by Tom Cain
69
* * *
CARVER WAS NOT, for once, pleased to see Alix. ‘What is it?’ he asked her impatiently.
She smiled flirtatiously and kept the happy, carefree look on her face as she said, ‘Zorn just said he was about to leave.’
‘Couldn’t you just text?’ he said, smiling back.
‘It was easier to say I needed the bathroom. And you’re better placed out here. When he goes, he will come out of this door, right there, and you will see him. Besides,’ and now the phony flirting gave way to a much more serious emotion, ‘I wanted to be with you. Just for a minute or two …’
Carver was about to reply when he saw her frown. She stepped closer to him, nuzzled her lips against his ear, and, making it look as though she was giving Carver her full attention – even though her half-closed ice-blue eyes were focused at a point beyond his left shoulder – she said, ‘There’s a man by the bandstand looking at you. He looks Chinese: quite tall, slender build, black designer jeans, black jacket, dark glasses …’
‘Chinese?’ Carver asked quizzically, wondering what interest anyone from the Far East might have in him. He’d made some serious enemies in Thailand, but that had been a long time ago. And they’d all been dead when he’d left them.
‘You’re sure he’s not just looking around, watching the world go by?’ he asked.
‘No. This looks like surveillance.’ She frowned. ‘There are two other guys with him, very similar style of clothes – jeans, jackets, but more casual – he’s talking to them. They both looked this way, too. OK, now they’re moving towards us, fanning out.’
‘Are they armed?’
‘I can’t be sure, but they certainly could be. Under those jackets … sure.’
‘Take my hand,’ Carver said. ‘They could be coming for you, not me. Let’s see how interested they really are.’
Gripping her tightly, he turned on his heel and started walking towards St Mary’s Walk, the path that cuts right through the Wimbledon site from north to south. It begins at the top of Aorangi Terrace, and plunges downhill all the way to the far end of the club grounds, passing virtually every court and building of any significance as it goes.
Carver and Alix moved quickly, with the purposeful strides of people with an urgent appointment to keep, forcing their way past slower movers with brusque words of warning or apology. They reached St Mary’s Walk at a point about two-thirds of the way along it. To their left, it continued down past the new mini-stadium of Court Number Three, and a gaggle of outside courts, to a tented village of shops and eating places. Carver went the other way, up a steep flight of stairs. Here the path ran like the floor of a canyon between the looming bulk of Centre Court on one side and the zigzag facade of the Millennium Building on the other. This was where both the press and the players had all the facilities they needed to work and relax, and the mini-theatre where both sides met for pre- and post-match interviews.
Carver stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back. The three Chinese were heading his way, forcing their way past the people at the foot of the steps thirty or forty metres away. He tightened his grip on Alix’s hand. ‘Let’s go.’
Ahead of him the crowd became even thicker. A knot of fans stood immobile in the middle of the path, clutching cameras, video recorders and phones, and gazing up at a covered footbridge that ran over their heads between the Millennium Building and Centre Court. They were waiting to see a star player walk along it, going to or from a match, and they glared crossly at Carver as he forced his way through.
He heard a gasp from Alix.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Up the hill … more of them.’
Carver grunted to show that he’d spotted three more Chinese, one of them female. They might be completely innocent, but he couldn’t afford to risk it. He and Alix were caught almost exactly halfway between the two groups. He glanced at one, then the other, before giving a sharp tug on Alix’s hand.
‘Change of plan,’ he said.
He turned towards the Millennium Building and made for a gap in its facade, past the plate-glass windows behind which the world’s tennis journalists were sitting at their desks, splitting their attention between TV and computer screen as they filed their latest reports. Now Carver came to a small courtyard, hemmed in on all sides by high white walls. He felt Alix flinch as she took in their claustrophobic surroundings. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Through here.’
He made for a door in the far corner of the courtyard, that opened on to a stairwell.
‘Down,’ he said. ‘We’re going underground.’
70
* * *
ONE GOOD THING about looking the way Schultz did: if you sat down at one end of a park bench, no way was anyone else going to sit at the other. Certainly not without asking very politely.
He heard a voice in his ear. It was Cripps. ‘You need a hand with the fireworks, boss?’
‘No worries, Kev, I’ve got this fucker well sorted.’
Schultz had delved into the B&Q bag and taken out the squat grey plastic tube, the shallow copper cone and a locking ring. He placed the cone at one end of the tube, the point facing inwards so that the external surface was concave. Then he screwed the locking ring on to the tube until it pressed tight on the copper, to keep it securely in place. Then he turned the tube over so that the open end was facing him.
Next Schultz got out the bag of Polyfilla and undid the clip that had been placed over the open corner. He then held the bag upside down, over the grey tube, and poured out the contents of the bag – in actual fact, high-explosive RDX powder – tamping the floury white particles down as he went, to make sure they were tightly packed into the tube. When the bag was empty, he placed the plastic disc over the open end of the tube as a backplate, and secured it with the other locking ring. The looped wire was now on the outside of the backplate.
