ENEMY -THE-

by WOOD TOM

  With his hands bound, he couldn’t just hold his gun arm around the corner and squeeze, so he twisted to the left as he stepped out to the right, realising his mistake as the moonlight cast his shadow on to the far wall of the alley ahead of him.

  A gun fired first, a snapshot before Victor had fully revealed himself, the bullet blowing a chunk from the brickwork.

  Victor lurched to the side, squeezing off a shot of his own, knowing it had missed without needing to look. He hurried along the wall, away from the alley, walking backwards, gun up, but doubting the assassin would continue forward. He or she would backtrack and find another way around the buildings. The others could already be doing the same as the one in the alley. If Victor let them flank him, it was over.

  He put two rounds into the very corner of the alley mouth to make sure his attacker did double back. Then he sprinted for the fence, running awkwardly, unable to pump with his arms, expecting a bullet in the back at any moment. Reaching the fence, Victor tossed the gun over while he was still running, leapt, grabbed hold of the metal links halfway up, pushing with his feet. He climbed the last few feet, one hand clutching on to the links while the fingers of the other hand stretched to take hold a few links up. He repeated the process rapidly, urgently, scrambling all the time with his feet.

  Razor wire topped the fence but he had no choice. Holding on to the top links, he swung his right elbow up and hooked it over the wire. Edges of metal sliced through his clothes and skin. Victor ignored the pain, pushed up with his legs, got his left elbow over too and hauled the rest of his body up and over the fence.

  He let go and dropped down to the other side. The razor wire shredded the sleeves of his jacket and shirt and the skin beneath. His feet hit the ground and he immediately went into a roll to disperse the impact. The earth was rocky and wet from the rain.

  His fingers were slick with rainwater and blood. He couldn’t feel them. He located the gun, scooped it up into both hands, turned and rose to one knee. On the other side of the fence, the row of workshops stood seventy yards away. Moonlight sparkled off thousands of falling raindrops. Victor saw no one.

  He heard a faint muffled shot and saw the sparks as the bullet clipped a fence post, but couldn’t see the shooter. There was too much cover, too many shadows. The assassin could be anywhere, approaching in the darkness to take a shot at closer range, while the others did the same. He heard another shot, but from a different origin, and heard the bullet strike the ground nearby.

  Victor jumped to his feet and ran, hoping that the two shooters were the sum total of his pursuers, but knowing a third was probably circling around some other way to intercept him, leaving the remaining assassin to check the Renault for survivors, manage evidence, call for backup. Maybe Victor had been lucky and scored a hit with his shots at the Peugeot, leaving one of his enemies injured. Maybe, but Victor didn’t believe in luck.

  There was enough light to see the ground but not the many shallow ruts and rocks that littered it. He stumbled and staggered, unable to use his arms for balance, knowing any Israelis following him would cover the distance faster than he could.

  He saw a factory up ahead. No lights. As he neared, he could make out gaping holes in its sloped corrugated roof. Abandoned. Derelict. No chance of finding a car to steal, but more chance of locating something sharp to cut the plasticuffs.

  He sprinted on. The rain soaked his clothes, hair and skin. The wasteland crested and then sloped down before it gave way to a flat area of asphalt set around the factory itself. Grass grew through cracks in the ground. The factory was several hundred feet long and thirty high to the start of a sloping roof that rose and peaked after another twenty. The walls were made of brick, set all the way along with huge rectangular windows comprised of dozens of smaller panes, many broken.

  Victor ran up to the factory and rushed along the edge of the building, crouching low, looking for a way inside. Outside, the Israeli’s numerical superiority would win without question. Inside, he might be able to avoid them, or hide long enough to force a withdrawal. If he could get his hands free. The windows were no good as an entry point. He would have to smash more to create a big enough gap, and with bound wrists, wouldn’t be able to pull himself up to get through them. All the time, the Kidon assassins were closing.

  He found a set of double doors. He checked the padlock. Stainless steel and sturdy. Even if he fired all four of his precious remaining bullets he wouldn’t get through it. He moved on.

