“You have such an interesting way with words. How far away are you?”
“Couple of miles. Had to ditch my wheels and use my heels, man. Didn’t wanna risk taking a cab. Be there inside thirty.”
“No. I have some business to take care of right now. Hold off until five o’clock on the dot. One minute later, and I’ll send someone to escort you here. Understood?”
Barcode ground his teeth. Why the hidden message? Why not deliver the threat out front and in the open. Stupid cloak and dagger bullshit.
“Five o’clock? Yes, TM. I won’t let you down, boss.”
At least not yet awhile.
The connection ended.
Two hours to kill. So fuckin’ boring.
He dropped his mobile onto the passenger’s seat and settled back. Maybe he’d take a nice little nap. Been awake for nearly two days straight. What with servicing the be-atch overnight, the earlier excitement, and his cracked head, he needed sleep, big time.
He settled back, rolled his shoulders into the soft upholstery, and closed his eyes, but snapped them open again a moment later.
Fuck’s sake, man.
What was he doing? Couldn’t sleep. What if he missed the new deadline?
He lowered the window fully, stuck his head out, and turned his face to the sky. The bitter sleet-rain shocked him awake. He blinked wide, pulled back inside, and shook the water from his eyes and hair.
Man, what a blast. Mother Nature’s version of speed. He took a deep breath, coughed, and spat into the street before winding up the window and sparking another Camel, the last one in the packet.
Fuck.
Did he have time to find an open petrol station with a ciggie machine? Damn it. Fancy running out of smokes in the middle of the night. Schoolboy error.
Nah, he’d better stay put for now. One of the Goons would sell him a smoke at five o’clock. Might even give him one for free. After all, he’d be the hero, returning from the battle.
Again, the minutes ticked by in a dull, exhausting blur.
Chapter 37
Monday 20th February – Treachery
Walthamstow, NE London
02:39.
Below Kaine, the lights shone bright. He removed the night vision goggles and stowed them in the side pocket of the baby-Bergen. Didn’t need them anymore.
The staircase dropped away into the bright lights of danger.
“I’m going to start counting, Griffin,” Williams screamed, his excitement bordering on hysteria. “Sixty … fifty-nine … fifty-eight …”
A manic giggle interrupted the countdown.
It resumed at fifty-three, by which time Kaine had reached the intermediate landing and dropped into a squat, part-hidden behind a solid oak newel post.
The final flight of ten steps ended in another corridor, with oak blocks set out in a herringbone pattern. Solid, built for looks and to stand the wear and tear of time. Like the hallways he’d already traversed on the upper floors, the one on the ground floor would run east-west, most of the length of the building, ending at the Hub.
The solid treads and panelled balusters blocked Kaine’s view to the end of the hallway. He was going in blind, with no idea of the strength or positioning of the enemy and couldn’t use his gun, not with Freeman in the firing line. The only things going for him were his skills, experience, and the fact that none of his enemies knew exactly who they faced.
“…thirty-eight … thirty-seven. This is getting real boring, Griffin. Don’t you care about your friend? Such a shame. Thirty-one … thirty …”
Shadows moved at the far end of Kaine’s range of vision. He slipped off the backpack, unclipped the Sig and its holster from his belt, and slid it into the front pocket. He tucked the whole kit into the darkest corner of the poorly lit landing. The most cursory of searches would find it easily enough, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances. He was gambling that the unprofessional rabble he’d witnessed so far wouldn’t even bother to search the building once he’d given himself up. A longshot perhaps, but his only option.
“…twenty-five …”
He stood, raised his hands, and descended the final set of stairs.
“Okay, okay. That’s enough with the damned counting.”
By the time he reached the parquet, four delighted-looking men of different sizes and ethnicities moved in to surround him. He recognised the baby-faced Delinquent from the courtyard, but none of the other three. They must have been the second shift.
Since Kaine had last seen the kid, Delinquent had grown a vicious-looking bruise below his left eye and a fat lip, and he looked none too happy about it.
