It was Loretta Hoyle, Nicholas Hoyle’s deceased daughter, now apparently back from the dead.
‘The last time we saw her, she was being eaten by hogs, right?’ said Angel.
‘That’s right.’
‘She’s looking good on it.’
But already Louis was on his feet.
‘We’ve been set up,’ he said. ‘We’re out of here.’
Lynott and Marsh were sitting in their Tahoe. It turned out that they had certain shared tastes in music, among other things. Marsh had brought his iPod, and the stereo had an MP3 socket, so they were now listening to Stan Getz’s Voices. It was a little too close to the middle of the road for Lynott and did not, he felt, represent Getz at his best, but it was restful and suited his mood. From where they sat, just off a woodcutter’s trail, they could see any cars that might pass before them, and part of the bridge on the other side of the road, but they remained invisible among the trees. Only someone approaching from the west on foot would have a chance of seeing them, and then only if he got up close. In the event of that happening, the person in question would have reason to regret his proximity.
On the backseat of the Tahoe were eleven pint bottles of water, a large flask of coffee, four prepacked sandwiches, and some muffins and candy bars. Again, this was Marsh’s doing. Lynott had to give him credit for thinking ahead, even if he was starting to regret having some of the coffee and one of the bottles of water from the twelve-pack.
‘I need to take a leak,’ he said. ‘You want me to do it in the empty bottle?’
Marsh looked at Lynott as if he had just asked to take a leak on him.
‘Now why would I want you to do that? You think I get off on seeing men urinate in bottles? I don’t even get off on women doing that.’
‘Just thought I’d ask,’ said Lynott. ‘Some guys are sticklers for staying with the vehicle.’
‘Not when it comes to anything below the waist I’m not. Go find yourself a little privacy.’
Lynott did as he was told. It was good to stretch his legs, and the air was cool and smelled of green leaves and clear water. He walked slowly into the woods, moving perpendicular to the gradient, taking care not to slip on the wet ground and fallen leaves. He found a suitable tree, then took a look over his shoulder to make sure that he still had the Tahoe in sight before turning his back and unzipping his fly. The only sound in the forest was the none-too-gentle trickle of liquid upon wood, and Lynott’s accompanying sigh of relief and contentment.
Suddenly, a third sound was added to the mix: the shattering of glass, and a noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a cough. Lynott identified it immediately, and his gun was in his right hand even as he used his left to tuck his member back into his pants, ignoring the unwelcome trickle that accompanied the move. He took two steps before something impacted on the back of his skull, and then he was dead before he even realized that he was dying.
Angel resisted telling Louis that he’d told him so.
They moved along opposite sides of the cattle pens, their guns always moving, sighting down the barrels on the empty doorways, the dark windows, alert for even the slightest sign of movement.
They reached the barn unchallenged. It seemed unchanged from when they had left it, its doors closed to hide the car within. They paused and listened intently, but heard nothing. Louis signaled to Angel to open the left door, counting down from three. Angel’s mouth was dry, and there was an ache in his belly. He licked some perspiration from his upper lip as Louis’s fingers silently made the count then, as the final finger fell, he yanked the door open.
‘It’s clear,’ said Louis, then added, ‘but it’s not good.’
The car was resting too low to the ground on one side, like a lopsided smile. The tires on the right had both been slashed. The driver’s side window had been broken, and the hood had been raised and then allowed to fall back down without locking. Louis remained at the door, keeping watch, while Angel moved inside. He could detect no movement. An empty field stretched from the back of the barn toward the forest, but he could make out little in the distance apart from the shapes of the trees.
Angel squatted in front of the car and carefully raised the hood a fraction. He took a tiny Maglite from his pocket, switched it on, and held it between his teeth before picking up a piece of wood from the ground and slowly running it along the gap between the body of the car and the hood. There were no wires that he could find. He raised the hood a little farther with his left hand and, with the flashlight in his right, examined the engine. He could see no springs, no pads, no devices that might be activated by the raising of the hood. Nevertheless, he drew a deep breath before he lifted the hood fully. It took him only a moment to figure out what had been done. He could smell it before he saw it.
