IX
‘… all things are cleansed with blood,
without bloodshed there is no forgiveness.’
I have tried over the years to recall what the man looked like, if indeed he was a man, but in truth I do not think I ever saw his face. The light, which lit the land around him and shone into mine, seemed to come from inside him, so bright I could not look directly at him. I recalled another of the priest’s highlighted passages that had made no sense to me until now:
… and his face did shine as the sun,
and his raiment was white as the light.
I threw myself forward in fear and awe and began to pray, begging forgiveness for all my sins, for I believed my judgement had come and this angel had come to deliver it. And when none came I held up my hands and asked the shining man what he commanded of me and his voice came back like a whisper inside my head.
‘What do you most desire?’ he said.
I replied with the answer I had given to all who had questioned me on my long journey. ‘I wish to build a church of stone,’ I said, ‘where God’s words of peace and love might be spoken aloud until they have driven all savagery from these lands.’
The angel spoke again, its words intimate and soft in my head:
‘But what do you most desire?’
And I knew then that he had seen through my half-made answer. I do not think I had admitted the truth even to myself before that moment, but his light shone so bright it lit up the darkest corners of my soul and I realized I could not hide anything from this angel and that, though it had asked me a question, it knew my answer already.
‘I want to be somebody,’ I replied. And when he said nothing further I spoke on, my words drawn out like yarn by his silence. ‘I want to be a man of substance. I want people to remember me when I’m dead and say, “That was a man that did great things, that was a man who found a fortune and used it to build something in the desert, something that will live forever.” I do not want to die as a nobody. I do not wish to be forgotten.’
And there it was. The truth. My truth.
The angel’s silence continued but I said no more, for I had nothing more to say. I had confessed fully and I knew even his bright searching light could illuminate nothing more in me.
At long last he spoke and his words were soft and kindly. ‘You are an honest man,’ he said, ‘and honesty like yours is rare and holds great value to me. So in exchange for that, and if you are willing, I shall give you what you desire.’
I wept into the dirt, hardly daring to believe I had reached this dreamed-of moment when only a few hours earlier I had abandoned the Bible along with my resolve to continue my pilgrimage. Only the light had changed my mind and drawn me on. And now here I was, making bargains with angels, or with Christ the Saviour, or maybe even with the Lord God Almighty himself.
‘I am yours to command, Lord,’ I said to the shining man, for whatever he was — man, vision, angel — I knew he was lord over me. ‘Whatever you would have me do, I will do it, and gladly.’
There was a mighty crash like a mountain splitting in two and a flash so bright I saw it clear as day though my eyes were tight shut and my face pressed hard to the dirt. The ground shook violently beneath me like a dynamite blast through bedrock, then all went dark and silent.
I don’t know if I was knocked senseless for a spell but I lay there for a long time and when I eventually looked up I saw nothing but darkness. The mirror was gone. My ears sang from the loud noise still and made me feel disconnected, as if I was floating in the vast night sky. Then the singing faded and a new sound crept in, the sound of running water.
I scrambled across the dirt towards it like an animal, drawn by my raging thirst. The darkness was solid to my light-ruined eyes and I made my way by sound alone, feeling my way over the ground and cutting my hands on the sharp edges of rocks and the spines of cacti in my haste to reach the water.
Something huge loomed out of the darkness and I cried out and pulled away in terror. The stink of sweat and death sloughed off it and I wondered if I had died out in the desert, that the light I had seen had been the dying dream of a man driven mad by thirst and exhaustion and I was now in some terrible limbo populated by death creatures, cursed for eternity to crawl through the spiky darkness, tormented by the sound of water that I would never find. The thing ambled past then snorted and I realized what it was — not some diabolical beast sent to torment me but my mule, drawn to the same promise of water as I.
I stood and grabbed the hair of its hide, and let it lead me on, trusting its animal senses more than my own. And when it stopped and the smell of wet earth and the sound of bubbling water filled the air around me I fell to the ground and into the cool shallows of a pool.
And I drank.
It was the sweetest thing I ever did taste and I drank long and deep of it, sinking my face beneath the surface and feeling the soothing cold water against my sunburnt skin. I wanted to fall into it entire and cleanse myself like a sinner at a river revival, but the pool was scarce more than a hand’s width deep and though it bubbled up readily from some fresh crack in the earth, it soaked away fast, the land being every bit as parched as I was. I took one last, long draught then unhitched every canteen from my saddle and tossed them into the pool. I threw my gold pan in too, scouring it with wet dirt and swilling away all trace of its most recent use before chasing my floating canteens through the water, pushing each one under until every flask had been filled and stoppered.
I sat back from the edge of the widening pool, taking steady mouthfuls of the sweet water from one of the newly filled flasks and wondering at the miracle of it all. I must have fallen asleep like that, for I seemed to blink and it was morning and the pool now lapping at my feet.
I gazed for the first time upon the water that had appeared so miraculously in the night. It was now about the same size as a large corral, the spring still bubbling vigorously at its approximate centre and sending ripples out to the irregular edges. Two halves of a large boulder lay split clean in two like the shell of a nut, exactly like the reflected image I had seen in the night. I turned to where the mirror had stood and saw a small bundle lying on the ground. A cold shiver ran through me as I recalled the dead child I had discovered on the track only the previous day.
This could not be her.
It couldn’t be.
I stood slowly, my body cold as death, and walked stiffly over to the bundle. It was not the body of the poor starved child, it was only my Bible, wrapped in sacking, its pages open and fluttering in the cold morning breeze. It must have slipped from the saddle in the night and I saw that its spine had cracked in the fall and the pages were loose in the cover.
I stooped to pick up the book and felt a sharp pain arrow through my palm, which made me drop it again. I turned my hand over and saw a fragment of silvered glass embedded in the soft heel of my hand, a remnant of the broken mirror. I gripped it with my teeth and drew it out then held it up, somewhat fearful as to what I might see reflected in it. But all I saw was myself, and the ordinary land stretching out behind me stained red by the blood that clung to the surface of the glass.
I tucked the shard into my shirt pocket, took up the Bible again and pushed the pages back together, checking the book from cover to cover to make sure it was all there.
But it wasn’t.
A single page was missing. It was from the book of Exodus, verse twenty, where Moses comes down from the mountain carrying God’s ten holy commandments. I felt sick at this discovery and felt it augured badly that, through lack of care, I had allowed God’s holy laws of all things to be lost in this wilderness. I rose up and searched the land all around for any sign of the missing page but found nothing and vowed to make amends for my carelessness however I might.
I carried the Bible back to the waterhole and placed it under a heavy rock to keep the thieving wind from its pages. Sunlight flashed on the surface of the water now, the canteens floating and bobbing like strange fish. I crouched by my gold pan to bathe my wounded hand in the water collected there and saw sunlight glinting at the bottom of this too — and something else. I stirred the sediment into murky clouds, my wound now forgotten, then lifted the pan and started moving it in small circles, tilting it forward a little each time to let the water and lighter particles of mud and rock slop out. When there was no more than an inch of water left at the bottom I let it settle.
Bright flakes of gold shone warm and yellow, along with crystals of lighter green. It was malachite, lots of it: the rock here was rich with copper.
I untied the kerchief from round my neck and tipped the contents of the pan on to it. The total haul was tiny, about the size of a robin’s egg, but when I held it in my hand it felt good and heavy. I spent the rest of the day working the waterhole, taking samples from the pool and the surrounding land, but it didn’t seem to matter where I stuck my shovel in the ground, it always yielded mineral-rich earth. The copper was everywhere.
When there was about an hour of daylight left I lit a fire and set a pan of beans atop it with some chunks of dried beef stirred in. Then I sat and drank coffee while it cooked.
The fruits of my labours covered the most part of a blanket now, a pile of ore rising almost up to the eye of my mule, the sight of it made me anxious. There was too much to carry and I would have to return with wagons to cart it away. But I needed to make it back to the fort first and get the legal papers signed before someone else happened along, drawn by the water, someone who might have a wagon or a faster horse and who might steal it all away from me yet.
How quickly the world turned. On my outward journey I had nothing to lose, now I had the world within my grasp and was filled with watchful fears because of it. I saw dust rising far to the north — maybe a dust devil, or maybe horses — and kicked the fire out, smothering the embers with dirt so no smoke from it could give a clue to my location. Then I sat, wrapped in blankets, and ate my cold banquet of beef and soaked beans, watching the land go dark around me.
I had come to this spot by a circuitous route but figured if I took a direct line back to the fort I could get there in four days. When darkness had swallowed the land I packed enough provisions for a week and gathered all the water bottles from the waterhole. What little remaining space there was in my saddlebags I crammed with rock samples and a couple of small dust bags filled with the finer material I had collected. Then I slung the pale Christ across my back and balanced the Bible on top of it all and lit out of there, leading the mule north by the light of the stars, little knowing what horrors still awaited me.
71
Mulcahy looked across at Tío.
‘This your plan?’
