Fearless ; The Smoke Child

by Lee Stone

  As Lockhart sat down again, Tyler’s phone bleeped. The message was simple:

  KILL HIM.

  Tyler had no idea how they would access the money in the account without Fearless to type in the codes. But he had long ago learned to trust Lang. His boss hadn’t been wrong yet. His boss had made them rich, until they lost the truck.

  Lockhart hoped for Tyler’s sake that he didn’t play poker. He would have been the worst. His brow had furrowed, and he had shifted in his seat. He hadn’t looked up since he had read the text. Lockhart knew bad news when he saw it, and in his mind he wondered if he could reach the hot poker in one lunge.

  He watched Tyler carefully as he leaned forward and picked up his whisky. He took a sip, just enough to wet his lips. Before he got a chance to grab the poker, Tyler looked up, pulled out the revolver, and aimed it straight at him. Without saying a word, he pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened. The change in temperatures between the freezing cold snow and the hot fire had jammed the weapon. Lockhart remembered his dad once saying to him that if life offers you a second chance, you should grab it with both hands. On instinct, Lockhart threw the heavy whiskey glass straight at the man in front of him.

  Lockhart had aimed well, and the heavy base of the glass smashed square into the middle of Tyler’s face. The man was a brute, but even so he was momentarily stunned. Lockhart was instantly up and away before Tyler had stumbled to his feet. He ignored the poker and ran straight into the fire.

  Tyler had been aware of Lockhart moving towards the hearth. He saw his shadow as he was instinctively wiping blood and shards of glass from his face. His nose was broken but the cuts were superficial. He looked up towards the fireplace in confusion. Lockhart wasn’t there. It was an impossible escape. The solid oak door was still firmly in place, and for Lockhart to escape out of the back door he would have to have passed Tyler, which he definitely didn’t.

  Tyler looked at the fire, and then moved closer with his revolver back in his hand. He looked up the huge chimney, as if Lockhart might be hiding up there. He wasn’t. Then Tyler notice that there was a cupboard built into the side of the massive hearth. There was a solid oak door which was out of sight when you looked at the massive stone surround from the front. It looked as ancient as the house itself, and as solid as the front door.

  Tyler laughed at the futility of a grown man hiding in a cupboard. He gave it a kick but it didn’t budge. So, he took the poker from the hearth and began to lever the burning logs out of the grate. He piled them up in front of the oak door, and soon it began to smolder. Tyler would smoke him out or burn him out. He didn’t really care which.

  Lockhart had slammed the thick oak door behind him and slid three bolts into place. Even Tyler wouldn’t be able to kick it down. Then he had turned around and started down the steep stone steps at the back of the cupboard which led to a damp narrow passageway below. His shoulders brushed either side of the corridor as he rushed along.

  The corridor was just broad enough for Lockhart. He was fairly confident that even if Tyler managed to break through the wooden door, he wouldn’t fit down the stone staircase. The tunnel stretched on in a straight line for about two hundred meters. There were lights every few meters in the wall, and occasionally another passage would join the main corridor. About half way along there was a doorway which Lockhart went through. It opened out into a spacious room which had once been a chapel. The original Catholic owners of the Lodge had built it so that they could practice their religion away from the state’s prying eyes.

  Deep underground, Lockhart remembered his cagey conversation with Rosalina about her Bahá’í religion which was outlawed in Turkmenistan. Back in Elizabethan England, the Catholics had been forced underground. Nearly every house in Woodridge had a secret hole in the fireplace or under the floorboards. They built tunnels to keep priests safe in their houses, and escape routes in the walls, so that if the Queen’s men raided, the priests could always escape.

  Lockhart had made the underground chapel more comfortable since he discovered it nearly a year ago. He realized at once that it would be useful when Tyler finally arrived. He had furnished it with a couple of sofas, and a low table with magazines on. There was a thick rug on top of the bare stone floor.

