Exile

by James Swallow

  Amarah fired a single round that went straight through Kawal’s chest and splattered blood and lung tissue over the marble walls and gold pillars. The younger man staggered backward and Amarah hit him again with another, this time putting the kill-shot through the side of his face.

  Kawal fell back over one of the couches and collapsed into a twitching heap. The bomb-maker cried out and rushed to him, clawing at his grandson’s body in shock and horror.

  ‘He would not be silent,’ said Amarah, through gritted teeth.

  ‘He was tiresome,’ agreed Ramaas, his mood shifting again. ‘But you and I, we have no quarrel.’

  ‘I want to kill the whore and the Britisher,’ continued Amarah, the raw need for his revenge like acid. ‘I have no interest in your business.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Ramaas gave Lucy a rueful smile. ‘That would put me in your debt. A problem solved.’ He took a step back, studying Amarah. ‘And it would make you free, I think.’

  Lucy’s lip curled. ‘Aw, look at you two. Like kindred scumbags.’ Her mind raced; if she could get Amarah to react instead of think, she might get an edge she could use. ‘Hey, if you wanna blow each other, go right ahead, don’t be shy. We won’t judge.’

  Ramaas drew a knife and tossed it onto the blood-spattered table. ‘Use that on her. A bullet would be too swift.’ He turned toward the door. ‘As much as it might be entertaining to remain here, I have other priorities to attend to . . .’

  ‘You’ll both be dead before you get out of the compound.’ Marc’s words were cold and controlled. ‘There’s a strike team embedded outside right now. They heard those gunshots. Anyone comes out who isn’t me or her gets a .300 round through the eye.’ Lucy had to admit he sounded fairly convincing.

  ‘I will take that bet,’ said Ramaas, his smile widening. ‘I have killed everyone else in this house. Three more bodies matter nothing to me –’

  ‘Kutha sala!’ Sood screamed the words at Amarah with a force and venom that Lucy would not have believed the old man capable of. He came up from the ground in a blind rush, his white cotton robes soaked with his grandson’s blood and Kawal’s golden gun in his trembling fist. Sood mashed the pistol’s trigger and fired wildly, spitting rounds in an uncontrolled arc.

  Lucy glimpsed Marc throwing himself out of the line of fire and she did the same, her combat instincts kicking in as she dived across another of the low couches. She landed badly, her breath blowing out in a gust.

  Everything else unfolded in flashes, actions stacking atop one another with such speed that it made her head swim. Ramaas reacted as though he had been kicked in the chest and he staggered backward as a random bullet hit him in the right bicep, carving out a ragged chunk of blood and muscle.

  Amarah fired into the old man as Jalsa came lurching across the room, hitting him in the stomach. Jalsa crumpled like paper and crashed to the tiles. Dark blood filled his hands as he tried to cup the edges of his ragged wound.

  In the same moment, Lucy saw Marc dragging an oil lamp up from the table, pulling it into a swing which he directed toward Ramaas’s head – but even injured, the pirate warlord was able to get up a hand and deflect the improvised weapon away. He smashed the lamp and bellowed in pain as he punched Marc with his wounded arm without thinking. The hammer-blow connected and she saw Marc reel back and go down.

  ‘Enough!’ snarled Ramaas, and he glared at Amarah. ‘Do what you wish here. Just make sure they are all dead!’ He lurched away, clamping his free hand over the new wound to staunch it as he vanished into one of the corridors, unwilling to ignore his own mission in favour of the two interlopers.

  Lucy dragged herself upright as Amarah spun toward her, holding the wicked knife the warlord had left behind. ‘Your turn now,’ he said.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘I bet you dreamed about this, right?’ Lucy let a mocking lilt enter her voice. ‘Night after night, in that six-by-nine where the CIA put you?’ She licked her lips provocatively. ‘Is it going how you thought it would?’

  Amarah scowled, infuriated by her tone. ‘I will silence you.’

  She knew his type down to the last detail, the kind who believed women were for beating or for using, who wrapped up their ignorance and cruelty with words like ‘values’ and ‘honour’ to conceal the fact that they were just bastards. Colour, creed or religion didn’t factor into it. Some men just hated.

