Simon Toyne - Solomon Creed

The world starts turning to liquid and I feel myself going limp. A hand cradles my head and gently lowers it to the ground. I try to fight it, willing my eyes to stay open. I can see the distant town, framed by the road and sky. I want to tell them all to hurry, that the fire is coming and they need to get away, but my mouth no longer works. My vision starts to tunnel, black around the edges, a diminishing circle of light in the centre, as if I am falling backwards down a deep well. I can see the sign now past the edge of the ambulance, the words on it visible too. I read them in the clarifying air, the last thing I see before my eyes close and the world goes dark:

WELCOME TO THE CITY OF

REDEMPTION

Mulcahy leaned against the Jeep and stared out at the jagged lines of wings beyond the chain-link fence. From where he stood he could see a Vietnam-era B-52 with upwards of thirty mission decals on its fuselage, a World War II bomber of some sort, a heavy transporter plane that resembled a whale, and a squadron of sharp-nosed, lethal-looking jet fighters with various paint jobs from various countries, including a MiG with a Soviet star on the side and two smaller ones beneath the cockpit windows denoting combat kills.

Beyond the parade of military planes a runway arrowed away into the heart of the caldera , snakes of heat twisting in the air above it. There were some buzzards to the north, circling above something dead or dying in the desert; other than that there was nothing, not even a cloud, though he had heard thunder a while back. A spot of rain would be nice. God knows they needed it.

He checked his watch.

Late.

Sweat was starting to prick and tickle in his hair and on his back beneath his shirt as the trapped heat of the day got hold of him. The silver Grand Cherokee he was leaning against had black tinted windows, cool leather seats and a kick-ass air-conditioner circulating chilled air at a steady sixty-five degrees. He could hear the unit whirring under the idling engine. Even so, he preferred to stand outside in the desert heat than remain in the car with the two morons he was having to baby-sit, listening to their inane conversation.

– Hey, man, how many Nazis you think that bird wasted?

– How many gook babies you think that one burned up?

They’d somehow made the assumption that Mulcahy was ex-military, which, in their fidgety, drug-fried minds, also made him an expert on every war ever fought and the machines used to fight them. He’d told them, several times, that he had not served in any branch of the armed forces and therefore knew as much about war planes as they did, but they kept on with their endless questions and fantasy body counts.

He checked his watch again.

Once the package was delivered to the meeting point he could drive away, take a long, cold shower and wash away the day. A window buzzed open next to him, and super-cooled air leaked out from inside.

‘Where’s the plane at, man?’ It was Javier, the shorter, more irritating of the two men, and a distant relative of Papa Tío, the big boss on the Mexican side.

‘It’s not here,’ Mulcahy replied.

‘No shit, tell me something I don’t know.’

‘Hard to know where to start.’

‘What?’

Mulcahy took a step away from the Jeep and stretched until he felt the vertebrae pop in his spine. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘If anything was wrong I’d get a message.’

Javier thought for a moment then nodded. He had inherited some of the boss man’s swagger but none of the brains so far as Mulcahy could tell. He had also caught the family looks, which was unfortunate, and the combination of his squat stature, oily, pock-marked skin and fleshy, petulant lips made him appear more like a toad in jeans and a T-shirt than a man.

‘Shut the window, man, it’s like a motherfuckin’ oven out there.’ That was Carlos, idiot number two, not blood, as far as he knew, but clearly in good enough standing with the cartel to be allowed to come along for the ride.

‘I’m talking,’ Javier snarled. ‘I be closing the window when I’m good and ready.’

Mulcahy turned back and stared up at the empty sky.

‘What kind of plane we looking for? Is it one of these big-assed nuke bombers? Man, that would be some cool ride.’

Mulcahy considered not replying, but this was the one piece of information about aircraft he did know because it had been included in the brief. Besides, the longer he talked to Javier, the longer the window would remain open, leaking cold air out and hot air in.

‘It’s a Beechcraft,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’

‘An old airplane, I guess.’

‘What, like a private jet?’

‘Propellers, I think.’

Javier pursed his boxing-glove lips and nodded. ‘Still, sounds pretty cool. When I had to run, I sneaked across the river on some lame-assed boat in the middle of the night.’

‘You got here though, didn’t you?’

‘I guess.’

‘Well, that’s the main thing.’ Mulcahy leaned forward. A dark smudge had appeared in the sky above one of the larger spill piles on the far side of the airfield. ‘Doesn’t matter how you got here, just so long as you did.’

The smudge darkened and became a column of black smoke rising fast and thick in the sky. He heard the faint sound of distant sirens. Then Mulcahy’s phone started to buzz in his pocket.

Movement rocked him awake.

His eyes flickered open and he stared up at a low white ceiling, a drip bag hanging over him, a clear tube coiled round it like a translucent snake, moving gently in time with the ambulance.

‘Hey, welcome back.’ The female medic appeared over him and shone a bright light into his left eye. He felt a stab of pain and tried lifting his hand to shield his eyes but his arm wouldn’t move. He looked down and his head swam with a chemical wooziness. Thick blue nylon straps were wrapped round his arms and body, securing him tightly to the gurney.

‘For your protection while we’re on the move,’ she said, like it was no big deal. He knew the real reason. They’d had to sedate him to get him in the ambulance and the bindings were to make sure they wouldn’t need to do it again.

He hated being bound like this. It pricked at some deep emotional memory, as if he’d known confinement and never wanted to know it again. He focused on the feeling, trying to remember where it came from, but his mind remained stubbornly blank.

The movement of the ambulance was making him feel sick and so was the cocktail of smells trapped inside it – iodine, sodium bicarbonate, naloxone hydrochloride, all mixed in with sweat and smoke and sickly synthetic coconut air-freshener drifting in from the driver’s cab. He wanted to feel the ground beneath his feet again and the wind on his face. He wanted to be free to focus and think and remember what it was he had come here to do. The pain in his arm flared again at the thought and the bar rattled when he tried to reach for it.

‘Could you loosen the straps?’ He forced his voice to stay low and calm. ‘Just enough so I can move my arm.’

The medic chewed her lip and fiddled with a thin necklace round her neck with ‘Gloria’ written on it in gold letters. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘But you try anything and I’ll knock you straight out again, understand?’ She held up the penlight. ‘And you’ve got to let me do my job.’

He nodded. She paused a little longer to let him know who was in charge, then reached down and tugged at a strap by the side of the gurney. The nylon band holding his hands came loose and he lifted his arm to rub at his shoulder.

‘Sorry about that,’ Gloria said, leaning in and flashing the light in his eye again. ‘Quickest way to calm you down before you injured someone.’ The light hurt but this time he put up with it.