The Final Hour (Victor The Assassin 7)

by Tom Wood

  ‘You see,’ the Estonian said. ‘Your brother is safe so you can now get some sleep. We’ll start work tomorrow.’

  Raven coughed and gestured to the balcony doors. ‘Do you mind if I open these?’

  The Estonian said, ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you stink.’

  He frowned, then shrugged, and when she approached the balcony and he thought she wasn’t looking, quickly sniffed one of his armpits.

  ‘The cigarette smoke,’ she said as she opened the French doors and took a deep breath of fresh air. ‘I can’t handle it. Makes me lightheaded.’

  ‘Whatever,’ he said, agitated. ‘Get some rest while you still can.’

  ‘There’s no way I’ll be able to sleep,’ Raven said.

  He shrugged. ‘That’s up to you, but you might not get much chance later. You don’t want to fail because you’re asleep, do you?’

  ‘What if I try and run?’

  ‘You won’t. Your brother is safe for now. If you run…’

  ‘So you don’t need a gun then, do you?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘How many people have you killed?’

  He hesitated, and said after a time, ‘A lot.’

  She said, ‘How does it make you feel?’

  ‘Like life is a precious gift, and mine is more valuable than anyone else’s.’

  ‘You know, if you really think that, then you should cut your losses and sit this one out. Whatever they told you about me, they didn’t tell you the half of it. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. You’re just a foot soldier. You don’t know who the voice on the end of the phone belongs to. You’re ignorant, if wilfully. But I’ll spare you because of that ignorance, but only if you back down right now.’

  ‘A generous offer.’

  ‘But it’s a one-time deal. You only get a pass if you go this instant.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  Raven said, ‘I knew you wouldn’t listen to me but I had to try.’

  He smiled at her. ‘They assure me you’ll cooperate fully. They always know how these things play out. You’ll do as asked. I’m not worried about that.’

  Raven said, ‘You won’t mind if I use the bathroom, then?’

  The Estonian looked at her as if she were crazy.

  ‘I take it that’s allowed,’ she said. ‘I take it you don’t want me to go pee-pee here.’

  She began lowering herself into a squat.

  He frowned and shot to his feet, thinking she was serious. ‘At the end of the hall.’ He pointed. ‘Don’t take too long.’

  ‘That’s up to nature.’

  She took her time walking along the hallway, using the opportunity of being unwatched to examine more of the penthouse, to peer into rooms with the doors open and to ease open the one door that was closed. She figured it was closed for a reason and she was right. This was the Estonian’s room. A sleeping bag was draped over the single bed and she glimpsed other items – a rucksack, clothes and so on.

  There was no time for a thorough examination as she heard floorboards creak behind her and closed the door before he could see what she was doing.

  She heard him enter the hallway and glanced over her shoulder. ‘Do you want to watch?’

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t come any closer. She entered the bathroom.

  It was like the rest of the apartment – in need of some serious attention. Tiles were cracked. There was an infestation of black mould. Limescale was everywhere. The door had a catch and she engaged it. Not strong enough to stop the Estonian, but strong enough to slow him down.

  She heard his voice call to her: ‘Don’t forget that your brother is trapped at home with a team of very unpleasant men.’

  ‘You’ve got it the wrong way around,’ Raven called back. ‘They’re trapped in that house with him.’

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Gaffney had been given a piece, same as everyone else. The boss had distributed them from a case in the Ford Explorer’s boot. His was an old Beretta, scratched and worn. The serial number hadn’t just been filed off but a groove had been dug into the metal where it had once been – to prevent acid bringing it out at a microscopic level, Gaffney knew. He remembered some of the useful stuff from being a cop. That the people he was working for were that thorough said a lot. It reassured him they knew what they were doing, because he sure didn’t.

  He was the youngest by some way, and he figured the least experienced. That was why he was tasked with watching Mayes while the others were tossing the joint downstairs. Babysitting was the short straw because he was the baby of the crew.

  Mayes said, ‘I need to use the bathroom.’