  And that meant she could push his buttons. Lucy eyed the jagged-edged blade he twirled in his right hand. ‘You want to stick it in me, big man? Reckon you can keep it up?’

  He lost his cool and dove at her with a sudden flurry of slashing attacks that cut through the air in flashes of bright steel. Lucy retreated, dodging from side to side, staying just beyond his reach. She watched his motion, looking for patterns and strike points.

  If Amarah was smart, he would have taken his reprisal the quick way and shot her dead where she stood. But here was someone who considered himself righteous and wronged, who had probably spent every day of his incarceration coming up with ways to get payback on the skinny black girl from Queens who had put him in that cell. He wanted to cut on her and take it slow.

  Amarah snarled and changed tack, shifting his grip to go for a downward stabbing motion. Lucy didn’t let him get there. She stepped to him, coming inside her attacker’s reach to shorten the distance and hit him hard with a punch to the chest. She followed it up with a cross-hand move that was meant to disarm him, but Amarah had enough of his wits about him to deflect that approach and he reeled back.

  Lucy cursed inwardly. They hadn’t been able to take any weapons with them when they left Sweden, and she felt naked without a gun. If their roles had been reversed, Amarah would have had two bullets in him by now, but this was going to have to go the long way round.

  The terrorist went back at her, going for the stab again, and Lucy brought up her hands to block his strike – but it was a feint. Amarah deftly flipped the combat knife around his palm and hit her hard with the heavy pommel, cracking her across the cheekbone. Flares of pain lit up inside her head and she lost her pace.

  She was too close to the wall, in danger of losing room to manoeuvre. As the thought occurred to her, it was already too late to react. Amarah grabbed at the thick folds of her abayat and shoved Lucy back. He slammed her bodily into a shade across one of the open windows, and she felt the wooden slats splinter apart across her shoulders under the force of the sudden impact.

  Her legs caught on the ledge of the window and she lost her balance before she could grab for a handhold.

  Lucy tumbled backwards out of the window, grasping for Amarah, pulling him with her as she fell into the blazing yellow sunshine outside.

  Briefly blinded by the sudden change in illumination from the darkened reception room, they fell a storey and landed hard atop the wide, square-framed veranda that shaded part of Jalsa Sood’s swimming pool from the midday heat. The wooden frame cracked alarmingly under their weight.

  Amarah was atop Lucy, holding her down as he pressed the knife toward her throat. She pushed back with both hands. All she could see was the black shadow of his head framed by the sun, and the dazzling mirror-bright line of the blade. The knife’s razor tip puckered the skin of her neck where it touched.

  *

  Everything was blurry and made out of pain. At least, that was how it felt inside of Marc’s skull as he blinked back to awareness and rolled over onto the cool marble tiles. It took agonising moments for him to drag himself away from the edge of semi-consciousness. He tasted copper in his mouth and he could already feel the side of his face starting to stiffen with the beginning of bruises.

  There was a liquid, wheezing noise that rose and fell around him, and Marc’s hand clutched at his chest, afraid that the freight-train punch from Ramaas had broken something in his lungs. Then he figured out that the sound wasn’t coming from him and he righted himself, turning toward the noise.

  Fighting through dizziness, Marc’s eyes laboured into focus. Har
d sunlight flooded the reception room through a window behind him, shattered bits of wood lying all around it. He cast about, Lucy was gone and the room – now bereft of all shadows in the unfiltered daylight – was a mess of broken furniture and spilled blood.

  The wheezing was the sound of a man’s life ending. Kawal Sood was dead, slumped in an untidy heap, his head and torso a mass of red, and his grandfather was trying to hold on to him, as if he feared at any moment someone would tear the two of them apart.

  Jalsa Sood’s white robes turned crimson as the mortal wound in his belly blossomed. The old man was crying and struggling to force in every breath of air he took.

  Marc moved to him. Kawal’s bloodstained Sig Sauer lay forgotten on the tiled floor between them.

  ‘My boy,’ wept Jalsa, cradling Kawal’s ruined head. ‘My boy is dead. I killed him. I killed them both.’

  Crouching there, ending a little more with each exhale, the bomb-maker was stripped of all the lies about who he was and what he had done. Marc saw a grandfather and a father buried under regrets, destroyed by the life he had made for himself. He felt the smallest flicker of sorrow for Sood, before a voice in the back of his mind reminded him of a certain truth. He has more blood on his hands than just this. Sood is reaping the harvest of a lifetime of violence.