‘They blew the fuse panel,’ he said. ‘This baby isn’t going anywhere.’
‘Guess we walk.’
‘Kids?’
‘You see the local gangbangers while we was passing through?’
‘No, but this is, like, rural. Maybe they were hiding.’
‘Yeah, ’cause they was so scared of the big city boys.’
Louis took one last look around, then stepped into the garage and headed straight for the trunk of the car. He put his finger upon the release button, then paused before pushing it and glanced at Angel.
‘There was nothing up front,’ said Angel.
‘That’s reassuring. Maybe you want to take a couple of steps away, just in case.’
‘Hey, if you go, I go too.’
‘Maybe I don’t want you to go too.’
‘You want someone to mourn for you later?’
‘No, I just don’t want you with me for eternity. Now step the fuck back.’
Angel moved away. Louis hit the button, flinching only slightly as he did so. The trunk popped open, and Louis swore. Angel joined him.
Together, they stared into the trunk.
Weis and Blake had no music in their car, and they had long ago exhausted their store of mutual acquaintances. It did not trouble either of them. They were men who valued silence. Although, true to form, neither had said it aloud, each admired the other’s essential stillness. The inability to remain quiet and unmoving for long was one of the reasons why Weis detested Lynott. Their paths had last crossed in Chad, where they had nominally been fighting on the same side, but Weis considered Lynott to be unprofessional, a thief and a man of low morals. But then, Weis was a man who hated easily, and already he had begun to notice Blake’s breathing which, stillness or no stillness, he felt was uncomfortably loud. There was nothing to be done about it, he supposed, short of suffocating him, and that seemed like an overreaction, even to Weis.
Curiously, Blake was thinking exactly the same thing about Weis but, unlike him, he was not a man who felt compelled to simmer quietly. He turned to Weis.
‘Hey –’ he said, and then the passenger side window exploded beside Weis’s head, the roar of the shotgun almost deafening Blake in his left ear, and suddenly Weis had a head no longer. A warm redness descended on Blake as Weis’s torso toppled toward him, but by then Blake was already below window level, yanking the door handle and tumbling to the ground, his gun in his hand as he fired blindly, his vision clouded by Weis’s blood, knowing that the noise and the fear of a stray round hitting its target might be enough to buy him crucial seconds. He must have been lucky, he realized, for as he blinked the blood away he saw a man in a green and brown camouflage poncho fall to the dirt, but Blake didn’t stop to take in what he had done. All that mattered was to keep moving. If he stopped, he would die. He felt pain in his head and shoulder, and knew that some of the pellets must have hit him, but a combination of Weis and his good fortune in being seated a little farther forward than his late companion had saved him from the worst of the blast.
Shots impacted around him as he ran, and one passed so close to his left cheek that he felt the heat of its passage and thought that he could almost see the bullet
as it flew, a spinning mass of gray tearing the air apart. Then the trees were growing thicker around him, and another shotgun blast shredded a branch not far from his head, but he kept moving, veering from left to right and back again as he went, using the trees for cover, giving them no clear shot at him. He heard the sounds of their pursuit, but he did not look back. To do that, he would have to stop, and if he stopped they would have him.
