‘Who are you? Let me out of here!’ Levoir demanded. ‘I won’t tell anyone about the murder! I won’t! I won’t!’
He tried to push by the man to reach the car’s door, but his head began to swim and a warm sensation gradually engulfed his body, his legs going weak till he felt he’d lost all control over them. They buckled beneath him and he fell against his captor. In seconds he was asleep.
The car turned onto the main road, crept sedately past the crowd of hotel guests as they spewed out of the hotel doors and onto the rain-glossy street.
‘What the hell is going on?’
Robert Napier leapt from the car before the driver had chance to properly stop outside the hotel.
A member of the hotel staff, standing before the sea of unhappy-looking guests out in the cold, a clipboard in one hand and talking animatedly on a phone, turned to the sound of Napier’s voice.
‘It’s the fire alarm, Mr Napier,’ he said, rather pointlessly, as the alarm still rang out like a tormented spirit.
There came the strident call of sirens as a fire engine rounded the corner, its blue lights blazing.
‘Do you have Adrian Levoir out here yet?’ he asked, scanning the faces of the crowd of guests.
The man shrugged. ‘We haven’t done a proper check yet, Mr Napier. They’re not all out of their rooms.’
Napier didn’t see Levoir among the people and signalled quickly to the three men inside the company car to follow him. He spoke to the staff member as he passed. ‘You see anyone by the name of Adrian Levoir you hold him here for me, understand?’ He didn’t wait for a reply and instead pushed through the press of bodies and through the doors into the lobby.
‘Excuse me, sir, you can’t go in there!’ someone shouted at his back.
‘I can go where I like,’ he returned. ‘Two of you take a lift each; you take the main stairs, I’ll cover the other flight,’ he ordered the men. ‘Do not let him get by you.’
‘Sir, there’s a possible fire. We cannot let you go in there.’
It was the desk manager. ‘There isn’t a fire,’ Napier said. ‘You were told to keep an eye on Levoir.’
‘And so we have been, Mr Napier. He’s not downstairs yet. The men watching his corridor will bring him down presently.’
‘I’m not so sure about that. If he’s slipped by you there’ll be hell to pay from Mr Lindegaard.’ He stormed by the worried manager and headed for the door to the stairs. His men fanned out on all sides. The firemen burst through the doors of the hotel and yelled out for Napier to stop, but he ignored them and dashed up the stairs.
When he reached the third floor, pausing briefly to catch his breath, he pounded down the corridor to Levoir’s room. One of his men was already there, waiting outside.
‘Where are the guys who were watching over him?’ he demanded to know.
‘No one is here watching him, Mr Napier,’ the man responded quickly.
‘What are you waiting for? Get in there. Break down the door if necessary.’
The man slid a card in the lock and swung the door open, letting Napier into the room. It was plain to see Levoir wasn’t there, but a thorough check was carried out nevertheless.
‘No sign of him taking the stairs, Mr Napier,’ said the second of his men coming into the room.
‘Then he’s made a break for it out the back way,’ snarled Napier. ‘Check it out, quick.’
Napier was left alone as the men went about their duty. He made a call.
‘Mr Lindegaard – Adrian Levoir is missing,’ he said. There was silence at the other end of the line. ‘Mr Lindegaard, did you hear me?’
‘I hear you, Robert.’ His voice as cold as granite. ‘Is that an alarm I hear?’
‘Yeah. Looks like he used the fire alarm and confusion to cover his getaway. Somehow the morons who were supposed to be keeping tabs on him let him slip by them. He can’t be far away. I’ve got my men onto it. We’ll have him soon.’
‘Now do you believe in his guilt, Robert? A guilty man never runs.’
‘If he ran…’
‘Meaning?’
‘I’d like to know how he slipped by his two guards.’
‘However he did it, he did it, and I find I’m extremely disappointed in you, Robert. Extremely disappointed. You failed to spot him. Failed to spot the CSL mole in our midst. How is that even possible?’ said Lindegaard.
‘I performed two thorough checks on the man. He appeared clean…’
‘You find him soon – understand? And when you do I want him taken care of. I’m so disappointed in you, Robert,’ he reiterated.
The line went dead.