Tío stared ahead with the same weird look Mulcahy had seen before, his eyes flat and defocused like he was on something, saying nothing.
They had been zip-tied and bundled in the back of a DEA paddy wagon without so much as a word and were now being driven through town at speed. They both had guards either side of them in full combat gear and tactical masks that hid their faces. It all seemed a little anti-climactic. There had to be an angle in this. Tío had bought his way out of jail before, maybe he planned on doing it again. But where would that leave him?
Mulcahy stared out of the narrow window at the town rushing past, streets he had driven down freely only a few short hours ago. He tried to think his way back and see if there was anything he could have done differently, but he couldn’t see it. All roads led here. He had always been bound to do whatever Tío wanted him to do.
‘Did you ever plan to let my Pop go?’ he asked.
Tío looked at him and smiled. ‘You haven’t fulfilled your half of the bargain yet.’
They passed the church and the building where the police station was housed. The van didn’t slow, which made his heartbeat quicken.
Where were they taking them?
He watched the mine slip past then the chain-link fence and the rows of aircraft beyond. He was back where he had started that morning, waiting for the plane that would never show. The van slowed and slipped through a gateway then under the vast expanse of an aircraft wing.
‘Look at these things,’ Tío said, ‘powerful enough to fly to the edge of space, enough firepower to destroy a town, now rotting away in the desert. How many people you think are dead because of this one plane?’
Mulcahy shook his head. It was déjà vu. Not only was he back where he started, he was having to listen to the exact same shit. Perhaps he’d died and this was his own tailor-made form of purgatory.
The van slowed then stopped in front of a large hangar. The rear doors were pulled open with a gust of cool evening air and the guards hustled them outside.
Morgan appeared from inside the hangar, walked over to someone who seemed to be in charge and spoke to him for a few seconds. The man in command nodded then looked around, checking there was no one else there. He walked back over to him and Tío. A knife appeared in his hand and for one moment Mulcahy thought he might kill Tío right there. Instead he slipped it between Tío’s wrists and snicked it upwards, cutting the zip-tie free.
Tío rubbed his wrists and turned to Mulcahy. ‘This is my move,’ he said. ‘If you know there’s going to be DEA waiting for you, make sure they’re bought and paid for.’ He turned to the commander and took the knife from him. ‘Go back to the church and get to work,’ he said. ‘I want you to tear the beating heart out of this community. Just leave me a gun and a couple of your men.’
The commander pulled an FN Five-seven from his holster and handed it to Tío. ‘I’ll stay,’ he said. ‘You’re paying me to protect you, so I’d feel better if I was close enough to do it.’ He beckoned another guard over, one of the soldiers in full combat gear, his face hidden behind combat mask and visor. ‘The rest of you head back to town.’ He turned to Morgan. ‘You too. You don’t need to be here for this.’
Morgan looked at Tío then the commander, then nodded and left.
Tío stepped forward and snicked Mulcahy’s ties free then handed him the knife. Mulcahy studied it. It was seven inches long with a sturdy quillon, sharp enough for paring skin from muscle and solid enough not to bend. He didn’t need to ask what it was for.
‘You still want to save your father?’ Tío said. He turned to the commander, who handed him the framed photographs of his dead daughters and the printout of the blackened skull. ‘Get me the name of the bastard who ordered my son’s death.’ Then he turned and walked into the hangar.
72
Solomon heard the van approach, then voices outside and footsteps approaching.
He was hanging by the arms from a steel beam that spanned the width of the hangar. The rope bound his wrists and was pulled so tight he practically had to stand on tiptoe to relieve the pain in his shoulders. Morgan had ordered him to take his jacket and shirt off before stringing him up. The gun pointing at Holly had ensured he had obeyed. Holly was tied up next to him and hanging from the same beam. He had not made her strip down, which suggested to Solomon that whatever was coming was coming to him.
The footsteps grew louder then a man stepped into view, short and squat and with thinning black hair and bad skin. He walked past Solomon and made his way over to a workbench lined with neat racks of tools. He took three photographs and carefully arranged them along it, taking his time, getting it right according to some design he carried in his head. Two were framed and were of young women, smiling at the camera with some reserve and some intelligence in their eyes. The third showed a skull, blackened by fire, a rectangle of metal bolted on to it. It wasn’t framed and the man had to rest this one against an oilcan and hold it in place with a wrench.
‘¿Quien te envió?’ the man asked, when the pictures were in place.
Solomon studied the photographs, the girls clearly related, sisters probably, the blackened skull still unfathomable but a portent of nothing good.
‘Who sent you?’ he repeated, in English this time, and turned to face him. He resembled the young women in the photographs, or they looked like him, which was unfortunate for them. Solomon guessed the skull might have resembled him too before the fire burned everything away.
‘My family,’ the man said, following his stare. ‘My flesh. My blood. My bone. All rotting now. All gone. These people called me Papa. Everyone else calls me Papa Tío. You heard of me?’ Solomon shook his head. ‘Yes you have. Now tell me who sent you.’
‘I haven’t heard of you,’ Solomon said. ‘And nobody sent me.’
Tío nodded at someone unseen and Solomon felt the rope bite into his wrists as it was pulled tighter.
The knife felt cold when it first touched his skin then flared into white heat as it started to cut. He could feel the burn of it as it sliced through his flesh — just below the skin, above the muscle — severing capillaries and nerve endings in a sensation so intense and so far beyond pain that it almost flipped over into pleasure. Solomon gasped and shuddered and tried not to howl while the waves of whatever he was feeling washed over him then gradually ebbed away. Hot blood spread down his back and dripped on to the oil-dappled concrete. It felt like someone was pouring hot water down his back.
He opened his eyes and looked over at Holly. She was staring at him wide-eyed, her shock rising to new levels with each atrocity she was forced to witness. Solomon winked at her to reassure her, or maybe himself because he had no idea how this was going to pan out. He looked back at the photographs on the workbench. ‘Who’s the skull?’
Tío stared at him with his dead eyes. ‘You know. You know who I am and you know who he was too.’
‘No. I don’t.’
‘Then let me tell you. He was the reason I did everything, the reason I breathed in and out and got out of bed in the morning. I heard someone say that having kids gives you a reason to live the second half of your life. That’s true. Only someone took away my reasons, piece by piece, and I think you know who it was. So if I have to cut it out of you piece by piece to find out what you know, I will. I got nothing left but time.’
He nodded at the knifeman standing behind Solomon, the man who had sliced him and was about to slice him again, in all the same places the old man had been cut.
‘Wait!’ Solomon said, realizing something. He turned as much as he could and spoke to whoever was behind him. ‘What’s your name?’
‘What does it matter?’ a voice replied.
‘Kind of intimate, don’t you think? You sliding a knife into me, slicing bits of me away. The least you can do is give me your name.’
‘Michael,’ said the voice. ‘Michael Mulcahy.’
‘Are you two gonna start fucking or are we going to get on with this?’ Tío said.
Solomon ignored him, chasing something down now, making sure his next question was loud enough for Tío to hear. ‘Tell me, Michael, why did you stage the torture of Old Man Tucker?’
Tío’s eyes shot over to Mulcahy. ‘What’s that?’
‘The cuts in the skin were all made post-mortem. I wondered at the time why Ellie Tucker hadn’t been alerted by the screams of her dying father — she didn’t know he was dead when she came out to find me. And how come you didn’t lock her up more securely, kill her even — a blind girl taken by surprise should have been no trouble for someone like you. Then it occurred to me that she might not have heard any screams because there hadn’t been any. You killed him quickly, mercifully even, a quick stab to the heart that made him bleed out fast and would have killed him in seconds. Then you made it appear like he’d been tortured. Why do that?’
Tío pulled his gun from his waistband and pointed it at Mulcahy. The commander and the guard pointed their weapons too. ‘That’s a good question,’ Tío said. ‘Why would you do that?’
Mulcahy walked forward so Solomon could see him. He was holding a bloodied knife in his hand and studying it like he had never seen it before. ‘It was the blood, wasn’t it?’ he said, seemingly untroubled by the fact that three loaded guns were pointed directly at him. ‘The cuts were too clean because the old man had already bled out.’
Tío shook his head and pulled a phone from his pocket. ‘You know the only reason I haven’t put a bullet in your head is because I want to see your face when you listen to your piece-of-shit father die in agony.’ He pressed a button to speed-dial a number and put it on speakerphone. The sound of ringing echoed in the hangar. Nobody picked up. Tío checked his phone and dialled the number again.
‘They’re not going to answer,’ Mulcahy said, looking up from the knife. ‘My father has been safe for about an hour now. The guys who were holding him don’t work for you any more, Tío. None of us do. Things change. People change. You’re not in charge any more.’
The commander and the guard shifted position so their guns were now pointing at Tío. Tío looked at them then back at Mulcahy like he had just sprouted horns. ‘Are you serious? Who is in charge then? You?’ He laughed and pointed at Holly with the barrel of his gun. ‘Her?’
