Silencer (31 page)

‘Peregrino don’t need to be told twice. He whirls the mallet around his head and hammers it down – but now it’s not me lying there any more. I’m close by, watching my partner’s head being split open like a grapefruit by
los
fucking
vigilantes
.

‘I start reliving that shit again. What’s left of him gets showered with fucking mineral water. But it doesn’t clean the grass, just spreads the mess. It’s a total mess.
I’m
a fucking mess.’

‘Mate, you’re not, you’re—’

‘Yeah? So how come sometimes I’m even afraid to look up in case that fat fuck is there, ready to play polo with my head? How come I feel like I’m surrounded by a million people, all taking my breath away? Why does my heart beat so fast, Nick? Why do I get so scared when someone gets too close to me? It’s like a tornado, crushing and tearing up everything in its path.’

He turned towards me again, eyes wild.

‘I’m scared of the world, and scared of everyone in it. Every fucking day is a struggle. Every one. I want it to stop.’

‘But you escaped, yeah? That bit’s over. Done.’

‘Really? You think so? Look at me … That day – that day at the polo – I knew it was now or never. They were going to kill me for sure, one way or another.

‘A couple of nights later, the kennel girl leaves my cage open like she sometimes does while she goes to fill up my water bowl. That’s all I need. That’s it. I’m out of there. I take her down, tie her up, gag her, run. Man, do I fucking run …’

His face crumples.

‘One of those fucking dogs comes after me …’

‘I know, mate. I saw the scars.’

‘Those scars, I can handle.’ There were tears in his eyes. ‘It’s the others …’

He went silent for a while, then gave another heart-wrenching sob. ‘I thought the dogs were my
friends
, man. We shared everything. We even had to listen to Liseth’s psycho shit together.’

‘What happened?’

‘I guess I should have grabbed a knife or something, on my way out of there …’

I knew what was coming.

‘One of the Shepherds. I have to kill it with my bare hands. Push the poor fucker’s eyes out first. Then I run …’

He sighed.

‘Almost made it, too. Almost all the way across the polo lawn to the scrub. Eight hundred, man. I’m maybe twenty metres from cover when some fucker spots me and gives me a burst with an MG4. You know what I’m saying, you know the weapon …’

Of course I did: a Heckler & Koch 5.56 belt-fed machine-gun. I gave him a nod.

‘So I make it into the scrub but they keep hosing the area down and I take a round.’ He tapped his knee in case I needed the hollow reminder. ‘Can you believe that, man? The fucker wasn’t even aiming.

‘I manage to drag myself further into the undergrowth. It’s real dense, so I just keep crawling. Three fucking days crawling through it, until I find myself near El Veintiuno. By then I know the leg is history but, fuck it, I’m alive. So I steal a truck and get myself to Acapulco, using my good leg, until I crash into a police convoy near the coast.

‘That’s where the Feds are, man – where the tourists hang out. Not the local guys, they’d have handed me right back. The Feds make some calls, the DEA have me medevaced north, and here I am.’

Dino shook his head. His eyes never left the ceiling.

‘Except that I left a big part of myself behind. I can’t close my eyes without seeing their faces. I check windows, doors, every fucking lock and bolt, every step of the way. I’ve no fucking patience with anyone. I can’t sit still for more than five minutes unless I’m plugged into the Xbox. Shitloads of Xbox, just to keep a grip on … something …

‘I get disoriented … displaced … One day I lost it on the freeway … forgot who I was, forgot how to drive. It was like I’d completely lost my mind. For a few weeks I managed to keep it together on the outside, then got to the point where I almost couldn’t leave the house. There was no safe place in the world for me.

‘I was an easy-going guy. You knew me, man, back in the day. I was married, good kids. But when I came home, everything went haywire. I was on edge, and I mean seriously. Short temper, short fuse. The smallest thing could set me off. I’d blow up if my wife was five minutes late. Out in the field, five minutes late can get you killed! She never really understood. She said she did, but I could see the fucking pity in her eyes too …

‘I started in on our boys. I was constantly on their case. I was
so trapped inside my own fucking head I couldn’t feel their pain. I had no idea what was going on around me.

‘I was still fighting a war I didn’t understand against an enemy I couldn’t kill.’

