by Tim Stevens
Keeping his hand covered with the coat he broke away as many pieces of the glass as he dared, tossing the shards away behind him into the weeds. When he’d created a gap big enough to fit through he put the coat back on again and crawled through, sending further splinters skittering into the restroom. He dropped to the floor and paused at the door, drawing the Glock.
A short passage led from the restroom to the shop beyond. Purkiss stopped at the springloaded door at the end of the passage and looked through the glass panel at eye level.
Across three or four aisles, Pope stood at the window, looking out. Almost hidden in front of him was a woman’s slight figure. Pope’s right hand held a gun steady against the side of her head.
With his fingertips Purkiss pushed against the door. The springs were well oiled and there was no sound as the door opened. He passed through quickly, controlling the closing movement.
Pope presented his back to Purkiss. A single shot would have to suffice to take him down; one from closer range would be better. Pope was turned slightly to his right, holding the girl directly in front of him, so an approach from the left would be less likely to risk hitting her. Purkiss ducked and edged along the aisle towards the front of the shop.
Ramirez screamed.
The noise was like a gunshot, and for a fraction of a second Purkiss was immobilised as if he’d been hit. He heard her voice – behind us, there’s a man behind us – and at the same instant saw the CCTV monitor above the counter, his frozen figure gazing back.
Careless.
Pope was fast, spinning and opening fire as Purkiss emerged at the end of the aisle and brought his own gun up. Purkiss was forced to drop again as the bullets smashed into the shelves around and above him, ripping through packets and tins, sending a billow of flour and sugar overhead. Purkiss rose again and took an instant to aim before firing, aiming not at Pope – he’d swung the girl round, not quite in front of him, and the risk of hitting her was too great – but at the window behind him while making sure his aim was high enough to avoid the petrol pumps beyond. Purkiss ducked once more as the window exploded outwards, the shock and noise meant to disorientate Pope even fractionally.
Purkiss came round the end of the aisle at a crouching run, aware of shouting drawing closer through the shattered window, and saw Pope with his gun raised, looking back through the window hole. A body lay near his feet, a civilian. Pope’s free hand was on the woman’s shoulder. She cowered, clutching something in front of her – an instrument case – and staring at Purkiss.
‘Ms Ramirez,’ he yelled. ‘Come over here.’
Pope looked across at him and simultaneously pulled the woman closer to him and brought the gun to bear. Purkiss ducked behind the shelves again, felt the shot sing over his head. How many was that, so far? Five or six? Pope’s gun looked like a Hockler; that could mean up to fifteen rounds. Ten left, plus whatever he had spare.
Gunfire crashed and sprayed the wall at the back of the shop, blasting away plaster. Purkiss risked a raise of his head and saw the back of Pope’s head again: he was facing through the shattered window, firing back. Two shots; a third.
Ramirez’s white, frightened face stared back at Purkiss again.
Purkiss beckoned her. Her eyes widened.
‘He’ll kill you,’ Purkiss called. ‘Get over here. I’ll get you away.’
‘Don’t listen to him, Nina.’ Pope half-turned, still focused on whomever was out there. Another salvo of shots came and plaster dust erupted from the ceiling.
‘Get over here now. You’ll get killed at any moment.’
She broke free then, only her head visible and moving over the top of the aisle. Purkiss moved to the front to meet her at the end.
‘Nina.’ Pope’s voice had risen to a roar.
She was six feet from Purkiss now, but she stopped and glanced back. He reached forward and grabbed her wrist roughly, yanking her past him and behind him. She was still clasping that case. He moved to the end of the aisle she’d emerged from and peered round.
Pope’s shot whined past his cheek and drove him back.
A high-pitched, repetitive rising tone started up, cutting across the aftershock of the gunfire. The rear door alarm.
Purkiss moved back around the fronts of the aisles to where Nina was hovering. He put his hand on her head and pushed her down, feeling her flinch, just as the door into the back passage opened and a man emerged. He’d come in through the fire door.
Thirty-Six
Interstate 95, between Washington D.C and New York
The man held a gun in a two-handed grip.
‘Give me the girl.’
‘Drop the gun,’ said Purkiss, the Glock levelled.
‘Send the girl over here.’
Purkiss shot him in the chest, a double tap, sending him back hard against the wall. He gripped Ramirez by the collar and hauled her up. He’d been intending to send her out through the fire door on her own while he dealt with Pope. Now that wasn’t an option.
Keeping himself slightly ahead of her he shouldered open the door into the passage. Halfway down was the restroom he’d come through, and at the end was the open fire door. Behind them he could hear the gunfire continuing.
Purkiss ran to the door and looked out. Nobody there. He pulled the woman stumbling after him and made her follow him hugging the wall to the corner and around the side. They encountered nobody.
Further shots came from the front of the building, and it took Purkiss a moment to realise that he’d let himself be misled, that the shooting at the moment didn’t involve Pope, because Pope had followed them through the fire door. His shape loomed at the corner they’d just passed and he had his gun raised, but wasn’t shooting because Ramirez was between him and Purkiss. Purkiss fired past her and Pope flinched back.