‘Me,’ the other guard said, his voice muffled behind his full-face mask. Tío whirled round and pointed his gun at him. ‘You don’t want to shoot me,’ the guard said, and Tío’s gun dipped as he recognized something in the voice.
The guard crouched slowly and laid his automatic rifle on the ground. Then he rose back up and unclipped the side fastening of the mask. He slipped it off along with his visor and helmet revealing a six-inch scar on the side of his head. ‘Hello, Papa,’ Ramon said. ‘You miss me?’
Tío stared at his dead son. Mouth open.
‘Put the gun down, Papa?’ Ramon said. ‘I think we need to talk.’
73
Cassidy watched the truck pull up by the church and the soldiers get out.
He was standing by his study window, the lights switched off, the shutter open enough for him to see outside but not enough for people to see in. He didn’t want anyone to know he was there. He told himself this was sensible, given the situation, but in some deep-down part of himself where he buried the things he didn’t like to look at he knew the real truth. And the truth was he was scared.
He had thought, with the arrival of the DEA task force, he would have felt secure, that this would have drawn a line under his fears for the town. Morgan certainly seemed happier. He could see him out of his window now, talking to one of the soldiers and pointing at the church. More soldiers appeared next to him and began unloading things from the back of the van, big black boxes that took two men to lift. They carried them down the path, shuffling towards the church with straight backs and bent knees, and started stacking them by the door.
Cassidy considered heading out and offering to help, partly because he wanted to be more instrumental in the defence of his town but also so he could find out what was in the crates. Morgan glanced over in his direction and Cassidy froze. He didn’t want to give away the fact that he was there with a movement. He didn’t know why he felt this but he indulged it. Morgan studied the house for a few minutes then looked away again.
Cassidy let out a breath and realized he had been holding it. He watched Morgan walk away, following the shuffling pairs of black-clad soldiers as they carried the heavy crates towards the church. Morgan reached the door and opened it for them using a key only a few people in town had in their possession. Pete Tucker had been one. Jim Coronado too, briefly. It suddenly struck Cassidy that he was the only one of the three sheriffs left. Again, it put him in mind of the old-time westerns where some lone marshal played by Gary Cooper or John Wayne stood up to the outlaws for the sake of his town, though he didn’t feel much like either of them at the moment. He felt more like the coward who hid in the barn until the shooting was over.
He watched the soldiers carry the crates into the church and glanced over at the panelled door by the fireplace that led down to the tunnel connecting the house to the church. It had been built by Jack Cassidy in his later years when his fame had become a burden to him. The tunnel meant he could leave the sanctity of the residence library, appear like an apparition among the townsfolk to preach his weekly sermon, then be gone again before the prayers had ended.
Cassidy looked up at the portrait hanging above the fireplace. It had been painted in Jack’s later years when success and money had softened the edges of him a little. His eyes had never softened though and they seemed to be staring straight at him now, challenging him to stand up and be brave.
Cassidy took a deep breath then walked over to the panelled door and felt inside the edge for the hidden catch. The door sprung open and he listened for a moment, trying to hear any sound that might have been communicated down the tunnel from the church. He heard nothing, not even distant voices.
He started down the stone steps, careful not to make a sound, and headed down into the earth and onwards to the church.
74
Tío kept his gun pointing at his son, his naturally suspicious mind convinced that this must be a trick. It couldn’t be Ramon, it couldn’t. He studied the lines of his face for something out of place but found nothing, stole a glance at the photograph of the fire-blackened skull, the metal plate exactly where it should be.
‘I staged that,’ Ramon said. ‘Paid some motorbike freak of a meth head who’d had his head all smashed up in a crash to take a short plane flight and deliver a package. It was a bomb, but he didn’t know that.’ He nodded at Mulcahy. ‘Nobody knew, not even the people I trusted.’ He looked at the photograph, rubbing at the spot on his head where his scar was. ‘I guess we all look the same under the skin. You know, it was real nice watching you just then, seeing how cut up you were about me being dead and hearing all those nice things you were saying about me. You never said anything like that when I was still alive.’
Tío opened his mouth to speak but Ramon held his hand up to stop him. ‘It’s OK, Papa, I guess I deserved some of it, the things I did, the trouble I caused.’ He continued rubbing at the scar on his head as if it was hurting now. ‘I knew you were never going to bring me in on the business.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Shhhh. Let’s be honest now. No lies. I figured I had to work out some way of showing you that I was up to the job. You’d have to hand it all over to someone eventually. No one lives forever. Only I don’t think you ever figured that person would be me. Nobody else did either, but people hate uncertainty, so I offered them continuity. So what do you think, you proud of me now? You think I’m enough of your son to be a worthy successor?’
Tío shook his head, still trying to process the fact that his son was still alive. ‘I always wanted you to take over,’ he said. ‘I never figured you were ready.’
Ramon opened his arms wide and smiled. ‘Put the gun down, Papa.’
Tío lowered his gun, opened his arms and embraced his son. He closed his eyes and felt as if his heart had just started beating again, like he had broken surface after a long swim in the dark.
His son was alive. His son was alive.
He held him tight, like he hadn’t done since he was small, and felt the warmth of his own flesh hugging him back.
‘You never gave me any credit, Papa,’ Ramon whispered softly. ‘How was I ever supposed to become king with you sitting on the throne and never ever leaving your mountaintop fortress? I had to figure a way round that too.’ He hugged him tighter. ‘And here you are.’
The pain was sudden and intense.
Tío gasped and stumbled back, reaching behind him for whatever had caused it. Wet warmth pulsed over his hands and down his back and he could feel a coldness creeping into his core. Wetness pattered on the floor behind him and when he turned Mulcahy stepped away from the spray. He had a knife in his hand, different from the one he had held before, thin as a needle and wet with blood — his blood. Tío tried to raise his gun but it felt too heavy.
‘I’m sorry, Tío,’ Mulcahy said as Tío’s knees buckled and he fell forward on to the ground. ‘You didn’t give me any choice.’
Tío was kneeling on the ground now, his head drooping forward, his eyes staring down at the concrete floor where his blood was pooling around him. He felt cold, so cold, a deep cold he had not felt since childhood when he had hidden in the poppy fields and the fever from his buckshot wounds had started coming on.
He turned his head, searching for Ramon and saw him looking down on him with the light of triumph in his eyes. ‘I’m proud of you,’ Tío said, clutching at his chest where his heart felt like it was splitting in two. ‘I never knew you had it in you.’
Then the coldness squeezed the last warmth from him and he slumped forward on to a floor wet with his blood and as red as the poppies from his childhood.
75
Holly gasped when Tío’s face hit the concrete and Solomon turned to her.
Her eyes were staring down at the body and she had gone almost as white as Solomon was. He realized she had probably never seen someone killed right in front of her before and she was likely going into shock, her mind shutting down rather than trying to deal with what it was witnessing. None of it had bothered him at all. Seeing a man stabbed through the heart and bleeding to death did not seem exotic to his strange mind.
‘The king is dead,’ he said, loud enough so everyone would hear. ‘Long live the king — but for how long, I wonder?’
Ramon turned to him. ‘What’s that you say?’
Solomon stared into flat, bottomless eyes. ‘King killers rarely last long. Perhaps it’s because their reigns always begin with such a clear demonstration of how easy it is to end it again.’
Ramon stepped up to him, so close he could feel his breath on his face. ‘You know you’re still tied up so the smart move would be to show me some respect here? Lucky for you, you did me a favour, turning up when you did and drawing so much attention. You were like a fat little maggot wriggling on the hook I’d set for my Papa.’ He looked down at the body on the floor, blood spreading out from it in a steadily widening pool. ‘But now I landed the fish, I guess I don’t need the maggot any more.’
He turned to Mulcahy and pointed at Holly. ‘Cut her down and put her in the car. You’re both coming with me.’ He pointed at Andrews. ‘You — burn this place down and everything in it.’ He looked back at Solomon. ‘And I mean everything. He dies as hard as it gets, understand. I don’t want to be hearing no gunfire while I’m driving away neither, no mercy shots. Meet us back at the church when you’re done.’ He glanced down at his father’s body. ‘Least a son can do is respect the last wishes of his father.’
Then he turned and walked away, heading into the black square of night framed by the hangar door.
76
Cassidy felt his way along the tunnel. He didn’t want to turn a light on and alert anyone in the church that someone was coming and he’d walked it enough times in the light to be able to do it in the dark. He could hear voices now, echoing down from the church but he couldn’t hear what they were saying.
He reached the stone steps leading up to the vestry and walked up them steadily, taking one at a time and placing both feet on each step before proceeding to the next so he could better maintain his balance and avoid making any sound.
He made it to the top of the stairs and pressed his ear to the door, trying to work out how close they were. From the scuffing of shoes and dragging of furniture it sounded like they were right in the heart of the church over by the altar.
