by Andy Lucas
Barbara had been here before. On more than one occasion, an adversary had hoped to draw her into a physical confrontation while they were staring down the barrel of her gun. Usually, she did not allow herself to fall into the trap. She would simply smile, squeeze her trigger and make the call for a disposal team to deal with the body.
‘I don’t play those games,’ Barbara said. ‘But perhaps you are a special case.’
Sensing a chance, Rachel pushed harder. ‘You know I am. The question is whether you’re a coward, or not.’
Barbara could not help but laugh aloud, which was not the response Rachel needed. ‘Your actions, in revealing the security codes for the Sea Otter’s defensive systems, cost dozens of people their lives.’ Her laughter faded. ‘We found the dock hand who spilled the beans about some of the ship’s systems but he was low level. He had no way of knowing how to access our priority systems. That took high level clearance. Needless to say, he was dismissed from our service but he was kind enough to give us the information we needed before he left.’
‘Left? You mean he is dead?’
Barbara shook her head slowly. ‘Unlike the enemies that we fight every day, the McEntire Corporation does not indulge in unnecessary termination. You should know that, Rachel. As I said, he was dismissed and was allowed to keep the money that ARC paid him, on the basis that he keeps his mouth shut. Of course,’ she added conspiratorially, ‘he is under no illusion of what will happen if we ever have to knock on his door again.’
Rachel was still not sure why she had allowed herself to be drawn into treachery. She had been a loyal employee, and operative, for the McEntire Corporation for more than a decade. The money was great and she adored the thrill of field work.
Highly thought of, and skilled in martial arts and weaponry, she had finally risen to the lofty heights of being assigned to Doyle McEntire’s personal security detail and also acting as his new personal assistant after his daughter stepped away from the role when she was finally made aware of the real work that the Corporation did to keep Britain safe.
In the end, she knew, love had been her downfall. It was something she never allowed herself to feel, as to do so would make her weak. She kept relationships brief and physical but then she had met Terry, and everything changed.
She had been on a routine security visit to the Corporation’s dockyard, where some of her most covert assets were berthed, when she met him in the canteen. Tall, dark and handsome he wasn’t but his strong physique, square jaw and curly blonde hair had sent strange flutters through her stomach, as their eyes locked accidentally across a plastic table.
Terry Marks was a low level dock worker, although carefully vetted. He worked in the general stores, as a foreman, with no real access to the guarded slipways and he had never set foot aboard a McEntire vessel. He was well placed, however, to overhear snippets of conversations between other staff and he had eyes in his head that regularly spotted covert work taking place. Although he was not privy to the details, most of the component orders came through him, so he gained some idea of what was going on.
That was when had been approached by two men in exactly the same way that they had targeted the unfortunate Wormly. He had jumped at the chance to tell everything he knew for the cut price of five thousand pounds, in cash. Then they had offered him the tantalising carrot of finding out more for them by befriending one of McEntire’s staff, who he had seen a couple of times before, when she visited. If he could put them in touch with her, another ten thousand would be coming his way. He agreed.
It was no chance encounter, their meeting in the canteen. He had watched her arrive and waited until he saw her head off to get a coffee before taking his own break and seating himself opposite. He could hardly believe his luck when their eyes had met, he had struck up conversation, and she had enthusiastically responded. She was attractive and he was currently single, so there had even been the bonus of some great sex over the following fortnight before he had broached the subject of his friends wanting to meet with her.
For ARC, it had been a huge gamble. Trying to turn someone so close to McEntire himself was fraught with danger. Subterfuge worked both ways. Although they had no idea about the true nature of the McEntire Corporation, even the decent security of a large corporation might rumble them and send law enforcement agencies knocking on their door. When Terry had let them know that the Sea Otter was due to put to sea imminently, and that she had some very sophisticated protection equipment on board, they had taken the chance. They needed to know exactly what protected the ship and, ideally, any security codes that would allow their own assault team to remotely disable them, masking their approach.
Rachel sighed, still warily eyeing the gun that had not moved a centimetre. She had been thrilled by the approach and the offer of a well-paid job on the ARC payroll, with travel and shopping perks worldwide, had just tripped something inside her. Along with the flushes of love, it was as if a door had suddenly been thrown open for her.
Fifty thousand pounds, in a numbered Swiss account, was her prize for using her security access and providing her contacts with the ship’s defence codes. Even her clearance was not high enough to access any further technical data so she truly had no idea as to the nature of the vessel’s offensive capabilities.