  He turned on the laptop which was sitting on the low coffee table. He powered up Skype, and dialed in to the laptop on his kitchen table. The video link popped up on the screen, and he could see Tyler through the doorway standing next to the fireplace. He was trying to burn down the oak door. It would take him forever. In the foreground was the pad of paper that he had written on earlier. The top sheet was blank. Tyler must have ripped up the flight details as he walked through earlier.

  Lockhart dialed the journalist’s number on Skype, and another kitchen table popped onto the screen. He needed to check that Tyler didn’t have an accomplice waiting for him in the Lodge. The kitchen was still, but Lockhart’s spirit sunk when he saw the two bodies on the kitchen floor. The journalist was dead. He didn’t recognize the other man, but he was completely still and the coast was clear.

  The problem was going to be the snow. Lockhart picked up his grab-bag from underneath the coffee table. There wasn’t much in it. Ten thousand pounds sterling, ten thousand Euros, various bank cards, a passport and a bottle of water were all he needed. He grabbed a thick coat and strong boots and the keys to his Range Rover. He bought it new but then had it shipped up to Scotland to be modified.

  There was an article on the front of the magazine on the coffee table next to the car keys. Lockhart had read it a few weeks ago and it had given him an idea. A way to deal with Tyler. Lockhart couldn’t kill him; it wasn’t in his nature. But he was going to finish him once and for all. He had given the giant the chance to walk away, and Tyler hadn’t taken it. Instead, he had tried to shoot him in the head without warning. Now Tyler was going to pay.

  Lockhart walked out of the chapel and continued down the corridor towards Woodridge Lodge. Back in the cottage, Tyler was pacing like a caged tiger, confused and spoiling for action. The oak door was beginning to smolder, but patience was not Tyler’s strong point. He took the poker back out of the fire. It was glowing hot. He began ramming it with all of his might into the wooden door in the side of the hearth. A combination of the heavy poker, Tyler’s enormous strength and the fire-weakened door meant that it slowly began to yield.

  A small fissure began to appear, and Tyler worked the poker into it, jimmying the door off its ancient hinges. He barged into it with his shoulder and it gave way. As he smashed through the door, Tyler fell into the cupboard, ready for action. He looked like an animal, his face dripping with blood from his broken nose and the hot poker held high, ready to strike at whatever he found in the room behind the door. But he found nothing.

  The cupboard was pokey and there was a small light coming from the floor in the back corner. Tyler squeezed his broad shoulders through the smoldering doorway and pushed his way into the dark. Where the hell was Lockhart? As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized that there was a small hole in the back corner. It was a tiny stairway down. He couldn’t fit. He tried to force his shoulders into the gap, but he was just too big. He roared his frustration down into the passage instead, and then came back out into the cottage.

  Lockhart was right at the other end of the tunnel when he heard Tyler’s voice echoing fiercely along the stone passageway. Lockhart wondered if he had managed to squeeze himself down the stairs. He climbed another set of steep stone steps, and emerged from the passageway through a trap door in the floor of the kitchen in Woodridge Lodge.

  The first thing he saw was the journalist lying dead on the floor. Lockhart took a moment to close over his eyes. The other man looked familiar, but Lockhart couldn’t place him. He had been shot through the head with a crossbow and his face was bloodied. Again, Lockhart closed his eyes, and then he pulled the heavy oak table over the trap door. Tyler’s strength was incredibly but the weight would at least slow
him down if he tried to come through. Then Lockhart moved to the back door and out into the snow before he became a third corpse on the pile.

  Chapter Sixty

  Woodridge, England.

  “Because I’m a million miles away and at the same time

  I’m right here in your picture frame.”

  – Jimi Hendrix, Voodoo Chile.

  The cold air hit Lockhart as he moved outside. He was drunk on adrenalin, and the temperature sobered him up for a moment. He didn’t allow himself to think about what would have happened if Tyler’s revolver hadn’t jammed. He didn’t allow himself the luxury of mourning the journalist either. He just focused on what he had to do next. After a year of waiting, it was time to leave Woodridge and start the journey again.

  He would miss the people: The friends who came around to eat most nights. The gardener and the painter and the sculptor that he had supported. The school and the pub he had saved. But he wouldn’t miss the isolation and the boredom. The waiting and the stillness. He wouldn’t miss that at all.