  Marc picked up the gun, weighing it in his hand. ‘What did you do for him, Jalsa? What did you do for Ramaas?’

  Sood looked up, but his eyes were fogged with pain. His hand dropped from Kawal’s bloody cheek and it fell to his lap. ‘I knew I would die. Time. But Kawal. Not him.’

  Marc leaned in, pushing away every human reaction that tried to come to the fore. ‘Where is the device?’

  The old man’s hand snapped up and grabbed him by the collar, blood smearing Marc’s shirt as Jalsa pulled him close. Pink froth gathered at the edges of Sood’s mouth as he spoke, his words drowned and fluid. ‘Right.’ He had to push it out in gulps of air. ‘Cylinder. Nine . . . Nine rods.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means . . .’ Marc began.

  But Sood was already gone.

  *

  A bead of crimson grew where the knife rested on Lucy’s throat, and Amarah grunted in frustration as he tried to press the weapon into her. Their hands locked around the hilt of the blade and each other; both of them struggled with all their might to resist or to kill. Locked in an obscene embrace, seconds seemed to extend into hours. The need for revenge and the desire to survive were perfectly matched, but the stalemate could not last.

  Amarah gave a wordless snarl and renewed his inexorable pressure with a flex of his shoulder blades, making the muscles in Lucy’s forearms buzz with the exertion. Then without warning, the wooden struts holding up the thick sailcloth of the veranda splintered and finally broke in half. The entire front section of the platform gave out and came apart, dropping the two of them into the deep end of the swimming pool below.

  Lucy twisted out of Amarah’s grip as they hit the water and went under, arms flailing as she desperately tried to put some distance between them. Lucy rolled as she sank, kicking off her shoes, and her feet slapped the bottom of the pool as she pushed away again. The water was clouded and over-chlorinated, and it was hard for her to swim through it as the black abayat clung to the contours of her body. The material dragged on her, and she pushed at debris from the collapsed veranda, groping toward the surface overhead.

  A dark shape blocked her way and she reflexively shoved at it. The last of the breath in Lucy’s chest erupted out of her mouth in a shock of bubbles as the shape resolved into the drifting corpse of an Arab man in a tuxedo. Blank eyes glared back at her from a face made pallid by days in the water.

  There were others in there with them. Numerous bodies drifted in the ornate pool. Sickened, Lucy thrashed her way past the dead man and broke the surface, spitting tainted water from her mouth. She spun, trying to get her bearings, but everywhere she looked there were floating corpses.

  I have killed everyone else in this house. Ramaas’s words came back to her. Three more bodies matter nothing to me. He had not lied. The pool and the sun-drenched patio around it had been turned into a mass grave.

  Amarah exploded out of the water behind her, still clutching the shiny steel knife in one hand, and she saw sunlight flash off the blade. Lucy lurched forward, splashing through the shallows toward a mosaiced staircase leading out of the water, and she had one hand on a chrome banister when a savage pull dragged her backwards.

  The terrorist was still waist-deep in the pool, and he had a length of her clothing in his hand, curling the material around his wrist. Amarah yanked on it with all the strength he could muster and Lucy clung to the banister, crying out in anger. He tried to stab her with the knife, but the blade whistled through empty air, centimetres from her exposed back.

  Her bare feet skidded on the bottom of the pool. If she slipped, Amarah would reel her in and plant the knife in her heart. Lucy struggled, fighting to slough off the robe and get free. A horrible possibility flashed through her mind: Is Lula going to be the death of me?

  And then someone shouted her name and she twisted, glimpsing a figure atop the remains of the ruined veranda.

  Marc had Kawal’s golden gun in his fist and he fired off two shots, one after another. The first went wide and fizzed into the water, but the second was true and hit Amarah in the right shoulder. He screamed and toppled into the pool with a heavy smack, losing the knife and his grip on Lucy’s clothing.

  Suddenly free of him, she dragged herself the last few metres out of the water and across the patio. The sickening taste of the tainted water clogged her throat and nostrils, and she wanted to retch.

