Blood and Ashes (40 page)

Maybe it was just the sun through the clouds, casting shadows in the alleyway across the green. For the briefest of moments, I was sure I’d caught sight of a face peering from within the darkness. But when I focused on the place, the face was gone. And so were the killer eyes I could have sworn were staring back at me.

Thanks

As any author will tell you, there are far more people who help in shaping a book than you can ever remember or credit. So, to all those who go unmentioned, thank you anyway.

My special thanks as ever go to my agent Luigi Bonomi and to Alison Bonomi, two people who have built and shaped Joe Hunter in ways I’d have once thought unimaginable, and to Ajda who works behind the scenes at LBA but is a valuable member of the team. Your guidance and support is very much appreciated.

Also, a huge thank-you to Sue Fletcher at Hodder and Stoughton, editor par excellence, and someone else who should take equal credit for the creation of Joe Hunter. To Eleni, Swati, and Alice, thanks to you all for the support. There’s a whole bunch of friends who I owe my thanks to, so in no particular order, thank you to: Col Bury, Richard Gnosill, Lee Hughes, Sheila Quigley, Adrian Magson, Pete Nicholson, Paul D. Brazill, Val and George Steventon, Pat Reid, and Gina Metz. Thanks also to Mandy, Geoff, Jacky, Val and Bunny. And to the real Mike Dillman, Sonya Madden and Liam Walsh, thanks for the use of your names.

And the biggest thanks of all to my wife, Denise.

Want to find out what Joe Hunter does next?

Here is a taster from Matt Hilton’s

Dead Men’s Harvest

Prologue

Conchar is an ancient Gaelic term for those who admire the king of all hunters: the wolf.

To some, the wolf is a magnificent beast, the pinnacle of predatory evolution. To others, the wolf is a thing of nightmare.

Castle of the wolf: it was a good name for an Army Confinement Facility. Imprisoned within its walls were men and women who were ultimate predators and, often, also things of nightmare.

Criminals housed at Fort Conchar generally fell into four categories: prisoners of war, enemy combatants, persons whose freedom was deemed a risk to national security and, lastly, military personnel found guilty of a serious crime.

Occasionally it housed criminals that did not meet any of these criteria, but that was an extreme circumstance. Only once had it opened its arms to a man who checked all four boxes and then some. Designated Top Secret, his name was withheld even from those who guarded him night and day. Known only by a number – Prisoner 1854 – he was a cipher in more ways than one.

Mostly he refused to speak to his jailers. Some even thought him incapable of speech. But his mystery went much deeper than that.

He was a living dead man. According to official records he had died, not once, but twice. And yet he still breathed.

If all went to plan, like Lazarus, the dead man would rise again. And people would know him. And they would scream his name in fear.

Chapter 1

A breeze stirred and the susurration of foliage was like the whispering of lost souls. Frogs croaked. Water lapped. All sounds indigenous to the Everglades pine lands. Jared ‘Rink’ Rington ignored the natural rhythms of the Florida night, listening instead for the soft footfalls of the men hunting him.

There were at least four of them: men with guns.

From the cover of a stream bed, Rink spied back to where he’d left his car. The Porsche was a mess. Bullet holes pocked it from front to back and had taken out the front windshield. He’d wrecked the sump when he’d crashed over the median and into the coontie trees. There was a wide swath of oil glistening in the moonlight, as though the Boxster had been mortally wounded and had crawled into the bushes to die. Rink cursed under his breath, more for the death of his wheels than for his own predicament, but it wasn’t the first time he’d had to consign a car to the grave.

Neither was it the first time he’d been hunted by armed men.

It kinda came with the territory.

The stream was shallow, stagnant almost. He used its steep bank as cover as he headed left. Above him someone stepped on a twig and it was like the crack of a gunshot. The insects grew still. There was a hush on the forest now. Rink crouched low, pressing himself against baked mud.

A few yards further on, another twig creaked beneath a boot.

Rink wormed himself out of the stream bed. A man was moving along the embankment above him, periodically glancing down towards the water, but more often towards the road.