To prove her new loyalties, they had then given her a small errand to run. A few months before, she had collected a pram, with a hidden package underneath the doll that served as the pretend infant, and then delivered the whole lot to a huge mound of blubber in a park. It was hardly much of an assignment and they never told her what was in the package. Even now, despite her dire predicament, she still frowned as the unpleasant memory of having to kiss the man popped into her head. The other slightly less distasteful elements were having to wear tight clothing and bleach her normally brunette hair a tacky blonde, by way of a basic disguise.
‘I did not know that the ship would be attacked,’ she defended herself softly. ‘I just gave them some codes, did a little job, and I have now been offered a nice new job working somewhere else.’ She nodded over to the desk, where an envelope sat alone in the centre. ‘That’s my letter of resignation. I planned to give it to Mr McEntire in the morning.’
‘Planned?’ Barbara wondered.
‘Well, it doesn’t look like I’ll be needing to move jobs now, does it?’
‘I suppose not,’ agreed Barbara. ‘You don’t simply resign from this particular job, you know that.’ She toyed with another idea that Doyle McEntire had thrown at her, suddenly not as certain of her actions as she had been. Perhaps it could work after all? Even though she had convinced him otherwise, looking at Rachel now, she found herself wondering.
‘So, are you going to shoot or do I get a chance to fight for my life?’ asked Rachel.
‘What would you do?’ countered Barbara. Rachel’s answer was irrelevant because Barbara finally made up her mind.
‘Me? I’d shoot you and not risk losing the initiative,’ admitted Rachel truthfully.
‘Then it’s your lucky day, young lady,’ smiled Barbara. ‘Lose the gun.’
Rachel slowly pulled her gun from behind her back and tossed it across the room, where it was quickly lost in the shadows beyond the pool of light cast by the desk lamp.
‘Now what?’
‘Now, you get to show me what you’re made of and, perhaps if you’re as good as you think you are, it might be you walking out of this room alive instead of me.’
Rachel watched, stunned but relieved as Barbara unclipped the .25 Colt from the wrist mechanism and tossed it in to the shadows after Rachel’s own weapon.
Barbara waited, slipping into a comfortable stance, flexing her knees lightly. Her mind focused on her opponent, with everything else blurring into the background as she entered a higher level of consciousness, many years in the honing. She did not have to wait long for the first attack, which was a good combination of kicks, spins and punches. None of them connected and Rachel flew past her, amaz
ed and infuriated that her usually lethal opening attack had been so easily batted away by a few well placed blocks.
Rachel came in again, driving Barbara backwards a few steps but still not landing any blows. It was unbelievable to her how the old woman moved so fast that her eyes could barely register what was happening. Rachel had beaten some of the best martial artists in the business, including several out on the streets, and none of them had ever moved so superbly well.
It reminded her of a Bruce Lee film, with her own well executed attacks, feints and reverse blows being anticipated, countered and brushed off by someone who was clearly in a very different league to anyone she had ever come across before.
After throwing herself at Barbara for the tenth time, her opponent seemed to grow tired of the constant defensive stance. Timing her own attack with sublime perfection, as Rachel span a foot around at her face, her stilettos long since discarded, Barbara delivered a single, lightning-fast blow directly to her throat, crushing the windpipe and sending her crumpling to the highly polished, reclaimed wooden floor, gasping for breath as she started to die.
That was all it took from The Janitor to defeat an enemy. Trained by the CIA after being plucked from the medivac helicopters of Vietnam, then brought in to the McEntire Corporation in the seventies, Barbara had earned her fearsome reputation. Dedicated to keeping fit, she had practised her own martial skills for three hours every day, for over forty years. Strangely, as she knelt down over the foaming, wheezing form of her fallen adversary, Rachel’s image of Bruce Lee was spot on.
In fact, Barbara had spent two months training with the man himself, in the late sixties, after becoming more than a little fixated by his speed and prowess in the films. In the flesh, she had found him even more remarkable and had used a whole year’s leave to take classes. He never knew what she did for a living but the skills that he taught her, along with the philosophy of defensive counter-striking, balance and fluidity, had created a foundation upon which she built, allowing her to win every fight that she’d ever had.
