A flashlight beam played over us.
Distantly I recalled there was still one man unaccounted for.
But I was too busy contending with my opponent to worry about him now. The kidnapper still refused to die. He clawed for my eyes with both hands. I squeezed my eyelids shut, pulled out the machete then instantly drove it in again. Then again. The fingers fell away from my face. I wasn’t content that he was fully dead. I rammed the machete in a fourth time and felt it slide with little resistance through his body until it drove into the wall with a dull thud. I gave it an extra bit of pressure and left the man hanging on the blade like a display in a psycho killer’s trophy room.
Stepping away, gasping for breath, I stood there for a moment. Gravity and the weight of the man’s upper body did their combined work. The blade sagged, was pulled from the wall, and the kidnapper splayed on the floor before me. I felt no satisfaction at his death. I was only relieved that his machete had completed its final work, and this time it wasn’t on a boy’s fingers.
Thinking of Stephan, I turned and saw Rink pull him from the broken window. Rink looked at me, and his head jerked in warning.
Again light played over me.
Swinging around I saw the fourth man standing in the doorway. He was looking not at me, but at his dead buddies. But then he brought up the flashlight again and it settled on my upper body.
He cursed, and I braced to take a bullet.
Yet the man spun on his heel and took off down the corridor, calling out in fright.
He was no Usain Bolt.
I could have caught up to him. But two things halted me: for one he was running away and no threat. The other was Rink’s command.
“Let’s get these kids outta here.”
In recollection, it had to have been the guy with the flashlight who’d got a good look at my tattoo. From the way in which he’d fled the scene, crying out for assistance that would never come, I didn’t think for a second that he was the man now pressing Jolie for my whereabouts. A more likely scenario was that when the remainder of the gang had heard about what had gone down at the abandoned holiday complex, they’d got the description from their final man on the ground. We never identified the men in Miami, but because that was where the money drops had gone down, it was apparent to me that they were the key players. The thugs on the island were simply that. Men who didn’t shy away from chopping off the fingers of rich young American kids, or burying at sea the boat’s crew snatched alongside them. The Miami connection were the brains of the outfit, and better placed to discover who was responsible for snatching their prizes away from them.
Although few people were aware of my tattoo, or what it signified, it wasn’t exactly a secret either. Recently I’d even seen a photograph of the tattoo design on the Internet, and wondered which of my old Arrowsake colleagues had been stupid enough to post it. It was only after I realigned the image that I understood the pic had been taken while its wearer was horizontal, lying dead on a morgue slab. The number of my old pals out there was dwindling. I was yet to find out which of them was the latest to die, because other than with Rink, I’d no connection to any of the other operatives I once hunted terrorists alongside.
I wondered if whoever was hunting me had used the tattoo to track me, but that wasn’t likely. A more probable scenario was that they had used their connections in the criminal underworld, or even the law-enforcement community, to sniff me out. Unfortunately I’d enemies in both camps. Yet the most obvious way in which they would have traced me here to Tampa, and to Rington Investigations, was through Charles White, the private investigator from Miami who’d played at mediator between the Jamaicans and the Pilarcik family. As far as I could tell, Charlie White was a good man: I doubt he’d have given me up willingly.
As I strode back to the office, clutching my waxed cup of Blue Mountain coffee, I called him on my cell.
“Charles White Private Investigations,” said a voice.
It wasn’t Charles. This voice was feminine. It sounded slightly wary.
“Who am I speaking with?” I inquired.
I didn’t get a straight answer. “If you wish to speak to Mr. White, I’m afraid he’s out of the office at this time.”
“Can you tell me when you expect him back?”
There was a hitch in the voice, a second or so of a pause that confirmed my fears. When she came back on, the woman went through the motions robotically. “I’m sorry, but I can’t be precise. If you’d like to give me your name and number I’ll have him contact you on his return.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t divulge that kind of information.”
She sounded worried, and rightly so.
I considered asking White’s assistant outright if he was missing, and if she had any idea about what had happened to him. But I didn’t. The Jamaicans had moved on from Miami. They were here in Tampa. As for Charles White, there was a likelihood that he was currently feeding the fish out in Miami Sound.
Instead, I said, “It’s okay. I’ll call another time.”
My assumptions were speculative at best. Maybe Charles was the type to disappear for days at a time, but I couldn’t ignore the coincidence. I had that prickling sense that had alerted me to danger in the past and I wasn’t about to write it off now. The Jamaicans would have easily learned Charles’s identity. Poke him with a machete enough times and he’d give up the names and descriptions of those he’d sent to conduct the rendition of their hostages. Perhaps the Rasta man at Jolie’s had thought my tattoo was more indicative of my identity than my name, and had described it to make sure he was closing in on the correct person.
I’d purposefully left my Audi parked across the street from Jolie’s. The Jamaicans weren’t there, but since they’d already mentioned they’d visited Rink’s office and found it deserted, I decided I’d leave things looking the same way. Possibly they had someone watching Rington Investigations and they’d report if my vehicle turned up.
I went left at the next intersection. Still two blocks up from the office. Mid-way along the next block was a service alley and I headed along it. Coming to the next cross street I paused, conducting countersurveillance measures instilled in me during all those years of active service. I didn’t spot a shadow. I headed for the next service alley, but once out of sight I halted, waiting to see if anyone nosey enough would poke their head around the corner. While I waited I sipped on my coffee. It had grown tepid. I binned the cup in a Dumpster. Nobody showed up.
Happy that I’d gone unobserved I headed down the alley to where a roller shutter concealed the back entrance to Rink’s building. I had a key to the lock and I let myself in the back door. There’s a room at the rear that occasionally doubled as a bedroom. No one sleeps there anymore. A bullet hole in the door frame to the outer-office area had been left as a vivid reminder of what happens when you lower your guard. Alongside the bedroom is a short corridor, where there’s a small bathroom with a sink and a john, a small file room filled with rows of gray cabinets. Next to that is a closet. It holds mops, buckets, cleaning products. It also holds an armory locker. I also held the key to its lock.
From the locker I took out my personal SIG Sauer P226. Unlike the SIG dumped in the Caribbean Sea as Velasquez steered us away from the kidnappers’ den, this one was in full working order. I checked the workings anyway — habit — and slapped in a full mag of 9 by19 mm Parabellums. Racking the slide, I put a round in the breech. Then, dropping the decocking lever, I lowered the hammer, making the weapon “drop safe.” All it would take to fire the gun now was slight pressure on the trigger, but I wouldn’t put my finger on the trigger until a viable target was in front of me. Cops and most military operatives would go postal on me for carrying around a hot weapon, but fuck them. I’d found the difference in a draw down was counted in milliseconds and any advantage outweighed the cons of an accidental discharge. Frankly, I’d never shot myself in the foot. My SIG went into my waistband at the back.