Dead Men's Dust Read online

  Rink was waiting in a vestibule area. A door that had once held wire-reinforced glass but was now blocked by a tarpaulin hung on bent nails, barred our progress. The faint buzz of conversation filtered from beyond.

  “What do you think?” Rink whispered.

  Ever the smart one, I made a quick calculation. Held up three fingers to Rink. Not that he didn’t trust me; Rink placed his face at the edge of the tarpaulin to confirm the estimate. We moved back down the corridor a safe distance.

  “Two guys on the stairs. Looks like another one sitting down in a chair to the left of the door, but I could only see his feet.”

  “Armed?” I asked Rink.

  “Nothing I could see.” Rink shrugged. “Doesn’t mean anything. They could still be packing.”

  Armed or not, it didn’t mean a thing. I could chew my lips all day, but it wouldn’t change our options. “We treat them like they’re armed. Okay?”

  “Yup,” Rink said, hefting the shotgun so the barrel was skyward.

  It’s not what you want—and to be fair, it didn’t lie straight with either of us—because it meant we were going in with what’s known in our trade as extreme prejudice. In layman’s terms: shoot to kill. These weren’t international terrorists or even enemy soldiers, just half-assed gangland hoods. Killing them was extreme. Maybe too extreme under the circumstances. As Rink had reminded me last night, we didn’t have a license to kill anymore.

  “No, Rink, we can’t. You happy with defense only?” I suggested.

  Talk about weight coming off shoulders. I’d swear we both grew a head taller.

  “Okay,” I said. “We only shoot when necessary. Otherwise it’s hand-to-hand.”

  “I’m happy with that,” Rink said.

  Rink again laid an eye to the edge of the tarpaulin. His raised thumb showed no change to the tableau.

  Okay, we’re rolling. Action!

  Rink ripped aside the tarpaulin and stepped into the hallway beyond. I was a fraction of a beat behind him.

  Confusion is the result of prolonged inactivity dramatically kick-started into life. The three men in the stairwell were caught catching flies, with their hands in the cookie jar, with their trousers down, whatever your choice of metaphor. The sudden intrusion of two armed men in their midst caused shocked silence. But that was only one frame of the action. Time jumped to fast-forward.

  To my left a man erupted out of a wicker chair. He had a sawed-off across his lap and was snatching for it. It was an easy decision for me. I snapped my left hand sideways. Put a back fist strike to the bridge of his nose. The man went down into his seat like the world champion of competitive musical chairs. The fact that his hands didn’t reach for his broken nose in reflex meant he was unconscious. The shotgun slipped out of his lap onto the floor and I swiped it away with the edge of my boot.

  Giving them their due, the other two had more sense than to challenge Rink’s shotgun. They stood like mute statues until he ordered them to come forward. The one-two was on; I immediately mounted the stairs. From below me, Rink said something. Knowing him, it would be funny, but no one was laughing. The silence was followed by the thump and scuffle of feet, and I guessed my suggestion of hand-to-hand was being followed.

  The second landing was devoid of movement. I crept forward, stepping into dim light that leached from the floor above, bringing up my SIG to sweep the space before me. My darkness-adapted eyes sought the next flight of stairs. Below me, Rink mounted the stairs, and you’d assume that it was safe for me to go on. Bad move. You know what they say about assuming anything; it certainly made an ass out of me.

  Maybe I’d grown a little rusty. I should have checked the corridor to my left before proceeding. As I committed myself to the stairs, a door opened behind me and a voice challenged me.

  “The hell are you?”

  Then a second voice shouted, “Five-O in the house.”

  I’ve undergone extensive hand-to-hand training in the Fairbairn method of combat. What I neglected to mention is that I’ve also trained in Fairbairn’s armed technique known as Point Shooting. Like the hand-to-hand, it’s based on the principle of immediate and reflexive action. Point. Shoot. Simple as that.

  While the two men were stunned at my appearance, I could have spun and put a couple of rounds into their bodies. They would have been on their backs and I’d have been up on the next landing.

