by WOOD TOM
He saw a tall man some twenty metres away, a shadow of stubble around a mouth set with determination. Another mercenary followed a little way behind.
‘In here,’ Victor said.
He shoved open the door to a restaurant and pulled Gisele inside behind him.
SEVENTY-SIX
The restaurant had a high ceiling and ornate metal tables and chairs. Similarly ornate mirrors covered the walls. Victor waved a hand to dismiss a waiter’s ‘Table for two?’ and hurried through the room, eyes picking out the ways in and therefore out, seeking an exit instead of a way deeper into the building. His instincts told him to head for the kitchen and an inevitable back door, but he felt a breeze on his face from an entranceway below a sign for the toilets.
A waitress overloaded with bowls and plates stepped out in front of him and was thrown out of his path, sending soups and salad across the floor. Gisele apologised on his behalf.
Through the entranceway, he turned to follow the corridor, saw doors leading off to the men’s and lady’s toilets and the fire exit at the far end propped ajar to let air funnel inside.
From behind him, he heard the crash of the restaurant door being flung open.
‘Run,’ Victor said.
The two pursuing mercenaries charged through the restaurant, knocking diners and staff aside, jumping over the spilled food and puddles of soup, knowing exactly where their targets had gone, thanks to a waitress yelling in the direction of the toilets.
They entered the corridor, moving fast, the first leading with longer stride, heading for the open fire exit, the second following a metre behind, view blocked by the taller man.
He drew a pistol from beneath his jacket.
Which Victor batted out of his hand as he charged out of the adjacent men’s room, slamming the man into the wall with his momentum, elbowing him in the face, sinking him to his knees.
The lead man turned and snapped his pistol up, but not fast enough to stop Victor stepping inside and striking him in the chest with a short left punch. He staggered backwards, gasping, dropping his weapon to reach out with both hands, searching for purchase on the walls to his left and right.
The scrape of metal alerted Victor to the man behind him, going for the gun while still on his knees. He scooped it up, twisted around one hundred and eighty degrees, arms straightening and aiming.
A side kick sent the gun out of the mercenary’s hands for a second time. He rolled out of the way of Victor’s next attack, who didn’t try for a third because he knew the taller man would be recovered behind him. Victor spun around, blocked the knife thrust meant for his back, dodged a second, grabbed an outstretched arm when the third came and swung him into the men’s room door, face first.
Releasing the arm, Victor slipped the second man’s elbow, then dropped him to the floor with a kick to the back of the knee, creating the space to strike the taller mercenary, catching him in the mouth with a right elbow, then sending him sprawling from a palm heel to the jaw.
He went for the closest gun, but the prone man recovered fast and charged him from behind, powering him into a wall, making him toe the pistol away as he stumbled. He caught his attacker with a backwards headbutt, creating enough time and space to twist around and follow up with another headbutt, impacting with his forehead into the bridge of the mercenary’s nose – not shattering it because he was already stumbling back, but sending blood streaming from the nostrils.
He ran because the tall man was rushing for the second gun and he was going to reach it before Victor got to him.
The gun clacked and a bullet took a chunk from the fire exit as Victor dashed through it. He veered out of the line of fire an instant before a second round buried itself in the brickwork opposite.
The fire exit led out into a narrow alleyway just wide enough for a car to squeeze down. Victor headed right, as he had instructed Gisele to do, and found her staring at him, tense from the gunfire.
Sinclair heard the gunshots too. They were muted by a suppressor and subsonic ammunition, but he heard them all the same. He stood outside the Range Rover, holding an MP5 out of sight behind the open rear door.
A voice through his earpiece: ‘We’ve lost him in the restaurant… In pursuit. He’s heading west.’
‘Stay back until I say otherwise,’ Sinclair replied. ‘I have him.’
The mouth of the alleyway was fifteen metres away on the far side of the street. The gunshots had come from that direction. He waited. The target and her protector appeared. Sinclair stepped out of cover, began bringing up the sub-machine gun when Wade said:
‘Careful. Cops.’
Sinclair glanced to where a police car had stopped at the end of the street, no doubt looking for the culprits responsible for the recent crash and shooting.
‘Get in the motor,’ Wade screamed. ‘We gotta move out.’
The siren grew rapidly louder as the police car sped closer. Sinclair didn’t look. He didn’t need to.
‘Fuck ’em,’ Sinclair said, raising his weapon.
Victor saw a man on the far side of the street, partially shielded by the open rear door of the Range Rover. The man had a shaved head and wore khaki trousers and a leather jacket. The South African. The man called Sinclair, who had made the near-impossible shot that killed the cab driver. Though mostly out of sight, Victor could see the fat integrated suppressor of an MP5SD held in cover.
Sinclair wasn’t looking his way. He was glancing to his right, at the cop car pulled over at the mouth of the street. The MP5 started to rise.
‘GUN,’ Victor yelled, and pointed in the hope the police officers would see.
Instead of hanging around to find out, he darted to his right, away from the gunman, dragging Gisele down into the cover of a parked vehicle.
The cop car skidded to a halt near to Sinclair before he’d found the shot. All he needed was an instant, a heartbeat, but it didn’t come. In his peripheral vision he saw the armed response officers exiting their car, weapons up.
