Shadow Code (A John Kovac Thriller Book 2) (John Kovac Thriller Series)

by David Caris

  With good reason.

  Kovac looked down at the bridge, then back up towards Bishop’s perch.

  He was suddenly fuming.

  There was only one way Bishop was grabbing Anna and locking her up, and only one way Lewis was gunning down journalists. King.

  Kovac had seen Megan’s press conference. He had seen Yvette stand there and grill Megan with the confidence only video evidence could bestow. He had recognized Yvette immediately: the pixie cut, the startling blue eyes, the Irish accent. She was his early a.m. council worker, Zoe Joannou-Clark; a little internet research had revealed her real name. And now she was dead.

  He had been wrong. About everything. Again.

  And stupid.

  So fucking stupid.

  He had to put a stop to this madness.

  He checked his pistol, refocused on the bridge and started sprinting.

  Chapter 72

  ‘Why did Griffin come to us?’ Luther asked. ‘Why did she go behind your back?’

  But Bibi didn’t want to discuss that.

  She took out her phone, which she had never switched off. She pressed play on a video and tilted the screen for Luther’s benefit. He squinted against reflections on the glass and realized he was looking at each of the Frenchmen in turn, as they recorded videos with a flag behind them for The Brotherhood. ‘What am I looking at?’ he asked.

  ‘The terror cell that emerged from your company. Malone helped them record their videos and showed them the cash that would go to each of their families. Six million Euros, which happens to be most of my life savings.’ She pointed back along the bridge, and Malone seemed to take this as an invitation to start forward towards them. ‘Though in truth, none of my money will reach French families. It’s my payment to Malone. If Kante and Gasly lose their nerve and live on, he’ll pay them a visit.’

  ‘Why?’ Luther suspected he knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from Dauguet.

  ‘Why? Former French special forces is why, and every bit as good as Kovac at tidying up loose ends. So far he’s been excellent value for money. Sims, Krathwohl, O’Keefe. He garroted O’Keefe, by the way. Filmed it, too. We filmed everything.’

  She tapped her phone screen – or more accurately flicked it – and the video changed. It showed a series of CCTV clips, all featuring Kovac. Luther saw him at Malone’s front door in London, filmed from a window half-covered with cardboard. He saw him rushing the soccer stadium ticket machine, saw him checking into hotels, saw him on European trains, saw him wandering streets and pressing door buzzers.

  ‘And what’s all this for?’ Luther asked.

  ‘I think you know.’

  Malone arrived, stopping a few steps shy of the two of them.

  Luther realized he was running out of time. Something was coming, something unpleasant, and he didn’t get the feeling it was going to work in his favor.

  Where was the fucking projectile that ended Bibi’s life?

  But even if it came, he would now be left with Malone.

  He decided to take a risk. ‘You said we were here to negotiate. Yet it seems to me like you’re in a position to destroy me.’

  Bibi shook her head. ‘You have my journalist.’

  Luther was confused. ‘Let me make sure I understand what we’re talking about here. You’re suggesting something’s coming today – in France, from your final two horsemen. And that something will lead back to me, because for a short span of time I unwittingly employed all four of these men?’

  ‘Yvette Morris,’ said Malone with a thick French accent. ‘Where is she?’

  Bibi shot him a look, though Luther couldn’t discern the meaning.

  He continued addressing Dauguet. ‘And you have Yvette Morris writing all this up?’

  Bibi said nothing. She just went on smiling at him, enjoying his confusion.

  ‘What you’re describing here, it’s lunacy. There’s no need to kill innocent people. And there’s no need to rip apart a company which is a positive force in the world.’

  Malone said: ‘I was engaged to Rose.’

  The smirk was gone, and Luther saw the hatred now.

  He nodded slowly. ‘Then I offer both of you my life, here and now. Give me your word that it ends here, ends with me, and I’ll make no effort to defend myself. You can take me wherever you please, do whatever you please before killing me. But it ends with me.’

