Matt Hilton: Cut and run

He smiled. Not many fools could make a living from killing and as a measure of his success, Rickard was a very wealthy man.

'Rickard,' he said into the phone.

'That was good work today,' said the voice at the other end.

'Thanks. I enjoyed it.'

'The figure we agreed is in your account.'

'Yes.' Rickard had already checked.

'OK, so Hunter can't go to the police now. We've got him on the run and I want to keep the impetus going. Are you ready for the next part of the plan?'

'When?'

'How soon can you be ready?'

Rickard cupped his hand over the phone. He called out to the closed bathroom door, 'Alisha, honey, take your time in there. Change of plans, I'm afraid. I have to go out alone tonight.'

After yesterday, having a gun pressed to my head wasn't the best way to start my day, but it did a lot more to wake me up than the two Vente Americanos I'd already downed from the corner Starbucks. By the feel of the snub-nosed revolver touching a point just above my left ear, the man wasn't joking. I took my hands from the steering wheel of my Taurus to show I wasn't armed.

'You don't need the gun,' I told him. 'Don't forget… you called for this meeting.'

'I haven't stayed alive this long by taking unnecessary risks. Just do as I ask and everything will be fine.'

Slipping out of the car, I appraised the gunman. He was unremarkable: brown hair, brown eyes, medium height and medium build. He was the type of person who could blend into any crowd, your typical CIA agent. It was seven years since I'd laid eyes on Bryce Lang, but the years had been kind to him. Apart from a couple of extra lines round his eyes, he looked much the way he had when last we'd worked together.

'Am I missing something here, Bryce? I thought we were on the same side.' I looked at him steadily and saw his eyelids droop ever so slightly.

'That's the problem, Hunter. I'm not sure whose side you're on any more.' He waved me towards a nondescript brown sedan car. 'You drive.'

'Where to?'

'I'll tell you when we're moving.'

Bryce kept the gun on me until I was seated in his car. Periodically he glanced round searching for hidden observers, but this neck of Tampa was practically deserted at this time of morning. Only the occasional harried employee ducking into the nearby Starbucks for a caffeine injection on their walk to work was in evidence. Their eyes were too sleep-muddled to make sense of the man with a gun in their midst. Happy that we'd gone unnoticed, Bryce clambered into the passenger seat. He held the gun across his thighs, the muzzle aimed at my side.

From his jacket pocket he pulled out a small contraption that he held concealed in his palm. He waved the electronic device in my direction and I heard a faint buzz in response.

'You have a mobile phone?'

'You know I do. You called me on it.' It was prepaid and unregistered, no way of linking it to me.

'Turn it off. Do it slowly. No sudden movements.'

Reaching into my shirt pocket I used two fingers to slip my Nokia out and flip it open. I depressed the red button and put the phone back in my pocket.

Bryce again swept me with the device and he seemed happy that I wasn't wired or carrying any kind of bugs or location devices on me. As he did, he relaxed his grip on the gun. If I wanted to I could have taken him out then. A quick slash of my stiffened hand into his windpipe and that would have been that. But I didn't. Like I'd told him earlier, I thought we were on the same side. Plus, the trouble I'd found myself in and the timeliness of Bryce's sudden appearance was no coincidence.

'What's going on, Bryce?'

He grimaced, but then nodded us forward. 'Drive.'

So I drove.

We headed out on Kennedy Boulevard, sitting silently. Bryce angled the wing mirror so that he could keep an eye on the road behind us. He ordered me to take a left on to a surface street, cutting through a housing scheme that appeared to be more trees than houses. Nice neighbourhood. He watched for anyone following, but the road behind us was clear. He indicated me through a couple of turns and we came out on to another boulevard, this time Henderson. I took a sharp right and we headed back towards Kennedy on the Dale Mabry Highway. At Kennedy once more, he indicated that I continue driving west out of town. I glanced across at him. His eyes were on the mirror.

'There's no one following.' I was pretty sure of that considering I'd been checking for cops all morning. 'I came alone, like I said I would.'

'It's not anyone with you that's troubling me, Hunter.' But that was all he'd say. He again fell silent, watching behind us for a tail that I was certain wasn't there. We reached a turnpike and he gestured me through it and north on to Veterans Expressway. We were almost at Greater Northdale before Bryce finally put the gun away.

'Where am I going, Bryce?'

'Knowing Joe Hunter, you'll have a safe house somewhere. Take us there.'

'Tell me what's going on.'

'Only when I'm sure that it's safe.'

He didn't speak again until we were on US 98, heading north-west for the Gulf Coast. When he did so, it seemed like there was a touch of regret behind his words.

'I always trusted you, Hunter. You were always a good man.'

'So why the gun, Bryce? Why all the precautions?'

'It's the nature of the job, Hunter. You know that.'

'I'm not in the job any more.' I looked across at him again. 'Last I heard, neither are you. You retired, I was told.'

'People like us never retire.'

I couldn't argue with that.

I was no special agent like Bryce Lang, I was just one of the grunts sent in when the agents had done their work. Assassin isn't a term I favour, but I suppose that all depends on which end of the gun you're looking down. When you've killed for a living, it's something that you can't leave behind – however hard you try. I've tried to hide from my past, but it was a pointless exercise because the violence always seemed to find me. I'm not seen as an assassin now; these days people call me a vigilante.

I don't care for that term either.

However my ethos is simple: there's no room in this world for people prepared to make the lives of others miserable. As a soldier my enemies were sadistic, brutal and immoral people and I had no qualms about putting them down. Stripped bare, all they were was bullies and the only way I know to stop a bully is to stand up to them. If that makes me a vigilante then so be it.

'Someone from your past has come back to haunt you,' I offered.

'Someone from our past, Hunter.'

I looked across at him and we locked gazes. 'Colombia?'

Had to be Colombia. It was the only time we'd worked together.

Now I was the one checking my mirrors for a tail.

Bogota, Colombia, had two faces. One was made up of modern high-rise towers, as affluent a district as boasted by any other major city in the civilised world. The second was that area that sprawled on the western edge of the city, where people lived in squalor to rival the worst ghettos anywhere. There people existed. No other term was applicable to their lives. There was no money, little food, poor sanitation and homes made from wood and sheet metal and anything else that could be scavenged. It was a city that summed up for me the very reason for battling against the corrupt people of the earth. I couldn't stand by and watch children starve to death, knowing that little more than a few miles away evil people were growing fat on their misery. The thought sullied my conscience.

I was there along with another three members of my team, plus Bryce Lang, our CIA link, and an agent from Colombia's Narcotics Task Force called Victor Montoya who was our local Departmento Administrativo de Seguridad contact. We were in the Barrio La Candelaria district of the city, surrounded by old world buildings painted in vibrant colours. This was the area that the city was originally founded upon and it retained much of its historic charm. Over the rooftops, I could make out the ornate twin spires of the cathedral in the nearby Plaza de Boliva. Beyond the spires the Andes were swathed in menacing clouds the same gunmetal blue as the SIG Sauer P226 I held in my hand.