Assassin

by Tara Moss

  Mak turned and she half strode, half sprinted up the street to an alley alongside a series of medieval-looking buildings, where she was quite surprised to catch a glimpse of a small courtyard full of dog kennels and cats, beyond wire fencing. Soon she was on the parallel street, Carrer del Carme, moving at a quick pace past an incredible set of double doors emblazoned with the pop-art painted face of a Chinese woman with scarlet hair, beneath the name Rita Rouge, and the exotic, filigreed El Indio building on the opposite side. La Rambla itself was still crowded by the time she reached it, but here, finally, she could breathe. She’d never seen the city so busy. She crossed the street, dodging between cabs, and cut down a narrow, curved street on the other side, barely wide enough for a car, making her way towards home.

  I have my passport. I have it.

  It was such a relief to make it out of there. And the crowd! It had been chaos.

  She stopped.

  Another procession was filing down Santa Ana. She spotted the huge float of a crowned Virgin Mary moving past, flanked in front and behind by more Nazarenos, this time wearing white robes and tall green velvet pointed hoods. The virgin herself moved stiffly through the crowd atop her rectangular, golden float, surrounded by hundreds of white, dripping candles, the float shaking slowly from side to side, shifting like a boat on the tide. From her angle Mak could see dozens of pairs of feet underneath, walking it along.

  She’d have to go the other way.

  Makedde doubled back, arriving at a plaza she recognised, and finally she got onto Carrer de Bertrellans — her street — entering from the other side. She was relieved to be near the car, which was parked in a rental space across the alley. It might take some time to get out of the centre of the city, but then she would be on the open road. Free. She pulled the graffitied metal shutters open with a screech, a plume of filth rising into the air. Se Alquila Plaza De Parking, the sign above her said. The Peugeot was there in the darkness of the tiny parking rental spot, amongst a dozen other small- to mid-sized European cars. This was Luther’s local wheels. Luther’s spot. She’d already packed it with his things — things she needed for the evening’s work. Yes, Luther has been unwittingly generous, she thought darkly.

  In minutes Mak was driving down the narrow lane, headed for the square, moving at an agonisingly slow pace as she waited for pedestrians to pass. Strange. A man was at the end of her street, watching her, she thought. From his flushed cheeks he looked like he’d been running, though he had his hands in his pockets. Her inner alarm bells went off. But then she blinked and he was gone. Was that the man from the crowd outside the church? No. It couldn’t be.

  Feeling overly paranoid, she accelerated again before slowing for another group. Someone brushed against the car and she frowned. Only another block and she would be on the main street.

  Yes. The open road would be a relief.

  CHAPTER 8

  Makedde Vanderwall felt a glimmer of optimism, the first she’d had in months.

  She drove out of the city under a sky ablaze with a spectacular red sunset, her long dyed hair whipping bare, muscled shoulders. Luther’s car was a convertible and Mak was enjoying driving with the hardtop down once she was out of town and away from prying eyes. This was the most human she’d felt since Paris: alone on the road with no one to fear.

  The roads had opened up, the people of Barcelona having completed their travels for now. The religious amongst them were praying at their preferred place of worship while the heathens enjoyed the spoils of the public holiday with plenty of rabbit-shaped chocolates and home-made food. The freeway was dotted with the occasional car as she passed huge tracts of flat industrial land at Barcelona’s outskirts. Warehouses. Car factories. Rows of depressing low-income housing stood like filthy concrete dominoes, damp laundry hanging precariously from every window. The large Barcelona airport looked uncharacteristically quiet as she passed. A single plane circled above.

  Barely forty minutes after she’d crawled into the car, an increasingly barren Spanish countryside flew past her on one side, the Iberian Sea on the other. Finally here she allowed herself a smile, buoyed by her success in gaining an identity. It was as if she’d passed some important test. For so small a document her false passport seemed to offer grand possibilities. A new life even. Would she live in Spain as Ms Cruz? Perhaps she would open a bank account in this new name. Get a credit card? Blend into the crowd instead of hiding away during the daylight hours?

