Headhunters Read online

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

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

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

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

  He had a gun.

  He fired.

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

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

  “No!”

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

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

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

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

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  THE MAN whom Milton had knocked out was still unconscious. Milton found a washing line in the garden outside, used a knife from the kitchen to sever two metre-long lengths, and, working quickly, lashed them around the man’s wrists and ankles. He dropped him into one of the kitchen chairs and lashed him to it. Satisfied that the man was secure, he took the dead agent’s pistol, a Glock 22, and quickly searched the rest of the house.

  He found Matilda in the lounge. She was laid out on the sofa, breathing with regular, shallow breaths. He gently tapped his fingertips against her cheek and, when that elicited no response, squeezed the tender flesh in the crook of her arm. Still she did not stir. Milton looked around and, on the table, saw a syringe and an empty ampoule. He picked them up. The barrel of the syringe was empty. The ampoule was empty, too, the label describing its contents as midazolam hydrochloride. It was an anaesthetic, usually reserved for surgery. If they had hit her up with the full 10mg/2ml solution, she was going to be out cold for several hours. Milton laid her out into the recovery position, making sure that her airway was unobstructed, and then checked the rest of the house.

  He was confident that they were alone, but, since there was a chance that someone might have hidden, he moved carefully and thoroughly. He started on the first floor and cleared each of the remaining rooms one by one, entering with his gun aimed and ready to fire, sweeping right to left and then checking behind doors and inside and underneath furniture. Moving to the second floor, he found four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Three of the bedrooms bore the signs of use. One, the largest, was obviously the master suite. There was a picture of the two men on the dresser, smiling happily into the camera. The second was a storage room, with unpacked crates stacked against a wall. The other two rooms were occupied and, judging by the posters on the walls, the books in the bookcases and the toys stuffed into colourful plastic boxes, they were occupied by children.

  Milton hadn’t thought of that, but there was no reason to think that the couple would have been childless. They were sayanim, and what better way to merge into the locality than by having kids? He went downstairs again and noticed a portrait on the wall that he hadn’t seen before. There they were: the two men and two children, a boy and a girl, a nice little family unit.

  But now? Not so much.

  Milton felt a moment of regret, and, knowing that dwelling on it would only lead him closer to taking a drink, he closed his eyes and waited until the moment had passed.

  They had brought it upon themselves.

  He searched the downstairs more thoroughly. There was an occasional table in the hall and, on it, next to a hands-free telephone, he found a stack of bills. The family name on the bills was Hughes. David and Paul Hughes. Fake names? Maybe. A mundane existence, a mortgage and utility bills, nothing out of the ordinary. Yet they were sayanim, and they had put themselves in his way.

  He opened the cupboard under the stairs, and, behind a stack of boxes, he found a gun safe. It was a metre tall and half a metre wide wide, the kind of safe that would be used to store a couple of broken-down shotguns. He tried the door, but it was locked and much too substantial for him to think about forcing. On a whim, he went back to the kitchen and took the bunch of keys that he had noticed on the counter. There was a key for the side door and another for the Mazda, but a third, smaller than the others, looked as if it might fit the safe. Milton tried it and, with a satisfying click, the lock opened. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges and Milton looked inside.

  He was pleased with what he found.

  There was a Tec-9 semi-automatic handgun chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum. A Swedish weapon, discontinued now, but favoured by the US market as an inexpensive open-bolt semi-auto. There were two more Glock 22s, with boxes of ammunition for the pistol and the semi-auto. It was a good haul. Milton felt a little more prepared knowing that he would be properly armed when he and Matilda left the house.

  He went back into the kitchen.

  *

  THE MAN was beginning to stir. Milton glanced at him briefly and searched the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and found another three bottles of the midazolam hydrochloride that they had used to sedate Matilda. Returning to the front room, he checked that she was still comfortable, collected the empty syringe and then went back to the kitchen.

  He frisked the man. He had a wallet in his pocket with two hundred dollars and a collection of credit cards. Milton pocketed the wallet, then filled a glass with water from the tap and took it back to the man. He poured the water over the man’s face and waited as he regained consciousness completely.

  He groaned as he was assailed by pain from the battering he had taken.

  “Mr. Hughes, wake up.”

