Killer Instincts v5 (4 page)

He doesn't even glance in my direction. "Go on then, I've got this old sow covered."

"C'mon, James. Let's introduce you to the ladies."

"Fuckin' A, Will! I bet getting rescued is a real panty-dropper."

"Easy, tiger. Those ladies are precious cargo."

Weapons at the ready, we descend into the bowels of the slave ship; a couple of guns for hire, covered in blood and reeking of cordite.

Several hours later, I find myself standing on the corpse-strewn deck, my sneakers soaked with gore, my clothes stinking of rust, diesel fumes, and cordite. Andre is lifting the last of the freed women off of the freighter’s deck. I look up, squinting against the rotor-wash and see Maryanne Steiger give me a shy wave as the Colibri helicopter flies away in the light of dawn.

I look around the battlefield of the top deck. James and Tommy stand nearby, keeping a wary eye on the deck hatches in the unlikely event that someone is still alive down in the bowels of the ship and looking for a fight. I’ve got my Uzi slung across my back, my gloved hands holding onto the railing, and I turn to look out over the ocean, staring north. The sea is mirror-calm this morning, and as far out as we are, there is nothing but glassy blue water around us as far as the eye can see. Even Steiger’s yacht is over the horizon, far away from the freighter in case another ship appears and decides to investigate.

Tommy walks over to me, his Galil assault rifle still in hand, and motions behind him to a canvas-wrapped bundle on the deck.

“Will, I think it’s time.”

I nodded. Kenneth’s body will be buried at sea. We have no easy way of getting his corpse back to the States, and Richard told me there would be no one willing to take possession of it anyhow. The three of us drag the bundle containing Kenneth’s body, weapons, and wargear to the railing. We look at each other, unsure if we want to say any words before the final act. Finally, James clears his throat.

“He seemed like, a pretty hardcore guy. I would’ve worked with him again.”

Tommy and I mutter agreement. On three, we heave the bundle into the ocean, where it disappears with a soft splash. Weighed down with weapons and ten yards of chain, the body sinks instantly, and within a heartbeat the sea is again mirror-calm.

We stand there for a moment, looking down into the water. This might be James’ first loss on an assignment, but for Tommy and I, this is all too familiar. I think back to the men who bought it in Afghanistan, the guys who died in Mexico, then all the other losses over the years. Most were men I had only met a few times, if ever before. Men whose lives and back stories I barely knew, whose names were simply “Kenneth” or “Mikey” or sometimes just a nickname. Men who were often left to lay where they died, carrying no identification, no personal effects that could be traced back to their place of origin. Just broken meat.

Andre’s helicopter has now disappeared over the horizon. Tommy is softly singing a hymn or lament to himself, and James has the streaks of tears running down his cheeks. I give him a soft smile and he wipes them away, not wanting to look weak, but I shake my head.

“Better to feel sad than feel nothing at all,” I say to him.

James nods, returns my smile.

“Will, you going back to the States after this?” He asks.

I take a moment to glance at my watch; it's 6:02 AM. I do a little bit of mental arithmetic.

Well, what do you know? Happy 31st birthday to me.

The last ten years have passed by so fast. I guess time flies when you're killing for fun and profit.

I shake my head, looking north again, off to the horizon. Steiger will be returning to Europe now that this is all over.

“No. I think I’ll visit Paris.”

TWO

The second semester of my junior year, I met Beth Callahan in my Global Economics class. I had seen her around campus here and there, and I considered her a real sexpot; ripe curves in all the right places, dark red hair, green eyes and a light dusting of freckles. Her smile was a mile wide and she had this way of laughing and sticking the tip of her tongue out between her teeth that just sent my hormones into overdrive. Two weeks into the semester and we were fucking, that perfect storm of mutual sexual chemistry that just kicked us both into carnal overdrive whenever we were in proximity to each other. When a month went by and we were still enjoying each other's company, we allowed ourselves to consider it a relationship, and her present to me on my 21st birthday that February was letting me call her "my girlfriend".

