Who Dares Wins

by Chris Ryan

  None of them except one.

  He knew exactly where the shots had come from; he was looking directly up, though he didn’t bother aiming his handgun, because he no doubt realised he didn’t have the range. It was the man Jacob had thought he recognised. And now that he had him in his sights, he realised why.

  ‘Mac.’

  Mac continued to look up.

  Jacob almost felt as if he was staring his old friend in the eye.

  *

  The ground was covered in bits of pulverised brain and bone. The air filled with screams, partygoers and pissheads who’d just been given a nasty dose of reality. Mac tried to ignore them all. He looked up to the rooftop above Sam. That was where the shots had come from, no doubt about it, and now he thought he saw a flash of movement. All around him was chaos. Men barked contradictory orders at the horrified pedestrians and each other alike. A black cab with tinted windows pulled up and two ashen-faced guys jumped out. They started shouting too, but their voices were lost in the melee.

  On the other side of the street, Sam had frozen. Mac slipped away from the pandemonium around him and ran across the road to where his friend was standing. ‘Shooter on the roof!’ he shouted. ‘He has to come down on Piccadilly or Regent Street. You take one, I’ll take the other.’

  ‘Did you see him?’ Sam’s face, despite the cuts, was grey.

  Mac shook his head. ‘I saw a figure, that’s all. Too far to ID.’ In the distance, the sound of sirens. ‘Move, Sam. I’ll take Piccadilly, you take Regent.’

  Sam nodded and in an instant they parted.

  Mac sprinted. Word that something was up had clearly spread quickly – pedestrians were flocking towards Piccadilly Circus and he was running against the tide. As he ran, he took in everyone around him. None of them were Jacob.

  Thirty metres. Forty metres. Fifty. To his right, a mews. He turned into it, then stopped a moment. To his right again, an alleyway between two shops. Narrow. Dark. Big metal bins and a rear loading-bay entrance to one of the shops on Piccadilly. At one end, a tall, spiral metal staircase. Mac gripped his weapon. Without any more hesitation, he ran towards the steps and started to climb. He looked upwards and pointed his gun in that direction too, half expecting to see the shooter descending at any moment. He tried to go quietly, but that was impossible, not at speed. His footsteps made the metal of the staircase echo and ring.

  The roof onto which he emerged was perhaps thirty metres by thirty. At one end, heading towards Piccadilly Circus, was a low wall and a gap; then an almost identical roof beyond, and another one beyond that. Around the edges were disused chimney pots, brick turrets with vast television aerials and more low walls. Good cover for anyone who needed it.

  It was quiet up here. The noise of the traffic and sirens from down below was audible, but faint. Looking around he saw nobody. The sound of traffic and sirens drifted upwards; but they were somehow disjointed. He felt as if he was in another world.

  Mac gripped his Browning. He held his gun hand out and stepped forward, his eyes narrow.

  ‘Jacob!’ he called. His voice echoed.

  Jacob.

  Jacob.

  He stepped forward again, checking left, checking right, moving ahead. His senses were alive. As sharp as glass. But he never even heard the footsteps behind him.

  ‘Drop the gun, Mac.’ And as he heard the words, he felt hard metal against the back of his head. He closed his eyes. He didn’t need to turn round to see who it was. The voice was instantly recognisable.

  ‘I said drop it.’

  Mac let the weapon fall from his hands.

  ‘Walk.’ Jacob’s voice was clipped. ‘Now.’

  Mac stepped forwards. Ten paces. Fifteen.

  ‘Hands on your head.’

  He did as he was told. And then, slowly, he turned round.

  Jacob looked older. Older than he should have done. His dark eyes were darker, his face more intense. His handgun didn’t falter in its direction: it was aimed directly at Mac’s head. A silence as the two men looked at each other.

  ‘A long way from Baghdad, J.,’ Mac said.

  No reply.

  ‘I was there,’ Mac continued. ‘In Kazakhstan. Sam risked a lot to warn you. Me too. Reckon we deserve to be told what’s going on.’

  Still no reply. Mac lowered his hands from his head. Keep talking, Mac told himself. Keep talking.

