by Andy McNab
She looked down at the fishing line dangling from the jacket sleeve. 'I have to get this thing off me. We'd better go somewhere out of sight.' She started working at the buttons of the jacket. 'I couldn't take it off before. People would have seen me. I disconnected the det leads in the lift. That was all I had time for.'
'It's still dangerous,' said Danny.
'I know,' Elena replied. 'Let's go.'
As she moved slowly down the ramp leading into the park, Danny followed and took out his mobile.
'Who are you calling?' asked Elena.
'My granddad. He needs to know what's happening.'
'Not yet, Danny. I want to talk to you alone first.' She'd unbuttoned her jacket, but then she stopped. 'There's something I need to know.'
She looked closely at Danny. The lights of the city seemed far off. He could hear the traffic but it could have been a million miles away.
'Deveraux killed my dad,' she said.
'What?'
'It's true. Black Star told me he heard Fergus and Deveraux talking about it. Did you know? I want the truth, Danny – don't lie to me. There've been enough lies.'
Danny was still trying to get his head around what Elena had said. 'Maybe Black—'
'Did you know?'
'No, I didn't. Maybe Black Star just said that . . . to get you to do the bombing. How could he know?'
'He heard them. And I know he was telling the truth. You know what Deveraux's like. She did it. I know she did.' Elena's voice was deep with urgency. 'Danny. Did you know?'
'I promise you I didn't know,' he said.
Elena said nothing. Just stared at him, as if looking for the truth in his face.
I've never lied to you, Elena,' he said more emphatically. 'If it is true, we'll find out. But can we get the IED off you? I've gotta call Granddad to tell him that we're in the park. He knows how to make it safe.'
They were at the bottom of the ramp, and Elena moved even further into the gloom. 'I believe you. I'm glad. But I'm still doing it.' She stared towards the lights bouncing off the Time Warner building and up into the sky.
'Doing what? I don't understand, Elena.'
She turned back to Danny as a single tear rolled down her face. 'Somehow, and I don't know how, I'm gonna kill Deveraux.'
Behind the tears in Elena's eyes was a hard look of determination that frightened Danny.
'Elena,' he said softly. 'I . . . I promised I'd always be here for you. I haven't done as good as I could have . . . I . . . I got too caught up in all this . . . stuff. Black Star. Working for . . .' He was going to say Deveraux but he knew it was the one word he had to avoid. 'Working on this mission. It made me feel important. Special.'
He edged forward as he continued to speak softly. 'But I've realized it's not important,' he went on. 'None of it. Not if I haven't got you. You're the most important thing in the world to me, Elena. Honest, I swear it. More important than my granddad. More than anything.'
He swallowed hard. 'I love you, Elena. You know that. But killing someone in revenge . . . you can't kill Deveraux, you know that. It won't bring your dad back.'
Elena's body shook as she sucked in a deep, sobbing, faltering breath and tears sprang to her eyes again. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came.
'And your dad wouldn't want it,' said Danny, fighting back his own tears. 'He'd want you to be happy, like he was. Your dad was always smiling, and laughing. That's how he'd want to see you. Always.' He paused for a moment.
'My granddad's going to get us out of here. We'll be safe and we can think things through.'
The hard look was back on Elena's face.
'Fergus knew,' she said accusingly.
'I don't think he did,' said Danny. 'He didn't tell me—' He stopped again. There were lots of things Fergus didn't tell him.
The night was still. They were only a few metres inside Central Park, but it was enough to give the illusion of woodland. The only reminder that they were in the heart of the city was the constant drone of the traffic spinning around Columbus Circle before heading off to every part of Manhattan.
Neither of them moved, but Danny was acutely conscious of the danger they were in.
Then Elena lifted her head and looked at him. He could see her shoulders relax. She smiled. It wasn't the challenging, confident smile of old, but it was a smile. A beginning.
She nodded. 'You're right. But I hate her and I'm still going to get her,' she said grimly. 'Maybe not kill her, but I'm going to get her somehow.'
Danny took a single step forward. He had to twist the det wires – make sure they were really safe. 'We'll do it together, Elena.'
And then, before he could take another step or say another word, there was a dull thud and Elena was hurled backwards with shattering force and went crashing to the ground at the base of a tree.
Danny's mouth gaped open. He tasted the blood, Elena's blood, as it ran down his face and over his lips into his mouth.