Spring break was approaching, and I considered my parent's promise to send me to Paris for the week, all expenses paid, after the previous semester's A average. I brought Beth down from Boston to meet my family, arriving in Providence with a plan in place to get her included in my travel package. The dinner that evening went very well, and Beth was full-on charming. She talked about the possibility of law school with my dad, including internship possibilities at his firm. When she’d sufficiently charmed my old man, Beth brought up the other possibility of an MBA program with my mom, and the two of them discussed a future in banking. Beth even asked my sister about her plans after high school, mostly what colleges and degree programs looked the most appealing, and if she wanted to go to Boston or New York, or perhaps head out west?

I don't know how she managed to do it, but the bedroom animal who drove me crazy with lust was transformed into a polite and demure little thing, the very picture of modesty and decorum. I believe my mom wasn't fooled but accepted the polite fiction with a resigned understanding that her son was a red-blooded man away from home and would do what he wanted with whom he wanted. My father's only acknowledgment that the jig was up consisted of the slightest nod, a tumbler of scotch raised a couple of inches in salute, and the most nonchalant wink I'd ever seen. My sister, I could tell, was in a state of complete torment. My parents no doubt locked her down like Fort Knox so she wouldn't embarrass me, probably threatening a whole laundry list of punishments for even the slightest of comments. She strained at the bars of her verbal captivity the whole evening, but never once broke loose.

The entire evening I had been concocting and discarding a dozen different plans that I could hatch in order for Beth and I to screw while still under my parent's roof. But Beth was far smarter than I was. She could see the brass ring ready for the taking and knew that I'd try to do something to fuck it all up. As we were getting ready to head our separate ways for the night, she leaned in close and whispered in my ear.

"Keep it in your pants tonight, tiger, and I'll make it up to you in Paris."

I kept it in my pants, and the next morning, my Dad let slip to me in private that if things were still good with the two of us come mid-March, my parents would be glad to pay for Beth and I to go to Paris for spring break.

"Your mother feels that it would be cruel to break the two of you up and send you to Paris for a week while Beth was left behind. She told me 'Michael, Paris is for lovers, not loners'. So enjoy yourselves, okay?"

My parents were too fucking cool.

I don't remember much of Paris, all things considered. Little bistros and coffee shops, long walks down cobblestone streets. Kissing at the top of the Eiffel Tower and in the middle of the Louvre. Beth and I couldn't keep our hands off of each other, and she joked that we were missing all of Paris because we spent too much time in the hotel. I pled guilty to that charge, because I couldn't go for more than a few hours without dragging her back to our room and having at it. She was pure sexual adrenaline to me. What I do remember most of the first four days was Beth's face floating above mine, flushed and glowing with perspiration as she looked down, straddling me on the hotel bed. It was her favorite position, and I wasn’t complaining, either.

The call came Wednesday morning around 9 AM. Beth and I had screwed maybe an hour before, showered, and then elected to go back to bed for an hour or two, no doubt meaning to go at it again before we finally left for the day. The hotel phone rang, and I wondered if someone complained about the noise. Beth would often tease me by being loud, real porno movie loud, just because she knew it embarrassed me thinking that some poor family next door might be subjected to our fornicating. I answered the phone with a fervent apology on my lips, only to be told in broken English that the front desk was transferring a call from a Jamie Lynch in America.

When I heard my uncle's voice on the other end of the line, coming from so very far away, my mind suddenly cleared from the fog of sex and sleep and I did a brief bit of mental math, realizing that it was three o'clock in the morning on the East Coast.

"William," Jamie said to me, his voice strangely detached and cold, "there's been an accident. A fire."

"Is everyone okay?" I asked.

It was the dumbest question I could have possibly come up with. If anyone was okay, it wouldn't be my estranged uncle calling from the backwoods of Maine at three in the morning. My uncle let out a long, tired sigh, the kind you only ever hear when it precedes the worst kind of news.

"No William. They're all gone. No one made it out alive. Your parents and sister, they're dead."

I don't recall much of the remaining conversation. Even now, years later, all I remember was sitting on the edge of the bed, with my head in one hand and the phone in the other, asking my uncle a series of senseless questions. Was he sure they were dead? Was he sure it was our house? It really was a fire? No one was left? He really was sure it was our family? Not the house next door?