  For a while, perhaps?

  Just until Jack and Damien Cavanagh were properly investigated and it was safe for the woman called Makedde Vanderwall to return to the world she’d known before. Canada. Australia even. Eventually she would go back, but for that to happen, a trial would need to bring the Cavanaghs down, and this far away from Australia, it was hard to know if the case against them was progressing at all. After an initial flurry of articles about tentative links between the Cavanagh empire and a Queensland organised-crime ring, the news sites had gone quiet. Even the respected Sydney investigative journalist Richard Staples, who had been the most high-profile voice calling into question the Cavanaghs’ reputation, had moved on to other stories — the live-export trade debacle, with more horrific images coming to light of Australian livestock being tortured in overseas abattoirs. Then there was the ongoing fracking debate between oil companies, environmentalists and farmers. Yes, there were plenty of pressing issues to distract from Jack Cavanagh and his troubled son. The major transport deal the Cavanaghs were looking to secure had been put on hold, by all accounts, but the larger questions of corruption and criminal enterprise had simply fallen away, and the public seemed not to care. How was that possible? In a very real way, she felt her survival depended on the outcome of the investigation into the Cavanaghs. In the meantime, her life was one of uncertainty. And loneliness.

  Dad.

  Again she considered her decision not to contact her father. Could she perhaps send him some sign? Some indication that she was alive? A secret code — but what? She missed him in ways she had never before experienced, as if a key part of her had been amputated. But while the price was still on her head she would have to be very careful whom she spoke to. And her own father, with all of his law enforcement contacts and his tendency to expect that he could control situations, was capable of a fatal error in judgement — particularly because of his strong emotional connection to her. Emotions clouded judgement. Mak had no doubt that her father would want to personally see to it that Jack Cavanagh went down. He would get himself dangerously tangled in the mess that her life had become.

  No.

  She could see only three cars on the road as she neared her turn-off. Makedde pushed her foot down on the accelerator and her vision blurred, the distant cars behind her reflecting in her rear-view mirror and fragmenting out into whirling spots, her fleeting sensation of happiness already strangled. Beneath her dark glasses, a warm tear gathered at her lashes and blew back with the wind. She blinked the moisture away and focused on the road. A new identity did not change who she was. It just made her a bit more mobile. It did not mean she could see her family. Not yet. That could endanger them. But what she could do was prepare for the challenges and dangers to come, just as she had been doing for weeks, just as she would do now.

  Mak pulled off the main highway, making her way past an open-cut mine and down a little-used gravel track towards an area of bushes, the wheels of the car kicking up dirt. She pressed a button on the key fob and the hardtop raised itself and began closing over her. This area, about an hour outside Barcelona proper, was unmarred by man-made structures save for a single old, dilapidated house, once a cottage or small farmhouse perhaps, but now little more than a sun-bleached fireplace and one remaining stone wall, the rest torn apart by time. Mak parked on the gravel across from the old cottage, next to an area of dense thicket, pulled the handbrake, popped the boot and climbed out of the car. It was a hard-worn, well-loved Peugeot Cabriolet. She’d found it to be reliable enough for the
driving she had to do and importantly, the boot was adequate for Luther’s kit, which was undoubtedly why he’d purchased it in the first place. So far, she’d only driven to and from this isolated location, but perhaps under the cover of Ms Cruz, she could now travel around Europe? And why not? She’d lived here when she was modelling, but with Luther’s cash she would not have to worry about paying the bills for a while. If she was careful and stayed out of the major cities, she could travel safely under her new identity.

  She secured her hair in a ponytail, pushed her sunglasses up on her head and bent over the open rear boot.

  Makedde spent some time considering the options before her.