  ‘I don’t think anyone’s going to be mourning Dolohov. Not from what Sam said.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Jacob demanded.

  ‘Close,’ Mac replied. ‘He’ll be here any moment.’

  ‘He should have stayed away. Both of you should have stayed away.’ Jacob sounded unsure of himself. It wasn’t like him. Mac couldn’t remember ever having seen doubt in his friend’s eyes; but he saw it now.

  He stepped forwards. ‘Put the gun down, J.,’ he said. ‘You’re not going to shoot me any more than you’re going to shoot your brother.’

  ‘Don’t move.’

  Mac ignored him and continued to walk slowly.

  ‘You’re not going to shoot me,’ he repeated. ‘What’s going on, Jacob? Put the gun down and talk to me.’

  But Jacob didn’t put the gun down. And he didn’t talk to Mac. Not any more. His lip curled. Almost as though he was just an observer to the scene; it crossed Mac’s mind that it was an expression of pure anger and dislike.

  The first shot from Jacob’s handgun slammed into Mac’s right shoulder. It felt like a heavy punch at first, and he fell to the ground as a hot wetness seeped into his clothes. Fuck. The round hadn’t exited. He could feel the bullet lodged in his shoulder. It felt like someone turning a slow, sharp knife into his muscle. He could even feel how hot the round was. He looked up. Jacob was there, staring down.

  ‘Cocksucker!’ Mac spat. ‘We fucking saved your bacon…’

  ‘You should have stayed away, Mac,’ he said as he stretched out his gun arm again and aimed it at his old friend’s skull.

  Mac shook his head, desperately, violently. But he knew he was properly cunted. He thought of his wife, Rebecca. He thought of Jess and little Huck. He opened his mouth to speak, but words wouldn’t come.

  ‘You should have fucking stayed away.’

  Mac Howden didn’t hear the shot that killed him. The bullet entered his head before he even had a chance. Nor, as he fell to the ground with one side of his head shot away, and miniature fountains of blood spraying upwards, did he see the look on the face of his killer.

  A grim look. A horrified look. A wild-eyed look. A look of utter, brutal self-loathing. The look of a man covered in bits of another man’s brain tissue and blood.

  The look of a man who could not believe what he had just done.

  *

  Sam ran along Regent Street, his gun in his fist. He collided with two men – big, burly and drunk. They wore jeans and football shirts, sporting joke orange beards. They yelled obscenities at him in broad Scottish accents and pushed him in the chest. Sam didn’t even bother to warn them. He whacked the gun against the side of one man’s face, which softened into an angry red welt. The other man he kneed in the groin before continuing to run.

  His mind burned with impossible thoughts. He tried to keep his focus, to look for somewhere to access the rooftops. But he had run a hundred metres. Two hundred. He turned left, but found himself lost in a complex of side streets between Regent Street and Piccadilly. His blood raced with urgency. Like in a childhood dream he felt he couldn’t run fast enough.

  He was on Piccadilly now, running east. Finally, to his left, he saw a small mews road. He ducked into it. To his right an alleyway, and a set of metal fire-exit stairs running up. Sweat poured from him, but he didn’t slow down. Three steps at a time. Four. He hurtled up, stopping to catch his breath only when he was on the roof.

  He looked around, his gun at the ready. With a sense of nauseous anticipation he almost expected Jacob to be there. Half-formulated phrases buzzed around his brain. He felt a curious mixt
ure of excitement and blind anger.

  But Jacob wasn’t there. He was nowhere to be seen. As he stared out over the rooftops, however, Sam became aware of something else. Firmly gripping his gun, he stepped forward until he was standing right by the body.

  Sam didn’t need to check it was dead. The face was unrecognisable, just a shredded, bloodied pulp. He knew it was Mac, though. He recognised the clothes and even if he hadn’t… He just knew.

  Time stood still.

  Sam bent down. He stared at the damaged corpse of his friend. His blood turned to ice in his veins. He couldn’t move.

  They’ll tell you things, Sam. Things about me. Don’t forget that you’re my brother. Don’t believe them. What had sounded before like a warning now sounded nothing but a deceit.