Schultz now had a closed canister, not much bigger than a beer can, filled with explosives, with a fuse wire at one end and copper at the other. This was a Krakatoa, a weapon that arguably produced more bang per buck than any other on the planet. It struck Schultz that this was essentially a smaller, smarter version of the mortars that had been used to attack the refinery. Good to think that the man behind the attack would be getting a taste of his own medicine. It was just a pity Carver’s orders had been so specific: hit the engine, not the passenger compartment. Schultz would have liked to atomize the bastard. But orders were orders, even when they were crap.
There were four small open tubes on the side of the newly formed canister. Schultz took the four plastic sticks from the bag and inserted them in the tubes. Now the canister had legs to stand on.
Schultz undid the wire tie holding the loops of the fuse wire together, and unwound it. Holding one end of the wire in his hand, he placed the canister on the ground, lining it up with the pegged string.
‘Oi, Crippsy! Wake up, you idle bastard!’ Schultz said.
There was a laugh in his ear. ‘What do you want, boss?’
‘Take a look out your passenger window. Can you see the Krakatoa?’
Cripps grunted as he shifted his position. ‘Hang about … Yeah, if I look for it I can see something through the grass, and obviously I know what it is, right? But no other fucker’s gonna have a Scooby.’
Schultz chuckled. ‘No, not till they get it right up the Aris. Then they’ll fucking know all about it.’
71
* * *
ONE THING YOU can count on in any combat situation is that nothing will go exactly according to plan. The ability to adapt to changing circumstances, and improvise accordingly, is therefore vital. Derek Choi was no soldier, but he was well versed in the need to think on his feet. Carver had slipped his original trap. But now he might have run right into another.
For Choi, too, had been studying plans and photographs of the All England Club and its surrounding area. When he saw Carver disappear into the media centre
stairwell, and then take the stairs heading down, he knew exactly where he was heading. He snapped out a series of orders to his most trusted subordinate: a thickset, shaven-headed tough called Lin Zhuang. ‘You and the others will be the hunting dogs and I will be the hunter. Follow Carver and the woman. Drive them towards the unloading bay. I will be waiting to snare them. If you kill them first I will not be displeased. Understand?’
Lin nodded.
‘Then go.’
Lin and the other four agents raced away down the stairs. Choi turned on his heels and went the other way. He ran about a hundred metres, and then he, too, headed down into the depths of the earth.
72
* * *
THERE WAS A small landing at the bottom of the stairs, with a single, duck-egg blue door, which had a round glass porthole. Carver took a look through it, then pushed it open with his shoulder, glancing back up the stairwell as he did. The sound of scurrying footsteps was clearly audible, coming from above them. The Chinese were on their way.
Carver raised his gun to cover the stairs as he gestured for Alix to go through the door. He followed her into one of Wimbledon’s underground service tunnels. The door was positioned close to a right-angled bend, so that the tunnel ran away straight ahead of them and to the right. The concrete floor was shiny and slick from the constant passage of feet and wheels. The walls were made of bare breeze blocks. A couple of doors, painted in the same duck-egg blue, were set into the right-hand wall. The nearest one had a sign next to it that read, ‘Ball Boys and Girls’. The one beyond it displayed one word: ‘Pilates’.
On the left, two massive black pipes ran all along the bottom of the wall, with metal racks above them that were used to carry countless, loosely hung strands of multicoloured wire. A number of smaller red-painted pipes were suspended from the ceiling, along with yet more wires. They were all held in place by metal frames like horizontal ladders, from which hung a line of harsh white neon strip lights that ran as far as the eye could see.
‘Let’s go,’ said Carver, running down the tunnel up ahead.
Alix followed him, her heels clattering against the concrete floor. As they rounded a left-hand corner Carver gestured at her to stop and get to the side of the tunnel, just behind him. He took up a position by one of the pipes, wishing that Schultz were down in the tunnel with him, instead of sitting on a bench by Wimbledon Common. Give the two of them a couple of sub-machine guns and a bunch of grenades, and they’d have the Chinese sorted in no time. Doing it solo was a little more complicated.
Carver was as close as he could get to the angle of the corner, leaning slightly out into the tunnel to get a view of the door from the stairs. It opened and one of the Chinese stepped through it, holding his gun out in front of him. He stopped for a moment, saw no one else in the tunnel, and lowered his gun as he relaxed a fraction, and that was when Carver stepped out and fired the two shots that killed him.
Carver put another two rounds through the porthole to discourage the men waiting the other side, then immediately turned – and almost ran right into a squat, white, open buggy that was coming down the tunnel towards them. Thanks to its electric motor the buggy was virtually noiseless. In fact the loudest sound coming from it was the music seeping from the earphones of the skinny, acne-faced lad at the wheel. He seemed lost in what he was hearing, his attention long since dulled by the constant repetition of trips up and down the same stretch of tunnel. He barely registered Carver’s presence until he was two metres away, and then his dull working day suddenly got a whole lot more exciting. He slammed on the brakes and came to a halt within a few centimetres of Carver, who simply put a foot in front of the buggy, leaned forward, and used one hand to shove his gun in the young driver’s face, while the other ripped the earphones from his head.
‘Get out, now,’ said Carver. ‘That way.’
