The Long Shot (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  He crept over to the far wall, looking for the source of the light he’d seen earlier. There was a shutter high up, and he opened it to find a locked window with three thick bars blocking any exit. There was only one way out of the basement, and that was through the door. He went back to the stairs and tiptoed up, his back close to the wall, the gun at the ready. The higher he got up the steps, the louder the crackling became. Tendrils of smoke drifted up from the bottom of the door and when he put his left hand flat against the wood he could feel the heat burning through. He turned the handle and pushed, but the door was locked.

  He went down the stairs and picked up the pieces of his shirt. He soaked them in the bucket and draped them over his head and shoulders, then upturned the bucket and poured the rest of the water over his body. It stung when it ran over his cuts and abrasions but he ignored the pain, knowing that it would be a matter of minutes before the wooden structure began to collapse. He ran back up the steps and fired two shots at the lock. He kicked the door hard and the wood splintered. He kicked it again and it opened, but only a few inches. Something was blocking it. Thick, cloying smoke billowed in, making him cough. He wrapped one of the pieces of wet cloth over his mouth and kicked harder but the door wouldn’t budge. Through the gap he could see flames flaring up from the floor and a wave of heat singed his eyebrows. He put his shoulder to the warm wood but could make no impact on it. He pulled the door shut and wiped his face with one of the wet cloths. The door was held in place with two hinges, each with six screws. He took a step back down the stairs and fired two shots at the top hinge and it buckled. The lower hinge disintegrated the first time Joker fired at it, his ears ringing with the sounds of the shots. He did a quick tally of the bullets he’d fired. Four at the chain, two at the lock, three at the hinges. Nine shots. The 411 held eleven cartridges in the clip, so that left two shots, assuming the clip had been full originally.

  He seized the door handle and pulled it towards him. The wood around the hinges fractured and the door fell towards him, banging him on his head. He dragged it down and it fell against the stairs. The heat leapt at him like a wild animal, pushing him and threatening to steal the breath from his lungs. As the door clattered by his side he saw the table which had been blocking his escape. It was lodged between the door frame and the sink unit. He’d never have moved it by pushing. He clambered over it and leapt through a sheet of flame that sprang from the floor. He could feel the hairs on his arms crisp and burn and he held the wet cloth over his mouth so that he wouldn’t singe his lungs. He narrowed his eyes, looking for a way out. A figure appeared to his left, a man in sweatshirt and jeans carrying a gun. It wasn’t any of the men Joker had seen earlier. The man raised his gun but Joker fired first. The stranger got off one shot which ripped a chunk out of Joker’s shoulder, but Joker fired as he’d been trained to, two shots to the chest. Bang bang. The man’s arms slumped to the side and the gun fell to the floor, his mouth open in surprise. Two red splotches grew on his chest, so close that they formed a figure eight. Joker saw a door which seemed to lead to the outside. He aimed his gun at the lock but realised the gun was empty. He twisted the door handle and to his amazement it opened and he staggered outside, gulping in the cold night air. He fell to his knees, coughing and spluttering. He heard movement behind him and the man he’d shot fell out of the door, taking several unsteady steps and crashing face forward onto the grass. He smelled of burnt meat and his hair was smouldering. Joker rolled him over onto his back. He was still alive, but only just, and Joker knew there was nothing he or anyone could do to prolong his life. Both shots were smack in the centre of his chest.

  The man’s eyes fluttered open. He had no eyebrows left and there were large blisters on his cheeks. His eyes fought to focus on Joker’s face. “You Cramer?” he croaked.

  Joker was stunned. The man had an English accent. He nodded.

  “You bloody fool,” the man said, forming the words slowly and painfully. “I’m with Five.”

  Joker’s mind swam. Five meant MI5, the British Security Service.

  “I was . . . coming . . . to help you,” the man said.

  Joker held him, not knowing what to say. “Are you alone?” he asked, looking back at the house.

  The man shook his head and closed his eyes. “Partner . . . following . . . Hennessy . . .” he gasped.

  “How did you know they were here?” Joker asked.

