by Andy Maslen
“The Rangie or the Suburban, boss. Both have blacked-out windows and plenty of space for an inert body,” he said out loud.
He re-crossed the road, then crept towards the motel through the brush, keeping the peak of his cap well down over his sunglasses. Keeping the cars between himself and the cabins, he slithered over to the Corvette. No security beyond the locks, boss.
He opened the blade of the BÖKER and slid it into the gap between the driver’s side window and the roof, grateful that the Corvette had frameless windows. Applying steady pressure, he managed to drop the glass enough to get his fingers inside. Then he dragged the glass down through brute strength, feeling the gears of the motor inside the door protesting. With the glass all the way down, he leaned in and opened the door. Slumped in the driver’s seat, it took him a minute or so to hotwire the car. With the ignition live, he leaned on the horn button twice. As the twin blasts echoed off the hard surfaces of the cabins, Gabriel scooted away into the ornamental shrubs ordering the car park and waited.
Mortensen emerged from the cabin on the far left of the office: number 1. He strode into the centre of the car park, looking for the new arrival. He was to be disappointed. Gabriel watched from his hide as Mortensen went over to the Range Rover, walked all the way round it, then, frowning, went back inside.
Got you!
Repeat Business
ONCE Mortensen was inside his cabin again, Gabriel skirted round the motel and approached the row of cabins from the rough ground behind them. Coming up to the door, he drew the pistol, racked the slide, and banged on the flimsy painted wood with his left fist.
“Police! Open up!” he called, using the tone of command drilled into him first at Sandhurst and then in the Parachute Regiment, coupled to what he hoped was a passable New York accent. He stepped back, keeping the pistol close to his side and aimed at a point corresponding to centre mass for a six foot-plus combatant.
He was ready. Muscles pumped with blood and taut with unspent energy. Eyes flicking up and down, from door handle to a point at head height. Hand gripping the HK45’s butt, trigger finger curled and ready to squeeze.
“Coming, I’m coming,” the voice from behind the door said, the former generic American accent now replaced by a tone that was softer, less hard to define, but with a definite Dutch catch to it.
The door swung inwards revealing the man Gabriel knew had been tasked with bringing him to Erin Ayers, and death.
Not giving him time to react, Gabriel swung the gun up and smacked it sharply against the man’s left temple. Mortensen staggered backwards, clutching his palm to the cut that Gabriel’s blow had opened on the side of his head. His other hand was groping at the back of his waistband but Gabriel had anticipated that his man would be armed. As Mortensen’s right arm swung round with a pistol, a 1911, Gabriel chopped his own gun down onto the wrist, loosening Mortensen’s grip so that he dropped the 1911, which Gabriel kicked away into a corner of the room.
Gabriel kicked out at Mortensen’s left knee, eliciting a howl of pain as the leg buckled, throwing Mortensen in a twisting fall to his right. He kicked the door closed behind him, readying himself to beat Britta’s location out of Mortensen.
As Mortensen went down, he rolled over and hooked his right boot around Gabriel’s ankle, pulling his working knee in and unbalancing Gabriel so he stumbled sideways. The opportunity was fleeting, but Mortensen took it. Rearing up, he swung a massive fist into Gabriel’s gun arm, catching him halfway between wrist and elbow.
It was a numbing blow, and Gabriel felt his grip on the pistol loosen, just for a split second. Mortensen was ready and grabbed hold of the barrel, twisting it out of Gabriel’s grasp.
Gabriel reacted instinctively, taking a check-step backwards then launching a kick at Mortensen’s hand that sent the HK45 flying across the cabin to hit the rear wall and drop behind a sofa upholstered in grimy brown fabric.
Mortensen was on his feet, breathing heavily and grimacing, his lips pulled back from his teeth.
“You fuck!” he growled. “You’re a dead man.”
He lunged forwards, chopping a blade-like right hand at Gabriel’s throat. Gabriel moved to block the incoming blow, but it was a feint, and Mortensen’s hand swerved in mid-air to deliver a straight-fingered blow into his gut. The solar plexus was obviously the target but Mortensen’s damaged knee had thrown his balance off. The blow connected painfully with Gabriel’s stomach, but missed the sweet spot that would drive all the air from his lungs and leave him gasping for air, curled up on the ground, ready to receive a kick or a punch as Mortensen wanted.