Very carefully he opened the door and peered into the church. The vestry area was curtained so he couldn’t see much. He listened for a few moments, only moving forward when he was sure no one was close. He pressed his head flat against the partition wall and peered through the narrow gap where the curtain didn’t quite meet it.
Four black crates were lined up along the central aisle with one of the soldiers crouching in the middle of them, doing something on the floor that Cassidy couldn’t see from where he was. The soldier stayed hunkered down for a moment then stood and walked away, his footsteps echoing until the bang of the closing door silenced them entirely. Cassidy heard the key twist in the lock. Waited a minute in case anyone came back, then broke cover and moved across the flagstones to the aisle.
He lifted the lid on the first crate and saw four five-gallon cans lined up inside. He unscrewed the cap from one, glancing nervously at the door, still terrified someone might come back. The cap came loose and he smelled the chemical fumes. It was gasoline. Eighty gallons of it lined up inside his church.
He moved to the centre of the aisle where the soldier had been crouching and saw a smaller box with a keypad, a display screen and a slot for a key. The screen was blank, which suggested it wasn’t live yet. Cassidy wasn’t exactly sure what it was but the thought of what it might be made him go cold.
He looked back at the door and fished his phone from his pocket, thinking about who he could call. Everyone he might once have called was now dead — Stella, Pete Tucker, Jim Coronado. Morgan was the only one left, but he had helped transport this giant Molotov cocktail into the church. Hell, he’d even used his key to let them in. He racked his brain for someone else he could trust and started going through the contacts menu on his phone. Who would stand up against a bunch of armed soldiers? Then it struck him. The soldiers, or whatever they were, must all be fake too. Morgan had never called up the DEA and told them what was happening here. Which meant Cassidy still could.
He moved quickly to the window where the signal would be better and dialled the number of someone he knew in the sheriff’s department over at Globe — someone he trusted. If he could tell them what was happening here they could send over some real agents, or get a helicopter airborne to offer air support and chase these people away from his town before they had a chance to arm this bomb and do some real and terrible damage.
The beeps of the dialling phone sounded much too loud in the quiet of the church and Cassidy pressed his cellphone against his jacket to muffle it, raising it to his ear only when it had stopped. He glanced back at the door, waiting for the ringtone to sound. Instead it beeped twice and a ‘call failed’ message flashed up on his screen.
He checked the signal. Saw he had no service. Moved back to the vestry where he usually had a stronger reception and found he had no service there either.
He hurried back over to the vestry and down the steps, heading through the dark to his office and the phone on his desk. He listened at the door again before opening it, paranoid that someone might be there, waiting for him. He heard nothing and burst into his study, grabbing the phone from its cradle and raising it to his ear.
It was dead.
They’d cut the landlines and his cell still had no signal. They must be jamming it somehow.
He was on his own.
77
Solomon watched Andrews pour the contents of a gas can over Tío’s body, making sure it was nice and soaked. The liquid was straw-coloured — aviation fuel. He poured the rest on the ground around where Solomon was standing. His mind was humming, sucking in every detail, measuring distances, fixing on the details of how he could get out of here. He could see his shirt and jacket, folded on a bench by the exit. He pictured himself putting them back on and walking out of the door. He willed it to happen.
Andrews splashed more fuel up the walls and over the workbench opposite. He watched it drip down the faces of Papa Tío’s dead daughters and soak into the picture of the skull, the skull that wasn’t Ramon. Solomon thought of Ramon now with Holly. His interest in her was the only thing keeping her alive, but it wouldn’t last. He needed to get free and find them before Ramon tired of her. But first he had to stay alive.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said.
Andrews ignored him. He unscrewed the cap from another can and kicked it over, the fuel spilling over the floor towards Solomon’s feet, the fumes choking the air.
‘How much are they paying you?’
Andrews found some oily work rags and dipped them in the fuel on the floor, stepping back to keep his boots dry. He picked the rags up and let them drip a little then pulled a lighter from his pocket and struck a flame.
‘It’s not so much the money,’ he said, staring at the flame not at Solomon. ‘It’s more what they will do to my family if I don’t work with them.’ He turned the soaked rags, teasing the flame around it until it was almost curling up to his hand. ‘It’s nothing personal. I’m sorry.’
Then he dropped the burning rag in the puddle of fuel, turned and walked away.
78
The sound of the lock opening echoed in the empty church then Ramon pushed the door open and walked in, sniffing the air like it smelled bad. ‘Fuckin’ hate churches,’ he said. ‘Give me the creeps.’ He studied the exhibits by the door, the mannequin standing by the covered wagon, the Long Tom sluice box still working away, refining nothing out of nothing. ‘What is all this shit?’
Morgan appeared behind him, an M-6 assault rifle slung across his shoulder. He hadn’t held a weapon like this since Iraq and he liked the feel of it, like he was doing proper work. ‘It’s for the tourists,’ he said, ‘to get them to come over here and visit the church.’
Ramon nodded. ‘Guess you gotta try something. So where’s the mayor?’
‘We haven’t found him yet,’ Morgan said. ‘We’ve searched his residence, but it’s empty. There’s a tunnel over there leading to it. Thought he might be hiding in there.’
Ramon turned and stared at Holly, standing in the doorway, handcuffed between two guards.
‘They got bedrooms in this residence?’
‘Yes — it has bedrooms.’
Ramon smiled ‘Then let’s go check out this tunnel.’
He moved down the aisle, past the crates of gasoline and the detonator box, heading to where Morgan had pointed. Morgan went in front and led him over to the vestry. The guards followed with Holly.
Morgan pulled the curtain aside and stopped. He’d been wondering when the best time to broach this subject might be and figured now was as good a time as any. ‘The church …’ he said, turning back to face Ramon.
‘What about it?’
‘Do we have to burn it?’
Ramon looked puzzled, as though Morgan had just suggested the sun might like to rise in the west for a change.
‘I mean, I know why your father wanted to burn it down, as some sort of symbolic gesture of revenge because he thought the town had betrayed you and caused your death. Only we didn’t betray you. We helped you. And you’re not dead. So, I was thinking maybe we didn’t need to torch the church now either.’
Ramon smiled. ‘You like this church?’
Morgan nodded.
‘Then find me the mayor and we’ll talk about it. Can’t have any loose ends here, not if you want to keep doing business.’ He stepped past him and stopped by a wooden door set into the wall. ‘This where you think he might be hiding out?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Then you go first,’ Ramon said, stepping aside. ‘You’re the one holding the fuckin’ M-6.’
79
The moment Andrews turned away Solomon grabbed the rope with his hands and flipped his legs up, turning himself upside down. Pain lanced through his shoulder where the skin had been peeled away, but he used it to help him focus. Feeling pain meant he was alive so he welcomed it.
He wrapped the rope round one ankle and trapped it with his other foot, holding himself upside down for a moment while he prepared. He would only have one chance at this. The flames were sweeping quickly towards him like a miniature version of the wildfire he had fought earlier in the day. If they caught him, he would be dead. He would get no second chance.
He pushed hard with his foot to keep the rope trapped, then bent at the middle and reached up with his bound hands. The rope was thin and hard for his foot to keep trapped so his weight pulled him down a little, down towards the flames directly burning on the spot where he had been standing. He grabbed at the section of rope above his knees and held it as tightly as he could, then loosened his feet and slid them further up the rope, feeding it round his leg while all of his weight was supported by his hands.
The heat was rising fast, sucking the oxygen from the air and making everything harder. He trapped the rope with his feet again, reached up with his hands and grabbed a little higher, moving up the rope a few painful feet at a time until the steel beam was only a foot or so above him. The heat was building now and the effort of supporting his weight was draining his strength but he resisted the urge to lunge for the beam. The next move would be risky. He had to release his leg from the rope and hook it over the beam while his weakened hands held him. One mistake, one slip, and he would fall head first to the burning concrete twenty feet below.
He was having trouble breathing now, smoke filling the air as it began to consume the contents of the warehouse. He gripped the thin rope as tightly as he could, released the brake of his ankle and felt the rope start to slip between his fingers. His strength was gone, he was falling. A feeling fluttered at the back of his mind that he should be stronger than this, that he used to be stronger. He shoved it aside and threw his leg up and over the steel beam and hooked it over just as his hands let go. The hard edge of the steel dug into the back of his knee and he gripped the rope again to steady him, hooked his other leg over, hanging there for a moment, bat-like in the smoke and the heat.
The whole section of hangar beneath him was burning now. The fire had consumed the workbench and the body on the floor and was spreading fast to the rest of the building. If he waited any longer he would be trapped here and the fire would choke him.
He levered himself up, careful to keep his balance, then stood and walked steadily along the beam, as fast as he dared, heading for the part of the hangar the flames had not yet reached. Ahead of him another beam jutted out with a block and tackle set resting on steel runners to help move heavy engines and aircraft parts around. Chains dripped down to the concrete floor below it, offering him a way back to the ground. He was so focused on it he didn’t notice the rope tightening around his wrists until it snapped tight and almost tugged him off balance. He stared down at the roiling inferno beneath him and managed to steady himself by taking a step back. The rope around his wrists was still secured to a stanchion that had somehow remained untouched by the fire. He was trapped with the fire spreading and the air getting hotter and smokier all the time.