The Goons wore a mishmash of quasi-military clothing—dark green sweaters, camo trousers, and black boots. One, a tall, dark-haired man, stood back, tapping the heavy end of a baseball bat into the cupped palm of his left hand, trying to look threatening. And failing miserably.
Kaine had been intimidated by tougher-looking people. Lara, for example. She could be a real vixen whenever he failed to stack the dishwasher properly.
The other three carried nothing more deadly than one combat knife between them, and Delinquent held it in an overhand grip with the blade pointing up. The kid had never been taught knife combat and would be more likely to slice his finger off than injure a skilled opponent.
While Baseball stood his ground, Delinquent and his partner flanked Kaine, and the fourth, a heavily muscled black man in his mid-twenties, circled around behind him and grabbed his wrists. Kaine relaxed his arms and allowed the man to press his hands together and hold them into the small of his back.
Muscles leaned closer to Kaine.
“Hold still fuckwit, or I’ll break your wrists, like what you done to poor old Alphonse.” Kaine recognised the accent. He’d finally put a face to Essex Boy Robbie.
“…nineteen … eighteen …”
“Okay, okay,” Kaine called out. “You’ve got me. Stop the damned count.”
Delinquent snapped out his free hand and tried to cuff the back of Kaine’s head. Kaine ducked. Delinquent missed.
“Careful, lad. You’ll make me angry and you won’t like me when I’m angry,” Kaine said, staring at the Goon, who broke eye contact in a heartbeat.
Baseball laughed. “Why? You gonna turn green an’ explode out o’ your vest?”
Kaine fixed the man with a cool smile. “Something like that, sonny.”
The derisive laughter died in the tall man’s throat. He glowered and took one pace forwards, the bat raised. Essex Boy Robbie tightened his grip on Kaine’s wrists.
“…ten … nine …”
Kaine slumped, snapped up straight, and back-butted Essex Boy Robbie in the nose. The Goon squealed and released his grip. Baseball hesitated long enough for Kaine to boot him in the groin. He grunted and fell faster and harder than a sack of spuds dropped from the back of a truck. Unlike in the movies, in real life, fully operational men don’t recover instantly from crushed testicles. Baseball’s face turned dark red, the bat fell from his hands and wobbled on the parquet. He puked. Vomit spewed over the floor.
Delinquent didn’t move a muscle, but the colour drained from his damaged face.
“…five … four …”
Kaine ignored Delinquent and took off at a sprint.
“…three …”
“No, stop! Damn it.”
The hallway seemed to stretch on forever. At the far end, a door stood wide open, bright lights flooded through, dazzling in the half-gloom of the corridor.
Kaine burst through into a huge open room.
The Hub.
“…two … one. Bang!”
Raucous laughter followed from at least three different directions.
Kaine skidded to a halt, and half-turned fractions before a heavy load landed on him from behind, crashing him into the floor. The pointed weight of a knee dug into his lower back, pinning him down. Pain shot through his left kidney.
A man grunted and the weight shifted.<
br />
Hot breath tickled the back of Kaine’s neck.
“You think you can hurt Alphonse Coulthard and get away without extreme pain, connard?” the Frenchman whispered, seething venom.
The knee grinding into Kaine’s kidney shifted again. Kaine tensed. Every muscle in his back turned into forged steel. He twisted. The Frenchman’s knee slipped sideways, bounced off the tensed muscle, and slid down the side of his back. Kneecap connected with hard flooring.
Another grunt of pain, but this time, it wasn’t Kaine who made it.
A hand on the back of Kaine’s head pressed his face into the dirty flooring. Kaine twisted away, struggling to breathe, his ribcage restricted by the Frenchman’s dead weight.
“Hold it right there, Alphonse,” TM’s electronically modulated voice crackled out of the speakers lining the walls and echoed through the room. “You’ll have plenty of time to hurt him later. Let the man up so I can see who’s been wreaking havoc on my best people.”
“Best people?” Kaine said into the floorboards. “If these clowns are your best people, I suggest you find a different employment agency, buddy boy.”
Coulthard yelled and the hand driving Kaine’s face into the wood gripped his hair tighter, as its owner apparently tried to pull it out from the roots.
