Matt Hilton - Dead Men's Harvest

The highway was mainly cleared of snow, but it was piled at each side in huge mounds. The trees were heavily laden, the lowest boughs hidden in the drifts. There was little traffic, but she tucked into the wake of a truck and followed its lights through the swirling storm. It became apparent that other road users had the same idea because another car tucked in behind hers and one behind that. She made it to Machias in just under an hour, following the road through town and over the Machias River and out towards the police office. Joe had promised that he’d send someone to collect her, but how would they get here in this storm? The same way the bad guys would, she realised, and glanced once more at the reassuring presence of the revolver beside her.

Flakes of snow drifted slowly across the road, caught on the breeze from a cross-street, as she waited for a traffic signal to turn green. On the sidewalks there were few pedestrians, but she watched a father trail two small boys on a sledge. The children were laughing and exhorting their dad to greater speed. They were approaching her car, and from his higher vantage the man would see her gun. She tucked it inside her coat. The man leaned down and grinned at her as he passed, a small-town gesture of friendship.

Imogen flapped him a brief wave of her hand.

She watched in her mirror as the man picked up speed, turning to run backwards as he yelled something at his cheering children. For a moment Imogen forgot about her worries in thoughts of children of her own. Could she imagine Joe Hunter hauling their kids along on a sledge? Then the tears were back. When next she checked in her mirror, the family had gone round a corner, but there was someone else on the sidewalk.

A man was walking quickly towards the rear of her car. He had his head tilted down against the weather, his collar turned up, both hands stuffed in his pockets. She had no idea where he’d come from, but suspected that he had climbed out of the vehicle two back in the line. She wondered if it was one of the two cars that had followed her trail along the highway. His head came up, and there was nothing of a small-town welcome in that glance.

She jerked her gaze up at the lights. Still on red. A bus crossed her path, slowed and angled for a turn past her car. The driver was taking things easy on the slushy surface, but even so the back end of the bus slewed slightly. The driver adjusted his approach, and began to creep around the corner. The lights changed, but Imogen could go nowhere yet. When she glanced in the mirror again, the man was passing the car behind hers. She touched the gas pedal, readying to take off.

Then something unexpected happened.

He yanked open the passenger door of the car behind and leaned in. Over the roar of the bus’s engine Imogen didn’t hear the bang of a gun, but she saw the flash of flame and the spray of blood that misted the interior of the car.

‘Oh my God!’ Caught in a panic, Imogen grabbed at the steering wheel, seeking a way around the rear end of the bus.

There was another flash inside the car behind, a second shot. Then the gunman stood up, and this time he was heading for her. The second car back suddenly peeled out, barrelling along the sidewalk and past the walking man. It screeched to a halt to Imogen’s side, blocking her with its fender. Boxed in by the bus and the vehicle, she’d nowhere to escape to. Imogen let out a series of frightened cries, struggling to extract the revolver from her coat. The hammer snagged on the lining and she knew she’d never get to it in time. She cast a terrified glance at the car blocking her in, but couldn’t make out the face of the driver.

Another prayer escaped her, and she saw the gunman reach for her door. Any second now he’d lean inside and shoot her. She tore at her coat, almost had the gun clear but it slipped from her fingers. The door began to swing open and Imogen screwed her eyes up in anticipation of a bullet in her head.

‘Imogen,’ a voice snapped.

She made a mewling sound, but reaction forced her eyes open.

A man with a scar on his lip and missing a chunk of eyebrow held an empty hand to her.

‘Come with us now.’

Imogen was too terrified to recognise the face.

‘It’s me, Brigham. Joe sent us for you.’

The name Brigham meant nothing to her. But he’d spoken the magic word: Joe. She looked at him now with a mix of hope and revulsion for what he’d just done to the people in the other car. He read the horror in her face. ‘If I hadn’t stopped them, they’d have killed you. Now, come on, we’re sure there’ll be others.’

Afterwards, Imogen didn’t recall being hauled out of her car, or being hustled into the government vehicle. Once she was down on the back seat, with Brigham covering her with his body, she sucked in a deep gulp of air, realising that she’d been holding her breath since she’d been grabbed. Her heart thundered in her chest and she felt woozy, on the verge of passing out.

The government car bumped down off the sidewalk, weaving around Imogen’s stalled vehicle and the back of the bus. There were faint shouts of consternation from within the bus as its passengers realised what they’d just witnessed. Imogen tried to sit up.

‘Stay down,’ Brigham hissed. ‘I told you there might be others.’

‘Those people…’

‘Punks sent after you.’ It was the man in the front who’d spoken. Now that she’d had a few seconds to think, Imogen recognised both men as the two who had taken Joe away from her. ‘Looks like we made it here just in time.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘We’re good at our jobs. They’re local scum, but they’d been sent orders to capture you by someone called Baron. Joe Hunter warned us that was going to happen.’

‘Local scum! What if they-’

Brigham cut her off. ‘We were listening in with a directional microphone. They were armed and they were following you, plotting how to take you down. We had to take them down first.’

Imogen was too confused to make any sense of it or the implication of their deaths. Was she complicit in murder? Should she bail out of this car at her first opportunity and run to the police for help? Or should she be thankful that the two CIA agents had risked their own lives on her behalf? After all, it was Joe who had sent them. She shut up.

When Brigham finally allowed her to straighten up in the seat, they were beyond the town limits and heading for Machias Valley Airport. Imogen blinked at the snow-laden trees flashing by. Hartlaub glanced in his mirror at her. ‘You OK?’

‘I… I think so.’

‘Good. Now sit back and relax. I think we’re out of the fire for now.’

‘For now?’

‘Who knows when they might try again?’

Imogen ran trembling fingers over her face. ‘Why are people always trying to kill me?’ Even to her own ears she seemed on the verge of hysterics.

‘That’s what comes of having friends like Joe Hunter, I guess.’

Selwin, North Carolina, was about a mile to the south of Rene Moulder’s veterinary practice. Between her tiny clapperboard house with its purpose-built annexe and the small town, the countryside was dominated by thick woodland, interspersed with the occasional cattle-dotted meadow. It was into one such meadow that Harvey put down the Bell Jetranger and from there we transferred Rink to the rear of the vet’s flat-bed truck. I guessed that in the past Rene had utilised it to cart away sick or dead livestock, so it was big enough to accommodate an ox like Rink. I crouched in the back with him while Harvey clambered into the cab with the woman. Rene set off for her practice, taking it easy over the rutted dirt trails.

Rink had come round from his deep slumber, but he wasn’t looking much better for the rest. His usually tawny skin had a grey tinge that made him look a decade older. That said, he was his usual self in other ways. ‘What do you make of Rene? Told you she was a pretty little thing, didn’t I?’