  Gaffney said, ‘So?’

  Mayes gestured with his chin. ‘It’s just through that door.’

  He didn’t know what he was supposed to do in such a situation, but he didn’t want to ask. He wasn’t supposed to take his eyes off Mayes, so he would have to yell down the stairs, which he didn’t want to do. But he didn’t want to get into trouble by letting the captive use the loo if he wasn’t supposed to.

  ‘You’ll have to hold it.’

  Mayes said, ‘I’ve been holding it in since you guys got here. I can’t hold it much longer.’

  ‘Not my problem.’

  ‘I’m going to make a mess.’

  Gaffney thought of piss-stained bedclothes, or worse. That might be against the plan. He didn’t want to screw up. He feared the people he worked for more than any bookie.

  He approached Mayes. ‘You think I’m stupid? You think I’m going to let you in that bathroom alone? Don’t make me mad, don’t make me hurt you.’

  Mayes recoiled, tense and scared. He couldn’t take his gaze off the gun pointed at his face.

  ‘You hold it in, okay?’ he hissed. ‘You make a mess and I’ll make a mess of your head, you got that? I will annihilate you.’

  Gaffney was breathing hard. Waving the gun around had got him pumped. He loved that feeling of strength, of dominance. He liked making others afraid. He was neither big nor strong, so those moments didn’t happen without a weapon in his hand. He paced about, heart racing, enjoying the surge of adrenaline.

  ‘Do you know what the problem is with cable ties?’

  Mayes was sitting on the end of the bed, as he had been the whole time. His head was bowed. He was too scared to look up. Gaffney revelled in that power. This was what life was about. He was a king and Mayes was just a farmer, a peasant. He didn’t quite catch what Mayes had said.

  ‘Hey, what? What did you just say?’

  Mayes repeated himself, ‘The problem with cable ties… do you know what it is?’

  ‘Do I look like I care? Do I look like I give a shit? You are a fool if you think you can find some common ground with me. I am the antichrist. I will beat you to death just to see what your corpse looks like. Don’t make this hard for yourself. Keep quiet and keep prayin’.’

  He was surprised by his own performance, his confidence – or the imitation of it. Hell, it would’ve convinced him, had their roles been reversed. But he wasn’t dumb enough to get caught up in… whatever this was. Mayes was just a farmer, not a king.

  Funny then that Ben Mayes didn’t look much like a farmer, come to think of it. He looked like he spent his days throwing hay bales, but he seemed too lean, too fit, too clean to be the kind of man who worked on the land. It wasn’t Gaffney’s job to think much about these inconsistencies. He was just the hired help. Don’t ask questions, was the first thing he had learned when working for the people on the end of the phone. A simple yes or no was all they wanted to hear. Anything else was superfluous to requirements. More than that, and it got dangerous.

  Gaffney was here to make money, to pay off some of his debts, and go back to his flat in one piece and scrub away the memories of what he had done in a cleanser of blow and booze and young arse.

  Mayes said, ‘The problem is that the tighter you make them, the easier they are to get out of.’

 
Gaffney smirked. He had to admit, he was intrigued. ‘What are you, some Houdini wannabe? What are those guys called?’

  ‘Escapologists.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. That what you wanted to be instead of a farmer?’ He was smiling now, grinning his way through the adrenaline surge. ‘I love magic shows.’

  ‘I studied Houdini, as it happens,’ Mayes said. ‘Self-education, you might call it.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with cable ties?’

  Mayes raised his hands. ‘Would you like me to show you?’

  ‘Show me what? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I can show you how to get out of cable ties.’

  ‘I already know, dickhead. With a knife.’

  Mayes said, ‘That’s the best way, sure. But you don’t actually need a knife.’

  ‘Really?’ Gaffney said, all the hyped-up rage gone now and only curiosity remaining.

  ‘Really,’ Mayes said. ‘With enough force, you can pop them open. If you extend your arms then pull them back hard enough against your abdomen’ – he did – ‘they’ll pop open.’

