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

5

Mulcahy leaned against the Jeep and stared out at the jagged lines of wings beyond the chain-link fence. From where he stood he could see a Vietnam-era B-52 with upwards of thirty mission decals on its fuselage, a World War II bomber of some sort, a heavy transporter plane that resembled a whale, and a squadron of sharp-nosed, lethal-looking jet fighters with various paint jobs from various countries, including a MiG with a Soviet star on the side and two smaller ones beneath the cockpit windows denoting combat kills.

Beyond the parade of military planes a runway arrowed away into the heart of the caldera, snakes of heat twisting in the air above it. There were some buzzards to the north, circling above something dead or dying in the desert; other than that there was nothing, not even a cloud, though he had heard thunder a while back. A spot of rain would be nice. God knows they needed it.

He checked his watch.

Late.

Sweat was starting to prick and tickle in his hair and on his back beneath his shirt as the trapped heat of the day got hold of him. The silver Grand Cherokee he was leaning against had black tinted windows, cool leather seats and a kick-ass air-conditioner circulating chilled air at a steady sixty-five degrees. He could hear the unit whirring under the idling engine. Even so, he preferred to stand outside in the desert heat than remain in the car with the two morons he was having to baby-sit, listening to their inane conversation.

– Hey, man, how many Nazis you think that bird wasted?

– How many gook babies you think that one burned up?

They’d somehow made the assumption that Mulcahy was ex-military, which, in their fidgety, drug-fried minds, also made him an expert on every war ever fought and the machines used to fight them. He’d told them, several times, that he had not served in any branch of the armed forces and therefore knew as much about war planes as they did, but they kept on with their endless questions and fantasy body counts.

He checked his watch again.

Once the package was delivered to the meeting point he could drive away, take a long, cold shower and wash away the day. A window buzzed open next to him, and super-cooled air leaked out from inside.

‘Where’s the plane at, man?’ It was Javier, the shorter, more irritating of the two men, and a distant relative of Papa Tío, the big boss on the Mexican side.

‘It’s not here,’ Mulcahy replied.

‘No shit, tell me something I don’t know.’

‘Hard to know where to start.’

‘What?’

Mulcahy took a step away from the Jeep and stretched until he felt the vertebrae pop in his spine. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘If anything was wrong I’d get a message.’

Javier thought for a moment then nodded. He had inherited some of the boss man’s swagger but none of the brains so far as Mulcahy could tell. He had also caught the family looks, which was unfortunate, and the combination of his squat stature, oily, pock-marked skin and fleshy, petulant lips made him appear more like a toad in jeans and a T-shirt than a man.

‘Shut the window, man, it’s like a motherfuckin’ oven out there.’ That was Carlos, idiot number two, not blood, as far as he knew, but clearly in good enough standing with the cartel to be allowed to come along for the ride.

‘I’m talking,’ Javier snarled. ‘I be closing the window when I’m good and ready.’

Mulcahy turned back and stared up at the empty sky.

‘What kind of plane we looking for? Is it one of these big-assed nuke bombers? Man, that would be some cool ride.’

Mulcahy considered not replying, but this was the one piece of information about aircraft he did know because it had been included in the brief. Besides, the longer he talked to Javier, the longer the window would remain open, leaking cold air out and hot air in.

‘It’s a Beechcraft,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’

‘An old airplane, I guess.’

‘What, like a private jet?’

‘Propellers, I think.’

Javier pursed his boxing-glove lips and nodded. ‘Still, sounds pretty cool. When I had to run, I sneaked across the river on some lame-assed boat in the middle of the night.’

‘You got here though, didn’t you?’

‘I guess.’

‘Well, that’s the main thing.’ Mulcahy leaned forward. A dark smudge had appeared in the sky above one of the larger spill piles on the far side of the airfield. ‘Doesn’t matter how you got here, just so long as you did.’

The smudge darkened and became a column of black smoke rising fast and thick in the sky. He heard the faint sound of distant sirens. Then Mulcahy’s phone started to buzz in his pocket.

6

Movement rocked him awake.

