by James Easton
“We have the signal jammed,” said Max.
“She’ll work out a way around it. Fuck, man, the way the woman moved.”
“OK. What do you want?” said Max.
“Give me rifle fire on both ends of the house. We hit the bedrooms and the garage side.”
Carolina crawled into the study, then into the lounge. She went on her belly, fast, keeping her tail down and driving with her legs. Looked right, down the bedroom corridor over her sights. Clear. She moved to the second door and crouched under the corridor window. They would avoid the rooms further down because entering there would force them to come down the full length of the corridor. They would come through the bedrooms where she was now. And walk into her. They’d smell each other’s sweat and breath.
Waiting. Forcing herself to breathe, deep and slow.
Stop them. That’s all that matters.
On the line, Max said, “Two of us hit the corridor, then three hit the windows at the back. Sharp angle.”
Jean said, “OK. Hammer the kitchen, three go into two of the bedrooms.”
“Good to go?”
“Merde. Yes.”
A heavy rifle cracked from the south. A submachine gun raked the back of the house in short bursts. She heard windows shattering, wood and brick cracking, debris tumbling down the walls.
Carolina heard the window to her left break, big pieces of glass caving in. She rolled there, pushed the door open. Two shapes coming through the window. She heard their breathing strain as they pulled themselves in.
She fired at the left-hand guy’s chest, dropped him, flicked onto the second guy, and fired, but he was falling back already. For a split second, she was riveted there, wondering if she’d hit him.
His weapon came over the window frame and he fired. Flat, dead, barks. The bullets hit the wall behind her, then the doorframe below her armpit. Ricochets. Dust and splinters. Yelping, spit flying through her teeth, Carolina fired at his weapon. The handgun fell on the bed as he rolled back, thumping down outside. She rocked back against the corridor wall. Let her breath out. Squeezed her eyes shut. She could have died then. Like on the mountain the day before.
Then she jerked back. Wake up.
The door to her right opened fast. She fired into the gap. Pure reflex, yelping again in fright. She pushed to the opposite wall, stuck her hand around the door, and emptied the mag, all instinct. Heard him grunt. She reloaded and darted past the door before he could gather himself. Saw the shape of him on the floor. Finish him. She led with the weapon around the door frame and fired. She listened. Blood gurgled in his throat, bubbles near the surface. She came fully around the door, got her second hand on the SIG. His chest convulsed, and he coughed blood. She could hear it in the dark. She put one into his head to make sure.
She moved back around the door and slid onto her haunches against the wall. She felt sweat pouring. Her ears were even more dulled. She heard Berg firing the Pardini through the wool. Five quick shots.
She moved back to the lounge and saw him and Ignacio were OK. The garage door was ajar, its edge torn and blasted.
She caught movement on her right. The ones Berg had beaten off coming around to the back. She came up and switched her feet in a single, fluid move, side on to be narrower with a push-pull grip, aiming across the lounge into the meadow.
Moonlight gave her three of them running from the left. She heard the others, too, tight in against the house like rats.
One looked in at the left-hand window. Blocking off the group in the meadow. Carolina emptied her mag at him, at them. The guy at the window fell back, maybe hit, maybe not. One of the guys in the field went down. Another gripped his arm but kept moving. Then they were gone. Flicking across the other windows, moving to her right, too fast to hit.
A heavy round knocked a hole in the floor. Sniper. She dived flat behind the sofa, crawled its length, then darted to the back wall where she crawled to the end of the room by the study. She called through. “I’m on the back wall. Anders, Ignacio, keep them back from the other side, or I’m dead.”
Berg came into the lounge, still covering the corridor but with an angle on the back windows over Carolina’s head. Infantry training he’d remembered.
She sat with her back to the wall and loaded fresh mags. Fire came in outside the kitchen. Ignacio giving it back, four rounds. How many rounds did they have left?
Jean was near the driveway at the front of the house. “Pierre, what can you see?”
He imagined the green and grey shades of a sniper rifle night vision scope.
Pierre’s voice was measured. “She was against the back wall, in the salon, but I can’t see her at the moment.”
“Max, where are you?”
“Back corner. What’s the damage?”
“Three down. Keep this going.” It was way more than three, but the truth might well have stopped some of the guys in their tracks. “Go again, everyone. I’m doubling your money. She can’t do anything if we all go at once. We rush the kitchen side. Max come in the back when we pin them down. GO.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Berg fired, five metres away from her. She heard a man drop back and scuttle. A sniper round tore another long gash in the floorboards. She heard men moving in the yard by the kitchen. She fired blind across the lounge, the other way this time, spreading the rounds to move them back.
It was a feint.
A submachine gun laced the lounge from the back. Wood chips and plaster flying in a storm. She lay flat, on her stomach looking down the wall, her guts juddering as the rounds crashed into the floor. A big head pushed in through the far window. It was Bullneck, squeezing his torso inside the house with his machine gun hanging down on a strap under his chest. Carolina levelled on him. She squeezed the trigger. Her SIG jammed. She threw it at him.