  H
e opened his eyes as far as he could; the right was already half-closed by the incipient bruising.

  His voice was thin and weak. “My…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Dead.”

  Hughes looked away, his larynx bobbing up and down. His voice was choked and husky when he spoke again. “You’re a dead man, Mr. Milton.”

  “Let’s not do that. It’ll be easier if you just answer my questions and I can be on my way.”

  “You think it will be as easy as that? The Mossad wants you. Avi Bachman wants you. You know what that means?”

  “Avi and I will have a chance to discuss all of this, believe me.”

  The man laughed bitterly, humourlessly. “You’re deluded.”

  Milton went to the island to collect a chair. He placed it in front of Hughes and sat down.

  “We are going to have a discussion. It’s going to go like this: I’m going to ask you some questions, and you are going to answer them.”

  “Go to Hell, Milton. I don’t know anything, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “I thought you might say that.”

  Milton stood and went to the cupboard next to the refrigerator. He took out the small culinary blowtorch that he had seen earlier. He went back to Hughes and sat down again.

  “Do what you want to me,” he said. “It won’t make any difference. I can stand a little pain.”

  “You think you know about pain?” Milton said. “You don’t. Not yet. I’ll start with this, and then we’ll move onto your fingernails and then your fingers.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “And it’s not just about the pain, though, is it? You can’t be thinking clearly. What about your children?”

  Hughes didn’t answer this time, but Milton saw that he was gripping the arms of the chair.

  “Jack and Ella, right? I had a look in their rooms while you were out. Where are they now? School?”

  Hughes clenched his jaw tight.

  “I’m going to assume that they are. And, since it’s one thirty, I’m going to assume you’ve got an hour or two before they come home. Who are you? Paul or David?”

  “Paul.”

  “You have a choice, Paul. You can cooperate with me, and I’ll leave you in one piece. Or you can play games, and we’ll do things the other way. But if we have to do that, there’s a good chance I’ll still be here when they come home. And I don’t know about you, Paul, but that’s not the sort of thing I’d want my kids to have to watch.”

  Milton opened the gas on the blowtorch and squeezed the trigger to ignite it.

  Hughes blanched, and Milton watched as beads of sweat appeared on his brow. He brought the blowtorch closer so that its icy blue flame was just an inch from his scalp. He moved it closer still until the ends of his hair began to smoke. Hughes squeezed his eyes closed and, for a moment, Milton thought he was going to try to resist. Milton did not enjoy inflicting pain, but he wasn’t bluffing. Hughes had brought this on himself. They had tried to kill him. They had mistreated Matilda. He didn’t want to have to torture Hughes, but it wouldn’t have been his first time, and he would have done it.

  The flame had started to blacken the skin of the man’s scalp when he gasped out in pain and said, between ragged pants, “Stop! Stop!”

  “Want to talk now?”

  He gasped, and Milton let him gather his breath.

  “Ready?”

  “Ask your questions.”

  Milton pulled the blowtorch away and extinguished the flame.

  “I don’t have many,” he said. “Why is the Mossad doing this?”

  Hughes paused for a moment, his eyes watering from the pain Milton had inflicted. “It’s Bachman. I don’t know what you did to him, but he wants you dead. They could’ve put a bullet in the back of your head in the outback except for the fact that, whatever you did to him, he wants to do it himself.”

  “How did he get out of prison?”

  “They broke him out.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t pay attention to the news?”

  “I’ve been trying to avoid it.”

  “They took out the convoy that was transporting him from Angola to Baton Rouge. Killed the guards, got him out. It’s a big story. The FBI and the CIA know it was us, but no one is going to admit it. The truth doesn’t suit anyone.”

  Milton felt the anxiety in his gut. It was getting worse. The Mossad had staged an attack on American soil just to free Bachman?

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  Milton gripped the man’s chin and turned his face so that he could look directly into his eyes. “Why is he getting help?”

  He shook his head, and Milton let go. “You tell me, Milton. I haven’t got the first idea.”

  “Don’t waste my time. You were talking. I heard you. You said he’s using something against them.”

  “It’s a rumour. But they’re not going to confirm anything to us. That’s not how this works.”

  “What rumour?”

