by Tim Stevens
‘So you find me, call it in... and then Corcoran, or Becker, or whatever he’s really called, swoops down and has me murdered?’ said Lomax calmly.
‘Yes,’ said Venn. ‘Corcoran couldn’t tell me to kill you, couldn’t even blackmail me into doing it, because he knew I wouldn’t. So I’m the sniffer dog and he’s the hunter. He’d have me killed after taking you out, of course.’
‘He knows where we are now,’ said Lomax.
‘No,’ said Venn. ‘He knows where I am. He can’t know that I’ve found you. And we have to keep it that way.’
‘So what do we do?’ asked Beth.
Venn hesitated. ‘The only option we have is to get out of here, together,’ he said. ‘The longer Corcoran sees me stationary in a remote spot, the more he’ll suspect I’ve found something. Either Professor Lomax himself, or a clue that will lead to him.’
‘Where we go?’ It was Stavros, who hadn’t spoken much.
‘I’m thinking north,’ said Venn. ‘Over the border into Canada. It won’t be completely safe there, by a long shot. But it’ll be a hell of a lot trickier for Corcoran to exert his influence there, in a foreign country.’
‘We can go to the press there,’ said Beth. ‘Flood the media. Blow the lid off C-77 and the whole cover-up.’
Venn was on the move. To Stavros he said, ‘How many guns have you got?’
‘This rifle.’ The large man held it up. ‘Shotgun. One handgun.’
‘We need to take them all.’ Venn looked out the window. ‘That your SUV?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. We take two cars, that one and the Toyota. We ditch the Impala.’
Beth saw Venn pause at the window. Noticed something in his posture, something she’d seen earlier, at the motel, when he’d said he sensed something wrong.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘We’re too late,’ said Venn. ‘They’re here.’
Chapter 60
Shelly would have known where to turn off even without reference to the satnav. One vehicle after another was peeling off the highway and lumbering up the winding road through the woods.
She slowed to a crawl. There were sedans, Land Rovers, pickups. Maybe ten cars and trucks in all, laden with men.
And there’d be more on the way.
Shelly waited till the last of the cars had turned off. Then, keeping a discreet distance, she followed in the Hummer. With any luck, she’d be taken for one of the posse. The windows were tinted, so the occupants of the cars ahead wouldn’t immediately see that instead of a thickset mobster goon, the Hummer was being driven by a small woman.
A couple of miles along the road, the cars ahead began braking. Shelly hung back. She scrolled through the satnav menu and brought up a display of the immediate area.
A turning up ahead to the right led to a road winding round the rear of the cabin, by the look of it. Once the car ahead was out of sight, Shelly took the turn.
The cabin appeared through the trees. Shelly could see two vehicles already parked in front. And farther back, amongst the trees...was that a black Chevy Impala? Shelly couldn’t be sure, but thought so.
She followed the road a little further till it started curving away from the cabin. It rose to a higher point in the woods. Shelly continued until she reached what appeared to be a picnic area, a small rectangle of cleared forest beside the road with wooden benches and tables.
Pulling over, she got out and looked back. She could just see the cabin through the trees, below here.
Shelly climbed onto the roof of the Hummer. And discovered she had a perfect view of the cabin, its lawns, and the swarm of vehicles that were taking up position in a semicircle in front of the log structure.
Diving back into the Hummer, Shelly opened the compartment beneath the backseat and hauled out the hardware.
Back on the roof, she sat cross-legged and assembled the FN SPR sniper rifle. Through the scope, she surveyed the cabin.
There was no sign of anybody outside. Whoever was in the cabin seemed to be staying there. And the men in the cars weren’t moving, either.
Until one of the Land Rovers’ doors opened and a man leaned out, a loudhailer held to his mouth.
Shelly couldn’t quite catch what he was saying, but it sounded like an order for whoever was in the cabin to show themselves.
Still there was no movement at the cabin itself. Nobody came out.
Shelly settled down to wait.