Through the bushes Rink saw another man moving along the blacktop. This one held a Glock machine pistol, the elongated barrel telling him that it was fitted with a sound suppressor.

Frog-giggers want to do me in silence, he thought. Well, all right. Two of us can play at that game.

From his boot he pulled a military-issue KA-BAR knife, a black epoxy-coated blade that didn’t reflect the light.

His options were few. He had to take out the men hunting him or die. Put that way he’d no qualms about sticking the man in front of him.

His rush was silent. His free hand went over the man’s mouth even as he jammed the KA-BAR down between the juncture of his throat and clavicle. The blade was long enough to pierce the left aorta of the man’s heart, killing him instantly. Rink dragged the corpse down to the ground.

The man on the road was unaware that his companion was gone.

From the dead man’s fingers, Rink plucked free the Heckler and Koch Combat .45 and shoved it into the waistband of his jeans. There was no suppressor on this gun, so the knife would remain his weapon of choice for now, because the man with the Glock had to be done as silently as the first. There were two other assassins out there – possibly more – and he wanted to even the odds in his favour before exchanging rounds.

Rink was tall and muscular, built like a pro-wrestler. The man at his feet wasn’t. But by exchanging jackets and with the man’s baseball cap jammed over his black hair, he’d fool the other hunter for a second or so. Everything weighed and bagged, that would be all he’d need.

In the corpse’s clothing, Rink moved through the bushes. For effect he pulled out the .45 so the disguise was complete. He held it in a two-handed grip, or that would be how it looked in silhouette.

The man to his right gestured, soldier speak that Rink recognised. These men weren’t your run-of-the-mill killers; they too must have had military training. Rink hand-talked, urging the man towards a stand of trees. As he moved off, Rink angled towards him. Ten paces was all that separated them. The moon was bright on the road, but its light helped make the shadows beneath the trees denser. If Rink moved closer he could forget the charade.

The man halted. Something stirred in the foliage ahead. He dropped into a shooter’s crouch, his Glock sweeping the area. Then a bird, disturbed from its roost, broke through the trees in a clatter of plumage on leaves. The man sighed, turned to grin sheepishly at his compadre.

Rink grinned back at him and he saw the man’s face elongate in recognition. Charade over, he whipped his KA-BAR out from alongside the .45 and over-handed it at the man. Like a sliver of night, the blade swished through the air and plunged through tissue and cartilage.

The man staggered at the impact, one hand going to the hilt jutting from beneath his jaw, the other bringing round the Glock and tugging on the trigger. Rink dropped below the line of fire, the bullets searing the air around him, making tatters of the bushes and coontie trees. It was a subdued drum roll of silenced rounds, but no less deadly than if the gun had roared the sound of thunder. The man was mortally wounded, though not yet dead, but the Glock was empty and no threat. Gun in hand, Rink moved towards him.

Weakened by the shock of steel through his throat, drowning in his own blood, he couldn’t halt Rink’s charge. He was knocked off his feet and went down under the bigger man. Then Rink had a hand on the hilt of the KA-BAR. A sudden jerk sideways opened one half of the man’s neck and that was that.

Dragging the corpse off the road, Rink concealed it amongst a stand of palmetto.

Two down, two to go.

Rink was beginning to fancy his chances.

Armed now with two reliable guns and his KA-BAR, he decided it was time to show these frog-giggin’ sons of bitches who they were dealing with.

‘My turn now, boys,’ he whispered.

A faint click.

‘No, Rington,’ said a voice from behind him. ‘Now it’s
my
turn.’

Rink swung round, his knife coming up in reflex, but it was too late.

Something was rammed against his chest and he became a juddering, spittle-frothing wreck as fifty thousand volts were blasted through his entire being.

Chapter 2

The headstone was the only feature that held any colour. Everything else was the grey of a Maine winter, with sleet falling like shards of smoked glass across the monochrome background. Even the trees that ringed the small cemetery were dull, lifeless things, their bare branches smudged by the shifting sky. The sleet was building on the ground, not the pure white of virgin snow, but slushy, invasive muck that filled my boots with a creeping chill that bit bone deep.

