Shadow

by James Swallow

  Axelle fought to pull her off balance again as they still struggled for control of the pistol. The razor nails dug into nerve points beneath Lucy’s flesh, drawing blood, and her hand jerked unexpectedly. The Glock barked twice more, this time the bullets going into the frame of the box truck. The cries of the captives inside became screams.

  Then the rifle’s two-point sling snapped up and caught Lucy across the throat. The webbing pulled painfully tight and she felt Axelle’s shoulder in her back as the woman began to strangle her with the gun strap.

  Lucy tried to pull in a breath, but nothing came.

  * * *

  Marc kept his Rubicon spyPhone clasped tightly in one hand, holding it inside the pocket of his jacket. He drew in, his body language deliberately low-key, keeping his baseball cap down over his brow as he walked along the cobbled street.

  Up ahead, on the far side of a knot of German tourists, Meddur al-Baruni continued his dejected, fearful trudge, moving off the main streets and toward the historic quarter. The man hung on to the straps of the pack on his shoulders as if it contained the weight of the world, and every few dozen steps he cast a furtive look at the bulky smartwatch on his wrist.

  Marc felt his phone vibrate each time the man received an update on his directions, as the software intercepted the same signal. This time, he had switched off the audible message cue, for fear that it could alert his quarry once again. But for the moment, al-Baruni seemed to think he had lost his tail, and Marc wanted to keep it that way.

  He felt sorry for the man. He had to be overwhelmed by everything that was happening to him, trapped in this foreign city and forced into this act by those without conscience. But unless Marc could find a way to reach him and get his lethal payload away, Meddur al-Baruni would go down in history as the lynchpin of the worst terrorist atrocity to strike continental Europe.

  He would have to act soon. It was late morning now, and the streets were filling up. Shoppers, locals, tourists, and people dining out at curbside cafes were everywhere Marc looked. Again he saw more students like the ones he’d encountered before, these ones carrying guitar cases and passing out brightly colored flyers. Marc took one and studied it. There were similar posters around advertising a week-long music festival at numerous venues around Brussels. Any one of them would be an ideal place to trigger the Shadow device.

  As he tucked the leaflet in his pocket, Marc’s target passed the mouth of an alley, and a man stepped out and came to a halt in the middle of the street. He glared straight at Marc as al-Baruni walked on, oblivious to the man’s appearance. The guy had a face like a clenched fist, hairless and tracked with scars, and he was wearing what Marc had now come to consider the Lion’s Roar “uniform”—work boots, army surplus trousers and a dark jacket in a military cut.

  He was staring Marc down, challenging him to react.

  They must have made me when I caught up with al-Baruni, he thought. And if there’s one of them …

  His gaze flicked left and right, before it zeroed in on another figure captured in the reflection of a shop selling tacky souvenirs. A second man with stringy brown hair in the same kind of outfit was trailing Marc, just as he had been following al-Baruni.

  Too busy watching your target to check yourself, Dane, he admonished silently.

  When he had been recruited to MI6, the instructors at Fort Monckton had trained them in dozens of scenarios like this one, and the rule was: if you were spotted by your target or by enemy operatives, you disengaged immediately.

  That wasn’t an option here. If he lost al-Baruni in the crowds of tourists, there was a good chance he would never be able to find him again. But he couldn’t get caught by two of Verbeke’s bruisers in broad daylight either.

  To Marc’s right was a shabby indoor shopping mall with kiosk-like compartments selling cheap imported goods. He pivoted smartly toward it, and stepped through the entrance. The instant he was out of the eyeline of Verbeke’s men, he broke into a run. The cramped mall was a far cry from the posh arcade of the Royal Galleries a few blocks away, with its fancy chocolatiers and ritzy perfume stores. This place was gloomy, packed with stalls selling knock-off designer handbags, noisy plastic toys or paraphernalia for those who liked a little ganja. What they did have in common was multiple entrances and exits, and Marc turned a corner down one narrow passage toward what he thought would be a way out.

