Matt Hilton - Cut and run

Then everything was happening round me like I was caught in some kind of slow-motion nightmare.

I lunged towards Abadia, even as the second Galil bore round on me, and the henchman from the Lincoln grabbed at a weapon inside his jacket. The man with the rifle was the immediate threat and I dropped low in a stress fire isosceles stance as I sent two rounds into his central body mass. Ribbons of blood flew from the man's back as he was thrown down on his side. The Galil slid harmlessly beneath the town car. Abadia had caught the boy in his arms. I couldn't shoot him now. Anyway, the man from the car was now aiming his handgun at me. I saw the gunman squint as he targeted me, and knew that his bullet would follow a fraction of a second behind the action. I dipped my body to the left, saw his gun waver as it tried to follow, then I snapped back to the upright, leaving his aim trailing and I placed a round in his forehead.

The driver was clambering out of the car. He was a danger, but my most pressing thought was where Abadia was now – or more correctly to see if I had an opportunity to drop him without placing the boy or his mother in danger.

I caught a snapshot glimpse of the situation and saw that it was hopeless. Abadia had the boy held tight to his chest with one arm, while his other hand was drawing a revolver from a snap-lock holster on his hip.

The son of a bitch. He wasn't cradling the boy out of love. He'd recognised my reticence to shoot where the child was involved and he was now using his own son as a shield. Jimena had also come to that conclusion, and she was clawing at him to get the boy away. Her actions bought me a couple of seconds to deal with the man coming out of the car.

The driver had drawn his weapon – an H amp;K I immediately identified from its shape – and was bringing it over the roof of the car to shoot me. He snarled something in Spanish that I didn't catch. I was already dropping low, like an old-time gunslinger, shooting from the hip so that my bullets passed through the open car door on my side and out the open one on his. I hit him in the gut. He was sorely wounded, but not yet dead. He fired, and I'd no option but to throw myself to the ground. Now I fired under the car, blasting one of his ankles from under him. As he collapsed screaming, I again fired under the chassis and this time my bullet silenced him.

Four men dead in less than fifteen seconds, but none of them the man I'd come for.

I rolled over on to my back, bringing up my SIG.

The snapshot had changed from before.

Seeing me distracted, Abadia had released his grip on the boy, and Jimena had now taken charge of him. Abadia was taking a running step towards me, his revolver aiming at me.

So this is how I die, I thought, looking into Abadia's contorted features.

But then I saw Abadia shudder, and blood spattered from a wound in his chest. Another bullet tore a chunk out of his right shoulder and the revolver went spinning from his hand.

Jack Schilling, his MP5A3 rattling out death, continued to race nearer to me laying down covering fire. Behind him, I saw Bryce revving our car towards us.

I quickly came to one knee. Abadia was on the pavement not ten feet from me, face down, unmoving. Standard operating procedure dictated that I put a round in the back of his skull. But I was more concerned with the other bodies lying sprawled on the steps to the house.

They were unmoving too. Clutched in Jimena's death grip was a gun.

The operation to stem the flow of cocaine from Abadia's cartel was deemed successful – despite the unfortunate collateral damage incurred – and we all went on to further missions. All but one of us. I didn't hold Jack Schilling responsible for killing the woman. I couldn't; not when he was trying to save me. But the fact that he'd killed the boy sent an ice-cold wedge into my heart that just wouldn't thaw. We were never the same after that. Shame burned in the two of us. Jack retired from our unit before I did and I heard that he swallowed a bullet from his own gun a short time later. Maybe the killing of the boy had driven a wedge into his heart too.

My home is on the beach overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, but we couldn't go there. The cops would have it under constant surveillance. So instead we went to another house I use, a few miles to the south. No one but Rink, Harvey Lucas, who is a friend out in Arkansas, and Walter Hayes Conrad, my old CIA controller, knew about this place. I parked Bryce's brown sedan on a turning circle above the beach. Below us was tall grass that gave way to golden sand. Beyond the beach the sea was sparkling under the early morning sun like someone had taken a handful of diamonds and scattered them across the undulating water. The view was beautiful, but I couldn't appreciate it. I was thinking ugly thoughts.

I was thinking about the boy lying dead in his mother's arms all those years ago. It was an image that occasionally came back to haunt me when sleep evaded me. Most times I'd get up and throw on some shorts and run along the beach under the scowling eye of the moon until the effort and streaming perspiration shoved the image aside. Now the boy – whose name remained a mystery to me – was back, and this time there was no opportunity for a night-time run.

Bryce had become a catalyst for my nightmare. When Rink first mentioned Bryce's name yesterday, the first thing I'd thought about was that boy. The second image had been one that I hadn't witnessed, but one I could easily conjure: I saw Jack Schilling propped in a chair in some stinking apartment with his brains decorating the wall behind him. Now I actually had Bryce standing beside me and it looked like the nightmare wouldn't recede any time soon.

'We'll talk inside,' Bryce said.

'Maybe we should.' I set off for the house with Bryce following. He was alert, scanning the area for anything untoward. I didn't let it show, but all my senses were on overdrive, except nothing in the natural flow of the day warned me of hidden danger.

At the door I checked for signs that someone had been there while I was out. The faint dusting of sand I'd scattered on the doorstep was unmarked. There were no glistening marks on the locks to show anyone had finessed their way inside. Someone could have entered by the back door, but I doubted that. Everything was still and silent and felt at peace. Bryce still looked like he was expecting to die at any second.

At least Bryce had seen enough sense to put the gun away. It was pleasing; I was growing a little tired at being threatened by someone I had deemed a friend.

We walked inside and I paused to get a feel for the house. It was as I'd left it. No eddies of air shifted to warn of stealthy movement nearby. There was no detectable odour of a nervous man waiting in concealment. I nodded Bryce inside. Bryce moved past me and if I wanted to I could have killed him easily. His fieldcraft had grown rusty, either that or the fear he was under had displaced the rules from his mind. Following him, I saw that his shoulders were rounded, as though he was already a defeated man.

I'd spent last night here, sleeping on a futon in one corner of the living room. The only other furniture was a deckchair. Bryce sat down in it uninvited.

'Tell me everything, Bryce.'

He chewed his bottom lip. He was forced to lean back in the chair to look up at me. 'First I want to apologise for holding a gun on you.'

'That'd be a start. But forget it. I knew you wouldn't use it.'

'I'm surprised you let me get close enough to pull a gun on you.'

'I was there as a friend,' I reminded him.

Bryce indicated his breast pocket. 'Not a gun this time.'

I nodded at him to go ahead and he withdrew an envelope and held it out to me. From his pinched expression, it held something nasty. The envelope disgorged a short stack of photographs.