Below Zero (Ryan Kidd Thriller series)

by Roger Hurn

  We barged our way through the crowds and ducked down a side street. We had a fifty metre head start on Greenstick and I was hoping the whack on the head I’d given him would slow him down. It seemed I was right. We kept looking back but there was no sign of him. Of course I should have realised the guy was too smart to just come haring after us.

  We were almost at the train station when I noticed two guys lurking in the shade of the Mediterranean pines outside. They were about as inconspicuous as elephants in sunglasses. Then they clocked us but tried to pretend that they hadn’t. I guess they hoped we hadn’t noticed them and that they could intercept us as we arrived at the station entrance. But we weren’t in the business of making life easy for them so we spun round and started to run back the way we’d come. To no one’s great surprise they dropped the “we’re just two regular guys shooting the breeze” act and gave chase.

  We nearly ran straight into Greenstick. I realised what he’d done. It was a no brainer really. He’d obviously popped into the Tourist Information office and asked where his “friends” had gone. The woman at the counter would have told him that we’d headed for the train station and then all he had to do was give his pals a bell and organise the reception committee. The guy was running rings around me and it was getting on my nerves. Whoever he was working for was getting their money’s worth. The guy was a pro.

  We skidded to a halt right in front of him. And that’s when he showed he wasn’t quite as good as I thought he was. He focused on me. That was a mistake. It always is when you underestimate a woman. In a heartbeat Carly lashed out and kicked the underside of his knee hard with her foot. He yelped and his leg buckled and we charged on past him.

  Carly was really motoring but I have a dodgy knee – which is why I’m no longer in the DPG – and it was screaming at me to slow down. I risked a quick glance back over my shoulder. Greenstick’s boys had helped him to his feet and from the way he was gesturing he was telling them to forget about him and get after us. It only slowed them up for a few moments but it was all the time we needed to try and lose ourselves in the Festival crowds who thronged the streets.

  Chapter 27

  We were caught up in a human tide that was flowing towards the Plaza de Toros. It was almost impossible to go against the flow so we didn’t. The good news was that the torrent of people that was preventing us from running was also making it impossible for Greenstick and his guys to make any headway in catching us.

  The crowd surged up towards the bullring and we wormed our way out of the mainstream and down the side of the building along the Paseo de Orson Welles. If I hadn’t been so scared I might have found this ironic as we were trapped in a manhunt straight out of The Third Man.

  Then I saw that the gates to the back of the bullring were open to allow a livestock delivery truck to enter. We slipped in after it. I figured that the behind the scenes area was the perfect place to hide. Naturally I was wrong.

  Now the secret of getting away with it when you’re in a place you’re not supposed to be is to exude confidence from every pore and act like you have every right to be there. If you look like a shrinking violet some jobsworth is bound to home in on you like a scud missile demanding to know what you’re up to. It was pretty chaotic with people running around like headless chickens so we actually didn’t need to be too brazen because they were all too busy doing whatever it was they had to do. And, in a recession hit economy, no one was being paid to deal with us – so they didn’t. But if I thought we were home free then I was in for a rude awakening.

  Half a dozen horny-handed sons of toil were dragging a very reluctant bull from out of the delivery truck. The beast was huge and had some wickedly sharp horns that looked like they could do serious damage. I knew that the horns would be shaved long before the animal ever made it into the ring because these fights are fixed but right now they looked like formidable weapons. Carly gasped with anger and disgust. The bull was distressed and not so much angry as terrified.

  ‘Where are they taking it?’ Carly asked.

  ‘Down to some pen under the stadium where they soften it up before it goes out into the ring. Trust me Carly, you really don’t want to know.’

  ‘Oh your concern for dumb animals is truly touching, Ryan.’

  I spun round and came face-to-face with Greenstick and his two buddies. Greenstick had a gun in his hand. He grinned nastily.

  ‘Thought I’d save your pity, ‘cos I’d say that bull has more chance of living to see the sunrise than you guys do.’ Then he scowled. ‘Now gimme the freaking memory stick.’