  The man was wracked by a series of coughs, and blood dribbled from between his lips. “Followed you,” he said. Joker looked over his shoulder. He had to get further away from the burning house, which crackled and spat behind him, but he knew that to move the dying man would hasten his demise. “How bad?” the man asked, his voice cracking.

  “It’s bad,” said Joker. There was no point in lying. If their positions were reversed, Joker would want the truth. Joker took one of the man’s hands and squeezed. There was more he wanted to know. “Who told you to follow me?” he asked.

  The man shuddered. “London,” he said.

  “You followed me from New York?”

  “Yeah,” said the man, the word coming out in a long-drawn-out gasp.

  “Why?” Joker asked. Blood was pouring from his shoulder wound but he ignored it.

  There was a pause. Back in the house, something exploded. “Bait,” the man said.

  “Yeah,” said Joker, “that’s what I thought. Thanks.”

  The man squeezed Joker’s hand, then he sighed once and the fingers went limp. Joker staggered to his feet and walked away from the burning house. He was still carrying the gun in his right hand, even though the weapon was now useless. He managed only two dozen steps before his legs collapsed underneath him and he fell to the grass, unconscious.

  Carlos drove quickly, wanting to put as much distance between himself and the house before the neighbours saw the flames. The motel was midway between Baltimore and Washington, a good forty-five minute drive from the house. There was little traffic on the road and Carlos was soon on the main three-lane highway which led to the Capitol. He kept his speed up in the high eighties and made good use of his rear mirror – the last thing he wanted was a State Trooper on his tail. He caught up with Schoelen after ten minutes of hard driving, and he braked and tucked in three cars behind him. Schoelen appeared to be alone in the car and Carlos nodded to himself, pleased that Hennessy and Bailey had followed his advice and were keeping out of sight. He assumed they were in the back, lying down.

  Schoelen was driving in the centre lane, sticking religiously to the speed limit. Under the circumstances, with his two passengers just recently featured on a television programme with millions of viewers, he was being prudent. As they drove along at 55 mph, Carlos continued to check his rear-view mirror.

  He didn’t see the tail at first because the guy was hanging back and switching lanes every few minutes. Once he actually overtook them and at first Carlos thought that perhaps he’d made a mistake, but then he realised it was when they were between intersections with nowhere for them to turn off. The driver was alone, and as the interior of his car was illuminated by passing headlights, Carlos could see he was in his late thirties to early forties, clean-shaven and wearing spectacles. That was all Carlos could see without making it obvious he was looking. Carlos was certain that the tail wasn’t after him but, to be sure, he slowed down, allowing Schoelen to get almost a mile ahead. He was right, the tail stuck with the sniper, usually keeping half a dozen cars back. Carlos couldn’t see any other cars, which surprised him because he knew that successful tailing depended on using several vehicles and rotating them frequently. Using one man and one car was asking for trouble. It couldn’t be the FBI or the Secret Service because they’d call in back-up immediately. He thought of the SAS man locked in the basement of the burning house. It couldn’t possibly be him, but what if he had a partner? That didn’t make sense either, Carlos realised. If Cramer had a partner, he’d have told Hennessy about him under torture. And what sort of man would allow hi
s partner to be captured and held by a woman with Mary Hennessy’s reputation? Surely he’d have called in the police? None of the possibilities made sense, but there was no denying that the man was following Schoelen.

  Carlos had the advantage in that he knew where Schoelen was going, so he waited until just before the exit ramp before getting any closer. He caught up with Schoelen and his tail on an unlit road which wound between leafy woodland dotted with impressive houses with private driveways and three-car garages. Most had flagpoles and basketball hoops, Carlos noticed. And probably a couple of .44 Magnums under the mattress and a shotgun in the den, he thought wryly. White, upper-middle-class America. Clean, wholesome and armed to the teeth.