  His path was blocked by a wall of temporary metal fencing that rose to the low ceiling, cordoning off part of the building that was under construction. The unpleasant possibility that he had made a serious mistake started to form in Marc’s thoughts.

  He headed back the way he had come, this time cutting across a silent food court in front of a shuttered burger bar, and the reason why the mall was so ill-lit quickly became clear.

  Apart from a handful of kiosks near the entrance, manned by bored-looking shopkeepers, the rest of the complex tiny precinct was closed up. Roller doors were down on every alcove, and the overhead lights were switched off. Despite it being broad daylight outside, the only illumination was what leaked in from the entrance vestibule. More of the metal fences were visible down another corridor, and Marc heard the thud and bang of workers busy on the floors above as they knocked down walls and carted away rubble. Half the place was being rebuilt, it seemed. The smell of plaster dust and fresh concrete hung heavy in the air.

  Staying low, Marc looked back toward the entrance and found the balding thug standing sentinel just inside the door, like a bouncer at a dingy nightclub. His comrade was following the same path Marc had taken, peering into the dead-end passage.

  The only other route was a fourth corridor that led around to the far side of the building, and Marc went for it. He gave his smartphone a quick look. The device had gone silent. With no line of sight to al-Baruni, the mirroring software had nothing to track, and he hoped that didn’t mean the target was lost for good. Marc stuffed the phone in his back pocket and turned the corner, hoping to find another way out of the darkened mall.

  Another temporary fence was waiting for him across the locked doors, a sheet-metal portcullis that was far too heavy for one person to move.

  Had this been the plan all along? He wondered if the Lion’s Roar thugs had chosen this moment to reveal themselves, because they knew they could herd Marc in here and deal with him out of sight.

  I don’t want to stick around to find out.

  Searching about in the dimness, he found a shopfront with a shutter that didn’t quite reach to the sloped floor. There was enough room for him to get his fingers underneath and he pulled it up, giving it all he had. The roller door let out a pained creak and rose half a meter, enough that Marc could get beneath the lip and shoulder it open a little more. The shutter finally jammed in its runners at a steep angle, but there was room enough to squeeze under.

  The noise was going to attract the thugs, but at this point there was nothing else Marc could do. The distinctive smell of freshly cut leather hit him inside the cluttered little shop. Crammed in there were dozens of black plastic showroom dummies, decked out in long rigs, biker gear and jackets of every hue and design. Marc had to push through the unmoving throng, past a glass display counter filled with matching spiked bracelets, sculpted collars and zircon-covered chokers. In the gloom, he picked out a door that he hoped would lead to a back alley, and a way out.

  He kicked the lock off the door and it opened halfway, revealing a space beyond that was filled from floor to ceiling with bags of unsold goods. If there was an exit in there, it was buried under half a ton of poorly made bolo jackets and studded chaps.

  Out in the corridor, heavy footfalls were coming closer. Marc shrank back into the crowd of dummies, peeling off his baseball cap and setting it on the head of a male mannequin in a long coat. He grabbed a dark red racer jacket off a rack, and held it in front of him like a shield to break up his silhouette.

  Letting out a breath, he froze, blending into the ranks of human-shaped shadows. For a moment, he
thought about the Glock semiautomatic holstered inside his waistband. The gun would make short work of this, but using it in here would bring the police in moments. A single shot would echo like a thunderbolt, and Lucy had neglected to pick up any sound suppressors along with the weapons.

  Last resort, then, he told himself.

  The younger of the two thugs swung in under the half-open shutter, his head swaying right to left as he peered into the darkness. His right hand was clamped around the grip of an ugly-looking combat knife. The weapon had a wickedly curved guard and a spiked spine that glittered in the gloom, looking more like something from a Hollywood action movie than an actual fighting tool. Still, the broad, polished blade had a keen edge that would go right through flesh.

  Marc took advantage of the man’s momentary distraction and nudged the stand holding up one of the dummies. The figure rocked and the thug instantly went for the decoy, shoving the other mannequins out of the way.

  He was looking in the wrong direction when Marc came at him, leading with the jacket bunched over his fists.