He forced himself to walk back into the heart of the heat though every instinct was screaming at him to run. The rope slackened and he flicked the loose loop of it into the heart of the blaze where it caught light immediately and started to burn. Solomon hunkered down, bearing the heat for as long as he could while keeping a nervous eye on the spread of the fire. It had almost reached the chains now. He recited the words written on the church wall to help focus his mind and help him endure the heat:
Only those who face the fire yet still uphold God’s holy laws
Only those who would save others above themselves
Only these can hope to escape the inferno and be lifted unto heaven
He thought of Holly and the kiss she had given him. The psycho with the scar had said they were heading back to the church, something about honouring the last wish of his dead father. He needed to get there, but first he needed to get away from here.
He stood and moved towards the spreading edge of the fire, glancing back at the burning rope as it tightened. He reached the spot where he had been stopped before, widened his stance a little and tugged at the rope.
It held.
The entire length of the rope was burning now but the core remained firm. He tugged again, as hard as he dared, wary of it breaking suddenly and upsetting his balance.
Still it held.
He glanced over at the chains, his escape route. The fire already there and moving past them towards the exit where his folded shirt and jacket lay waiting. He had to get there. He had willed it to happen.
He squatted down, lowering his centre of gravity and yanked harder, then again, harder still, desperate now, risking his balance. It gave suddenly with a dull twanging sound that rocked him on his haunches. He grabbed the steel beam to steady himself then rose up and practically ran to the block and tackle. His hands were still bound but there was no time to free them. He reached down for the dangling chains and felt the heat in them from the fire below. He grabbed them as tightly as he could then rolled forward and off the beam.
The chains rattled as they took his weight and Solomon swung beneath them, feeling the links digging into his hands. His forward motion sent the tackle block moving along its runners and he swung his body to keep it going. Below him everything was burning and smoke made it hard to breathe and see. He closed his eyes and kept on swinging until the block hit the end of the runners, then he let go of one half of the chain and rode the other half down to the ground in a noisy rattle. He landed on the detached tailpiece of a plane and slid to the floor.
The fire was all round him, the heat radiating off it unbearable. He covered his head with his hands and flashed to a memory of Bobby Gallagher, bones sticking out from charred flesh. He saw the door ahead, the exit bar at waist height and ran at it. He grabbed his shirt and jacket from the chair and burst out into the night, flames chasing him through the door. He hit the ground and rolled, gulping the cool sweet air. He kept on rolling, using the cooling ground to squeeze the heat out of his skin and put out any flames that may have stuck to him, ignoring the pain coming from his back where grit stuck to the wet flesh of his peeled skin.
He came to a stop, looking up at the stars. He could hear the trapped fire rumbling in the building close by and the sound of a car driving away and heading back to town. The church was over a mile away, possibly two. It would take him maybe fifteen minutes to run there fully fit, longer in his current state. The mine was on the way though, and so was the corral.
He staggered to his feet and walked over to the nearest plane. It was a P-51 Mustang, polished to the same shine as the Beechcraft that had crashed. He crouched by the wheel and started rubbing the rope binding his wrists against the sharp edge of the landing gear housing. He glanced up and saw himself reflected on the underside of the wing, his white skin and hair darkened with ash and dirt. He looked like a creature of soot and smoke.
The rope frayed and fell apart and he stood and rubbed blood back into his wrists. The fire was pouring out of the hangar door now, a tongue of flame curling out to lick at the night. He grabbed his shirt and jacket from the ground and tied them round his waist by the sleeves. Then he started to run as fast as his exhausted body would allow, through the gate, on to the road, and back towards the town.
80
Mulcahy sat in the passenger seat of the transporter, staring down the pathway to the church door. The radio was turned low and filling the cab with the burble and crackle of local emergency traffic. Andrews had tasked him with listening out for any incoming units that might cause them problems, which was fine with him. It got him away from Ramon and gave him time to think.
He’d expected to feel relieved once his father was out of danger but instead he felt empty. Killing Tío hadn’t brought him peace either. He had quite liked him, oddly enough, despite the hold he’d had on him and his asshole behaviour on the journey over.
He thought about their conversation in the car and the picture he’d shown him of the mother Mulcahy had thought was long dead. He wondered if his Pop knew about her and felt a strong desire to call him up, but he couldn’t. They were running a cell-phone jammer to stop all calls and the landlines had been cut too. He’d have to talk to him about it when he caught up with him. Maybe. He didn’t want to break the old guy’s heart again, not after all he’d been through. At least he was a free man now, no more ties to the cartel. That was the deal he had done with Ramon, the price of his betrayal.
He wondered whether his Pop might also regard it as a betrayal if he told him he wanted to look up his mother. Perhaps he’d go anyway and not tell him, visit her and her country club husband, stir a little trouble into the neatly tucked away life she’d made for herself, walk up to her front door and say, ‘Hi, Mom, remember me? I’m the kid you had when you were a stripper, the one you dumped with a travelling salesman so you could start your life all over again.’ The thought of it was appealing, but he knew he wouldn’t do it. No point. What would she do, cry? Slam the door in his face? It would probably only make him feel even more empty, worse than he did now.
The radio chatter punctured his thoughts and he listened to a state trooper out on the highway, killing time with the dispatcher from another town. Simple little lives, all squared away in their own little worlds, the way his used to be. He wondered about Ramon. He couldn’t imagine that working for him would be the same as working for Tío. He’d already seen enough evidence of the chaos in him, the lack of control, and it worried him. There would be a bloodbath somewhere down the line with Ramon in charge and he didn’t want to be anywhere near him when it happened. He needed to get out, break the cycle. That’s what they told you in therapy when you were trying to kick the booze or the drugs. You needed to break the cycle. That was what he had been thinking about ever since Ramon had first approached him. Because a window of opportunity had opened up here and he had planned all along to escape through it.
He checked around, making sure none of the others were close by, and unhooked the hand transmitter on the radio. When he was still in the force he’d had to learn a whole bunch of emergency frequencies and their various uses for fieldwork. He punched one into the radio and raised the mic to his mouth. ‘Emergency, this is an emergency, over.’ He spoke low, his restless eyes scanning the night.
Nothing.
He switched to another channel and repeated the call.
Still nothing.
He was about to switch again when a voice buzzed back. ‘State your situation, over.’
‘This is retired Captain Michael Mulcahy,’ he said, and he gave them his old badge number so they could check him out. Then he told them exactly what his situation was.
81
Morgan led the way through the Cassidy residence, feeling a kind of thrill about it. He had only ever been in the entrance hall and the library before, never anywhere else. He’d never even used the john, and Lord knows there were enough of them to choose from.
They hadn’t found Mayor Cassidy lurking in the tunnel or in his office, and the guards had already searched the rest of the house, but Ramon seemed in no hurry to leave.
‘This is some nice place,’ he said, walking up the grand staircase and taking it all in, the wood panelling, the crystal chandeliers, the oil paintings of desert landscapes. ‘My old man lived in a shitty shack on the top of a dusty mountain. All that money he had and he still lived like a gomero.’
He stopped by a huge canvas showing a nightscape. A solitary figure stood with his back to the viewer, facing a bright shaft of light coming through what looked like a doorway cut into the dark. ‘What’s the story with this?’
‘Jack Cassidy painted it,’ Morgan said, ‘same man as built this house — church too,’ he added, hoping to steer Ramon back to the subject of not destroying it.
‘What’s the story though?’ Ramon said, studying the painting. ‘Who’s the guy?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe it was Jack. I think the shining doorway is supposed to be a mirror, though. He built one into another painting he did — in the church.’
Ramon ignored the hint and continued walking along the upper hallway, opening doors and checking the rooms like a man thinking of moving in. He reached the end of the hallway and opened a final door into a large bedroom with an old, solid bed sitting in the middle and a fireplace with two chairs arranged around it. A door was set into the far wall through which an old-fashioned, roll-top bath could be seen.
‘Now that’s what I call a bedroom,’ Ramon said, walking right in and looking around. ‘Bit old-farty for my tastes, but I guess you could rip it all out and pimp it up a little — hot tub back there in the bathroom, some mirrors on the ceiling. What do you think?’ He looked directly at Holly.
Holly said nothing.
Ramon smiled and turned to the guards. ‘Make yourselves useful. See if you can’t find this mayor. Me and the lady, we’re going to hang here a while. Test drive some of these soft furnishings.’
82
Holly heard the bedroom door close behind her then a soft click as the door was locked.
She stared down at the floor, the floorboards polished and scuffed by a hundred years of Cassidy feet. She tensed, waiting for Ramon to grab her. Her hands were still tied in front so she couldn’t do much about it if he did. She could kick him maybe. Stamp on his feet. She could feel him, standing between her and the door. The locked door.
