13
‘It’s been a while, Jack,’ Seth Raines told the man on the other end of the telephone line when his call was answered.
Jack Butler grunted.
‘How are things over there? Business is good?’
‘Uh …’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘No, I’m not drunk. I’m tired. It’s been a rough few days and it’s nearly three in the morning here.’
Raines looked at his watch which showed that it wasn’t quite eight at night. He always forgot about the size of the time difference.
‘Sorry.’
‘Never mind. What do you want?’
‘We’re getting out of the business.’
Raines felt like it would be best to tell Butler straight up. No preamble. He knew that Butler would not take it well. Not after Raines had ordered Butler to kill Johnson.
‘What?’ Butler asked, sounding more confused than angry.
‘We got an offer we couldn’t refuse from the Mexicans. We’re cashing out.’
‘You mean you got scared of them. The competition. They threatened you and you chickened out.’
Raines couldn’t tell if Butler was joking or not.
‘You know me better than that.’
Butler grunted again; Raines was unsure if it was anger, derision or something in between.
Raines didn’t know Butler well. Had trusted Andy Johnson’s recommendation. Johnson had been the one to float the idea that grew into the business conducted out at the compound and in the UK. Johnson had spent all the money he earned after he got out of the army – as a private security consultant in Iraq and Afghanistan – and was getting desperate for cash. Butler had worked with Johnson in Afghanistan and had contacts in the drug trade there – which he had revealed to Johnson on one particularly drunken night.
Johnson had stayed in touch with Raines. He heard about Matt Horn’s problems from Raines. Knew that he, too, was desperate for money.
For Raines it was a matter of the end justifying the means. Getting enough money together to get Horn out of the hospital and finding him a pair of artificial legs he could at least walk on. The ones he’d been given at the hospital rubbed his skin so badly that he’d been bedridden with infected blisters for weeks. And then the real infection had set in – almost killing him.
But Raines had grown to believe now that he had much more in common with Butler than with either Johnson or Matt Horn: that this line of work fed the need they both had to express themselves through violence.
In quieter moments, Raines wondered if he had always been a man who lived for violence and the adrenalin rush of it. And whether the war, the events that day after they left the poppy field and the indignities suffered by Matt at the hands of his so-called country had simply unleashed the real Seth Raines, free from the restrictions that society sought to impose.
‘Where do I get my gear now if you’re getting out – from the Mexicans?’
‘That’s up to you.’
‘You’re abandoning me, is that it?’
‘Hardly. You’ll work something out.’
‘Couldn’t be any worse than the f*cking mess Horn has made of it,’ Butler snorted. ‘Your little buddy with the chemistry degree who was supposed to run the manufacturing end of things. And look at us now. See how that turned out.’
‘You’ve had more ODs too?’
‘Yeah. And I had to cover my tracks.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean. I had to leave some cold ones behind and the cops are sniffing around.’
Raines pulled at the collar of his shirt. It felt like things were close to being out of control. First Johnson was killed for skimming profits, then Stark and now Butler was losing it. They were all at risk.
‘I worry about Matt,’ he told Butler.
‘He never did have the stomach for it. Not after he was out and hobbling around on his new legs.’
‘We had an undercover FBI agent trying to infiltrate us.’
‘What?’ Butler shouted. ‘Because of Matt?’
‘No. I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t know.’
‘So why are you worried about him? You’re not making any sense.’
‘He’s depressed. About the overdoses we had here. I don’t think he can take it any more.’
‘So do what I did.’
Raines wasn’t sure what he meant and said so.
‘Take him out. It’s the only way you can be sure he won’t turn you in.’
The thought had passed through Raines’s mind more than once. But it seemed like such a waste. This whole thing got started to get Matt out of the hospital. To get him well. It was only after that, when the operation grew, that they hatched the notion of doing something more with it.
‘Look,’ Butler said. ‘F*ck him. And f*ck the FBI. You do what I did. You take out anyone who is a threat. A weak link. Don’t even think twice about it. Doesn’t matter if they are civilians or if they wear a badge. There’s only two types of people: soldiers and all the rest. And the rest of them don’t matter.’
‘What about you?’
‘Don’t worry about me. You do what you have to and I’ll do the same. I can take care of myself.’
‘Okay. We won’t speak again.’
‘It’s been … interesting.’
Raines drove to Matt Horn’s house and sat in the car parked along the street. It was still light outside. His gun was in a holster under the front passenger seat. He leaned down and grabbed it, taking the gun out and sitting it on his lap. Closed his eyes. Saw it all play out.
Matt in the hospital screaming. Wanting to know why him.
The overbearing arrogance and lack of interest among the hospital bureaucrats: only interested in how much money they could make from the treatment.
Matt fading away as the multiple infections took hold and ravaged his body.
Him lashing out in the hospital waiting area, trashing the place.
The condescending replies to his letters.
Drinking himself into a stupor and making the threats.
Then, at the bottom of his despair, the thought of exploiting the contacts Johnson and Butler had made back in Afghanistan. Those men seemed like magnets for others soaked in violence and blood.
Raines tried to remember how he justified what he’d done in his own mind. He couldn’t have contemplated such a thing before the war. Before Matt. Wondered if his mind had snapped. Maybe it was Matt reminding him of his own son and the pain and suffering he endured before the leukaemia finally took him far too young.
He wondered if he’d ever been truly sane since his son had died. Thought that probably he had not.
Raines’s attention was drawn to a taxi pulling up outside Horn’s house. The front door of the house opened and Horn walked stiffly out to the taxi and climbed awkwardly into the back seat.
‘Where are you going, Matt?’ Raines said aloud.
Raines started his car and followed the taxi.