Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 17

Michael Gibbs let out a gentle burp. He smiled as the shot de sang béarnais , the spiced pig’s blood, repeated on him. The American palate didn’t usually stretch to things like sang béarnais , but despite La Terrasse being in Maine, it was an unashamedly French restaurant. It had been an excellent meal. A succession of small plates, one after the other as if from a conveyor belt. Room-temperature asparagus drizzled with a mustard-anddill sauce. Coquilles Saint-Jacques , a single scallop poached in white wine and topped with mushroom puree and grilled Gruyère. Soft-cooked egg with shaved truffle. Crispy pork belly with Corsican honey. Blanquette de veau , a rich, creamy stew of veal and carrots. A delightful tarte Tatin served with brown-butter ice cream. Chocolate truffles to finish.

The kind of meal that stayed in the memory.

He’d even flirted with the girl mixing his Martinis, the one with the birthmark on her face and the tattoos on her arms. She’d smiled when she’d taken his coat, and she’d smiled each time she’d mixed his drink. He’d never cheated on his wife, and he never would, but when a pretty girl is flirting with you, it’s polite to flirt back. She even offered to bring his car around to the front of the restaurant. Gibbs thought that was the kind of touch people came back for.

*

Harper Nash’s job that night was easy. Boring, really. All she had to do was ensure Gibbs’s car wouldn’t cause problems later. She’d already been out to the parking lot for a cigarette break – she didn’t smoke, but it was a useful reason to go outside – and checked through the windows. There was a smiley-face air freshener that would need to be gotten rid of. Otherwise, the interior was good to go. When Gibbs agreed she could bring his car around, she got inside and made sure she hadn’t missed anything. She hadn’t. The smiley-face air freshener was hooked around the rearview mirror with white elastic string. She removed it and put it in her pocket. She then started the engine, put the car in drive, and took it to the front. Gibbs was waiting for her.

She smiled at him.

He smiled back.

Men.

Park Loop Road is the primary route through the Acadia National Park. It’s twenty-seven miles long and has the coast on one side, mountains and forests on the other. Gibbs left La Terrasse and, after a couple of smaller roads, hit Park Loop Road. He always took this route. It wasn’t the quickest way home, but it was the most scenic, and after a meal at La Terrasse, he was in no hurry. His wife would be asleep anyway.

Gibbs usually drove a BMW X5, but he was in his wife’s old station wagon tonight. He enjoyed driving the Park Loop Road in the station wagon. It didn’t have power steering, it didn’t have airbags, and the windows had to be cranked up and down with a handle. It added spice to what could occasionally be a challenging drive. Parts of Park Loop ran alongside a sheer drop down to the ocean. Sometimes there were deer on the road. He’d stopped for a black bear once, although he knew his wife thought he was bullshitting. The Park Loop Road was like a fine French meal, there to be savoured, not rushed. He brought the station wagon up to forty-five miles per hour, then eased back on the gas.

Forty-five was a good speed.

Something bad would have to happen to send him crashing through the barrier.

The ‘something bad’ was a tripod-mounted Chinese ZM-87 portable laser disturber. It looked like the crew-served blasters the stormtroopers used in The Empire Strikes Back , but instead of firing energised particles, its neodymium laser discharged five pulses a second and was capable of temporarily blinding someone six miles away. It would cause permanent eye damage at the distance Stillwell Hobbs planned to fire it. Blinding weapons were banned by the Geneva Conventions in 1998, but by then, several ZM-87s had already entered the market. Hobbs had bought one from a Hungarian arms dealer in 2014, but he’d not yet used it. He was looking forward to seeing what damage it could do.

Park Loop Road was quiet at this time of year, particularly this late at night. Hobbs hadn’t seen a car for five minutes. The next one would be the station wagon. Harper had called when Gibbs left the fancy restaurant he ate at once a month, and Hobbs had timed the route enough times to know exactly when to expect him. He checked his watch. Unless something had happened between La Terrasse and the bend in the road, Gibbs should arrive in the next couple of minutes.