  But now the waiting was over. It was all about the next twenty seconds. Lockhart started walking through the snow over the two sets of prints heading back into the house. One set belonged to a dead man, the other to his killer. Lockhart emerged onto the street and kept walking towards the carpark outside the Crown and Cricket. He was ten seconds away. His key fob unlocked the Range Rover. The hazards flashed and it double-bleeped. Tyler was at the cottage window in a fraction of a second.

  With blood still dripping from his broken nose, he saw Lockhart crossing the street outside, coming from a completely different direction. He went for the front door but it was locked. His temper was rising fast. He could feel his heartbeat banging in his temples. He ran through the kitchen and in a fit of anger, he threw the jammed revolver across the room into the porcelain sink with all of his might. The weapon discharged and shattered the sink, with bits of white shrapnel flying across the kitchen.

  “For Christ’s sake,” he yelled. He retrieved the now functioning revolver and grabbed a meat cleaver from the knife block on the worktop. If the gun jammed again, he’d hack the guy to pieces instead. Then he sprinted out of the back door and around to the front of the house.

  He jumped, then forced himself through the evergreen and over the wall where he had first come in, and set off at full pelt towards the carpark. But he was too late. He had gone about twenty meters before his body started to react to the cold. His lungs felt like they were splitting as the snowy air filled them. His muscles were reacting to the change in temperature too, but he forced his body forwards at full speed, his knees slicing high through the air as he cut across the white lawn.

  Lockhart turned the ignition, then flicked on the main beams and the windscreen wipers. They were powerful, and the white landscape came into view straight away. The flakes had started up again, and the carpark was caked in four inches of powder. Nothing the Range Rover couldn’t handle. He had seen Tyler, of course. The black outfit in the white snow couldn’t be less camouflaged.

  He locked the doors and put his foot on the gas, pulling out of the carpark at a steady pace. He didn’t want to rush into a mistake. His plan was a good one, and he just needed to stick to it. He needed Tyler to follow him. It shouldn’t be too hard. He’d told him where he was going.

  Tyler’s rage was spilling over. As he reached the road, Lockhart’s black Range Rover was driving towards him. His body was moving before his mind caught up. He ran straight into the middle of the snow-covered road, heading for a spot a few meters in front of Lockhart. The road curved and the Range Rover would have to slow down.

  Lockhart was doing about twenty miles an hour by the time the man in black got into the street. He watched as Tyler took up a braced position and aimed the revolver with both hands straight at him. He aimed at the windscreen on the driver’s side. Head height. He waited for as long as he could, until the kill was inevitable, even with the ancient weapon. He pulled the trigger and this time the gun fired; the bullet flying from the muzzle directly toward the driver’s head. Tyler watched in disbelief as the bullet bounced straight off the windscreen without breaking it.

  Lockhart pushed the gas and the Range Rover’s four-liter V8 engine roared. It was sluggish compared to the standard model, because Lockhart had paid for it to be modified by a company called Wright International in Scotland. He had guessed that whoever came after the money would be armed, so he had commissioned the company to armor the SUV. Now the windows were 39mm thick, and there were stitch-welded ballistic plates in every panel. The suspension had been reinforced to allow for the extra weight. The Hutchinson tires would run flat, and the fuel was cased in steel. Lockhart was driving a tank. He had used his time waiting well, and the trip up to Scotland to get the Range Rover modified had been worth it.

  Tyler was still staring at Lockhart as the Range Rover hit him and he bounced off into the snow. As he lay on the ground, he spotted the blast plate under the chassis. Who was this guy?

  He was up in a flash, sprinting after Lockhart, but it was too late. He was pulling away. He wanted to shoot at the vehicle, but he knew he was wasting his time. He got back to his Audi and started the engine. He flung it out of the pub car-park and slammed through the gears, ignoring the snow on the road.