  Ahead he could see the tail, who was having a harder time staying inconspicuous. There was no sign of Lovell. Carlos wondered whether Schoelen would spot that he was being followed. He doubted it, Schoelen was a military sniper, not an intelligence operative. He was sure Mary Hennessy would not have been so careless. There was little traffic on the road so Carlos hung back and whenever possible drove with his headlights off. Carlos ran through the possibilities. He could wait until Schoelen arrived at the motel before confronting the tail, but if there were other motorists around he might not be able to act. He could drive ahead and find some way of warning Schoelen, but what then? As soon as he communicated with Schoelen he’d be spotted. No, that wouldn’t do. He could force the tail off the road, but he might sustain damage himself. There was only one solution. Keeping a firm hand on the steering wheel, Carlos leant over and opened the glove compartment. He took out the gun which Lovell had found in Cramer’s car, a SIG P228 with a bulbous silencer. A nice weapon, well balanced and compact. He placed it on the empty seat next to him and opened the passenger window. He accelerated smoothly, the wind noise roaring by the open window. Schoelen was still sticking to the speed limit and Carlos quickly gained on the tail. He reached over to pick up the gun and flicked the safety off with his thumb. The grip settled easily in Carlos’s hand and he rested the barrel on the passenger seat as he drove up behind the tail.

  He waited until the road was clear in front and behind, then indicated that he wanted to overtake. Carlos pulled out to the left, the power steering making one-handed control effortless. He drew level with the tail, his indicator lights still blinking, and looked across at the driver. The driver appeared relaxed, he looked over at Carlos, who smiled and nodded. The driver smiled automatically; his eyes flicked back to the road, and then across at Carlos again. This time he frowned, but before he could react Carlos raised the gun. There was just a slight coughing noise from the P228 as the tail’s window exploded with the first shot and the bullet buried itself in the man’s shoulder. Carlos fired twice more, both shots hitting the man in the side of the head. A fountain of blood sprayed from the man’s skull and the car lurched to the right as his nerveless fingers lost control. Carlos accelerated and in the mirror he watched the tail veer off the road and smash into a tree. A few seconds later the car burst into flames. Carlos smiled and put the gun back into the glove compartment before closing the window. Ahead, Schoelen drove on, oblivious to what had happened.

  Don Clutesi saw it first and he tapped Cole Howard on the shoulder. They were wearing headsets which cut out the thudding roar of the rotors and allowed them to speak to each other and to the pilot and co-pilot. He pointed to the burning house some six miles away by the side of the Chesapeake Bay. There were no streetlights or other houses close to it and the inferno seemed to be suspended in the darkness. “See that?” Clutesi asked.

  “You think that’s it?” said Howard, squinting into the distance.

  The pilot’s voice came over the headsets. “That’s where we’re headed,” he said. The co-pilot began calling up Baltimore air-traffic control to request that they inform the Fire Department. His call was acknowledged.

  Howard slapped his knee. There was no sign of a SWAT team in the vicinity of the house, no lights on the road. He was hardly surprised, they’d probably be driving out from the city, whereas the FBI JetRanger helicopter was zipping through the air at more than one hundred knots.

  The pilot took the helicopter down to about five hundred feet above the ground and banked around the house. “Jesus, look at that,” said Clutesi.

  For a moment Howard imagined that he could feel the heat from the blaze but he knew that they were too high. The pilot switched on a searchlight below the helicopter and an oval patch of light appeared on the grass below. Over the headset, Howard heard the co-pilot tell air-traffic control that he was landing.

  Clutesi pounded Howard on the shoulder again and pointed. “Here comes the cavalry,” he said. In the distance, about a mile from the house, they saw a convoy of vehicles speeding along the main road in the direction of the house. “That’ll be the Ninjas. Better late than never.”

  “There’s no rush – I don’t imagine there’ll be anyone hanging around,” said Howard. A blue car at the rear of the house exploded in a sheet of flame as its fuel tank detonated. The pilot yanked the helicopter up and away and chose a landing spot further away from the house. The oval light grew smaller and brighter as they descended and then the skids gently bumped the ground. The co-pilot turned around in his seat and handed flashlights to Howard and Clutesi and indicated that they could disembark. The two FBI agents climbed out, the still-turning rotors making their jackets flap around their waists. Both agents were armed and they took their handguns from their holsters as they jogged across the lawn to the house. The convoy of cars and vans turned down the drive to the house and Clutesi headed in their direction, holding his badge and gun aloft.

