Murderous by David Hickson (best ereader for comics .txt) 📕

“Where is he meeting Roelof?”

“Up the coast. Near the lagoon on the beach. Roelof is waiting there to take the weapons.”

Kenneth released the knot and Fat-Boy’s hand dropped beside him. Kenneth’s eyes held mine.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said. “I couldn’t kill your friends. I shot the man, but not the girl. Roelof sent me to do it. But I couldn’t kill her.”

Fat-Boy coughed suddenly, his body heaving with the effort.

“Time to go,” I said to Kenneth, then to Fat-Boy, “Think of the sand. You’ll be kicking it in our faces soon.”

“Particularly,” said Fat-Boy, and he coughed and splattered blood into my face. “Particularly yours.”

Hendrik’s route had taken us away from the pool of light, and now a curtain of darkness drew over the highlighted scene behind us. It was a pile of shipping containers, one of the apparently random and forgotten piles that were scattered around the older and abandoned side of the docks. A glance ahead showed that it was only a few crates long, but it was cover. It was our only chance.

“Now …” I called and grabbed onto the edge of the base and jumped off the back of the truck. The speed of the fleeing ground took me by surprise and snatched my feet from under me, but I had both hands firmly wedged under attachment hoops, and I felt the trigger finger of my right hand snap as my weight hung from it. My knees hit the ground and scraped along for a moment, but I pulled myself up and stumbled along behind the truck. I pulled my hands out and grabbed the sleeve of Fat-Boy’s overall. He raised himself and dragged towards the back edge. My right hand was going numb from the pain of the broken finger.

Kenneth stood up, placed a leg on each side of Fat-Boy and leaned forward to lift him. Then suddenly I could see the white of Kenneth’s teeth as he grimaced with the effort. The containers that had provided cover were behind us, and we were out in the open again. Kenneth’s head jerked up and backwards as a bullet struck him in the chest. Then another bullet hit between the eyes. His face disappeared in a burst of blood and he fell back. I grasped Fat-Boy’s hand.

The truck was gaining speed rapidly now. Kenneth’s lifeless legs were pinning Fat-Boy down. Sweat and blood and grease made his hand slippery. His eyes pleaded with mine, then his hand was snatched from my grasp. He drifted away from me in slow motion. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t catch up. I raised my Glock and threw it forward. It landed with a clatter on the back of the truck and then jumped and hopped and started sliding off as the truck hit a pothole. Fat-Boy reached out a hand and trapped the Glock under it. He looked back to me, but suddenly the truck, Fat-Boy, the Glock and Kenneth’s dead body flipped up and the road slapped me in the face. I had tripped on a patch of broken tar and ploughed into the ground like an airborne missile. My hands instinctively broke my fall, and scraped across the tar, but my face took some of the brunt of the collision, and when I looked up to see the truck disappearing in a cloud of sparks and dust I felt the blood dripping down my face.

I didn’t get to my feet, or struggle up onto my knees. My body was throbbing with the pain of my broken finger and the scrape across the tarmac. Adrenalin was pumping, and I closed my eyes for a moment to regain control. Scanned my body to be sure there weren’t any other injuries. If a stray bullet had struck me, it would be better to know about it now than discover it when I had lost too much blood, or the damage passed the point of no return. I found nothing unexpected and took a deep breath to focus my energy.

I reached the containers at the far side of the road at a crouching run. The sound of an engine came from behind me; a car travelling without lights, moving cautiously down the road. It was an open-top jeep, bumping slowly over the broken ground as if they were searching for something. The sound of the jeep’s engine modulated, and it left the road to travel in the no-man’s-land behind the shipping containers. I moved around the side of my container to stay out of the driver’s sight. Another vehicle was accelerating up the road towards me, headlights on full beam and engine whining. Harbour security in pursuit of the truck. The jeep in no-man’s-land approached my container, and then the engine dropped to an idle, and there came the gentle crunching of loose gravel beneath the wheels as it drifted to a stop.

“Corporal Gabriel,” came a voice. “You’re not made of glass, for god’s sake. Get your arse over here.”

I ducked out of sight of the harbour security vehicle moments before they screamed past and scrambled into the back seat of the jeep.

“What took you so long?” I asked. Robyn put the jeep into reverse and we started moving backwards at speed. Chandler was sitting beside her, his cold grey eyes searching me. He was holding his left hand over his right shoulder and I could see a dark stain oozing between his fingers.

“Fat-Boy?” asked Chandler.

“On the truck,” I said.

Robyn swung the wheel to turn us about, crunched into second and sped across the open space to regain the road. I gave them the shorthand version of our failure to extract the gold. Chandler’s jaw set in a determined grimace.

“Just a scratch,” he said, seeing my look at the blood oozing over his hand. “That man Kenneth cannot shoot for shit. Mind you, I don’t think his heart was really in it.”

“You should have it seen to,” I said. “Let me go after Fat-Boy.”

“Later,” said