Miller’s stubby finger travelled over the inlets and bays. ‘Somewhere near Plymouth would be the quickest landing.’
‘Navy.’
‘Your Navy.’
‘Besides, it’s further north and that yacht’s to port. Wouldn’t that be a quicker intercept for them?’
Miller nodded and stroked his beard, I scanned the map, eyes resting on an estuary further down the coast, a deep gash into a headland jutting out from south Devon. ‘I know this place.’ I tapped my finger on a small village.
‘Combe Wyndham?’ Miller cross-checked the map with his charts and shook his head. ‘Mouth full of sandbars.’
‘Nothing you can’t handle.’
He looked up and gave me a thin smile.
‘It’s perfect,’ I continued. ‘It’s a bit further but I’ve been there a few times, tiny place. Small roads but we’d be on Dartmoor in minutes. How long?’
He checked his satnav, scribbled a few calculations. ‘Three hours, give or take. If this weather holds.’
‘And how long until they catch us?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Three hours, give or take.’
I stood and stretched. ‘That’s the one then. If you can get us in and get that car off quickly there’ll be another bonus in it.’
He grinned, folding the map. ‘Nothin’ like a little incentive. We’ll get there.’
The speaker crackled. ‘Captain, you might want to come to the engine room.’
Miller walked back to the wheel, grabbed the radio handset and flicked a switch. ‘Katanga, I need you to take over the helm.’ He hung the handset back on the ceiling and pushed his hat up on his head. ‘Let’s go see what fresh shit we’ve got to contend with.’
Chapter Forty-four
Château des Aigles
Two days ago
I unhooked Ringo’s climbing harness from the rope and dragged him across the floor, dropping him in the hall by a door down to the garage. He huddled into a ball, flexing his fingers to try to get the blood flowing through his tightly bound wrists. His face was still beetroot, an effect of being hung upside down for too long but also his smashed nose, still trickling.
‘Hurry,’ he said.
I looked back at the big windows, at the torch beams cutting across the snow, and shook my head. ‘Sorry mate, out of time.’
‘That’s the only name I have, I swear!’
‘I had it all worked out, you know. Keep your enemies close, I wanted you on the ship with me.’ I opened the door, grabbed Ringo’s harness, pulling him to the top of the dark stairs. ‘It would have been so much better without all this,’ I waved my hand back at the loop of rope hanging over the beam in the hallway, ‘all this unpleasantness.’
‘I’m sorry, all right? What do you want?’
‘You’ve a history of doing owt for money.’ I looked out of the window again, we had a few minutes at best. ‘Hope this time it was worth it.’
I could see he was worried. He knew what sort of people were coming – they were not to be fucked with.
‘So we killed a few mercs. It was a decade ago, why do you even care?’
‘Someone has to.’
‘Wrong place wrong time, man. Probably deserved it!’
‘I suppose she was in the wrong place at the wrong time too?’
‘Lennon knew the risks when she took the job, just like me.’
‘Risks? The only risk was you, you bastard.’ I kicked him, he rolled down the stairs, bouncing off the wall at the bottom. Silence for a moment, then a long moan as he writhed on the floor. I stamped down the stairs after him, he shrank back, trying to shuffle away. I grabbed his harness, dragging him across the dusty garage floor, dropping him at the rear of my car. ‘You say we signed up for the risks, so you won’t mind what comes next.’
‘Please,’ he whimpered. ‘I told you everything.’
‘Keep quiet.’ I took out my phone, debating whether to ring Holderness now to get the ball rolling, or wait until the shooting had ended.
‘I swear, that’s who you need to talk to!’ His voice rose again. ‘I was only hired to make the device, I didn’t have any contact with the others. The whole team, all of them, talk to…’
I kicked him in the stomach to stop him moving then opened the boot. I grabbed a pair of handcuffs from next to Bob’s sleeping body, snapped one end around his right wrist. I fastened the other round one of the spokes of the rear wheel.
He coughed and spat on the floor, blood and phlegm bubbling on the dust.
