Headhunters

Chapter Twenty-Six

Milton sprinted up the drive and hid behind the red Mazda. The engine was ticking as it cooled. The wing, baking in the sun, was warm to the touch. He shuffled along the car until he reached the hood, and glanced around the chassis. There was a door in the side of the house. That must have been the door through which they had entered. He could use it, assuming that it wasn’t locked, but he preferred a different way in. He glanced ahead. There was a window adjacent to the door, but the blinds were down and he couldn’t see inside. There was a fence with a gate and then, he assumed, the back garden.

He waited a moment, checked that the side door was still closed, and, satisfied that it was, he stayed low and left cover. He hurried forward, pressing himself down beneath the line of the window and reaching out to try the handle of the gate. The latch opened. He pressed the gate aside with his fingertips, saw the large garden beyond, and slipped inside.

He heard another impact.

This one was nearer and clearer. Two impacts. The first was a fleshy thwack as something was struck. The second was the sound of someone falling to the floor.

Milton felt his heart beat faster, his breath accelerate. Adrenaline pulsed and he felt the familiar twitch of impending violence. He paused, reasserting a sense of calm, assessing his surroundings again.

The garden.

A pool, covered.

A hot tub next to it, also covered.

A brick barbeque with a bag of charcoal on the ground next to it.

A window in the wall overhead, the room beyond hidden by a blind.

He pressed his back against the sun-warmed bricks and listened.

He could hear voices.

The words were muffled. Double glazing, perhaps. He couldn’t make out the sentence, but the reaction — a cry of alarm — was obvious.

He looked again. He was taking too long; he had to move more quickly than this. Almost the entire width of the house was taken up by a decked area, twenty feet of space that ended with a wooden balustrade and a drop down to the garden below. A huge set of sliding glass doors at the other end of the deck gave access to the house. He climbed up, poked his head around the doorjamb and looked inside. It was the kitchen. Modern and expensive, granite work surfaces, a large double range, expensive equipment. The doors, when opened, would create one enormous inside-outside space.

He tried the door.

A lucky break.

It was open.

He pushed the handle all the way down and carefully slid the door wide enough to slip inside. It was new and the runners were lubricated, easing back without a sound. Milton stepped inside. It was woozily hot, like a greenhouse. The air conditioning had been left off; he wondered how long the occupants of the house had been away. He could feel the sweat rolling down his forehead, salty in his eyes. He wiped it away and stayed low, passing an easy chair and a small kitchen table until he reached the shelter of a large island.

He looked up. He saw a knife block with an array of knives on the counter on the opposite side of the room.

He was about to move to it when he heard voices.

A man: “What do we do now?”

A second man: “We wait.”

“No — with her. What do we do with her?”

“She’s not going anywhere. We’ll put her in the basement.”

The voices came closer. He heard the sound of two sets of feet.

“This place is like an oven,” the first man said. “I can’t believe you left the air-con off.”

“There was a rush, remember?” This voice was a little effeminate.

“True.”

“Nothing for six years and then drop everything and get to the station.”

“You know how it is. Don’t ask questions, just do as you’re told.”

“I know.”

“At least they’ll be pleased. We got one of them.”

“But not the one they want. You believe what she said?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Look, there was just the two of us and we only just got there in time. I think, given the circumstances, they should be pleased.”

“It’s Bachman, though. You know what they say about him.”

“Half of that is just gossip. Legend.”

“That still leaves the other half. All I know is, he’s a bad man. And he’s got them running around like this, running his errands.”

“Must be true, then, right?”

“What must?”

“What they said. That he’s got operational data. That’s what he’s holding over Victor.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, he’s not someone I want to disappoint.”

“Fuck him,” the first man said. “We deliver the woman to them, and we’re done. Back to normality like none of this happened. How long can we keep her here with the kids?”

“Won’t be very long. I was thinking, until they pick her up, you could take them camping for the weekend. I’ll come when they’ve come to collect her.”

“I guess.”

“I’m thirsty. I need a beer. You want one?”

Milton looked up. There was a big American-style refrigerator adjacent to the end of the island. If the beers were in the fridge, whoever came to get them was going to see him. There was no way he would be able to leave the kitchen without being seen. There was only one possible outcome now: confrontation. He pressed himself tight up against the edge of the unit, feeling the familiar tingle of adrenaline as his body readied itself for action.

He heard the sound of someone approaching, the sound of shoes on the floor.

Milton bunched his fists. He thought of the man who had abducted Matilda. Average height and build, forty to forty-five years old, looked like he kept himself in shape. He had only glimpsed the other man, the driver, as he got out of the car.