Hobbs heard the station wagon before he saw it. He hunkered down behind the ZM-87 and stared through the sight. He smiled in satisfaction. Gibbs was right on schedule. The next part was all about timing. Too early, and Gibbs would panic and hit the brakes while on a straight stretch of the road, stopping before he went through the barrier. Too late, and he would already be committed to the bend. Those old cars were stubborn when it came to steering. When you let go of the steering wheel on a modern car, the power steering straightened the wheels. It wasn’t a safety design; it was just the path of least resistance. Physics. But the old station wagon didn’t have power steering. When Gibbs took his hands off the wheel, which he would when he suddenly went blind, the station wagon would take longer to straighten out. It would drive around the bend itself. The optimum time to pull the trigger would be a fraction of a second before he committed to the bend. That way, when he braked, he would go straight into the crash barrier. The barrier was made of a lightweight steel and wouldn’t be enough to stop a station wagon travelling at forty-five miles per hour. But to be sure, Hobbs had loosened the bolts of the section he knew Gibbs would crash into. He didn’t remove them. That would look suspicious. He just loosened them enough so they had some give. Maybe half an inch. When the station wagon crashed into the barrier, there’d be enough momentum to ensure the bolts would shear off, the barrier would come away, and the station wagon would tumble down the cliff.

When Gibbs was one hundred yards away, Hobbs smiled again. He couldn’t help it. He loved his job.

One minute Michael Gibbs was tapping the steering wheel to the beat of ‘Fortunate Son’, by Creedence Clearwater Revival; the next he was completely blind. His vision didn’t blur. The road didn’t go hazy, then fade away. He could see and then he couldn’t see. His first thought was that the station wagon’s lights had finally gone.

And then he felt the burning. It felt like his eyes had been filled with fire.

He screamed and tried to slam on the brakes. In his panic he hit the gas, and instead of slowing down, he went through the sabotaged barrier going faster, not slower.

It saved his life.

Instead of the station wagon going through the barrier slowly, then tumbling down the steep, rocky slope, flipping over and over until every bone in Gibbs’s body had snapped and his internal organs had liquefied, he left the Park Loop Road like he was in a James Bond film. He was airborne for three full seconds before gravity pulled the station wagon back to earth. He hit the slope like it was the down ramp at a stunt show. His spine shattered, but sheer terror made him keep hold of the steering wheel. It meant that, despite being newly blind, newly paralysed and having a car without wheels, he steered the station wagon to a safe stop.

The silence was sudden and awful. Just the tink-tink of a cooling engine.

Gibbs let go of the steering wheel. He started to sob. After a minute he composed himself. Took stock of the situation. Something had happened to make him go blind. Possibly he’d had a stroke. Or a tumour in his brain had chosen that moment to make itself known. Or maybe it was a blood clot. He was a deepwater port expert, not a doctor. He pulled his iPhone out of his pocket. He touched the glass screen. It felt unblemished, didn’t seem to have cracked. He felt for the concave home sensor with his thumb. Pressed down gently. He was expecting to hear a click as his thumbprint unlocked it. Instead, it vibrated. A failed attempt. He tried again. It vibrated again.

His thumb was wet. It must be blood, he thought. He was about to wipe his hands on his shirt when he heard footsteps. More of a scramble. Someone was climbing down the slope.

‘Are you OK?’ a voice asked.

‘I can’t feel my legs,’ Gibbs replied.

‘That was quite the fall,’ the stranger said. ‘Let’s get you some help.’

‘I’ve tried to call nine-one-one, but I think my thumb must have blood on it. It isn’t unlocking my phone.’

The stranger reached in and gently took his cell. ‘I’ll call them,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry.’

*

Stillwell Hobbs glanced inside the station wagon and nodded in satisfaction. Harper had removed the smiley-face air freshener, like she’d said. He tossed the cell phone into the driver’s footwell. He grabbed the back of Gibbs’s head, held it at the right angle, then slammed his throat against the steering column. He only did it once. Gibbs was unconscious in three minutes, dead in eight. Hobbs waited fifteen to be sure.

Other, lesser contract killers might have been tempted to repeatedly bludgeon Gibbs. Kill him quickly. But that was for the two-grand-a-hit hoods the jails were full of. Hobbs knew that a single, devasting injury was far more convincing than a succession of blows. To an overworked pathologist, a single fatal blow looked like bad luck; a head beaten until it was the size of a pumpkin looked punitive. Turned an accidental death into a suspicious one. Made the cops get off their fat asses and start looking for alternative explanations. It was things like this that made Hobbs feel invincible. No other killers thought the way he did.

It was why he would never be caught.