  Marc’s Krav Maga teacher—a tough young Bosniak Muslim with an easy grin and a take-no-shit attitude—had always extolled the virtues of getting in one’s retribution early, and while Dane had never been a top student, that lesson stuck. Marc fired a series of short, sharp punches into the thug’s head before the man knew what was happening, the racer jacket acting like makeshift boxing gloves. He whipped it around, smacking him with the flapping sleeves, trying to keep him from regaining his balance. Marc stepped inside the thug’s reach, shoving the jacket at his face, briefly blinding him.

  The knife came up in a rising cut that Marc felt more than he saw, the low hum of its passing making him flinch backward. It was all the brown-haired man needed to turn the fight back his way and he advanced, making diagonal cuts in the air that caught on the leather, slashing it into red ribbons.

  The blade was designed to intimidate, to make an opponent back away and give control of the fight to the wielder, but the thug was overextending his stance with each downward sweep. Still gripping the ruined jacket, Marc threw out a block and the knife bit into layers of leather, sawing through. It was a cut that would have gone straight to the bone through nerve and vein, but the jacket gave Marc some temporary protection, and the chance to score a shin kick and a follow-up punch to the ribs. The man grunted in pain and tried to pivot, but he collided with another of the mannequins and lost his footing.

  Marc saw that and helped him along, shoving him face first into the clear-topped counter. Glass shattered and the thug reeled away, losing his blade in the dimness, desperately clamping his hands to his neck. He let out a wet, sucking gasp and Marc saw a jagged spar of plate glass protruding from his throat. Blood jetted from the fatal wound and the man tumbled back out into the darkened corridor, gurgling and choking.

  Marc followed him, still clutching the torn jacket. The thug managed two or three steps down the tiled corridor, his blood spattering the dusty floor, before he toppled at the feet of his hard-faced comrade. The second man had come to find his buddy, but he didn’t stop to give him any help. Instead, the older thug stepped over the dying man, letting a weapon of his own slide down from where it had been hidden up his sleeve.

  The Rambo knife had been bad enough, but the scarred man had gone one better. He gripped the handle of a fat-bladed agricultural machete that was easily as long as Marc’s forearm. The attack came fast and angry, in downward diagonal swoops that crossed over one another. What remained of the shredded jacket was cut in two as one slash connected at the collar and ripped it open. Marc threw one ragged punch at his assailant, desperately trying to extend the distance between the tip of the blade and his own throat, but he knew he didn’t have anywhere to go.

  He twisted toward the blocked entrance behind him, snatching at the Glock in his belt. Last resort time had come quicker than he expected. Marc heard the machete come down, skin-crawlingly close, the edge slashing open the jacket and shirt on his back.

  A line of fire lit up across his shoulders, and Marc let out a cry. The shock of the pain made him stumble, even as his fingers found the butt of the Glock and pulled it free of its holster. Time turned fluid, slowing as fresh blasts of adrenaline shocked through his system.

  The balding thug was still on the attack, both hands on the machete’s handle now as he brought it down like a shortsword, aiming to plunge it into Marc’s chest.

  Marc jammed his pistol into the folds of what was left of the racer jacket and mashed the trigger. The torn crimson leather muffled the gunshot, and the bullet cut a gory divot out of the scarred thug’s thigh. He cried out and faltered before he could make his killing blow. Marc didn’t wait; he put two more shots into the man’s chest and down he fell. The searing exhaust gases trapped in the torn jacket stung his hands and he shook the torn material away, hissing at the burn.

  The stink of cordite, blood and burned leather hung in the air, and in the aftermath, the enclosed space of the dark shopping arcade felt close and oppressive.

  Marc realized that the noise from the floors above had stopped.

  Did someone hear the shots?

  He stood up, and his fingers came back stained red when he probed the cut on his back. The steady burn of the wound pulsed as he moved, but he had been lucky. The cut was shallow, the brunt of the damage taken by his clothes, but he had nothing to dress it with.

  Walk it off, said a voice in his head that could have belonged to Lucy Keyes.

