[James Ryker 01.0] The Red Cobra

by Rob Sinclair

  ‘Fuck you, macho man.’

  ‘If you insist,’ Logan said with a mischievous smile.

  46

  It was three a.m. when the Red Cobra awoke with a start. She wasn’t sure what had roused her so aggressively. She hadn’t been having a bad dream and the room was silent. Except for her own heavy breaths and the much slower breaths of the man laying next to her in the bed; Carl Logan.

  She looked over at him, stared for a good while as she calmed her breathing. Then she got to her feet. She picked up the white hotel-branded robe from the floor and wrapped it around her naked body which was cold but damp with sweat. She moved over and sat in an armchair, facing the bed where Logan was still sleeping soundly.

  Before leaving the house in the forests, they’d taken apart all the electronic items she had on her. They’d found bugging devices in both the camera and her phone. That worried her. Because she’d purchased both items when she was already in Berlin. Potanin had somehow managed to plant the bugs on her probably while she slept. He’d never trusted her from the start, had probably always planned to kill her, like Logan said.

  After destroying all her electrical items, she and Logan had performed a thorough search of her clothing and her body for evidence of any other tracking equipment. There was none. Regardless, on leaving the house in the woods the two of them had headed straight to the nearest town where they’d purchased new clothes for her. She’d had to give up her leather jacket, but had spent a couple of hours once back in a hotel in central Berlin stitching a sheath for her hunting blade into a newly acquired one.

  Following that, the Red Cobra and Logan had eaten room service, drank two bottles of wine and ended up in bed together. Again. This time he hadn’t tried to sneak out.

  Instead, at three a.m., it was she who was awake with thoughts cascading through her brain.

  She couldn’t take the suspense. She had to know. And with her laptop and phone gone, there was only one way she was going to find out.

  She moved over to the bed and picked up Logan’s mobile phone. She opened the web browser. The connection was far slower on his phone than it would have been on her laptop but after five minutes of mostly staring at blank screens, she finally managed to open up her inbox on the chat portal she used to communicate with Potanin.

  Sure enough, there was a message waiting for her.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. It wasn’t like Potanin would have ranted and raged within the coded message he sent. Nonetheless, she could feel his animosity as she read the threatening words on the screen.

  The Red Cobra closed her eyes and gritted her teeth.

  What the hell had she done? This wasn’t over. Not by a long stretch.

  She deleted the message, closed the browser, then went into the phone’s settings and cleared the internet cache too. Then she placed the phone back down.

  She’d been given a simple choice by Potanin, much like the choice Mackie had given her: live or die. Potanin was giving her another chance to take out the targets. And while there wasn’t a part of her that wanted to take the lifeline that Potanin was offering, she knew she had to.

  Because it wasn’t just her life on the line anymore. Potanin had made that very clear.

  The Red Cobra bent down and rummaged through Logan’s clothes, looking for the handgun she knew he had. She found it and lifted it up, turning it over in her hands. Then she pointed the barrel to Logan’s head. He didn’t stir, didn’t move at all, not even a twitch. She pushed the gun closer to him, until the end of the barrel was an inch from his closed eyelid.

  ‘I already took the bullets out,’ Logan said, eyes still closed, his body unmoving.

  The Red Cobra felt a flood of anger – embarrassment too – rush through her. She dropped the gun and it clattered to the floor.

  Logan opened his eyes and stared at her. ‘You can stay, or you can go. It’s up to you.’

  She thought for a moment, then let out a long and sorrowful sigh, got to her feet, and pulled on her clothes. Logan lay in bed, his hard gaze fixed on her.

  Belongings? She had none. Just her knives, a few bank notes and the passports she’d brought with her to Berlin with photos that resembled her appearance but attached to identities that were nothing more than a lie. Everything about her life was a miserable damn lie.

  She pushed her hunting blade into the freshly stitched pocket of her new jacket, then took one last look at Logan. A man she could have loved, perhaps? No, she wasn’t capable of such a thing. And he certainly wasn’t.