His gaze finally drifted back in my direction and he lay there staring into my eyes, looking to me for answers I couldn’t give.

15.33 hrs

Ye olde towne north of the Beltway consisted of a labyrinth of brick buildings that must have been thrown together at quirky angles by a nineteenth-century
feng-shui
enthusiast. Most of them were now boutiques peddling high-end visitor tat or lace cushions and scented candles. A twenty-first-century Starbucks rubbed shoulders with them, doing its best to blend in. I sat inside it with a brew in a paper cup; I wasn’t sure if Dino would want to stay or go somewhere more private.

I was doing a little research on my iPhone when I spotted his truck through the rain-stained windows, heading for the marina car park on the Potomac less than a hundred metres away.

I’d suggested we met closer to the airport after he’d checked out the Academy databases. I needed to travel down to Narcopulco and get on with it.

Dino appeared with a bottle of mineral water in one hand and a plastic cup in the other. He looked a whole lot better than he had this morning, but still ragged. He sat down and straightened out his prosthetic beneath the table.

I put my iPhone down so he couldn’t see the screen. ‘Any luck?’

He leaned towards me as a couple of teenagers in sweats, rain-soaked and clinging, made their way past us to a window seat. The light had come back into his eyes. ‘A female Hispanic, mid-thirties, has been at the house.’ He tapped an index finger on the table-top in case I hadn’t tuned in to the significance of his announcement. ‘I don’t know if she’s still there, but for sure she’s not a whore. The hookers come in busloads, for the parties, but leave the next morning. El Peregrino is a possessive fucker – that’s the way Liseth has raised him. So if she’s there, he ain’t going to let her out of his sight. The fucker takes what he wants – and hangs on to it.’

I watched him swallow a mouthful, waiting for the inevitable.

‘I can
help
, Nick. I know that place inside out. I know how to get to the fucker – and to that bitch. Take me with you.’

‘Mate, you know you’d just be a pain in the arse. You’ve got half a fucking steel factory hanging off your leg, so you’re not exactly going to be climbing walls and jumping fences, are you?’

His tone was urgent again, but low: ‘I could give you real-time shit on the ground. It could save your ass, man, and hers. I know these people. I know that fucking
casa
like the back of my hand.’

I shook my head. ‘Three problems. First, you walk like you’re a crab on stilts. Second, what if you’re recognized? That would put all three of us in the shit. And, third, you’ve got a problem that needs some attention …’ I reached across and tapped his head. ‘We don’t want to make it any worse than it is already, do we? Flashbacks and all that shit messing with the inside of your head once you’re back down there. The two of them would be in spitting distance. Don’t you think that would fuck you up a bit?’

‘I can handle it, man. I gotta grip this shit, you know that. Maybe if I come down with you, maybe if—’

I held up a hand. ‘I do need your help. Real-time int? Yes, please.’ I pointed at the phone on the table. ‘I need you on one of these things, twenty-four/seven. I need you every step of the way. But let’s keep Mission Control up here, mate, where you can stay out of trouble, not down south.’

I was about to sit back when he gripped my shoulder and his eyes bored into mine. Energized became desperate again. ‘We
fucked up. We should have drilled that bitch in ‘ninety-three.’

‘That wasn’t the task, was it? No one knew then.’

‘It’s not just about us, Nick. Liseth is pushing that fucking son of hers to the top. You know what that means? It means a narco state on my fucking doorstep. Our kids are gonna suffer, man. And not just our kids. Their kids too. We gotta stop ’em.’

We both knew the future leadership of Mexico wasn’t the only reason he wanted them dead.

‘Mate, it won’t stop the nightmares, the paranoia, the meth – or get your family back. Nor will going in-country and exposing yourself to all the physical triggers. For what? So you can try to face your fears, tackle the demons? You really want to take that risk? A couple of dead bodies and a tray of tacos is gonna do fuck-all for you, mate. You need time, care and therapy to turn the page. I don’t know much, but I know about this shit.’

I watched him sip water with a shaking hand and stare out of the window.

After a few moments he turned back to me. ‘You’ve got to kill them, Nick. You’ve got to kill them both.’

I picked up my mobile and moved my chair round to his side of the table. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of the two teenagers sitting opposite each other, thumbing their smartphones in silence by the window.