I hunkered over the grave and wiped the accumulation of icy slush off the headstone. The granite marker stood four feet tall, pinkish-grey, with a spray of flowers carved down one side and painted in vivid splashes of red and green. The name had been inlaid with gold leaf, as had the date of her premature death: almost a year ago.

I’m not a religious man, not in the accepted sense, but I still mumbled a prayer for her. Religion, or more correctly the effects of others twisting it, had been a factor of my professional life. I’d seen people murder one another for having a different faith; I’d seen people tortured and mutilated. I couldn’t believe that if there was a god, then such a benevolent, loving figure would allow such outrages in His name – whatever that might turn out to be. For fourteen years I’d fought men whose minds had been poisoned by fanatical teachings; they all swore that they were doing His bidding. Made me wonder who was guiding me when I put the bastards down. I hoped that Kate Piers was in more caring hands than those of the god of war that must have propelled me.

I rose to my feet and folded my hands across my middle, looking down at the grave. The sleet stung my face, but it was small penance for failing to save the woman I’d fallen in love with.

‘Are you ready, Joe?’

Lost in the past, I’d momentarily forgotten that Kate’s sister was standing beside me. I looked at her, and her eyes shone with tears. Her sister had died protecting her life and Imogen had never got over that. She felt guilty that it was her little sister lying cold in the grave and not her. But, more than that, I knew her tears were because she feared the man she loved was thinking the same.

I took one of her gloved hands in mine, pulled her in close so that I shielded her under my arm and placed a kiss on her cheek. ‘Ready,’ I told her. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of this cold.’

Imogen leaned down and placed a single rose against the headstone, then together we walked across the cemetery towards the gates. The cemetery wasn’t large, just a half-acre ringed by a stone wall, and now almost overgrown by trees. The Piers family plot held five generations, including the body of my old army friend, Jake. This was where Imogen would come when her time on earth was over. Made me wonder where I’d end up. Nowhere as sanctified as this, I supposed; more likely an unmarked hole in the ground. Perhaps that would be fitting, because I’d sent plenty of others to such an ignominious resting place.

Imogen’s house was perched on a rocky bluff overlooking Little Kennebec Bay, a short drive from Machiasport. The cemetery was situated on the Piers land, but even the five-minute walk was unpleasant in this weather. We clambered into the warmth of my Audi A6. I’d had the foresight to leave the engine running and the car was snug. I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. Imogen struggled out of her gloves while I headed the car up the incline towards the house. In this half-light Imogen’s home looked like something out of a Poe story, its pitched roof and steepled corners rearing against the slate sky. We didn’t speak much in the car, nothing beyond complaints about the weather anyway, and the transition from vehicle to house was done in a hurry.

There was a fire burning in the hearth and I stoked it, piling on logs, while Imogen brought us both a drink. Hot, dark coffee for me, cocoa laced with something stronger for her. I never did get that drink. In the next few seconds we were in each other’s arms as we navigated the stairs to her bedroom. Survivors’ Guilt Syndrome is a powerful thing, but I couldn’t blame that for the surge of passion that rose up in the two of us. She just looked so damn ravishing, her cheeks pink with a flush of warmth, her hair slightly in disarray from having pulled off her hat. She looked fragile and vulnerable and in need of reassurances. I hoped that actions were more profound than words. All I did was put down my coffee, take her cocoa from her hand and place it next to mine. Then I pulled her into a kiss, one that I meant dearly. That was all it took for us to wrestle our way through the house, undressing each other as we went.

Imogen’s original bedroom had been violated when she’d been attacked by a misogynistic killer named Luke Rickard. Rickard had wanted to kill me and had targeted me through Imogen. She steered me past that room and into the one she had now commandeered. It was a big house for a single person, and the master bedroom only accentuated that. The bed would be best described as super king-sized, but we made use of every square inch.