Matt Hilton - Dead Mens Harvest

Also by Matt Hilton

Dead Mens Dust

Judgement and Wrath

Slash and Burn

Cut and Run

Blood and Ashes

Chapter 1

A breeze stirred and the susurration of foliage was like the whispering of lost souls. Frogs croaked. Water lapped. All sounds indigenous to the Everglades pine lands. Jared Rink Rington ignored the natural rhythms of the Florida night, listening instead for the soft footfalls of the men hunting him.

There were at least four of them: men with guns.

From the cover of a stream bed, Rink spied back to where hed left his car. The Porsche was a mess. Bullet holes pocked it from front to back and had taken out the front windshield. Hed wrecked the sump when hed crashed over the median and into the coontie trees. A wide swath of oil was glistening in the moonlight, as though the Boxster had been mortally wounded and crawled into the bushes to die. Rink cursed under his breath, more for the death of his wheels than for his own predicament, but it wasnt the first time hed had to consign a car to the grave.

Neither was it the first time hed been hunted by armed men.

It kinda came with the territory.

The stream was shallow, almost stagnant. He used its steep bank as cover as he headed left. Above him someone stepped on a twig and it was like the crack of a gunshot. The insects grew still. There was a hush on the forest now. Rink crouched low, pressing himself against baked mud.

A few yards further on, another twig creaked beneath a boot.

Rink wormed himself out of the stream bed. A man moved along the embankment above him, periodically glancing down towards the water, but more often towards the road.

Through the bushes Rink saw another man was moving along the blacktop. This one held a Glock machine pistol, the elongated barrel telling him that it was fitted with a sound suppressor.

Frog-giggers want to do me in silence, he thought. Well, all right. Two of us can play at that game.

From his boot he pulled a military-issue Ka-bar knife, a black epoxy-coated blade that didnt reflect the light.

His options were few. He had to take out the men hunting him or die. Put that way hed no qualms about sticking the man in front of him.

His rush was silent. His free hand went over the mans mouth even as he jammed the Ka-bar down between the juncture of his throat and clavicle. The blade was long enough to pierce the left aorta of the mans heart, killing him instantly. Rink dragged the corpse down to the ground.

The man on the road was unaware that his companion was gone.

From the dead mans fingers, Rink plucked free the Heckler and Koch Combat .45 and shoved it into the waistband of his jeans. There was no suppressor on this gun, so the knife would remain his weapon of choice for now, because the man with the Glock had to be done as silently as the first. Two other assassins were out there possibly more and he wanted to even the odds in his favour before exchanging rounds.

Rink was tall and muscular, built like a pro-wrestler. The man at his feet wasnt. But by exchanging jackets and with the mans baseball cap jammed over his black hair, hed fool the other hunter for a second or so. Everything weighed and bagged, that would be all hed need.

In the corpses clothing, Rink moved through the bushes. For effect he pulled out the .45 so the disguise was complete. He held it in a two-handed grip, or that would be how it looked in silhouette.

The man to his right gestured; soldier-speak that Rink recognised. These men werent your run-of-the-mill killers; they too must have had military training. Rink hand-talked, urging the man in the direction of a stand of trees. As he moved off, Rink angled towards him. Ten paces were all that separated them. The moon was bright on the road, but its light helped make the shadows beneath the trees denser. If Rink moved closer he could forget the charade.

The man halted. Something stirred in the foliage ahead. He dropped into a shooters crouch, his Glock sweeping the area. Then a bird, disturbed from its roost, broke through the trees in a clatter of plumage on leaves. The man sighed, turned to grin sheepishly at his compadre.

Rink grinned back at him and he saw the mans face elongate in recognition. Charade over, he whipped his Ka-bar out from alongside the .45 and overhanded it at the man. Like a sliver of night, the blade swished through the air and plunged through tissue and cartilage.

The man staggered at the impact, one hand going to the hilt jutting from beneath his jaw, the other bringing round the Glock and tugging on the trigger. Rink dropped below the line of fire, the bullets searing the air around him, making tatters of the bushes and coontie trees. It was a subdued drum roll of silenced rounds, but no less deadly than if the gun had roared the sound of thunder. The man was mortally wounded, though not yet dead, but the Glock was empty and no threat. Gun in hand, Rink moved towards him.

Weakened by the shock of steel through his throat, drowning in his own blood, he couldnt halt Rinks charge. He was knocked off his feet and went down under the bigger man. Then Rink had a hand on the hilt of the Ka-bar. A sudden jerk sideways opened one half of the mans neck and that was that.

Dragging the corpse off the road, Rink concealed it amongst a stand of palmetto.

Two down, two to go.

Rink was beginning to fancy his chances.

Armed now with two reliable guns and his Ka-bar, he decided it was time to show these frog-giggin sons of bitches who they were dealing with.

My turn, boys, he whispered.

A faint click.

No, Rington, said a voice from behind him. Now its my turn.

Rink swung round, his knife coming up in reflex, but it was too late.

Something was rammed against his chest and he became a juddering, spittle-frothing wreck as fifty thousand volts were blasted through his entire being.

Chapter 10

To look at him you wouldnt believe that Walter was supposed to have been cut to ribbons by a deranged killer. In truth he looked better than he had for some years, with a little colour in his usually pallid features and some of the unhealthy weight gone from around his middle. Giving up on those cigars and junk food must have finally paid off for him. The only dead thing about him was the fish-eyed stare he shot my way as I stepped into his temporary living quarters on the eastern shore of Tupper Lake in the Adirondacks National Park.

I guess that I deserve the ass-kicking youre about to give me, he said.

Lets not go there, eh? The son of a bitch did deserve a mouthful of abuse, or worse. Actually, I could have wrung his fucking neck, but I didnt have it in me. Right then I didnt see him as the lying piece of crap he was, but an old man mourning the loss of his best friend. So, I wrapped an arm around his shoulder. Im just glad to see youre OK.

The old man shivered in my embrace, then he pulled away and I let him go. He turned his back on me and I followed, allowing him the moment to gather himself. I made a silent bet that when he finally met my gaze there would be more moisture in his eyes.

His temporary quarters were in a large lakeside house, an almost square block formed of beams and planks all painted a uniform red and a slightly pitched shingled roof that angled down towards the surface of the lake. A porch led to a jetty where there was a cabin cruiser moored in the shallow water. He led me through the house, along the planks of the jetty and on to the boat. Behind us, Hartlaub and Brigham waited on the decking.

Walter ushered me into the cabin and sat in a plush leather chair. A bunk opposite him indicated that Walter had taken a nap, but judging by the twisted blankets it had been an uncomfortable forty winks. I sat down on the bed, fisted my hands on my thighs, waited for him to speak. He delved in a cooler box and came out with bottle of sour mash, No 7 brand.