A floorboard creaked as his weight shifted and she stiffened but he moved past without touching her. The mattress springs creaked as he sat on the edge of the bed and she could feel his eyes, crawling over her.
‘Look at me,’ he said. And she did, through hair that fell over her face like a dark veil.
He studied her, like she was a horse or a dog he was considering buying, then reached out and patted the bed beside him.
Holly looked at his hand, then back to his eyes. She didn’t move.
Ramon cocked his head to one side, reached behind him, pulled something from out of his waistband then held it up.
Holly stared at the knife, the blade catching the light as he turned it slowly in his hand. ‘So how do you think this little situation is going to shake out?’ he said.
Holly felt herself starting to tremble and she clenched her whole body against it. She didn’t want him to see and think she was afraid of him. She wasn’t afraid. She was angry. ‘You don’t care what I think,’ she said.
‘Oh, I do,’ he said. ‘You know I could just have you if I wanted to, right? You know it. I know it. Tie you to the bed, hold a knife to your throat, cut you if you tried anything. We can play it that way if you want, but what’s the point? Why take the hard road when there’s a much easier path leading to exactly the same place?’
He laid the knife down on the bed and pulled out his phone. ‘Let me show you something.’ He rose from the bed and unlocked his phone as he walked over, his attention on it rather than her. Holly glanced at the knife. Too far to reach. Even if she made it, her tied hands would make it hard to do anything with it. And Morgan was standing outside the door with a loaded gun.
Ramon stopped in front of her and held up his phone. ‘See this?’ Holly glanced at the screen and gasped.
A pair of eyes stared out from a smiling ruin of a face, the exposed teeth white against the red. Holly wondered how the girl could possibly smile after whatever atrocity had been visited on her. Then she realized the truth. Her lips had been cut off.
‘Rosalita,’ Ramon said. ‘I gave her the same choice I’m giving you — easy way or hard way. Guess which one she took. Brave girl. Beautiful girl. Shame.’ He swiped the screen and another savage image appeared, different eyes staring out of the same appalling redness. ‘Carmelita. She said No too.’ He swiped again and Holly looked away, nausea rising inside her.
‘Look at the screen,’ Ramon said.
She shook her head, took a step backwards and banged against the locked door.
‘Look at the screen,’ Ramon repeated, his voice cold and calm.
Holly took deep breaths, fighting her revulsion.
‘Look at the screen,’ his voice softer now. ‘It’s not what you think.’
She looked.
No red this time. No staring eyes This girl’s eyes were closed. She was maybe twenty years old, her black hair spreading over the pillow, looking glossy under the camera light.
‘Maria,’ Ramon said. ‘She gave me what we both knew I was going to get anyway. She gave herself to me. You understand? Same destination, different journey. So,’ he said and lowered the phone. ‘Which is it to be?’
He was standing so close she could feel his breath on her face. She looked past him to the bed. The knife lying upon it. Probably the same one that had cut away the beauty of those ruined girls.
She took a deep breath to steady herself then stepped forward, past Ramon and towards the bed. Every instinct screaming ‘run’. She focused on the simple act of making her legs move, one step after another.
She reached the bed and turned, her legs buckling as she sat down on the edge of it, making a point of ignoring the knife lying next to her. Ramon regarded her for a moment then nodded and started walking over, unfastening the belt on his jeans as he came.
He stopped in front of her, his waist level with her head and only inches away. ‘You do what I want, understand? You give it to me.’
Holly thought about that morning, standing by her husband’s grave, burying her old life then walking through the rain intending to finish the job. Only she hadn’t. And now, in this utterly wretched situation, she realized how much she wanted to live. She would do anything to preserve her life now. Anything.
She reached up and started to undo the buttons on the front of Ramon’s jeans. Her hands were tied tight, palms facing each other, making it hard for her to grip anything. She could feel Ramon watching her. He reached down for the knife and Holly froze, images from his phone flashing through her head.
‘Don’t make me take it.’
Holly nodded, her eyes on the blade. He turned the knife round until it was level with her face, held it there for a second, then slid the blade between her palms, the metal cold and hard. He sawed through the rope and it fell to the floor. Holly rubbed at the raw marks on her wrists, her fingers tingling as the blood returned.
She looked back at the buttons of Ramon’s jeans and a single tear ran down her cheek as she remembered the last time she had done something like this and for whom. She blinked it away, not wanting him to see it. Not wanting to give him that much.
She worked as slowly as she dared but the zip came undone quickly now she could grip the buttons. His breathing grew heavier as she reached her hands round his waistband. He still had the knife in his hand, barely a blade-length away from her eye. It moved away a little as she eased his jeans down over his hips.
And she yanked down hard. Hard as she could. Dragging his jeans down below his knees. She pushed herself up at the same time, shoving him backwards.
He roared in anger and the knife scythed through the air as his arms windmilled, trying to keep his balance, but his bunched-up jeans were like shackles and he fell hard, catching his head on the edge of a table.
‘Fucking bitch,’ he roared, lunging at her with the knife, jerking himself forward across the floor and stabbing at her fleeing heels.
Holly darted into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.
The blade thunked heavily into the wood on the other side and she heard splintering as Ramon twisted it free again. There was a key in the lock and she fumbled at it, her hand shaking so hard she had to use both hands to turn it. A deadbolt slid into place just as the door jumped from a heavy impact on the other side.
‘Stupid bitch,’ Ramon yelled through the door. ‘Now I’m going to have to take it.’
Holly turned, heart hammering, eyes wide, looking around for a weapon, or a way out — anything.
83
Solomon ran.
He ran through the cooling night, the raw patch of skin throbbing on his back and stinging from the sweat running into it. The brand on his arm hurt too, aching and pulsing in time with his pounding heart and his feet across the ground.
The road sloped away towards the town, which helped a little, but it was still a long way to run after already burning up so much energy getting out of the hangar.
He could see the church ahead of him, lit by low spotlights, its size making it seem closer than he knew it was. It was still there at least, though he felt anxious about that. He could feel the cross banging on his chest as he ran and he used thoughts of what it might unlock to drive him forward:
Have to get to the altar …
Have to find Holly …
Have to save James Coronado …
The mine rose up out of the night, ugly piles of dirt, and forbidding fences. He ran past the gate, the warning signs fixed upon them, then beyond the fence to where the track left the road and led to the corral.
He slowed as he approached it, trying to silence his loud and hungry breathing. He was about to try to steal a horse from a place he had already stolen from, so stealth was very much in order.
He reached out with his senses, listening through his breathing for signs of anyone there. The corrals were empty and the lights in the office were off and he wondered if the horses were no longer here. He listened for any sound of them and caught the snort of an animal coming from the furthest barn.
He moved towards it, skirting round the edge of the open spaces, keeping to the corral fences.
He was halfway to the barn when a security light tripped on. He froze in place, half expecting more lights to flood the yard and voices to sound as people with guns came to investigate. Nothing happened. After a minute the light switched off again and he continued on his way, crouching lower and using the fence to hide his movement from the motion detectors.
He could smell the horses in the barn, earthy and warm, and he reached the door and laid his hand upon it. There was a heavy padlock, threaded through a solid hasp holding the door shut. He looked around for something to try to force it or break the lock free. That was when he noticed the figure standing by a rainwater butt only a few feet away from him.
The suddenness of the ghost girl’s appearance made Solomon’s racing heart flutter a little faster. She was staring right at him, her old-fashioned clothes too large for her tiny frame. She looked down at the ground then melted away as quickly as she had appeared.
Solomon stepped over to the spot where she had stood and studied the ground. Some flat rocks had been wedged beneath the rain barrel to level it. One of them had a small indentation next to it the same shape as the rock, showing that it had been recently moved. He crouched down and pulled it out, saw the key in the dirt beneath it and smiled.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered, taking the key and fitting it in the lock.
He picked out a black Palomino, the colour chosen to blend in better with the night, and rode it out of the barn, his legs still trembling from his recent run. He pointed it at the road and galloped across the yard, setting off all the security lights at once.
He didn’t see the girl, standing in the shadows, watching until the lights blinked off again before turning her head back down to the ground to continue her endless search for whatever it was she had lost.
84
Morgan had been pacing in the hall, fretting about the situation with the church when he heard the shouting behind the bedroom door.
He rushed over and found it was locked. He thought about shooting the lock out but didn’t want to hit anyone with a stray round so he stepped back to kick it open just as the door opened.
‘She’s in the bathroom,’ Ramon said, pulling his jeans up and fixing his belt. ‘Shoot the lock out and drag her out here.’
Morgan hurried through the bedroom to the bathroom door. He tried the handle first then shouldered the rifle and aimed at the lock. The shot boomed and the wood around the lock splintered. Ramon stepped forward and kicked the door open.
The room was empty.
‘She’s outside,’ Morgan said, pointing at the small square window hanging open in the corner.
Ramon smiled. ‘Well all right then. The only thing I like better than fucking is hunting. So let’s go catch us a deer.’