  They would meet again, though. She was positive of that.

  Logan was, after all, still a target. But he wasn’t the only target. He could wait. Next time they met, though, one of them would likely die. But not tonight.

  Without either of them saying another word, the Red Cobra turned and headed for the door.

  47

  Present day

  Ryker hadn’t seen the Red Cobra for eight years. Two weeks after leaving their hotel room in Berlin in the middle of the night, she’d ambushed and murdered Gazinsky and his wife at a remote beach hut in northern Germany. Ryker and the JIA had been trying to smuggle the Gazinskys out of the country. They never did find out what they needed from the oligarch.

  The Red Cobra had ended up in a fight on a cliff top with Ryker. Or Carl Logan as he had been back then. She’d had a gun to his head, but she hadn’t taken the shot. She’d hesitated.

  He hadn’t.

  The last Ryker saw of her was her body falling out of view over the edge of the cliff as the bullets from his gun tore into her. She’d been presumed dead by many. Ryker had always thought differently.

  She certainly wasn’t dead. Not yet.

  The one saving grace when the Red Cobra attacked Ryker at Walker’s house was that the noise from Ryker – first in slamming the assassin into the shelves, and secondly his screams as the pepper spray bore into his eyes – was enough to alert Green and the armed policemen. Their responsiveness and strength in numbers were probably the only things that night that saved Walker – whom Ryker could only assume the Red Cobra had come to the house to kill.

  Thankfully, the brief training that Ryker had given to the others before he’d gone to sleep had paid off. Walker, locked in the sitting room with an armed officer and Munroe, had quickly been shielded as the others searched the house and grounds for the Red Cobra.

  They found nothing.

  The effects of the pepper spray diminished within minutes. After an hour, the swelling in Ryker’s face had reduced enough to allow him to see again. By the time dawn came a few hours later, the pain had almost subsided.

  Ryker sat on a stool at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, drinking strong coffee and eating a ham and cheese sandwich. Munroe was there too, nursing his umpteenth black coffee of the morning.

  ‘I don’t know what else you expect us to do now,’ Munroe said. ‘We have to get Walker moved.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ryker said.

  The previous night he’d been against the idea. He thought he could contain the problem, but the fact was he no longer wanted to sit around and wait for an attack. He wanted to be on the front foot. And the more he thought about it, the more he realised he didn’t care for Walker. Ryker’s job wasn't to protect him; plenty of others could do that. Ryker wanted to get to the bottom of why Kim Walker had been killed, and why the Red Cobra was on a mission of revenge in Andalusia.

  ‘Who can we trust?’ Munroe asked.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Ryker answered.

  ‘There must be someone.’

  Ryker thought. There was Winter of course. But did the JIA commander care enough about Walker to spend the time and effort in protecting him? Ryker decided no was the likely answer.

  ‘It’s not my call,’ Ryker said. ‘Green is the one you need to be speaking to about protection. He can work with the Spanish police, the English too if needed, to make sure Walker is okay.’

  ‘But you said we can’t trust the local police?
’

  ‘You can’t. But I know one thing: the Red Cobra is on her own. That’s how she works. She’s not with the Georgians. I’m sure the mob has paid off everyone they can around here, policemen included, but they all need to band together now. The Red Cobra’s a threat to them all.’

  Green came into the room. He looked confused.

  ‘News?’ Ryker asked.

  ‘We know how she left.’ Green moved over to the breakfast bar and pouring himself a cup of coffee. ‘There’s no physical sign of her path but the CCTV we put up shows her exiting over the back.’

  ‘It’s just trees and rocks that direction?’ Munroe asked.

  ‘Yeah. Quite a scramble in the dark to get back to civilisation from there.’

  ‘She used the distraction to escape,’ Ryker said. ‘When the alarm was raised, everyone’s attention focused in the wrong place.’

  Green shrugged. ‘She knew what she was doing. That exit route was planned.’

  Ryker felt foolish that it had been so easy for her.