  “They said, when he got out, he took a copy of the Black Book with him.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The active operational database. Details on agents in the field. Aliases, photographs, their assignments.”

  “But he’s been out for years.”

  “Don’t be naive, Milton. Even if it was ten years old, or twenty, it’s still dynamite. Some of those agents will still be in the field. They were junior then. Think what they could be now. He could tear down years of work if he ever put that out here. The agency is not doing this willingly, I know that much. Whatever Bachman has, it’s important enough for them to take massive risks to keep him happy.”

  “How far up does this go?”

  “All the way.”

  “All the way? To the director?”

  Hughes nodded. “All the way.”

  “Have you reported to them? That you found Matilda?”

  “I called it in when we were driving here.”

  “What’s the procedure now?”

  “They come to pick her up.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Will it be Bachman?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t speak to him.”

  Milton ran the thought through his head and started to assess the angles. Where would Bachman be? Would he have followed them to Broken Hill? Where would he have gone next?

  “Logistics,” Milton said. “How many people are in Australia? How many katsas?”

  “Four agents.”

  “Malakhi and Keren?”

  “I don’t know their names, so don’t ask.”

  “What about sayanim?”

  “Everywhere. Dozens. The Mossad knows you’re dangerous, Milton. Everyone is looking for you.”

  “And what about the girl? What do you know about her?”

  “We had her picture. They said that you might be travelling together. They think you’re a couple.”

  Milton grimaced. That was bad news. If they thought that, they would go after Matilda as a lever to use against him. She couldn’t be left alone now. If she was still minded to run, he would have to persuade her otherwise. That might not be easy.

  “Okay. We’re getting to the end now, Mr. Hughes. Can you get in touch with Bachman?”

  He looked down. “Yes.”

  “How?”

  Hughes sighed. He had already given up plenty of information. His cover was gone; he was finished as a sayan. His partner was dead. And, as far as he was concerned, he was clinging onto his own life and to the lives of his children. Milton knew, now, that the man was broken. He would give him everything that he asked.

  “I can call the agent who’s with him.”

  “Do it.”

  “My phone,” Hughes said. “It’s in my jacket pocket.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  MILTON LET Hughes find the number, the phone laid out flat in
his hand so that he could see exactly what he was doing. The number was stored in a blank contact form, with no indication that it was anything of any import.

  He put the phone on the counter and went back to Hughes. He took the syringe, popped the cap from the end of the needle, and slid the point of the needle through the pliant plastic sheath. He drew 5ml of midazolam into the barrel and then depressed the plunger a little to expel the first few droplets.

  “I’m going to put you under. By the time you wake up, we’ll be gone.”

  “My husband? I don’t want my kids to find him.”

  Milton looked over at the still body on the floor. “Do you have a room you can lock?”

  “The garage,” he said. “The key’s on my key ring.”

  “I’ll put him in there and lock the door.”

  “What about all this?” He nodded down at the washing line that secured him to the chair.

  “I’ll cut you free and leave you in bed. They’ll think you’re asleep.”

  Hughes didn’t thank Milton—he had no gratitude for him, under the circumstances—but he gave a nod, a little acknowledgement that he had been kinder than he might have expected.

  Milton took the syringe and slid the point into the vein on the back of Hughes’ hand. He pushed the plunger all the way down, watching as the fluid disappeared, and waited the ten seconds it took for the man’s head to loll woozily, for his eyes to shut, and for the muscles in his neck to relax so that his chin was pressed up against his chest.

  He moved quickly. He had no wish to be there when the children returned from school.

  He moved the body of the dead man into the garage. There was enough space inside for a car, the rest taken up by unopened storage crates and the detritus of daily life. There were two children’s bicycles; Milton tried not to think too hard about what they represented as he laid David’s body on the concrete floor and covered it with a span of tarpaulin. He made sure that the roller door was locked, then went back into the house and locked that door, too. He found a mop and bucket, filled it with soapy water, and washed the bloodstains from the kitchen floor. There was a lot of it, and it smeared and streaked, and the job took him longer than he would have liked. He checked that Paul Hughes was unconscious—he was—and untied him. He hoisted him over his shoulder and carried him upstairs to the bedroom, laying him out on the bed.