Authors: Matt Hilton
Next I wondered if I could tip forward at the end of the rope, do a mid-air headstand and feed my toes into the narrow gap between the bracket and ceiling, using the strength of my legs to suspend me while I tried to flick the rope from the hook. Yeah, right. Even if such a move were possible, it would mean dropping to the floor with nothing but the top of my head to cushion the blow.
I had to find another way.
My fingers were too numb to work on the knots. Even if I had sensation in my fingertips, the entire weight of my body had hung on those knots and had cinched them tighter than I could ever hope to loosen. I checked out the nearby worktops and calculated my chances of reaching them if I jumped, but that was a non-starter: there was not enough play in the ropes.
I was certain that Molina had used his rope device on my friends, the blood was testament to their beatings, but I doubted he’d done anything to Kirstie yet, despite his sordid bragging to the contrary. That was all so much bullshit to torment me. Even so, I believed that Kirstie’s torture was imminent, and perhaps being raped by a length of stiffened rope would be the least of her suffering. While I still breathed there was no way I’d allow it to happen. Even if that meant ripping one of my arms out of its socket, I’d never give up trying to save her. But dismemberment was low on my escape plans. There had to be something to help me, if only I could figure it out.
The only item nearby was the sodden rope Molina had discarded.
I fished for it with a big toe, trying to drag it towards me. I had the ludicrous notion that I could manipulate the thick rope between my feet, bending it and folding it so that I could form a wedge to jam under my soles and give me the extra elevation I required to gain some slack in my bindings. There was as little chance of that plan succeeding as my ideas of aerial acrobatics earlier. The rope was out of reach by about six inches, whichever way I strained and stretched.
Frustrated I threw myself back and forward, hoping that the weight of my body coupled with gravity would be enough to snap the rope or tear the hook from the bracket. It was pointless, and only served to place extra stress on my shoulders. Finally I got my toes under me once more and, bent as far as I could, I heaved in racking gasps of air. I could feel the focus of my rage altering from a need to escape to a sense of futility. In this state I was no good to anyone.
A noise brought my head up.
My contortions had brought me round to face the partly open door. Filtering through the narrow gap came the sound of footsteps in the hall. I could count only one set of feet. Whatever the urgency, Regis hadn’t held Molina’s attention for long: Molina was returning to finish what he’d started.
I steeled myself, determined that this time I’d take the beating without uttering a sound, make the bastard move closer to taunt me, where I’d then go for broke. If I killed that piece of shit, then maybe I could stand on his corpse and gain the slack I required. Yeah, right! There was about as much hope of that as of me winning the lottery, and I hadn’t even bought a ticket.
The door swung inward and a silhouette blocked the light from outside. Too big to be Jorge Molina. My heart pumped hard for a few seconds, and then it was as if a pin had popped a balloon. It wasn’t Rink come to rescue me, but James Lee Marshall who’d returned for round two. Something glinted in his right hand, and I recognised it immediately as a Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife, a weapon whose use we’d both been trained in during our Para days, and one I’d grown infinitely familiar with while at Arrowsake. He must be nostalgic about our past and wanted to kill me with a weapon I’d appreciate.
As he moved into the room, he was bathed in the sterile glare from the overhead striplights. The look on his face wasn’t one of humour, triumph, or even the stern set of one on a murder mission. It was a look of intense regret. Marshall actually looked sorry to be the one to kill me.
I stared at him as the lid drooped over his good eye. Call me crazy, but I could feel no hatred for him.
‘So Molina sent you to do his dirty work?’
‘Shut it, Hunter.’ He was sickened by what was about to happen, and I felt a bit sorry for my old mate.
‘If you’re going to do it, do it clean, OK.’
Marshall simply moved round behind me. He didn’t want to look into my face while he slipped the blade in. I contemplated kicking back at him, hoping to score a hit to his bollocks before I went, but knew Marshall wouldn’t fall for that trick. It would only piss him off and perhaps force him into wounding me sorely a few times before administering the
coup de grâce
.
Though violent death was something to fight against tooth and nail, it was always on the cards for someone engaged in my lifestyle. I’d accepted that I’d probably end up on the point of a knife or riddled with bullets sooner or later – and how I’d avoided that up to now amazed me as much as it did everyone else who knew me – and as a warrior I’d always planned to go out without regret or recrimination. Yet, I didn’t want to die like this, executed like a pig in a slaughterhouse. Not while so many others still depended upon me. Never had I begged for my life to any man, but I was on the cusp. I opened my mouth, hating the pinching in my throat as I attempted to form words.
‘I said to shut it,’ Marshall said. He grabbed my head in his left palm, forcing me to face away from him, and the dagger drove in towards the small of my back. Immediately I collapsed, the strength to stand failing me, my mind full of exploding stars and a wash of red that turned rapidly to black.
Chapter 41
Rink stood over the corpse of a man.
It wasn’t the first he’d stood astride during this long night.
The team who’d searched for him in the mountain pass had fallen to knife and gun, one of them to a broken neck. Rink had appeared in a blizzard of dust from out of a mound of grit dumped by the bucket of the excavator when Molina’s men had first moved it to launch their ambush. From behind he’d grasped the hunter’s head between his palms and wrenched it round so he was face to face with his would-be slayer. The man had died wordlessly, probably unaware that he’d even been set upon.
Rink had taken the man’s gun, blown away another punk, and then disappeared into the darkness once more.
