The Darkest Day

TWENTY

There was no one else in the courtyard apart from Victor and the five locals. The only exit, a narrow covered alleyway, lay behind the men. Two storeys above, a woman hung out wet laundry and watched proceedings. Of the four guys from the table, two had knives drawn. Both were cheap and unsharpened, but still capable of splitting skin and arteries and piercing organs.

The machete was a crude but effective weapon designed for chopping and splitting. With a good swing it could slice a coconut in half or bury itself deep enough in a skull to perform a partial lobotomy. This particular weapon was old and rusted and the blade looked dull, but the Haitian was strong enough to make up for the neglect.

‘I have five hundred dollars on me,’ Victor said. ‘You can have it.’

‘Good,’ the Haitian said. ‘Hand it over.’

‘But I’ll double that if you tell me where I can find Jean Claud Marte.’

‘You have the other five hundred on you?’

‘No,’ Victor answered. ‘It’s in my hotel room.’

‘What do you want with Marte?’

Two questions asked by the Haitian and neither included the word who.

‘I want to ask him some questions,’ Victor explained. ‘All you have to do is tell me where to find him and you can earn yourself another five hundred dollars.’ Victor took out his wallet and threw it at the ground between himself and the Haitian, who stood a little in front of the others. ‘That’s your first five hundred. Five hundred and thirty, to be exact.’

‘The rest?’

‘I’ve told you already. It’s in my hotel room.’

‘Maybe you’re hiding it.’ He gestured at Victor’s shirt. ‘Secret pouch or belt.’

‘There is none.’

The Haitian pursed his lips in consideration.

Victor said, ‘You don’t want to do what you’re thinking about.’

‘Which is?’ the Haitian asked with a smirk.

‘Don’t,’ Victor said.

The big Haitian adjusted his footing in a sign of nervous energy. The others were even more anxious: pacing back and forth, clenching jaw muscles, spitting, or scratching.

They were armed and in a position of strength through numbers, but they were just criminals, not professionals. Adrenaline was hyping them up and might make one try something rash before their boss had decided how best to proceed.

Victor continued looking around, never letting one of the locals out of sight for more than a few seconds. He acted passive because he did not want to provoke them into action through a challenge, but he needed them to be aware he was not their average victim. Weakness would only increase their confidence and therefore the risk they would turn to violence if they failed to get their way.

‘Take the five hundred now,’ Victor said. ‘And earn another five hundred the easy way. Don’t make this into something it doesn’t need to be.’

The Haitian stared at him; his unblinking eyes were bloodshot.

‘Well?’ Victor asked, when it seemed the big guy would say nothing further.

‘I’m thinking,’ he said.

This seemed to be a challenging process, given the pinched expression he wore.

The next closest man spat out a glob of saliva that landed on Victor’s shoe. A rope of it stretched from the man’s lip.

Victor looked at his shoe and then to the man in an acknowledgement of the taunt. ‘Thanks, they could use a polish.’

The man smirked in return. Victor did not know if he had been understood. It didn’t matter.

The Haitian in the white vest swallowed and clarity seemed to enter his bloodshot eyes for the first time. He smiled.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No five hundred. We search you.’

‘You’ll find nothing,’ Victor said.

The Haitian stepped forward. ‘Then I’ll be angry.’

The other four locals may not have spoken English, but they understood their boss’s tone enough to know what the decision had been. They neither tensed with readiness nor became focused with aggression.

The Haitian came forward, machete raised to threaten more than attack. At least for the moment.

The other four approached too. The two with knives stopped ahead of the two without.

‘Okay,’ Victor said with a sigh. ‘Okay. The other five hundred is in my belt.’

He unbuckled and slid it out from the belt loops of his trousers. He wrapped it around the buckle until it was a tight ball. He held it in one hand and gestured to the big Haitian.

‘Here,’ Victor said. ‘It’s in a secret pocket.’

The Haitian smiled in triumph and reached with his free hand for the belt, which —

Victor snapped out, holding on to one end, so the buckle was sent flying into the Haitian’s face.

It ripped open the skin of his left eye socket. Blood smeared across his cheek and temple. He staggered away, clutching his face with his free hand while he swung the machete back and forth with the other.

The two with knives darted forward.

Victor feigned an attack at the first, only to whip the belt at the second as he lunged to intercept. The buckle caught him on the side of the skull and he fell face first on to the floor.

A blade glinted in the dim light.

Victor blocked the incoming wrist with a forearm, then released the belt to grab hold of the arm in both hands and swing the guy into the closest wall. He managed to react in time to get a hand out to stop his face colliding with the brick, but not fast enough to stop Victor twisting the blade from his grip and throwing it away.

He blocked a punch from one of the two unarmed Dominicans, caught the wrist before it could recoil and pulled the man closer and into an arm bar, arm locked out, elbow facing upwards.

A second forearm strike broke the joint.

The man wailed, and again tried to punch, but with his other fist. Victor parried it with a shoulder as he turned on the spot, coming outside of the guy’s arm. He stamped on his instep, and then swept that injured leg out from under him.

The guy went down hard.

Thick arms grabbed him from behind, pulling him down into a headlock. Victor turned to his assailant, positioning his left foot between the guy’s legs for stability, and sent a palm strike into the groin that became an uppercut to the man’s chin. The grip loosened and Victor threw him away.

He parried an incoming punch and trapped the arm between elbow and ribs, leaving the man exposed and vulnerable to the counter strike that hit him in the sternum. Victor released him so he could stagger back, doubling over, airless and stunned.

The Haitian roared as he charged, machete swinging in a wide arc.

Victor knocked it from the big man’s grip with a downward forearm strike to the wrist and it skidded away across the floor.

A punch to the abdomen knocked Victor back into a wall. He blocked the next blow with a raised forearm, then another as the Haitian tried to overwhelm him with strikes. Victor responded with an open-palm blow to the side of his attacker’s face and he staggered away.

The Haitian raised his arms to parry Victor’s next strikes, but instead he went low, wrapping his arms around the man’s thighs and taking him to the ground.

The wind was knocked from the Haitian’s lungs and in that instant of stunned paralysis Victor grabbed hold of the back of his own head and drove his elbow down — using all the strength and mass of his upper body — against his enemy’s sternum.

The whole ribcage compressed until the remaining energy had nowhere else to go.

Ribs snapped.

The sound reminded Victor of breaking branches as a boy. The Haitian made a soundless cry.

Victor stood. The man lay as still as he could to avoid the agony of moving with multiple broken ribs. Tears welled in his eyes with every shallow breath.

Victor glanced around to check the other four were finished, then placed a heel on the Haitian’s destroyed ribcage.

‘Where’s Marte?’ Victor said as he began applying pressure.