He took a deep breath into his lungs, preparing for a burst of speed that might buy him more vital time, and then his face collided with a hard object, and his nose broke and his teeth shattered, and for a moment he was blinded once again, this time by white light, not blood. He fell backward, but even as he did so his instinct for survival remained sharp, for he held on to the gun as he hit the ground and fired in the direction of the collision. He heard someone grunt, and then a body fell upon him, pinning him to the ground. The white light was fading now, and there was fresh pain in its place. The man was spasming against him, blood pouring from his mouth. Blake pushed him off, twisting his lower body to use both his own weight and the dying man’s to free himself of the burden. He staggered to his feet, still dizzy from the force of the blow that he had received, and the first shot took him in the upper back, spinning him and sending him to the ground again. He tried to raise the gun but his arm wouldn’t support the weight, and he could only lift it a couple of inches. Somehow he found the strength to fire, but the force of the recoil caused him to scream in agony and, involuntarily, he released his grip on the gun. He tried to lean over and reach for it with his left, but another bullet struck him, passing through his left arm and into his chest. He fell back upon the leaves and stared at the trees and the dark skies above.
A man’s head appeared before him, his face obscured by a black ski mask. Two blue eyes blinked curiously at him. Then a third eye appeared, black and without emotion, and this one did not blink, not even as its pupil became a bullet and brought Blake’s pain to an end.
Two bodies had been crammed into the trunk of Louis’s car. The last of the season’s flies had already found them. Abigail Endall had been blasted in the chest. There was a lot of damage, the peppering at the edges of the wound and the shredding of her shirt suggesting the shot had been fired from a short distance away, enough to allow the pellets to spread but not enough to dissipate the force of the blast. Her husband had been killed at close range with a single pistol shot to the head, the gun held so close to his forehead that there were blistering and powder burns around the wound. Abigail’s eyes were half closed, as though she were trapped between waking and sleeping.
‘Help me get them out,’ said Louis.
He leaned into the trunk, but Angel stopped him with the palm of his hand.
‘Shit,’ said Louis.
Once again, Angel took the Maglite and the stick and used it to check beneath the bodies as best he could. When he was satisfied that the corpses were not booby-trapped in any way, they first removed Abigail, who was lying on top of her husband, then Philip. The matting beneath the bodies had been pulled back, and a series of hidden clips had been activated in the base of the trunk, releasing the panels in the base and sides. The weapons stored there, and all of their ammunition, were gone. The spare tire had also been slashed, as a further precaution.
Angel looked at Louis, and said: ‘What now?’
Hara and Harada didn’t make it much farther than Massena, and in that they were both unlucky and lucky: unlucky in the sense that they were now unable to participate any further in Louis’s operation, and unluckier still when a routine search of their vehicle revealed their cache of weapons. The cops declined to give them the benefit of the doubt, and they ended up in a cell in the Massena police department on Main Street while the chief figured out what to do with them, and thus their lives were saved.
Slowly, Angel and Louis approached the barn doors.
‘One hundred feet,’ said Louis.
‘What is?’
‘Distance between here and the forest to the east.’
‘If they’re waiting for us, they’ll take us as soon as we leave.’
‘You want them to take us here instead?’
Angel shook his head.
‘You go left, I go right,’ said Louis. ‘You run, and you don’t stop, no matter what. We clear?’
‘Yeah, we’re clear.’
Louis nodded. ‘See you on the other side,’ he said.
And they ran.
III
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, III, v
16
Gabriel opened his eyes. For a few moments, he had no awareness of where he was. There were unfamiliar sounds, and he was surrounded by too much white. This was not home: home was reds and purples and blacks, like the interior of a body, a cocoon of blood and muscle and tendon. Now, that protection had been stripped away, leaving his consciousness vulnerable and isolated in this strange sterile environment.
His responses were so sluggish that it took him time to recognize that he was in pain. It was dull, and it seemed to have no single locus, but it was there. His mouth was very dry. He tried to move his tongue, but it was stuck to his palate. Slowly, he formed spittle to release it, then licked his lips. He could not move his head more than an inch to the right or the left, not at first, and, anyway, it hurt him to do so. Instead, he worked on his arms, his hands, his fingers, his toes. As he did so, he tried to remember how he had come to be here. He had almost no recollection of anything that had happened after he had left Louis in the bar.
