by Rob Sinclair
The two men were still standing in position, pulling out weapons from inside their coats. Schuster had seemingly only just become aware of me and he slid down behind the far side of the car, out of view.
The two men opened fire. I ducked down as far as I could. I heard a succession of shots, only just audible over the engine noise. The windscreen of my car cracked, then shattered, sending glass flying through the air around me. I didn’t let up. I kept my foot pressed down hard. And braced myself for the impact.
I heard shouts from the men. Then it came.
One thud. Then another.
Then the crash.
My body, weightless for just the briefest of moments, flew forward in the seat, nothing to stop my momentum. Then the seatbelt caught. My head snapped forward, then was thrust back as I was punched in the face by the rapidly inflated airbag. The whole car swung upwards from the back, and I thought it might somersault right over. But it crashed back down to the ground again, bouncing and crunching on the broken suspension.
I don’t know for sure – the impact had been brutal – but I think I lost consciousness for a few seconds. Certainly it took me a while to get my senses back.
When I found the strength to move, I punched down on the airbag, pushing it away from my face. I looked up and saw the carnage in front of me.
The front of the X5 had buckled and crumpled. It had inserted itself into the side of Schuster’s car, which was being held in position on two wheels, having been pushed up and backwards by the force of the crash. One of Schuster’s men was wedged between the vehicles, his torso caught. He was slumped over the crumpled mess that had been the bonnet of the X5. He wasn’t moving at all. No longer a threat.
I spotted movement in front, off to my right. Schuster. He was limping away from his vehicle, towards the service door to the apartment block. His movement was awkward but he didn’t seem to be badly hurt. Being on the other side of the vehicle had saved his life, though his limp suggested he’d still been caught as his car was lifted through the air on impact.
I could see no sign of the other man. But I knew I’d hit him. He’d been one of the two thuds I’d heard before the crash.
I released my belt, then reached out and pulled on the handle of my door. It released but didn’t open. The bending of the frame as the car had been pushed inwards had wedged it shut. I leaned on it, grimacing in pain as I did so. It moved but didn’t open. I pulled back and thrust my weight against it, shoulder first. The same shoulder I’d landed on in the warehouse.
I shouted out in pain.
But it worked and the door flew open. Though I was unable to stop myself falling out of the car to the ground. My body twisted in the air and I landed flat on my front, my face scraping on the cold tarmac.
As I began to pick myself up, I spotted Schuster’s other man. At least what was left of him. He was lying on the ground, his deathly eyes staring right at me. His limbs were twisted and bowed, the left leg still wrapped up in the wheel arch of the X5. His other leg was missing. He had a gaping hole in his mid-section, like something had sliced right through him. Blood and guts lay all around him and up on the car. He seemed to be breathing but I didn’t fancy his chances.
I checked both of my weapons, then got the phone. The dot was still there, still moving. The problem was, I had no idea what floor Schuster would be on.
I darted off towards the door to the apartment block and entered a narrow corridor that soon opened out to the left and right. The dot was off to the left but I saw no sign of Schuster. I looked around and located the stairs, next to a bank of lifts. The stairs were the better option.
I checked the phone once more, then headed over to the first flight and ran up it. When I reached the top, I poked my head around, peering down the corridor. Still no sign of Schuster. I carried on and repeated the same move.
This time I got lucky.
Schuster was fifty yards in front, hobbling away from me. I took aim with the SIG but didn’t fire. I began walking, a steady pace but enough to close the gap on him. He looked around and I heard him shout something. I couldn’t make out the words but I knew they had been directed at me.
He was cupping his hands around his waist as though he’d been struck there. Or was it just from the damage I’d inflicted back on the train?
Then he swung around unexpectedly, gun in hand, and fired. The rushed shot missed me. I lifted an arm up to my face, pulled back against the near wall. I fired off one shot in response. At that range, having already been set, it was an easy shot to take. I hit him exactly where I’d intended.
Schuster screamed and fell to the floor, clutching at his left leg, the one he hadn’t been limping on. He lifted his hand to fire at me again but I was too quick. I let off another round. This one caught him in the arm, the one that was holding the gun, which he dropped to the ground.
I closed the distance to him, my gun held out. Ready for anything else he had to offer. Nothing came. He was spent. When I got to him he was lying on his back, the elbow on his good arm propping him up. His nostrils were flaring, his determined eyes still glistening.
‘Where is she?’ I said.
‘You really don’t know what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘You can’t possibly expect to get away with this. Do you know who we are!’
‘I could say the same thing to you. You should have thought more carefully before doing your dirty deals.’
‘There was nothing dirty about it. Mackie had it coming. Grainger does too.’
‘I’m not sure the Russians had quite the same idea as you.’
‘No. There’s nothing wrong with the Russians. At least you can deal with them. Negotiate with them. They always have something to offer. They understand how this game really works. They’re not all out there trying to be goddamn heroes like you. They’re realists.’