  Bibi put her phone away, turned and held the railing with her good hand. She stared down at the river below and Luther struggled to catch her words as she said: ‘Even if that offer tempted me, Luther, which it doesn’t, not even a little, I can’t accept it. It’s all done now. Today, your BoNT will shock the world, and tomorrow there will be cries for justice.’ She turned away from the river and regarded him with something like disappointment. ‘Tomorrow, I will provide the world with video evidence – the only kind anyone trusts anymore. They’ll see Kovac and the terror cell he created at Curzon. And in the weeks ahead, they’ll get their context. A corporate culture with reckless disregard for human life, an algorithm used by Kovac to recruit and utilize killers for profit, and of course the French pièce de résistance – a long-serving hitman who finally radicalized and snapped. French children, Luther. No one can forgive that. Your reputation will be in tatters, your company too.’ She leaned in a little and whispered. ‘And your enemies will read it all.’

  Luther suppressed a wail. ‘Please, I beg you. Show mercy.’

  Malone was apparently incensed by this. He shoved Luther and screamed: ‘Mercy?’

  Dauguet smiled as a few tourists took out phones and began to film the dispute. Maintaining her whisper, she said: ‘I told you, even if I wanted to, it’s not in my control anymore. Your enemies will identify Kovac. But the revenge attacks will extend well beyond him. Bishop, your daughter, your wife, even Lottie… You’ll be in custody, watching them die one by one.’

  ‘Please. I have your journalist.’

  ‘I know. Like I said, a corporate culture with reckless disregard for human life.’

  Luther saw there was no negotiating, no way out. Bibi didn’t really need Morris. It had all been a ploy, a trick to give him hope and a sense of control, to get him out here where they wanted him. He was still trying to plead, tears streaming down his face, when Malone stepped forward. He grabbed him and flung him hard down into the metal railing. Luther’s head struck it, and a moment later he was seated awkwardly on the wooden boards, dazed.

  The design of the safety railing wasn’t perfect. He hadn’t noticed this until now, but there were large gaps in its triangular design. He had come down in front of one such gap, and he saw what was going to happen. Malone would stomp at him, forcing him through the gap. He was about to plunge to his death.

  Bibi gave Malone her phone and turned back to the north, staring up into the fog. ‘Morris had her chance,’ she said. ‘Forget her. There’s a draft in my email, waiting to go out. Send our version to Bain now.’

  Malone tapped at the screen then reached down and grabbed Luther’s arm. ‘He can do it.’

  ‘Get off me,’ Luther shouted, trying to get clear of the railing.

  The old bridge was swaying and vibrating, as tourists saw what was happening and began to run for either end. Malone slid his grip down to Luther’s wrist, moving Luther’s limp hand towards the phone, and Luther was vaguely aware of people screaming.

  He was confused. Why do this here, with so many witnesses?

  And that was when he finally understood.

  She didn’t want him dead.

  She wanted him to kill her.

  Blood splattered across Malone’s face, across the phone, and across the wooden boards. Luther registered the wetness on his own cheek and forehead, then heard the distant gunshot.

  Malone stepped clear just in time, and Bibi fell half on Luther, clutching at her stomach. She was bleeding, creating a pool of blood that spread rapidly on the old wooden boards and slipped free on the underside. He saw it catch
the wind and splay out as it fell down into fog. She raised her head, and her eyes fixed on his. She was somehow both snarling and smiling, and Luther saw the life drain from her. He dropped his head back onto the boards and felt her head fall onto his arm, heavy, her hair damp. He was wailing, sobbing, staring up through tears into a swirling, depthless white sky.

  She had won.

  Chapter 73

  Kovac arrived to what, in his professional judgment, could only be classed as a complete clusterfuck.

  Bibi was dead, shot by Bishop. And Malone, as best he could determine, was showing his usual cockroach-like aptitude for survival. He had taken Luther hostage. Kovac couldn’t deal with any of this though, because he’d arrived at the western end of the bridge, which meant his old friend Rumpled Jacket.

  Kovac didn’t know who Rumpled was or who he worked for, and right now he didn’t care. Rumpled was shooting at him, using what Kovac guessed was a 9 millimeter. The rounds sounded like thin, flexible tree branches being thwacked just off to the side of his head. Kovac moved laterally, taking quick but careful aim, and fired five rounds in rapid succession.