Gabriel lashed out at Mortensen’s face, hand curled into a claw. He felt his index and middle fingers grab onto the man’s eye sockets, and pulled down and clenched his fist simultaneously, dragging a screech of pain from Mortensen. As Mortensen staggered backwards, looking to create space between him and Gabriel, Gabriel pressed forward, trying to gain a fight-ending advantage.
But Mortensen wasn’t done yet. As time slowed down for Gabriel, he was able to analyse his opponent’s fighting style and concluded this was no hired heavy with all his strength in his biceps. This man had learned how to fight properly.
Mortensen appeared to buckle, and started toppling towards Gabriel, then he thrust upwards from his knees, driving the top of his shaved skull into Gabriel’s midsection, winding him.
A balled fist at the end of a massively muscled arm caught Gabriel on the side of the head, dizzying him for a moment, and forcing him back a couple of steps. Mortensen pressed home his advantage, lashing out with his good leg and landing a kick midway up Gabriel’s right thigh that felt as if he’d been hit with a round from a Kalashnikov.
Gabriel dropped to his knees, one hand clutching his injured thigh, presenting an easy target for a swinging kick from the man’s booted right foot.
Mortensen grunted in triumph and swung his leg back.
Gabriel rammed his left fist into Mortensen’s balls.
Off- balance, his right leg still behind him, Mortensen screamed and fell backwards.
Knife drawn, Gabriel was on him before he hit the carpet. With his knees planted on Mortensen’s chest he jabbed the point of the knife into the notch of his throat.
His own breath coming in ragged gasps, Gabriel addressed the man who would take him to Britta.
“Where is she?” he hissed.
Mortensen lay still under Gabriel’s knees. He sneered up at Gabriel.
“Somewhere you’ll never find her, pokkenlijer.”
Gabriel pushed the knife downwards so the tip disappeared into the depression above Mortensen’s collarbone and a runnel of blood trickled away to the right.
“Fuck you!” Mortensen said.
Gabriel brought his face closer to Mortensen’s until he could smell the man’s breath.
“You’re going to tell me. One way or—”
Mortensen convulsed his body. He catapulted Gabriel forwards, and rolled away before the knife could swing round.
Grabbing a table lamp for the nightstand beside the bed, he swung it in a wide arc at Gabriel’s head. Gabriel evaded the incoming blow simply by ducking under Mortensen’s arm. As he came up, he lunged forward and flicked the knife out under Mortensen’s still-swinging arm.
The edge sliced cleanly through Mortensen’s shirt and into the soft tissue of his upper arm, opening a deep, six-inch gash.
With a squeal, Mortensen grabbed the wound, from which bright arterial blood was squirting. He looked down, mouth open, absorbing the fact that his lifeblood was being pumped out onto the floor by his own heart.
Gabriel closed with him and delivered a kick to his chest that sent him sprawling onto his back. This time, Gabriel kept his distance.
“That’s a bleeder. I hit the brachial artery. You won’t survive it. Not on your own. Tell me where she is and I’ll save you.”
Mortensen was glaring up at Gabriel, his teeth clenched against the pain and what Gabriel saw in his eyes was the fear of
his own death. In battle, on manoeuvres, in training, you could sustain a wound like that and survive. One of your mates would tie on a tourniquet, slap on a field dressing or stitch the fucker closed with fishing line if necessary. But in a motel room, with only your assailant for company, well, let’s just say now might be a good time to start planning the songs they’ll play at your funeral.
“Give me something to tie it off with,” Mortensen grunted out, looking from his blood-soaked sleeve to Gabriel and back again.
“Tell me where she is or I’ll open one on your thigh as well.”
Mortensen clamped his lips shut. Gabriel could feel Britta slipping away from him. Red spots floated around the edge of his vision and a roaring sound filled his ears. He knelt beside Mortensen and pinched the top edge of his right ear between his thumb and forefinger. With a swift slicing action, he brought the knife back and down in the angle between the ear and the thin, hairless skin behind it.