  He dared to glance back, but couldn’t see his pursuers. They wouldn’t be able to see him either, but they would have heard him kicking the door. After a few more seconds, he found another door, this time a single. It had been reinforced with a padlock too, but some enterprising person had smashed in the lower half of the door. Victor silently thanked delinquents everywhere and got on his hands and knees. He crawled through the gap. Splinters of wood snagged his jacket.

  It was cold inside. It might have been cold outside but he hadn’t noticed. He was in a huge expanse of almost empty space that had once served as the main factory floor. Rain fell through gaping holes in a sloping corrugated roof supported by huge metal pillars. Large puddles spread across the floor beneath and bounced back the moonlight.

  Some grass and plant life grew where light and rain regularly reached. Metal pipes, pieces of wood and sheets of plastic were scattered around. Visibility was good for an interior at night, but some areas in deep shadow were utterly black.

  Victor hurried away from the door. He heard glass smash and knew one of the huge windows was being used as an entry point. Another assassin would be following directly behind Victor, and in seconds, crawl under the door. He could wait to ambush his pursuer, but that would keep Victor occupied long enough for the second or third Israeli to kill him from behind. No time to find something to saw through the straps. There were several exits leading deeper into the factory. Victor lurched through the closest.

  He strained to see in the darkness; the further he went the less light there was. He didn’t know where the corridor led, but he had to keep moving. Water dripped on him from somewhere above. He passed an interior door, tried it, found it locked, and carried on. He turned a corner, pressed his back against the wall for a moment, breathing heavily.

  Victor forced himself to carry on. The light increased as the corridor opened up into a courtyard, overlooked on all sides by tall factory walls. There was only one way out, on the far side of the courtyard. A metal door streaked with rust. It was padlocked. Impenetrable. The walls were too tall and sheer to climb. No way out.

  He turned around, rushed back down the corridor. He found the interior door again, kicked it open. In his peripheral vision he caught a glimpse of a moving form before he dashed through the doorway.

  On the other side, moonlight shining through the decaying roof illuminated the large space. He made out the shapes of machinery, crates, tools, shelving, a conveyor belt, barrels. There were huge empty metal shelves along one wall, an abandoned forklift set before them. Victor backed off into the darkness.

  He needed to find a way out. The Israelis would know that, and one of their number would be sprinting around the exterior of the factory to cover the far side from which Victor had entered. Were all three to follow him inside, and he managed to get back outside, he would be home free. They wouldn’t make that mistake.

  He stayed away from the dim beams of light filtering through the roof, to protect his night vision as well as to stay hidden. On the end of each row of shelves was a circular mirror to aid driving the forklift. Most were smashed.

  Large crates were stacked in several rows and piles. Victor squatted down behind them, breathing hard, and used a jacket sleeve to wipe some sweat and rain from his face. He felt along the floor, hoping to find something sharp to cut the plasticuffs, but there was nothing.

  He peered around the crates, saw a tall figure enter the room, quickly sidestepping away from the door. Victor squeezed off a shot, but he wasn’t f
ast enough and the Israeli disappeared into cover.

  A shot sounded from somewhere unseen and wood exploded as bullets punctured one of the crates. Victor backed off. He couldn’t see the assassin, and couldn’t risk exchanging fire if he did. His wrists were still bound, and the Beretta had just three rounds remaining.

  There was a passageway to Victor’s left, which he guessed would take him back to the main factory floor. He made a break for it, sprinting out of cover, trusting to speed. A bullet pinged off machinery.

  He made it, didn’t slow down, running along the wide corridor, seeing the huge broken windows in the distance. He ran out into the main factory floor, veered right to take him out of the immediate line of sight of anyone following him. Victor didn’t know if the second assassin was nearby. He had to risk it.