The driver nodded frantic agreement, then scrambled across the seat towards the wall where Alix was standing.
‘Now hold out your hands in front of you,’ Carver told him.
From round the corner came the sound of the door to the stairs being kicked open.
Carver pulled a pair of the yellow plastic handcuffs from his trouser pocket and gave them to Alix.
Now a voice could be heard barking out orders in Chinese.
Carver nodded at the wall and said, ‘Tie him to those racks.’
There were distant footsteps, getting fainter – men running down the tunnel in the wrong direction. Then more commands.
Alix nodded and slipped one of the handcuff loops around the driver’s left hand, tightening it hard enough to make him wince.
More footsteps, coming in their direction.
Alex passed the cuff around the back of one of the upright struts that supported the wire racks, then took the driver’s right hand and secured it.
As she did so, Carver got behind the wheel of the buggy and executed a quick three-point turn, so that it was facing back the way it had just come. He slid across the seat so that Alix could get behind the wheel.
‘Floor it,’ he said.
The buggy trundled away, gradually picking up pace towards its top speed of sixteen miles per hour. Carver turned around in his seat so that he was facing backwards, half-kneeling with one knee on the seat, his weight pushed forward so that his thigh was braced against the vertical seat-rest. He reached around to the small of his back and took out his gun. Then he held it out in front of him, sighting at a point in the middle of the corner round which the Chinese were about to appear.
The footsteps got louder.
The kid tied to the wire-rack was darting his head from side to side like one of the spectators on the courts up above them, staring with terrified wide eyes at Carver, then back towards the sound of the approaching footsteps. He started desperately trying to clamber up and over the pipes to give himself a little cover.
‘OK,’ Carver told Alix, ‘hit the brakes.’
The two fastest Chinese came racing around the corner. The first almost skidded to a halt as he spotted Carver up ahead, aiming a gun directly at him, and there was almost a touch of slapstick about the way the next runner crashed into him, nearly knocking him off his feet. But that comedy moment saved the first runner’s life. It meant that Carver’s first shot missed him, and the second hit him high on his right shoulder, smashing into the joint between the shoulder blade and the upper arm. The impact knocked him backwards. He screamed in agony and his gun dropped from his limp, useless arm. But he was still alive.
Carver didn’t have time to finish the first target off. The second was already steadying himself and bringing his gun to bear on the buggy. Carver went for a head shot. Two more quick-fire rounds hit their target, splattering a mess of scarlet blood and grey brain matter against the stark, bare breeze blocks.
Eight rounds used, seven left in the magazine. Three men down …
No, make that two.
The man Carver had wounded was struggling to his feet. He switched his gun to his left hand, and staggered forwards.
Carver winced as he killed him with a pair of shots to the chest, almost resenting his victim for forcing such a clinical execution rather than being smart enough to count himself lucky and stay down.
He pointed his gun up at the neon strip lights and fired off the rest of his rounds, throwing that section of the tunnel into semidarkness. Then he released the magazine, slammed in a new one and passed the gun to Alix. ‘Get round the next corner, then wait for me,’ he said. ‘If I don’t come for you, shoot whoever does.’
Carver got out of the buggy and she drove away. He jumped up and grabbed hold of the framework that ran along the ceiling, carrying the red pipes, wires and shot-out neon lights. Then he swung his legs up into the framework, and pulled his body up until he was lying flat alongside the pipes and wires, hoping that the thin metal struts that supported them would take his weight as well; hoping, too, that he had taken out enough lights to hide his presence from the other Chinese, who
must now have realized that they had gone in the wrong direction, and be doubling back his way.
Carver reached down to his leg and slipped the knife from his ankle sheath.
More voices came, two of them, one higher-pitched than the other. Their words were indecipherable, but the questioning tone was clear. They were calling out for their mates, and wondering why there was no reply. Seconds later the owners of the voices came into view: a shaven-headed, thickset guy who looked like he could handle himself, and a slip of a girl in a sexy little mini. They both glanced at their dead comrades. The girl visibly flinched, then pulled herself together, advancing down the tunnel at a slow, steady pace beside the man. They had their guns in front of them, alert to the slightest sound or movement.
They were almost directly under Carver now.
Then there was a strangled cry for help, the sound of a man too terrified to be able to raise his voice. The buggy driver slid back down the pipe towards the tunnel floor and the two Chinese turned in his direction, presenting their backs to Carver. The girl swung her gun until the barrel pointed directly at the wide-eyed screaming driver, her face clenched into flint-eyed immobility as she put three shots in a tight grouping right in the centre of his skinny torso. They blasted bloody chunks out of his back as they passed right through him.
The sound of the firing was still echoing around the tunnel as Carver slipped down from his hiding place, his feet hitting the concrete directly behind the shaven-headed man. His left hand clamped over the man’s mouth as the knife in his right cut into the flesh of his neck and, in a single sweep from left to right, severed the windpipe and the carotid artery, sending a spray of blood pluming through the air in a downward arc. The man fell dead at Carver’s feet.
The young woman turned round to meet this unexpected threat, and Carver threw himself at her, reaching out for her gun with his empty hand and stabbing the knife up towards her guts.