  ‘Jesus, Mac,’ he whispered. And then, with a sudden outburst of violence. ‘Jesus!’

  He stood up and looked around for something to kick, something to punch. There was nothing and so Sam found his arms flailing uselessly in the air, like some animal twitching violently in its death throes. He heard a voice. It was a hollow, hoarse scream.

  ‘NO!’

  Only when the scream had echoed away into nothing did Sam realise it had come from his own throat.

  He looked around helplessly, as if by searching on this lonely rooftop he could do something about the terrible events that were unfolding. But there was nothing to do and his eyes fell on the body of his friend, unnervingly still in the way only corpses can be. As he looked he heard Mac’s voice in his head, repeating Jacob’s words:

  You’re a long time looking at the lid, Sam.

  Blood was still seeping from his friend’s wounds. It oozed up against the sole of his foot.

  You’re a long time looking at the lid.

  Sam stepped back. And as he did so, he realised the whole world had changed. That he had changed. Jacob had always made him feel like a kid. The younger brother, always looking up. Respectful. In awe.

  Not any more. Things were different, he saw that now. He stretched himself to his full height and jutted his jaw at Mac. ‘He’s not going to get away with it, Mac,’ he said, his voice still raw from the scream. ‘I fucking promise you, he’s not going to get away with it.’

  Sam drank in the sight of Mac’s body – the last time, he knew, he would ever see him – then turned his back. It was wrong to be leaving his corpse here, but he had no other choice.

  Not if he was going to do what he needed to do.

  Not if he was going to avenge his friend’s death.

  Not if he was going to find his brother and put a stop to this, once and for all.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Toby Brookes’s voice was strained and emotional. Gabriel Bland had to press his confounded mobile phone hard into his ear in order to hear him above the sound of shouting and sirens. With each piece of news he found his fury doubling. Dolohov dead. Another civilian casualty and all this in front of a city full of witnesses. Worst of all, no sign of Redman – of either Redman. No leads, no nothing.

  When Brookes had finished telling him everything, he was silent for a moment. ‘I, ah… I suppose I don’t need to tell you,’ he said eventually, ‘that you are in a very, very grave situation, Toby.’

  ‘I’ve just seen two people shot.’

  ‘I don’t believe I need that statistic repeating.’

  A pause. And then Brookes again, angrier than Bland had ever heard him: ‘Fuck this! Just… just fuck this!’ A click, and the line went dead.

  Bland stood in his office with the phone to his ear for a good while after Brookes’s voice disappeared. Brookes had cracked. That much was clear. Bland couldn’t let that distract him. There were more important things at stake than a young man who couldn’t take the pace. He had the unnerving sensation of everything unravelling around him. His breath came in deep, nervous lungfuls. Then, suddenly, with an uncharacteristic burst of violence, he hurled his phone against the window of his office, which looked out over London. The toughened glass of the window was entirely unharmed; the phone, however, shattered. He stormed to his desk and buzzed through to his assistant. ‘I need to speak to the chief,’ he said. ‘Now.’

  And what a conversation it was going to be. This was turning into the biggest balls-up the service had seen for years. They could issue all the DA notices they wanted, but with so many witnesses to the shootings it was probably all over the Internet already. And things were going to get worse. A major hit, Dolohov had said. Political. Jacob Redman was their only link. Without him they were blind men in a dark room. If things were bad now, they were going to get a whole lot worse.

  Gabriel Bland headed towards the door, steeling himself for the encounter to come. It promised to be ugly. He knew that if anyone was going to take the rap, it would have to be him.

  Five minutes later, the Chief of MI6 was staring up at him with a look of blank astonishment.

  Bland had never appreciated the experience of taking orders from someone his junior. He had seen the service’s chiefs come and go. He had disapproved of none of them quite so much as this one, with his ridiculous ideas of making the service more ‘open’ – interviews with the media and advertising for posts on the Internet. This obsession with image, however, was just a distraction from the nitty gritty of their day-to-day work.

  But right now, Bland had to put all that from his mind as he stood in front of his boss, who could quite clearly see an early retirement looming. ‘Who’s your agent on the ground?’ he demanded.