  ‘But they didn’t.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s like forcing a locked door,’ Mayes said as he continued to demonstrate. ‘If you use your shoulder, some of the force you generate is absorbed back into you. You don’t transfer it fully into the door. If you use your foot, all that force travels through a smaller area and breaks the lock. You could say there is more resistance. Of course, it helps if you have good core strength, but it’s not essential. It just means you don’t have to bring them down as hard against yourself.’

  Gaffney couldn’t help but step closer to get a better look. The rhythmic action of Mayes raising his bound hands then bringing them in a slow arc to his stomach was almost hypnotic.

  ‘What on earth does that have to do with cable ties?’

  ‘Localising the force is the key,’ Mayes continued. ‘If the cable ties are fastened like this, with a slight gap. Tight, but not too tight, then the ties themselves absorb some of this force. But if we tighten the ties’ – he used his teeth to do so – ‘until they’re really, really tight, then the next time I try to pop them open, all the force will be delivered straight at that lock. Like this —’

  Pop.

  It was a handsome house, Niven thought. He liked that it was old and weathered. He liked its character. Tough and resilient. Like Niven himself. A family home, but no family. Just Ben and Suzanne Mayes. There were two other buildings making up the property. A barn stood to the east, tall and strong. Outbuildings lay between the house and the barn. Niven knew nothing about rearing cattle or growing crops, and he couldn’t imagine how anyone could lead a life so dull, so uneventful.

  He was thinking how thankful he was to be doing something he enjoyed when he heard a noise. But it wasn’t from outside like earlier. It was from upstairs, directly above him. The noise was a thump sound, like something heavy had dropped hard on the floorboards. Another noise followed it. Not as loud, but more organic. Hard to place, but worrying.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Niven gestured to one of the crew – a thin man with a moustache. ‘For the love of God, find out what that idiot is doing to Mayes and make him stop. Shoot him if you have to. Mayes is not to be harmed. Yet.’

  ‘Sure, boss.’

  The thin man with the moustache climbed the stairs. In his hand he gripped a pistol. A Smith & Wesson. It was big and heavy and didn’t feel right. He wasn’t a strong man. He had never even shot a gun before.

  He swallowed as he neared the top of the stairs. He turned around as he reached the landing, looking to the leader for guidance. Niven, impatient and concerned, gestured for him to get on with it.

  The thin man pushed open the door to the master bedroom and stepped inside.

  Niven watched him disappear out of sight. He heard the hard shoes on floorboards.

  Then a thud and a clatter, something solid striking the floorboards and skidding away.

  A scream.

  More clattering, scrapes and thuds. More screams. A snap, and the scream became a piercing shriek.

  Then silence. An awful, heavy silence. Niven could hear nothing but his own panting.

  He overcame his shock and yelled, ‘Go,’ to two of his other men.

  They bolted up the stairs, guns out, eager and angry, hyped into action. They reached the landing.

  Rapid gunshots sounded, light flashed from inside the bedroom, highlighting the two men’s faces – grimacing and contorting.

  They staggered and fell, bullets punching into their chests and heads. Blood and flesh spattered the wall behind them.

  Niven and the two remaining men backed away. The two looked at him for guidance, for leadership. Instead, they saw him turning for the front door, flinging it open and rushing outside. They followed.

  Niven made it to the Ford Explorer first, not because he was the fastest, but because he had a head start. A gunfight wasn’t part of the plan. He was no soldier. He had no more courage than he needed.

  The two men behind him didn’t make it to the Explorer at all.

  More gunshots. Niven glanced back to see them drop to the dirt behind him, and the shooter – Mayes – stood at an upstairs window, pistol smoking in the moonlight.

  How the hell a simple farmer had escaped his bonds and massacred Niven’s whole crew was a question that would have to wait. For now, Niven wanted only to get away. The job had gone bad, way bad, and he only knew that whatever had gone wrong it meant he needed to be gone.