Purkiss dragged Ramirez to the corner ahead and round to the front of the building. The forecourt was littered with spent shell casings. A body lay near the front door of the shop. Purkiss and Ramirez moved further out and he saw movement through the shop’s wrecked front window. Berg and Kendrick, stalking between the aisles, Berg recoiling as a shot came by her.
Purkiss backed away from the building, shielding Ramirez, his gun aimed at the corner where he expected Pope to emerge. He heard a voice behind him near the pumps – Purkiss – and glanced round.
Nakamura sat beside one of the pumps, his lips drawn back in a grimace. His hands clutched his lower leg, soaked black in the shadows.
‘Bastards shot me.’
‘You dying?’
‘Fuck that.’
Keeping his gaze on the corner of the building, Purkiss said, ‘Ms Ramirez. Nina. Stay with this man. He’s an FBI agent. He’ll protect you.’
He risked a glance at her to make sure she understood. Then he began moving back towards the side of the building. Through the window, the cat and mouse appeared to be continuing.
Pope wasn’t round the side. Purkiss advanced to the back, darted a look round. He wasn’t there, either.
Purkiss thought it likely that Pope had run out of ammunition, which was why he hadn’t come after them immediately when they’d made it round the front. He also assumed Pope was going back for the gun belonging to the man Purkiss had shot inside the shop.
Purkiss made his way to the fire door, peered through. No sign of anybody in the passage.
Two shots came, close together, from the front of the building. Not from within.
From far away Purkiss heard his name being called, as a grinding rumble started up.
Purkiss ran, sprinting round the other side of the building to complete a circuit. As he came round the corner he saw three things at once:
Nakamura had crawled on his belly away from the pumps and was lying prone, his gun extended awkwardly in shaking hands.
Ramirez had stepped off to the side and was huddled with her instrument case, frozen in headlights.
The gargantuan truck, the only vehicle in the forecourt, had turned in a wide
arc and was doubling back, heading straight towards the pumps. At the wheel, high in the cab, was Pope.
Purkiss was running even as he raised the gun and fired at the windscreen, but the first shot glanced off the frame above it and after that the Glock’s hammer clicked down emptily, once, twice.
He continued running, aiming in a direct line for the truck, blotting out the horror of what was about to happen, of what was now happening as the front wheels reached Nakamura’s prone and haplessly scrambling body and rocked over it, whipping him underneath, the cab rising and dropping almost imperceptibly as he disappeared and his scream was cut off.
Purkiss drew level with the driver’s door of the cab and dropped the useless gun and leaped up and got a grip on the handle, pulling it open and hanging for a moment in the air, swinging off the door, before hauling himself into the seat – Pope wasn’t there, he’d bailed out through the passenger door – and seeing the pumps looming as he scrabbled for whatever served as a handbrake in a behemoth like this. He found the handle and pulled on it with all his strength, at the same time spinning the steering wheel into the direction of the slide that was already beginning.
The truck roared as it fishtailed sideways, the dozen-and-a-half wheels setting up a banshee howl as their rubber clawed and grappled at the tarmac. Through the window now Purkiss saw the pumps rushing at him: it was too late, he was too close…
Purkiss yelled as he wrenched at the wheel with both hands, trying to drive it beyond its limits. He felt the world tilt, the tarmac tipping crazily up at him, and in a split-second he understood what was happening and let go of the wheel and braced himself for the impact.
The truck slammed on to its side in an explosion of metal and glass, the window erupting beside Purkiss’s head and showering him with granular fragments. He managed to keep his torso far enough from the door that his body avoided absorbing the full force of the collision with the tarmac, but the impact jarred him all the same, sending a bolt of agony through his shoulder and chest. He closed his eyes, waiting for the tell-tale smell of fuel followed by the sudden burst of fire which would bring the end.
*
The sudden silence made Purkiss wonder if he had, in fact, passed over into unbeing, without having realised it; but of course that made no sense. He opened his eyes.
He was cramped at an angle in the cab, his feet at the door, the rest of him diagonally across the front seat. Above him was the passenger door. He reached up, feeling the pain lance through his shoulder again, pushed the door open like a trapdoor and hauled himself out.
The truck lay on its side like a massive, slain beast, its rear doors open and its innards – children’s toys, Purkiss noticed distantly – spilled out across the forecourt. The roof of the cab had slammed against the pillar to one side of the nearest pump.
Through the shattered shop window, Berg and Kendrick stared out. Two men stood beside them, close together, their postures truculent. Cuffed, Purkiss thought.
Behind the truck, the terrible thing that had been Nakamura was difficult to discern as anything in particular.
Ramirez and Pope were gone.
Thirty-Seven
Manhattan, New York City
Tuesday 21 May, 4.15 am
The door opened and a white-faced kid peered in. Giordano thought he looked scared enough to be an intern.
‘Mr Giordano. I’m real sorry to wake you, sir –’
‘Your job. Don’t worry about it.’ He hadn’t been asleep.
‘Mr Krugmann would like to see you, sir.’
‘Krugmann’s here?’ He blinked at his watch.
‘Sir.’