‘DON’T FUCKING MOVE.’ They came forward. ‘Hands in the air. Drop the gun.’
‘As you wish.’
He released the MP5 and it clattered on the road surface. The first cop approached Sinclair while the other stayed back, covering.
‘Turn around. Keep your hands up.’
Sinclair did as instructed.
The cop came closer, putting his gun away to take out handcuffs. He stood behind Sinclair. The cop reached up and took hold of Sinclair’s right wrist, but didn’t complete the manoeuvre.
Sinclair wrenched his arm down and spun to the right before the cop had a chance to act. Now facing him, Sinclair slammed his knee into the cop’s groin and with his left hand pulled the pistol from the holster in one fluid move.
Even if the other cop had reacted fast enough he couldn’t have taken the shot. Sinclair was using his partner as cover.
He pushed the Glock’s muzzle against the closest cop’s ribs and fired three times. Before the corpse had hit the ground the gun was raised and the second officer was flailing backwards, taken out with a double-tap to the sternum. A third between the eyes followed.
Sinclair turned back towards his prey, but they were gone. At the end of the street, the two guys who had pursued on foot were boarding Wade’s Range Rover. Sinclair approached.
‘You lunatic,’ Wade yelled at him. ‘You’ve fucked us all. I’m done with this shit.’
Sinclair executed him with a single shot to the face.
He looked at the remaining two mercenaries. ‘Anything to add?’
They shook their heads. Sinclair pulled Wade’s corpse from the driver’s seat and onto the road. He climbed in.
‘This is Unit Two,’Anderton’s voice said through the radio. ‘I see them.’
SEVENTY-SEVEN
The second Range Rover turned on to the street ahead of Victor and Gisele. They couldn’t turn back – that would mean heading in the direction of their pursuers. There were no alleys or side streets leadi
ng off. To the right lay an impassable wall of brick with barred windows. To the left plywood hoardings rose two and a half metres, securing a construction site beyond.
‘This way,’ Victor said.
He stood before the hoarding with his hands cupped as the Range Rover accelerated towards them. Gisele didn’t hesitate. She used her left foot to push off and he heaved her up. She cried out as she landed on the other side. He followed, leaping up and hauling himself over. He dropped down and pulled Gisele to her feet.
He grimaced, his injured ankle worsening from the drop, but they pressed on, scrambling down a slope on to an expanse of cracked asphalt stained with red building sand. There were huge piles of sand and gravel at one end of the area, a portable office cabin at the other. Directly ahead was the steel frame of a ten-storey building.
Behind them, a section of plywood hoarding collapsed as one of the Range Rovers crashed through it, blasting chunks of wood into the air. The vehicle tipped forward and dropped a metre before its front tyres hit the slope and its suspension absorbed the impact.
The only way to go was onward into the shelter of the partially constructed building. The Range Rover roared down the slope behind them. Victor and Gisele passed between steel columns, stepping up on to the poured concrete floor. The ceiling above was concrete too. Construction materials and cables lay everywhere. Some walls had been erected. In places, plastic sheeting formed temporary barriers. He glanced over his shoulders to see their pursuers gaining with every second.
‘Keep going through until you reach the other side,’ Victor said to Gisele. ‘Then find somewhere to hide. Don’t come out until you hear my voice.’ He gave her the gun. ‘Take this.’
She tried to push the gun back into his hands. ‘No. You take it. You need it.’
‘Do as I say, Gisele. Or we’re both dead.’
She looked at it, then at him. ‘What are you going to do?’
He didn’t answer because she already knew. ‘Go.’
Victor watched her hurry away. In seconds she was lost in the darkness. He turned around, eased himself into position, side-on behind a support column, and waited. Their enemies were near, frantically chasing for them, high on the thrill of the hunt – there was nothing quite like it – intensified by the fear of failure. Victor would use that against them.
He rocked his head from side to side to crack his neck. His hands tingled.
Death was close.
The Range Rover had blown a tyre and collided with a horizontal stack of girders. Steam billowed from under the bonnet and it struggled to reverse, wheels throwing out great sprays of wet red building sand that painted its black bodywork and coated windows. The mercenaries inside abandoned it.
There was no denying it, the vehicle was a wreck. The noises emanating from the engine were of a beast wounded and succumbing to the cruel hand of mortality. They drew their weapons and waited for Sinclair to join them.
Using hand gestures, he told them what to do.
He moved noiselessly through the construction site, silenced MP5 out before him, gaze focused along the iron sights. Where he looked, the muzzle pointed. He was eager to kill; to finish this. Not for fear of police intervention, but for his own personal satisfaction. He lived only to see death. He breathed slow, regular breaths. He was excited but calm in battle. The sweat tasted like honey on his lips.
He had heard the sound of plastic sheeting flapping in the wind. Somewhere in the darkness was a killer with a gun. Sinclair moved slowly. He had all the time in the world. He knew this was it. His enemy was lying in wait, ready to ambush.
Not that Sinclair felt at risk. He was the predator. He sat at the very top of the food chain, every other living thing below him. His prey.