Max flinched as something flew at him in the darkness from the right. Then the woman was there, driving an elbow into his eye. He grabbed her sweater above her neck and fell out, pulling her through the window after himself, and hurling her two metres out into the meadow. All this shit because of her. But Pierre had the shot. Max waited for her chest to gout blood. Smiling despite the crud they were in.
She got to her knees, dazed.
Open her up, Pierre. Come on...
She was getting up. She was going to come at him. Max went for his Glock, moved toward her. She feinted right, and her hand lashed out, and snow sprayed into Max’s eyes. He swung his fist and hit fresh air. He raised his Glock, moving back for space, trying to blink.
A horse kicked Max in the chest. He felt his body disappear. He looked at the blurry stars, the Spanish woman moving, picking up his Glock. Max murmured, “Fair enough,” and died.
Up on the hill, Eric, standing by the body of the sniper from Haim’s team, with Max’s fancy rifle in his hands, said, “Désolé, Max. Désolé.”
Carolina ran toward the side of the house she was nearer to, thinking the sniper wouldn’t miss twice. She threw herself to the ground when a volley of four shots sounded in front of her. She saw a man there, a shadow with his back to her. It was Haim. There were two dead men in front of him, and now he raised a handgun and shot the men lying against the house. They were the men she’d wounded coming through the bedroom window.
Haim wanted out, and he was cleaning up.
He moved into pitch black shadow against the house and was gone around the front before she could aim. More shots there. Anyone he couldn’t trust.
She ran to a window and climbed in. It was her room. She slid onto the floor and crawled, fast, back to her friends through glass and plaster and wood splinters. Cushion fibres floated in the air and made her cough.
Miguel was shaking in Eva’s arms. Berg and Ignacio looked grim but calm. She heard cars starting. They were running.
Haim would think about this, about her, about this family. He’d use Robin as a hostage now if he had to.
Carolina had the best chance of tracking him. She handed her
SIGs to Berg. He handed Carolina her phone. She took his jacket with his SUV keys in the pocket, grabbed a pipe wrench from the workbench in the garage and drove.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Jean called Emile.
“What the hell’s happening, man?” said Emile. “I heard shots.”
“Bloodbath. We have to get out. Take Robin. Drive to Marseilles. I’ll meet you on the way. I’m going to see if I can get those rifles Max has back at the house he was staying at. They’re all we’ve got now. Worth nearly half a mil. Rafa got it, and I need him to get to the money that we forced Alverez to send. My film will be discredited because of this mess. Everyone’s dead. Dino, Rafa, most of Rafa’s guys. Max I don’t know about, but he isn’t answering his phone. I heard Pierre get it too over the radio, up the hills. Doesn’t make sense. I’m with Carlo.”
“Are you sure about Robin? She may slow you down.”
Jean closed his eyes. The pain in his arm was intense. He thought the bone might be chipped. He’d stemmed the blood. The repair would wait. Robin might complicate things. True. Screw it.
“Take her.”
He had to get to the place Max was staying first.
It wasn’t hard. It was the only place over the other side of the Berg house. Maybe five hundred metres from the main road. He drove in and got out of the car. He pulled his Glock. The front door was open.
“Max?”
There was a noise in the room to his left. Jean kicked the door open, his weapon half raised. A little guy was kneeling over an open wine cellar, the kind you sunk into the floor. He held two rectangular black cases.
Jean snapped the gun up. “Who are you?”
“Eric.”
Jean remembered the name now. “What’s that?”
“It’s what Max left here. He wanted it to be safe. I thought maybe in here.”
Jean said, “Change of plan. I’m taking them.”
Little Eric looked at his weapon. “That’s not necessary, with respect. You are Max’s partner?”
Jean nodded. “Yeah. He wants me to take them. We’re meeting someone about them. Need to show them what we’ve got.”
He stood up and held them out. “It’s all there. Check.”
Carlo covered Eric while Jean opened the cases one-handed in the kitchen. It all looked sound. The casing was moulded inside, and there seemed to be nothing missing. Jean nodded at Carlo, who went out to the car. Jean said, to Eric, “Get out of Morzine.”
Robin put her coat on and waited in the kitchen while Emile checked the house was locked up. He’d wiped it down. It had hardly looked homely before, but now it was back to being a shell. No obvious traces of her and Jean.
“I heard shots,” she said. “Did Jean say what happened out there?”
He shrugged. “We meet him in Marseilles.”
Robin nodded, vaguely, still looking at him. “You didn’t ask him? You seemed worried, Emile.”
“Some shit. It happens.” He shrugged again. “We have to go.”
“Look, Emile, I don’t know what Jean told you about me. I’m a television journalist. Are the police coming for what happened, this problem?” She pointed in the direction of the L shaped house. “I can have big problems with this.”
“Let’s go. No talking.”
He wasn’t going to tell her anything, but his reluctance was information in itself. If she could get away with Jean, it would be OK. She could make up any story under the kidnap scenario, whatever had happened. She formed an image of roadblocks, bright lights, and police helicopters. If they were stopped tonight, leaving Morzine, and Emile maybe not knowing about her arrangement with Jean, she might look like she was complicit. And at the least it might lead to questions about the authenticity of the interview exercise. That might prevent them releasing the footage they’d taken.