Milton held his breath as the man came into view from around the side of the island. It was the man who had taken Matilda. He was still talking, his head angled back in the direction from which he had approached, and, as he reached out for the handle of the big unit, Milton knew that he wouldn’t see him in time. He pressed up and out, closed the short distance between in a single stride, grabbed the man’s left shoulder with his left hand and took a fistful of his hair with his right. He powered the man’s forehead against the metal door. He felt the man’s legs go weak, and, as he dropped him to the floor, he looked up to see his colleague.

He was on the other side of the island, ten feet away. Slim, of slighter build than Milton and thirty pounds lighter. He was next to the block of knives, and, before Milton could get to him, his hand whiplashed to the side and yanked out a cleaver.

He raised it and came forward.

Milton stepped back, over the first man’s recumbent body, and saw a rack of saucepans suspended above the range. He reached up for one and took it down as the second man rushed him, swinging the cleaver in a wide right-handed swipe. Milton brought the saucepan up and blocked his swing, the impact ringing out. Milton noticed that the man’s stance was excellent, his weight evenly distributed between his feet so that he would have optimal balance. He had certainly seen some training in his time; he wouldn’t underestimate him.

The man switched the cleaver between his hands, trying to keep Milton guessing and off guard. He came forward, backing Milton away from the island, and swung the cleaver again. Milton blocked it a second time and, using the brief moment that the man needed to readdress himself, hopped forward, grabbed the man’s wrist, thrust his elbow into his gut, and, reaching his right hand between the man’s legs, lifted him up onto his shoulders and then crashed him down again, dropping him onto the table near the sliding door. The man slammed down onto it, the glass shattering and the sudden weight buckling the legs, the metal screeching and scraping against the tiles as the man bounced off it and landed on the floor.

Milton felt a blow to his back as he turned away. The first man was up again, and he had swung a standard lamp at him. The china base was heavy, and it drilled the breath from his lungs, stunning him. He dropped the saucepan and stumbled away, steadying himself with a hand against the back of one of the two easy chairs. The man’s head was already showing the signs of a large contusion from the impact with the fridge door, the discolouration reaching from his closed right eye up into his scalp. Seemingly oblivious, he settled back into an easy ready position, his hands raised.

There was no conversation. No offer for him to surrender. They must have been told who Milton was, and what that meant. Milton shook his head to clear the dizziness away and then put up his guard, his fists clenched.

The man attacked first, a blisteringly fast series of rights and lefts that Milton blocked with his forearms. The flurry forced Milton onto the defensive, and he stepped away from his attacker, opening up enough of a gap so that the man could change to kicks. He went low, hard right and left strikes that bounced off his thighs and calves, aiming for the weaker junctions of cartilage and bone at his knees. Milton blocked.

The man aimed higher, his right foot slamming into the left side of Milton’s torso, but he had been anticipating it and, ignoring the fierce blare of pain, he clamped his left armpit down over the man’s ankle and, grabbing his shin with his right hand, he yanked and spun at the same time, lifting the man off his standing foot and corkscrewing him in the air until he landed on his face with a heavy thud.

The cleaver was on the ground. Milton stooped to collect it and turned, looking for the second man.

He had a gun.

He fired.

The bullet went wide, only just, drilling a neat hole in the centre of the wide pane of glass and striking the wall outside with a puff of chewed-up masonry.

Milton threw the cleaver. It streaked between them, end over end, the blade burying itself in his assailant’s sternum.

“No!”

A rending, anguished cry. The first man was back on his feet. He sprang at Milton and buried his shoulder in his stomach as he wrapped his arms around his waist and propelled him backwards. Milton’s head bounced against the edge of a cupboard, but he managed to hold onto the man, using his dead weight to pull him down to the floor as he wrapped his legs around his waist. He held him tight and squeezed, trying to restrict his movement, but the man reached a hand up between their bodies for Milton’s eyes. Milton jerked his head back at the last moment and butted the man, hard, square in the face. With his legs still pinning the man’s left arm to his side, and with his right hand fastened around the man’s right wrist, Milton drew back his left and pummelled him with a series of crisp, stiff jabs.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Milton fired in a sixth and then seventh blow. Blood splattered across the man’s face from his hopelessly shattered nose and lacerated lips until with the eighth — and as Milton feared he was about to kill him — he gave a groan, his strength dissipated, and his eyes rolled back into his head.

Gasping, Milton looked over at the other man. He, too, was struggling to breathe. He had removed the cleaver from his chest, and each time he tried to draw a breath, the air was sucked into the pleural cavity between his chest wall and lungs, where it stayed trapped. With every breath, more air was drawn inside, and the pressure increased. There was nothing Milton could have done for him, even if he had been so inclined. The pleural cavity would fill until the pressure collapsed the lungs. The pressure would continue to build until it pushed on the arteries and heart. Milton watched. The man’s blood stopped flowing and, as Milton rolled away and got to his feet, he gasped once, twice, and then lay still.