  There was no time to fumble in the dark for something sharp to cut the straps so Victor tucked the Beretta into his waistband, grabbed a pipe from the floor and swung it at a corner of one of the metal pillars. It made a loud clang. He swung it three more times, hitting the pillar in exactly the same spot. He dropped the pipe and rubbed the strap between his wrists against where he’d smashed away paint, rust and grime to reveal cold steel beneath. He felt the heat of friction as he frantically sawed.

  The clang of the pipe hitting the pillar would tell his enemies exactly where to find him, but he had no choice. If he wanted to live, he needed his hands back. He sawed harder, expecting the searing agony of a bullet’s impact at any moment.

  The strap snapped. Finally, he was free.

  Victor scrambled away, avoiding the swathes of light cutting through the air and reflecting off rain drops. When he reached the shelter of a rusty staircase leading up to a split-level lost in the darkness, he stopped, turned, and drew the Beretta. His hands were still numb and his wrists tingling, but it felt good to have independent movement again.

  He heard footsteps crunching grit and other debris, but couldn’t see the source. He had to move. Every moment he stayed under the split-level gave the other assassins time to close in and flank him. There was an interior doorway about thirty feet away; he approached it, keeping close to the wall, stepping as slowly and quietly as he could. He couldn’t see where he was treading, and knew that one wrong footfall could give away his position. He would have taken off his shoes, but the floor was so littered with sharp objects he would have sliced his feet to shreds by the time he made it to the door.

  Victor stopped ten feet from the doorway. There was too much light around it to move closer without revealing himself. His enemy could be watching the doorway, figuring he would head that way, and ready to shoot the second Victor moved into the light.

  He took a breath, preparing to sprint and trust to speed again. He didn’t have a lot of choice.

  Something brushed Victor’s ear. He flinched, reached a hand up and found a flake of rust on his shoulder. Instinctively, his head tilted backwards, looking up. He saw nothing but knew the split-level was twenty-plus feet above his head. Something up there had caused the flake of rust to fall.

  The second assassin. As Victor had thought, they knew where he was hiding, and while one waited on the factory floor, the second was seeking to flank, not from the left or right, but from above.

  Victor pivoted in the direction of the staircase. The Israeli above would have to come down that way, into the light. Victor stepped forward and to the side to get a better angle on the staircase. If he could kill this one, that left only one inside with him. Those were Victor’s kind of odds.

  He knocked something with his shoe. It skidded into a puddle and splashed. Not loud, but loud enough in the silence.

  A suppressor clacked and a bullet buried itself in the floor a couple of feet away. Another splashed into the puddle.

  The shots came from above, firing through the wooden floorboards of the split level, impossible to tell exactly where from just two shots. Victor remained perfectly still, willing the Israeli to shoot again and give away his position. The assassin fired a third shot, then a fourth.

  The final one hit the floor close enough for Victor to feel pieces of exploded concrete strike his shins. Moonlight glowed through a hole above. Victor calculated the trajectory and squeezed off a round. He heard it tear through wood. There was a grunt, a stumble. Victor tracked the sound and risked another shot. A second of silence before something small and hard hit the floorboards.

  Something big and heavy followed. Dead, or maybe just wounded. Or pretending.

  One round left in the Beretta. One too few to risk another blind shot, especially with another foe nearby. Victor felt around on the floor, found a heavy bolt, and hurled it at the open doorway. He was sprinting the instant the bolt clattered on the other side, knowing the Israeli on the factory floor couldn’t help but be distracted by it, if only for a moment. Victor reached the staircase and ascended fast. He heard movement below him as the assassin responded, moving to get a shot, and Victor flinched as a bullet struck the metal handrail behind him, but he made it to the top of the stairs and dived through a doorway on to the split-level.

  He was in a derelict office. Moonlight shone through a wide, smashed-out window. Victor jumped to his feet and, gun up, moved quickly across the space. The time for stealth had passed. If the Israeli up here was dead, it didn’t matter. If he was still alive and wounded, Victor wanted to get to him before he could recover sufficiently to retrieve his weapon, and before the assassin below arrived. There was no furniture except for a dented filing cabinet against one wall. The drawers had all been removed and stood, upside down, on the floor. Makeshift stools. Crushed beer cans and broken bottles were spread across the floor.

