by Gary Haynes
Karen nodded.
“We take out the ugly twins on the gate, Tom, that’ll be six shooters left and the tech.”
Tom glanced over at him. His friend’s eyes were on fire.
87.
Using bracken and ferns as cover, Tom watched Karen scanning the wall along its visible length with the long anti-sensor laser. She signalled that she’d picked up two glints from the lenses of CCTV cameras hidden in the vicinity, in addition to the one that Tom had already located. She switched the military laser off before the cameras were disabled prematurely.
“They’re pointing away from the guards,” she whispered, “covering the wall.”
“Guards first, then,” Tom said. “I’ll go left.”
Tom took out a coiled, knotted rope with a hook at one end and hung it from his belt. He nodded to Karen, who pointed the M16 towards the guards on the gate. She hit both of their faces in quick succession with the disabling light.
Tom and Lester sprang up and ran forward. The two men, who’d been blinded temporarily, raised their hands to their eyes before reeling around like drunks. As Tom and Lester reached them, they knocked both of them out with quick sharp blows from the butt stocks of the MP7s, hitting them on the sides of their jaws. After they’d dropped, they secured them with flex-cuffs and gagged them before dragging them over to the nearest tree.
The gate was locked by a central control system and couldn’t be scaled due to the razor-wire. Tom checked for signs of life, but there weren’t any. He jogged over to the wall, signalled to Karen, who activated the probe, which automatically switched to a high-energy laser and overloaded the cameras, disabling them.
He didn’t know what level of security the chateau had or had been added to by the tech. There could be infrared detectors or geophones, which monitored vibrations on the ground. There could be hidden microphones or cameras designed to look like flowerpots or rocks. But he just hoped that if they set something off before they reached the chateau proper, the tech would take them for guards. That was the plan. It didn’t matter what the windows, doors or interior were protected by – pressure mats, broken-glass detectors and the like – since they’d planned to assault the building head-on.
Tom swung the knotted rope hook first over the wall. Once secured, he began scaling it, pushing his body out and taking the strain with his legs. His hands worked mechanically, the odd jutting-out stone assisting his progress. At the top, he lay flat and pulled the rope up before fixing the hook to the front of the wall and letting the rope fall to the far side. He rappelled swiftly down, crouching on the damp soil a metre or so from clumps of light-yellow peony bushes. He took the field-scope from his belt and checked the front of the chateau. It was clear. He wrapped the rope in an oval around his hand and elbow and, tucking the sharp hook into the middle of the coil, swung it over the wall in a wide arc for Lester. He heard a dull thud as it landed on the grass verge on the other side. Waited.
He saw Lester emerge on top a minute or so later, the sound system filling his backpack, such that his friend looked as if he’d grown a shell. After repeating the manoeuvre with the rope, he crouched beside Tom and slid the MP7’s extended butt into his shoulder, aligning his eye with the holographic sight.
“It’s quiet,” he said.
Yeah, like a graveyard, Tom thought.
Karen appeared and rappelled down, leaving the rope dangling from the wall. Tom just hoped they wouldn’t have to use it to escape the place if everything went wrong.
Karen crouched down beside Lester, who took out the sound system and placed it next to her. She would wait for Tom and Lester to reach the chateau, then run up to join them.
“We’re gonna stroll up there like we own the place,” Tom said, handing Lester a wet-wipe before taking out one for himself.
They scrubbed their faces clean of camouflage paint. Lester took out a black ball cap and pulled it down low so that it was no more than three centimetres from his nose. He squeezed out a line of pale foundation cream from a tube, using it to buff his face into something that could be taken for Caucasian, at least from a distance.
Karen took the initiative, using the laser to knock out two security cameras, which, she said, were perched above the eaves of the roof.
With that, Tom and Lester walked casually towards the chateau along the gravel path, still dressed in the black fatigues of the men Lester had shot at the rest stop.