The two that remained had no idea their friends were corpses and came on, confident that their prey was trapped in the quarry at the head of the pass. Rink allowed both of them to enter the dead end, before he dropped from the rock wall from which he hung to land on the back of the rearmost, his KA-BAR pistoning in and out of both lungs so hard he heard the crunching of ribs. The racket of snapping bone carried even if the man’s death cry didn’t. The final man turned and fired, but Rink had already moved. The bullets tore the knifed man to shreds before he could die from the blood flooding his lungs. While the final gunman stared in incredulity at his slaughtered friend, Rink knelt calmly in the shadows of the cliffs, and picked his shots that took a chunk of the man’s skull and holed his chest cavity.
Before the lights of the last car had been lost to sight, Rink was on the road in a vehicle commandeered from the ambushers. Those he followed had no idea that he could have survived the odds stacked against him, or that he was so close behind. Luck, it seemed, was in Rink’s favour when he discovered bottles of spring water, a bag of corn chips and some pistachio nuts in a cooler box. He drove, sating his thirst and hunger, if not his need for revenge. That was something to be savoured for later.
Jorge Molina and Howell Regis had gone on ahead, taking the more direct route over the mountains in the helicopter. Hunter’s old pal, James Lee Marshall, had overseen the transportation of their prisoner in the large SUV that led the pack. Not for the first time, Rink considered gaining on the caravan of cars wending their way through the passes, with the intention of launching some kind of rescue. He knew his chances of a successful result were nil, so he held back, waiting patiently for a better chance. Damn your misguided loyalty, Joe, he’d thought at first. What the hell were you thinking? Hunter had given himself up so that Rink could escape. They should have stuck closer together, and they’d have found a way out of the shoot-out. But he soon realised that Hunter’s selflessness was for another reason. Hunter knew he’d be captured, probably savagely tortured, but he’d drawn the focus of the search from Rink, allowing him this opportunity to free his friend when the odds of both of them escaping with their lives were higher. Joe probably thought that by giving Molina a target for his fury, he’d be distracted from his pursuit of Kirstie long enough for Harvey and the guys to get her and the child safely over the border. Hunter had been wrong in this: from what Rink had understood from the conversations he’d overheard while lying in hiding, Kirstie and the others had already been captured. Molina and Regis had gone on ahead so that the punks could enjoy quality time with her before Hunter was delivered to them.
The drive to Agua Prieta had taken a few minutes over an hour, and it was the longest, most nerve-racking sixty-three minutes of Rink’s eventful life. Each second was a lifetime as he thought about what pain Harvey, McTeer and Velasquez must already be enduring. Thankfully – during the drive at least – Joe wouldn’t have to tolerate much suffering, because the blow he’d taken from the rifle stock would put him to sleep all the way back. Rink’s hope was that he could release his buddy before he was delivered to Molina, but it was a hope dashed, because the SUV was driven directly into a warehouse building on the outskirt of Agua Prieta and a roller shutter closed behind it. The other vehicles in the rolling column had parked, some of the men going in, others remaining in the yard, standing guard or toking on cigarettes they passed around in celebration of a good night’s work.
The warehouse turned out to be the workshop at the rear of a butcher’s shop. How freakin’ apt, Rink had thought. He didn’t linger on the connotation of his discovery, but considered the best way in. Full-frontal attack was out of the question. Too many frog-giggin’ punks were between him and his friends to take them on, though it hurt to admit as much. Face on, guns blazing, numbers’d simply overwhelm him. So he had but a single recourse. Cut the freakin’ numbers.
And so it had begun.
This was the third man to fall beneath his blade since arriving in Agua Prieta, and still he hadn’t made enough of an impact on those blocking his route inside. So get the hell on with your job, he admonished himself.
He was collecting weapons as he progressed, but there were only so many handguns he could shove into his pants before they became an encumbrance. He left the latest gun lying beside the dead man and moved off, heading for an alleyway that ran the length of the warehouse. Parked cars and vans offered some cover, but there were gaps between each. Across these spaces he’d to time his runs, but he made it to the corner of the building undetected. The sun had come up, but in the alley, the second wall of which was formed from a furniture storage unit, day was yet to arrive. Rink still wore the black garb in which he’d first assaulted Molina’s compound at Hermosillo, having discarded the more colourful clothing stolen from the rooftop laundry. He was practically invisible as he cat-footed down the alley and checked for the fire exit door he’d expected to find. But it was obvious that people who tortured and murdered had no care for rules, let alone fire safety regulations: the door was locked and barred with chains. It offered no ingress. Above him was a row of narrow windows, but they looked as if they hadn’t been opened in decades. In any case, even if they did open, he’d need to lose fifty pounds in weight and many inches off his shoulders. He searched higher; saw that the roof overhung the supporting walls by about a handspan. There was no guttering, only the bare edges of tin sheets that formed the roof. If he could find a way up there then he could possibly force a sheet from the joists and climb inside the attic space, then downward to where his friends were held. But there were no downspouts or ladders that he could see.
Pointless groaning; you had to make your own luck in this business. He continued along the alley, pausing at the front corner. Listening. He counted three voices, but there could easily be more men guarding the front; more obtuse guys who had nothing good to say. Holding a gun in his right hand, his knife in the left, he moved out from the wall far enough that neither would make contact with the hard surface and betray his position. Then he slowly leaned out, checking numbers and positions of sentries.
There were four guys and one woman.
Ordinarily women were off Rink’s killing radar, but this bitch was heavily armed and looked as cold-hearted as the men she stood guard alongside. He’d prefer not to kill her but if the choice was between her and his friends, then to hell with her. Females weren’t known as the deadliest of the species for nothing.
As he considered his best course of action another man emerged. Unlike the rest, who were all Mexicans, this man was Caucasian, and probably one of Marshall’s mercenaries. The guy had a machine-gun across his chest, his hands clutching his webbing vest as he stood near to the others. They didn’t invite him into their conversation or to share a cigarette, but eyed him with open belligerence. They were allies, but only loosely, Rink recalled.