Shut up, Ryan. Can’t help yourself, can you?
As a kid, Kaine’s mother used to accuse him of being his own worst enemy. Even in his forties, why did he still have to prove her right?
“Why not let Alphonse have his play?” Williams asked, more controlled than he’d been during the countdown, “so long as I can have what’s left over.”
“All in good time, Mr Williams,” TM answered. “You can all have your fun later, but I want to take a look at this fellow. The man who’s caused me so many problems.”
Coulthard released his hold on Kaine’s hair and rolled away, grunting as he moved. As the weight lifted fully off Kaine, two others, including a red-faced Baseball, took hold of his arms and jerked him unceremoniously to his feet. This time they pinned his hands against his sides and stood at arm’s length.
Whatever anybody said about the skill levels of the average Walthamstow Goon, these ones seemed to learn their lessons well. Kaine wouldn’t be back-butting either of these idiots in the nose any time soon, but there were plenty of other ways to break a man’s grip. All it took was strength, skill, and timing.
As best he could, Kaine relaxed his arms, loosened his fingers, and slowed his breathing.
Coulthard stood in front and slightly to one side of Kaine and his guards. He had one wrist wrapped in a crepe bandage, the arm cradled in a sling. It explained why he’d had to release Kaine’s hair before rolling himself to his feet. The man stood still, glowering. His expression, comical in its intensity, almost made Kaine laugh out loud. If looks could kill, Kaine would be a smouldering pile of ash. Thankfully, life didn’t work that way.
It hadn’t taken the Frenchman long to find medical treatment, but the bones in the wrist, the carpals, would take quite some time to heal. The poor man’s injury would be painful and restrictive for months.
Such a dreadful shame.
Kaine smiled at Coulthard and threw him a sly wink. The Frenchman snarled and took one pace forwards before firing a glance at the wall monitor and holding himself in check.
In the man’s eyes, Kaine saw anger and pain. Most of all, he saw madness. The big Frenchman was as close to losing control as anyone he’d seen in a long time. At some stage, Kaine might be able to use that.
In the momentary silence that followed, Kaine carried out a lightning sweep of his surroundings.
The Hub was pretty much as Damian had described it in the coffee house; large, open, a former school assembly hall. Floor to ceiling windows, dark and covered with filthy curtains, broke into the west and south walls, designed to let in the maximum daylight in the years before electric lighting. The other walls, originally whitewashed, now a mottled patchwork of damp and mould, were broken by smaller windows and doorways, all but two no longer contained doors.
In one corner, a quartet of tables, two of them holding expensive-looking computer systems, formed Geek Junction. TM’s huge flat screen monitor hung from the north wall, front and centre, imposing itself on anyone in the Hub. The blurred outline of the gang leader filled the picture. The outline shimmered as though TM were shaking with anger, but it may have been an artefact of the pixilation process.
Somewhere inside the building, the owner of the outline cowered in his protective nest.
Apart from Coulthard and the men holding Kaine, the Hub contained four others, two of whom he didn’t know. The other two, he recognised well enough.
Kaine kept each Goon in his peripheral vision as best he could, ready for unexpected movement, but he reserved his full attention for the two men directly ahead, the ones between him and the big screen—Sean Freeman and Demarcus Williams.
Freeman sat on a hard metal school chair, staring up at Kaine, shamefaced. A red welt bloomed on his right cheek. An open-handed palmprint with each finger and the thumb clear and isolated, it stood out angrily above his beard, through the healthy tan.
Williams stood over Freeman, bent slightly at the waist, looking a little discomfited, no doubt still feeling the effects of Kaine’s boot to his ribcage. In his right hand, he held a loaded and primed Glock 17, its muzzle pressed into Freeman’s left knee so hard it puckered the trouser leg. Williams’ finger curled around the trigger.
Freeman’s chin trembled.
“So sorry, Mr G-Griffin,” Freeman said, tears flowing from his dark blue eyes. “I-I was lost in concentration. Let the beggars creep up on me. I really am so … sorry. I had to tell them you were upstairs. Had to.”