They got about halfway up before a man wearing eyeglasses, jeans and a sweater emerged from a side entrance. Tom took him for the tech, since he wasn’t carrying a weapon. He figured he was checking to see what the problem was after the cameras had malfunctioned. He called out, and Tom and Lester waved. Before he had a chance to register that something wasn’t right, Lester raised his suppressed MP7 and sprayed him with a burst, bringing the gun up in an arc, the rounds cutting into him from waist to shoulder. The man flipped backward and lay splayed on the grey pavestones to the left of the chateau’s decorative façade.
They sprinted the remaining twenty metres or so to the right of the chateau’s main entrance, crouching down in the narrow portico. Tom waved Karen forward.
88.
Proctor sat at an oak desk in front of a flat computer screen, slicing an apple with his Ka-Bar knife. Sixteen centimetres of stainless steel with a serrated edge. The windowless room on the ground floor was a library stacked with musty-smelling books, the high ceiling edged with moulded-plaster cornices.
He glanced at his knuckles. They were a dull red and ached a little. Although he’d worked over the US Secretary of State, something that he’d found strangely empowering, he was thinking that he’d never killed a woman before, let alone at close quarters. He was a sniper, and snipers picked their targets with precision. From a distance. Beheading a woman was something else. He consoled himself by deciding that no one would see the expression on his masked face as the blade sliced through her neck, despite the otherwise macabre theatricality of the spectacle.
A French guard burst in. A pinched-lipped guy with a thin face and a long nose whom Proctor had secretly nicknamed, “The Shrew”.
“What’s wrong with your radio?” he asked.
Proctor put down the Ka-Bar and picked up the PTT radio on the desk, pushed the activation button. “Shit, it’s flat.”
“We have a problem,” The Shrew said.
“What is it?”
“Intruders. Armed.”
“Police?”
“Unlikely. Just two men and a woman. But they’ve killed Jacques already and taken out the CCTV cameras.”
“Alert the others. I’ll be out in a second,” Proctor said.
The Shrew darted out, a worried look on his ashen face.
Proctor took out his cell and phoned Swiss. After a couple of ringtones, he picked up.
“There’s an issue,” Proctor said.
“Tell me.”
“Two men and a woman with attitude problems.”
“So deal with them,” Swiss said. “Ring me as soon as it’s done. Don’t fuck it up.”
Proctor thumbed the red button, holstered his Slovakian K100 handgun fixed with a red-dot laser sight, stood up and walked from the room.
89.
Lester placed the thirty-centimetre-by-six-centimetre adhesive strip of breaching charge over the lock of the chateau’s large oak-panelled door before inserting the delayed primary explosive devices. Karen moved up and crouched beside Tom. He could smell her hair, a slight waft of deodorant, too. It smelled good. When the door was blown off its severed hinges, she would hit the sonic sound system. She’d wait outside, covering the rear.
They all put in their earplugs, which Lester had supplied, and walked backwards, keeping their distance from the wall. Six shooters, Tom thought. It only took one to kill her. He figured their chances were less than fifty-fifty. But he’d known since he’d spoken to the Frenchman masquerading as a DCRI operative, and then Birch, that they were her only hope. French Special Forces wouldn’t
get here in time. I’m doing the right thing, no matter what Birch and the suits on the Hill have waiting for me, he thought.
If I make it back.
The door was flung outwards, sending shards of wood into the air with the smoke as the shock wave careered down the wall. A split second later, they ran forward. Karen knelt and activated the system, the sound like a mixture of a high-pitched wail and a ship’s horn, causing the windows to rattle and ground to reverberate beneath them. Lester edged forward, using the stone archway as cover, and lobbed in a flash grenade. A couple of seconds after it had detonated, he and Tom rushed under the arch where the door had been. Inside, they hunkered down, covering either side of the flagstone vestibule as they moved forward, pointing their MP7s. Stopping just before the large entrance hall, Tom noted the knotted floorboards half-covered by a huge oriental rug, the high ceiling, and the wide wooden staircase leading to a carpeted gallery to the rear.