  ‘Toby Brookes, sir.’

  ‘Fire him. Fuck-ups don’t come bigger than this, you know. I’ve already got the PM asking me why he can’t take a leak without one of our guys looking over his shoulder. Now you’re telling me our only lead is missing and our collateral’s dead on the ground at Piccadilly Circus.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The Chief banged his hand on the desk. The coffee that was sitting there sloshed out of its cup. ‘Our analysts are crying into their files,’ he fumed. ‘None of them can tell me why the Russians would order a hit on one of our politicians. Things are frosty with Moscow, but there’s no point to it. Nothing to be gained.’

  Bland cleared his throat. ‘The Russians are a law to themselves, sir,’ he said. ‘Especially after Litvinenko…’

  The Chief’s face hardened at the memory of the former Russian spy assassinated on British soil – another big embarrassment for the service. ‘That’s what happens when you put a former KGB hood in charge of the fucking country, Gabriel,’ he said, neatly batting the implied criticism away. ‘Moscow’s a liability at the moment. God knows what they’re trying to do.’ He frowned. ‘These Redman brothers. They’re our only chance of getting some sort of clue as to what’s happening. Where the hell are they?’

  Bland didn’t reply. He had nothing to say.

  The Chief gave him a dark look. ‘Listen to me carefully,’ he said. ‘You’ve got every asset this agency can throw at it. Find them, Gabriel. And when you’ve found them, do whatever it takes to get everything they know. Whatever it takes, Gabriel. I’m sure you understand what I mean. No comeback.’

  Bland nodded, his eyes dead. ‘I understand, sir.’

  ‘Good. Now get the hell out of my sight. I don’t want to hear from you unless it’s to tell me that you’ve got one or other of those bastards in custody. And if you haven’t done it within twenty-four hours, I’ll find someone more capable who can.’

  In another part of London, far away from the bloodshed of Piccadilly and the panic at MI6 – and completely oblivious to both – Jamie Spillane was breaking into a house.

  It was a small house. In order to make his way up to the back door, the young man had climbed through several adjacent gardens. His fingers were splintered from climbing up and down wooden fences – he felt slightly foolish for not having worn any gloves and made a mental note to do so in the future – and the contents of his rucksack jutted uncomfortably into his back.

  There was a small patio outsid
e the back door. It was a bit of a shit heap – bags of rubbish, an old barbecue, a rusty bike. The paintwork on the door was peeling and the wooden frames of the two external windows were rotting away. Each window was covered from the inside by a blind, and the glass of the back door was mottled and frosted. The young man couldn’t see which room he would be entering. He looked at his watch. A quarter to one. Silence from the house and no lights from the upstairs windows. The occupier was fast asleep.

  He felt inside his jacket pocket. The lock picks and tension wrench were there. The young man licked his lips and bent down to the lock. As he prepared to insert the picks, he gently tried the door handle.

  It moved. He pushed the door open. Nobody had thought to lock it. He shrugged slightly and mastered a little twinge of disappointment as he realised he had rather been looking forward to picking the lock, to using one of the skills he had learned.

  No matter. He quietly stepped inside and shut the door behind him, then stood perfectly still for a few seconds while his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  He was in a kitchen. It smelled of food that he didn’t recognise and imagined he wouldn’t find very good to eat. There were dirty plates in the sink and most of the work surface in this small room was crowded. How strange, he thought to himself, that someone working in an embassy should live in such squalor. An archway led into another room. A street light from the front window illuminated it. There was a thick carpet in here, and a tiny table at one end, pressed against the window – one of those that looked out on to the back garden. At the other end, a two-seater sofa in front of a television, with a coffee table in between the two.

  A creak. He jumped.

  Beyond the sofa was a door, closed, that he assumed led upstairs. He found himself staring at it, half-expecting someone to burst through. But no one came. The creak was just that, he realised – the joists of the house relaxing. Still, his breath came in deep bursts. His skin felt hot and cold at the same time. He dragged his eyes away from the door and looked at the object lying on the coffee table.