  It was not her favourite weapon, but after mounting a fore-grip she was becoming reasonably adept with Luther’s polymer-constructed Heckler & Koch Universale Maschinenpistole UMP 9 submachine gun, which he’d seen fit to accessorise with a laser sight. She’d taken to practising with the weapon in the two-round burst trigger configuration, though she was still far more accurate with his nine-millimetre Glock, which was on her person at all times. Perhaps it was unsurprising she was so much better with the Glock, considering the submachine gun’s violent kick — the butt often left a faint reddish bruise on the inside of her right shoulder after too many shots.

  Mak cocked her head, looked at the other options in Luther’s kit.

  When she had discovered the price on her head, she had deemed it necessary to step up her training and found this location, perfect because of its isolation and a grouping of trees and thick bushes that provided some cover. There was no one nearby to hear her, and it was unlikely she would find herself with unwanted company. For the previous few weeks she’d spent most early evenings here. She used six empty red cans of Estrella Damm for makeshift targets and practised shooting them off the skeletal remains of the cottage using the Glock at close and middle-range distances, and the submachine gun, set for double-shot action, at greater distances. She had to stay fresh, fit and prepared if she was to survive any potential encounter with the mercenaries Cavanagh’s hit money attracted, she reasoned. And sunset was a good time for target practice, the lengthening shadows challenging her keen, 20/20 vision.

  The Glock and UMP will do tonight, she decided.

  She would set up her makeshift targets and work on her aim until it became too dark to see, then make the drive home and head up to the apartment to prepare her dinner with the fresh ingredients she’d bought.

  And then, she’d have some important decisions to make.

  Like what to do with Ms Cruz.

  Finally he had the woman, Makedde Vanderwall. He’d been separated from her in the crowd, and he’d had to give chase. Somehow she’d escaped him, but he’d found her again, and now successfully tracked her using the magnetic device he’d attached to her vehicle as she’d passed him in Carrer de Bertrellans.

  She was having car trouble.

  Fausto Martinez Villanueva watched his target as she was bent over the boot of her car, searching for tools. In the slowly failing light he observed the attractive shape of her figure, the taper of her long legs encased in tight jeans, the thick, dark hair tied in a ponytail. She could have been a fashion model, he reckoned. In another scenario, perhaps at the café on La Rambla, he would hope to catch her eye, but not here. Here he waited in a protective thicket of bushes while she searched in her car. He wondered whether she would even know how to change her tyre? Doubtful. He’d caught up with her signal, and followed her down the highway at a safe distance, eventually tracing the plumes of dirt she left in her wake on this small road. When she stopped her vehicle to change the tyre or check the oil, no doubt realising she was lost, he’d continued on foot.

  She was only metres away now, unaware she was watched.

  These kinds of women, always thinking themselves so independent, he thought and shook his head. After a shaky start, his job could not have been made easier for him.

  Bent over the boot, Mak finished loading the magazine of fresh nine-millimetre rounds into the Glock, checked that the safety was on, and slid the handgun and a spare magazine into the waistband of her jeans. She slung the tactical strap of the UMP over her shoulder, shut the boot and straightened.

  Cologne?

  Somehow, the distinctly man-made odour of cheap cologne was on the breeze, drifting right under her nose. It wafted past her, wrong and out of place here in every way. A second later it was gone, but already gooseflesh had come up on the back of her neck.

  Someone.

  A rustle of branches.

  Someone is here.

  The world shifted, her senses sharpened instantly, and all thoughts left her except the most crucial and basic survival instincts. Mak threw herself to the ground next to the car. A bullet whizzed by her so close she could actually hear its progress through the air next to her head, and that’s when she knew without a doubt that it was real. It was happening. It had all started again as she’d feared, as she’d known it would. She was being hunted.

  Mak landed next to the left rear wheel on her knees and forearms, and scrambled forwards as a second shot thudded into the tyre, causing it to leak with a faint hiss. She crawled along the side of the car on her hands and knees, not even registering the sharp edges of the gravel, and pulled the driver’s door open with one hand just as a third shot pierced the small right rear window of the Peugeot, sending small cubes of broken safety glass into the car. Crouched on the ground with her back to the body of the car, she pulled the handgun out of her waistband and waited. The disturbed bushes had sounded close. Really damn close.

