Rink moved up the steps and I went inside.
A short vestibule with double glass doors – a recent addition – separated the entrance from a reception area. The doors were on a sensor and hissed open as I stepped forwards. A woman dressed in a pale blue tunic was bent over the desk and didn’t even look up. Maybe she’d grown used to armed men coming in and out. The second that she saw my camouflage get-up could have been a crucial turning point, but she only glanced my way nonplussed. Funny how people can be desensitised to danger so quickly. I was in a different uniform but she must have taken me, as well as Rink coming in behind me, as FBI agents. No way I’d make her any the wiser.
The receptionist went back to whatever she was doing on her computer and I walked by her, allowing my gun to drop so I didn’t represent a threat. I passed through the next set of doors without challenge and waited there for Rink to catch up. We were inside so easily it made my guts squirm because dressed in the anonymous garb of an HRT trooper Rickard would probably have free range throughout the hospital. He would head directly for Alisha’s room.
A flight of stairs gave access to the upper floors and I went up them with Rink close behind. At the top was a narrow corridor. Checking out the signs hanging from the ceiling, I tried to figure out where Alisha’s room would be. At times like this I wished that Rapid Intuitive Experience went beyond a warning of danger, but that was about as psychic as I got. The signs were for different wards, all named after nearby islands in the Florida Keys, and none of them was distinguished from the next. Going for us was the fact that there were only four of them, two on the left and two on the right. They’d take no checking at all if it weren’t for the HRT commando striding along the hall towards us.
My first instinct was that this was Luke Rickard and I almost brought up my gun. I didn’t, though. This man was shorter and stockier built than the man I’d fought in Jimena Grajales’ sickroom.
I expected the feebie to challenge us, to try to disarm us, but all he did was speak into his throat mike. ‘They’re here, sir.’
I shared a glance with Rink. ‘Sounds like Hubbard’s expecting us.’
Rink scowled.
‘Come with me,’ the trooper said. Without waiting for us to comply, he turned and strode away down the hall.
‘What the hell’s going on?’
‘Don’t know, Rink, but we have to find out. We can refuse to follow this guy but you can bet his buddies will show up in a few seconds.’
‘Don’t want to make an enemy of the feds.’
We followed the trooper past the wards. Glancing inside, I saw only empty beds. Made sense; the patients having all been moved in anticipation of what was coming. I couldn’t stop the smile that crept on to my lips.
‘You realise what’s going on here?’
Rink nodded. ‘We’re not the only ones setting Rickard up.’
The trooper took us to another flight of stairs, this time leading down to a kitchen area full of stainless steel counters and ultra-modern ovens and ranges. It was empty of domestic staff. We headed directly through and into a short corridor. Two suited men stood guard at a door. Seeing us coming, one of them knocked on the door then opened it. He stood aside and allowed me and Rink to enter. The FBI trooper waited outside with the guards.
Part of me wasn’t surprised to see Walter sitting in an office chair next to a bank of CCTV monitors, not when I recognised the two men outside as being the bodyguards who’d been at the hotel with us. Opposite Walter, SAC Hubbard leaned against a wall with his arms crossed. His beady eyes gave us the once-over before he turned his attention back to the screens.
‘Relax, boys,’ Walter said, ‘you’re amongst friends.’
‘I take it that you’re back in charge, Walt?’
He gave me a grin that caused Hubbard to shake his head. ‘Orders from the White House supersede those coming from the Hoover building.’
Hubbard said, ‘I’m not happy with this situation. Neither are my superiors. We’ll make our feelings known after this, but for now we’ve handed over command and control to Mr Conrad. You have our full cooperation.’ His last words were delivered with plenty of vinegar.
‘How long have you been here, Walter?’
‘Must have arrived before you set up out in the swamp.’
‘Could have saved us the trouble if you’d thought to get in touch.’
‘I was busy organising things.’ He gave us a sickly smile. ‘And anyway, I wanted someone out there who’d spot Rickard coming.’
‘My men had that under control,’ Hubbard said.
‘They didn’t see us,’ Rink pointed out.
Hubbard shrugged, dug his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘We weren’t watching for you, Rington. We’re here to catch a murderer. We can’t do that if we’re traipsing all over the Everglades playing hide and seek.’
‘If you’d set up in the swamp you might have caught him coming in. Now you’ve lost a guy who didn’t have to die.’ Hubbard closed his eyes at my words. I’d already noticed that the nearest CCTV screen showed a view of the front lawn. It was zoomed in on a body partly concealed by shrubbery. ‘You sacrificed that man to ensure that Rickard entered this building.’
‘I sacrificed
no one
.’ Hubbard glared not at me but directly at Walter.
‘It was necessary to contain the problem,’ Walter said. ‘It also allowed Rickard a way inside without raising suspicion.’
‘This a killing house, Walt?’
‘Soon as you were inside, I had it locked down. I’m having the FBI people moved out. Then it’s down to you boys.’
‘What about Alisha?’
Walter tapped a TV screen. On it a helmeted black-clad figure crept along a corridor. Alert and armed, he looked like he had a firm destination in mind.
‘Rickard should be with her in the next few seconds.’ Walter sat back in his chair, almost as though relaxing in front of a TV to watch an afternoon matinee. ‘There’s no rush, Hunter. Wait and catch the show, you can always get him on his way back out.’
Chapter 44
‘When attacking, you must be determined and forthright. Worry about the consequences and that worry will kill you. Be bold, Luc, cut down your enemies while fear for their lives gives them pause.’