  Within a minute he could make out taillights in the distance. Lockhart wasn’t hanging around, but the Audi was quicker, and slowly Tyler made up ground. It was a good feeling. Eventually he was right on Lockhart’s tail. He couldn’t decide what to do. If he rammed the armored car, he would come off worse. If he shot at it, it would be futile. There was only one option for now, which was to stick as closely to the car in front as possible. His chance would come if the car in front ran out of fuel before he did, or if the pressure of Tyler following caused Lockhart to make a mistake.

  Otherwise, he would wait until they reached wherever they were going, and then take him out. He wondered if the man in front had any idea where he was leading them, or whether he was running blind. His respect for Lockhart was growing as quickly as his hatred. He guessed Lockhart would probably have a plan. He was right.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Pine Bluff, Arkansas

  “I was blind, but now I see”

  – Primal Scream, Moving On Up

  Ben Lang was trying to piece everything together. None of it was adding up. Since Tyler had texted to confirm he had located Fearless, he assumed the job would have been done by now. While he was waiting for confirmation from Tyler, he had set about his own tasks. Now that he had learned Lockhart’s real name, he had requested security details from a contact in the British Government, who owed him a favor. Within the hour, he got an email from an anonymous-looking address. It contained the address, bank details, phone bills and other public records for Charlie Lockhart. He had requested CCTV images covering the roads near Lockhart’s house, but there were apparently none; Fearless was either smart or lucky. Maybe both. He’d certainly done a good job evading Tyler so far.

  While he waited for Tyler to phone in the kill, Lang had poured over the guy’s bank records. The document contained the account number, sort code, and pass codes for Charlie Lockhart’s bank account. Lang had everything he needed to hack into the millions. Lockhart had become disposable.

  The next set of documents in the envelope showed details about the manor house in the village, Woodridge Lodge. It had been paid for in cash from Lockhart’s bank account and had cost nine hundred thousand pounds. The owner of the deeds was listed as Charlie Lockhart, with no previous address noted. He had registered to vote and there were no other listed occupants in the house.

  Tyler still hadn’t confirmed the kill. There was no reason for it to be taking so long. Although there was no CCTV footage in the email, the British contact had attached a JPEG file of a photograph of Lockhart. Lang double clicked out of curiosity, wondering what the guy who Tyler had chased across Turkmenistan looked like. He studied the screen for a moment, lookin
g at the man on the screen. Something wasn’t right. His eyes swept across the screen and slowly his blood started to freeze. He flew across the room to his jacket and grabbed wildly at his mobile phone.

  The guy in the photograph wasn’t Fearless. He was wearing a short-sleeve shirt and his wrists were visible in the shot. There was no tattoo on either wrist, which meant Tyler had been chasing the wrong guy. And if the guy was a decoy then the bank account would be a decoy too. Which meant they were back to square one; he needed Lockhart to unlock the bank account. Tyler was about to put a bullet through three hundred million dollars.

  The phone rang out. He needed Tyler to pick up.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  M4 Southbound, 30 Minutes from Heathrow

  “Don't stop me now 'cos I'm free wheeling, and I can't steer”

  – Wonderstuff, Can’t Shape Up.

  The snow was not helping the pursuit. Tyler had been close enough to touch his bumper against the back of the Range Rover at times, but he knew that any tussle with the armored car would see him come off worst, so he held back and followed Lockhart from a few meters behind as they made their way through the blackness of the night and the blinding snow flying against the windscreen. Fog cut across the motorway at times, and Tyler found himself following tail lights, squinting through the flakes to concentrate on his prey.

  In front, Lockhart was worried. An orange light on his dash told him that he needed fuel. Badly. There was a petrol station about ten miles ahead, but he wasn’t planning on getting out of his bulletproof Range Rover if he could help it. Suddenly, out of the snow he saw a huge black bull, its eyes staring at him as he hurtled towards it. Another car had skidded on the ice straight off the blacktop, and crashed through the wooden fence at the side of the road. Its tail lights were visible in the middle of the field. The bull had come through the gap in the smashed fence, and was now standing on the road. Lockhart stamped on the brakes and hit his horn, and the Range Rover slowed enough for the startled bull to bolt. Lockhart released the brake before his tires lost traction, and continued along the motorway in a straight line.