Kaine sneered and shook his head, not accepting the apology. Trust him, he’d said.
Yeah, trust him.
Williams grunted a little as he straightened and backhanded Freeman across his uninjured cheek, landing the blow with the butt of the Glock. Under such conditions, some might consider it a minor miracle for the weapon not to discharge.
Freeman squealed and curled into a ball, raising his hands and knees to protect his face.
“Please, please, don’t hurt me,” he wailed.
Kaine gritted his teeth.
Coward.
Williams raised the gun again in preparation for another blow.
“Pack that in, you moron!” Kaine shouted.
He struggled against his captors, but didn’t work hard enough or fast enough to break free.
Williams stopped mid swing and levelled the gun at Kaine.
“What you say, asshole?”
“Stop hitting him with the gun. It’s likely to go off.”
“Nah, safety’s on. Only shoots when I pull the trigger. Says so in the book.”
“You really are a complete moron,” Kaine said. “There is no external safety on a Glock.” He twisted to look at the men holding his arms. “Don’t know about you clowns, but if I’m going to be shot tonight, I don’t want it to be by accident.”
The man on Kaine’s left looked uncertain. He eased his grip on Kaine’s arm but didn’t release it completely. Delinquent held firm, but kept flicking his gaze towards Williams and, no doubt, the Glock.
TM’s voice cut through the room. “Mr Griffin is quite correct, Mr Williams. Stop using the gun and start using what little brains the Good Lord gave you. Use your fists, feet, anything, but not the gun.”
“Finally,” Kaine said, addressing the outline on the screen, “someone with a modicum of sense. Now how about you and me having a quiet chat, face-to-face. Let’s see if we can’t straighten this whole thing out to our mutual benefit.”
“Shut your mouth, you condescending prick!”
“Condescending? Moi?”
“The only way either of you is walking out of here alive, is if I let you.”
“Don’t be stupid, we all know you have no intention of letting us go, but that’s not the
way it’s going down,” Kaine mocked.
“And how is it going down, pray tell?”
Now who’s being condescending?
“You’re going to let me and my friend leave here unharmed.”
“Why the fuck would we do that?” Williams demanded, stepping closer to Kaine and away from Freeman.
“Mr Williams. Shut the fuck up!” TM screamed. A squeal of feedback echoed off the bare walls and bounced around the room, slicing into Kaine’s eardrums. “I’m the one conducting this interrogation,” TM said, more controlled, once the electronics had settled.
“Good to know someone’s in command here besides me,” Kaine said, smiling brightly.
“Explain yourself, Griffin. Why would I let you go?”
In a fluid, lightning-fast movement, Kaine rotated his left forearm, bent the elbow, and straightened again, breaking the already weakened grip. He dug his freed hand into his trouser pocket and pulled it out again, this time, holding up his mobile.
To add shock and awe to the move, he yelled, “Bomb! Bomb!” and threw his hand up high. He pressed a key on the mobile and held it down. Then he shrugged free of Delinquent’s grip and stepped away.
“What the fuck?” Williams shouted.
“Williams,” Kaine said, cool and calm, “lower the gun carefully to floor.”
“Fuck off. That’s a phone, not a fucking grenade.”
“Moron,” Kaine said, twisting his lips and widening his eyes into a manic stare. “This is a detonator. If I lift my thumb, we’re all going to hell.”
Staring at Kaine’s mobile, and with his outstretched arm shaking, the big Goon pointed the Glock towards an empty part of the Hub, and started to release his grip.
“No,” Kaine said, again softly. “Drop it and I might drop the mobile. Believe me, no one wants that.”
“Shoot him, Williams. Shoot the bastard!”
Williams flicked a disbelieving look at the monitor and shook his head. “But he’s got a bomb!”
Kaine nodded and held his arm higher.
“That’s right, Williams. All of you.” He spun slowly to stare down everyone in the room in turn before facing Williams and the wall monitor again. “There’s a quarter kilo of Semtex upstairs. I let go of this button and we all die!”
Ryan Kaine: On the Money: (Ryan Kaine's 83 series Book 5) Page 31