Emile had Jean’s holdalls. The duct tape and cable ties were in one of those.
“Tie my hands,” she said.
Jean Haim was approaching Morzine with Carlo driving.
“The house you used isn’t exposed?” asked Carlo.
“No. The guy who owns it is clean and out of the country. I’ll get someone to go back and shift that prick’s body when we are safe.”
Carlo said, “Your phone’s ringing.”
Jean hadn’t noticed. Carlo took it from his pocket and handed it to him.
“Yeah.”
“Hello, am I speaking to Jean?”
“Who’s this?”
“Max’s friend.”
The pain in Jean’s arm disappeared. The voice was distorted. “Who?”
“Rédoine.”
“How did you get my number?”
“Max gave it to me. Pardon me. I can’t get Max on the phone.”
“You can talk to me.”
“Ok. So I assume the interface is still on the hill? There are still cops there. The road is working, but there are still cops.”
“Sure. Yeah. We’ve got to wait,” said Jean.
“But the rifles. They were part of it.”
“Yeah.” His pulse kicked. He checked the mirrors, saw a police helicopter in the sky two kilometres back. The damn stars were so bright. He needed darkness.
“My buyer wants them tomorrow,” Rédoine said. “I can take the rifles if you have them.”
Jean played it cool. “I don’t know, Rédoine. Maybe I have to speak to Max.”
“OK, but why?”
“Splitting the order, man. It’s not something I can authorise. I mean, it’s Max’s deal, right?”
There was a pause. “Alright. Look, I can’t wait. The price was five-twenty. I’ll make that five-twenty-five.”
Jean actually rubbed his chin, playing the part. He had to get this money. It was a gift. A lifeline to freedom, and Robin. If he could get away with her tonight.
“Rédoine, look, I’ll do it for six-hundred now, and we take seventy-five off the interface.”
Jean thought he’d almost pushed it too far. You shouldn’t screw a man over like this.
“If you don’t tell anyone I did this, alright. Cash, yes?” said Rédoine. “Can you do it now?”
“OK, so we go to that big footbridge in Morzine. I want you to leave your car, walk across, we exchange, you walk back.”
“Jean, please. We meet in the middle. Let’s trust each other, what do you say?”
He didn’t like it, but Rédoine had more time than he did.
“Done.”
“Jean?”
“Yeah?”
“Which bridge would that be?
Two police bikes went the other way, the sound of their engines looming and fading fast.
“Hang on.”
What was it called? Jean looked it up on his phone.
“Francois Baud Footbridge. You can find the address, Rédoine. Can you do that?”
“Of course.” He didn’t seem pleased.
“Alright. We’ll do this, Rédoine. I had a shitty day.”
“You sound like it. But all is OK. I see you there. Which end should I go to?”
“I’ll go to the Routes des Bois Venants.”
“Good.”
Jean called Emile, who was on the road with Robin. He told him to turn back to Morzine and where to go. He would get the money and ride out of town with her.
He sat back, dreams and nightmares colliding in his mind.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Eric and Henri were in Eric’s hired car, heading into town behind Jean Haim and his associate. Eric was driving, his seat in the extreme forward position, keeping over a hundred metres between the cars and watching the arcs of Haim’s headlights carefully.
Henri said, “I’m worried we should be nearer. We may lose him at this distance.”
“Why so keen, Henri?” Eric tucked his phone back in his pocket.
“I need to contribute. I’ve done almost nothing.”
Eric said, “Henri, I understand you want to play a more active part. However, in addition to me being
a criminal and Chedan being in the boot, we are following an escaped armed robber who had been involved in a gun battle over the hill from your place. A safe distance is advisable.”
Henri nodded, then gestured at the road in front. “Sure. It’s just, all I did was hold the rifle case. I want to do more. My wife is back tomorrow. It might be my last chance.”
“I know.”
The hiss of the car filled the space for a minute. They watched the lights up ahead.
“I’m sorry, Eric. I should just let you work. What are you looking at?”
Eric’s eyes were in the rear-view mirror. He was smiling.
“That woman from the restaurant two nights ago is two cars behind. She’s followed Haim, from the gunfight.” He shook his head. “Ha! It was her. She stopped them.”
Henri twisted around.
“Henri, no. What is this? Eyes forward, please.”
Henri felt glumness descend. He said, “Maybe I shouldn’t bother. Crime is too difficult. All these moving parts.”
Eric smiled. “Don’t worry. You’ll get some action. And you’ll see your family tomorrow in good shape. I think we let the señora do the hard work. After all, we know where Jean Haim is going.”
After the car between Carolina and Jean Haim turned right, Carolina followed Haim into a residential part of Morzine. He turned off the road and doubled back up a sloping access driveway. She pulled over, well before the entrance and checked the map on her phone. It didn’t look like there was a way out at the back for Haim.
Her hands and face were covered in fine plaster dust. Her hair was full of it. She kept feeling bullets fanning the air by her head and body. They could all be dead because of this guy. She was angry. The anger kept her level and focused.