The ear came away with a tearing sound. Fresh scarlet spattered Gabriel’s face as the dozens of tiny arteries jetted blood like miniature firehoses, before adrenaline choked them off. The blood continued to flow, coursing down Mortensen’s neck and onto the carpet under his head.
“Location! Now!” Gabriel bellowed into Mortensen’s face. “Or I’ll do the other one, then your nose, then your eyes.”
Something seemed to click in Gabriel’s mind as he shouted at Mortensen. He felt as though he was watching himself squatting over the mutilated body of his enemy from a point halfway between the floor and the ceiling. He had time to observe the pattern of blood spreading out over the man’s shirt sleeve, and the way the bloody shreds where his ear had been attached to his skull resembled a bullet wound. Only the black hole at the centre was put there by nature, not a rifle round. Mortensen had reached his limit. Everybody had one, even Special Forces soldiers. He was ready to talk. To save his own skin.
“Ithaca,” Mortensen said.
Gabriel watched from the ceiling as he shouted another question.
“Where in Ithaca? Tell me now.” The blade was pressing against the root of Mortensen’s other ear, hard enough to draw blood.
“It’s a farmhouse: 15777 Mecklenburg Road.”
“Car keys.”
“Over there.” Mortensen pointed to the desk beside the door. “Hey, my arm, man. I’m bleeding out. You said you’d help me.”
Gabriel looked down, felt himself swooping back into his body.
He stood, releasing Mortensen, who had turned pale and was breathing shallowly. He crossed the room to the desk, grabbed the Range Rover’s keys, and Mortensen’s phone, then tore a strip of fabric from the curtain. He returned to Mortensen, who was clutching his opened triceps muscle with white-knuckled fingers.
“I did, didn’t I?” Gabriel said. Then he lunged down, grabbed Mortensen by the cheeks and dug his fingers in hard, forcing his mouth open. He stuffed the fabric strip in and pushed it home with his thumb, wadding the lurid orange patterned fabric down until Mortensen’s eyes bulged out.
“But you helped kill my friends,” he said.
Then he cut Mortensen’s throat.
He retrieved the HK45 from behind the sofa, and Mortensen’s 1911 from the spot near the bed, then left, closing the door softly behind him.
Behind the Range Rover’s steering wheel, he rechecked the map then tapped the address into the satnav. He gently steered the big car out of the parking space, being careful not to scrape the Chevy Malibu next to it, which looked brand new, and headed for Ithaca.
Finding Britta
CLOSE to contact. Engage enemy. Win firefight. Secure and release hostage. Exfiltrate. Extract.
As plans went, it was basic, but Gabriel’s rationality was in tatters as he piloted the Range Rover northwest towards Ithaca. Mortensen had installed a radar detector on the dash, but even without it, Gabriel would have maintained the same high speed as he did now, keeping to between 90 and 100 mph.
The satnav screen told him he was just two miles away from his destination. He roared past a white, clapboard house then braked sharply as he saw a sign for a US Forest Service plantation coming up on his right. He slewed the Range Rover off the road, losing traction for a second on the loose surface before the four-wheel-drive system restored order, and then slammed his foot back down on the throttle, powering away from I-81 at a right angle down the forest track.
After insisting he turn around where possible a few times, the satnav gave up and began plotting an alternative route. Finding no official roads, it switched to giving him a dotted line back to I-81 and a chequered flag in an expanse of plain green for the safe house where they were holding Britta. Which was fine. The car was built for exactly this type of driving, even though he imagined 99% of owners spent all their time on metalled roads.
After half a mile, he turned right down an even narrower track. When that dissolved in a swathe of vegetation, he simply slowed down and kept going, checking the satnav from time to time and also relying on his own sense of direction.
With about five hundred yards to the target, he brought the Range Rover to a stop in a small clearing. He killed the engine, collected his gear and got out.
The tree cover was thick, a light mist hanging between the ground and the canopy. Shafts of sunlight arrowed down, illuminating spots of tawny leaf litter and bright-green shoots pushing their way through to the light. As the petrol-scented exhaust fumes drifted away from him, their sharp smell was replaced by a mossy, vegetal smell he’d inhaled in woods, forests and jungles from Belize to Mozambique. The wind had picked up, and the tops of the trees – birch mostly, but also sugar maple and white oak – were swaying gently.