Chapter 61
‘This place got a cellar?’ said Venn to Stavros.
Stavros nodded. He was at the window, half-concealed by the drapes, the rifle gripped in his hands. In his eyes was a wild, angry look. Venn hoped he wasn’t going to start blazing away.
‘Entrance in kitchen,’ said Stavros.
‘Okay. Professor Lomax,’ said Venn. ‘I want you and Beth to get down there.’
‘No,’ said Beth.
‘What?’ Venn whirled to face her. ‘Those guys out there want to know if I’ve got Lomax. The moment they confirm that I have, they’ll kill us all. Look at them. Ten, a dozen vehicles, each with armed men inside. Lomax needs to stay out of sight.’
‘The professor, yes,’ said Beth. ‘But I’ll be more use up here. I have a gun.’
Yes, and you’ve never fired it, thought Venn. But there wasn’t time to argue.
‘All right,’ he said.
Venn said, ‘Stavros. You go with him. Guard the back door. They can’t drive round there, but they might try to sneak a man or two round that way.’
Stavros seemed reluctant to tear himself away from the window where the enemy was at least visible, but he complied, Lomax going wordlessly with him. Venn heard the cellar trapdoor creak, and slam shut.
He crept over to the window, crouching below the sill, and risked a peek out. Beth moved forward but he held out a hand.
‘Stay back. Don’t give them any more of a target than we can help.’
‘Are they all – professional killers? Government people?’
‘I don’t know,’ Venn murmured. ‘I doubt it, somehow. Those are muscle cars. And that guy with the loudhailer... he looks too well-dressed to be a hitman or a soldier. I think these guys may be mobsters.’
‘Like the Mafia?’
‘Yeah. Hired as proxies to take us down. Keep the killing at one remove from Corcoran.’
‘What do we do?’ Beth asked.
‘We wait to see what happens,’ said Venn.
As he spoke, he heard and saw more vehicles rumbling into the vicinity, till the area beyond the lawns looked like a parking lot outside a supermarket.
The odds were getting longer by the minute.
Stavros had already produced the shotgun, a Remington, and some spare ammo for the handguns. Venn loaded up the shotgun, made sure his Beretta had a fresh clip. Did the same for Beth’s Smith & Wesson.
The guy emerged from the passenger door of the Land Rover once more, brandishing his loudhailer.
Again he said: ‘Joseph Venn. We know you have Dr Colby and Professor Lomax in there with you. Come out with them and nobody’s going to get hurt.’
They can’t be sure I have Lomax, thought Venn. If they were, they’d have stormed the cabin already. They can’t afford to kill me yet, in case I haven’t found him. Corcoran would be back to square one.
There was a slight advantage in there somewhere. Though Venn was damned if he could figure out how to use it.
Venn called back, ‘Stavros. Anybody back there?’
‘No,’ came the fat man’s reply.
They stayed like that for a full fifteen minutes. Venn and Beth crouched with their guns in hand below the window, Venn taking occasional peaks out. Stavros at the kitchen door. And the semi-circle of men in their vehicles waiting, with regular appearances by the loudhailer guy, who alternately threatened, cajoled and demanded.
Then something happened that broke the tension in the most extreme possible way.
Chapter 62
The Panze
rfaust 3 rocket launcher was developed in West Germany during the Cold War, and was intended to be used in the event of a conventional ground war with the Soviet Union. It was designed to penetrate the armour of a battlefield tank and incapacitate it.
Shelly Anderson didn’t need to take out a Soviet tank. She just needed to shake things up a little bit.
Sitting on the roof of the Hummer, Shelly assembled the firing and sighting unit and the launcher tube. Into the tube she fitted the projectile. The projectile was tipped with a hollow-charge warhead, not powerful enough to penetrate a bunker, but plenty effective in causing mayhem inside a log cabin.