  Marc scrambled down off the half-destroyed veranda and ran to her, shielding his eyes in the sunlight. ‘Are you okay? I mean, I saw him with the knife, I thought –’

  ‘Gimme that,’ Lucy broke in, as she snatched the gold-plated pistol from his hand and turned back toward the pool.

  One arm hanging uselessly at his side, Amarah was wading out toward the edge of the water, grasping for the ledge. Lucy didn’t hesitate. She put a pinpoint shot through the man’s heart, killing him instantly. Amarah’s body toppled backwards and sank into a spreading cloud of crimson.

  ‘Damn,’ said Marc. ‘Uh, okay.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to let him give a speech.’ Lucy bit and tore at the shapeless black abayat until she finally shrugged out of the waterlogged dress-robe, revealing the soaked trousers and T-shirt beneath. ‘You didn’t really think we were gonna send him back to the CIA when we were done, did you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he admitted. ‘Kind of.’

  ‘This way is cheaper than airfare.’ She turned away, glaring into the distance. ‘And you can’t tell me you didn’t believe he had it coming.’

  Marc gave a grim nod. ‘No argument there.’ Like Lucy, he had been a front-row witness to the murderous ambitions of Jadeed Amarah and his cohorts.

  Lucy sighed. ‘Thanks for the assist.’ She stopped herself from suggesting that next time Dane should go for a kill-shot, reminding herself that it didn’t come as easily for him. She pushed that thought away and ejected the Sig’s magazine. ‘Only four rounds left. Shit. Where’s Ramaas?’

  The rattle of a submachine gun cut through the air, followed quickly by the revving of a powerful engine. ‘There’s your answer.’ Marc pointed in the direction of the ground-floor garage. ‘Come on!’

  *

  The throaty rumble of a supercharged V8 echoed through Sood’s workshop as they made their way through it, staying in cover behind support pillars and shelves laden with vehicle spares. Marc saw a workbench that had been abandoned in haste, with tools scattered on the floor and a stool lying on its side. Whatever the Baker had been cooking up for Ramaas was in the process of being cleared out, and if he got away from them now, their one and only shot at stopping the pirate warlord would be gone.

  He looked around for something to use as a weapon and settled on a brigh
t red crowbar lying atop a tool chest, brandishing it like a short-sword. At the far end of the workshop were two half-open doors that led into the garage proper. Marc could only see a slice of the space beyond, glimpsing the sleek shapes of vehicles hidden under black anti-static dust covers. He ducked back as he saw a bald man toting an Uzi walk past, keys jangling in his hand.

  ‘Is he in there?’ Lucy whispered the question and held up the gold Sig pistol, her finger resting on the trigger guard.

  Marc heard the sound of a trunk lid closing and the engine revved again. Voices in a language he didn’t recognise carried from inside the garage, echoing off the walls, and he nodded.

  ‘They’re leaving,’ said Lucy. ‘We gotta go!’ She took a breath and then kicked open the door. Marc shouldered the door on his side and followed her through.

  ‘Nobody move!’ shouted Lucy, leading with the pistol.

  Idling at the mouth of the garage was a silver supercar that resembled an art-deco bullet, a low and long-nosed two-door coupé sporting a large Mercedes-Benz trefoil and axe-blade scissor doors. Ramaas was already in the driver’s seat of the SLR McLaren, and part of Marc admired the choice he’d made in picking which of Sood’s car collection to steal. Another of his men was half-out of the passenger door, clutching a short-frame shotgun, and he froze, a grin on his lips.

  Two more of the warlord’s gun-thugs were helping themselves to a second car – this one a BMW Z4 roadster in candy-apple crimson – and Marc saw the bald guy with the Uzi whip around, heedless of Lucy’s warning. The submachine gun chattered again and the spray of shots punched holes through the workshop doors and sent the two of them diving for cover.

  The SLR’s snarling roar sounded and the car shot away and out onto the asphalt, even as the scissor door was still descending. More shots came from the men in the Z4 as they hit the gas and followed Ramaas’s lead into the daylight and away.

  Lucy sprinted to the garage door and raised the Sig into a two-handed aiming stance, but at the last second she held her fire, and watched the back of the Z4 disappear behind the over-elaborate stone fountain in the mansion’s courtyard. ‘We need to get after them!’