22
Screaming
Someone was calling out his name, but it was muffled, as if they shouted through a gag from a great distance away. His head was swimming, his thoughts failing to come together in any rational way, and the pain – it was as if his brains had been put in a blender and the thing switched on high.
‘Wade! Wade!’
He was aware of hands moving over his upper body, fingers inspecting his temple. His face being lifted out of the dirt which caked his mouth and eyes. He coughed, and the action shot a fresh burst of pain through his head. When he opened his eyes he saw Martin Bolan staring concernedly into his face.
‘Christ, I thought you were dead!’ Bolan said, helping Wade sit upright. ‘You’ve been dealt a glancing blow on the side of the head by a piece of shrapnel. You were lucky it didn’t take out your brains. A couple of more centimetres and you’d have no head to speak of.’
Wade struggled to gather his mashed-up thoughts. Rose shakily to his feet with Bolan’s help. ‘He was shot…’ he said, suddenly remembering what had happened.
‘Quick, we’ve got to get you back to the coach…’ Bolan said, scanning the desert. ‘Our shooter’s still out there somewhere and I feel like a duck on a lake at hunting time.’
Leaning against Bolan, Wade hobbled towards the coach, glancing back at the crater and smoking mess that had once been a human being. But he drew to a halt, staring past the rear of the coach into the distance at a speck on the horizon throwing up a dust cloud.
‘We’ve got company…’ Wade said.
Bolan already had his gun at the ready. Wade did the same.
‘You hear a motorcycle?’ Bolan asked.
Wade nodded. ‘Headed our way. Go back to the bus, calm the others down. I’ll take care of this.’ He checked the clip of his gun.
‘You reckon that might be the shooter?’
‘No. The bullet came from the other direction. Get the bus’s engine cranked back up and prepare to get the hell out of here.’
As Bolan stepped inside the coach, Wade walked to the rear of the coach and went down onto one knee, holding the gun in two hands and taking careful aim at the approaching motorcycle. It was now about three hundred yards away and he could plainly see the rider clad in bulky military fatigues. The sun beat down on him, and he screwed his eyes up tight, trying to ignore the heat, trying to keep the gun steady, ignoring the steady dribble of blood from the wound in his forehead and the waves of pain that cleaved his head in two.
A bullet hit the side of the coach, a mere three inches from his head. It took him by surprise; it had come from his right. When he turned to look he saw three dark figures some distance away, running across the desert towards him. They fell to the earth, taking cover. He heard more cracks and two more bullets slammed into the coach. The glass in one of the windows shattered and someone inside screamed loudly. Wade flattened himself against the earth, letting off a shot at the three men and crawling back towards the front of the bus. He glanced back to see that the motorcycle was almost upon him, pausing long enough to raise his gun and get a bead on the rider, who at that moment slid the motorcycle to an unexpected halt and was slipping what looked to be an assault rifle off her shoulder. But instead of training the weapon on him, the rider opened fire on the three men. He saw spouts of dirt fly up as the bullets churned the eart
h before the attackers.
More bullets rippled along the side of the bus with the loud and distinct clang of metal against metal, and dirt spewed up near Wade. Rifle shots, he surmised. The bullets didn’t come from automatic weapons. But this time they came from the rough direction of the front of the coach. Sure enough, Wade saw more figures running towards him. Five more. Spreading out.
Where were they coming from? Had they been lying in wait for them, hidden by the desert?
The rider turned her gun on the five new assailants and they quickly fanned out and took cover, falling flat behind whatever mound was available. They were soon lost to the patches of dense scrub. The rider gunned the bike and roared up to where Wade was lying on the ground. He lifted his gun and took careful aim on the rider, who pulled up a dusty pair of goggles. Wade was astounded to see the dirty face of a woman under the camouflaged helmet. An attractive but decidedly serious face nonetheless.
‘Get up here on the pillion behind me, Wade!’ she demanded.
‘What?’
Had she just called him by his name? A woman he’d never even seen before?
‘You heard. Get up here behind me. Onto the bike – now!’
Bullets whined. Another window was shattered. More screams filled the air.