  But as I’d so recently agreed with Rink, unless necessary this mission was to be carried out without lethal force. Shooting was out of the question. With that in mind, I’d no option but to turn around slowly, giving them ample opportunity to take stock of me on the stairwell. Not that I was about to give up an advantage. I kept my gun by my side, hidden from view by the angle of my body. If it came to it, I could shoot from the hip and take out both of them in a fraction of a second.

  What is it with criminals? Both men were dressed in windbreakers and denims, both with the obligatory shaved heads that went with hired muscle. They could have been the American cousins of Shank’s right-hand man. Perplexed at my appearance, they were caught in a limbo that stayed their hands as effectively as it did their brains. One of them had called out Five-O, street slang for police. That gave me a second advantage over them. Where they probably wouldn’t hesitate to take out a rival, it wasn’t okay to kill a police officer. Do that, and any agreement Petoskey had with the local police force went right out the window. When it came to avenging one of their own, the police would come down on them like a blue avalanche.

  The disguise didn’t fool them, but that was fine. They saw through the shabby clothes, but saw something that wasn’t there. So let them think I was a cop. It’s what would save their lives.

  “Police,” I said. “You’re both under arrest.”

  A totally lame statement, I know, but something they expected nonetheless. They gaped at me, then at each other, before breaking into stupid grins.

  “You’ve got to be jokin’, man,” said one of them.

  “No,” I answered. “I’m deadly serious.”

  Tweedledum and Tweedledee, they again exchanged grins.

  “What the hell you on, man?” Tweedledum asked. “You know you don’t come here.”

  “Oh? You mean an officer of the law isn’t welcome in your fine establishment?” I said. Any old nonsense was enough to keep their attention on me another second or so.

  “No, you’re not welcome,” said Tweedledee.

  “Ah, now that is a shame,” I told him.

  “Yeah, a goddamn cryin’ shame,” Rink echoed as he whacked the stock of his shotgun into the nearest man’s kidneys. The man buckled to his knees.

  The second Tweedle twin spun to face Rink, backing up against the far wall as he reached to his pocket for a concealed weapon. Rink wasn’t a black belt for nothing. He lifted a boot and kicked the man in the pit of his stomach, then held the man with his foot, pressing him up against the rotting plaster of the wall.

  “Go on up,” he said. “Leave these two punks to me.”

  “They’re all yours,” I told him.

  I was about midway to the next landing when the shooting started. Not from below, but from above. It’s natural to throw yourself down when fired upon. What is equally natural is the way I brought up my hand and fired off a return shot.

  Boom! There goes the neighborhood, you might’ve said. And you’d have been right. All hope of engaging the enemy without shooting was gone now. Any remorse about killing had to be put behind me, too. When fired upon, there was only one recourse.

  The stairwell echoed with the thump of feet. It could only be Petoskey’s men looking for cover. There were four distinct voices as they called out to others in the building. Confusion was the reigning order. Someone was shouting that the police were here, while another shouted that Hendrickson’s men were in the building. It didn’t matter who the hell they thought they were up against; panic had turned their response deadly.

  To buy a little respite, I unloaded a clip towar
d the head of the stairs, following my bullets with a headlong charge as I pushed another magazine in place.

  Rink was still below me, snorting like a bull as he finished off the two who’d tried to take me from behind. Undoubtedly eager to finish the fight and come to my assistance. Time to wait for him wasn’t a luxury I possessed. I sprinted upward to a point where there was a turn in the stairs. Suicidal I’m not, but that’s what I’d have been committing if I’d poked my head around the corner for a look. Unfortunately, I had to get some kind of bead on the men waiting to ambush me. Choice made, I thrust my gun around the bend, firing three rapid shots. Just enough to force my ambushers to dive for cover. I spun into the cordite cloud searching for movement.

  No one in sight, I sprang up the remaining stairs and into a recess on the left. I run regularly, occasionally go to the gym, yet I was still blowing hard. I blame it more on adrenaline dump than lack of condition.

  The wall next to my shoulder was holed by one of my own bullets. I quickly pushed myself deeper into the recess, firing off two more rounds into the quiet corridor. There were doors lining the corridor on both sides, and any one of them could be concealing an enemy shooter.

  “Rink! Are you about done down there or what? I could do with that shotgun up here.”