  His first two rounds missed, but the third caught Rumpled in the forehead.

  Kovac was shooting with the Colt .45 he’d bought at the farm on the edge of Romanos, Aragon. The bullet, he knew, would’ve momentarily created a five-inch wound cavity inside Rumpled’s skull, the skull fracturing from the phenomenal pressures introduced. Unsurvivable. But Kovac hadn’t been trained to stop shooting unless he was preserving ammunition, and right now he wasn’t preserving ammunition. So the fourth and fifth rounds struck Rumpled in the torso as he went down, causing him to jolt like a bad dancer.

  The last two rounds, more than the first three, solidified in tourist’s minds that Kovac was the bad guy here. He had come from the north, where the first gunshot happened, and he was shooting a man whose head he had just blown open.

  In other words, he had started it and he was a psycho.

  Kovac checked for any rogue heroes, but there was no sign of the remaining tourists producing weapons. He was able to move out onto the bridge unobstructed.

  Malone had Luther upright. He was using him primarily as cover from sniper fire, all the while edging towards the eastern side of the bridge. Dragging Luther as he was, it was easy for Kovac to close in on him. Malone twisted as best he could, his own pistol to Luther’s temple. He tried to get Luther to act as protection from the north and the west, but this was a physical impossibility.

  Kovac kept his pistol up, trained on Malone’s head.

  Malone did some more shuffling, some more forceful rearranging of an uncooperative Luther. He flopped him north, he brought him back west, then north again, as if trying to decide where the greater threat lay. He ended up deciding it was the sniper, who he couldn’t see and thus couldn’t anticipate. He kept Luther as protection to the north, and focused all his attention on Kovac.

  Kovac didn’t let up. He continued closing in, his pistol on Malone’s head. He was down to five feet now, and Malone came to a stop. He seemed to realize his error. He could no longer take aim at Kovac without broadcasting it; without Kovac anticipating the move and shooting first. Malone was trapped, and Kovac had the drop on him.

  Malone needed Luther’s head in front of his own, though not so far in front it would expose him to the north.

  Kovac knew Bishop wouldn’t risk a shot. But Malone didn’t know that. He didn’t know where Bishop was, or the sub-par setup Bishop was depending on. Malone looked north, searching, then swung his eyes back to Kovac. Wherever he gripped Luther, he didn’t quite seem happy with it. As if maybe there was some magic position that would only reveal itself with experimentation.

  Kovac didn’t yell instructions. He didn’t order Malone to drop the gun or raise his hands. He wasn’t a cop. He wasn’t even a soldier anymore. He was just a guy on a bridge with a gun, waiting for Malone to make a realization.

  Kovac saw it in Malone’s eyes first. An acceptance. Then it ran down through his shoulders, into his arms. He visibly relaxed, sneering at Kovac as he pulled the trigger. There weren’t the same distances involved, nor the same calibers or velocities. But Luther’s brain was still just a brain, the bullet still just a bullet. Once again, the spinning projectile flung cranial tissue outward, creating its gaping cavity inside, and another vacuum formed, sucking in air and fracturing the skull before compressing back down in an instant. As with Rumpled, all this force, applied to fragile human tissue, was more than sufficient to end Luther Curzon’s life, and the last thing he saw was Kovac. Kovac knew this, because he had been staring at Luther with disgust.

  Kovac didn’t move. His gun was on Malone, and he kept it on Malone. As Luther dropped, Malone turned and went for the railing, trying to parkour it. Kovac had expected this. In his limited interactions with Malone, the man had exhibited a complete disregard for physics. Every time. Of course he was going to try to survive a jump into a river a few hundred feet below. But he never got there. He never even got over the railing. Something stopped him dead in his tracks and flung him back, and Kovac waited for the distant gunshot. It came right on cue.

  Kovac had intended to run towards the eastern end of the bridge at this point, while Bishop reloaded. Bishop was using a bolt action rifle, which gave Kovac some time. Not a lot of time, but enough maybe. Kovac would be moving too, and Bishop didn’t do all that well with moving targets.

