by Tom Wood
‘You told me the cell reception at the farmhouse is unreliable,’ Victor said.
‘That’s right.’
‘Yet I saw both Coughlin and Dietrich have phones.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Then call them.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I’ll explain later and I’ll apologise if I’m wrong. But for now do exactly as I tell you: call Dietrich.’
‘I think you’re forgetting your place, Mr Kooi. You should remember that—’
‘Call Dietrich. Now.’
Leeson scowled, but recognised that arguing further with Victor was not in his best interests. He placed his tumbler on the table and fished a phone from the inside pocket of his jacket. He thumbed a code to unlock it and made the call.
‘It’s ringing,’ Leeson said. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Hand me the phone when he answers.’
‘You need to explain yourself immediately or there will be—’
Victor leant across the table and tore the phone from Leeson’s grasp, and held it to his ear. Leeson’s eyes narrowed and his face reddened, equally furious and humiliated.
The dialling tone cut off and Dietrich said, ‘How’s your dinner?’
Victor didn’t reply. He waited. A car drove past on the street outside the restaurant.
He hung up and looked at the call log. There were no names, only numbers. ‘Which one is Coughlin’s?’
Leeson said nothing. He glared at Victor.
Victor stared at Leeson, eyes unblinking, every iota of his lethality succinctly expressed in the gaze. ‘His number?’
‘It ends with oh-nine,’ Leeson whispered between clenched teeth. ‘It’ll be the last but one.’
The phone was already dialling before Leeson had finished speaking.
‘Sir?’ Coughlin answered.
Victor remained silent.
‘Sir,’ Coughlin said again, ‘is everything all right?’
Victor remained silent.
‘Are you there, Mr Leeson?’
A bus passed on the road outside. The glow from its big headlights washed over the two men in the alleyway. One had his hands in his pockets. The other’s hung loose at his sides.
It had been the same when Dietrich had answered.
Victor disconnected the call and tossed the phone to Leeson, who just managed to catch it.
‘Just what the hell is going on, Mr Kooi?’ he snarled.
‘Do you have any enemies?’
Leeson didn’t seem to hear. ‘I’ve had as much as I can take of your insolence, Mr Kooi.’
‘Listen to me carefully. A Jeep Commander followed us to Rome. There’s two guys now standing across the street. I thought they were Dietrich and Coughlin. They’re not.’
Leeson’s brow furrowed. ‘Of course they’re not. They’re both busy on my orders.’
‘So I say again: do you have any enemies?’
Leeson sat back, anger starting to fade, but he wasn’t grasping what Victor already understood. ‘Do you think a man in my line of work does not generate enemies?’
‘Who could have known about the farmhouse?’
‘No one. It’s an impossibility.’
‘The Rolls then. Who knows about the limousines?’
‘I, uh… I’m not sure.’
‘Tell me who might know.’
Fear crept into Leeson’s expression. ‘Georgians.’
‘Mob?’
Leeson nodded. ‘An organisation in Odessa. Half of them are former KGB and SVR. God, I—’
‘I don’t care what you did to them. If you want to survive this you’re going to need to do exactly what I say. No questions. No hesitation. I say; you do. Understand?’
Leeson nodded frantically. ‘You’ve got to protect me, Mr Kooi. These people are animals. They’re absolute animals.’
The waiter arrived and placed Leeson’s curry and Victor’s stir fry on the table. He bowed briefly and left.
Victor grabbed his fork and began eating.
Surprised, Leeson stared at him for a moment. ‘What… what the hell are you doing? We need to go. Right now.’
Victor spoke between chews. ‘I haven’t eaten in a long time. I need to fuel up.’
Leeson’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘We need to get out of here. I’m ordering you to.’ He pushed his chair back.
‘Go and die on your own if you wish.’ Victor waved a hand towards the door. ‘Or you can stay with me and live.’
Victor ignored Leeson while he shovelled into his mouth the crispy vegetables that wouldn’t bloat his stomach or weigh him down, along with the sauce packed with simple carbohydrates that would load energy into his blood. He’d ordered it in preparation for facing Dietrich and Coughlin, not Georgian criminals, but the benefits were the same.
‘Drink some water,’ he said to Leeson.
Leeson reached for his Scotch.
‘No, drink water.’
The younger man did, downing half the glass in one go. His face was pale.
‘Don’t worry,’ Victor said. ‘They’re not going to make the attempt while you’re in here unless we give them reason to. So get a hold of yourself.’
Leeson wiped his mouth with the back of his shirt sleeve, took a breath and nodded. ‘What do we do?’
‘Go to the men’s room. Put your gun in the bin. Then come back here and wait while I go and get it.’
‘Okay.’
‘Don’t forget the spare mags.’