  Niven rounded the vehicle to the driver’s door and climbed in. His shaking hands started the engine.

  Another gunshot. Hissing air from a plugged tyre. The vehicle tipped forward and left.

  Niven put the Explorer in reverse and drove.

  The front right tyre went next. The vehicle shook and rubber flapped and frayed as he tried to spin it around.

  Bullets took out the headlights.

  Both back tyres were blown before he made it on to the dirt path. The tail lights were next. He made it another 50 metres before the wheels had shed the tyres and the rims were spinning uselessly as they failed to grip the dirt.

  ‘Come on you piece of shit,’ he yelled, thumping at the wheel.

  He glanced at the mirrors. It was almost pitch-dark. He couldn’t see more than a few metres behind the Explorer, but no one was there. Mayes hadn’t followed. He would be calling the cops or his wife or shaking with relief, glad to be alive, high on the post-action adrenaline buzz. He wouldn’t be chasing. He wouldn’t be pushing his luck.

  Niven calmed down, thought. Evaluated. He had to continue on foot. Hurry to the main road, flag down whichever vehicle came by first, take the driver hostage and go as far as the tank of gas would get him.

  He took his gun in his right hand and gripped the lever with his left, glanced behind him to double-check no one was there, and went to open the door —

  Glass shattered, the window collapsing as a pistol was driven through it and smashed into Niven’s face.

  The Estonian was checking his watch every few seconds. He knew the woman was dangerous. He had been well-briefed on her capabilities, on her history, on her relentlessness. After a minute he made his way to the hallway to see the bathroom door closed. How long did it take a woman to use the bathroom? How long did it take a dangerous woman to fashion some weapon or trap?

  To his mind, there was nothing inside the bathroom that could pose any real threat. A strip of shower curtain could be torn away and rolled tight into a noose; the cistern lid could be employed as a club; a floor tile could be prised away and broken into a shiv. All lethal in the right hands, but none of them would give her enough of an edge to best him. He had guns, after all.

  After a second minute his patience was failing. He drew his sidearm and made his way along the hall, the bathroom door growing larger and occupying more of his vision with each step. He could hear no toilet flushing, no tap running, no woman urinating.

  He tr
ied the door handle. Locked.

  He tapped on the door with the gun’s muzzle. ‘Hey, what are you doing in there?’

  No answer.

  That was all the justification he needed. He kicked the door open.

  The bathroom was empty.

  There was no space to hide behind the door. There was no space to hide anywhere.

  The window was open.

  Do you mind if I open the balcony doors?

  He spun around, moving back out into the hallway, and there she was: standing before him, her bare feet red and dusty from climbing out of the bathroom window and along the building’s exterior, window ledge to window ledge, then on to the balcony and into the lounge.

  She pulled the knife from his belt sheath.

  He had no time to react or fight back because the blade had already pierced his chest, slipping horizontally between ribs to find his heart.

  His gun fell from his fingers and she guided him back into the bathroom while he still had the strength to stand, then as that last strength failed, lowered him backwards into the tub.

  He saw her step away, then retrieve the fallen gun from the floor in a spiral of blending colours that faded to black.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Head injuries were problematic. Knocking someone out wasn’t an exact science. Different people reacted in different ways. It was difficult to get a precise result. Making someone lose consciousness wasn’t the problem. Waking up again was where things became awkward. Some people didn’t. Swelling and bleeding on the brain could cause serious complications. The person might not wake up at all. They might wake up again but not as the same person. Niven woke up, which was good. When he did, he seemed awake and alert, despite the pain and disorientation, which was better.

  Victor watched as Niven assessed his surroundings and realised he was restrained. He was slumped on the floor of the Mayes’ barn. It was a large building, made cavernous because it was almost empty at this time of year. Niven’s face was bruised and swollen from the blow that had knocked him out, and his eyes were squinting against the barn’s lights. They were bare bulbs hanging in strips, trussed up between beams. Niven’s hands were roped together and a vertical support post was between his elbows. He could stand, but didn’t.