‘You know, if this hadn’t been personal for me, I’d have relished watching you get taken down by them.’
‘Taken down?’ Schuster said, confusion on his face.
‘They’ve set you up. There was no deal. They’ve had you running around this country taking out people on your own side. There was no intention of ever letting you out of here alive with Grainger, your prized possession.’
Schuster didn’t say anything to that. I gave him a moment to mull it over. Perhaps he finally understood.
‘I’ll help you get her out of here,’ he said, a sudden change of tack. ‘It’s your only chance. You’ve got no-one else now. You help me, I’ll help you.’
‘Sure you would,’ I said. ‘But I learned my lesson a long time ago. Don’t do deals with people you don’t trust.’
I pulled up the gun and shot him in the face.
Chapter 50
I rummaged through Schuster’s pockets and found what I was looking for. A piece of paper. That’s what it had all come down to. Mackie’s life. All the other people who’d lost theirs on the way. All the betrayal and the blood and the tears. The misery that had come to so many. All for the address that was scribbled on that one small piece of paper.
Apartment 406.
I looked up. All of the doors on this floor were numbered in the three hundreds. The four hundreds were one floor up. Angela was just one floor up.
After all this time, Angela.
I walked back to the stairwell and made my way to the next floor. Reaching the top, I peered cautiously around. Schuster and his men were all taken care of. But Lena’s words were still reverberating in my head. The ambush. I didn’t know when or how it would come, but she’d never intended that Schuster and Angela would leave alive. Would it be a sniper? A combat team? Was the apartment wired with a bomb that would go off the minute the door was opened? Was Angela really here at all, or was there one final deception from Lena still to come?
I didn’t know the answer.
But I knew that I would soon find out.
I walked up to the door to 406, knocked three times and waited. I heard the faint sound of movement from i
nside but no-one opened the door.
I knocked three more times. This time I didn’t hear anything at all.
But then came a voice.
Her voice.
‘Who is it?’ she said in Russian.
I didn’t answer. I just stared at the spy-glass, noticing as a shadow crept over it on the other side. She was looking at me. Then the door was unlocked and pulled open.
And there she was.
‘Carl?’ she said. I saw confusion on her face, and fear and something else…hope?
I’d often wondered what it would feel like to come face to face with her again. I’d known the time would come. I’d told myself it had to. But I’d always been torn as to why I wanted to find her.
Did I want to be her lover again?
Did I want to turn her in for what she’d done?
Did I want to kill her?
Since the moment Schuster had said her name and I’d focused on getting to her, I hadn’t given myself a chance to find the answer. But now, standing before her, I knew.
I wanted to protect her.
Because we were the same. Our own people had turned on us. First, my agency had left me for dead. They’d given up on me. The Americans had come in and they’d seen a chance to negotiate with my life. Grainger had been similarly wronged. It had started with the decision of her government to grant a life of freedom to the man who’d killed her father. Then the bloody quest that the CIA had embarked on to find and punish her for killing that same man.
We were both lost souls. We no longer had anywhere to call home. No longer had anyone that we could rely on. We had no jobs, no identities. We had nowhere left to go. All we had was our lives and the crowds of people behind us, our friends and enemies alike, trying to find us so they could take us down.
The future was a blank. How we’d get out of this alive, what we’d do next, I had no idea.
But I knew that whatever was to come, I would be facing it with her.
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Q&A with Rob Sinclair
A Classic Thriller
What are the ingredients for a classic thriller?
The single most important ingredient for a thriller – any type of book really – is conflict; whether it’s the internal conflict of your main character or some external conflict affecting a character, or perhaps just the wider subject on which the book is based. Certainly for the Enemy series the key conflict comes in the form of Logan and his troubles, not just in terms of the assignments he faces, but with regards to the personal demons in his own mind. It’s this element of Logan that I really enjoy writing about, that for me brings him to life and makes him so interesting but also vulnerable in a way that action heroes and super spies rarely are.
The other key elements for me are pace and intrigue. I love to read books that flow freely, where you get caught up in the story and have to hold yourself back from rushing ahead to find out what happens next. I try to make all of my books as action-focused as I can without leaving out any of the important setting and characterisation that are needed to really keep the reader engaged. Essentially what I’m describing is your classic page-turner – a book that once you start to read it you can’t stop.
What makes the perfect villain?
I really enjoy creating villains because you don’t have to hold back with them at all. In many ways the nastier they are the better. I want readers to hate my villains and look forward to them getting their comeuppance. But that said, just like with the main character to a story, I don’t think villains are entirely effective if they are one dimensional. There needs to be more to them than just devilishness. That could be in the form of an interesting backstory as to how they came to be who they are, or by showing a different side to them; they may have a family or interests or positions in life that either serve as an explanation for their wicked ways or simply adds to the confusion about who they really are.