The kid led him down the corridor to another small office. Krugmann sat pouchily behind a desk. He’d sacrificed his own office for Giordano and was having to make do.
‘Though you’d be home at this hour.’
‘I’m not having you Langley boys showing me up.’ Krugmann nodded at the intern to close the door. He shoved a mug of black coffee across the desk at Giordano. ‘Just got a call. The shit’s hit the fan.’
Giordano waited.
‘Where to god damn start… Remember how the shootings of our agents up in Skylands were called in by an anonymous person calling herself a federal agent?’
‘Barbara Berg.’
Krugmann stared. ‘How the hell’d you –? Yeah. Berg. She’s called in to her superiors here in Manhattan, saying she’s the one who called the killings in earlier, and saying she’s arrested two Company operatives on charges of attempted murder. Names of Druze and Sandford. Mean anything?’
‘No.’
‘Both based in Richmond, it seems. Anyhow, this Berg says two other Company guys were shot dead while she was making the arrests. Laymon and James. These two are from the Philadelphia office.’
Krugmann gave it to him in as ordered a fashion as could be asked for. Berg and her partner Nakamura were following a tipoff about a missing woman in Charlottesville, VA, who’d apparently fled the scene of a double homicide. They found links to the former agent Crosby and obtained further intel from him before they were attacked by a group of what turned out to be CIA men. Subsequent evidence led them to a service station outside Philadelphia where they found four men who turned out also to be CIA, laying siege to a gunman holding the missing woman Ramirez hostage. When Berg pointed out the CIA men weren’t authorised to act on domestic soil the Company men had attacked her and her partner, and attempted to storm the service station and kill both the gunman and his hostage. Berg and her partner killed tow of the CIA men and arrested a further two. The gunman escaped with his hostage and killed the partner, Nakamura, in the process.
There was no mention in the account of John Purkiss.
Krugmann pinched his eyes shut for a long moment, massaging his forehead with the fingertips of one hand. ‘It makes no god damn sense, Ray. None at all. This Berg goes rogue for a while, calling things in anonymously, running around like Rambo killing Company guys. All supposedly after being tipped off about some missing person crap hundreds of miles away. Then she comes out of the cold to say there’s a kidnapper on the loose with a hostage.’
‘What does the Director say?’ Giordano meant the FBI Director.
‘Nothing at the moment. He’s pissed off with us, and I can’t say I blame him. Whatever this agent of his, Berg, has done, she seems to have caught so far eight of our people in the commission of various felonies. If I were the Feebs I’d be looking for revenge, starting with keeping us as far out of the loop as possible.’
‘They’ll have to involve us sooner or later.’
‘Yeah. Once they’ve flushed out whatever rotten apples remain in our barrel.’ Krugmann cracked his knuckles. ‘You’ll need to get back to Langley, I believe. This doesn’t just involve New York any more.’
‘You’re right.’ Giordano stood. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my office for some privacy. I should be getting a call from the Chief at any moment.’
‘That you certainly will, my friend.’
*
Giordano slumped heavily in the office chair, his phone on the desk in front of him. It began buzzing immediately. He glanced at the number. The Chief.
He let it go to voicemail.
He did the same with a second call from the Chief. Then with one from Naomi.
Giordano stared at the wall, idly tracing a fine crack in the plaster from its source. He too had calls to make. Plenty of them. Ordinarily a decisive man, he didn’t in this case know where to start.
The phone sounded again, the vibration nearly sending it off the desk.
He didn’t recognise the number.
Giordano picked up the phone and hit the green button. He listened.
‘Raymond Giordano.’ A man’s voice. Accented, though he couldn’t tell with what.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Darius Pope. Does the surname ring any bells?’
And it all made sense, like a kaleidoscopic picture shifting into f
ocus.
Giordano waited still. The voice – the accent was English – said, ‘Tell nobody of this conversation. Be in the Board Room annex of the Holtzmann Solar head office, in the Loomis Building in Manhattan, at ten o’clock this morning. Make sure you’re there alone.’
Giordano opened his mouth to speak, and it was as if his indrawn breath prompted the man to interrupt: ‘Just so that you’re aware of what will happen if you don’t follow my instructions to the letter.’
He paused, as if to make sure he had Giordano’s full attention.
‘I have your daughter.’
Thirty-Eight
Manhattan, New York City
Tuesday 21 May, 7.35 am
Kendrick’s footfalls echoed off the bare walls in a rhythm that started to grate on Purkiss. He was standing at the large, tall window facing eastwards, watching the red sun emerge above the distant Jersey horizon.
‘Would you stop that,’ he said.
Kendrick glared. ‘You pace.’
‘I pace. I don’t prowl.’
He could see Kendrick was getting the urge, which he usually did at this stage of an operation: the craving for chemical stimulation. Normally Purkiss looked the other way, but this time he wouldn’t. There was no question of Kendrick’s stalking the early morning New York streets, looking for a fix.
‘How long’s she been?’ said Kendrick.
‘An hour.’
Berg had dropped them back at the abandoned office they’d used earlier when they’d been in the city the previous afternoon. She’d gone on to her headquarters to meet her boss and debrief.