Once fully inside, he saw a man on his knees to his right, his hands on his ears, blood flowing from them. Lester ran over to him, his boot knocking him unconscious as it connected with his temple. Tom quickly secured his hands and feet with plasticuffs before picking up the man’s weapon and slinging it over his shoulder. Despite the plugs, his eardrums were pounding, the constant pulse of the sound system creating a disorientating rhythm, and he struggled to stay upright and move in a straight line. After seeing an archway leading to a corridor to the left, a flight of uneven stone steps to the right, Lester pointed up to the gallery, the back wall draped in a massive mural of a hunting scene. Two men had appeared from either side with MP7s, but they were moving them around awkwardly, their faces contorted in silent screams.
Tom and Lester bolted for cover towards the left-hand corridor, just as a swath of bullets hacked at the floorboards, sending splinters through the air like a volley of blow darts. They crouched down beside an oak grandfather clock, the gilded woodwork gleaming. Lester unclipped a stun grenade and reached out to throw it. As he let go of the grenade he spun around. His right arm hung limp. A random round had penetrated his bicep.
Tom dived out, falling into a forward roll. The two men were on their knees now, barely able to hold onto their weapons, although one got off a couple of rounds, which hit the lattice ironwork beneath the wooden banister rail, creating a flash of sparks.
Knowing he had just a few minutes to save the secretary, Tom took aim and fired two short bursts, saw them keel backwards.
Struggling up, he swayed back to Lester, who was propped up against the clock, his hand grasping his arm, the blood leaching out in ominous-looking streaks. Abruptly, the sound system stopped. Tom guessed it had malfunctioned. He fixed up Lester’s arm as best he could with a makeshift tourniquet, using a handkerchief he’d pulled from a pocket of the fatigues. They both took out their earplugs.
“That mother coulda used that,” Lester said, gritting his teeth.
“You wanna bleed out or get snot on your arm?”
“Well, you put it like that.” Lester pulled out his SIG. “But I ain’t done yet.”
Tom pushed Lester to the floor, covering him with his body, as two men came running up the corridor behind him.
“Tom?”
It was Karen’s voice. He heard her as she ran through the vestibule, the thud of her boots echoing as they hit the flagstones.
“Get down, Karen!” he shouted.
Covering Lester’s head with his forearms, he let off a burst from the sub-machine gun, hitting one of the men in the legs as the other ducked into an alcove. The man he’d hit cried out and buckled to the floor, his weapon falling out of reach.
“Jesus, Tom. Let me up,” Lester said.
Tom glanced around, saw the telltale red dot on Karen’s chest, emanating from an optical laser-beam sight. She was scanning the hallway with the Browning, but the man with the gun was obviously hidden.
“Karen!”
Lester heaved him off and aimed his SIG at the alcove. “Help her,” he said.
90.
Tom struggled up, hearing the discharge before he could break into a sprint. He saw the Browning fall from Karen’s hand. Then another shot rang out. Her body collapsed to the ground, an agonized expression creasing her face.
“Jesus, no,” he said. “Karen!”
As he was about to run to her, Tom heard Lester hammering down the corridor behind him, emptying half a clip as he did so. He glanced over his shoulder, almost involuntarily, just as Lester put a round in the head of the man in the alcove. His near-suicidal charge had been successful only because the man had risked ducking out rather than blind firing, conscious, perhaps, that if he missed he would be vulnerable. They had both acted recklessly, and Lester was lucky to be alive.
Tom turned and glimpsed a shaven-headed man disappearing down the stone steps to the basement. The last man. He saw Karen lying on the rug, her body twitching in spasms. He ran towards her, jumping over the body of the man he’d secured earlier. As he got to her, he bent down. Her eyelids were fluttering, her camo windbreaker soaked with blood around the two scorched entry holes.
“Go on,” she said, blood oozing from her already blue-tinged lips. “Find her.” Her breath was laboured, her voice a murmur.
