by John Connor
‘I am police, little girl,’ he said, speaking bad English suddenly, and looking irritated. ‘You do what I tell you. Come over here now.’ But still he didn’t get up from the crouch. He was looking off towards the house, looking very nervous, like he was frightened the tall man would appear from there. That’s what it looked like. He shouted again, ‘Where is the man you were with? Tell me now.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. She was still taking slow steps forward. Why had she lied?
He stood up, beckoned her with his hand. ‘Walk to me,’ he said. ‘You are safe.’ The gun in his other hand was pointed forward, not at her, but in her direction. She stopped.
‘Come,’ he said, more urgently. ‘Come now.’ He looked down the hill again, then started to come towards her, warily. She saw the gun coming up. She had followed none of her mother’s advice today. What would her mother say about this? She would tell her to run.
She spun quickly and started across the junction, heading up the road beyond, away from him.
Carl was already coming round the side of the house when he heard the first shot. He sped up, kept his head low, ran to where his pack and gun lay. As the front area came into view he could see a man up on the road, in uniform, a handgun held out at arm’s length. He was about seventy metres away. The man fired the gun as Carl watched. Carl couldn’t see what he was shooting at, but knew. He felt a flush of fear in his blood, then heard her scream – a short yell of fear, rather than pain. He tried to keep calm, got his hands onto the gun, dashed sideways towards some bushes.
Then he could see them both. She was about thirty metres from the man, lying on the ground. She was off to Carl’s left, about forty metres distant, above him, on the road that led past the house. She was partially screened by the low bushes there. Carl felt his scalp prickle, the kick of adrenalin high up in his chest. The policeman was further away than her, to Carl’s right, but moving forward quickly, not looking towards him.
He got the rifle up and the scope to his eye as she scrambled to her feet and started to run. The policeman aimed at her again, moving towards the rock where Carl had told her to wait. He fired twice very quickly, before Carl could do anything. Both misses, because she didn’t pause. The policeman started screaming something, then disappeared behind the rock, into cover. Carl had the cross hairs on the rock, but no clear shot. He could feel his heart thudding as he tried to steady his legs. The gun was difficult to shoot accurately from a standing position. He needed to go down onto one knee, brace it against his leg, but there was no time. He kept his eye against the scope, waiting for the man to emerge at the other side. He heard the girl cry out again, decided he couldn’t wait. He started to move clumsily sideways, just as the guy came out.
The man was holding the gun with both hands now, pointing it towards her, completely focused on the shot. Carl had the cross hairs over his chest, but he was still moving, off balance. He squeezed anyway. The shot smacked out with a loud whipcrack. The gun was big, the round powerful – so even with the muzzle brake and the fat suppressor mounted on the end of the barrel, the recoil spun him, pulling his eye from the scope. The guy disappeared from view. There was a puff of stone and dust from the rocks behind where he had been, where the bullet struck.
Carl recovered and put one knee on the ground, eyes on the road still. He slid the bolt, felt the next round chamber, then stood and moved up the hill, moving very cautiously, holding the gun ready in front of him.
But there was no need. As soon as he got to the junction he saw the guy lying there, flat out, face in the dirt, arms spread wide, the pistol discarded in the road some distance away. There was some blood. The round must have gone straight through him before ricocheting off the rocks behind. The girl was over by some trees at the side of the track, on her backside, cowering, staring at him.
‘Did he hit you?’ Carl shouted over. ‘Are you OK?’ She didn’t reply, but he couldn’t go to her yet. He had to check the man, be sure.
He walked over to him with the gun still ready. But from five metres back he could see enough to lower it. It was a clean headshot, though a lucky one. He had been going for the torso. The limbs were still twitching, but not with life. He turned away from it, ran back to the girl.
‘He tried to kill me,’ she blurted out, indignant. ‘He shot at me …’
‘Did he hit you? Are you hurt?’
She shook her head. She was trembling like she was freezing. That was mild shock. He could see her looking past him at the body, her eyes very wide, her face very white.
‘You’re safe,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about him.’
She stared at him, her expression aghast, then said, ‘I was running. He fired at me. I think he tried to shoot me …’
‘He did try to shoot you, but those guns are inaccurate. It’s almost impossible to hit a moving target, so you did well to run …’ He put the gun down and helped her stand up, checked her front, just in case. He had seen her on the ground. Her clothes were dusty. Had she been hit without realising it? Her pupils were a little dilated, like she was full of adrenalin, but there was no blood on her.
‘I fell over,’ she stammered. She looked confused. ‘I fell over when he started firing. He was pointing it at me and shooting …’
‘He was trying to kill you. And he wasn’t alone. We need to get out of here. Right now.’
