Matt Hilton - Dead Men's Harvest

In a cavern beneath the Mojave Desert I’d rammed a human bone through his throat and watched him bleed to death. I’d watched the light go out of his crazed eyes. Martin Maxwell, once a Secret Service agent, had been buried and the government had covered the shame of one of their own being responsible for his crimes. His headstone bore a different name. As far as the general public knew, it wasn’t Maxwell but his stepbrother Robert Swan who’d masqueraded under the name of Tubal Cain. Outside of the establishment I was one of the few people who knew otherwise.

So had I been misled as much as everyone else? On more than one occasion I’d challenged Walter on the explanation for Cain being whisked away on a gurney. That first time, when I’d wanted to ensure the bastard was dead, Walter, in his usual enigmatic style had come back with the rejoinder; ‘We don’t bury the living.’

But that was exactly what he’d done.

‘OK, Hartlaub. The charade’s over. Take me to Walter.’

‘Charade?’ Hartlaub had made a career from lying, could come over as plausible even under the closest of scrutiny. But we weren’t enemies and he allowed the corner of his mouth to turn up. ‘Walter is dead, Hunter.’

‘And so is Martin Maxwell, right? The son of a bitch…’

I wasn’t sure who my final words were aimed at, whether Cain or Walter. I suppose that they were for Walter because they’d have been much stronger fired at the man who’d savagely tortured my younger brother, John. Walter had lied to me, sworn that Cain was dead and buried, and now he was adding to the lie by faking his own death.

‘Where is he, Hartlaub? I don’t want any more bullshit. Walter escaped this, didn’t he?’

‘OK, keep it down, Hunter. There are guys within earshot who are under the impression that Walter died alongside his guards.’

Taking in the splashes of gore, I counted where men had fallen. ‘Looks like three men did die here. Walt’s guys were killed, but who was the other unlucky bastard?’

‘You know him, I’m told.’

I had an idea where this was leading. I did know a guy, a friend and fellow fisherman who often accompanied Walter to the cabin.

‘You’re talking about Bryce Lang?’

‘Yes. Poor fucker must’ve been mistaken for Walt.’

I could see how that could have happened. Bryce had also been CIA. He was of an age with Walter, had the same air of the spook about him. Unlike Hartlaub and Brigham, who were active in the field, both of my older friends were the type who directed covert operations from offices at Langley and other institutions. They had the grey pallor and equally grey demeanour of men who spent their days cooped up in hidden places. Someone coming here with the intention of finding Walter Hayes Conrad could have assumed that Bryce was their man. Supposing that they had never met Walter face to face, that is.

If, and I was beginning to believe that I was right, it was Tubal Cain who was responsible for this carnage, he hadn’t seen Walter when we were standing over him in the cavern at Jubal’s Hollow. At the time Cain was so close to death that he must have been searing his optic nerves on the blazing flames of hell. But, if Walter had saved the man for some unknown reason, then there was the possibility that he’d visited with him since. And that begged further questions: what the hell had happened here? Why had Bryce been cut to ribbons? What had his killer been after?

Cain was looking for something.

My brother John.

‘Walter is playing at being dead, that’s it? He wants Cain to believe that he’s dead. And he sent you to bring me in. There’s only one reason I can think why he’d do that.’

‘You’ve had experience with this man before,’ Hartlaub said.

‘So it is Tubal Cain? You’re confirming that?’

‘I ain’t going to lie to you any longer. Cain was being held at Fort Conchar. There should’ve been no way for him to escape…’

‘But he did.’

‘Yes. Despite all the odds, he murdered one of his guards, used the uniform as a disguise. Once outside he gave his pursuers the slip — we don’t know how he managed that yet.’

‘Fort Conchar is a super-max facility, yet he managed to walk out in a fuckin’ guard’s uniform! What about the checks and security points? I’d’ve thought that… Oh, wait. I get it. We’re talking about Tubal Cain, aren’t we? He took the body parts he required to get past the security.’

‘Fingerprints and retinal scans are no problem to someone like him.’ Hartlaub gave me a gentle shove towards the door where Brigham was waiting. ‘C’mon. We’d best get going.’

‘It’d better be to see Walter or we’re parting company right now.’

‘Let’s move then.’

‘Do you have a phone?’

‘I do, but our orders are to maintain silence until we’ve joined Walter.’

I shook my head. ‘There are other people involved in this. If Tubal Cain is out there, then they could be next on his list.’

‘You’re talking about Jared Rington?’

Rink had been with me when I’d taken Cain down, and was as likely a target of the deranged killer as Walter was. Harvey Lucas, too, though I couldn’t see how Cain would be aware of his involvement.

‘Can save you the trouble,’ Brigham interjected. ‘Walter asked for Rington to be brought in. The team sent to find him has come up blank. Rington’s dropped off the face of the earth.’

One day earlier…

‘My entire resources are open to you. Money, men, weapons. Choose whatever you want to get the job done.’

Kurt Hendrickson was a man of power. He was a significant figure in the criminal underworld of the Eastern Seaboard. He controlled the market in drugs, prostitution, pornography, extortion, and up until recently had been a major player in counterfeiting currency that he traded with terror groups intent on bringing down the mighty dollar. He wielded the kind of influence where he need only click his fingers to make people disappear without trace. However there was a specific man whose disappearance had nothing to do with Hendrickson. This man was under the US Federal Marshals’ witness protection programme and, unusually, this was being overseen by agents of the CIA. Tracing him wasn’t the main issue; killing him without being implicated in the murder was. It was bad enough that he was facing judicial trial; he didn’t need the murder of the key witness laid at his door as well. It served his purpose that Tubal Cain had a vendetta against the same man.

‘All I need from you is his location,’ Cain said.

They were standing in a vault that Hendrickson had installed in the wine cellar of his house. The vault contained row upon row of firearms.

Hendrickson, it appeared, had a fascination with guns.

Tubal Cain wasn’t that interested; his passion was for knives.

That stood to reason, considering his name was derived from the Biblical inventor of cutting instruments. But he was not averse to other weapons of destruction when necessary. He had a Heckler and Koch 9 mm in a shoulder rig. A Beretta 92F, a variation of the famous service weapon of the US armed forces, was in a second holster on his hip.

‘I have a plan in motion. We will have his location within a couple of days.’ Hendrickson picked up an ancient Colt and held it up to admire under the overhead lights.

‘I want to get started now,’ Cain said. ‘I have an idea or two that might put us ahead in the game.’

Hendrickson nodded distractedly, lost in his fascination with the Colt. ‘I killed my first man with this gun.’

Cain sniffed. ‘I find guns so impersonal.’

‘Maybe, but they get the job done. If you only desire a man’s life, then a bullet in the brain will do it every time.’