  ‘Why should we if you’re gonna kill us anyway?’ Carly sounded defiant but we had nothing left to bargain with.

  ‘Cos you can either die quickly or slowly in a hell of a lot of fucking pain. Your choice babe.’

  Carly’s shoulders slumped and she dug into her bag and pulled out the memory stick. She thrust it at him. ‘Here you are, arsehole!’

  He took it and laughed. ‘Good call.’

  Then he pointed the gun slightly towards me. ‘Sorry Kyd, but you don’t get a choice. You’re going to linger a while coughing up blood. Hey, that’s kinda fitting doncha think? You know, like the guy in that bullfighter movie Blood and Sand?’

  Suddenly one of the workers noticed that Greenstick was waving the gun in my face. He yelled something in Spanish and pointed at us. For a split second everything went into freeze frame then all the Spanish guys ran for their lives – including the blokes who’d been holding the bull.

  I have no idea how smart bulls are but I guess even the dumbest creature will make a break for freedom when it gets the chance, and this bull was no exception. It charged down from the ramp and 700 kilos of muscle hurtled straight towards us.

  Greenstick aimed his gun at the bull. I don’t know what macho fantasy was going through his mind because he had as much chance of stopping a beast that size with a water pistol as he did with his handgun. I shoved Carly hard out of the bull’s path and then leapt back as Greenstick blazed away.

  The bull smashed into Greenstick, driving one of its horns into his throat and up into his skull. Blood spurted out in a bright red fountain as Greenstick was lifted up into the air. Then the animal shook him furiously from side to side and the horn tore itself free. Greenstick collapsed to the ground and the bull trampled on him. But Greenstick had gone far beyond the pain. I think he was already dead.

  The bull seemed confused as to what to do next. It stood there snorting and pawing the ground and shaking its great head while blood seeped out of the wounds Greenstick had inflicted on it – but it made no attempt to run or to attack us. Then one of Greenstick’s guys recovered his wits. He stepped up to the bull and shot it in the middle of its forehead. The poor creature sank to its knees and then keeled over. Its breath left its body with a shudder and, although its legs still jerked and spasmed, it was as dead as Greenstick. The whole incident had taken seconds but it seemed like years.

  The guy then bent down and picked up the memory stick, but he was wasting his time. The bull had crushed it with its hooves and it was smashed beyond repair. He tossed it away and then he and his mate turned their weapons on us.

  I could hear police sirens in the distance. They were going to be the last sounds I ever heard. I grabbed Carly’s hand and squeezed it. She gave mine an answering squeeze. I was glad. I didn’t want to die but I also didn’t want to die with her mad at me. It’s weird what you worry about when you’re staring death in the face. Then two shots were fired almost simultaneously and Greenstick’s guys’ heads exploded.

  A bloke I recognised as the one who back in Puerto Banus called Carly and me drunken English scum stood there with a semi-automatic pistol by his side.

  ‘Come with me,’ he barked.

  We didn’t argue.

  Chapter 28

  We ran out of the stadium and into the park that bordered it. The trees provided plenty of cover but, although I guessed pandemonium was breaking out back at the bullring, t
he families picnicking and strolling through the park paid us no attention.

  We soon came to a road where a car we’d seen before was waiting. We wrenched open the back doors and clambered in. The driver floored the pedal and we took off.

  The four guys in the car were the same ones who’d been at Constantin Stere’s place just after us. I’d guessed then they were Mossad and it turns out I was right. Well, they were a Kidon team and Kidon or “tip of the spear” is Mossad’s ultra-secret assassination unit. The words “frying pan” and “fire” leapt into my head because these guys are like the hangman and the doctor on Death Row who administers the lethal injection rolled into one. Their actions are all sanctioned by the State of Israel so, in their eyes, they can kill their enemies with impunity. I was hoping against hope that they remembered the old proverb: “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”.

  The guy who was the team’s executioner half turned and spoke to us. ‘The memory stick was destroyed by the bull, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded. ‘It was the only one I think.’

  ‘It was.’

  He nodded again. ‘Then all that needs to be done is for you to disappear.’

