Honorable Assassin (19 page)

Cann River was only five kilometers away but
there was no place to hide the van there. It was a service town and
the only reason for its existence was that it marked the confluence
of the Monaro Highway and Princes Highway. Instead of turning west
on Princes Highway as he had intended, Terry took Tamboon Road
south and pulled off into an orchard. He backed the van around so
he could see the road but could not be approached unseen from the
road, took a deep breath and shut off the van.

“
Christ, I’m in it now. At least one
witness drove off. He saw the van. My pistols are hot now but I got
no other weapons. The paperwork said PVC but those men were not
stealing piping. It’s got to be drugs of some kind and if I get
caught with them I’m done for. If I don’t deliver, they’ll think I
stole it and I’m done for. Shit. Is there a map in there?”
It
turned out there was a map in the glove compartment but there was
nothing but farm roads south of Cann River and none of them led
anywhere.
“Shit. The manifest in the truck will lead them right
to the destination. Oh, hell. I left that in my pocket, good. I
can’t go to Melbourne or I’ll be in it with the constables. North
then. Find a spot. Make a call.”
Once again, to decide was to
implement and Terry headed back to Princes Highway and north from
there. About 30 kilometers away he pulled off onto a dirt track in
the Alfred National Park and pulled back as far as he could, about
four kilometers. Then he tried to make the call but there was no
service.

Terry got out of the van and slipped into
the woods. He did not think he had been followed, but there may
have been a tracker in the van. It was only a matter of minutes
before he heard another vehicle making its way down the dirt track
road. From the condition of the road, it could not have seen more
than a dozen vehicles a year, and most passenger cars would have
gotten stuck in the mud if they went any further. The sound of the
engine stopped and Terry knew he was right. He reached in his
pocket and pulled out two shells to replace the ones he had used,
slipping the empty brass into a hole in a log.

It did not take long to determine that his
current target was not the same class of clumsy buffoons as he had
shot earlier. He had slipped out of the Land Rover and had not
closed the door, let alone slammed it. He had slipped into the
woods on the far side of the trail from Terry and was undoubtedly
making his way toward the van.

If Terry disabled the Land Rover he would
not be able to get around it to get out. He was not sure he could
go much further down the road in the van as the track degraded
badly further on. Also, he wanted the Rover. The van had been
marked but he did not think the Rover had. It was a perfect swap,
all he had to do was kill the man who had driven it and that should
not be a problem.

The track was not easy to follow initially.
The man had some skills for forest work. As it got closer to the
van and the ground got damper, the footprints were easier to pick
out. Terry was stepping over a fallen log when he heard the voice
behind him.

“Ye’ll be stopping right there. If you make
one untoward move I shall kill you where you stand.” The voice had
a heavy brogue that Terry had heard before.

“You must be the Scotsman who’s been taking
pictures.” Terry said without turning around.

“Aye, and you’ll be the Aussie who almost
got hijacked. Now drop your weapons. Do not think for a minute I
will hesitate to kill you.”

Terry dropped his pistols in front of him
thinking the log would make good cover but his captor was having
none of it.

“Back yourself off that log and move toward
me slowly, backward. I want to see your hands at all times. You may
be driving but yer no driver. Good. Now take off your vest. Turn
around.”

Terry turned around and looked right into
the barrel of a 9mm automatic. “You’re very good in the woods,” he
said. “Not many men can sneak up on me.”

“You still have a lot to learn. I didn’t
sneak up on you, I merely let you slink past me and there I was,
behind you.”

“Who are you, really?”

“That’s not important. Let’s just say I’m
your guardian angel.”

“You shot the men back there at the
truck?”

“Aye, that is to say I shot three of them.
You shot once that I heard, but you were the only man that came out
of those woods. No, you’re no driver.”

“And you’re no photographer so let’s come
clean. You didn’t shoot me when you had the chance, then, and you
didn’t shoot me now, so I think you won’t be shooting me.”