‘Wade! Get inside here!’ Bolan shouted from the bus doors. He fired his gun twice at the barely-glimpsed figures crawling on the ground to the front of them. ‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed. ‘There are more of them! They’re coming out of the bloody ground!’ He glanced querulously at the rider. ‘Who the hell is she?’
‘We don’t have much time,’ she said, firing in a wide arc, enough to keep their attackers pinned down. ‘You have to come with me now. There’ll be more of them coming pretty soon and trust me, you don’t want to fall into the hands of Cain.’
‘Cain? Who is Cain?’
The crack of rifle shots caused him to duck down again. The woman, however, casually traded gunfire. ‘I won’t be able to keep them pinned down for long. You’ve stirred an ants’ nest and they’ll be swarming all over the place in minutes. You haven’t got time to argue – just get your arse up here and I’ll get you away from this place.’
‘Are you crazy? I haven’t the faintest clue who you are, lady, but I’m not leaving the rest of them.’ He edged his way along the side of the coach. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
Bolan was trying to take cover just inside the door to the coach, but it was flimsy protection and he knew it. His face was drained of colour as bullets hit the metalwork beside him, forcing him deep inside. Everyone else was on the floor of the coach, hands covering heads, the sound of terrified voices filtering out to Wade.
‘There are more men coming at us from the other side of the coach!’ Bolan shouted as he spied the distant figures shimmering in the heat haze through the cab driver’s window. ‘They’re looking to surround us!’
‘You’ll never make it. You have to leave them, Wade,’ the woman cried. ‘The other passengers, they’re not like you. You don’t understand yet – you can’t – but you will soon. It’s you that’s important, not them. They don’t matter.’
‘Don’t matter?’ Wade burst angrily, reaching the door. ‘They matter to me!’
‘You have to believe me when I tell you that you shouldn’t waste your energy on them. They’re not what they seem. And neither are you.’
‘You’re talking bollocks, lady!’ he returned.
‘I can’t stay,’ she said.
‘Then give me the automatic,’ he demanded.
She looked out to the desert. More shots rang out and she almost felt the passage of the bullets as they whined close by her. ‘Sorry, no can do. I need it.’ She pulled hard on the throttle and the bike’s engine gave an ominous, throaty growl. ‘One last chance, Wade…’ she said, pulling down her goggles.
That instant she was knocked sideways from the bike, a bullet crashing into her chest. She collapsed onto the ground, the motorcycle narrowly missing her legs as it landed with a clatter in a cloud of dust. She yelped out in pain and Wade instinctively ran over to her at a crouch, picking up the fallen automatic and letting off a sharp burst in the direction of the latest fusillade. He could see she was still moving, her eyes screwed up in agony, her gloved hand clutching at her chest.
Grabbing hold of the straps to her weighty backpack he hauled her across the ground with one hand and fired the gun till the magazine clicked on empty. Bullets tore up the ground in front of him, and one or two more hit the metal of the coach near his head. He’d almost reached the door when he felt a thud on his arm, at first feeling the wound as little more than a bee sting. Blood soaked into his sleeve as the pain bit and he let go of the strap, unable to hold on. Resting on one elbow, he lay down the automatic and picked up his handgun again, noticing how bold his attackers were becoming, standing at a stoop but steadily advancing through the heat haze with seeming impunity. His gun soon emptied of the few remaining rounds. But his fear was held in abeyance by the sight of the men as they advanced ever closer.
They were dressed, not in some form of military fatigues as he’d expected, but, it appeared, in tanned leather and animal skins.
A shadow fell over him. Martin Bolan took hold of the woman and pulled her to the door. ‘Get your arse inside!’ he yelled to Wade. He lifted the woman up, who tried to shrug him off.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, coughing and grimacing at the pain it inflicted. She attempted to stand. ‘I’m wearing a vest…’ she explained.