Who is Carl Logan to you?
To me, Logan is such a complex and intriguing person because there are so many elements to him. In many respects he’s your classic action hero – he’s highly trained and he’s a fighter, much like all of the protagonists from the big, best-selling thrillers that we know and love. That said, to me at least, there is much more to Logan. Sure, there are plenty of washed-up heroes but it’s Logan’s absolute naivety of what a normal life is that makes him so interesting and vulnerable. For all of the qualities he has as a secret agent, he’s almost childlike in the way he sees the world as black and white; in the way that he feels emotions so powerfully and uncontrollably, having felt so little for so long. The Enemy series deals with the big concepts of love, betrayal and revenge in various guises and I get real pleasure from putting Logan into those situations and seeing how he reacts, and imagining the emotion he would be feeling.
Why do you write thrillers?
They say you should write what you know. I’m an accountant by trade and whilst I’m sure I have some interesting stories from my time as a fraud investigator, it just doesn’t do it for me as the main basis for a thriller novel. I’m not an ex-detective or ex-army, I’ve never been a secret agent, so I don’t have those real life experiences, but I know thrillers. For years it’s what I’ve read, it’s the TV series I go for, the movies I love. Basically I write the type of book that I love to read myself.
Inspirations
When and why did you start writing?
People are always really shocked when they learn how I got into writing. It wasn’t something I’d always thought about doing at all. I’d never attempted to write fiction until I was 28 years old and had never even contemplated it if truth be told. It all started from a seemingly innocuous comment I made to my wife that I reckoned I could write a ‘can’t put down’ thriller. We were on holiday at the time and the comment was borne of frustration from me having read a number of books in quick succession which I hadn’t been very impressed with. I don’t think either of us thought too much about the comment at the time but from that point I started planning some ideas in my head – just individual scenes really. I started writing out those ideas in secret at first. I was almost embarrassed that I had the audacity to think I could be a writer. But I got into it straight away – it felt really comfortable to me. When I finally built up the courage to show my wife the few chapters I’d written she gave me the nod to carry on. I’d half expected her to burst out laughing but she didn’t. She was really supportive then and has been throughout the years that have followed.
Since that time I’ve just fallen in love with writing. I can’t stop it now. It’s been a long, hard road to get to where I am but it’s been worth it and I’ll carry on writing now regardless of how successful the books are, even if it’s just for me. Luckily, so far the reception to my work has been really positive.
Do you always use exotic locations in your novels?
I’m not sure the locations are all exotic, but certainly there’s a really international feel to the books with few – if any – scenes based in the UK. I think that just fits the nature of the stories and in particular the role of Carl Logan.
Do you visit the locations in your books as part of your research?
I don’t yet have the luxury either in terms of time or money to visit all of the locations for research unfortunately! That said, I’ve visited many of the places I write about either on holiday or as part of my job as a fraud investigator. As you can imagine, when you’re investigating cases of large scale fraud and corruption there’s a good chance of you being required to travel the globe to less salubrious locations. The settings for the books are certainly influenced by my own experiences in that regard – either places I’ve been to or places where colleagues I’ve worked with are from.
A Writer’s Life
When and where do you write?
My life has changed immeasurably in the years I’v
e been writing so far. When I first started I had a full time job to contend with. I was writing any spare moment I could; mornings before work, lunchtimes, evenings, weekends. And I’ve written in countless places; trains, planes, ferries, hotels, offices, both in the UK and around the world.
Thankfully, I’ve now become more regimented at least in terms of when and where I write. My usual place is sat on the sofa in my lounge, looking over the garden. It’s not great for my back – my physio says I should sit in a proper chair – and the sofa is definitely getting worn out from over-use, but it’s where I feel most comfortable and productive. In the future I’d love to have my own little writer’s retreat somewhere; a place in the mountains or by the sea perhaps. I love the Lake District, where my parents live, and every time I visit there I feel really relaxed and inspired. It’s an incredible place that has certainly worked well for plenty of writers in the past, so maybe there. One day.
What’s your favourite part of being a writer?
Two things really stand out for me. One is the writing process itself. It’s the moment when it all comes together. I’ve never started a story with a fully-formed plot, just a few big ideas. That means I don’t know where the story is going necessarily and it can become quite nerve-wracking when you have the self-doubt about whether or not the ideas will come to finish the book. So that point when you finally get to the last chapter and everything has come together is a really great feeling – even though after the first draft the story generally still needs a lot of editing.
The other thing is positive feedback and reviews. There’s nothing better than somebody saying they enjoyed my work, whether it be someone I know, a reader or a reviewer. It makes all of the hard work, both in writing and publishing the stories, worth it. If I didn’t have people telling me the work was good I probably wouldn’t continue publishing – I guess I can be quite a vain person but I’m not vain enough to continue putting my work out to the world if people were consistently telling me how bad it was!