  My heart tied itself in a knot and I began to babble in desperation. ‘Look the girl’s no threat to you. She’s just someone I brought along for the ride. Why don’t you just let her go? She’s only a kid for god’s sake!’

  The guy stared at me coldly. ‘She’s Carly Bloom, your associate in your Private Investigations business. She’s nineteen and quite old enough to know exactly what she’s doing. She didn’t come along for the ride. She came to do her job – exactly the same as you did, Mr Kyd.’

  I must admit this floored me. I couldn’t see how or why the Ryan Kyd Agency would have appeared on Kidon’s radar so I didn’t see how he was so clued up on us. But one thing was obvious; lying to this guy was not going to be a good idea.

  He must have read my mind. ‘Crispian Hunt of MI5 gave you to us. He knew you were out of your depth but were too stubborn to give him the information in your possession. This gave him a dilemma. Should he risk you falling into the hands of Aasad al-Sahara, the self-styled “Lions of the Desert”, or should he pass you on to us to prevent that happening? Well, he decided that he would rather the State of Israel have the memory stick than a group of Islamist fundamentalists. This way he would lose the stick but he would earn our gratitude and that is no trifling thing because we always repay our debts.’

  I frowned. ‘Hang on a minute. Are you telling me that Greenstick was working for a bunch of jihadists?’

  ‘Aasad al-Sahara posed as Russian Mafia when they killed Constantin Stere. They thought they had the memory stick but then you and Miss Bloom discovered they were mistaken. Unfortunately, you told the very man who could put them wise – and he did.’

  ‘Hey, but why did Greenstick bother to bug our phone if his guys had already tracked Constantin down?’ Carly asked.

  ‘Because at that point they hadn’t. No one knew the exact whereabouts of Constantin Stere. That was why Crispian Hunt was sending you on the mission and, for all Greenstick knew, you may have succeeded in reaching Stere first. Therefore, he needed to know where you were at all times. Then, of course, when you recovered the stick, the bug enabled him to send details of your whereabouts to the Aasad al-Sahara agents in the field.’

  ‘You did well to elude them,’ said a man with a thick beard and tousled black hair. He had the gravel-seeped-in-tar voice of a man who smokes way too many full strength cigarettes. I guessed that he was the leader. He sat forward. ‘You fooled us when we met you in Puerto Banus and not many do that. And then you gave a good account of yourselves when one of their kill teams found you in the mountains. We were following them in the hope that they would lead us to whoever had the memory stick. Unfortunately, none were left alive to tell us who it was they were tracking.’ He paused for a second then said: ‘Who would have dreamt that it was a drunken English lout and his equally drunken blonde slut.’ He smiled but his eyes held no humour. ‘Well, we came to Rhonda to take stock of what to do next and then we received word that it was you who had the stick.’ He sucked in his cheeks. ‘It was fortunate for you that we did, and that we were close at hand, otherwise you would now be dead.’

  I shivered like someone had just walked over my grave. ‘Thanks for that,’ I said. ‘But your man there said you were going to make us disappear and that doesn’t sound good.’ I gave a shrug of weary resignation. ‘And, when you get right down to it, it makes no odds if we’re killed by desert lions or kidon – we’ll still be dead.’

  Gravel-voice sank back into the upholstery with a sigh. ‘When we say “disappear”, Mr Kyd, we mean that we are going to spirit you away back to England so that the Spanish authorities never have the chance to ask you awkward questions. As far as they are concerned, you and Miss Bloom were never here.’

  Carly had been silent but now she piped up. ‘Listen, you guys are an assassination squad, right?’

  Nobody answered. I think we all knew it was a rhetorical question.

  ‘So, what I wanna know is, did Crispian Hunt say we were off limits when it came down to the killing?’

  The kidon leader closed his eyes. ‘He told us you had the stick and that you were in Rhonda with a rogue MI5 officer hard on your heels. He left it to us to decide the appropriate course of action.’

