by Zoe Sharp
Even though it was what I’d been expecting, hearing it put like that gave me a jolt that must have shown in my face.
“But you knew what Orosco was planning to do,” I murmured. I remembered Schade’s apparent inspection of the goods in the container when the truck first arrived, glanced over at him. “What was in that truck, by the way?”
“Well…auto parts, mostly,” Schade said, deadpan. “With one crate of dummies in case he wanted a look-see himself before the hand-off.”
“You took a risk, even so.”
“Darius doesn’t like getting his hands dirty. And he trusted me.”
I noted the past tense but didn’t comment, asking instead, “How long were you hoping it would take before Hamzeh realised he’d been had?”
“They were intending to ship out of a port in southern Italy where they’ve paid off the right people. It’s around fifteen hundred klicks, and getting there to make their scheduled departure was going to be tight,” Schade said. By the way he smiled, I knew the timing had been no accident. “They were gonna tag-team drivers, hit the road non-stop. No time to start fully inspecting the load, even if they’d had a secure location to do it.”
“So, maybe eighteen hours?” I murmured. “Time enough for you to do your own deal tomorrow and get out of here.”
Kincaid cleared his throat. “We already did the deal,” he said. “This evening.”
I nodded slowly. Everybody lied to everybody else until it was normal—expected, even. I thought of the little convoy I’d seen departing, apparently innocent, with horse trailer in tow. The upper rear doors had been closed, I recalled. I should have known they didn’t have any horses with them.
“What were you expecting to happen, once the Syrians did realise they’d been had?”
Kincaid shrugged. “Threats and posturing on their part. An apology and a refund on ours. And a very definite end to any business relationship between us.”
“How very civilised,” I murmured. I glanced at Schade. “When you first got in the car, you told me Orosco had taken a shot at you. Surely he didn’t know, at that stage, the cargo wasn’t genuine?”
Schade took a long swig of coffee and shook his head. “No, but you gotta hand it to the guy, he sure thinks on his feet,” he said. “As soon as your booby-trap was sprung, either he thought I’d rigged the truck or he was just trying to save his own skin. What better way to pass the buck and convince the Syrians that he was just as much a victim as they were?”
“Any chance that worked?”
Schade shrugged again. “If he’s still alive, yeah, it probably did.”
“But, if he is still alive, that would mean the Syrians believed him, wouldn’t it?” I asked. “And I shouldn’t imagine he’s going to be exactly thrilled about what’s happened. So, what’s to stop him leading them straight back here?”
A muscle jumped in the side of Kincaid’s jaw. “That’s not the way we do business.”
“It might not be how you do business, but are you sure the Syrians have read the same rulebook?”
I knew, without having to mention it, that he was thinking back to the ambush on Helena on the road back in New Jersey. That attack had not been the start of things, not by a long way, but it had marked my entry into the game.
He glanced across at Schade. “Call the pilots. Tell them to have the jet fuelled and ready to go, soon as we get there.”
Schade nodded, already turning away with his phone in his hand, dialling.
“So, where does this leave things between you and Orosco?”
Kincaid shrugged. “He’s family. We may have our…disagreements, as all families do, but when it comes to it, we stand united.”
“For people who are supposed to be all on the same side,” I said at last, “you certainly seem to keep a lot of secrets from one another.”
“Everybody has secrets, Charlie. Even you,” Kincaid said. “It’s no secret that since I got…involved with the company, I’ve been trying to take it in a different direction.”
“One your father-in-law doesn’t like.” It didn’t need to be a question.
“He makes his…disapproval kinda clear.”
I took a sip of my coffee. It was dark and bitter, but coffee had never tasted so good.
“Why do it, then?” I asked. “Why make your life difficult and have him go off and, from what I can gather, do deals that are both behind your back and under the table, putting everyone in danger in the process?”
Movement caught my eye. Maybe if I’d been less tired I would have caught it sooner. Next to the tall windows were doors leading in from the anteroom where food was brought up from the kitchen. They were standing open. I should have checked there was nobody lurking on my way to sit down. Like I said, I was tired.
Now, Helena Kincaid walked in, fully dressed and alert, with Mrs Heedles at her shoulder. If it was any consolation, Kincaid looked as unsettled to see his wife as I felt.
She stopped next to my chair. I looked up at her warily, unsure of my reception.
“You want to know why,” she said to me. “It’s because I asked him to.”
59
“That kind of answer causes only more questions,” I said.
Schade returned just as I spoke. He pointedly flipped back the cuff of his jacket and checked his watch. “Well, ask ’em when we’re in the air, dude, ’cos we need to get gone.”
Kincaid put down his coffee cup. He looked as tired as I felt. Helena cast him a concerned glance. “I’ll speak to Gilbert and make our apologies.”
“There is no need.” It was de Bourdillon himself who spoke. He followed Schade in. “I understand your position completely.”
“I am sorry,” Kincaid said as they shook hands. “We thought only to out-manoeuvre Darius. Now it seems we must also out-run him.”
The Frenchman smiled. “Then I will wish you bonne chance, my friend.”