For a moment his brain was telling him that the device had detonated and killed Elena. Just Elena. But that couldn't have happened. It couldn't. It couldn't.
Then he heard Deveraux's voice: 'Move away from the device! Move away!'
Danny's head turned slowly. Nothing else would move.
Deveraux was behind him, a little to one side, her Pll still up in the firing position and pointed at Danny's head. 'Move away from the device,' she said again, her words slow and controlled. 'If you do not move, I'll take you down too. Move away. Now.'
Somehow Danny forced himself to take two or three shuffling steps away from Elena's body, which was lying face down and perfectly still.
'Give me your mobile phone!' said Deveraux. 'Now!'
Danny reached into his pocket and handed it over. With her pistol still in her right hand, Deveraux punched in Fergus's number, knowing he would take a call from his grandson. He did.
'Danny, I'm at the Circle. Where are you?'
'It's over,' said Deveraux. 'I need you to make the device safe.'
48
Fergus had had two minutes to prepare himself for what he saw as he walked down the ramp into the park.
But it made no difference. He was crying.
Danny was sitting against the inner wall, his head bowed over his raised knees. He didn't look up when Fergus glanced towards him before going over to Elena's body.
Deveraux was by the ramp, her weapon still in her hand. She was watching and waiting in case anyone should wander into the park.
Fergus knelt at Elena's side. Blood was still flowing from the head wound and he was relieved that he didn't have to look at her face. He couldn't have looked at her face.
He wiped the tears from his cheeks and then, slowly and expertly, he began to search for the detonator.
On the ground next to Elena's head he saw the pouch containing her passport attached to a chain around her neck. She had followed all Danny's orders.
Danny hadn't moved since Deveraux had ordered him to sit by the wall, but he looked up and saw his grandfather by Elena's body. 'She'd already disconnected the det.'
It took a long, tense sixty seconds to establish that what Danny had said was correct. Fergus nodded towards Deveraux, who took out her Xda and punched in a number. Then he got up and went over to his grandson.
Deveraux was talking into her Xda: 'Cancel the end ex. I have another job for you right now. I want you and Fran to come and clear up at Columbus Circle. Across from the Time Warner building; just inside the park. We need to dispose of a body.'
Danny's head snapped round towards Deveraux. His eyes blazed with fury but his words hissed through clenched teeth. 'It's not a body,' he snarled. 'It's Elena!'
Fergus rested one hand on his shoulder. 'Danny,' he said gently. Danny was still glaring at Deveraux. 'Danny,' said Fergus again.
Slowly Danny turned and looked up at his grandfather. There were no tears, not yet. All that registered on his ashen face was pain, and stunned disbelief. 'She wasn't gonna do it, G
randdad,' he said. 'She wasn't gonna do it.'
Fergus carefully pulled Danny to his feet. 'Come on, we're—'
'Stand still!' Deveraux's finger was still on the P11's electronic trigger.
Fergus gripped Danny's hand tightly. 'What you gonna do, Marcie? Drop us both?' He shook his head. 'You can't do that. Know why?'
The P11 was pointed at Fergus's head but he continued without waiting for a reply.
'You'd have three bodies to clean up. That's not possible for you and your two mates. One, you might just get away with. But three? No chance. You'll be seen, and then what do you do, Marcie?'
He began to move backwards, still gripping Danny's hand. 'And there's another reason you can't pull that trigger. I have all your Oxford sit reps. We go down and they go straight to the FBI. I've still got a few friends back home, Marcie. They don't hear from me, the sit reps go to the FBI.'
He could see Deveraux's hesitation. Slowly she lowered the pistol, as Fergus pulled his grandson into the darkness of the park.
Some time later . . .
They were living in a small rented cabin on the edge of one of the Great Lakes of Canada. But they were also living a lie.
Fergus was an accomplished liar; it had long been part of his life and part of his trade. Operating covertly in the Regiment and afterwards as a K, he had found that his life had often depended upon his ability to tell completely believable lies.
He had taken on many new identities; they were all fabrications, lies. He had become so good at lying that even when challenged in a life-threatening situation, he almost believed the untruth he was telling.
That ability had spilled over into his personal life. As a young man, he had lied to his wife during their brief marriage. Sometimes it was just easier to tell a lie, as long as he remembered that lie when the time came to tell the next lie. He had lied to his son. He had lied to mates; sometimes it was necessary for their safety as well as his own. And now he had lied to his grandson.