I leaned closer to his shoulder. ‘Listen, mate. I’ve been lifted myself a couple of times, and I was a PoW in the Gulf. I know what it’s like. I know about the pain.’

I rolled up my right sleeve to show him the pattern of dog-bite puncture marks that decorated my arm. ‘I’ve even had some of that shit. I may not know much …’ I got half a smile out of him as I knuckled my head … ‘but I’ve learned something from it all.’ I let the cuff fall back to my wrist. ‘I bet when you were captured there was nothing you could do about preventing the physical pain. Am I right? They could do whatever they wanted to do to you and you could do fuck-all about it …’

He nodded. I could see his mind ticking over and some of those images coming back into his head.

‘That’s right, mate. Even the leg.’ Through his jeans, I tapped the composite where it cupped the stump. ‘There was fuck-all you could do about it. You got fucked over, and you had no control.’

He nodded again.

‘But you aren’t
living
the pain any more. That’s all in the past. Nobody’s taking a mallet to your head. No one’s spraying rounds
into you. No one’s burning, biting or doing whatever the fuck they did to you. That’s no longer happening.’ I tapped my temple again. ‘It’s just this fucking thing refusing to let go, that’s all. Just your head. The physical shit has gone, mate.
They
have gone. Liseth and the Pilgrim can’t hurt you any more. You can only hurt yourself now, and the people close to you. The people who love you, the people you love.’

I tapped my iPhone screen and passed it over.

Dino took it. His eyes bounced between the read-out and me as the last drop of rain dribbled down the side of his face. I’d been Googling therapists.

‘Mate, no one needs to know about this apart from you. Contact one of these fuckers. There’s thousands of them.’

Dino handed me back the mobile with a look of sadness. ‘Those thousands cost thousands, Nick.’

I thrust the screen at him, held it no more than an inch from his nose. ‘Bollocks. I counted six of these fuckers in Alexandria alone. They won’t be the overpriced wankers who see you twice a week and then tell you your mum fucked up your potty training. I bet there were shed-loads of people – civilians, military, who cares? – who needed help after the nine/eleven hit on the Pentagon. They wouldn’t have wanted anyone to know they had problems, but I bet they decided it was money well spent.’

I put the mobile back on the table, screen up. ‘So here’s the deal. You promise to get help. I’ll go and lift Katya, and try to find out what the fuck this is all about.’

He steepled his fingers in front of his nose and took a couple of deep breaths. Then he nodded and pointed to the phone. ‘I’ll be on one of those things, twenty-four/seven. I’ll be there for you, man. Every step of the way.’

I picked up my brew and stood. ‘We need to sort out comms, that sort of shit, but I’ll do that as soon as I get a flight. And I’m going to need a whole lot more detail about the
casa
. I’ll call you when I’m on the road, OK?’

He nodded like a lunatic. Then his face clouded again. ‘I think it’s her, Nick. I think Katya is there. But there’s something you should know …’

He grasped the neck of his bottle like he was going to strangle the fucker.

‘She seems to have the freedom of the place. We’ve only got partial imagery, but she may not be a prisoner.’

I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with her, mate, and to be honest, I’m not sure I care. But Anna and our boy are under threat, and Katya’s the one with the answers.’

I paused. ‘Last night, when you were back there, you mumbled a whole bunch of numbers. Were you trying to remember something? A code maybe?’

He went very still.

‘Like I said, man, they’ve got their own escape route. The tunnel goes from inside the house – from inside the kitchen – to the hangar where they keep the chopper. Steel door both ends. Only Liseth and Peregrino know the access code. They don’t even trust the guy in charge of security with it.’

‘Just in case he helps himself to their grab bags.’

He nodded. ‘The money must be in there somewhere. Miguel had to turn his back each time she tapped the numbers into the keypad. But she didn’t worry about us dogs – as long as we stayed on our leashes and didn’t shit on her floor.’

I had one last question before I hit the road. ‘What would have happened if I hadn’t remembered the range?’

He put his water bottle carefully on the table. ‘We wouldn’t be here, man.’ Then he noticed the name scribbled on my cup and smiled a real big one, the kind of smile I hadn’t seen on his face since he was all cock and no brain a couple of lifetimes ago.