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Slow Recoil. C.B. Forrest
Читать онлайн.Название Slow Recoil
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781926607184
Автор произведения C.B. Forrest
Жанр Ужасы и Мистика
Серия A Charlie McKelvey Mystery
Издательство Ingram
“Number sixty-two,” Turner said.
Kad threw the car in gear and took them slowly up and down the rows until they found the unit. He put the car in park and killed the engine. The motor ticked as it cooled down. Turner dug in his coat pocket for a key then looked over at Kad quickly, perhaps one last check of this stranger he was about to arm. Kad stared back at him. He didn’t like this Turner with his orders and his “this isn’t a cow lane in Bosnia”, as though he thought Kad was some dumb farm kid from the hills. He had been that at one time, yes, as a boy. But he did not remember that boy, could not place himself in those shoes.
Turner unlocked the door and lifted it just high enough to get a boot under it. He gave the door a good heft with his foot, and it rolled all the way up to reveal a storage unit twelve feet deep by eight feet wide. There was nothing inside the unit except for a large green trunk. Kad recognized the box as a military foot locker.
“Close the goddamned door,” Turner said, standing there at the box. Kad turned and rolled the door down, enclosing them in darkness. Then a light came on, a glow of bright blue-white from an LED lantern. Turner’s face was rendered pale and eerie in the light, and the eye patch suddenly gave him a new and sinister impression. Kad saw then the potential that existed within the man for violence; it was there, yes, he could see it now. And this was so true of life, how sometimes the things a man needed to see only became clear to him in the darkness. How a man like Turner navigated through life by appearing just as he presented himself: harmless, insignificant. It was a tactic, of course it was, because everything they did had a tactical purpose.
Turner knelt and unlocked the foot locker. He pushed the lid back and moved some things around. He came back up with a black attaché case. He flicked the latches and revealed a handgun, ammunition clips, a couple of other accessories, stainless steel death. Turner took hold of the sidearm, heavy and black. Checked the safety, racked the action to check for live rounds.
“SIG P225. Recoil action, 9 millimeter NATO cartridges in a nine-piece clip. Canadian Navy boarding parties use these beauties. Close security teams, you know—the cavalry. Cleaned and tested it myself,” Turner said.
“I know guns,” Kad said, and he took the piece.
He held it in his hand. Regarded it. Turned it over in the way that felt natural now, the way a guitar player held a new instrument— weighing it, getting to know its body and character. For weapons were a lot like humans: they could look alike, perhaps, but no two weapons were exactly the same in personality, in temperament. He had thrown aside expensive German hunting rifles with thousand-dollar scopes for a worn and beaten lever action 3-0-3 simply because of the feel and the response, the nature of the weapon. Simply because it felt right in his hands, an extension of his will. You for me, and me for you.
“Good,” Kad said, sliding the action.
“Accessories,” Turner said, and handed over a black silencer attachment about four inches long. “And your ammo. Thirty-six rounds. That’s it, so don’t waste it.”
“The rest,” Kad said. A directive.
“Hold your horses,” Turner said. Then he turned back to the foot locker. He looked over his shoulder—because he had handed over a weapon with ammunition—then turned back to his rooting. He stood up and held what looked like a men’s shaving bag. He unzipped the bag and held it open. Kad stepped closer and looked inside. Four syringes, four vials. Clear liquid.
“Be careful,” Turner said. “You as much as prick the end of your little finger when one of those is loaded up, and you’re fucked six ways to Sunday. I mean gone.”
“Do I look clumsy to you?” Kad said. His eyes were hard.
Turner looked at Kad from across the storage room. Dust filtered through the LED light. Turner blinked his one eye. So easy to offend, these types. Nothing to lose, for they owned nothing but their family name, their pride. They were machines to a great extent, and like all machines they could only be programmed to a point. There were limitations.
“Relax, sparky. I’m just saying, be careful,” Turner said. “This shit is straight from the play book of the Mossad. Get it? I’m talking covert black ops. One CC, and the poor son of a bitch exhibits signs of a heart attack—not even detectable in a routine autopsy. Boom, dead. The trick is to get the needle somewhere it won’t leave a bruise, signs of puncture. Under a toenail, back of the hairline, around the anus, that sort of thing. Use your imagination.”
Kad put the pistol back in its case and zipped up the shaving bag. “The girl is ready?” he said.
“Oh she’s ready, all right,” Turner said.
“Take me there,” Kad said, “now.”
Turner smiled, and said, “You know, that’s what I like about you people. You cut right to the chase. To the fucking bone.”
Kad wondered how much the girl had changed in the three years since they had sat around that kitchen table drinking plum brandy, making plans through long-distance and third-party communication with The Colonel. Or whether she had really changed at all. Were any of them capable of further change? The transformation was complete, as far as he was concerned. From what he had started as, what he had become along the way, and what he was right now—it was a complete metamorphosis. Psychological, physiological, biological, spiritual. He had been a boy once, yes, the little boy who worked and played at his grandfather’s farm. The smell of animals in winter, hay wet with the stink of piss. He remembered the boy sometimes, though rarely, and always within the distorted context of fractured memory. For Kadro was dead, the death certificate filed in a municipal office. He was dead, and his brother was an orphan. It was the irony of this strange arrangement—they had to die in order to be re-born for this.
“Let’s go,” Kad said.
“I’ll give you the directions,” Turner said. “Drop me off at the subway.”
Kad gave him a look.
Turner said, “What, do you want me to hold your hand? This is it for me. I’m done. Over and out. You reach me in the event of catastrophe, period.”
Turner opened the garage door, and they both squinted against the flood of light. He slammed the door shut behind them, wiped his hands across his pants, and they got in the car. Kad turned the ignition and put the car in gear and said, without looking at Turner, “Your eye. What happened?”
Turner sort of smiled and said, “Left it in Bosnia.”
Kadro dropped Turner off a small parking lot kitty corner to the York Mills subway station in the north of the city. There was a brick building about the size of a large garden shed, stairs leading underground and connecting to the station across the street. Turner opened the door and stepped out. It was a good late summer day, warm enough for the diehard cyclists to wear their shorts as they careened in and out of traffic.
“Good luck,” Turner said, his hand on the door.
Kad looked over and gave a small nod.
“Get back on the highway up here,” Turner said, pointing north.
“I know how,” Kad said. The grid map of Toronto was burned into his brain like a cattle brand. The hours they had sat pouring over maps, being quizzed as though his life depended on it. And it did.
Turner closed the door, walked to the brick building and slipped inside. Kad waited a minute then pulled out of the parking lot. He made it a block before pulling into a Petro Canada station. He bought a newspaper and four scratch-and-win tickets. He sat in the car and used a penny to slowly scratch each ticket. He blew the crinkled bits of foil from his lap. He didn’t think about anything when he was scratching these cards. Nothing.