‘Billions in cash, boss,’ said Dale. ‘Sadists were buying up the warlords, trying to speed up the end game.’
‘Just one big pool of deniable assassins, feeding at this lake of cash? That it?’
Dale shrugged, still smiling to himself.
‘Forget about Kenny,’ said Gallen, bringing the conversation back. ‘You broke into my employer’s house and stole something. Where is it?’
Dale deadpanned. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, boss.’
‘I can get Kenny in here.’
‘But you won’t.’
‘Okay, then let’s ask it another way,’ said Gallen, annoyed that Dale was wasting time. ‘Why the tail?’
‘Orders.’
‘Why? You’ve already got the Newport file.’
Dale’s face creased in confusion. ‘Newport?’
The floorboards creaked at the other end of the room. Gallen reflexively launched himself at the floor, rolling into the wall behind a storage cupboard as rifle fire whistled above his head.
‘Stop,’ yelled Dale, as Gallen pulled his SIG free of his waistband and shot at the door, where two men with rifles were posted. ‘Stop, Gerry, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you.’
One of the shooters at the door seemed to sag from a leg shot. The other hesitated, allowing Gallen to find his feet and get a proper grip on the SIG. Standing, he moved sideways from behind the cupboards so he was behind Dale as he poured fire into the far doorway, forcing the remaining shooter to yield.
Gallen estimated he had seven shots left in the fifteen-shooter. Standing slightly taller, he watched the door close as the door behind him opened: Winter.
As Gallen tried to calm his breathing, the door at the far end of the room was thrown open once more, and as Gallen and Winter shot at it, a rifle muzzle pointed into the room and fired a burst on full auto. Throwing himself back to the cupboard as the splinters flew, Gallen heard the screaming whine of a helicopter outside the window.
Standing slowly, he swapped a look with Winter, who crabbed down the other wall towards the shooters’ door.
Holding his SIG in a cup-and-saucer grip, Gallen aimed it at the shattered window. Down on the concrete apron, two men — one of them limping — ran for the helo and jumped inside. Leaning out the jagged window and aiming, Gallen took five shots. The sixth created a spark off the rotors. As he steadied for the last shot, the helo lifted skywards, banking away into the clear Alberta skies.
Struggling to get air into his lungs, Gallen walked towards Bren Dale, freezing as he stood over his former sergeant. Dale’s chest was torn open with a bullet wound, his eyes rolled permanently to the ceiling.
‘Everyone okay?’ said Gallen, checking himself as he said it.
‘Mr Kevlar isn’t so happy,’ said Winter, walking back from the shooters’ door, pulling up his shirt to examine a slug in his vest.
Gallen gulped at a dry throat as he walked through to Mike Ford in the other room. ‘Where’s the white dude?’
Ford pointed at the door flapping in the breeze.
‘Ran?’ said Gallen, moving to the door in time to see the man disappear behind an abandoned railway oil tanker.
‘Like a robber’s dog,’ said Ford, looking through the empty window pane at the retreating helicopter. ‘How’s Dale?’
‘Didn’t make it,’ said Gallen, still panting. ‘Get anything from your guy?’
Ford and Winter swapped a look.
‘Well? This is turning into a cluster. I hope we got something.’
‘The bloke told us they didn’t take a file from Florita,’ said Ford. ‘And they aren’t investigating Oasis. Didn’t know what we were talking about.’
‘So who are they?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Winter, lighting a smoke as he scanned the rail yards. ‘But I think the lawyer dude is the boss.’
‘Why?’ said Gallen.
‘Before you got here, he wouldn’t let the black guy speak,’ said Ford. ‘Tried to do all the talking.’
Gallen and Ford followed Winter towards Bren Dale’s sprawled body. Kneeling, the Canadian slit the flexi-cuffs on Dale’s wrists and motioned with his head for Ford to help him. They eased the large body to the floor and Gallen smoked as Winter meticulously went through the former Marine’s clothing and shoes. There was folded cash in his right chinos pocket, about $500 American and $380 Canadian. Winter handed it to Gallen and then pulled a set of keys from the left pocket.
‘Dale was the driver,’ said Winter, handing over the keys. The black plastic grip of the main key featured an oval decal for the Ford Motor Co., but the keys had no identification on them, not even a registration number.
‘There’ll be a dark Crown Vic somewhere near the motel,’ said Gallen, knowing that Winter already had it logged in his mind.
Gallen and Ford watched in silence as Winter undressed and searched Bren Dale, the Canadian doing a thorough but unpopular job — in special forces, every dead and injured body was a potential gold mine of information. Because special forces was largely recon, you had to get used to inspecting clothes and then orifices to see what could be learned.
Finding nothing, Winter walked to the kitchenette and washed his hands. ‘Your buddy’s working clean,’ he said, shaking off his hands and then wiping them on his jeans.
Gallen looked down on the body, the USMC tattoo on Dale’s left pec destroyed by the fatal bullet. ‘You sure?’ he said.
‘No phone, no credit cards, no room key. Not even a watch.’
‘That’s pro,’ said Gallen.
‘That’s deniable,’ said Ford.
CHAPTER 45
After they’d searched around the motel for Dale’s car and come up empty, they met back in the room Winter had rented. Whoever was chasing Gallen had a professional clean-up team to go with the helo and spooks.
Ford made coffee as Gallen tried to set them back on course. ‘So let’s go through it: about ten to midnight on the first night you’re in here, you watch a heavily built black man move along the lower level, duck into a maintenance alcove and then through the door? ‘
‘Right there,’ said Winter, standing and pointing through the muslin curtains at a janitor’s lock-up on the ground level.
‘So you give him a few minutes and then you pick up a small movement? ‘
‘See those bars, up high in the wall?’
Gallen saw an air vent in the cinder blocks. ‘Yep.’
‘The white boy leaves about ten minutes later. I took that to be the midnight change-over,’ said Winter.
‘And what happens?’
‘Just before six in the morning, the white boy is back,’ said Ford, handing out coffees. ‘That was my shift.’
‘So you wake Kenny and move on them while they’re in the same room?’
‘That’s about it,’ said Ford. ‘The rest you know.’
‘We need an ID on this leader. He had to be staying nearby. What’s across the road?’
‘Another motel,’ said Winter.
‘Let’s rattle a cage,’ said Gallen.
Winter was back in the car thirty-seven minutes later.
As Ford accelerated into the traffic, Gallen leaned over his seat. ‘What we get?’
‘Found this.’ Pulling a white DVD from the inside pocket of his jacket, Winter handed it over. ‘Told the maid that the night manager had left my umbrella in the room behind the counter.’
‘So when she couldn’t find it, you just helped yourself?’
‘Something like that. Check the dates. I think that’s the CCTV for yesterday.’
‘Might be useful.’ Gallen handed the disc back to Winter. ‘We need something to play it on.’
‘In my bag,’ said Ford over his shoulder as they merged with traffic and got southbound on Crowchild.
Winter pulled a black laptop from the side storage compartment of a Cordura overnight bag and booted up. Inserting the DVD, he manipulated the images back and forth, reverting to the ‘gallery’ function that allowed him to select views around the motel.