“Karen, hold on. Just hold on,” he said, cradling her head. Her eyes closed, a ghostly moan emerging from her mouth. Then she went limp. He put his hand to her nose, felt nothing. Tears welled in his eyes.
“She’s dead,” he said, hearing Lester come up behind him.
“We gotta move, Tom,” Lester said, putting his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “We gotta move now.”
“He went down the steps. That’s where she is, in the basement.”
“C’mon, Tom. We gotta finish this.”
Recalling Karen’s words to him at the airfield, Tom took off his jacket and placed it over her neck and face. He slumped down afterwards, the impact of the shock of her death making him lose focus. He held her flaccid hand, willing her to somehow open her eyes.
“The secretary,” Lester said, dragging Tom up. “He’s gone to kill the secretary.”
Tom shook his head, took a deep breath and stared blankly at his friend.
“C’mon, Tom. We gotta move,” Lester said, grabbing Tom’s forearms and shaking them like a pair of maracas.
Running down the stone staircase with Lester, Tom felt as if his head were about to explode, as if he had come to the limits of his physical and mental self. It was all he could do to stop himself from passing out. But he had to go on. To find her. To fulfil his promise to her. He hadn’t had the opportunity to save his mother, although he would’ve gladly died in the process. If he knew anything at all now, it was that he had to go on. To take revenge on the man who’d killed Karen, too.
As they got to the foot of the steps the corridor went left and right. Tom and Lester hugged the opposite supports beneath a large stone lintel.
“We’ll split up,” Tom said, his head still buzzing.
“I’ll go right.”
Tom watched Lester run down the corridor, drops of blood leaving a scattered trail from the entry wound. Looking left, he saw the dim corridor, a few lights affixed to the low ceiling in wire cradles. The gas pipes were exposed against the off-white walls, the floor grey-slate slabs, uneven and cracked with age. As he got halfway down he saw three rooms to the right, another corridor leading off to the left. Uncertain of how to proceed, he crouched down. The chain of events that had led him here were a wake-up call. Many people from Pakistan to the States had been involved in the secretary’s abduction. Some were dead or captured. The rest would follow, he told himself.
Hearing footsteps behind him, he glanced around, seeing Lester jogging back along the corridor, shaking his head. Five seconds later, his friend knelt down beside him, breathing heavily and grimacing as he tightened the makeshift tourniquet with his good hand.
“A dead end,” he said. “A windowless, granite wall.”
“You check the corridor off left.
I’ll check the rooms,” Tom said.
With that, the middle door swung open slowly.
“That’s spooky shit,” Lester said.
“No, that’s flesh and blood that wants us to walk into somethin’.”
Tom sighed. He figured she had to be in the room. There was no other reason for the man who had shot Karen to come down here. Nowhere else for the secretary to go, either.
“What now?” Lester asked.
Before Tom had a chance to answer, a voice called out.
“You got ten seconds. Then I’ll blow her face off.”
“An English accent. The guy the Frenchy called Proctor. He’ll know we won’t go in shooting,” Lester said.
“I gotta go,” Tom said, standing up.
“We come this far. I say we go together.”
“You’ve done a suicide run already, old friend.”
“He killed Karen. Your blood is up. That means you ain’t thinking straight,” Lester said.
Tom figured he was right. They got up together and walked side by side down the corridor towards the open door.
91.
The room was the makeshift cell she’d been kept in, a rank smell of body odour and damp filling it. The secretary sat gagged on a wooden chair. Her body was covered in blankets. Apart from her cut hair, her nose had been broken, her cheeks scarred and bruised. Her face was smeared with blood. Her appearance shocked Tom, but he did his best not to show it.
Proctor was standing beside her, holding a handgun to her head. Tom noticed the laser sight and flinched. It could only have been Proctor who had killed Karen, the shaven-headed man he’d glimpsed running down to the basement, but the physical confirmation had sent a jolt of aggression through him. He wore green fatigues and high, laced combat boots. He had a childlike smirk on his ugly face, his thick neck protruding from his clean-shaven jaw-line. Tom switched his eyes to the secretary.