  Rink appeared on the stairs below me. Blood was seeping from a shallow nick below his left eye. Other than that, he appeared unhurt.

  “One of the punks thought he’d do me with a set of brass knuckles,” Rink said. He dabbed away blood with the back of his wrist. “I soon knocked that silly notion out of his skull.”

  “Get yourself up here and give me some cover,” I whispered to him. “Sounds like they’re holed up in a room on my right.”

  Rink came up the stairs, feeding shells into his shotgun. There was blood on the stock. Thug with brass knuckles versus Rink wielding a shotgun like a club: no contest.

  “I’m going to try and get by that door there. If it looks like it’s about to open, give ’em hell.”

  “Leave it to me,” Rink said. He moved to the head of the stairs where he could get a line on the door I’d indicated.

  Cat-footed, I moved forward, my gun extended before me. The defenders behind the door had to know I was moving into the corridor, but there was nothing for it: I had to go forward. We had to stop them and stop them fast. I feared the arrival of reinforcements who’d be able to pen us in from below. Then there was the other consideration. That Petoskey was making a quick exit by another route. If he got away from us now, it’d probably be impossible to get a second chance at him.

  Passing the door on the right, I nodded for Rink to follow, and he thumped up the corridor like Frankenstein’s monster. True to form, the door exploded into splinters. Even the wall opposite was shredded, the bullets continuing into the rooms beyond.

  As the first barrage ended, I swung in front of the shattered door, emptying my clip through the wood. Men yelled inside the room, one of them making a series of gasps. I’d hit one of them at least. That left—what?—three more?

  Rink lifted a boot and smashed open the door. Immediately he blasted the interior of the room before swinging back out of sight. Two seconds of carnage were all I required to insert a full clip of ammo. Exchanging positions with choreographed precision, I opened up, firing off bullets as quickly as I could squeeze the trigger. Then I was in the room and had moved left as Rink let off another full load of pellets.

  Armed confrontations do not resemble John Woo’s battles of balletic gunplay; any somersaulting or leaping through space discharging bullets is reserved for the movies. Reality is not so pretty. I slammed my back to a wall, my gun out before me, and emptied it at every target that moved. I was shouting something that was unintelligible even to me. An animal shout of loathing, fear, and unrestrained rage.

  It took all of a few seconds to deplete my gun of bullets, yet I felt as spent as the bullet casings littering the floor at my feet.

  Rink hustled into the room, the stock of his shotgun to his shoulder as he sought targets. Smoke hung in the air. So did the unmistakable tang of blood. One man was huddled in a corner of the room, hands over his head as he sobbed in terror. Another was sprawled over a coffee table, a hole the size of a baby’s fist in his shoulder. The man murmured, delirious in his agony.

  That accounted for two of them, but I couldn’t see where the other two were. As Rink covered the cowering man, I ejected my empty clip and inserted a fresh one. Rink moved over to the open window. Sounds of flight ricocheted from the fire escape beyond.

  “Careful,” I said. Both to Rink and as a warning to the man who cringed away from the business end of my SIG. Rink gave me a wry grin as he approached the window.

  “Like rats down a drainpipe,” he observed. “Two of them are running for it.”

  “Let them run,” I said. The cowering man peeked up at me through tears and smeared snot. I nudged him with a boot. “Where’s John Telfer?”

  In those old Poe books, victims of terror often gave out a keening wail. I’d never heard one for real and couldn’t imagine what one sounded like. Until now.

  I nudged him harder. “I said, ‘Where’s Telfer?’ I won’t ask again.”

  He must have read something in my face. Maybe my hesitancy to kill in cold blood. Whatever it was, his demeanor suddenly changed. “Go to hell, asshole.”

  “So now you’re the brave guy?” I put the muzzle of my gun to the center of his forehead. “You don’t think I’ll do it? Try me.”

  As suddenly, he was wailing again.

  “Where’s Telfer?” I asked.

  “I don’t know who you mean. Speak to Petoskey, man. Not us. For God’s sake…don’t kill me.”

  I took the gun from his skull. There was a scarlet ring where the hot metal had pressed into his flesh. “Second question, and the rules haven’t changed. Where’s Petoskey?”

