by Mark Dawson
The bodyguard was bundling Karsh and Jesse Brenner into the vehicle. Björn hoped for a sight of Karsh before he drove off. He aimed at the Land Rover, but he had no shot. He could possibly have shot the bodyguard, who was driving, but Karsh and Brenner were out of view as the Land Rover accelerated round a bend towards the castle.
As soon as he had fired the fourth shot and was absolutely sure Bertin was dead, Number Five slid down the slope into the gully behind him. He was now out of sight of the Land Rover. Bent low, he scrambled up the gully by the side of a small stream, then climbed over the ridge, still out of sight, and on to the reverse slope.
He contacted the Group and requested to be put through to Control.
“Target down,” he said.
“Well done. What about Thorsson? Have you seen him?”
“Negative.”
“He’s there somewhere. He used a credit card to pay for two rail tickets from Euston to Glasgow Central yesterday, and he hired a car in Glasgow. Silver VW Polo, registration Sierra Bravo One Seven Kilo Alpha Lima. Our assessment is that he is on his way to Castle Rosnager to go after Karsh. Delova is probably with him. Stay near the castle and keep an eye out.”
“I had to leave Bertin’s body on the hillside. The estate workers will call the police.”
“Avoid contact,” said Pope needlessly.
“And what do I do if I see Thorsson?”
“You know,” said Pope. “We still need Karsh alive. Thorsson is a threat.”
“Copy that.”
He set off back to his OP overlooking the castle. He wasn’t entirely happy with his orders. He had had no trouble killing Bertin. It was all in a day’s work; Bertin was a paid hit man who worked for the bad guys. But Thorsson? He wasn’t exactly a Brit, but he had served in the British army, risking his life for his adopted country. And for his mates, mates like Five. Then there was Norway: Five didn’t exactly owe Thorsson his life, but the injured corporal probably did. And Five certainly did owe Thorsson his career.
Thorsson wasn’t working for the bad guys, or at least not knowingly. He was trying to avenge the death of his sister. Five was trying to protect some rich hedge-fund murderer and some mineral deposits in a country he hadn’t heard of.
He shook himself. He couldn’t afford to think like this or he would end up like Milton, burned out and useless to the Group. He had been given an order and he would carry it out.
His day’s work was not yet done after all.
16
Björn assessed the situation.
He had missed his opportunity. But he wasn’t giving up; Karsh was going to die that day.
Someone else had been ordered to kill the American. A professional hit man. That man was now lying dead on the mountainside. Karsh or one of his employees would call the police almost immediately. But it would take them a while to arrive. A local copper would probably wait for armed backup before he investigated. Björn had no idea where the nearest armed police were stationed, but it couldn’t be anywhere nearby. He had some time: an hour at least, maybe more. Unless the police came by helicopter. In which case, less.
But who had shot the sniper? No one who worked for Karsh, or he would have shown himself. A professional, certainly. A rival hit man? Or the British government?
Björn didn’t know. But he did know that whoever had shot the sniper was good, and would probably shoot Björn to protect Karsh. Which meant Björn had to find whoever it was and neutralise him first.
The older estate worker was hurrying up the hillside towards the dead sniper, surprisingly quickly for one so burly. Björn took the opportunity to slip away over the reverse side of the ridge. He knew from his early-morning recce that there was a gully just behind the spot from where he thought he had seen movement.
A silver lochan sparkled in the hollow of the shallow valley in front of him. He skirted it in a wide circle to a point from where he should be able to see the mysterious shooter emerge from the gully.
And sure enough, there was a figure carrying a rifle, walking rapidly through the heather towards the castle, parallel to and out of sight of the road. Björn let him go on ahead, waiting until he had disappeared around a crag to follow. By the time Björn got to the crag, he could see the other man crawling up the hillside to the top of the ridge. Björn knew from his map that the castle was on the other side.
Björn watched as the man set up his rifle, pulled out his binoculars and scanned the view on the other side of the ridge.
It was going to be difficult to get near him; there was at least a hundred metres of open moorland behind him.
Björn watched for five minutes. At one point the man gave a cursory glance at the moors behind him, but he was concentrating on the castle over the ridge.
Björn crept closer along a muddy stream bed. Then he hurried forward over the open ground as rapidly and silently as he could. He was holding his weapon in front of him. He would use it if it became necessary, but he really didn’t want to.
The only person Björn wanted to kill was Finlay Karsh.
Fifty metres. There was a steady breeze from the northwest blowing in his face. It would muffle the sound of his boots squelching over the damp turf.
Twenty metres. The man still hadn’t heard him. Björn increased his speed to a sprint.
At ten metres, the man heard something and twisted. He reached for his rifle, but before he could aim it, Björn was on him.
Björn fancied himself against anyone in close-quarters combat, but he was hampered by his desire not to cause his opponent permanent damage unless he absolutely had to. He slammed the butt of his weapon into the man’s upper arm, forcing him to drop his rifle. He raised the weapon for another strike, but his adversary was quick, landing a swift kick to his knees.