Beth, dear Beth, slowly and with infinite care, wrapped herself around me on the bed. Her breasts pressed against my back, her chin rested gently on my shoulder, her temple against mine, her arms wrapped around my shoulders, her legs wrapped around my hips. I could feel her tears falling down my chest, and I thought how sweet she was to cry for me, because for no reason I could think of, I was not crying. Not one tear fell as I babbled away at my uncle on the phone.

Finally Jamie asked if there was anyone with me, and if so, could he speak to them? I handed the phone over my shoulder to Beth, and heard her voice, shaky and small next to my ear. There was a short conversation and then Beth hung up the phone. I noticed a change in her. She was no longer sobbing and grieving but instead, she was afraid, trembling even. She had the look of someone who was an arm's length away from a viper, trying to remain calm and failing miserably.

"Your uncle says he wants you to stay in Paris for a few more weeks."

"Why?" I asked. "I gotta go back...a funeral, there's going to be a funeral. I have to go back."

"He...he said it might not be safe," Beth replied. Her voice was quavering.

I wasn’t understanding her. "But the fire will be out, they would have taken care of that. I don't understand."

Beth shook her head. "No, he meant, it's not safe for you to go back home. It might not have been an accident. Your family might have been killed because of your father's work. It might be because of a trial."

That was a moment of clarity for me. All the cobwebs that had been spun through my mind over the last few terrible minutes just blew away. I stood up and looked down at Beth, so beautiful and sorrowful and terrified. There must have been something dark and cold in my eyes now, because she drew the covers up to her chin and hid her nudity from me.

"Is that what he said? That they were killed? Is that what he told you?"

Beth buried her face in the covers and nodded frantically.

I walked over to my luggage, dug around and pulled out my little black leather address book. I looked up my uncle's number and called down to the front desk, asking them to put me back through to him.

"Jamie, I want to know what happened," I asked. There was no sadness in my voice, no sorrow, no quaver. I might as well have been telling a classmate to go over an assignment again.

I heard my uncle make a strange sound on the other end of the line. It was a dry, humorless, evil sort of chuckle, the sound a man makes when he sees something bad about to happen that's going to bring him great satisfaction. It was the sort of laugh you made knowing your favorite prizefighter is about to destroy his unsuspecting opponent, and you've got a ringside seat. Jamie knew, although at the time I didn't, that I had just climbed over the ropes and stepped into the ring.

THREE

I left Paris the day before Jamie buried my family. On his advice, I checked out of my hotel, put Beth on a plane back to the states, withdrew an absolutely ridiculous amount of money through the first bank I could find, and took a train out of Paris. I regretted not spending more time seeing the city, but it was dead to me now, and I needed to get out as soon as I could. I traveled instead to Calais, found myself a small coastal inn that had a room for rent, and settled in for the time being.

The first thing that surprised me was that I didn't drown myself in wine or brandy or something even harder. I spent most of my time walking the city, soaking up its architecture and history, eating in tiny cafés and watching the sun set over the Atlantic Ocean. I feasted on steamed mussels in garlic and butter, coc au fin, pot au feu, and many other French dishes with names I can’t remember. I sampled a variety of amazing wines with my meals, but never more than a glass or two. I even tried to pick up a few words of French, although I utterly failed as I had no ear for that tongue and still don't today. It was actually the vacation I should have had, and even to this day I am still bitter at the fact that Beth and I wasted our time in Paris on something as transient as sex. While the coupling might have been incredible, we missed out on so many other memories, so many other moments that we could have carried with us as we moved on to our separate lives.

I stayed in Calais for two weeks before Jamie came to visit. He flew in to Paris and took the train like I did, and met me for lunch at a seaside bistro where I had picked an outdoor table with a great view of the English Channel. It was a beautiful day, warm but with a light breeze and not a cloud in the sky. Seagulls floated lazily in the air along the water's edge, and old French couples and young American tourists were scattered along the beach. I was having a lunch of steamed mussels in a garlic and wine sauce, a fresh baguette and butter, and a nice bottle of Semillon, decanted and breathing when I saw Jamie arrive, walking through the restaurant and emerging into the sunlight.