‘We’re surrounded,’ I said. ‘I really need to start shooting soon, so keep quiet.’
He spat another mouthful of blood. ‘You can’t take them all by yourself,’ he said, eyes pleading. He knew that despite everything, he was still better off with me than the people he’d made a deal with.
‘You’d best hope I can, or neither of us are getting out of here alive.’
I closed the garage door and made my way back to the lounge. Outside, the snow had started again, I could see it whirling in the beams of the various torches converging on the house through three different windows, to the side, from the meadow below the rear of the house, and up the road past the patio doors to the front.
I took out my pistol and laid it on the floor next to the big window, picked up one of the HK MP5s from next to the sofa, cocked it, checked the safety was on. I laid it next to the pistol, stacked loaded magazines for both next to them then went into the kitchen, returning with my HK rifle and its night optics.
I sat three magazines for the rifle on the floor in the middle of the room. The magazine in my hand contained a round with an orange tip at the top, I inserted it into the rifle then laid on my belly, squinting through the night-vision scope, out the crack in the patio doors. In the black and white image four figures were creeping slowly towards the house, hunched over in the deep snow, I panned across to see more advancing up the road, another group in the pines to the east.
I cocked the rifle, steadied myself. They were so close I could hear the murmurs of the team advancing up the road below the open patio door, thankfully I was deep in shadow. The trembling in my hand had calmed, I used the breathing space to click the scope, put my eye back to the thermal imager. One of the figures outside was crouched on the driveway next to Katrin/Lennon’s BMW, an old 850 coupe with the pop-up headlights. It’d been a crying shame to leave it on the drive but I needed the extra bait.
I watched through the top night-vision scope as a masked man pushed a knife into the tyres of the BMW, blocking the garage door. I shuffled and rested my cheek against the rifle stock, looking through the normal scope, watching a shadow crouching beside the front door. Didn’t matter how a job started, I always ended up in the same position: alone, outnumbered, looking down the barrel of a gun.
Chapter Forty-five
Tiburon
Vincent held out the innocuous-looking component and nodded at me. ‘He was right, it was the thermostat.’ He sparked up a cig and blew smoke across the top of the engine. ‘Welded.’
Miller took it from him and turned it over in his hands. ‘When?’
‘Must have been before we left port – can’t remove it with the engine running.’
‘Can you replace it?’
‘Already have, I’m about to restart the engine.’
‘Get to it, man.’
Vincent hopped back down the ladder, I grabbed Miller’s arm and ushered him out of the door. I looked back in at the others down in the engine bay, all more interested in the engines, though Vincent had one wary eye on us.
I led him down the passage and leaned in. ‘Someone on your crew wanted to slow us down.’
He nodded, running a hand through his greasy beard.
‘We already knew that,’ I continued, ‘but this means they planned it before I arrived on board. This, the pumps, the ballast tank…’
‘Seb,’ he said.
‘Yes, but who else? You took Vincent on at the same time.’ I let the imp
lication hang there for a while before whispering, ‘He only fixed the engines because he was forced to.’
Miller shook his head. ‘He could have left it to overheat.’
‘He wanted to slow us, not sink us.’
‘Then why would he tamper with the ballast valve, and disable the bilge pumps? Must have wanted to sink us then.’
‘Maybe so, a quarter of a mile from shore. Not out here, in the middle of the ocean.’
Miller frowned. ‘We need to find Seb. He’s loose somewhere on this ship; he’s behind all this, I swear.’
Chapter Forty-six
Château des Aigles
Two days ago
The thing about these rental chalets is they all look the same, the reason the one over the road from ours had been empty is I’d rented both. Or I should say, a mining company based in Johannesburg had rented both for a Christmas employee getaway. A company with no past, no future, and nothing tying it to me. God knows how Holderness had pulled it on short notice, but pulled it he had. I’d rented them both partly to ensure we weren’t disturbed, but partly to give me this; a fallback defensive position should we need it.