  Through another door, Victor emerged into a larger office, some kind of briefing room, perhaps. The carpet had been stripped to expose the floorboards. Rain fell through holes in the roof. There were piles of broken chairs and other junk, rusting filing cabinets lying on their sides, plastic water-cooler bottles scattered around. Too dark to see the bullets holes in the floor. There were two doors at the far end.

  No dead or injured assassin.

  Victor froze, knowing he couldn’t backtrack and go down the staircase. If the Israeli from the factory floor was still down there, he or she would have an easy time shooting Victor as he descended. He had to keep moving forward, knowing at least one assassin was waiting for him.

  He stepped around the junk. There was nowhere for anyone to hide, but there were two doorways that led out of the room. Both open. An ambush could be waiting for him on the other side of either. At least two assassins close by.

  One bullet.

  CHAPTER 65

  As Victor approached the doorways he saw the closest wasn’t an option. Junk packed the room beyond – broken chairs, boxes and other trash created an impassable blockage. Victor headed towards the second.

  He walked down the hallway beyond, slowly, cautiously, one silent footstep after the next. The light was dim but abundant enough that he could see the details of the walls – old peeling paper, wires hanging where light fixtures had been removed, holes for hooks. The carpet had been stripped from the floor but some underlay was left over the floorboards. The roof above had yet to breach and the floor was dry.

  There were two closed doors, the nearest to his left, the furthest to the right, before the hallway opened up to another area. Based on the width of the split-level, he imagined the closed doors would lead to small offices. Beyond the open space up ahead would be the other staircase. The cool air that flowed gently his way told him a large opening lay ahead, maybe a smashed-out window. He heard the relentless patter of rain hitting hard surfaces.

  Victor ignored the doors. A Kidon assassin would not have trapped him- or herself in a small office with only one exit. He or she would be in the area at the end of the corridor or somewhere beyond.

  Twelve more steps and he was almost in the open area. A rotting couch and a water cooler with no bottle revealed it as having once been a reception room or loun
ge. Rain soaked the floorboards beneath a huge hole in the ceiling. The couch had no cushions, bare springs visible and rusty.

  A doorless entranceway on the opposite side of the lounge led to a kitchen. Victor could see the remnants of white-painted units and cabinets. He stepped quickly into the open area, first looking left, then right, sweeping with the Beretta as he did. No sign of an assassin and nowhere for one to hide. Shards of glass from broken bottles and crushed cans were scattered across the floor. Through an open door to Victor’s right, he saw a metal balcony and another staircase.

  The door leading to the balcony was open fully, letting in a swathe of dim light from the night sky above. Pieces of glass jutted from the door around the square hole that had once been a window.

  Victor stepped forward again so he could see further into the kitchen and get a better angle on the balcony, but there were still blind spots that would only be revealed if he moved closer to one, presenting his back to the other. He knew there had to be an assassin hiding in one of the locations, but which one?

  The open staircase door could have been like that before – nothing to do with his enemies – or maybe it was open to lure Victor towards it, so he could be ambushed from behind. Or maybe an assassin was on the balcony, figuring that Victor would think it a trap and head to the kitchen. Beyond that was double and triple bluff, a never-ending stream of potential deception. Tactics didn’t come into it. Experience didn’t help. In the end it was a straight fifty-fifty.

  He had to pick one, fast. He couldn’t hang around. The second Kidon assassin would be closing. The third one from outside could even have been called in, now Victor was trapped on the split-level.

  He headed to the staircase door so that if he was wrong and the assassin attacked from the kitchen they would come out of hiding with the moonlight in their eyes. Victor approached side-on so that he could keep looking left towards the kitchen.

  Eighteen inches from the balcony, he stopped. Any closer and he would give himself away an instant before he had a visual on his enemy. At the same time, Victor would reveal himself to anyone in the kitchen. And he couldn’t be looking in both directions at once.