side of the building. I’d just gained that position when I heard gunfire very close by and a window on the side of Calle’s house shattered. A dark-haired man dressed in fatigues, heavily armed, followed the volley through the window a moment later.
Despite myself, I blinked in surprise.
To say I was confused was an understatement. The way I’d seen it, Luke Rickard had been working under the guidance of someone associated with Gutierrez – my bet going on Cesar Calle – and yet here he was, in all his glory, leading the attack on behalf of Calle’s enemy. The dark hair and the tint of his skin didn’t fool me. The man had walked directly towards me, cold-bloodedly shooting his own wife, and I’d burned that image into my memory. He could have had green hair and a clown’s painted face and I’d still have recognised him.
What the hell was he doing?
From within the house came the rattle of a machine gun. The noise snapped me out of my confusion.
And I knew.
Luke Rickard was not only a murderer. He was a rapist, and misogynist. He was also a control freak beyond any I’d ever come across before. Rickard, I believed, had come here to exact retribution for some perceived slight against his twisted ego. Maybe Calle had dispensed with his services following his failed attempt at ruining me, and this was Rickard’s way of showing his dissatisfaction at the betrayal.
Didn’t matter.
Whatever his reason for turning up at Calle’s place, he was here now. My hunt for him had just been offered a great boost I’d never expected. And regardless of the fact that he was embroiled at the centre of a power war, I had a chance at nailing him. It was time to get down to killing the bastard.
After that thought followed immediate action. I stood up, ready to follow Rickard through the broken window, then had to duck as tracer rounds zipped by my head. Bullets knocked chips of wood from the pile and I screwed my eyes tight to avoid being blinded by flying splinters. The smell of sap competed with the stinging burn of heated wood to overwhelm my senses.
Retreat wasn’t in my plan but I’d no option. I ran at a crouch away from the woodpile towards the far corner of the building then ducked round the side. The rear end of one of the vehicles could be seen, but there was no sign of any of the attackers. Whoever had been shooting at me must have been further away. Making it to the front corner of the house, I searched for targets. Men bobbed up and down behind the shielding trucks and jeeps, but none of them was paying me any attention. The shots fired my way had to have been random. I backtracked to the woodpile.
Glancing back up to the cleft, I could see Juan Charles leaning out from the rocks, his face a pale blob against the deep-green shrubbery. He’d moved further across from where I’d left him and Nunez, and was now in a position to offer covering fire. He gave me a thumb-up signal, before leaning into the stock of his assault rifle. I nodded and then ran full pelt for the shattered window. Now the tracer rounds zipping over my head were heading in the other direction.
A small fence was no obstacle. I went over it without breaking stride and pounded through a flower bed. At the house I turned, pressing my left shoulder to the wall, and brought up my H&K. Smoke drifted in my vision from all the gunfire and I caught the same smell that follows a firework display. But I had no target. Charles continued to lay down covering fire and I could hear the metallic ting of his bullets striking the vehicles. Quickly I stood, taking a glance in the window and sweeping the room with my gun. It appeared clear. Grabbing at the sill, I clambered inside, over a dresser and into the room beyond. A man lay ten feet away. He was dead. Unfortunately it wasn’t Rickard.
Moving through the room, I heard the rattle of a gunfight somewhere in the house, someone screaming in Spanish. At the door I peeked out into a hallway. Cordite hung in the air. I walked slowly, checking and clearing rooms as I progressed. One room I came across held the bodies of two men who looked to have been cut down from behind. Almost opposite that room were a door and a short flight of steps leading down. I thought I heard voices.
Just as I turned to investigate, bullets cut through the house, knocking pictures out of frames and plaster from the walls. In reaction I ducked. At the other end of the hallway a man ran into view. He was a second or so in recognising I was a stranger – and therefore an enemy – and in that time I brought up my gun and gave him a measured burst. The bullets knocked him sprawling, his gun flying out of his hands.
The walls of the house shook to a detonation. Not the boom of a Hollywood explosion but a dull thud. Someone was throwing hand grenades. Following the noise there was a moment of utter silence, but it didn’t last long. Somewhere a man began to scream. Guns began rattling again, and I turned my attention back to the short flight of stairs. I went down them stealthily, holding my H&K ready for anything that might present itself. Periodically I checked over my shoulder for anyone following but it seemed I had the stairs to myself. The short passage in front of me was also empty.
When caught up in battle your senses can compress so that you are operating in a narrow sphere of consciousness: the vision can become tunnelled, the hearing a dull whoosh in the ears, touch and taste and smell can be relegated to some hidden corner of the mind. Other times quite the opposite can be true. I felt like a plucked guitar, I was buzzing so much. It was as though electricity played over my skin, prickling me like a static charge. Partly it was due to the endorphins flooding my system, but more than that it was because I felt that an end to everything that had happened the last few days was in the chamber at the end of the passageway.
Rickard was there – I felt it.
But so was whoever had hired him to destroy me.
Gritting my teeth, I moved forwards.
The antiseptic smell hit me, but I paid it no mind. I continued along the passage, listening for my enemies and gauging their positions. Surprisingly they spoke with lowered voices, as though in gentle conversation. I could make nothing of their words. But the tone and timbre of one voice gave me momentary pause.
I shook my head.
Couldn’t be.
But then I lunged into the room and found my worst fear come true.
It wasn’t for the fact that two men lay dead, their bodies riddled with bullets, or that Luke Rickard stood with a knife in his hand poised to strike his victim. The hospital-style bed, complete with medical accoutrements and electronic gauges, didn’t halt me in my tracks. It was because of
who
was in the bed.
The person Rickard had been getting his orders from, on whose behalf he’d murdered my old team-mates and their families, and for whom he’d tried to kill Imogen Ballard, was the last person I expected.