‘I don’t have any.’
‘Then just leave the gun.’
Leeson nodded again and stood. He looked unsteady.
‘Keep calm,’ Victor said. ‘Don’t let them know we know.’
Leeson sucked in a large breath, relaxed his face as best as he could, and headed for the toilets.
Across the street, the two Georgians waited.
THIRTY-FIVE
Victor retrieved Leeson’s gun from the bottom of the bin that stood next to the paper-towel dispenser in the restaurant’s men’s room. He had wanted to find an FN Five-seveN that fired supersonic bullets capable of penetrating most conventional body armour and held twenty in its magazine. He would have been pleased with a reliable Glock or a Beretta with plenty of bullets to shoot, whether 9 mm or .40 or .45 calibre. He would have been content with a compact pistol that held fewer rounds but still had enough stopping power for a one-shot drop. He had to settle for a SIG Sauer that fired .22 calibre bullets.
A .22 had enough power to kill – Victor had done so using one several times – but he had also seen a .22 bullet ricochet off a man’s skull. The SIG’s barrel had less than four inches in length through which to spin the subsonic round and create accuracy. Its magazine held just ten rounds.
It would have to do.
He tucked the gun into his waistband and headed back to the table where Leeson waited. He hadn’t touched his food, but he seemed as if he’d shaken off a little of the panic.
‘If you live through this,’ Victor said, as he sat down opposite, ‘get yourself a better sidearm.’
‘I called Dietrich,’ Leeson said. ‘He’s on the way with Coughlin.’
‘They won’t get here in time.’
‘They’re not at the farmhouse. They’re in Rome. They can be here in less than twenty minutes. We just have to stay in here. We just have to wait.’
Victor shook his head. ‘No, we have to get to the car.’
Leeson shook his head too. ‘We wait. I’m ordering you to wait.’
Victor stood. ‘Waiting won’t do any good. They know.’
‘What? How do they know? How do you know they know?’
‘Because they’re not across the street.’ He looked around the room. ‘Did you make the reservation yourself?’
‘Yes. This morning.’
‘You’ve eaten here before?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘With a member of the Georgian cartel?’
Leeson’s face dropped. ‘But it was
years ago. Before our relationship ended. I don’t understand…’
‘The time is irrelevant. You should have known better than to come to the same place twice, especially when the people you betrayed are former Russian intelligence. Someone overheard your calls to Dietrich and Coughlin.’
Turning on his chair to face the open kitchen, Victor saw the waiter staring straight at him, backing out of a door on the far side. He looked terrified. He knew what was about to happen.
Victor was already reaching for the SIG as the man in the knee-length leather jacket burst through the same door. He had a pump-action Mossberg shotgun clutched in both hands, the galvanised steel finish glinting under the bright halogen lights of the kitchen. His face was rigid with controlled aggression. His head immediately swivelled to his left, to where he knew his target sat, the muzzle of the Mossberg trailing a fraction of a second behind. Trained, but out of practice.
His right eye exploded in a haze of blood and gelatinous fluid.
There was no exit wound because the low-powered .22 bounced off the inside of the skull and deflected back on itself, tumbling end over end through the Georgian’s brain.
The man’s turn continued after death, momentum pirouetting the corpse as it collapsed forward into a kitchen worker, who screamed and fell beneath it.
Victor shot again, twice, because he knew the second Georgian from the alley would be following behind, and as the dead man collapsed, the next appeared, moving into the line of fire, the second of the bullets catching him in the left shoulder before he was even through the door. The shock and pain halted his charge and he tried to aim with his own shotgun but another .22 hit him in the throat.
A spray of blood arced through the air.
He fired – whether deliberately or from the reaction of his nervous system jerking his finger on the trigger – and the plate glass window at the front of the restaurant exploded.
Glass rained to the floor.
Diners were screaming and ducking or throwing themselves off chairs. Panicked kitchen staff dropped to the ground or scrambled into cover.
Victor squeezed the trigger again and the bullet zipped past the Georgian’s head. Blood continued arcing from his neck in staccato spurts as he racked the Mossberg. The expended shell was ejected from the chamber and spun through the air trailing a grey wisp of gunpowder smoke.
Terrified diners and staff moved into Victor’s line of fire. He tried to sidestep to get an angle but people were dashing to the door and blocked his way.
The shotgun roared and the maître d’s face contorted in front of Victor. She dropped at his feet, opening up a corridor of air between the SIG and the guy with the shotgun.
Victor put a double tap through his heart.
Amongst the tinnitus ring in his ears and the screams of terrified civilians, Victor heard Leeson’s panicked inhalation and the screech of hot rubber sliding on asphalt.