He and Helena exchanged cheek kisses that ended in a hug. He shook with Schade, and with Mrs Heedles, giving her a slight bow and a solemn, “Madame.”
She inclined her head, responded with regal gravity, “Monsieur le Duc.”
Schade’s phone beeped. He checked the screen. “Vehicles are waiting out front.”
He headed for the door. The others followed. By luck, Mrs Heedles was just ahead of me. I touched her arm and she paused expectantly.
“You knew, didn’t you?” I said, keeping my voice low.
“Knew what, dear?”
“What they had planned—when I went out to test that rifle yesterday morning. You tried to warn me.”
She nodded, eyed me for a moment. I could almost see her debating on giving me the whole truth or just a version of it. Shame I didn’t know her well enough to tell the difference.
“Of course,” she said. “And for what it’s worth, Charlie, I’m glad they failed.”
“Was it Orosco?” I demanded quickly. “Or Kincaid?”
She blinked. “Well, I wasn’t in the room—or supposed to be within earshot, for that matter—but I believe they were both present when the idea was…put forward.”
I glanced at the now-empty corridor leading to the main stairwell. We only had another moment or two before people started to wonder where we were. And what we might be discussing.
“So which of them was it who told Schade to get rid of me?”
“Neither,” she said. “Mr Schade suggested it himself.”
60
By the time we caught up with the others as they crossed the drawbridge, I still hadn’t processed that information. I purposely kept my expression blank when Schade glanced over at me. His eyes flicked to Mo Heedles but didn’t get much traction there, either. If he inferred anything from that—or from the way we’d walked out together—he made no comment on it.
Lopez and Williams had pulled up by the moat in a pair of Land Rover Defenders. They looked to be the same vehicles I’d seen the day before, but this time there were no horse trailers in sight.
Chatty Williams grabbed my bag along with Helena’s and placed them inside the rear of the second Land Rover. From the luggage that Lopez stowed in the lead vehicle, I gathered that Mo Heedles intended to travel with Kincaid and Schade.
Helena herself was standing with her hands wrapped around her upper arms. She seemed quiet and withdrawn. Dawn had crept into the eastern sky, which was lightening by the minute. There was a curious lack of dew, but that didn’t mean it was warm out there.
Kincaid moved to her side, hugged her to him as much to impart reassurance as heat, I guessed. She gave him a brief, distracted smile and he kissed the side of her temple.
“I’ll see you at the plane,” he said. A promise.
And to me, “Take good care of her.”
A warning.
“It might help if I was armed.”
Kincaid hesitated, frowning. It was de Bourdillon who said, “Let me take care of that for you.” He disappeared inside.
Schade took the opportunity provided by the pause to dump a comms set in my hands. An earpiece and mic with a wire to a pack that clipped to my belt.
By the time I’d got it fitted and comfortable, de Bourdillon had returned. He had a long gun on a strap over his shoulder and a flat gun case in his hands. He flipped the case round and opened it towards me as if offering a duelling pistol.
Inside was a SIG very like the one I’d left behind. I picked the gun out of its foam bed, pulled back the slide enough to check the chamber and dropped the magazine into my palm.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, laying the gun back into its bed.
De Bourdillon closed the gun case. He dug a box of 9mm rounds out of his pocket, placed it on top and handed over both.
“And I thought this might come in handy,” he said, unslinging the long gun. “One never knows.”
I’d already recognised it as the FR-F2. Probably the same weapon I’d been testing with Schade on the far side of the estate. It felt strangely familiar in my hands.
“Sir, I’m not sure—”
“It’s merely a loan rather than a gift, I’m afraid,” he said quickly. “Take it with you as far as the airport, anyway. If you don’t have need of it, well”—he shrugged—“think of it as carrying an umbrella in the hopes that it will not rain.”
“Well…thank you,” I said again. “How do we get this back to you?”
“Oh, just leave it in the Land Rover. My chaps will be across to collect the vehicles later anyway, soon after you’ve departed.”
The rifle might as well have been an umbrella, for the casual way he spoke of it.
Another box of ammo joined the first. The 7.62x51mm old NATO rounds were significantly heavier than those for the handgun.
There were further hurried goodbyes, during which I carried my new arsenal over to the rear Land Rover. There appeared to be genuine affection on the part of de Bourdillon for the Kincaids, and a certain amount of awed respect for Mrs Heedles. She had that effect on people.
We climbed into the vehicles. Mrs Heedles took the front seat alongside Lopez, leaving Kincaid and Schade in the rear. I expected Helena to take the rear seat of the second Land Rover, but she hopped into the front. With Williams behind the wheel, that left me in the back on my own. I was starting to feel ever so slightly got at.
Still, at least it gave me the space to spread out and load my weaponry. I laid the rifle carefully across the bench seat, unclipped the ten-round box magazine and started to feed in the long rounds. Better to get that out of the way first, I reasoned, before we hit the public road. It would have been better still to do it before we set off at all, but I wasn’t given that choice.
Lopez set off, sweeping around in a wide arc and heading for the driveway. Williams followed. The driveway was dead straight between the avenue of tapered bushes, but gravelled rather than paved, so we were travelling at a moderate pace.