  ‘But how did she get in?’ Munroe asked. ‘Not just onto the grounds but into the house?’

  ‘Good question,’ Green said. ‘We have no idea how she got past us. Between eyes and the cameras, we had every angle covered.

  ‘No you didn’t,’ Ryker said.

  ‘Yes we did. We went through it all together last night.’

  ‘There was one angle we didn’t think of.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘She didn’t sneak into the house in the middle of the night. She was already in here.’ Ryker felt a chill run down his spine at his own words. He guessed from the shocked looks on the faces of Munroe and Green that they were feeling the same.

  Ryker got to his feet. Munroe followed suit.

  ‘The hallway was covered,’ Ryker said. ‘Green was there.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Green said. ‘She didn’t come past me to get into the library. No way.’

  ‘And you were there the whole time?’ Ryker asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Green said. ‘I mean, I went to the toilet for thirty seconds but that was it. I left the door open. I had my eyes on the hall the whole time.’

  ‘And the stairs?’

  Green didn’t answer. Ryker fought hard not to roll his eyes. It was a mistake by Green but the policeman could hardly have expected the Red Cobra to be sneaking by in those few seconds when no one else on the grounds had once suggested there was a problem.

  ‘She was already upstairs?’ Munroe said, shocked. ‘But for how long?’

  Ryker turned and walked out of the room, heading back through the hall then up the twisting staircase to the first floor. Green sheepishly followed, Munroe a step behind and looking bewildered.

  ‘We locked every room down,’ Green said, apparently still not ready to believe Ryker’s words. ‘We placed seals over the doors. Nothing’s been disturbed up here. I checked it all already.’

  ‘Except she knew what you were doing,’ Ryker said. ‘She probably watched and listened to you doing it. And it’s not too hard to replace a seal if you know it’s there.’

  ‘What? But–’

  ‘How many accesses to the loft?’ Ryker asked, standing on the landing and looking up at a hatch above his head.

  ‘Three,’ Green said. ‘That’s the main one. The only one with a direct access, a retractable ladder. No way she was up there, it would have been too noisy bringing that ladder down. Have you heard that thing?’

  ‘And the other two?’ Ryker asked.

  ‘A hatch in the master bedroom. Inside the wardrobes. But it doesn’t go into the full roof space. Just a cubbyhole for storage. Not big enough to fit a person.’

  ‘And the third?’

  ‘In here,’ Green said, turning around and walking along the landing.

  He opened a set of doors that led into a linen cupboard. He pointed upwards, and Ryker looked at the small hatch. It was no more than a foot square. Ryker seriously doubted he could fit through there. But the Red Cobra?

  ‘I don’t know why it’s there,’ Green said. ‘Maybe access to pipes or electrics.’

  ‘Didn’t you check it? Last night?’

  ‘Of course,’ Green said. ‘But it’s sealed shut. I tried to open it but it’s been glued or painted in place.’

  Ryker pushed past Green and climbed onto the first shelf inside the cupboard so he could reach the ceiling. He pushed the hatch. It lifted up in his hand. Inside was an empty storage space, no bigger than a cubic yard. Electrical wires snaked along one of the walls. Ryker looked down at Green who gawped in disbelief. His cheeks turned red.

  ‘It didn’t move,’ Green said, as though trying to convince himself as much as the others. ‘I tried it myself.’

  Ryker shook his head. ‘She was already in there. Probably sat on the damn thing when she heard you moving around, so that it wouldn’t open.’

  ‘I can’t... but–’

  ‘And now we know why Cardo was pushed over the edge of that ravine,’ Ryker said, climbing down.

  ‘Time,’ Green said, finally getting it.

  ‘Yes. Which is what I suspected. I just didn’t know why.’

  ‘She didn’t want the police swarming this place to protect Walker straight away.’

  ‘She needed time to get from that hotel and over here into position first. By hiding Cardo’s body, she knew she was buying time before his murder was called in. Enough time to get over here, sneak in and lay low before we secured the damn place.’