8
Carl moved quickly and deliberately up the hillside, stooping low, taking a route that led from cover to cover, stopping periodically to raise the rifle and hunt the ground within small arms range, to either side and above. There were broken rocks strewn all over, easy to gash your leg on if you fell, so he couldn’t move as quickly as he would like, not with the girl in tow. She was behind him a little and he had to repeatedly slow and hurry her along. She was still stunned, he thought, automatically obeying him because something frightening had happened and he was the nearest adult. She stumbled from rock to rock, less out of breath than he was, but saying nothing. It wouldn’t be long before that changed though – then she would start to ask the questions he was fearing. Like what had happened to her parents? What was he going to tell her?
Mostly, he kept his eyes on this side of the valley. That was what he was most worried about. If they were over the other side of the valley – where he had seen Jones’s man – then they would need to have another sniper to pose a threat, and he thought they wouldn’t have hired more than one sniper. He was having difficulty understanding why they had hired even one. If they had gone to the trouble of planting a device then why not simply wait until all the targets were in the house? When Jones had told him they were using him as a kind of humane killer he had bought it only because he had imagined that the other targets were to be brutalised in some way, perhaps questioned before being executed, or worse. But a device didn’t do that. A device was haphazard – it could kill effectively, maim people, or leave them untouched. Which meant that, by using him instead, they must have really wanted a certainty that this girl was dead, and that wasn’t how Jones had explained it. And if that was the case, why detonate the device before she reached the house? That had to have been a cock-up. It was impossible to think it through clearly now, though. Right now he had to keep his concentration focused on the threat.
He paused for breath. He still had the sterile overalls and gloves on, and was sweating heavily, but didn’t dare strip them off until he was in the car. His hands were especially uncomfortable. He glanced back. She was still there, ten paces further down, looking up at him. He moved a bit higher then checked his field of view using the rifle scope. He could see nothing, no one following, no cars coming up the road, no movement back at the house. No sirens. No reaction. The longer that continued, the more it bothered him.
The valley here was deeply wooded but all the trees were low, stunted things, not much higher than bushes. There was a kind of scrappy, dry grass coming out of the
soil, but it was thin and looked thirsty and brown. It grew about as high as his knees. The ground was hard, cracked like in a drought, dusty, the soil a faint shade of red. Here and there were flowers, but not many. Earlier in the day he had thought he could smell wild rosemary, but now the only thing in his nostrils was the smoke he had inhaled down in the house. He saw lizards scampering away from him, heard the clicking of crickets, the whirring of cicadas. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky but luckily it was far from high summer. He needed water, but he wasn’t too uncomfortable.
He set off again as soon as she caught up with him. After five more minutes he got to a prominent stand of rocks he had seen from the house and climbed round them, then up onto a high ledge. They were big, broken slabs of stone, rising above the little trees, giving him a good field of fire. As she scrambled up behind him he warned her to stay below, in cover, then lay down and started searching, using his eyes first, then checking through the scope. Still he could hear no sirens, though the dissipating smoke cloud was high in the sky now. Why hadn’t the neighbours driven up? He didn’t understand it.
He checked the ridge opposite. There was no sign of Jones’s man, so he started to scan around him, working methodically. As he concentrated, his mind kept flicking back to the girl. She looked really scared now, but the horror hadn’t even started. Both her parents were dead. He felt a weight in his stomach thinking about it. He had played a part in that. The whole situation was totally fucked up, well beyond his comfort zone. Why hadn’t he seen that it would be like this two weeks ago, back in London, when it had all started?
He slid back off the rocks to where she was standing, squinting up at him. ‘Ten minutes more,’ he said, ‘then we’re over the top.’ She looked like she hadn’t heard him. He repeated it, then wondered whether he should try to say something encouraging to her. But he didn’t have a clue what. He didn’t know how to deal with children.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Why are we climbing up here? Why are we running away?’
He pointed up to the ridge line. ‘There’s another valley over there. My car is there. We can use that to get out of here.’
‘Your car? I don’t want to get into your car.’ She took a step back from him, a look of obvious fright on her face, her lip trembling. ‘My dad will be back soon,’ she said, like it was a threat. ‘I want to wait for him. I don’t want to go anywhere with you. I don’t know who you are.’
He put the gun down and stared at her. He hadn’t seen anyone else when he searched, but he was sure they were here, somewhere in this valley. They would know what route he was taking, they would be reacting right now. The time to discuss things was therefore not now. But if she went back down to the house they would kill her. He was sure of that. ‘The explosion in your house wasn’t gas bottles,’ he said. ‘It was a device, a bomb. Someone triggered it on purpose, to kill people. That’s why we’re running.’
She frowned at him. ‘A bomb? I don’t understand … to kill who?’
He opened his mouth to tell her, then shut it. He couldn’t start on that. He needed her to be in control, not screaming with grief. ‘The policeman tried to kill you,’ he said. ‘You were there. It was you he was shooting at. You know that. That’s why we’re running.’
Her face crinkled up. ‘I want to call my mum,’ she said, urgently. ‘I need to speak to her.’
He shook his head. ‘Up there. When we get to the top so we can see this place more clearly, make sure my car is still there. Then we can call her. Not now. Right now we have to keep going because if we don’t someone is going to find us and start shooting again. It’s not a joke or a game …’
‘I didn’t say it was.’