‘Now, young lady,’ she said quietly, locking eyes with Rachel and seeing the sheer terror of impending darkness that lay within. ‘Are you ready to die now?’ From the desk, she had already retrieved two items; a letter opener and a bic pen.
Of course, Rachel was unable to speak and the thrashing of her limbs was already beginning to slow as her brain began to grow starved of oxygen.
‘I may be crazy,’ soothed Barbara, pinning Rachel’s weakening shoulders to the carpet with her knees, straddling her. ‘You are good. Don’t feel as if you’ve failed. Perhaps you are even too good to waste?’
Leaning forwards she slipped the sharp point of the letter opener expertly into Rachel’s windpipe, just below the damaged cartilage, twisted and pushed the pen into the hole she’d just made, withdrawing the ink refill from the middle with another deft flick.
The pain did not register to Rachel’s fading consciousness but the sudden ability to breathe kick-started her lungs and they bellowed furiously, sucking air down through the makeshift tracheotomy, giving her back her life. Tears flowed silently from the corners of her eyes as her blurred eyesight slowly drew back into focus, staring up at the sombre face of Barbara who was still straddling her.
‘I am going to get off you now,’ she explained, in a voice that was almost kindly. ‘You need to hold the pen in place while I grab some tape from the first aid kit on the wall over there. Keep breathing and you will be fine. We’ll get you down to the medical facility, on the sixth floor, and I will call the doctor.’
Leaving Rachel to recover on the floor, wiping blood from her hands, The Janitor dialled a number in her own encrypted phone and hurriedly reported the turn of events to McEntire, who was delighted to receive cheerful news despite the call having woken him up from a very rare early night. He was very glad that Rachel had not needed to be terminated and approved Barbara’s plan to get the Corporation doctor in to patch her up. Her second call was to the doctor.
Ten minutes later, she allowed the elevator to bring up two security guards and the doctor, wheeling a gurney between them. No words were spoken as the guards lifted Rachel up and placed her on the trolley. The doctor cast an approving eye over the amateur surgery before ordering the guards back inside the elevator.
Barbara stepped over to the elevator with them, meeting Rachel’s gaze once again as the doctor pressed the button for the sixth floor, and his own working world. She had colour coming back in to her cheeks and her breathing was settled, although a slightly comical whistling accompanied every breath through the hollow tube of the inkless, plastic pen.
‘I have a job for you, Rachel. I have saved your life for one reason, and one job. Do not let me live to regret it.’ Then the doors slid closed and the drama was over, for now.
In the gloom, Barbara Balvenie thought about the events of the past few weeks. She had been kept informed by Baker, at every turn, having worked with him for many years. He was one of the few people she had ever met who she feared might be good enough to match her skills. Luckily, they were the best of friends and had always dealt with problems facing the McEntire Corporation together, as a deadly team, and never had to cross swords.
He handled the war zones and she dealt with the traitors, undertaking the risky solo assassination operations. It was a good system. They had also been lovers, on more than one occasion, over the years.
ARC was not finished yet; Josephine Roche would surface again at some point, she was sure. Other dark forces were also starting to range against Britain, overtly and in secret. Countries were falling, governments were collapsing into bankruptcy and fundamentalist terrorism was on the rise, wearing many different disguises. Barbara had a real sense that the hidden work that the McEntire Corporation did was about to become even more vital to national security, and to the security of the world.
‘Yes,’ she decided quietly. ‘We’re going to be very busy in the years to come. It’s about time I started training my successor.’
As she walked over to the elevator and rode it down to the underground car park, she was grateful that men like Baker, Pace and Hammond were working with her side. Now, even Rachel would come in handy, she knew.
A terrible, relentless storm was raging and Britain’s most secret service was in the front line. She had already spoken to Doyle McEntire about a new threat that had just appeared over the horizon, which was why she would soon be getting on a flight to Nepal.
This one might even turn out to be their most dangerous adversary ever, she knew, but they would be ready.
James Pace, and his team, would soon be needed once again.
If you enjoyed RACE AMAZON and SKELETON GOLD, watch out for the new James Pace thriller duology.
Book 1 is coming in January 2016.
BLOOD GURKHA: Prophecy
‘Better to die than be a coward’ is the motto of the world-famous, much-feared, Nepalese Gurkha soldiers. They are a vital component of the British Army.
For more information about my books, including other pending releases, please visit www.andylucasbooks.com
...continue the adventure!