His eyes flickered open and he stared up at a low white ceiling, a drip bag hanging over him, a clear tube coiled round it like a translucent snake, moving gently in time with the ambulance.

‘Hey, welcome back.’ The female medic appeared over him and shone a bright light into his left eye. He felt a stab of pain and tried lifting his hand to shield his eyes but his arm wouldn’t move. He looked down and his head swam with a chemical wooziness. Thick blue nylon straps were wrapped round his arms and body, securing him tightly to the gurney.

‘For your protection while we’re on the move,’ she said, like it was no big deal. He knew the real reason. They’d had to sedate him to get him in the ambulance and the bindings were to make sure they wouldn’t need to do it again.

He hated being bound like this. It pricked at some deep emotional memory, as if he’d known confinement and never wanted to know it again. He focused on the feeling, trying to remember where it came from, but his mind remained stubbornly blank.

The movement of the ambulance was making him feel sick and so was the cocktail of smells trapped inside it – iodine, sodium bicarbonate, naloxone hydrochloride, all mixed in with sweat and smoke and sickly synthetic coconut air-freshener drifting in from the driver’s cab. He wanted to feel the ground beneath his feet again and the wind on his face. He wanted to be free to focus and think and remember what it was he had come here to do. The pain in his arm flared again at the thought and the bar rattled when he tried to reach for it.

‘Could you loosen the straps?’ He forced his voice to stay low and calm. ‘Just enough so I can move my arm.’

The medic chewed her lip and fiddled with a thin necklace round her neck with ‘Gloria’ written on it in gold letters. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘But you try anything and I’ll knock you straight out again, understand?’ She held up the penlight. ‘And you’ve got to let me do my job.’

He nodded. She paused a little longer to let him know who was in charge, then reached down and tugged at a strap by the side of the gurney. The nylon band holding his hands came loose and he lifted his arm to rub at his shoulder.

‘Sorry about that,’ Gloria said, leaning in and flashing the light in his eye again. ‘Quickest way to calm you down before you injured someone.’ The light hurt but this time he put up with it.

‘What’s your name, sir?’ She switched the light to his other eye.

She was so close he could feel her breath on his skin and it made him want to reach out and touch her to see what she felt like and make gentle rather than violent contact with someone. ‘I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember anything.’

‘How about Solomon?’ a new voice answered for him, a man’s voice, high-pitched but with a touch of gravel in it. ‘Solomon Creed, that ring any bells?’

Gloria leaned down to write some notes on a clipboard and he saw the cop who had nearly run him down perched on the gurney behind her.

‘Solomon,’ he repeated, and it felt comfortable, like boots he had walked long miles wearing. ‘Solomon Creed.’ He stared at the cop, hoping he might know more than his name. ‘Do you know me?’

The cop shook his head and held up a small book. ‘Found this in your pocket, personally inscribed to a Solomon Creed, so I assume that’s you. Name’s in your jacket too.’ He nodded at the folded grey jacket lying on the gurney next to him. ‘Stitched right on the label in gold thread and written in French.’ He said French like he was spitting out something bitter.

Solomon studied the book. There was a stern, sepia-tinted photograph of a man on the cover and old-fashioned block type that spelled out the title:

RICHES AND REDEMPTION

THE MAKING OF A TOWN

A Memoir

by the Reverend Jack ‘King’ Cassidy

Founder and first citizen

He wanted to snatch the book away from the cop and see what else it contained. He didn’t recognize it. No memory of it at all. No memory of anything, but it had to be important. Frustrating. Maddening. And why had the cop been through his pockets? The thought of it made his hands clench into fists.

‘So, Mr Creed,’ the cop continued, ‘any idea why you were running away from that burning plane?’

‘I can’t remember,’ Solomon said. A badge on the cop’s shirt identified him as Chief Garth B. Morgan, hinting at Welsh ancestry and explaining why his skin was pink and freckled and clearly unsuited to this climate – like his own.

What the hell was he doing here?

‘You think maybe you were a passenger?’ Morgan asked.

‘No.’

Morgan frowned. ‘How can you be sure if you can’t remember?’