No, wait, there was something: a stumble, an old man’s fear of falling, then a burning, like hot coals inserted deep into the core of his being. And sounds, faint but still audible, like the popping of distant balloons. Gunshots.
There were stinging sensations in the back of his left hand and in the crook of his right arm. He saw the drip needle in the soft skin on the right, then took in the green plastic connector at the top of the second needle that had been inserted into a vein in the back of his hand. He thought that he might have vague memories of waking before now, of lights shining in his eyes, of nurses and doctors bustling around him. In the interim, he had dreamed, or perhaps it had all been a dream.
Like most men, Gabriel had heard the myth that one’s life flashed before one’s eyes in the moments before death. In reality, as he had felt the cold rasp of death’s scythe cutting through the air close by his face, its chill in stark contrast to the burning that had followed the impact of the bullets, he had experienced no such visions. Now, as he pieced together what had occurred, he recalled only a vague sense of surprise, as though he had bumped into a stranger on a street and, looking into his face to apologize, had recognized an old acquaintance, his arrival long anticipated.
No, the events of his life had come to him only later as he lay in a drug-induced stupor on the hospital bed, the narcotics causing the real and the imagined to mingle and interweave, so that he saw his now-departed wife surrounded by the children they had never had, an imaginary existence the absence of which brought no sense of regret. He saw young men and women dispatched to end the lives of others, but in his dreams only the dead returned, and they spoke no words of blame for he felt no guilt at what he had done. For the most part, he had rescued them from lives that might otherwise have finished in prisons or poor men’s bars. Some of them had come to violent ends through Gabriel’s intervention, but that ending had been written for them long before they met him. He had merely altered the place of their termination, and the duration and fulfilment of the life that preceded it. They were his Reapers, his laborers in the field, and he had equipped them to the best of his abilities for the tasks that lay before them.
Only one walked in Gabriel’s dreams as he did in life, and that was Louis. Gabriel had never quite understood the depth of his affection for this
troubled man. His dream gave him an answer of sorts.
It was, he thought, because Louis had once been so like himself.
Gabriel heard a chair shift in the corner of the room. He opened his eyes a little wider. Carefully, he turned his head in the direction of the sound, and was pleased to find that he had more movement than before, even if the discomfort that it caused was still great. There was a shape against the window, a disturbance in the symmetry of the horizontal bars of the half closed blinds. The shape grew larger as the man rose from his chair and approached the bed, and Gabriel recognized him as he drew closer.
‘You’re a difficult man to kill,’ said Milton.
Gabriel tried to speak, but his mouth and throat were still too dry. He gestured at the jug of water by his bedside, and winced at the pain the movement brought. It was that damned needle in the back of his hand. He could feel it in the vein. Gabriel had been hospitalized twice in the previous ten years: once for the removal of a benign tumor, the second time for a hairline fracture of his right femur, and on both occasions he had been strangely resentful of the connector in his hand. Odd, he thought: the injuries that have brought me to this place are more serious and painful than a thin strip of metal inserted into a blood vessel, and yet it is this upon which I choose to focus. It is because it is small, a nuisance rather than a trauma. It is understandable. Its purpose is known to me. And today, at this moment, it represents the first step in coming to terms with what has happened.
Milton poured a glass of water for him, then held it to Gabriel’s mouth so that he could sip from it, supporting the old man’s head gently with his right hand as he did so. It was a curiously intimate, tender gesture, yet Gabriel was resentful of it. Before, they had been equals, but they would never be so again, not after Milton had seen him reduced to this, not after he had touched his head in that way. Even though there was kindness in the action, Milton could not have been unaware of what it meant to Gabriel and his dignity, his sense of his own place in the complex universe that he inhabited. A little of the liquid dribbled down Gabriel’s chin, and Milton wiped it for him with a tissue, compounding Gabriel’s anger and embarr assment, but he did not show his true feelings, for that would be to surrender entirely to them and humiliate himself still further. Instead, he croaked a thank you and let his head sink back onto the pillows.