  He didn’t run, though. Instead, without even deciding it, he turned and faced north, and held out his hands. He dropped his pistol, and stared into the mist and waited.

  End it, he thought.

  Bishop had seen him deliberately hold off on shooting Malone, and he would know exactly why Kovac had done it. Anna.

  Kovac held his ground, arms still out. He gritted his teeth and swallowed hard.

  King was dead. That meant Bishop had a choice to make, too: clean up, or walk away.

  Nothing happened.

  Kovac blew out a long lungful of air, lowering his arms and giving Bishop a single nod – not gratitude so much as a farewell. Then, turning away, he started towards the eastern end of the bridge.

  Chapter 74

  Bishop stared at Kovac through the scope a moment longer, then started packing up.

  He understood what Kovac had just said to him.

  Now or never.

  It was an easy choice.

  ‘Never,’ Bishop said to himself in a mumble. His loyalty to Luther didn’t extend to avenging Luther’s death, and certainly not with the sort of messed-up demands Luther had been making of late. Bishop agreed with Kovac’s assessment, and he felt a new and unfamiliar lightness.

  Optimism, was it?

  Maybe.

  Collecting up the rifle and scant gear he had in one hand, he turned and started hiking, all the while making a phone call with his other hand. Lewis answered on the third ring.

  ‘It’s off,’ Bishop said. ‘Let her go.’

  ‘But I’ve found her.’

  ‘She hurt?’

  ‘Hurt?’ He sounded confused. ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Walk away, Lewis. Or you and I have a problem.’

  There was a pause. ‘And what about Mehmood?’

  ‘Let him go too. He can find his own way home. Tell him if he speaks, it’ll be the last thing he ever says.’

  ‘This is coming from Luther?’

  ‘Yeah. Final decision.’

  He ended the call and picked up his pace. He could hear tourists somewhere well below, but they weren’t his real concern now. Helicopters, specifically police helicopters. That’s what was going to make his life difficult, at least until he could get a few hours under his belt and widen their search perimeter.

  He looked at the phone, then pocketed it. Bishop knew he already had a problem with Lewis, whatever the man did or didn’t do. He had half a mind to kill the guy. He wasn’t just a loose end. He was one of those rare, fucked up soldiers who liked killing.

  But to do
that, he needed to get out of Spain.

  Prioritize and execute.

  He glanced back at the bridge one last time, and saw a man he guessed was Kovac collect something from Bibi’s splayed corpse.

  Her phone, he figured.

  Kovac had clearly doubled back for it, because last Bishop saw, Kovac had been heading for the eastern edge of the bridge: the side Bishop couldn’t get to without following Kovac’s exact footsteps and crossing the bridge himself.

  Bishop wouldn’t be doing that. No, he would ditch this rifle, continue north for a bit, then hide. As soon as it was dark, he would loop around and hide again, but indoors. Somewhere in the south of the city. They weren’t going to go door to door in Cuenca. They’d expect him to get clear of the crime, and they’d be looking for him out in the scrub. He’d make do on water, fasting if he needed to, and he’d let a few days pass. Kovac, he knew, would do something similar.

  He wondered what he would tell Megan, and decided he didn’t have a clue. In the end, it didn’t really matter.

  In fact, now that he thought about it, he doubted he’d ever speak with Megan Curzon again.

  He turned and started jogging.

  Chapter 75

  Megan Curzon had passed the time examining the contents of Van Heythuysen’s phone. A trace on Bibi’s “January” number had led to nothing. But comparing Van Heythuysen’s phone records with her photo of Kapoor’s phone logs had produced a hit. Megan now knew for certain that both men had been in contact with one another.

  The information on Kapoor’s solid-state drive was even more interesting. DELPHI had produced long lists of names, all sorted by psychological tendencies, search histories, purchase histories, even porn preferences. Four names had been highlighted from the hundreds on the drive, and though the names were unfamiliar, the ages of the individuals matched the four terrorists Kapoor, Van Heythuysen and Bibi had managed to plant inside Curzon. Two of the names were also French, confirming Megan’s suspicions. They had used aliases at Curzon, but the four men had almost certainly been found by DELPHI.