I lay on the floor of the second chalet, watching through the scope as four figures paused at the top of the steps outside the other place’s front door. The house was built into the hillside, garage underneath and above it, on the first floor, those huge picture windows from which we’d gazed down at the target property. Another two figures had already scaled the walls to the raised decking outside, no doubt others were doing the same round the back. The old BMW sat blocking the garage door on four flat tyres.
Movement on the steps as one of the figures brought up a bosher, a handheld police battering ram. At a signal he swung at the lock, the door flew inward.
The figures swept into the house, there was a blast from the balcony at the side as a second group blew the locks on the patio doors and charged in. Shadows moved behind curtains, dashing between the rooms, searching and finding them empty.
I took my face away from the scope, counted in my head, visualising their room-to-room search. Figures entering through the front door would have emerged straight into the lounge, while those going in via the windows would have stormed straight for the stairs. They’d be in the bedrooms by now, overturning beds, opening wardrobes, checking bathrooms.
Curtains waved in an upstairs window, the crack of gunfire echoed down the hillside as the trigger-happy assault team swept room to room.
I put my eye back to the scope, swinging the rifle across to the kitchen window. Off with the safety, I settled the sights on the bright red gas bottle I’d stood in the kitchen sink, and wondered how many of the intruders would have smelled the gas I’d left on.
I squeezed the trigger. The tracer round sparked towards the other chalet, I closed my eyes, saw the flash through my eyelids. It was followed by a loud whump, I felt the heat in my cheeks even down here. A moment after that, a delayed reaction secondary explosion as the other cannisters I’d placed around the house went up in rapid succession, rocking the foundations as the whole lot went up. The glass in my chalet blew in, shards speckling my face. There go two deposits.
The blast hadn’t died down before the screaming started. I panned the rifle across the flaming timbers, the top floor of the huge open-plan house all but gone. Shadows flitted in the flames, I swept hair, glass, and splinters from my eyes and looked through the scope, already squeezing the trigger. Figures danced into the fire, I saw two of them drop but others took cover behind pieces of debris. I pulled the trigger faster, emptying the magazine into burning beams and chunks of masonry.
I swung over onto the pines on the left at the edge of the garden and squeezed again at the shadows darting across the snow. More screams and flashes replied, something buzzed through the shattered window and buried itself in the wall, a puff of plaster indicating someone had got a bead on me. I shuffled backwards, ejecting the empty magazine and grabbing another, snapping it in place and cocking as I stood, back pressed against the wall. Another bullet zinged through the door, followed by another shattering the deer skull above the fireplace, cracking it in half. The antlers dropped onto the hearth and shattered across the floor. I looked at the angle, the shooter was above and to the right, so somewhere along the side of the burning chalet.
I swung round, aiming at the corner of the house and squeezing the trigger rapidly to get their head down then put my eye to the scope, quickly checking. There, laid on the snow by the bin store, a flash. I aimed and squeezed, pulling the trigger several times, watching puffs of snow erupt. I paused, red dot on the shadow, no flashes replied this time.
The wood panelling behind me exploded, I dropped to the floor as bullet holes stitched a jagged line up the staircase, someone out there had come equipped with serious hardware. I rolled away from the window, kicking the spare magazines across the room and scooping them up as I dashed into the kitchen. I put the rifle to my shoulder and squeezed off a couple of shots at figures running down the hillside towards me then ducked and ran back into the lounge as the kitchen exploded in showers of wood and lead.
I dropped the empty magazine from the rifle, pushed my pistol into the waistband of my jeans, and bundled the spare magazines into my rucksack. I slid the last one into the rifle itself, then swung round onto my back.
The door flew inward, I grabbed the MP5, it coughed rapidly three times. The man stumbled back onto the steps, dead before he landed. I pulled on the rucksack, pushed the submachine gun into my shoulder and swept into the kitchen, risking a glance through the smashed windows. More dark figures were sprinting towards the house, I ducked as another torrent of lead tracked across the ceiling.