He checked both pistols, even though he’d checked the HK45 before leaving Manhattan. The HK still had its full magazine. He pushed it home with a damped snick and moved on to inspect Mortensen’s 1911. It was a Kimber Stainless II, a handsome weapon with a satin-silver-finished barrel, slide and frame, and rosewood grips. He dropped the magazine out. Also full: seven Hornady .45 ACP hollow-points. He sniffed the muzzle. Unlike Tall Man’s gun, this weapon had recently been fired. As he’d expect from a bodyguard. He replaced the HK in his belt holster, next to the TacMed first-aid kit, and inserted the Kimber into the back of his waistband, next to the gollock in its leather sheath. He stuck the BÖKER down inside his boot.
Time to move.
The undergrowth was thick with fast-growing shrubs and creepers, eager to exploit the spring warmth and spread as far and as fast as possible. Staying as silent as he could in his approach, he observed a “no-cutting” rule, pushing through the stems and foliage rather than using the gollock. It slowed progress, but the tactical advantage was worth it.
A strange, half-human wail away to his left made him freeze in position. It sounded like a child’s voice. But rough, and throaty, despite the high pitch. Then a second voice joined the first. He could hear undergrowth being smashed and flattened.
Straining to pinpoint the direction the sound was coming from, he had to stop himself from gasping in shock, as a bear cub came lolloping towards him through the undergrowth, followed a moment later by a second. Their bitter-chocolate-coloured fur stood out in sharp contrast to the greenery. Five yards out, the cubs obviously smelled him. They veered off in alarm, back the way they’d come. Gabriel pressed himself down into the leaf litter, praying that the cubs’ mother was nowhere around. After five minutes had passed, and no overprotective, 300-pound mama bear had trampled him, he resumed his approach to the house.
Half an hour later, peering through a gap between some sycamore saplings, he had his first glimpse of the house where Erin Ayers was holding Britta. Two hundred yards away was a large, rambling structure clad in cedar shingles that had silvered with age, curling away from the frame of the house like the scales of a ripe pinecone. Three windows with white-painted wooden frames on the ground floor of the side facing him, three above, plus a dormer in the slate roof.
He brought the binocula
rs up, grateful for his cap, which kept the sun out of the rubber eye cups. The windows were obscured by net curtains. He began a clockwise circle around the house, crawling on his belly, and checking the structures and windows on each side. The rear of the house had four more windows, all curtained. To the right of a timber outbuilding with a padlocked door was the red Testarossa. Next to the Testarossa was a black Cadillac Escalade with blacked-out windows. Prisoner transport, he thought, grimly. The far side of the house was virtually identical to the side he had come at initially, except that one of the upstairs windows was uncurtained. He brought the binoculars to his eyes again and focused on the room beyond. And gasped.
Element of Surprise
RIFLE over her shoulder, smiling down at something, or someone, stood Sasha Beck. She was talking, so it was someone, not something. The angle of her head said that the person in there with her was on the floor. So not Erin Ayers. It had to be Britta. Oh, thank God. You’re alive!
If he’d had a rifle, Gabriel would have taken the shot. He wasn’t a trained sniper like Britta, but from that distance, he was confident he could make a centre-mass shot. If he’d had a rifle. But the pistols would be useless at that range. He’d have to go in. Fine, it’s time we settled this face to face. No more messages.
When he’d been fighting battles with the SAS, and the Paras before them, he’d rarely been in a position where overwhelming force was on his side. They were small units of highly trained men working far behind enemy lines. Sometimes just a four-man patrol. Rarely more than thirty. So the element of surprise was a prized strategic and tactical asset in any combat situation. When his total forces amounted to one, surprise wasn’t just desirable, it was vital. Crashing in through the back door, guns blazing, would be a surprise while it lasted, but it would be a short-lived victory. Beck, he knew, would be heavily armed and trained to fire without thinking. Ayers was the unknown quantity. She’d probably be armed, but something told him she wasn’t a professional. Why hire an assassin to do her dirty work otherwise? Britta would be useful just with her hands and feet, or a kitchen knife, but she’d be bound or handcuffed to a pipe, so no immediate help until he could release her. By then he hoped both Ayers and Beck would be dead.