For reasons best known to themselves, Rosetti’s mobster goons were laying siege to the cabin and its occupants, instead of storming it. There were easily fifteen or twenty men out there. Venn couldn’t have anything like the same numbers inside. The mobsters could take Venn without too much difficulty, however much of a tough guy he was.
Shelly’s mob contact, the guy she’d leaned on and who had provided her with the location of the cabin, hadn’t mentioned that there was going to be a softly, softly approach. Maybe he hadn’t been told.
Whatever. Shelly wasn’t really all that interested.
What she was interested in, was claiming Dr Colby’s scalp. And if that meant smoking her out with overwhelming force, so be it.
Shelly put her eye to the sighting unit of the launcher.
The weapon had an effective range of around four hundred yards. She estimated that the visible side window of the cabin was approximately three hundred yards away.
And it was a stationary target.
Easy.
Shelly was sighting with her left eye, with her left hand on the launcher’s trigger. Firing the Panzerfaust didn’t result in backblast, which allowed it to be used in confined spaces. But there would be a recoil, which would damn near wrench Shelly’s injured shoulder off if she used her usual, righthand side.
So she’d have to be a southpaw for now.
The weapon was beautiful. Beautiful. She’d fired it on various outdoor firing ranges, but she had never used it in a combat situation.
Today was a first.
Shelly kept the sight rock-steady on the cabin’s window.
She braced herself.
She drew a deep breath.
And released it, as she squeezed the trigger.
The launcher bucked hard, slamming back against her shoulder. Next to her ear there was a sharp explosion, followed by a sucking and whooshing sound.
The rocket shot from the launching tube, spewing a dirty white contrail behind it.
The window of the cabin smashed inward. Shelly felt a fist of triumph punch up into her chest.
Bullseye.
Less than a second later, the warhead detonated.
And the side of the cabin visible to her blew apart.
Chapter 63
Venn dived instinctively at the sound of the shattering glass. But he wasn’t prepared for what happened next.
The cabin behind him exploded.
An enormous, deafening roar rode on the back of an expanding ball of flame that sprayed wood and glass and twisted metal before it. The blast flung Venn forward, accelerating his dive, so that he crashed hard into the log wall. Above him the front window blew out, shattered into fragments by the pressure of the heat and the shock wave.
Shards of glass and metal rained down on him, stinging him like the pricks of a swarm of wasps. Venn rolled, ducking his head into a circle formed by his arms, protecting his eyes and his face as he’d been trained to do. He felt the fire singe his back, his legs, his hair.
A split-second later, when he realized he wasn’t mortally wounded, Venn rolled on to his side and surveyed the remains of the living room.
Looking for Beth.
The living room was a wreck. The connecting walls with the rest of the cabin had been hurled flat so that the whole place now resembled some open-plan office nightmare, the individual rooms now cubicles separated by half-wall partitions.
Venn saw a leg protruding from under an overturned armchair.
He threw himself across the room and grabbed the chair and heaved it away, all the time keeping low in case a new wave of debris came spinning his way.
Beth writhed and squirmed and dragged herself upright. There was blood in her hair, and she was coated in dust, but she was moving all of her limbs.
She stared up at him through a cake of grime.
She looked okay.
Thank God.
Venn reached down, seized her hand, hauled her upright while at the same time pressing her head to keep her crouched.
He raised his head, took a quick look around.
It had been some kind of bomb, or rocket. Thrown or shot in through one of the side windows, into a bedroom or a bathroom.
Venn let go of Beth’s hand and turned, bringing up the Beretta in one hand and the shotgun in the other.
Through the blown-out front windows he saw men running, in a ragged line, from the cars toward the cabin.
They carried handguns, all of them.
Without pause, Venn strode to the window and began firing.
One shot after another with the Beretta, smoothly pulsed firing at one target, then the next.
While with his left hand, he pulled the triggers of the shotgun. Jerked it almost upright to activate the sliding mechanism and reload. Aimed and pulled the triggers again.
Steady shots with the Beretta. Staccato blasts with the shotgun.
