Matt Hilton - Cut and run

He shot the first man in the heart, just beneath his folded arms, and in the same movement swung on the man with the broken arm. The guy shrieked in panic, trying to get at the gun in his jacket but impeded by the cast. Rickard fired once and the bullet struck the man's left cheek. Blood and brain matter puffed in the dusty air behind him. Both men collapsed at the same time, one to each side of Rickard's extended arm. A little over two seconds was all that had elapsed between Rickard drawing the handgun and both men lying dead in the road.

In those couple of seconds Wetherby knew the truth, but his reaction wasn't to fight back. Fear struck him and gave him the false sense of capability that said he could outrace a bullet. He set off running along the road, kicking up dirt.

Rickard shook his head at the man's cowardice. He lifted the gun and aimed, firing a single round.

Wetherby slapped a hand down hard on his right buttock. It did nothing to stop the damage caused by the bullet. His leg gave under him and he spun to the ground, screaming in pain. He rolled over on his back, eyes wide as he watched Rickard walk calmly towards him. Finally he went for the gun clipped in a snap-holster on his hip.

Rickard stamped on his elbow, pinning his arm to the ground. He pulled loose Wetherby's gun. It was a stainless steel revolver, six-shot, an old-timer's weapon.

'Please.' The word came out as a long whine.

'The truth now, Ken.' Rickard stepped off his elbow. 'You told Hunter how to find me.'

'I didn't…'

'The truth, I said.'

'He must have figured it out himself.'

Rickard shook his head slowly. He leaned down so he was staring deeply into Wetherby's face. 'You were at the centre of this, Ken. It was you who fed Jimena Grajales the information on Hunter and his team and who directed my movements on her behalf. You're the only person who knew the connection between me and Gutierrez, and with Jimena. Hunter didn't just turn up at Cesar Calle's place by chance: someone gave him the tip-off.'

'Why would I do that? I wanted him dead as much as Jimena did.'

'Because you're a coward, Ken, and you're afraid of Hunter. You were the only person who knew I was going to Colombia. You hoped that by sending him after me we'd end up killing each other. You didn't expect either of us to come back.' Wetherby tried to sit up, his hands coming up imploringly. Rickard placed the toe of his boot to the man's chest and pressed him down again. 'You must have hated Joe Hunter a great deal to decide you'd set me up as well. Did you not consider what that would mean if I survived?'

'I did hate him, Rickard. He threatened to close my business down, I couldn't let that happen. So, yeah, I jumped at the chance to have him murdered. When Gutierrez contacted me looking for someone to do the job, you were the first name that came to my mind. I knew you were better than him. I knew that you could take him wherever you met.'

'I thought you said you had nothing to do with sending him after me?'

'Jesus, Rickard, you're putting words in my mouth.'

'No, Ken, I'm putting this in your mouth.' He jammed the end of the suppressor against Wetherby's teeth. 'Say aah!'

Wetherby cried now. Rickard thought it strange that someone could screw their eyes so tight and still produce tears. His lips were equally puckered.

Rickard pulled the gun away.

'Open your eyes, Ken.'

Wetherby couldn't. The prospect of a horrible death had such a powerful hold on him that his brain function temporarily rebelled. He just lay there mewling like a broken-backed cat.

'Open your freakin' eyes. Look at me like a man, not crying like a little girl.'

Rickard kicked Wetherby in the backside, toe digging painfully into the bullet wound. The pain did the trick and Wetherby's eyelids shot open. His pupils remained unfocused for a few seconds afterwards, but he finally looked up at Rickard.

'Jesus… God…'

'Shut up, Ken. You're embarrassing yourself. You're beginning to sound like my goddamn wife.'

'Don't hurt me… please!'

'Well,' Rickard said, 'I've nothing else I can come up with. I was going to let you take the Fireblade back, but I can't have you bleeding over such a beautiful piece of machinery.'

Rickard smiled, making the ill-concealed lie even more obvious.

'Please…'

'Can't allow it. You betrayed me. Goodbye, Ken.'

He shot Wetherby in the chest.

The life went out of Wetherby like a tyre with a slow puncture, his arms flopping in slow-motion by his sides, mouth drooping open.

Rickard ejected the magazine from his gun, checked how many rounds he'd used. Still plenty left, so he pushed it back in place. While unscrewing the suppressor, he looked down at Wetherby dispassionately.

He thought that killing the man might cause more of a reaction. Wetherby had been his major source of income over the last few years and for most of them they'd been friends. It was a shame that Wetherby had allowed his hatred of Joe Hunter to come between them.

'You should have just hired me to kill him straight off, Ken, kept things simple, instead of allowing a woman to call the shots. Do you see where a scheming bitch has got us now?'

I'd been meaning to take an air-boat ride for the last couple of years, ever since I'd taken up residence here in Florida. Riding the air-boats with their huge rotating fan on the back has always summed up my idea of seeing the beauty of the Everglades in style, but I hadn't got round to it yet. In the time I'd been here, other things just seemed to get in the way. Too often those things had meant violent death to too many people. A lot of those people should have still been around, but some of them deserved exactly what they got.

'We get out of this alive,' I had told Rink earlier, 'I'm gonna hire an air-boat and go and look at the 'gators.'

'Keep your eyes peeled, buddy, or you might see 'em sooner than you think.'

He wasn't kidding.

Rink then slipped away through tall grass, heading in a circuitous route round the back end of the hospital grounds. We had our mobile phones to communicate by, but that was the last I'd heard from the big guy in the last few hours.

Instead of careening through the swamp on a flat-bottomed boat, the huge propeller whirring behind me, my view of the swamp was from a raised hummock of limestone. I'd built an observation post there, scraping a narrow furrow in the earth to make lying down a little more comfortable. I had my carbine propped in a natural V between two rocks, the DPM sheet spread over me with tufts of grass strewn over it to aid the camouflage.

Oddly enough, I wasn't hiding from Luke Rickard. My reason for remaining so still and silent was so that the men in the grounds of the hospital were unaware of my presence. The men – Hubbard's HRT troopers – would see my being there as a interference in lawful process worthy of my being arrested and thrown in chains. We were on the same side; it was just a pity they couldn't see things that way. They wanted to arrest Luke Rickard, hurl the weight of the Federal Court system at him and lock him away for life, while I just wanted to bury the asshole.

Hubbard's men were highly trained – probably the cream of all SWAT teams in the country – but they weren't the right men for this job. They were specialists in hostage rescue, not standing guard against a determined assassin. I'd counted half a dozen storm troopers up until now, intimidating in their black Kevlar armour and helmets but no deterrent to someone like Luke Rickard. Maybe Hubbard thought he could frighten off the killer with this show of force, when instead all he was doing was showing his hand and allowing the planning of countermeasures. He should have brought only a small hand-picked team of undercover agents, men and women who could blend with the hospital staff. That way Rickard wouldn't find it so easy to determine the strength of his enemy. That would give him more pause, make him worry that everyone inside the hospital was a potential threat and that this was neither the correct time nor place for a hit. That would slow him down more than any skirmish line of heavy artillery would. To stop an assassin you had to think like one.