  He wanted to resist. Perhaps it was bravado, but more likely it was fear of his boss that held his tongue. Back went the gun.

  “Where’s Petoskey?”

  Fear of a bullet in the skull now or perhaps one later from Petoskey if he survived; I could see the math going around in his head. It was a simple equation.

  He nodded upward, eyes on the ceiling above.

  “He’s upstairs?” I asked.

  The man nodded again.

  “How many with him?”

  “How the hell should I know?” the man spluttered.

  “Guess,” I said.

  “Three, four…I don’t know. Could be as many as a dozen for all I know!”

  “Armed?”

  “What do you think?”

  It was a stupid question.

  “Yes. It’s the end of the line, buddy,” I said. Then I slammed the butt of my gun against his temple, sprawling him sideways across the floor.

  “Maybe you should plug him and be done with it,” Rink said from behind me.

  Was that really my friend speaking?

  “Can’t do it.”

  “I know it’s not right, but it makes more sense. We don’t want to be going up there, leaving one of them behind us. Not when he’s armed.”

  “You’re right. But I’m not a murderer.”

  Rink’s gaze sought the man with the new open-vent shoulder.

  “He’ll survive. Anyway, that was different,” I said. “He was trying to kill me. But I won’t kill a man in cold blood.”

  Rink winked at me, his stern face softening. “Just checking, my old friend,” he said. “Like I said last night, we don’t have a license to kill no more.”

  “I hear you,” I told him. And I meant it. But we still had a job to do, and it was my firm guess that others would die this night. My only hope was that it wouldn’t be either of us.

  16

  THERE HE WAS.

  The thief.

  Purloiner of second-favorite knives and sports utility vehicles. He was just as Tubal Cain remembered him, though subtly altered, he had to admit. A handsome en
ough bloke as thieves go. Aged in his early thirties. He was dressed the way a million other guys were, in nondescript casual clothing with a ball cap down to his ears. The sum of his possessions in a knapsack slung from one shoulder. It was the same knapsack he’d carried when he carjacked Cain yesterday. Mirrorlensed sunglasses concealed his eyes.

  In essence, the thief was very similar to Cain, Mr. Normal blending in with his surroundings. The thought had occurred already, but now, watching the man who’d signed his name in the hotel’s register as David Ambrose, Cain came to a conclusion. “You’re hiding your true identity as carefully as I am. Why is that?”

  One thing was for sure, Ambrose wasn’t hiding from Cain. He had no way of knowing that Cain would hunt him down. In his mind, Cain had been nothing but a hopeless freak he’d left out in the middle of nowhere.

  “I’ll tell you why. It means that you are afraid of someone else.”

  Cain leaned back in the driver’s seat of the Oldsmobile, chewing his lower lip. Now this was an unexpected turn of events.

  “Who are you running from, Mr. So-Called-Ambrose?” he whispered as he watched Ambrose approach the SUV. “Who is it that frightens you more than Tubal Cain?”

  Ambrose gave off a vibe. An electrostatic buzz of anticipation. Almost as if he were steeling himself for a sniper’s bullet between the shoulder blades. It was the subconscious way he moved, trying his damndest to appear nonchalant, yet at the same time with a posture as taut as piano wire. He could pretend not to, but Cain knew that behind the mirrors of his shades, Ambrose glanced around, alert as a mouse in a rattlesnake’s den. Turning, the sunlight and dappled shadows of palms played across his glasses. Cain thought of a beetle’s eyes.

  The insectlike gaze skimmed over the Oldsmobile, pausing for less than a heartbeat before passing on. There was a momentary pinching of the thief’s lips as he scanned the car, but the strained expression was gone in the next instant. No, it was merely an unconscious reaction, not recognition. In the shadows of his parking spot, Cain felt protected from the amateur who’d made too many mistakes.

  Approaching the SUV, Ambrose dug for keys in a trouser pocket. Unhitching the knapsack from his shoulder, he unlocked the driver’s door and slung the bag onto the passenger seat. Another glance around gave Cain the impression of one of those hopeless spies that Napoleon Solo—and that guy with the Russian-sounding name that Cain could never recall, let alone pronounce—used to thwart every week in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.