“I’m thinking you were planning on shooting
me,” the Scotsman said with a crooked grin.

“I was. I didn’t know but that you were just
another member of whatever team it was that tried to kill me and
take my load.”

“If I find it necessary I will kill you, but
I don’t see it now. Your pistols are dirty, now, right? Both of
them?”

“Yes. If I had another I would have tossed
them into a river.”

“Pick them up, one at a time, two fingers.
Crack them and empty the shells into your hand. Now put the shells
in your pocket. Give it to me. Now the other one. Keep the pistols
in your holsters and put your vest back on. We need to get rid of
them where they won’t be found. They’ll be searching the rivers
around the bridges. An area like this has nothing happen for 10
years and when it does they get onto it like a terrier with a rat.
We need to move and we need to move now. We leave the van here, but
first, I want to know what is in the crate. Walk in front of me and
don’t even consider putting your hand in your pocket.”

“You never told me who you are.”

“And you don’t need to know. Call me
Glasgow.”

Back at the van Terry found an old-fashioned
jack handle that could be used as a crowbar and he opened the
crate. Inside was a load of heroin.

“You didn’t think it was plumbing, did you?”
asked the Australian.

“No. I knew she wasn’t plumbing.”

“Would you have taken the job if you knew
you were hired by drug dealers?” Terry cocked an eye at Gordon,
attempting to gauge his reaction as well as his words.

“A job’s a job. I always see the job
through, regardless of what it is. I was told that someone using
the name Irishman was playing hob with the legitimate concerns of
the Brothers Troy. I suspected something was foul but a job’s a
job.”

“What now?”

“Well, lad…”

“I’m nobody’s boy.”

“No, and that you’re not. Mate, then. What
we do now is deliver the load, mate. The van stays here. We’ll set
them on it later. We need to put the load in the Land Rover and
deliver it. You see, my job is not done. I contracted to find the
Irishman and I have not yet done that. We did manage to remove some
fools from the scene, but unless I miss my guess, none of them was
the man I’m after.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The man I’m after destroys the product or
leaves it for the bobbies. Those men were stealing it. They were
after the load for their own ends, not to hurt the business but to
profit from it. No, those fools had nothing to do with the
Irishman.”

Halfway back to the road, the Scotsman had
Terry stop the Rover and bury the revolvers off the trail after
wiping them clean of prints. The rest of the trip was uneventful.
The men at the destination were suspicious but that was cleared up
with a phone call.

Terry spent the first part of the trip
looking for a way to get the drop on his new accomplice. That
proved to be impossible, or at least too dangerous to attempt,
especially with a crate of heroin in the back of the vehicle. It
was not too long before the Scotsman’s wit and casual manner
impressed Terry a great deal. He was already impressed by the man’s
hunting skills. He decided that he could have done worse for a
partner. He also decided that he would kill this Glasgow soon. It
is always beneficial to know who is hunting you, it evens up the
playing field.

After the delivery, the day was done. The
two checked into a motel for the night, planning on driving back to
Sydney the following day. The telephone call was placed from
Terry’s room and a message was left. The number went straight to a
message pager. The phone rang with the return call about a beer and
a half later.

“Glasgow here. Yes, sir, we have thwarted an
attempt to highjack the load. The truck was disabled and had to be
left on the scene, unfortunately. No, sir, I do not wish to have
this conversation on the telephone. Yes, sir, Mr. Barber acquitted
himself with style. It would be my pleasure. We will see you
tomorrow evening then. Thank you very much, sir.” The Scot hung up
the phone and turned to Terry, “Mr. Troy says you are to get a
bonus for actions above and beyond the call of duty.”

“Which one?”

“Which what?”

“Which Troy did you speak with?”

“Well, it wasn’t actually one of them at
all, it was a subordinate. I’m sure he has sufficient swing to
authorize a bonus, however.”

“I’m sure he does, I just like to know who
I’m dealing with.”

