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Dusk fell as they travelled across the city. A
The second SUV was directly behind them. They had visited the restaurant and found it closed down, boarding fixed across the front door. They had asked around at the other businesses nearby and discovered that there had been a second shooting, two days after the first. The owner and the woman who ran the front of house had both been shot dead. No clues as to who did it. It was them who they needed to talk to. Since they couldn’t, that trail had run cold.
But it looked like they didn’t need that trail, after all.
A
And Pope needed her help, too.
He parked a hundred yards away from the gated entrance to the compound. A
“Alright, A
“I’m not blind.”
“Do your thing.”
She opened her laptop and co
“I can’t be surgical about this,” she said. “It’ll be the whole block.”
“Doesn’t matter. Can you do it?”
“Just say when.”
“Ready?” Pope asked the others.
Hammond said, “Check.”
“Check,” said Callan.
“Alright then. Here we go.”
They quickly smeared camouflage paint across their faces. Pope put the van into gear again and slowly pulled forwards. When they were twenty feet away from the gatepost the guards came to attention, one holding up his hand for them to stop. The van had tinted windows and the two of them were unable to see inside. The men made no effort to hide the automatic rifles they were carrying. Pope pulled a little to the left, opening up an angle between the driver’s side of the van and the gatepost. One of the man spat out a mouthful of tobacco juice and stepped into the road. Hammond brought her MP-5 up above the line of the window, aimed quickly, and put three rounds into each guard. A
A
Suddenly, it all seemed brutally, dangerously real.
Pope calmly put the van into gear again and edged forwards through the gate.
A
They collected their weapons.
The time on the dashboard display said 21:59.
“Now, A
She hit return.
Her logic bomb deployed.
The time clicked to 22.00 and all the lights went out.
The streetlights.
The lights in the mansion, the colourful lights in the grounds.
The music stopped.
“Go, go, go,” Pope said.
52
Plato and Gomez ended up on their usual jetty, looking out onto the sluggish Rio Bravo. The brown-green waters reached the city as a pathetic reminder of what it must have been, once, before the factories and industrial farmers choked it upstream for their own needs. They were beneath the span of the bridge, sitting on the bo
Sanchez pulled another two cans of Negro Modelo from the wire mesh.
Plato took a long draught of his beer. He sighed. His heart wasn’t in the banter like he hoped it would be.
“What’s on your mind, man?” Sanchez asked. “You’ve been quiet all night.”
“Been coming here for years, haven’t we?”
“At least ten.”
“But not for much longer. All done and finished soon.”
“What? You saying you won’t still come down?”
“Think Emelia will let me?”
“You wait. She’ll want you out of the house. You’ll drive her crazy.”
“Maybe.” Plato tossed his empty can into the flow. It moved beneath him, slow and dark. Sanchez handed him another.
“What am I doing?”
“What?”
Plato looked at the can, felt it cold in his palm. He popped the top and took a long sip. “I can’t stop thinking about that girl.”
“From the restaurant?”
“And the Englishman. Going after her like that. Going after the cartels, Sanchez, on his own, going right at them. Makes me ashamed to think about it. That’s what we’re supposed to do — the police — but we don’t, do we? We just stand by and let them get on with their murdering and raping and their drugs. We swore the same oath. Doesn’t it make you ashamed?”
He looked away. “I try not to think about it.”
“Not me. All the time. I can’t help it. All that bravery or stupidity, whatever you want to call it, how do I reward him? — by sending him on his way to a death sentence and not doing anything to help him. And then three of his colleagues turn up and I won’t even take them to where he is. Didn’t even try and help them. I just tell them where to find him. They go there, that’ll be another three deaths that keep me up at night. All I can think about, all day, is what am I doing? I’ve just been trying to keep my head down. Get my pension and get out.”
“You’ve done your years.”
“Not yet. I’ve still got one more day.”
“So keep that in mind. One more day then all you need to worry about is your family and that stupid boat.”