Patrick Quinlan - The Hit

Fielding nodded. ‘You’ll accompany my men back here on the plane, of course. To make sure the operation ends smoothly?’

‘Of course. I’ll probably bring at least one of my men with me as well.’

‘The scientist,’ Fielding said. ‘He’s a good man?’

Gant chose not to answer the question. ‘I’ve worked with him before, and our previous work has been a success. What we accomplished in the past is likely what brought my name to your attention.’

He paused, then looked deeply into Fielding’s eyes. ‘The question now becomes, are you sure you want to go through with this?’

Gant saw the look come into Fielding’s eyes. He had seen it many times before, in many other sets of eyes. It was a hunger, like a vampire thirsty for blood.

‘Mr Gant, this house has been my primary residence for the past thirty years. I’m an American, but this island is my home. I buried my wife here. I raised two children here. I’ve run my businesses from here. Many good friends of mine have been driven away, forced off the island, by the tyranny of the mob. Innocent people have had their homes taken, have been murdered, and far worse.’ Fielding’s thin, weak hand clenched into a fist. ‘ Worse than murdered, do I need to explain the meaning of that to you? And some of the men doing these things were policemen not even a year ago. But this isn’t Rhodesia, or Zimbabwe, or whatever you want to call it. A few of us are still here, and we’re not going anywhere. We will not be terrorized and we will not be driven out. I am totally committed to the course of action I’ve asked you to take.’

‘And the media reaction?’ Gant said. ‘What will you do when CNN and the BBC are broadcasting footage of corpses being buried by bulldozers? What will you do when the Marines come ashore, with investigators from the Centers for Disease Control? What will you do afterward? How will you stay here? This is going to be a land of the dead.’

Fielding waved his hand, as he would wave away a mosquito. ‘Please don’t underestimate my ability to influence media coverage, or to influence the US government response. Let’s just say that members of Congress are among the least powerful of my friends. Anyway, this is a tiny island, barely worth mentioning. I’m sure you read the newspapers – people are dying everywhere. If a few thousand people here suddenly succumb to an infectious disease…’

He shrugged and paused for several seconds. Then he nodded. ‘And what am I going to do in this land of the dead, as you describe it? For one thing, I’m going to stay and see my enemies defeated. Then, after an appropriate length of time has passed, I’ll repopulate the island with immigrant workers who can better appreciate the blessings available here. To put it another way, I am completely prepared for the consequences of the operation.’

When he finished, a silence drew out between them.

‘Have I answered your concerns, Mr Gant?’

‘I guess you have. And I assume that means your operatives are ready?’

‘They’ve practiced nighttime attacks on the water towers half a dozen times now, without being detected.’

‘And you’ve taken the precautions I suggested? You have bottled water and food stockpiled? Your people are ready to defend this perimeter?’

‘I do, and they are.’

‘I want to tell you something. It’s a hell of a thing, what’s going to happen. I hope you’ll feel as gung ho about it afterward as you do now. Personally, I think you probably won’t.’

‘I’m surprised to hear you say that, Mr Gant. You sound like a man suffering from regrets. Will you lose sleep over this project? Have you lost sleep over similar projects in the past? If so, then I’m afraid I have the wrong intelligence sheet here.’

Gant stared into Fielding’s deep black eyes. ‘I’ve been around death a long time, Mr Fielding. It doesn’t bother me. In fact, it’s been my constant companion. If I’m away from it for any length of time, I start to feel lonely.’

Fielding smiled. ‘That’s good. That’s very, very good to hear.’

Gordo hummed a happy tune.

An hour had passed since they missed Foerster, and he and Jonah were in Kelly’s Bar, a dark and moody watering hole with two shamrocks in bright green neon adorning the front windows. The place sat along a grim and desolate strip of road, across from a cemetery. The nearest open shop was halfway up the street, a place that installed alarm systems. Also, there was a scrap metal dealer next door, a sign announcing ‘We Buy and Sell’ hovering above a barbed wire fence, but Gordo had never seen anybody go in or out of there. Kelly’s itself was long and narrow inside, like a tunnel, and always smelled of beer and piss. On the plus side, they had their own diesel-powered generator under an awning behind the building, and they weren’t reluctant to use it. As a result, the jukebox in the far corner and the color TV bolted to the wall over the bar always worked.

Gordo had the beers in hand, pints in frosted glasses. Despite the day’s fiasco, he felt pretty good. It was a temporary setback. Before leaving the scene today, Gordo had gone upstairs and snatched some unopened mail he found laying around the apartment. There was good stuff in that pile of envelopes, he knew there was.

When Gordo arrived at the table, Jonah was slouched on his stool, ignoring Foerster’s mail. Instead, he held a wet cloth napkin packed with ice against his forehead. He said he had gotten hit with a bottle, and he had an evil lump to prove it. The lump had cracked open and was oozing a sort of liquidy pus. Maybe there was some glass in there, Gordo didn’t know and didn’t care. He had bigger things to think about. For one, Jonah had shown him something today. That leap across the fire escapes, that took the door prize for guts. That was probably why Gordo felt so good, just knowing he had a partner with the stones to do that.

For a moment he saw the Jonah others saw. Light-skinned black man, son of a black mother and a white father. He had softer features than a lot of black guys – a leaner nose, thinner lips. Jonah was a solid, handsome dude, like an actor or maybe a pro baseball player out and about in street clothes.

It was rare for Gordo to look at him this way. Most of the time, Gordo still thought of his partner as he was when they first met and became friends in junior high school – a skinny kid with a crazy head of curly hair and basketball shorts hanging down past his knees. They had known each other a long time now – just about twenty years.

Gordo placed the beers on the table and slid onto his stool.

‘You want some acetaminophen?’ he said. ‘I got some out in the car. Generic store brand, but it works real good.’

Jonah shook his head. ‘The stuff is poison, man. It kills the liver.’

Gordo saw right away that Jonah was in a mood. Well, then it was up to Gordo to lighten the place up a little. ‘Listen, it was poor planning,’ he told Jonah. ‘The fucking guy out-thunk me, that’s all.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Jonah said.

‘We learned something today, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Planning is the key, all right? We just gotta look at all the angles. Cover all possible exits, no matter how crazy they seem.’

Jonah grimaced in response and stared down at the table. ‘That’s a long way to go to learn something.’

Gordo sipped his beer.

He was thirty-two years old, stood a shade under six feet tall, and weighed almost two hundred and fifty pounds. He thought he carried it pretty well, more like a strong, heavy thickness than fat. His massive belly was as hard as an iron skillet. His legs were like the trunks of California redwoods. His arms were like the big bass pipes on a giant church organ. And the nickname? He loved it. El Gordo. It reminded him of a superhero, or maybe a monster from the old Jap Godzilla movies. He had loved the girl down in Santo Domingo who thought it up, too. She was dark black with dyed-blonde hair and a killer body. Chocolata, she called herself, though God knew her real name was probably something a little more conventional like Rosa, or Maria. In any case, Gordo did her good, in ten different ways and in the morning he gave her an extra tip for the nickname idea.