“You’ll meet him tomorrow evening. He wants
to meet you personally. In the mean time, we need to get something
to eat or we’ll get drunk.

It seemed to be in each man’s interest to
get the other drunk, as well as it was in each man’s interest to
keep himself sober. Terry wanted to know everything he could about
this new card in the deck and the Scot wanted to know where Terry
had learned to track and fight. Neither of them wanted to tell the
other anything and the night turned onto a cat and mouse game of
lying and telling more lies to cover up the lies that had already
been told. Before long, they had told so many lies they had
forgotten half of what they said and more of what they heard.

Morning came and the men rolled out of their
beds. The motel had a pot of coffee brewing in the office and
breakfast was a short way off.

“When are you planning to go to the police
with your story?” the redhead wanted to know over eggs and
sausage.

“Shit. I hate dealing with them but I
suppose I’m going to need to. I’ll need a barrister on hand if I’m
to be interrogated.”

“Let me make another call. It may not be
necessary. Did the paperwork list you as the driver of record?”

“Well, yes, but I have that in my
pocket.”

“Then that load got hijacked, plain and
simple. Let me make that call.”

Gordon called from a pay phone instead of
the motel phone, but he was clearly unsure about the sanctity of
the phone at the other end of the line. He made some inquiries
about the dead men on the Monaro Highway. Who did they work for?
What was their capacity? He finished up with the questions, “Oh,
then he was the man driving the truck? And he was killed in the
hijacking? And the load was never delivered? “He hung up the phone
and said, “All right, Mr. Barber, you are cleared. It seems one of
the unfortunate victims of the robbery was the driver in question
and the load of polyvinylchloride is now on the black market.”

“Brilliant.”

“Not so. Did you sign anything in Canberra
where you picked up the load?”

“I think so.”

“Mmm. We need to stop there on the way north
to adjust the paperwork.”

Once they were on the road, there was
nothing to do but talk so they did a lot of it. Terry was full of
questions about what his new associate did for a living. It was not
a security guard job that caused people to shoot each other with
high-powered rifles.

“You are an assassin, right?”

“That is a term I have heard applied to my
class of gentleman adventurer before, though it is not one I
prefer.”

“Mercenary, then?”

“That is also appropriate.”

“How is it you came to this profession?”

“I was in the Military. Royal Scots
Dragoons, as was my father. He made a career of it until it killed
him, I decided on money over honor and became a freelance.”

“You’ve seen action then?”

“Aye…” It looked as though he would not say
more and then started speaking anyway. “I stopped counting the
number of men I’d killed. It’s not the men though. It’s when you
need to kill women and children that makes it so bad.”

“You’ve killed children?”

“Aye. When I had to. We all did what we had
to, or we never came home. Many of us never did. I’d like not to
talk about it.”

“Very well. What you do now, I have some
familiarity with it.”

“I know you drive a truck but there is
something else, something driving you that is not money or laziness
or drugs. Not one of the usual motivations for blackguards.”

“Is that what you think I am? A
blackguard?”

“You transport loads for a living. You
suspect what they are, but you do nothing about it, so you are a
blackguard.”

“And what if I had a different agenda?”

“Then you would not… Is there something here
I am supposed to know?”

“No. I am just a blackguard truck
driver.”

The two men fell silent. Something had just
happened and neither knew exactly what. A curtain had fallen
between them. They knew each other a very short time. They had
developed respect for each other but not trust. Each recognized
that they had said too much and there was no way to take it
back.

When they reached the warehouse in Canberra
the dock clerk fished out the paperwork in question. The only thing
that really saved Terry was that he had not left his copy in the
truck. The paperwork was officially changed to read Byron Burger
instead of Thompson Barber. Byron Burger had been found dead on the
side of the road the day before. Terry and Glasgow had a short
conference with the plant manager. The manager was understanding
and compliant. An emergency load of PVC had been sent south the
previous day. Byron Burger had driven it. It had been hijacked and
Byron was killed.