  ‘She was here the whole time,’ Green said again as though he still couldn’t fathom it. ‘She could have killed us. She could have killed us all.’

  ‘She could have, but she didn’t.’

  Five minutes later, the men sat back in the kitchen. Green and Munroe were clearly shocked that the Red Cobra had been so close to them and they’d known nothing of it. But they didn’t need to be scared. Not unless they were hiding something. The Red Cobra was after Walker, not them.

  Ryker kept coming back to the same point. Why hadn't she just taken the opportunity to kill Walker? Twice she’d been in the house. Twice she’d left without a scalp. Ryker could think of two reasons. First, Walker wasn’t a target. Yes, she’d attacked Walker, she’d left that note. But was it simply a clue, a message as to her real intention? The note certainly wasn’t a direct threat against Walker’s life.

  The second reason was that the Red Cobra needed Ryker’s help. Whatever she had planned, she can’t have been sure she could see it through alone.

  Either way, Ryker wasn’t scared, not like these two were. He was simply impressed at the tactical move she’d made, and slightly embarrassed not to have figured it out sooner. Hiding in plain sight. They’d never once suspected she was already in the house, lying in wait. More fool them.

  Ryker downed the rest of his coffee which was by then only lukewarm. ‘It’s time I got going,’ Ryker said, looking at his watch. It was nearly eight a.m.

  ‘Going? Going where?’ Green asked worriedly.

  Ryker debated for a moment whether to let Green in on his plans. In the end, he decided against it.

  ‘I’m going to try and save your skins,’ Ryker winked at Green then headed for the door. ‘You can thank me later.’

  48

  The Sunday morning traffic was light on the motorway as Ryker made his way from Casa de las Rosas into central Malaga. The hotel he’d stayed at when arriving in Spain was his first stop. He wasn’t staying long though. As much as he felt he could do with some more rest, given the rude awakening he’d had in the middle of the night, now was hardly the time for sleeping. But he did want to pick up his belongings. His money. His passports. He didn’t know when he’d again be getting a restful night in the hotel so there was little point in leaving his few valuables there.

  After checking out of the hotel, for which he paid in cash, Ryker made the short trip through the painful one-way system of the city towards the apartment block where Miguel Ramos lived. It was less
than two miles from the hotel but took nearly thirty minutes, the irksome journey only adding to Ryker’s fractious mood, which wasn’t helped by the fact he’d barely slept the night before following the Red Cobra’s attack.

  Ryker left his car in the closest public car park he could find – the cramped city streets left little room for on-street parking – then headed on foot to the apartment block. He didn't know the city well but from what he’d already seen, it had the distinctive enclaves of most large urban centres. The old town centre, packed with tapas bars and restaurants that spilled onto the streets, shops and charming buildings, churches and museums, was pleasant and extensive enough to draw in the locals and throngs of tourists. But the real life and soul of the city lay in the mainstay residential areas that sprawled out into the distance.

  The area Ramos lived in was a far cry from the charming historic centre, despite its geographic proximity. It certainly wasn’t poverty-stricken but the many apartment buildings were all block-like, nondescript. The buildings weren’t in serious disrepair but the large cracks and blemishes in their rendered walls – some finished in white, some yellow, others red, blue – showed they were in need of better care. Quite a contrast to the ostentatious wealth Ryker had seen on display just a few miles west in Marbella.

  The dirtied-yellow building that Ryker walked up to had an arched passageway that led into a central open-air foyer. There was no security of any kind, no guards or concierge. The inside was tidy and clean. Ryker headed to the tiled staircase.

  An old woman approached. She carried a walking stick in her hand and wore a long skirt and woollen jumper that Ryker couldn’t fathom given the heat that was already building. She made eye contact with Ryker as she passed. He smiled at her. She just glared at him warily then carried on her way.

  Was he really so off putting?

  Ryker moved up the stairs to the third floor then along the exposed corridor that ran along the inside of each of the four sides to the building. He stopped when he reached Ramos’s door, knocked three times, then waited.