It had always been easy for Fergus to lie because, until very recently, he had never cared enough about anyone for it to bother him too much. But now it did.
They had made their escape, heading north through Central Park, and they didn't stop travelling until they reached Canada. At first Danny was too deeply shocked to even speak. He just allowed himself to be led like a small child by his grandfather. Neither of them mentioned Elena's name.
Fergus rented the cabin and made sure they were secure, and then he contacted Deveraux; he had to – they needed money. He reminded her that if anything happened to himself or Danny, the FBI would get every one of the sit reps he had downloaded from her laptop. A few days later the cash was transferred into the bank account that Fergus had set up.
It should have been a new beginning, but it wasn't.
Spring had moved well into summer, and most days were warm and bright. But now the weather had turned; it was raining and the sky was leaden and heavy.
Danny sat against a tree trunk, getting little shelter from the rain. He reached into his jacket and took out the alias passport Fergus had got for Elena. He always kept it with him. Her name would have been Elena Higgs, according to the passport. But names didn't mean a thing. He opened the back page and looked at her photograph, and then he let his head tilt upwards against the tree trunk so that the raindrops could mingle with the tears running down his face.
When he got back to the cabin, Fergus was brewing coffee on the stove. He put two mugs and the coffee pot on the wooden table and then sat in the chair opposite his grandson.
'We need to talk, Danny.'
Danny looked hard into his grandfather's eyes. 'Do we?'
'It's about. . . the future. What we do. We can't stay here for much longer and the money we've got won't last for ever.'
The rage that had been building inside Danny suddenly exploded like a bursting dam. 'The future! How can we talk about the future when we've never talked about the past?'
Fergus looked bewildered. 'What?'
'Why didn't you tell me Deveraux killed Joey? You owed it to me, and you owed it to Elena.'
It was out in the open. At last.
'I . . . I didn't know until near the end. It was too late to do anything about it then and it didn't make any difference as far as the—'
'As far as the mission was concerned!' yelled Danny. 'Is that what was most important?'
'No! Keeping you and Elena safe was what mattered most!'
'Well, you failed in that, didn't you?'
Danny grabbed one of the coffee mugs, stood up and hurled it with all his strength at the wall behind his grandfather's head. It shattered and coffee dripped down the wall.
Fergus hadn't moved a muscle. 'How did you know?' he said quietly. 'About Deveraux?'
Danny slumped back down onto his chair. 'Black Star told Elena, and Elena told me just before Deveraux killed her.'
They were silent for a few moments, both deep in their own thoughts, and then Fergus got up, fetched another mug and filled it with coffee.
'I'm sorry. When it was over, I should have told you. But I thought there was no point in you knowing now. Sometimes it's better to . . .'
'Lie?'
'To . . . to just not tell the truth.'
Danny shook his head. 'Yeah. And look where it's got us.'
'We've got to move on, Danny. Not to forget about Elena—'
'I don't wanna talk about Elena!' said Danny his face furious again.
'But we have to talk about the future. About what we're going to do. I can't be certain we'll be safe here. We need to work, get jobs.'
'What jobs? Another burger bar? What else could you do? And what could I do? All you've ever taught me is how to lie.'
He grabbed the coffee and took a gulp. 'Oh, yeah, and I also know a lot about killing now.'
Danny pushed back his chair and it scraped noisily across the floor. 'I'm going for another walk,' he snarled. 'It'll give me time to think about my career options.'
Fergus knew there was no point in arguing. They would talk more later, when Danny had calmed down. He watched his grandson go to the door, open it and step outside, leaving it open.
The cabin stood at the end of a long mud track, which rose gradually for about a hundred and fifty metres before descending again and winding on towards the town.
As Danny left the cabin, he glanced to his right. At the top of the rise in the track sat a stationary black 4×4. Danny could just hear the throb of its running engine.
'Granddad,' he said quietly, without moving back into the cabin. 'We've got company.'
THE END
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Read an extract from the next thrilling
adventure in the Boy Soldier sequence:
ANDY
McNAB
and ROBERT RIGBY
MELTDOWN
PROLOGUE
Glasgow
The thirty-minute team made the best use of the shadows as they approached their entry points and prepared for the attack. Close by, on the river Clyde, two tugs passed in opposite directions, their stubby bows pushing through the inky-black water.