Solomon looked out of the rear window at the burning plane and a fresh torrent of information cascaded through his head and crystallized into an explanation. ‘Because of the way the wings are folded.’

Morgan followed Solomon’s gaze. One wing still stood at the centre of the blaze, folded up towards the sky. ‘What about it?’

‘They show that the aircraft flew straight into the ground. Any passengers would have been thrown downwards, not outwards – and with lethal force. A crash like that would also have caused the fuel tanks to rupture and the fuel to ignite. Aviation fuel in an open-air burn reaches between five hundred and seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to burn flesh from bone in seconds. So, taking that into account, I could not possibly have been on that plane and still be talking to you now.’

Morgan twitched 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.

Solomon shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘No.’ He glanced over at Morgan. ‘Why?’

‘Because of that cross you’re wearing round your neck for one thing. Any idea how you came by it?’

Solomon looked down and noticed the cross for the first time, a misshapen thing hanging round his neck from a length of leather. He took it in his hand and felt the weight of it. ‘I don’t recognize it,’ he said, turning it slowly, hoping his scrutiny might shake a memory loose. It was roughly made from old horseshoe nails welded together and twisted at the bottom so the points stuck out at the base. There was a balance and symmetry to it, as though whoever made it had been trying to disguise the precision of its manufacture by constructing it from scrap metal and leaving the finish rough. ‘Why does this make you think I’ve been here before?’

‘Because it’s a replica of the cross standing on the altar of our church. You’re also walking around with a copy of the town’s history in your pocket that appears to have been given to you by someone local.’

Someone local. Someone who might know him and tell him who he was.

‘May I see it?’ Solomon asked.

Morgan studied him like a poker player trying to figure out what kind of hand he was holding, and Solomon felt anger simmering up inside him at his powerlessness. His body started to tense, as if it wanted to spring forward and grab the book from Morgan’s hand. But he knew he was too far away and the nylon bindings were still strapped tight across his legs; he would never be fast enough, and even if he was Gloria would react and stick him again with whatever she had knocked him out with the first time – propofol most likely, considering how quickly he had recovered from it –

… Propofol … how did he know this stuff?

How did all this information come to him so easily and yet he could remember nothing of himself?

I have an ‘I’ burnt into my skin and yet I have no idea who ‘I’ am.

He breathed, deep and slow.

Answers. That was what he craved, more even than an outlet for his anger. Answers would soothe his rage and bring some order to the chaos swirling inside him. Answers he was sure must be contained in the book Morgan held in his hand.

Morgan glanced down at it, deciding whether to hand it over or not. He chose not to. He held it up instead and turned it round for Solomon to see. It was opened at a dedication page, something designed to encourage people to gift the book.

A GIFT OF AMERICAN HISTORY

– it said –

TO – Solomon Creed

FROM – James Coronado

Pain flared in his arm when he read the name and again he felt what he had experienced back on the road, a feeling of duty towards this man he couldn’t remember but who apparently knew him well enough to have given him this book.

‘You have any idea how you might know Jim?’ Morgan asked.

Jim not James – Morgan knew him, he was here. ‘I think I’m here because of him,’ Solomon replied, and felt a new emotion start to take shape inside him.

The fire was here because of him

But he was here because of James Coronado.

Morgan tipped his head to one side. ‘How so?’

Solomon stared out of the rear window at the distant fire. A yellow plane was flying low across the blue sky. It reached the eastern edge of the fire and a cloud of vivid red vapour spewed from its tail, streaking across the black smoke and sinking to the ground. It sputtered out before it had covered half of the fire line. Not enough. Not nearly enough. The fire was still coming, towards him, towards the town, towards everyone in it. A threat. A huge, burning threat. Destructive. Purifying. Just like he was. And there was his answer.

‘I think I’m here to save him,’ he said, turning back to Morgan, certain that this was right. ‘I’m here to save James Coronado.’

A shadow flitted across Morgan’s face and he stared at Solomon with an expression that could not mean anything good. ‘James Coronado is dead,’ he said flatly, and looked up and out through the side window towards the mountains rising behind the town. ‘We buried him this morning.’

II