He pictured the killer, gambling that they would be rash or stupid. Hoping they were going to walk into his trap.
Praying, more like.
Sinclair had set a trap of his own.
He’d signalled for the two mercs to move forward while he circled around the flank. However good Norimov’s assassin was, he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head.
The two men would die, serving as bait to bring Sinclair’s prey out into the open.
He would feast on them all.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
Victor waited in the shadows. He crouched low, where it was darkest, listening to the quiet scrape of shoes on concrete or crunch of heel on gravel, noting when they broke apart and formed to separate sounds, one growing increasingly quieter while the other grew louder. The sounds were close, but they overlapped and echoed around the space. Victor waited. The two men were moving too fast. They were attempting caution but too anxious to make it work. Adrenalin and limited visibility were not conducive to accurate special awareness.
If he could take the first out without the second’s knowledge, the second wouldn’t be a problem. He changed positions, closing the distance between himself and the first man. He stood side-on to another column, watching the man’s shadow approach.
Victor sprang out of cover, but his ankle slowed him. He took the man by surprise, but was not fast enough to take him down noiselessly.
The mercenary managed to squeeze the trigger, but the muzzle was already twisted away from Victor, gun torn out of the hand an instant later, clanging off a steel column after hurtling through the air.
Victor dropped his forehead into his enemy’s face, darting back at the same time as the man recoiled, then turning to intercept the second gunman, who was responding to the noise, hurrying through the darkness, gun up, but failing to get his sights lined on to Victor, who was moving laterally, disappearing behind columns and partially constructed walls. He reappeared a moment later, coming at the gunman from his flank.
Victor caught the second man in the face with the edge of his right palm, then across the top of the gun-holding hand with his left forearm – shock and pain overloading the nervous system, jolting the weapon from the man’s grip. The mercenary fought back, fast and strong, trying to hit Victor with hooks and elbows.
He slipped aside, waiting for his opponent’s over-eagerness to create an opening, too slow and weak to exploit the man’s lack of skill until he left himself exposed. Victor slammed him with an elbow. The man lost his footing and collapsed to the floor, down but still conscious, cheekbone broken.
Victor grabbed the pistol, not hearing the first mercenary until he was already on him, grappling, trying to get the gun out of his grip, not the best fighter but bigger and stronger and uninjured.
The weapon was pushed upwards, forcing Victor’s arms above his head, using his extra reach and strength in an attempt to free the weapon. A kick to the side of the man’s knee took four inches from his height as he sank downwards. Victor exploited the momentary weakness to pull their arms down and drive his enemy’s fist into a steel column.
A smear of blood was left on the metal, but the man didn’t let go, so Victor did, letting the gun fall from his fingers. It struck the ground and the toe of his shoe sent it skidding away.
His enemy released him as he knew he would and went for his throat, but Victor was already moving, using his greater agility to slip from the grapple and land a solid punch to the man’s chest.
The impact knocked the mercenary back a step, but he was as tough as he was strong and within a second he’d recovered. He rushed Victor, who timed the inevitable takedown attempt and stepped aside, letting the man stumble into space, losing his balance and recovering too slow to stop Victor leaping on to his back and snaking an arm around his neck until the pit of his elbow was at the front of the mercenary’s throat.
The second man was on his feet already and going for his gun, so Victor released the choke and went after him, grabbing the outstretched pistol and fist as they turned his way, then wrenching them down and pulling towards him, muzzle harmlessly pointed at the floor, tipping his enemy off-balance. The man yelled in surprise and then in pain as Victor tore the gun from his grip and smashed it into his face. The f
irst impact dropped him to his knees. The next opened up his skull.
Victor turned, seeing the surviving mercenary going for Victor’s own disarmed pistol, scooping it up into his hands but immediately flying from his grasp as he contorted from the two bullets Victor put into him.
He glimpsed Gisele in the darkness and gestured for her to come to him. She did, keeping low and moving fast. He led her back the way they had entered.
A noise. He pushed her into the cover provided by the crashed Range Rover as an MP5 opened fire.
‘Keep down. Get behind a wheel.’
Gisele did, cowering as bullets slammed into the vehicle shielding them, puckering the bodywork with holes, cracking glass, making the car reverberate with multiple impacts.
The subsonic nine millimetre rounds fired from the MP5 had too little power to pass all the way through the car, but it wouldn’t protect them for much longer. Victor didn’t need to put his head into the line of fire to know the gunman was stalking closer. There was nowhere to run to.
He shuffled to where the car’s fuel inlet was located. He drew the mercenary’s knife, reversed his grip and drove the blade through the car’s bodywork approximately twenty centimetres below the inlet. Metal squawked as he tugged it free. He waited a second. Nothing.
Gisele whispered, ‘What are you doing?’
Victor stabbed with the knife again, five centimetres lower to account for the fuel tank being approximately a quarter full. Which was more useful to him than a fuller tank. This time when he pulled the blade free, petrol trickled out of the hole.
He stabbed twice more to widen the hole and soaked a handkerchief in the petrol. He stuffed it into the hole and looked at Gisele.
‘When I say go, run like you’ve never run before. Okay?’