Björn buckled and the rifle butt landed only a glancing blow. He stepped backwards as the man sprang up at him, grabbing Björn’s rifle with both hands. The two men crashed into the heather. As they rolled Björn took a split-second opening to slam his head into the other man’s face. Then again. There was the crack of a broken nose, but the man’s fingers still clasped the rifle. He was strong, perhaps as strong as Björn.
But not quite as quick. Björn let go of the rifle with his left hand, causing the other man to lurch forward off balance, straight into Björn’s fingers, which gouged his eyes. Björn slipped out from under him and aimed a sharp chop at his neck. The man’s head banged against a rock and he was out cold, blood still running from his nose.
Björn checked his neck for a pulse. The man was unconscious, not dead. And, to Björn’s surprise, he recognised him. He was the sergeant who had been in charge of their section in that disastrous exercise in Norway: Björn couldn’t remember his name. Did this mean the SAS were involved? Were the British government on Karsh’s side? The only alternative that he could think of was that the man was retired: a gun for hire.
Björn knew the man would kill him if he could, but he didn’t want to murder him. He took a length of rope and a knife out of his pack and tied the ex-sergeant’s wrists and legs securely. He ripped open the man’s jacket and cut a strip off his shirt to use as a gag. Then he rolled the man, still unconscious, down the hill, checked that he was on his side so the blood from his nose wouldn’t flow back down his airway, and left him.
17
Björn crawled over the rim of the hill and studied the castle below. The Land Rover was parked right outside the front door. All the curtains were open apart from those covering a window near the back of the house. That was probably where the inhabitants were gathered, the curtains closed to prevent Björn, or someone like him, firing at them through the windows.
Björn skirted around to the back of the house and descended through a damp wood of gnarled moss-covered trees and scattered boulders, keeping out of sight. From behind a copper beech at the edge of the garden, he could see two more curtained windows: presumably they all belonged to the same large room. He crawled through some rhododendrons, and then,
crouching, he scurried across the back lawn and pressed himself against the wall of the house. He risked peeking in the windows, but the curtains were well drawn, leaving not a crack.
He worked his way around the building; every time he came to a window, he would raise his head and check inside. The fourth window looked into a grand hall. The bodyguard, Mr. Jessop, was pacing back and forth holding one of the sporting rifles, glancing at the big oak front door and then back at the door to the curtained room. The hall was wood panelled, decorated with the heads of stags, a salmon in a glass case and a portrait of a man with impressive whiskers. The room stretched upwards two storeys; a wide staircase led up to a gallery and presumably bedrooms above.
Björn ducked down. He saw no other sign of life. There was a back door that was locked. He tried the window to a larder, but that was secured. He couldn’t get into the castle without making a noise.
Moving around to the back of the house he noticed that a window was slightly open on the second floor. It was a long way up, but a drainpipe headed down from the roof gutters a couple of metres to one side of it.
The drainpipe was not in good repair.
Björn was an expert rock climber, but he wasn’t sure whether the pipe would take his weight.
Only one way to find out.
18
Colin MacLeish was used to hearing rifle shots, especially on the moors around Castle Rosnager. But the sound of these four shots was subtly different to the Winchester or Tikka sporting rifles he was familiar with.
His first instinct was to check the hills for the white flashes on the rumps of hinds fleeing. Seeing nothing, he looked for a fresh carcass, or a wounded animal.
He was taken aback by the reaction of the two Americans and their bodyguard as they dived for cover, and felt an impulse to laugh.
But something wasn’t right. Who was doing the shooting? It had to be a brazen poacher to try to take a deer this close to the house when the ghillies were right there.
He turned to check the reaction of Archie, his boss. He was hurrying up the hillside.
Colin looked up to the ridge. There was a carcass amongst the heather all right. But it wasn’t a deer. It was a man.
The Land Rover sped off back towards the castle, with Mr. Karsh and Mr. Brenner inside, leaving Colin all alone and a little frightened in the middle of the road. He ran after Archie.
The two ghillies looked down at the body splayed before them. The shooter was dead. There was a rifle set up and pointed at where the Land Rover had just been parked. It wasn’t like any rifle Colin had seen: it looked military. He felt the barrel. Cold.
“What the hell’s going on, Archie?”
Archie gazed across the hills. “I don’t know. But whatever it is, it isn’t good.”
Archie took out his mobile phone. There was one bar of reception this high up, enough to make the call. He dialled 999. His report was urgent but firm. There was an armed man on the hills and a dead body right in front of him. Archie ended the conversation and put the phone away.
“All right,” he said, clutching his rifle. “I’ll wait for the police in the lodge.” That was his house, owned by the estate, just a few yards away. “You go back to the castle – you’ll be safe there with that bodyguard. But if you see anyone, just get into cover, do you hear me? Nothing brave. Nothing stupid.”
Colin set off at a brisk walk back towards the castle. He was excited and he was scared. Actually, he would feel safer in those hills that he knew so well than cooped up in the castle, however well secured it was.
He had gone a quarter of a mile when he glanced upwards. He had keen eyesight, and he knew how to spot movement. Someone was up there, just at the top of the burn.