There was a noise from the lounge, the crunch of combat boots on broken glass, I crept backwards, away from the door, pulling out my phone. I dialled Ringo’s phone and held my breath. A moment later his phone started ringing upstairs, I waited a couple of heartbeats then cancelled the call. There was a whisper then boots crunched again, creaking on the bottom step as they made their way up to what they assumed was me.
I slid onto the kitchen worktop, waited another couple of beats for them to get halfway up then peered around the corner into the lounge – my head up high near the ceiling, not where they’d be expecting a head to be, in case they were waiting for it.
They weren’t – combat trousers tucked into heavy work boots crept up the top of the stairs, the man’s body unseen as he scanned the landing above, trying to decide which room the ringtone had come from.
I fired a burst into the legs, a scream, he dropped, another burst into his head stopped the screaming. I dashed across the room, crouched, pulled out the man’s bloody earpiece and pushed it into my own ear. It was quiet, no frantic gabbling, no tactical instructions, just panting as whoever was left was charging around looking for a target.
With another glance out the front door to confirm there were no more bounding up behind him, I ran for the window at the other side of the room, dropping the submachine gun, letting it hang from the strap. Out the rear patio doors, onto the balcony looking down the village, I spun the big rifle round into my hands and brought it up. The meadow below glowed in the firelight, my chalet cast a long dark shadow down the orange snow.
‘Moving to the rear,’ a voice hissed in my ear.
I swung the rifle round, aiming at movement, squeezed off a group of three shots, there was a grunt in my earpiece as the figure dropped. I could hear him panting and groaning in my earpiece, I looked through the scope and found him, a dark shape writhing in the snow. I put the red dot on his head and squeezed again, the writhing stopped.
I swung the rifle round onto my back and slid over the railings, dropping the short distance into the deep snow, staying low. In the shadows beneath the balcony was my snowboard, to which I’d already duct-taped a torch. I kicked it across the snow, sending it skimming away down the fields.
‘He’s getting away!’ said a voice on the radio.
/> I backed in against the house and brought the rifle up. A man ran from behind the wall to my left, charging after the torch which by now was a good fifty metres away, the light bouncing away down the hill.
‘He’s skiing down.’ The man raised a weapon and fired, the torch continued. ‘Get back here!’ he shouted to his comrades. He chased after the board, pausing every few seconds to take another shot at what he thought was me trying to make my escape. ‘He’s gonna get away.’ I watched him through the sights and waited for whoever he was talking to. Didn’t take long, another man charged across the fields from behind the house, following in his mate’s footsteps. I held my breath and moved the sights onto him, at his back leaping through the knee-deep snow.
Any more? How long should I wait? My decision was made for me as the torch beam below suddenly lurched and shone directly up into the whirling snow like a Bat-Signal. The board had crashed into something.
‘Got him, he’s down.’
‘He wants him alive!’ a second voice said.
In a few seconds, those pursuers would be on the board and find not me, but a little torch taped to the bindings, and when that happened they’d be back up here. A bullet in the spine felled the guy at the rear immediately, howling into the radio, I swung onto the lead guy, hitting him in the chest as he turned to see what’d happened. I followed his progress to the ground, put another three into him, then moved the cross hairs back to the first and did the same. Neither would be back up here now.
I lowered the rifle and paused to listen. How many was that, six or seven? And the explosion must have taken care of everyone in the house. The information was pointless as I didn’t know how many had come up here.
I waited, hunched over in the snow for a full two minutes. Nothing moved, no sound, either on the mountainside or on their radios. I slowly stood, stretching out my cold legs, and stepped towards the corner, rifle at my shoulder. I edged towards it then brought the rifle down and risked a peek.
The black mass came up fast, I pulled the rifle up and squeezed the trigger but it was too heavy, too long, he was too close. He grabbed the suppressor with his left hand while bringing up a pistol with his right. I dropped to my knees as a shot sliced above my head, rolling onto my back, dragging the rifle away and kicking out with both feet. He flew backwards, flailing, putting some much-needed distance between us. I pulled the trigger rapidly, emptying the magazine in his direction before he could get off a shot.
Black Run Page 23