Solomon Creed: The only thriller you need to read this year. Simon Toyne

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СКАЧАТЬ like his nose had been flicked. ‘So where did you come from, if not the plane?’

      ‘All I can remember is the road and the fire,’ Solomon said, rubbing at his shoulder where the pain had now settled into a steady ache.

      ‘Let me take a look at that,’ Gloria said, stepping closer and blocking his view of Morgan.

      Solomon started undoing his buttons, watching his fingers moving, the skin as white as his shirt.

      ‘Back there you said something about the fire being here because of you,’ Morgan said. ‘Any idea what you meant by that?’

      Solomon remembered the feeling of total fear and panic and his overpowering desire to get away from it. ‘It’s a feeling more than a memory,’ he said. ‘Like the fire is connected to me. I can’t explain it.’ He unbuttoned his cuffs, slipped his arms out of his shirt and became aware of a shift in the atmosphere.

      Gloria leaned in, staring hard at Solomon’s shoulder. Morgan was staring too. Solomon followed their gaze and saw the angry red origin of his recurring pain.

      ‘What is that?’ Gloria whispered.

      Solomon had no answer for that either.

       7

      ‘Crashed? What do you mean crashed?’

      The Cherokee was kicking up dust, Mulcahy at the wheel, eyeing the smoke rising fast to the west as they drove away from the airfield. ‘Planes crash,’ he said. ‘You know that, right? They’re kind of famous for it.’

      Javier was staring out at the smoke, the obscene cushions of his lips hanging wet and open as he tried to get his head round what was happening. Carlos was in the back, hunkered down and saying nothing. His eyes were wide open and unfocused and Mulcahy knew why. Papa Tío had a reputation for making examples of people who messed things up. If the package had been lost in the crash, this package in particular, then the shit was going to hit the fan like it had been fired from a cannon. No one would be safe, not Carlos, not him, probably not even cousin Lips in the passenger seat.

      ‘Don’t panic,’ he said, trying to convince himself as much as anyone. ‘All we know is that a plane has crashed. We don’t know if it’s our plane or how bad it is.’

      ‘Looks pretty fuckin’ bad from where I’m sitting!’ Javier said, staring at the rapidly widening column of smoke.

      Mulcahy’s fingers ached from gripping the wheel too tight and he forced himself to let go a little and ease off the gas. ‘Let’s wait and see what shakes out,’ he said, forcing calm into his voice. ‘For now, we follow the plan. The plane didn’t show, so we relocate to the safe house to regroup, report, and await further instructions.’

      Mulcahy’s instinct was to run, put a bullet in his passengers, dump them in the desert and take off to give himself a good head start. He knew it didn’t matter that the plane crash wasn’t his fault – Papa Tío would most likely kill everyone involved anyway to send one of his famous messages. So if he killed Javier and Carlos right now then disappeared, Papa Tío would definitely think he was behind the crash, and he would never stop looking for him. Not ever. And despite his less than honourable résumé, Mulcahy didn’t especially like killing people, and he didn’t like being on the run either. He had a nice enough life, a nice enough house and a couple of women with kids and ex-husbands who weren’t looking for anything more than he could offer, and who didn’t seem to care what he did or ask how he had come by all the scars on his body. It wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, and it was only now, when faced with the prospect of walking away from it all, that he realized how badly he wanted to keep it.

      ‘We stick to the plan,’ he said. ‘Anyone unhappy with that can get out of the car.’

      ‘And who put you in charge, pendejo?’

      ‘Tío did, OK? Tío called me up himself and asked me to collect this package as a personal favour to him. He also asked me to bring you two along, and like the dickhead that I am, I said “fine”. If you want to take over so all this becomes your responsibility then be my guest, otherwise shut your fat mouth and let me think.’

      Javier slumped back in his seat like a teenager who’d been grounded.

      Mulcahy could see flames to the west now. A twisting wall of fire curling up from the ground and spreading fast. He could see emergency vehicles, too, which meant at least the cops would be well occupied.

      ‘Plane!’ Javier shouted, pointing back to where they had just come from.

      Mulcahy felt a flutter of hope take flight in his chest. Maybe it was all going to be OK after all. Maybe they could turn the truck around, pick up the package as arranged and have a damn good laugh about it all over some cold beers later. Maybe he would get to keep his nicely squared away, uncomplicated life after all. He took his foot off the gas and twisted in his seat, taking his eyes off the empty road for a few seconds to see what Javier had seen. He saw the bright yellow plane banking in the sky above the airfield and spun round again, stamping down hard on the gas to claw back the speed he had lost.

      ‘The fuck you doing?’ Javier said, looking at him like he was crazy.

      ‘That’s not the plane we’re waiting for,’ Mulcahy said, feeling the full weight of the situation settling back on him. ‘And it’s taking off, not landing. It’s a tanker of some sort, probably MAFFS.’

      ‘MAFFS? The fuck is MAFFS?’

      ‘They’ve been talking about them on the news ever since this dry spell set in. Stands for Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System. It’s what they use to fight wildfires.’

      The chop of propellers shredded the air as the plane flew directly overhead, the sound thudding in Mulcahy’s chest.

      Javier slumped back in his seat, a teenager again, shaking his head and sucking his teeth. ‘MAFFS,’ he said, like it was the worst curse word he had ever heard. ‘Tole you, you was some kind of a military motherfucker.’

       8

      Solomon’s skin glowed under the lights, the mark on his shoulder standing out vividly against it. It was red and raised and about the length and thickness of a human finger, with thinner lines across the top and bottom making it resemble a capital ‘I’.

      ‘Looks like a cattle brand,’ Morgan said, leaning forward. ‘Or maybe …’ He left the thought hanging and pulled his phone from his pocket.

      Gloria gently probed the skin around the raised welt with gloved fingers. ‘Do you remember how you got this?’

      Solomon recalled the intense burning pain he had experienced when the name James Coronado had first appeared in his mind, like hot metal being pressed to his flesh, only he had been wearing his shirt and jacket when it had happened and it had felt like it had come from inside him. ‘No,’ he said, not wishing to share this information with Morgan.

      Gloria dabbed the reddened area with an alcohol wipe.

      ‘You visited our town before, Mr Creed?’ Morgan asked.

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