Bolan pushed her up the step and inside the bus. She staggered and fell awkwardly beside the driver’s cab, and Bolan called for someone to help her. Jack Benedict crawled to the front of the bus. The floor was strewn with ice crystals of broken glass. The rest of the passengers huddled together at the rear of the coach on the floor between the seats. Hartshorn’s girlfriend Cheryl was in a convulsive state, experiencing an uncontrollable fit of near-hysterical screaming and tearing at her hair with clawed hands, her nose an inch from the floor. Amanda Tyler was doing her best to comfort her, but it appeared to be doing little. Hartshorn was sitting quietly and pale-faced on the floor, staring blankly into space. The Kennedy’s were on their knees praying furiously. There was a splash of blood on Phyllis Kennedy’s face.
Wade staggered to his feet, pushing Bolan ahead of him. But before they could seek the relative shelter of the bus Bolan fell forward, a red stain appearing immediately in his back. He gave a single sigh-like groan and slumped on the step, his right leg twitching. Wade pulled him up into the bus, leapt into the cab and hit the door button. It hissed shut.
‘Someone take care of Martin!’ he ordered. ‘He’s been hit in the back.’ He hit the accelerator, the bus lurching ahead. Through the front window he made out a line of men some twenty or thirty yards ahead, all of them armed with rifles and small arms.
And as one they took aim as the bus thundered towards them, the bus’s wheels hitting the charred and smoking mound that had once been a man tied to a chair.
Inside his head, Wade was screaming.
23
Live to fight another Day
Jack Benedict looked horrified to see the sticky red patch on Martin Bolan’s back begin to spread. ‘He’s bleeding badly! What do I do? What do I do?’
The woman he was trying to help – the sewn name badge on her uniform said Lieutenant L. Keegan – pushed him away.
‘I’m fine!’ she told Benedict. She was inspecting the hole where the bullet had struck her chest. She opened the jacket to reveal a black bullet-proof vest in which was embedded a flattened lead slug. She casually plucked it out and tossed it away. ‘Shit, this is going to hurt for a long while,’ she said, wrinkling her nose and rubbing her chest.
‘Martin’s bleeding badly!’ Benedict repeated. ‘I don’t know what to do!’
They both lurched forward as the bus hit a deep pothole. The woman stripped Bolan of his sweat-sticky shirt, ripping it open. Bolan coughed up bright-red blood.
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‘The bullet didn’t go through him. It’s still lodged inside him,’ she said.
‘You’ve got to help him,’ Benedict urged. ‘He’ll die.’
‘Sure he will,’ she said casually. ‘The bullet has passed through his spine and into his lung. He’s drowning in blood.’
‘In God’s name, quit jabbering and help the man!’ Wade yelled from the cab, looking down onto the pathetic form of Martin Bolan lying on his side, a pink froth bubbling from his lips, his face as white as snow-filled cloud.
‘I can’t,’ she returned. ‘There’s nothing I can do for him.’
‘Can’t do or won’t do?’ he said angrily.
‘Both,’ she said, her eyes hard and uncompromising. ‘He’s not who you think he is…’
‘Don’t give me that bullshit again. He tried to save me; he saved you! What have you got in that backpack of yours? You telling me you’ve not got a medic’s kit in there?’
‘He tried to save me?’ She laughed hollowly. ‘I hate to disappoint you, Wade, but that’s impossible. Altruism just isn’t in his makeup. Trust me, I know that for a fact.’
‘Yeah? Well you’ve got your facts all wrong…’
A storm of bullets sent the massive windscreen of the bus opaque, the glass falling like a heavy shower of hailstones. Wade covered his eyes with his arm, ducking down as bullets struck metal near him. The bus veered off the road and down a slight embankment, its nose hitting the soft sand and sending the occupants rolling forward. Wade shoved the bus into reverse, but the wheels couldn’t gain traction and the bus refused to move.
Keegan opened her backpack, took another thirty-round magazine and slipped it into the automatic rifle. She was cursing to herself; cursing at herself for getting into this mess. What had she been thinking? She should have never entered the fray in the first place. What good could she do now if she was taken by Cain’s men? But it was too late for personal remonstrations. She raised the gun and fired through the space where once there’d been a window. The men outside ducked and spread out as they’d done before, some lying down flat and peppering the bus with bullets, others racing towards the vehicle. She brought two of them down, then a third. A loud bang and the sudden dropping of the bus at the front told her one of the tyres had been punctured by a round. There was no getting out of this now.
Armageddon Heights (a thriller) Page 19