I finished loading the FR-F2 and clipped the magazine back in place. Ahead, Lopez began to slow for the gates, which were already swinging open.
Suddenly, the Land Rover he was driving swerved right, bounced two wheels onto the grass and accelerated hard. A moment later, it hit one of the massive stone gateposts, hard enough to lift the rear end off the ground and slew it sideways.
Williams stamped on the brakes of our Land Rover, cursing.
I keyed the mic. “Schade! Lopez! Status?”
As I spoke, I was twisting in my seat, scanning the distant trees, knowing how good the cover was that they provided. Knowing anyone could be hiding out there.
Knowing somebody was.
“Sniper fire. Trees. Ten o’clock,” Schade said, his voice tight but controlled. “Lopez is down. So’s Mo. Get her out of there, Fox!”
61
I didn’t need to ask who he meant. I didn’t need to tell Williams what to do, either. Before Schade’s message was over, he’d already thrown the Land Rover into reverse gear and sent us rocketing backwards.
The acceleration slammed me against the seat-back in front of me. I bounced off the headrest, wedged an elbow into the upholstery. The rifle pitched towards the footwell. I grabbed it, cursed as I heard the box of 9mm ammo tip out and scatter.
Twenty metres back, Williams grappled with the wheel to chuck the Land Rover into a rapid J-turn. It scrabbled for grip—not the most agile of vehicles to carry out such a manoeuvre. Gravel pelted up into the wheel-arches like hail as we skidded sideways and round.
As soon as he was facing away from the gate, Williams hit the throttle hard. We lurched forwards again, the transmission whining as it tried to make good on his demand.
Helena was screaming. It took a moment for me to realise that she was screaming for us to stop.
Her words registered with Williams a fraction later. He lifted off automatically. An ingrained response.
I growled, “Don’t you dare.”
“You work for me, not her,” Helena yelled, hitting him on the shoulder with her clenched fist. “You damn well do as I say.”
Williams didn’t brake, but he didn’t accelerate again either. We were coasting. He glanced back over his shoulder, the conflict of orders crumpling his features into a scowl. He knew we were both right and that didn’t make it any easier deciding which of us to obey. In other circumstances, it might almost have been funny.
Helena twisted in her seat to glare at me, desperation in her face.
“Charlie, please. You have to help Eric!”
“He’s got Schade,” I said.
Besides, last time I delegated your safety to someone else, they lost you.
I didn’t say the words aloud, saw from her expression that I didn’t have to.
Her eyes flicked beyond me, through the rear window to where the other Land Rover was still buried nose-first into the gatepost. Schade had Kincaid out of the vehicle and bundled down close by the front wheel, but they were clearly taking incoming fire.
I let my breath out, fast and annoyed, and scooped up the rifle and the box of rounds that went with it.
“Get her inside the chateau and bloody well keep her there or you won’t have to worry about anyone else,” I told Williams. “Because I’ll shoot you myself.”
62
I bailed out of the Land Rover while it was still moving. I hit the grass at the side of the drive in a half-roll, keeping the rifle clear of the ground, and scuttled deeper into the grass. I watched Williams make it all the way to the chateau, saw him hurtle around the side of the moat and knew he was probably heading for the line of French windows at the rear as his point of entry.
It was a better idea than stopping and then having to make an exposed run across the drawbridge.
Only when they had disappeared from view did I raise my head, moving slow and careful, and focus o
n the other Land Rover.
I could still hear sporadic shots, close and loud enough to make me cautious. And frequent enough to keep their heads down behind the vehicle. It made me wonder what their plan was now. Remembering the RPG that Hamzeh’s guy had fired at the helicopter, I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
A part of me was tempted, briefly, to leave Schade to cope on his own. If what Mrs Heedles had said was true—that he was the one who’d suggested taking me out during our zeroing session—then he could fight his own damn battles.
But that wasn’t going to help Eric Kincaid. Nor was it going to help Mo Heedles or Lopez.
“Down,” Schade had said. Did that mean they were injured?
Or dead?
I eyed the vehicle again but could see only Schade and Kincaid. Surely he would not have left them inside unless…?
Taking out the driver, I knew, was the best way to send a vehicle off the road. The way the Land Rover had crashed, it was as though Lopez had all his strings sliced through at once, completely losing control. And if they’d stitched fire across the front windscreen, that would have taken out the front-seat passenger.
No, I wasn’t prepared to leave the unknown gunmen to finish off the others as well.
Keeping in a low crouch, I ran alongside one of the neatly trimmed hedges that bordered the drive, using that cover to zigzag my way closer to the treeline.
I tried to recall the landscape inside the woods in as much detail as I could manage. I’d scoped it out myself with some deliberation and picked what I felt was the optimum position for concealment and field of fire.
No reason to suppose this shooter wouldn’t have done the same.
And come to a similar conclusion.
I threaded my way through the trees, putting my feet down with moderate care, wary of stampeding through the undergrowth like the wild boar I’d almost encountered.
I was prepared to sacrifice absolute silence in favour of speed, though. Either the shooter had ear protection, or he’d just experienced continued gunfire. Whichever was the case, it meant he wasn’t going to hear every little crackle of twigs on my approach.