He grabbed the M-6 from Morgan and hurried out of the room.
Holly slipped her way across the copper-clad roof, feeling the trapped heat of the day radiating up into her bare feet. She had taken her boots off to give her better grip and was slipping her way to the far corner of the house, the side furthest away from the church and all the activity and people.
She reached the corner and peered over the edge. It seemed much higher looking down than it ever had gazing up and she gripped the edge of the roof to steady herself. A drainpipe ran down the side of the house, but she hesitated to reach for it.
She heard a loud bang and splintering wood behind her, muffled by the half-closed window but still loud enough to carry. She took a breath, dropped her boots down to the ground below and almost faltered again when she heard how long it took for them to hit.
‘Move,’ she told herself, and she did.
She lay flat on the roof and swung her legs over the side, feeling her way down with her feet until they found one of the brackets fixing the pipe to the wall. She gripped it with her toes then reached down with a hand to grab hold of the pipe and began slowly shimmying down, taking it as fast as she dared and willing the ground to appear beneath her.
85
Ramon burst out of the front door of the Cassidy residence and jumped down the wooden steps on to the gravel drive.
Over by the church a couple of the soldiers were looking over, alerted by the gunshot, their hands resting on the stocks of their weapons.
‘I got this,’ Ramon called over, and they turned away again.
Ramon walked backwards from the house, looking up at the roof. He couldn’t see anything up there, though she could be hiding on the other side. He loved this feeling he got when he was hunting, the clarity of thought, the singularity of purpose. He turned and scanned the garden, studying the avenues of trees between the house and the church. She could be hiding behind one of the broad trunks, but he doubted it. The guards had been surprised by his sudden appearance, which suggested that nothing else had come this way recently.
Morgan appeared at the door, his police-issue firearm in his hand. ‘What’s back there?’ Ramon asked, nodding at the far side of the house.
‘More garden and an orchard.’
Ramon set the M-6 to single shot, raised it to his shoulder and moved forward, rounding the edge of the house and staring into the dark garden beyond. The lights that lit the square and the church did not reach this part of the garden and the jacarandas threw deep shadows over everything.
Ramon listened out, heard a rustling about a hundred or so yards away and raised the gun to a firing position. He flicked on the night-sight and a circle of garden lit up in front of him, phosphorescent green in the scope.
He saw her almost immediately, a bright smear of movement. She was holding her boots in one hand and running fast, keeping to the shadows and weaving through the trees, her other hand held in front of her to ward off the low branches she couldn’t see in the dark.
Ramon could see perfectly. He followed her progress, anticipating her movements and steadying his breathing. She was running almost directly away from him, making her a much simpler target to follow. ‘Too easy,’ Ramon murmured, sounding disappointed.
He pulled the trigger and watched the figure drop in his sights. It did not get up again.
‘Stay here,’ he told Morgan and started moving into the shadows. ‘Won’t be long.’
86
Andrews looked up when he heard the shot.
He was standing on the road that ran alongside the church, staring back towards the airfield and the distant glow of the burning hangar.
‘What was that?’ the man in the truck beside him said. ‘Sounded like a shot to me.’
‘Nothing to worry about, sir,’ Andrews said, not believing his own words. ‘But you should go home and stay there until further notice.’
The man had driven up a minute ago, all wide eyes and questions. He lived back up the road close to the airfield, said he’d seen smoke rising from one of the hangars and people moving around. ‘You know the phones are out too?’ he persisted.
‘Please, sir,’ Andrews repeated, ‘go home. Everything is under control here.’
The man shook his head, put his truck in drive then pulled away, making a slow, wide circle in the road before heading back in the direction he had come from.
Andrews watched him drive off then angled his head down to talk into his lapel mic. ‘This is Andrews. What’s the report on those gunshots?’
‘It was Ramon,’ a voice came back. ‘He shot someone out back of the house, I think.’
‘The mayor?’
‘Negative. The mayor is still at large, whereabouts unknown.’
Andrews shook his head and started walking back to the church.
Things were becoming too risky here and the longer they stayed, the worse it got. If he could see the burning hangar from his position then plenty of others would see it too. That plus the gunfire meant it was time to leave as far as he was concerned, loose ends or no loose ends. He reached the church door, unlocked it with Morgan’s key and stepped inside.
A figure loomed out of the dark and his scalp tightened before he remembered what it was. He didn’t like old churches at the best of times, let alone ones someone had put a spooky-assed dummy inside. He continued walking up the aisle towards the line of crates. Be doing everyone a favour, levelling this old tomb of a place.
He crouched down by the detonator unit and slotted his key into the arming switch. The display lit up, a line of red zeroes.
Ten minutes ought to do it.
He punched it into the timer and twisted the key again to arm it. He watched the numbers start counting down then propped the detonator against one of the crates, pulled the key out and walked back towards the door. The detonator unit contained two kilograms of C-4 explosive, enough to crack the stone floor and blow out all the windows. The gasoline would do the rest. Tío had wanted to light up the sky. Pity he wouldn’t be around to see it. Now it would be a useful diversion to occupy the town and let him and his men get away.
Ten minutes to clear out and be gone. Plenty of time.
He closed the door and locked it behind him, the sound of it echoing to nothing in the vast empty space of the church.
87
Holly dragged herself forward, pushing at the ground with her good leg and letting the other one drag behind.
She had been shot, she knew that, though it didn’t hurt much, not as much as she thought it would. When the bullet hit it had felt like someone had punched her hard on the leg above the knee, and she had fallen down and then not been able to get up again. It was only when she felt the blood that she realized what must have happened. There was a lot of blood, she could feel it though it was too dark to see. She worried that the bullet had nicked an artery on the way through and she was bleeding out. She felt if she could just make it out of the shadows and back into the light, maybe she would be OK.
A light appeared and danced in front of her on the ground, as if her thought had summoned it. It moved up and shone in her face, then the toe of a boot slid under her hip and levered her on to her back.
‘Not bad for a running shot in the dark,’ Ramon said from behind the flashlight.
There was a pressure on her leg then intense pain as he pressed his boot down on the entry wound. She howled with the pain and grabbed at the boot with both hands, desperate to push it off her.
‘Didn’t even catch the bone, by the looks of things,’ Ramon said.
He took his boot off her leg and turned the flashlight round so she could see the knife he was holding. ‘Now where were we?’ he said, and he started to unbuckle his belt with the hand holding the knife.
Holly felt around on the ground for something, anything. Her hand closed around a small piece of branch that had broken off a tree. She held it up in front of her.
Ramon laughed. ‘The fuck is that?’ He lashed out with his boot, kicking her hand hard and knocking the branch from it.
Tears of anger and pain burned in her eyes. She felt around on the floor again, desperate not to give in, found the stub of a stick and raised it up.
Ramon swung the rifle towards her. ‘You think that’s gonna save you?’
Holly stared up at him, refusing to close her eyes or look away. She waited for the gunshot that would end her pain and felt the earth start to tremble beneath her. Ramon glanced off to his right and she realized he must feel it too. She could hear it now, like a heartbeat drawing closer.
The rifle swung away towards whatever was bringing the thunder and Holly followed it and saw a dark shape surging through shadows like a piece of night made solid. Ramon took a step backwards, bringing him closer to where Holly was lying. He aimed at the shadow and Holly swung her arm round as hard as she could and jabbed the piece of branch into his leg.
Ramon flinched from the sudden pain and his finger squeezed a round off. He fired wide. He tried to readjust and ignore the pain in his leg, but he never got the chance. The shadow hit him and galloped straight through him as if he wasn’t there.
88
Solomon wheeled the horse round and dropped down close to where Holly was lying. There was a flashlight on the ground and he grabbed it and checked around. Ramon was on his back, a deep dent in his head where the horse’s hoof had caught him. It had peeled the skin away, broken the metal plate and pulled it back to expose a small square of his brain beneath. The rifle was lying next to him and Solomon picked it up and carried it over to Holly.
‘How did you find me?’ Holly asked when he knelt beside her.
‘I heard the gunshot,’ Solomon said, tearing at the sodden material of her jeans so he could examine her leg, ‘then I heard you scream.’
There was blood, plenty of blood, but not enough to make him think she would bleed out. He undid her belt, pulled it through the loops of her jeans then wound it round her thigh and cinched it tight above the wound.
‘Hold that,’ he said, handing her the end of the belt. ‘It’ll control the bleeding until we can get an ambulance to you.’
‘Am I going to die?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Solomon replied. ‘Not if I can help it.’
‘Hands where I can see them,’ a voice called from the shadows.
Solomon turned to see Morgan emerging from behind the trunk of a jacaranda tree, his gun pointing straight at him.
‘Your hands,’ Morgan repeated.
Solomon stood slowly, lifting his hands in front of him. He stepped away from Holly so that Morgan could see Ramon, lying dead on the ground behind him.
