Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

He closed the twin doors behind them. Lash looked at the books lining the walls. “These come with the house?” Crassion sat in one of the tall-backed, leather chairs, but Lash remained on his feet. “Who is it you’re trying to fool with all this?”

“I am a person who never expected to breathe a day past age thirty. When I did, I looked around me and I smartened up. A man matures, Agent Lash. Not you?”

“You’re the regular American dream.”

Crassion frowned, realizing that Lash wasn’t in the mood for bullshitting. “What do you want?”

“I’m here to let a little light in. About these fucking bandits.”

Crassion nodded. “Heard of them.”

“Think I can’t read a fucking pattern? Who’s getting hit, who’s not? Broadhouse is out there arming himself to the teeth for a war. Lockerty brought in some crazy, fucked-up Jamaican to try and collect his own bounty.”

“The Jamaican who died at the Black Falcon terminal. I hear he has a half brother. I hope you’re going to visit Lockerty as well.”

“I am here to say that I am onto you. And these fucking bandits. I’m not going anywhere, is what I want you to know. I am not going to stop.”

Crassion digested that. “They’ve taken Windfall away from you, haven’t they?”

Lash weighed the pros and cons of taking apart Crassion right here in his study. But Lash needed to stay out of trouble in order to stay out on the street — to give himself a chance to put this fuck away.

Lash said, “I wouldn’t worry about my survival. I’d worry about your own.”

After Lash was gone, Crassion walked circles inside his library, hands deep inside the pockets of his robe. He knelt at a lower row of books, dumping gilt-edged antiquarian volumes of Hawthorne to the floor until he found the door to a small safe.

Inside was a mobile telephone, nothing else. He swapped in the battery from the wall charger and dialed the only number stored in the memory. The call went straight to voice mail, aggravating Crassion. He left a stern message before slipping the phone into his pocket, awaiting a call back.

Maven crept toward the farmhouse through the flooded cranberry bog. A late-afternoon fog rolling in from the surrounding trees, smoking the surface of the eight-inch-deep water, helped obscure him.

The slow drag through an acre of floating berries gave him time to think. About this, their last job; about the chill in the early-fall air; about all the changes the coming weeks would bring. He and Royce had had a reconciliation of sorts during the weapons check back at the pad, Royce admitting that Maven had been correct to question the Black Falcon job. Maven was more optimistic about the prospects for an honorable separation, with no bad feelings. This whole thing might end with handshakes and respect, as it should.

Closing in on the house, Maven saw vehicles parked at the end of the long dirt driveway in front, angled in from the country road. No movement anywhere: no birds, nothing. He reached the edge of the bed and slithered onto the muddy field. He crawled behind a large piece of harvesting equipment, stopping there to undo the strap on his wet bag. As Maven pulled out a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun and three full magazines, Glade emerged from the bog, ruby traces of water streaking his vest and mask like blood. Suarez came out last, wide right, setting up with Glade behind irrigation equipment and fitting in his earpiece.

Termino was the point. Maven checked his Oris watch, waiting one minute past go time, squatting there, shivering in the mud. Then he turned on his radio. They were conservative about unsecured broadcasts.

Maven said, “Big Dog, read? Over.”

Nothing.

“Big Dog, do you read? Over.”

Nothing. Not a click.

Suarez said, “No one out in front.”

Glade said, “Fuckin’ freezing here.”

Maven said, “I’ll go around front. Wait for my go.”

Maven curled out. The lawn up to the house was on a slight grade. He rushed to the underside of the wraparound farmer’s porch, along a cord of stacked wood. The closer he was to the structure, the better.

Three vehicles out in front: a boxy blue Honda SUV, a small, white conversion van, and Bellson’s silver Saab 9–3 convertible. The rear of the backed-in van was windowless, so Maven came up on the blind side, using the mirror to check the cab, make sure it was empty. The SUV had plenty of glass and was also empty. Maven came up low and fast on the front seat of the Saab, also unoccupied.

He scanned the trees, watching for some sign of Termino. Could be that he was inside already, forced to take a different position. Could be a radio malfunction, a broken watch.

It could have been any of those things, but it wasn’t. As Maven turned back to the farmhouse, he noticed something on the floor in the back of the Saab. A curled-up body, facedown, with Bellson’s telltale Dr. Who scarf wound around its neck.

Maven dropped low again, scanning the trees. He retreated to the broad side of the van, checking the house, then going to the back of the vehicle, trying the door.

It opened on three dead bodies facedown in a slick of blood.

Maven started running. Up the stairs to the front door. He didn’t bother with the radio. He was yelling, “Get out! GET OUT!”

A volley of gunshots. An abrupt yell in Maven’s ear.

Then return gunfire, and a howl.

Maven’s heel crushed the frame plate, the front door cracking inward.

One time, back in Eden, while on patrol at a traffic-control point in urban Samarra, a buddy of Maven’s loaned him his new Oakleys. The sunglasses had a built-in music player, making Maven’s headspace an oasis in that desert hell. Maven was giving Cal, his buddy, some shit for listening to opera when a sniper round ripped through Cal’s neck. Cal dropped to the sidewalk, dead before he hit the ground.

Maven spotted two fedayeen hustling away from an idling Opal, tucking something under their robes. With Verdi soaring in his head, he chased them through a curtain of smoke, into and out of a marketplace slaughterhouse, ending in a close-quarters firefight in a courtyard.

He heard that same music now as he crashed inside the farmhouse. Time sped up, became fractured into gunfirelike bursts.

Splintering rounds spun him back from the bottom of the stairs. He raced down a narrow hallway, elbows bouncing off the walls.

Glade lay on the kitchen floor, straight out. Head shot.

A barrage from his left drove Maven back into the hall. He returned fire blindly, rounds pummeling his armor like iron knuckles.

He tumbled into a side room and sat back against the dividing wall. The MP5 was hot, smoking. Not empty, but he reloaded anyway, needing a full whack.

He listened. An old house, full of creaks. One loose floorboard groaned on the other side of the wall.

Maven pushed off and spun, firing through the old plaster and wood. He heard a cry and a heavy fall. Return fire rained splinters and dust into the room, and Maven covered his head and ran for the other door. More rounds pelted his back — one penetrating the armor, a hot needle thrust under his shoulder.

Suarez. Termino.

Maven cut out from the wall, riding his open gun across the hallway, galumphing up the carpeted stairs. His left foot was better than his right.

He came upon Suarez at the top landing — slumped against the corner, talking blood.

Rounds stitched Maven’s back, pitching him forward. He turned and fired back down the stairs, clearing some room. From the floor, he ejected his empty and reloaded, grabbing Suarez’s semiauto and slinging it over his shoulder.

Suarez’s eyes followed him. “Get ’em,” he gurgled. “Get ’em.”