Twisting, Victor saw the big Jeep Commander skidding to a stop on the road in front of the restaurant. The passenger was already looking their way, the barrel of an AK74-SU protruding through the open window.
‘DOWN.’ Victor yelled.
Leeson was slow to react but Victor leapt forward to send them both crashing together to the floor as the sub-machine gun opened fire.
The AK-74SU was a shortened version of the AK-47, designed to be used at close quarters. The Jeep’s passenger aimed low to follow his target, but the SU’s recoil lifted the muzzle as it spat out a cyclic rate of over five hundred rounds per minute in a wild uncontrolled spray because the shooter wasn’t braced in a proper firing position.
Bullet holes appeared in brickwork, tables, diners, kitchen cabinets and even the ceiling.
The roar of the gunshots drowned out the screaming.
Victor rolled onto his back as Leeson lay face down with hands over his head as if those hands could stop bullets. Victor squinted to protect his eyes from the fragments of masonry and brick dust that peppered the air and the blood that misted above him. He counted off the seconds – one – because he knew on continuous fire – two – the SU would unload its thirty rounds in—
Three.
He jumped to his feet and drew a bead on the Jeep’s passenger as he released the spent magazine and fumbled for a new one, but he didn’t shoot straight away. The man was twelve metres away, blurred by gun smoke and shadow, presenting a narrow side-on profile, fifty per cent of his body concealed by an SUV’s door that might as well have been armour plating to a low-powered .22 calibre round.
Victor waited until the SIG’s tiny iron sights were perfectly aligned and squeezed the trigger three times.
The man jerked and slumped in his seat. Blood splashed across the driver’s face.
The Jeep’s tyres squealed and smoked as it sped away.
‘Move,’ Victor said to Leeson.
THIRTY-SIX
When he didn’t move, Victor grabbed him by the collar and wrenched him to his feet. He shoved the empty SIG into his hands.
‘Put this away and follow me.’
Victor pushed and shoved his way through the crowd of cowering and wailing diners. He vaulted over the stone counter and into the kitchen. The tiles were slick with a lake of blood from the guy shot in the neck. At about six feet tall and two hundred pounds he should have had nine litres of blood in his body. About half of that was spread across the floor. As Leeson followed, awkwardly climbing over the counter and dropping down the other side, he slipped in the blood and fell onto his back.
There wasn’t time to search the corpses, but Victor patted underneath the armpits and around the waist of the first dead Georgian, finding nothing. He did the same with the second and found a pistol tucked into the back of his jeans. It was a Daewoo DP-51.
‘Get up,’ Victor said to Leeson.
He thrashed and fumbled on the blood-slick tiles, horror etched into his young face, his tailored wool suit soaking up blood.
Someone in the kitchen screamed at Victor in Japanese. He ignored them, released the Daewoo’s magazine to check the load, shoved it back into the grip, pulled the slide, and gun leading, hurried to the open back door through which the two Georgians had appeared. It didn’t lead directly outside. A corridor lay on the other side. It was narrow and bright. Closed doors lay to his left. They would lead to walk-in cold cupboards, storage, maybe a small office or toilet. Another door at the end of the corridor hung open. Victor saw an alleyway on the far side.
Leeson scrambled to his feet and scooped up the first Georgian’s shotgun.
‘Take the other one,’ Victor said.
‘This has more shells, surely.’
‘But we know for certain the other one works.’
Leeson swapped weapons and edged up behind Victor, who had the Daewoo trained on the open doorway at the end of the corridor.
‘More?’ Leeson asked.
‘Only one way to find out.’
Victor walked quickly along the corridor, gun out before him. Leeson followed, cradling the Mossberg with whitened knuckles.
‘Keep your finger outside the guard,’ Victor said, glancing over his shoulder.
‘But—’
‘If you squeeze the trigger while you’re behind me you’ll shoot me in the back. Then who will get you out of this?’
Leeson nodded. ‘How are we going to get back to the car?’
Victor ignored him. He kicked open the first door to his left. There was a small toilet on the other side. He kicked open the next door. It was a pantry, full of boxes and shelves of non-perishable food and kitchen supplies. He glanced around, gaze fixing on cans of chopped tomatoes. He grabbed one and tore off the label to reveal the bare metal beneath. Leeson watched but said nothing.
Back in the corridor, Victor made his way to the doorway leading to the alley beyond. He listened. Nothing from the left. A dead end. Muted sounds of traffic and fleeing diners coming from the right. He tossed the can through the doorway so it sailed diagonally to the right. It was dar
k in the alleyway but the reflective metal sheen of the can caught what little light there was.
Muzzle flashes illuminated the alleyway in strobes of orange and yellow.
Bullets chipped brickwork and tore through the open door.