  Scrambling around, Marc recovered his cap and took another racer jacket, leaving the dead men where they had fallen.

  Emerging back in the daylight, he saw some of the stall owners outside in a worried bunch, one of them speaking quickly into a cell phone. Marc pulled his Rubicon-issue device, working urgently at the touch-sensitive screen as he set off in the direction al-Baruni had been taking.

  The copycat program duplicating every input sent to the smartwatch had caught one last thing before the connection dropped out. An audio message. Fearing the worst, Marc tapped the play tab and held the phone to his ear.

  It was a woman speaking in Arabic, and she was terrified. Marc didn’t understand the language but the tone was clear as day.

  Help us.

  It had to be the wife, he reasoned. The voice continued for a few seconds, and divorced from the ability to comprehend the actual words, Marc listened to the pace and rhythm of them. He looped the playback, losing himself in the sound.

  Back at Six, one of Dane’s sharpest skills had been his ability to “see the music” when confronted with a wall of intelligence data. There was a knack to it, being able to look at the big picture and see the spots where the notes didn’t ring right. That same sense was being tweaked right now, as the panicked message played out. The shape of it seemed … artificial.

  Like the video of Ji-Yoo Park’s family, he thought. Dead for days but faked back to life by the Lion’s Roar in order to make the scientist do their bidding.

  Meddur al-Baruni was carrying a virus bomb because he believed his family would be killed if he didn’t. But they might already be dead.

  * * *

  The dark, shadowed edges of the subway tunnel began to contract around Lucy, and the bloody color from the flare faded to gray.

  Her brain was being starved of oxygen, the life being choked out of her by the thick gun strap tightening about her throat. Within a couple of heartbeats, Axelle would tip her over the edge into semi-consciousness and then Lucy would be at the mercy of the pale woman. And she would die down here, in this stale dead-air tunnel, left behind for the Belgian cops to find days or weeks from now …

  No.

  Blindly, Lucy snatched at the rifle strap and slid her fingers down it until she grasped the quick-release lock on the two-point harness, snapping it open with a flick of her wrist.

  All the strangling tension around her neck vanished in an instant as the XAR rifle came loose and clattered to the ground. Color flooded back int
o Lucy’s vision and she choked down a lungful of much-needed air. Acting on angry impulse, Lucy struck out blindly at the assailant behind her with a reverse shoulder jab and cracked Axelle on the jaw. The blow was hard and direct, and the other woman gave a choked wail.

  But still the pale woman held on to Lucy’s gun hand, digging in her nails to draw blood, the fluid flowing freely from the new cuts. She hissed in pain, but didn’t let up.

  They spun about, coming together into a chaotic dance, skidding off the flank of the box truck. Trading blows, battling for control of the pistol, each of them tried to twist the weapon toward the other. Lucy’s boot splashed in a pool of spilled gasoline as Axelle forced her back against the truck.

  Neither woman held the clear physical advantage over the other. Lucy had the build of an Olympic runner, firm muscle and toned limbs married to stamina and core strength. Axelle was more like a dancer; hers was the illusive and willowy form of a ballerina with zero excess body mass. She was supple, but wire-hard with it, never putting a foot wrong.

  Using her whole weight as a lever, Axelle curled around Lucy and forced the Glock back in the direction of her opponent’s face. Lucy’s finger was still locked on the pistol’s trigger and before it passed a point of no return, she pulled hard. The gun barked, shooting a 9mm round uselessly into the concrete ceiling in a blink of muzzle flash. Lucy kept on mashing the trigger, the report of the shots elongating into one constant thunder, cordite stinging her throat, brass shell cases flicking away into the gloom. In the dimness, at such close range, the bright discharge from the barrel dazzled them both. Then the Glock’s slide locked back and the gun was empty.

  Axelle gave Lucy the opening she was desperately searching for, a fractional, momentary relaxation of pressure as her opponent shifted weight. Lucy took the opportunity with a vengeance. Putting all the force she could muster into it, she jabbed across with the empty pistol, smacking the metal frame of the handgun into Axelle’s head.