Colin knew he should turn around, or possibly hide in the rhododendrons, but he had spent much of his childhood and adolescence crawling over these hills, and he was bloody good at it. If he could stalk red deer, he could stalk a man.
He set off up the gully.
He took his time. He was careful. An armed man was much more dangerous than a deer, but a man’s eyesight and hearing wasn’t as good, and most importantly, his sense of smell was rudimentary in comparison.
When Colin finally reached the ridge, he could see nothing. But he knew there was a broad strip of bog running from the ridge down to Lochan Fuar that the man would have had to cross. Sure enough, he found first one footprint and then another in the mud between the tufts of yellow grass. He made his way carefully down to a crag and peeked around it. He spied a figure lying prone on the ridge overlooking the castle, a rifle strapped to its back. The figure then got to its feet and set off along the ridge towards the wood behind the house.
Colin followed.
He heard him before he saw him: a strangled groan.
A man, a different man, was lying trussed up in the bottom of a muddy stream bed. Colin hesitated and then ran down to look more closely. The man was bound at his ankles and wrists, and a strip of cloth gagged him.
Colin ripped the gag off, picked up the unfamiliar rifle, figured out where the safety was, and pointed it at the man. Blood had caked his face from a broken nose.
“Untie me,” said the man. He was English. Northern English by his accent.
“No,” said Colin.
“Untie me. Now.”
“Not until the police get here.”
“I work for the British government,” said the man.
“Oh aye? Can I see your ID then?”
“I have no ID. I’m protecting Finlay Karsh. There was a sniper back there. I killed him. But there’s another man after him, the man who tied me up. Untie me so I can stop him.”
“How do I know that’s true?”
“I could’ve shot you before, couldn’t I?”
Colin thought a moment, and then shook his head. “Best wait until the police arrive. That’s safest.”
“No, it’s not,” said the man. “If we wait Karsh, will be dead. And probably everyone else in that castle.”
Colin’s sister Isla was in the castle, making the beds and tidying up.
“Think about it,” said the man.
Colin thought about it. Would that man he had seen crawling along the ridge really shoot his sister?
Possibly.
“All right, pal,” he said, laying down the rifle. “Give us your hands.”
19
Björn moved quickly and silently up the drainpipe. He might have been silent, but the pipe creaked. It really didn’t like his weight.
As he reached the level of the part-opened window, something slipped with a grinding sound, and the pipe eased away from the wall. He was now at least thirty feet above the ground; a fall would be painful at best, fatal at worst. There was a hard stone path beneath him. Probably fatal.
He was too far across from the window to reach it. His plan had been to get above the window and swing down.
He moved faster. The drainpipe detached itself from the wall completely, and began to fall in a long, slow arc. By a combination of pulling and swinging, Björn managed to direct the fall past the window, and he grabbed on to the ledge as the drainpipe crashed to the path below.
He now had two problems: the people inside would have been alerted that something was going on outside, and Björn was hanging from his fingertips from a window ledge thirty feet up.
The swimming and the time in the university’s gym were enough, but only just enough, to give Björn the strength to haul himself up onto the ledge.
It was a bathroom window. He carefully slipped his backpack and his weapon in first, and then squeezed through himself.
The bathroom led through to a bedroom, which in turn led on to a hallway. He descended some narrow stairs at the back of the house and emerged onto another landing.
Silently, he moved towards dark wooden railings at the end: the gallery he had seen from the window.
In the great hall below, Mr. Jessop was darting from one window to another, looking out for whoever had made that
crashing noise.
Björn dropped, landing on Jessop’s shoulders and knocking him flat. Jessop still managed to keep a grip on his rifle with one hand, but Björn stamped hard on his forearm, breaking a bone and the bodyguard’s grasp. Björn kicked the weapon out of reach, stood back and pointed his C8 at Jessop.
“On your feet! Quick.”
Jessop blinked at Björn, grabbed his arm and winced.
Björn raised his weapon. “Now.”
Jessop hauled himself to his feet.
“Through that door.” There were four doors leading off the great hall. Björn indicated to the one that led in the direction of the room with the closed curtains.
Jessop opened it, and Björn shoved his back, following him into what was a large drawing room.
Björn rapidly took in the situation. There were five individuals, all standing at various points around the room: the butler, Mackay; three girls, two blondes and one with green-edged hair whom Björn recognised as the waitress from the pub; and Finlay Karsh. The butler and the women looked scared. Karsh looked calm. And confident.
Where was Jesse Brenner? There was another rifle. Where was that?
Björn noticed the waitress’s eyes glance to his left.
He dived, rolled, and brought his weapon to his shoulder.
There was the loud report of a shot in an enclosed room, and then Björn fired a half-second burst at Jesse Brenner.
Brenner dropped.
Björn scrambled to his feet and stepped back before anyone else could make a move, his ears ringing from the gunfire.
Mr. Jessop was still holding his arm, Karsh was rooted to the spot, and one of the two blondes screamed.
Brenner was still.
“Nobody move.”
Nobody moved.
“You. Over with the others.”
The bodyguard did as he was told.
“Very good,” said Björn. “Unless you do anything stupid, you’re all going to walk out of here alive.” He glanced over at Karsh. “Apart from you.”