  Howard saw a figure lying on the grass about fifty yards from the house, stretched out and unmoving. He went over and knelt down beside the body. It was a middle-aged man, bare-chested with wicked cuts across his back as if he’d been whipped. There was also a nasty gunshot wound on one shoulder but it didn’t look fatal. The man’s right hand was holding a compact black handgun, his finger still on the trigger. Howard took a pen from his inside jacket pocket and used it to pry the gun from his fingers. He rolled the man over and winced as he saw more wounds on the man’s chest. His right nipple was missing, a red, crusty scab in its place, and it looked as if a strip of flesh had been ripped out, exposing the muscle underneath. “Hell, what happened to you?” Howard said under his breath. The man’s eyebrows and chest hair were singed from the flames and his cheeks and nose were red as if he’d been under a sunlamp for too long. Howard bent down and put his ear close to the man’s mouth. He couldn’t hear anything above the crash of falling timbers and crackling wood, but he felt the man’s breath on his cheek.

  Clutesi ran over, followed by two men in blue overalls and body armour. Clutesi knelt down beside Howard. “He dead?” asked Clutesi.

  Howard shook his head. “Not yet,” he said.

  One of the men in overalls introduced himself as the commander of the SWAT team, Scott Dunning. Howard asked him to arrange an ambulance.

  “You’d be better off using the chopper, airlift him to Shock-trauma in the city,” said Dunning. “It’ll take the bird ten minutes but it’s almost an hour by road.”

  “Good idea,” said Howard. He patted Clutesi on the back. “Don, you go with him. I’ll check here. When you get to the hospital, call Ed, let him know what’s happening.”

  The commander called over two of his men and had them pull out a stretcher to carry the injured man to the JetRanger. As the helicopter turbine roared and it lifted into the air, Dunning and Howard surveyed the burning building. “Not really much need for a SWAT team, is there?” observed Dunning tersely. His men were standing beside their vehicles, the flames throwing long flickering shadows behind them.

  “Not unless you’ve got a fire engine with you,” said Howard.

  “Afraid not, not today,” said the SWAT commander.

  “Fire Department’s on their way,” said Howard. “We called them from the chopper.”

  One of
the members of the SWAT team, a young man with a rifle and telescopic sight, wandered over the lawn towards the house. “Tom, stay by the vans until the lab tech boys get here,” Dunning shouted. The man waved and went back to the van. “He’s new,” explained Dunning. “He’s a crack shot but a menace around a crime scene.”

  Howard nodded. He walked slowly around the area where the body had been lying, looking at the grass. He was trying to work out where the man had been shot. The shoulder wound was from the front, so his first thought was that he’d been shot as he’d left the house, by someone outside. He shone the flashlight on the grass, looking for footprints. He saw a few drops of blood where the man’s feet had been and he began working his way back to the house, sweeping the flashlight beam from side to side. He found several more spots of blood and revised his first impression. The man had been shot in the house and had been running away before he’d passed out, either from loss of blood or the effects of the smoke.

  Someone was shouting and he looked to his left. The young SWAT sniper was pointing towards the house and yelling. Howard shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted in the direction he was pointing. There was something lying on the ground, close to the door. Howard went closer but the heat drove him back. It looked like another body. He went over to the sniper and borrowed his rifle. He shouldered the weapon and looked through the telescopic sight. It took him a while to centre the cross-hairs. Through the scope he saw the man’s sweatshirt burst into flame and his skin bubble and crack. There was nothing they could do – the SWAT team had protection against bullets, not fire, and until the fire engines arrived they could only stand and watch.

  The motel could be seen from the road; a red neon sign over the main entrance indicated that there were vacancies. The building was U-shaped, with the two wings pointing away from the road, either side of a car park and swimming pool. Lou Schoelen parked his car outside the entrance and went inside to arrange his room. Carlos stopped his car some distance from the motel and watched, checking that no-one else had tailed the sniper. After a few minutes, Schoelen appeared, swinging a key. He got back into his car and drove slowly around to the parking area. Carlos followed him and pulled in next to him.