The hail of gunfire and buckshot smashed into the advancing row of men, mowing them down, flinging them back like targets in an amusement park shooting gallery.
Some of the ones who hadn’t been hit dived aside, scrambling for cover. Others began to return Venn’s fire.
Venn ducked as bullets sizzled and whined over his head. He glanced back, saw Beth fumbling for her own gun.
‘Stay down!’ he yelled at her.
He rose again, fired through the window. Another guy dropped.
Six, maybe seven guys were down. At least twice that number were coming on, using the cars in front of the cabin, the SUV and the Toyota, as cover. Those cars were already looking pretty shot up, the windows shattered, the tires flat.
Their numbers seemed to give them confidence. A coordinated fusillade of gunfire made Venn duck away from the window once more. It gave him the chance to slam a new magazine into the Beretta.
A head appeared at the window. Venn fired and it dropped away in a red spray.
Behind Venn a crash made him whirl. He brought the shotgun up and was about to let loose when he recognized the stumbling figure picking its way through the wreckage of the connecting walls.
It was Stavros. Like Beth he was covered in dust, but he seemed to be intact.
He was charging toward the front door, rifle in hand, like some absurdly out-of-condition infantryman on a battlefield.
‘Don’t do it, you idiot!’ Venn shouted.
But the fat man had already flung open the door.
‘You blow up my god damn house!’ he roared. ‘I kill you fuckers!’
Venn heard the ratchet and punch of the rifle, and screams. He peered over the top of the window. Saw all visible guns trained on Stavros.
Venn stood, emptied the clip, dropping three more guys.
But it wasn’t enough, and the barrage of gunfire smashed into Stavros, jerking his enormous body this way and that like a grotesque marionette, he hit the ground with a thud.
Emboldened by their success in taking down one of the enemy, the remaining men began to creep closer to the cabin as Venn reloaded once more.
He wasn’t going to be able to keep them all back, he knew.
He dropped the shotgun, picked up the other handgun Stavros had provided.
‘Beth,’ he said. ‘Stay down. The moment anything appears in that window, fire at it. Don’t wait to see who it is.’
She nodded, her own gun extended before her in none-too-steady han
ds.
Venn crouched beneath the window and faced the wrecked rear of the cabin, waiting. If those guys were smart, they’d abandon their efforts to come in through the front, and instead spread around the cabin and get in at the back.
And sure enough, there came the first ones. He heard the kitchen door get kicked off its hinges.
Two men burst into the living room from the rear. Venn took them both down with a single shot each.
Ammo was going to be a problem before too long.
Beth fired suddenly, at a point above Venn’s head, and he heard a yell. He craned round.
‘Scared him off,’ she muttered.
And then Venn heard a sound he’d last encountered on the streets of Chicago. The clatter of automatic fire.
Jesus. They had assault rifles?
But there was shouting from outside. And screaming.
Venn duckwalked over to the front door, which hung ajar. He risked a peep out.
Men were cowering behind the wreckage of the cars in the forecourt as a sustained burst of fire chopped at the metalwork and gravel around the. The shooting was coming from somewhere off to the left.
Without speculating who might be firing, without pausing, Venn ran over to Beth at a crouch, grabbed her by the upper arm.
‘Come on,’ he yelled. ‘We’re going out the back.’
She rose and ran with him. Outside the firing continued, in shorter bursts now. Venn heard the individual shots as the men returned fire.
In the kitchen Venn hauled the door off the floor and lifted the trapdoor to the cellar. He called down, ‘Professor Lomax. We need to get going now.’
Lomax’s white face peered up from the gloom. He scrambled up the steps and Venn helped him through the opening.
‘Stavros?’ the professor asked.
‘Dead.’
Bracing himself, Venn stepped through the kitchen doorway.
Chapter 64
The projectile from the launcher had blown out one side of the log cabin, and must have done a hell of a lot of damage inside. Shelly stared, impressed.