Personal

Joey turned sideways and came through the gap between his guys, one freakish stride, and then he stopped and stood face to face in front of me.

Or face to collar bone. He was six inches taller. And six inches wider. He was all bone and muscle. Not a bodybuilder. Like a regular guy, but a strong one, and all swollen up uniformly, like his house. He smelled of sweat, sharp and acid, and there was a pulse jumping in his neck. All of which hit the ancient parts in the back of my brain, especially the most ancient part of all, which had kept us safe for seven million years, and counting. The flight reflex, and mine was screaming at me to get the hell out of there. But I didn’t. I had no place to go. Wall behind me, wall to the left of me, wall to the right of me, and Joey ahead of me. I looked up into his eyes, and in the recessed shadows I saw one pupil blown the size of a dime, and the other like a pinprick.

I said, ‘What else are you taking, Joey?’

He said, ‘Shut up.’

He lifted his hands. His fingers were long and thick. Not like sausages. Wrong description. They were wider than that, and harder. More like soda cans, jointed at the knuckles, with fingertips twice as wide as mine, and nails twice the size.

He hooked those fingertips into my coat pockets, and wormed them deep, four inches maybe, coming close, breathing on me, and then he jerked back and tore the pockets right off my coat. My gun and my knife spilled out and clattered to the floor. He scraped at them with his feet, and kicked them behind him. Then he turned and stepped back to the door, the same giant stride in reverse.

Charlie White said, ‘Joey, don’t walk away from me.’

Joey shifted his weight, one foot to the other, and the floor creaked, and the balanced flashlight fell over, and shone a rolling beam across our ankles. Charlie White started moving, getting impatient, testing the tape on his wrists. I figured Joey had about a second and a half to make up his mind. Any longer than that, and there was no going back. Bonds of trust would have been destroyed. Suspicions would permanently linger. Charlie would always know it had passed through his subordinate’s mind to do exactly what I had outlined to Bennett.

A second and a half.

Joey chose wrong.

He turned his giant head and called out the door, ‘Get in here and take Mr White home.’

Which was impossible, as long as he was blocking the doorway. So he bent his head again, and hunched his shoulders, and bent his back, and bent his knees, and he squirmed his way out of the hut, sideways, right leg, duck, left leg, and then he was gone again.

The guys holding Nice and Bennett stayed on the ball, their elbows tight on their necks, their guns up diagonally, ready for instant action, aimed halfway between them and me. I looked at Bennett and said, ‘What do they call these new teams they’ve got you in?’

The guy holding him said, ‘Shut up.’

I said, ‘Make me.’

Which he didn’t. He was not authorized to intervene, I guessed, except in dire emergencies. Other than that, our fate and our treatment was to be decided at a higher level, at a later time. Bennett said, ‘We don’t really have a name. Not yet. It’s all pretty fluid at the moment.’

‘Is your air force working with you?’

He nodded. ‘It’s a completely integrated approach.’

‘Can you get us a flight out of here?’

‘Home?’

‘Fort Bragg.’

‘When?’

‘Now would be great. But let’s say a couple hours from now.’

‘You’re optimistic.’

‘I try to stay cheerful, no matter what.’

‘Won’t O’Day send a plane?’

‘I want the Royal Air Force,’ I said. ‘I’ll trade that for not meeting the Queen.’

Then the guys from outside came in, and they hustled through the tight quarters and helped Charlie White to his feet. They cut the tape off his wrists and his elbows with knives of their own, and he rubbed his arms and rolled his shoulders to get some circulation back, and then he straightened up, no longer a hostage, but a gang boss again, full of power, and strength, and confidence. He looked at me and said, ‘You lose, kid. Pity about that. Because now comes the death warrant.’

I glanced out across the bowling lawn, at the dark street nearly a quarter of a mile away. Was Kott watching? I pictured a hallway window, 50 per cent taller and 50 per cent wider than anyone else’s hallway window, with a tripod behind it, and a pair of night-vision binoculars, bought off the Internet maybe, or stolen and smuggled out of a military depot anywhere in Britain or Europe, with Kott crouched behind them, eyes to the rubber rings, staring past where the fence had been, and the fallen tree, taking in all the precise silvery details. But the line of sight was narrow. We could see the house, and he could see the hut, but none of us could see much of anything else.

Which was good.