‘It was about duty,’ yelled Gallen, tears welling up from God knew where. ‘What is it about you pen-pushers that you don’t get that?’
‘Shit, Gerry, you’re breaking my heart,’ said Mulligan. ‘Point is, here we are talking about twenty-eight million dollars, and I don’t have it. Ern Dale’s people thought Kenny had it, and I have no reason to doubt that.’
‘That’s bullshit, Mulligan,’ said Winter.
‘Really?’ said Mulligan. ‘Only other guy close enough was Gerry.’
They looked at each other, Gallen heaving with anger.
‘You’re wrong, Paul,’ said Gallen, as he calmed down.
‘About you having the money?’
‘No,’ said Gallen. ‘The point isn’t money — the point is duty.’
‘Can’t live on duty,’ said Mulligan.
‘Tell that to a soldier who’s seen action,’ said Gallen, ‘and he’ll know you were never there.’
The first shot cracked the window with a small tinkle and hit Viktor in the forehead. As the big man collapsed on the floor, Mulligan stood and flattened himself against the wall, pulling a black 9mm pistol from a hip holster.
Gallen struggled with the ties around his wrists as automatic gunfire sounded around the farmhouse. Windows smashed, a man yelled out in pain and voices barked at one another. Lebanese voices. Gallen’s call had worked — Arkie’s crew had arrived.
Mulligan took a quick look through the shattered window and swore. ‘On your feet, Gallen. We’re going for a walk.’
‘Not going anywhere with Viktor’s gift-wrapping,’ said Gallen.
Duck-walking to a briefcase, Mulligan pulled out a set of flexi-cuffs and crouched to Gallen’s position. Locking Gallen’s wrists in place with the flexi-cuffs, Mulligan used a small pocket knife to slice the duct tape from where it was wrapped around his wrists and ankles.
‘Up,’ said Mulligan, gesturing with the pistol in Gallen’s face.
Another bullet hit the kitchen wall above the sink and Gallen groaned in pain as he got to his feet, his shin now throbbing and not wanting to take any weight.
‘Keep down, Kenny,’ he said, as Mulligan pushed him out of the kitchen and into an internal passageway. Opening what looked like a broom cupboard, Mulligan revealed a set of narrow stairs into the cellar.
Hobbling down the stairs into the musty basement, starbursts of pain in his eyes, Gallen looked around at a blue-grey furnace and a stack of beer crates. At the far end was a concrete ramp that rose to a trapdoor.
‘Move,’ said Mulligan, slapping Gallen over the head with his pistol. ‘You disappoint me, Gerry — we had a deal.’
Gallen climbed the ramp and waited for Mulligan. He wanted the spook to climb the ramp and put himself in range of a kick— maybe he could knock him on his ass, take the weapon and turn the tables. But Mulligan gestured to Gallen to slide the bolt himself.
Reaching above his head Gallen slid the internal bolt with both hands as the gunfire abated.
‘Now push it open,’ said Mulligan, and Gallen pushed up with his manacled hands, forcing the left-side trapdoor over. Light flooded onto them and Gallen stepped up further: the entrance came out behind a water tank and a wood pile.
Mulligan joined him in the cold air as Gallen saw a man he didn’t recognise run towards the farmhouse. Mulligan shoved him in the back and Gallen limped towards the barn, his left foot now virtually dragging along the gravel, the agony roaring throughout his body.
They got to the barn without being seen and Mulligan forced him upstairs to the hay mow. As Gallen looked around, Mulligan shoved him again and his leg wouldn’t take the weight. He collapsed against an old square hay bale, which looked tiny compared to the large round bales stacked along the back of the mow.
‘I don’t have Florita,’ he gasped, reaching for his shin but too scared to touch it.
‘No kidding,’ said Mulligan. ‘So who’s out there?’
‘My guys,’ said Gallen, his voice a thin rasp.
Mulligan peered through a gap in the boards. ‘Two F-250s and at least five operators. You don’t have those numbers, Ace. So who’d you call?’
Gallen gasped. ‘I called God, you asshole.’
‘Fuck you, Gallen,’ said Mulligan, pressing the barrel of the pistol against Gallen’s forehead. ‘I gave you a deal for Florita and you pull an ambush? On me?!’
Gallen’s eyes rolled as the pain overwhelmed his senses. He could barely think. Above him he saw the workings of a barn like the one he grew up with, stacks of round bales along the barn wall and the old hay gantry running the length of the pitched ceiling, a hundred feet in the air. Looking around he realised he was sitting on the loading platform of the mow, and in the corner of his eye was a loop of hemp rope tied to a cleat in a basic horseman’s hitch. If this barn worked the same way as Sweet Clover’s, that rope was the hay gantry tie-off.
Mulligan cocked the action on his pistol. ‘I go down, you go down, Gerry. You got that, you fucking redneck hillbilly? ‘
Smiling, Gallen looked his killer in the eyes. ‘Us hillbillies, we got one thing going for us.’
‘Last words, Gerry.’
‘We know how a hay mow works.’
The spook squinted in confusion as Gallen reached behind his right shoulder and slipped the pulley rope from its tie-off. The pulley block hanging just below the ceiling held a six-hundred-pound round bale aloft; released from the tie-off, it descended a hundred feet with a whir of rope, slowing only as it crushed a man who didn’t know how a hay mow worked.
As the bale bounced in front of Gallen and rolled away, a thickset Lebanese man scoped the hay mow with his assault rifle and turned back to Gallen.
‘Arkie,’ said Gallen, weak. ‘My instructions worked?’
‘No, you can thank Chase for that,’ said the smiling mercenary. ‘He tracks all his vehicles with RFDs.’
CHAPTER 70
The blonde woman who smiled too much put the coffee on the desk in front of Gallen and left the observation room. He picked it up and sipped as Aaron Michaels adjusted the sound volume in the room. Behind the one-way glass in front of them, Florita Mendes spoke in relaxed but articulate sentences with two NSA spooks who’d been interviewing her for the past hour and ten minutes.
‘Like I said, Aaron,’ said Gallen, feeling his shin itch beneath the cast. ‘I’m not hearing many discrepancies here.’
‘Yeah, she’s pretty clean,’ said Aaron. ‘But I don’t want to cut an immunity deal and be embarrassed by it.’
‘I guess not,’ said Gallen. He’d been in Washington for a week and had spent his own day with the National Security Agency’s WMD team, of which Aaron Michaels seemed to be one. He’d been asked to sit in on the Florita sessions and pick the lies or the half-truths in her story and they were now into the third day of the interview. But he wanted to be back on the farm helping Roy, and he didn’t like sitting behind one-way glass. He felt like a pervert.
‘And by the way, Gerry,’ said Aaron, as Florita rolled her eyes and told the investigators she’d already answered the question four times about her commercial relationship with ProProm, the Russian company making the nuclear power plants. ‘I’m sorry about those questions concerning Harbour Light Inc.’
‘Harbour Light?’ Gallen couldn’t recall the name.
‘You know: Chase Lang’s company? It was your good fortune being rescued by those special forces guys.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Gallen. ‘I have nothing to hide. I don’t know Arkie’s full name and I don’t know why Chase is operating an Arab crew in North America.’