Etienne Pagnon, the man who had murdered his mother, but had also taken him under his wing and made from him a warrior without equal, was more than just a burnt-out soldier living for his next gulp of strong liquor. He was also a man of books and study, with an enquiring mind and a will to pass on his knowledge to his worthy pupil. He was a master when it came to the methods of killing men and when he was sober – or only mildly inebriated – he sought to expand his knowledge further. Rickard had often found him with his nose in a book, normally ancient treatises on warfare; Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War
; Chanakya’s
Arthashastra
or Miyamoto Musashi’s
Go Rin No Sho
. If he hadn’t succumbed to his base weaknesses, he’d quite probably have become a great military strategist.
Of all the books that he studied, Etienne advocated Musashi’s
Book of Five Rings
, a seventeenth-century manual on sword-fighting that was as applicable in modern warfare as it had been back in the days of the samurai warrior. Musashi said that technical flourishes were excessive and what was most important was simply the cutting down of one’s opponent without fearing for one’s own life. Etienne liked Musashi’s no-nonsense approach to killing and impressed this ethos on his young pupil. The great sword master also advocated practice in combat: you must experience much killing to achieve mastery over it. Etienne’s enthusiasm – put across in his accented psychobabble – had resonated within Rickard and he’d learned his trade well, following Musashi’s wisdom, basically learning to kill by killing.
He remembered his lessons clearly and would follow them to the letter. Etienne advocated crashing through the enemy’s defences and cutting them down. So that, Rickard decided, was how he would approach his attack on the hospital. First, though, he had to get inside.
He travelled to within a mile of the Anhinga Key hospital in Wetherby’s Land Rover, leaving his betrayer and his two henchmen where they lay alongside the discarded Fireblade. There, after concealing the 4×4 from view, he dressed in the clothing supplied to him by Wetherby’s SWAT contact, the full tactical kit including body armour, gauntlets and helmet. There he also loaded the M-40A3 bolt-action rifle, and shoved more rounds in a pouch on his utility belt. Lastly he screwed on the suppressor that was lodged in the Styrofoam interior of the black case.
Musashi favoured the two-sword style, but he’d always taught that weapons should be interchangeable to suit the battlefield. Instead of the
katana
and
wakazashi
that the legendary sword master wielded in battle, Rickard had his gun and his ceramic knife. He felt ready for anything.
He jogged through the swampy terrain, eager to get started. The coldness in his gut demanded immediate release. Crash through their defences, cut them down, he repeated the mantra in his mind.
Coming to the entrance to the hospital, he saw a group of buildings. These he could tell were the administration offices. They looked like they had been closed down and there was no sign of life except for two men sitting in a black SUV. The men were obviously FBI agents. The shades and conservative suits were a cliché but evident nonetheless. He wasn’t surprised to find the feebies on site: it was for that reason he’d arranged his disguise, expecting that Alisha would be placed in protective custody until he was caught.
Rickard slipped by the FBI guards like he was invisible and continued in towards the hospital. It was a fair jog through the forest, but he didn’t see it as a task. It only warmed him up and prepped him for action.
A windbreak encircled the hospital grounds. It gave great cover for him while he surveyed the layout and position of anyone standing guard. He merely pulled free a handful of the interwoven branches, and was able to get a good view through the fence without exposing himself.
In the distance armoured FBI troopers patrolled the grounds, but they were more concerned with watching the points leading in from the swamp than they were the front approach. They probably didn’t believe he’d have the nerve for a full-frontal assault. That had been Cesar Calle’s mistake and Rickard recalled where that lapse of judgement had got him.
Rickard brought the sniper rifle to his shoulder and extended the silenced barrel through the hole in the fence. Through the scopes the solitary trooper standing guard at the front of the property looked as close as could be without becoming intimate. Rickard studied him through the scope. The man was fully armoured, but his chin and a notch of skin at his throat were exposed when viewed through ten times the magnification. He was only fifty yards away. Shit, Rickard thought, I could drop him without the sights.
The shot was an easy one for him.
So why was he waiting?
Crash through their defences, cut them down.
He touched the trigger, but again he paused.
Thinking rationally, he knew that this was a fool’s errand he’d set himself. What would he gain from murdering Alisha that he hadn’t already achieved? This was an insane plan he’d embarked on, whatever way he looked at it. He was chancing death when he could simply walk away. He was wealthy; he could turn his back on his apartment in Miami, move anywhere in the world he chose and live a good life on the proceeds of his trade he’d tucked away in offshore accounts.
‘You can’t let a woman see any weakness in you, Luc. None at all. Do that and she’ll despise you. You will become nothing in her eyes. You understand,
oui
?’
Nothing.
‘You must make women fear you. It is the only way you will gain their respect.’
The serpent, the manifestation of his rage, pulled the trigger.
The trooper dropped in a boneless heap on the lawn.
Rickard waited for the alarm to be raised, but except for the distant call of a bird nothing else could be heard.
He propped the rifle against the fence, then scrambled over the top of it and into the hospital grounds.
He went directly to the dead man. He caught him under his armpits and dragged him into some nearby shrubs. There he peeled the Velcro patches from the man’s uniform, discarded the redundant SWAT insignia from his own and replaced them with the FBI ones. The uniforms weren’t exactly the same, but they were close enough. By the time anyone noticed the differences they’d only be a split second from death.