Morgan shook his head when he saw him. ‘It’s all one big damned mess is what it is. This was supposed to be a new beginning. New business partner, more shipments. Cassidy didn’t want it, neither did Tucker, that’s why they had to go. There would have been so much damn money coming through this town we’d all have been rich. Maybe that’s why they didn’t want it. And now look …’ He stared at Ramon, lying on his back, eyes open and a fist-sized hole in his head. ‘Who am I supposed to do business with now?’ He turned to Solomon. ‘Why did you have to come here? Everything was fine until you arrived.’
‘Not according to James Coronado.’
‘Oh Jesus, spare me all the “I’m here to save him” crap. You can’t save him. Any more than you can save yourself.’
He raised his gun, aimed it at Solomon’s head and a shot rang out.
Solomon gasped and watched Morgan fall to his knees, his gun dropping from his hand and on to the floor. He turned to where the shot had come from and saw Holly pointing Ramon’s rifle up at the spot where Morgan had been.
‘Not rock salt this time, you son of a bitch,’ she said, her voice already slipping out of focus.
Then the rifle fell from her hand and her eyes rolled up into her head.
89
Andrews was heading back to the van, scanning the square for movement, when he heard the gunshot.
‘That’s it, we’re moving out,’ he said.
Mulcahy was hunched over the radio, riding the scanner. ‘We should take the desert road,’ he said. ‘Not the one past the airfield or the one through the mountains.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve been picking up some radio traffic from two tactical units. They must have been tipped off by someone, or could be they saw the fire. One is inbound from Douglas, the other’s coming from Globe. I’ve heard nothing from the desert road. Guess they have it down as impassable, but it’s not. I drove in on it.’
Andrews nodded and leaned his head towards his lapel mic. ‘All units listen up. RV back at the transporters immediately and prepare to exfil. Repeat: RV at the vehicles and let’s get out of here. Now!’
He checked his watch and glanced over at the church. ‘We need to step on this, that thing’s going up in less than seven minutes. Where’s Ramon?’
‘Over behind the church,’ Mulcahy said. ‘Don’t worry about him, he can come with me.’
‘You sure? He’s going to be pissed I gave the order to pull out without checking with him first.’
‘I’ll cope,’ Mulcahy said. ‘I just spent two hours in a car with his old man. Can’t be any worse than that.’
90
Cassidy lay in the quiet of the church, listening for any signs of movement. He had heard the door being locked but wanted to be sure before he showed himself. He knew they were looking for him, he’d overheard someone say it, and he didn’t want to be found. He felt like something terrible was going to happen here and that perhaps he was the only one who could stop it.
He sat up and looked out at the silent church through the canvas arch of the covered wagon. He couldn’t see anyone and the lack of lights suggested there wasn’t anyone to see.
He moved as quietly as he could, aware of every creak as his weight shifted inside the old wagon. He stepped out on to the floor and listened again before moving towards the line of crates in the central aisle.
He saw the red LED numbers shining brightly in the darkness, the display showing 5:24.
Then 5:23.
5:22.
Cassidy fell to his knees, his hands fluttering over the surface of the thing, hoping for something so simple as an ‘off’ switch. The numbers continued to tumble and the 5 became a 4.
Outside he heard an engine start up. Everyone pulling out before the bomb went off. Why would anyone want to destroy something so beautiful and sacred as a church?
The numbers continued to tumble, faster than seconds it seemed. He thought about walking it right out of the front door, but there could still be people out there who might make him put it back again, or shoot him and put it back in here themselves. He didn’t care about his own safety, he felt he had forfeited that with all the bad choices he had made. He had made them for good reasons though. It was all to save the town. Perhaps he had failed at that too. But he could still save the church, that much was in his power.
He could save the house his ancestor built.
91
Mulcahy moved towards the Cassidy residence, wary of the two gunshots he had heard coming from the other side of it. He knew Ramon was back there somewhere, Morgan too, and he thought the woman was in the mix as well. He pulled his Beretta from his holster and held it in front of him.
Behind him the armoured trucks started up, their heavy engines shattering the night with their roars as they moved away. By the time he reached the house they were gone and he listened out to the sounds of the night through their fading rumble. He cocked his head to one side and tightened his grip on the gun.
He could hear the sound of heavy footsteps shuffling across the dry grass and getting louder. He waited until he was sure they were in safe pistol range then stepped out and pointed his gun straight at the figure emerging from the shadows.
He frowned when he saw who it was. ‘I thought you were dead,’ he said.
‘Apparently not,’ Solomon replied and carried on walking. ‘If you’re going to shoot me, get it over with, otherwise give me a hand. She’s been shot and she needs to get to the hospital.’
Mulcahy looked past him into the shadowed garden. ‘Who else is back there?’
‘The psychopath with the plate in his head.’
‘Alive?’
‘No.’
‘What about Morgan?’
‘He’s there too.’
‘Alive?’
‘No.’
Mulcahy relaxed a little. ‘Well, that saves me a job. Let me help you there.’ He holstered his gun and took the girl from Solomon. Her leg was a bloody mess and he carried her over to the wide wooden porch and laid her down on one of the outdoor sofas.
‘Can you call an ambulance,’ Solomon said. ‘She’s lost a lot of blood.’
Mulcahy checked his phone. ‘I can now they’ve switched the jammer off.’
Solomon nodded and looked over at the church. ‘Make sure she’s OK,’ he said.
Mulcahy inspected Holly’s leg as the ringing tone sounded in his ear. It was a clean in-and-out wound, no hollow points or anything else that might have blown a chunk of her leg off. It could’ve been a whole lot worse.
‘State your emergency,’ the voice sounded in his ear.
‘Gunshot wound. Female in her late twenties. She’s been shot in the leg and she needs an ambulance.’
‘State your location, sir.’
‘Cassidy residence. You might want to send some extra folks down while you’re at it. There’s been some gunfire here. Couple of people dead.’
He hung up before he could get drawn into a conversation he didn’t want to have. They would send cops for a gunshot wound callout, though he wasn’t sure what cops were left. He looked up and realized that Solomon was gone. He stood and walked over to the edge of the porch and spotted him halfway down an avenue of trees. He was heading for the church.
‘No!’ Mulcahy called after him, remembering what Andrews had said. ‘Get away from there.’
Solomon heard Mulcahy calling him, telling him to keep away from the church but all it did was make him start running towards it. He felt drawn to it like a drunk to a drink.
He felt so tired now, but he pushed himself on, one foot in front of the other. He wanted to know what was hidden beneath the altar. He needed to know.
He pulled the cross out from under his shirt and held it in his hand, not understanding how he had come by it or what it might mean, but knowing all those answers were close. The wall was in front of him now and the church just beyond. Somehow he had to get over that, get into the church and find what was hidden in the plinth. The lost Cassidy treasure. His to find. And maybe something of himself.
The explosion was like a thunderclap, so deep and loud he felt it in his chest. The ground beneath him erupted and he was thrown upwards into the lower branches of a tree. He reached out with his hands to try to protect his face but he hit his head hard on a branch and the world went blinding white for a second. Then he felt himself falling, and the sound of the explosion was gone, and the whiteness faded to black.
92
Andrews was driving past the burned billboard on the edge of town when he heard the explosion. He thought of the creepy mannequin by the old-fashioned wagon and smiled at the thought that it had been obliterated. The blast and the fire would keep everyone busy for hours, days even. It was the perfect diversion to help them slip away. It had been as neat as it could have been: no men lost, minimal gunfire and none of it from his men. Objective achieved. As far as missions went, they didn’t get any better.
He fixed his eyes on the road ahead, plotting the best route through the potholes and ridges on the surface. They passed the tangled wreckage of the plane and headed away into the night, the blackened desert blending perfectly with the dark sky. It felt like they were flying instead of driving. He felt like he was free.
The light flicked on ahead of him when he was almost at the junction, so bright it flooded the cab and forced him to slow right down.
‘Stop your vehicle,’ a voice commanded through a loud-hailer.
More lights came on either side of them. The headlights of vehicles parked out in the desert.
‘We have you covered on all sides,’ the voice came again. ‘Stop your vehicles, turn off your engines and step outside with your hands where we can see them. I repeat, we have you covered, do NOT attempt anything stupid.’
Andrews stood on the melted edge of the road with his hands on his head, the rest of his men lined up alongside him. He stared out at the black desert and felt oddly relieved that it was over. All the deception and anxiety about the next call and what he would be required to do to keep his family safe. He knew some of his men had turned for money, but not all of them, and he wondered if those others in the line were feeling as relieved as he was.
A captain stepped in front of him and regarded him coldly from behind his visor. ‘Real shitstorm you’ve stirred up here. Not sure the department’s going to get out from under this one any time soon.’ He shook his head and looked along the line. ‘Which one’s Mulcahy?’
‘He’s bringing up the rear,’ Andrews said, staring back down the road towards the town. He could see the glow of the fire over at the airfield, but that was all, no headlights coming up the road and no fire in the centre of town.
Then he realized what had happened.
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