  Silence.

  Her heart hammered as she waited for another noise. In the far distance she heard traffic on the freeway. Birds squawked overhead, disturbed by the gunshots. She thought fleetingly of getting under the car for protection, but that would only trap her. She’d been seen and there was no cover here that would aid her. She needed to check her environment, use all her senses. She could bolt for the bushes, but she felt sure she would be hunted down until one of them was dead. The keys were in the ignition. She could try to drive away, but there was no guarantee she would get far. A decent shooter would take out the other tyres.

  Slow down. Calm now. Calm.

  Where had the sound come from? Behind the car. Southwest, where the breeze was coming from. That’s why the rear right window had been hit. It meant the car was between them for now.

  Mak willed her heart back to a normal pace. One beat. Two beats. Three. She’d been in dangerous situations before — too many to think about — and the key was always a clear head. She had to be unemotional. Whoever was trying to kill her was after the money offered for her head. She’d known this would happen. He, or she, would be utterly unemotional about killing her. She had to be utterly unemotional about killing them. She wasn’t going to be a sitting duck for anyone. Not today. Not ever. Whoever was after her could not be given a second chance. Perhaps twenty seconds had passed since the first shot. Not wanting to give her attacker more time to reposition himself — yes, him: that cologne — she took the chance of pulling herself inside the car. This action was met with the thunderous crash of the entire rear window being shattered with two closely timed shots. She covered her face as glass showered down.

  Mak stayed low across the seats, Glock in front of her.

  Southwest.

  She shifted over crunching cubes of safety glass and pressed the button on the key fob in the ignition to automatically retract the Peugeot’s hardtop. Obediently, it swung up behind her like a shield. A sixth shot from her attacker fired uselessly into solid metal as the car hummed and worked, the parts separating and folding up. She had twenty seconds. Stretched across the seats, Mak pulled the submachine gun off her shoulder, switched it to fully automatic trigger mode and flicked off the safety. There had been six single shots now, reasonably well aimed. Her attacker might be good, but she was almost certainly more heavily armed.

  ‘I give up! Me entrego!’ she yelled over the whirring s
ound as the hardtop pulled away. ‘No me tire!’ Don’t shoot.

  In response there was the faintest sound of movement in the thicket and, just as the hardtop disappeared into the body of the car, Mak rose up on the front seats and mercilessly sprayed the bushes behind the car with lead, her hips braced against the windshield as the recoil bucked. The thirty-round magazine emptied in a wide arc from one side of the car to the other at the rate of six hundred and fifty rounds per minute, the sound deafening in the quiet evening air, branches torn to shreds and hot bullet casings falling to the leather seats at Makedde’s feet. When the weapon was spent, Mak threw herself back down into the car and discarded the UMP in exchange for the loaded Glock.

  She took a breath, then sat up between the leather seats, looking down the back of the car through the weapon’s sights.

  No shots.

  After a minute she sat a little higher. Several metres back from the car and to the right, the bushes had been disturbed. She saw movement. ‘Reveal yourself!’ she yelled. ‘Or I’ll fire again!’

  A groan.

  Mak stepped cautiously from the car, keeping the Glock out in front of her with both hands.

  ‘Step out from the bushes! Surrender! Entrega!’ she demanded.

  Mak reached the bushes and found him — a lone man, now sprawled awkwardly in the sharp branches and shot up beyond repair. He wore a dark T-shirt and torn leather jacket with slacks. No bulletproof vest. The would-be mercenary could have been in his twenties or his fifties; it was hard to tell in his broken condition. His brown eyes rolled back into his head and then forwards again, focusing on her with a childlike fear. He opened his mouth to speak, revealing busted teeth. Blood oozed from a bullet wound in his cheek. He gurgled and spat, the grim sounds unintelligible in any language. He was armed with a switchblade and a single handgun, or had been before his wrist was shattered by gunfire. He’d come to this party with the wrong accessories, it seemed.