‘OK.’ He took a breath. ‘It’s really urgent we get out of this valley. It’s like a kill zone. It’s making me very nervous. I’m sorry if I’m not explaining things well. I’m not used to dealing with kids …’
‘I’m not a kid. I’m ten.’
‘Whatever. If you don’t do what I say you’ll be a dead ten-year-old. Can you understand that?’
She flinched, then the tears really welled into her eyes. He crouched down, so that she was actually taller than him. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘There are men here who want to kill you …’
‘Why? I don’t understand … Why is this happening?’ She started sobbing badly, her chest heaving.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I need you to trust me. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m trying to protect you. You have seen already that that is what I’m doing. I stopped that man from killing you. I promise you that that is all I will do – I will protect you. I promise. Now can we get going? We can talk about it when we’re out of here.’
He didn’t know what else to say. Was he meant to reach out a hand, touch her? How did you reassure a ten-year-old? He had no idea. He shouldered the gun, turned his back on her and set off. He was thinking: Go. Run. Run back down the hill and wait for your dead dad. She wanted to run from him. He had seen it in her eyes. He wished she would.
What was he doing here? What on earth did he think he was doing? It was absurd. He had stood beside her and watched himself doing it – offering to protect her. That was what he had just done. He was fucking insane. She was nothing to do with him, not his problem. He had done his bit already to save her life – he had moved the sights off her, staked his life. He had acted instinctively, without considering anything. Up to this point. But now he saw he should have left it there. She wasn’t any longer his problem. If she turned now and ran he would be relieved. Then he could really speed up, get out of this situation. He widened his stride a little, hurrying over some flatter ground, not looking back. Maybe if he went fast enough she would get the idea.
He went right to the summit without looking back. When he finally paused, almost ten minutes later, she was close behind him, struggling to keep up, tears still running down her cheeks. He breathed hard. Too late, he thought. He had made the choice when she was within his sights, now he was going to have to deal with the consequences. All the consequences. He was just beginning to comprehend what they might be.
‘Now can I call my mum?’ she asked him. He pretended he hadn’t heard.
He got behind a narrow ridge of rock running along the top and told her to get down beside him. Then he got out the spotting scope and crept forward.
‘You promised I could call my mum,’ she insisted from behind him.
He held up a hand to her, then looked down the reverse slope. No obvious movement. He put the scope to his eye and searched the hillside down to the dirt track, then the parking area beyond that. His car was still there, by itself, as he had left it, about a kilometre away. The place was marked on the map as a beauty spot. The valley over this side offered less cover, looked drier, but with more impressive cliffs and escarpments to catch the eye. His eyes followed the snaking tourist route back down to the little village about five kilometres distant and could see no traffic at all on the road. The road was a dead end below him, finishing without warning a few hundred metres after the parking space.
He moved back and turned to her. She was about five metres away, kneeling down. He saw her fumbling quickly to put something in her pocket and immediately realised that she would have a phone of her own, of course. All kids did these days, no doubt. She didn’t want him to know she had it because she didn’t trust him. ‘Have you got a signal?’ he asked her. She looked startled, then guilty. She was still quietly sobbing to herself. He sat up and got his own mobile out, switched it on, waited for it to boot, then waited for a signal. There was none. They had taken down the masts covering the area, he decided. Probably the fixed line too, if there was one. That partly accounted for the absence of response to the explosion. They must have done it while he was lying there, waiting, during the morning – planted some small timed device to do some specific damage. Perhaps that was what the guy on the opposite r
idge had been up to. There was a mast up there – he could see it now, still intact across the other side of the valley. Or maybe they arranged it with the service provider, paid to have it cut on some computer system. That was possible, though more risky, unless you knew people clever enough to hack in and do it remotely.
‘I have no signal,’ he said to her. ‘What about you?’
She shook her head, then sat back in the grass and started chewing her lip. She was getting more and more agitated. She wanted to speak to her mother. He understood that. But her mother was dead. He needed to work out a way to deal with that. He needed to tell her. But not yet. That news would slow them down, take some dealing with, and he didn’t know how to do that. The first priority had to be to get out of this area, change cars, get lost in a higher density population area. Then get out of Spain.
At least, he had to do that. He still had to work out what to do with her. He had promised her protection. But how could he achieve that? So far he had given it no thought at all. She would have relatives here, or even in England, maybe, but they wouldn’t be able to protect her without using the police, and the police here, at least, were in on it. That had just been demonstrated in the most effective way imaginable. Official assistance was out of the question. Whoever he was up against, it was just him and the girl as long as he was in Spain.
The only sure solution would be to trace the contract, find out who wanted her dead, then do something about it, and he would need to be in London for that. All his resources were there, including the connections within his brother’s world. And Viktor himself – he would know what to do, maybe, or at least he would help. He could help extract him from this mess too, of course – set up a charter so they didn’t need to go near a public airport. But Carl would have to consider all those options when he was capable of clearer thought. Right now things were out of control.