  Carly didn’t say anything to this but I had the feeling she was thinking exactly the same thing as me. Dead PI’s, their dead blonde associates and dead rogue MI5 officers tell no tales. But sadly for Crispian we’d survived. The thing was, kidon are ruthless killers but in this case, their enemy’s enemy had indeed turned out to be their friends – and, luckily for us on this occasion, they saw no reason to kill their friends.

  Chapter 29

  There was a huge hoo-ha in the media about the shootings in Rhonda. Though, funnily enough, an awful lot of outrage concerned the fact that the bull had been killed even though that’s what was going to happen to it anyway. People never cease to amaze me with what gets them hot under the collar.

  The guys the kidon assassin killed were identified as two tourists who’d been in Rhonda for the Festival and Greenstick was pegged as a British civil servant with a passion for watching bullfighting. No one could offer any plausible explanation as to why they had met their deaths in such bizarre circumstances or why they appeared to be armed to the teeth. Certainly no mention was made of a crushed memory stick or the Syrian connection. Mind you, I suspect the local force was leaned on pretty hard to not peer under too many stones. A murder mystery is fine but a terrorist atrocity is always bad for business.

  Anyway, there was an appeal for the man and blonde woman who’d been seen being threatened with a gun to come forward. This appeal was accompanied by a ridiculously bad e-fit picture of us. Now, every copper worth his salt knows that eye witnesses are hopeless and that no two people can ever agree on what it is they’ve just seen. This was just as well otherwise we’d have been in very deep shit indeed. Needless-to-say, we stayed schtum and laid low. But it didn’t stop our favourite Box 500 man from paying us a call.

  The weather had improved remarkably since his previous visit and we were in the gentle grip of an Indian summer. Crispian’s presence still had the effect of dampening our spirits and creating a chilly atmosphere. He sat down in the chair in front of my desk and smiled, but this time I didn’t offer to make him a cuppa.

  ‘The money for services rendered is in your account, Ryan. There’s no bonus I’m afraid but then you didn’t bring home the goods and there was a rather considerable amount of fuss.’ He gave me a brittle smile. ‘Still, it’ll be a nine day wonder as these things always are and the dust will soon settle.’ He brushed some imaginary dust from his trousers just to reinforce the point. ‘And if we can’t have the information then, thanks to you, at least nobody else can either.’

  I was prepared to swallow the no bonus malarkey but Carly and I both
wanted some answers and I had the feeling that’s why Crispian was here.

  ‘So why did Greenstick sell us out to Aasad al-Sahara?’

  Crispian cleared his throat. ‘Hatch Beauchamp turned out to be a man with a hidden motive. His father was American but his mother was Syrian. They were both educated at UCL – which was where they met – and after they graduated they stayed in the UK and eventually became British citizens. Beauchamp was educated at Winchester and then got a first in PPE at Balliol. He was basically a good egg and, apart from his ridiculously affected accent and rather louche mode of attire, we had no reason to be suspicious of him.’ He pursed his lips and his eyes flicked from left to right as if he were thinking up a lie. He probably wasn’t but I just didn’t trust a word he said. ‘Anyhow, it now transpires that, although Beauchamp’s mother and father are dead, Beauchamp’s late mother still had family living in Aleppo. They were part of the business community but when the Syrian army went for broke they sided with the rebels. That was a big mistake because an elite military unit wiped them out.’

  Crispian allowed the silence to linger while we digested this.

  ‘Apparently, Beauchamp had long been of the opinion that the West was sitting on its backside doing nothing while atrocities were being committed on a daily basis by the forces loyal to Assad. So, of course, the massacre of his mother’s relatives was the thing that tipped him over the edge.’ Crispian smirked. ‘I suppose it was an epiphany on the road to Damascus sort of thing – even though it was Aleppo in this particular case.’

  Crispian really was an irritatingly smug bastard who needed a good slap but I said nothing and let him chunter on.

  ‘But, short of running off to fight on the barricades, he was stuck as to how he could make a difference. What he needed was a way to do something practical for what he saw as a righteous cause. Then, when Constantin Stere went missing with the memory stick, he was presented with the perfect opportunity to hit back at the Assad regime. It was his big chance to even the score and he took it.