by Andy McNab
‘Not sure ain’t good enough, man.’
‘Yep, I know. Wait …’
I fumbled for a water bottle and untwisted the top with my teeth. I got some liquid down me, then shone the cell light at Katya. ‘Where did you leave him?’
‘In the tack room. That’s where he tried to—’
‘Dino – you get that? Where’s the tactical room? Like an ops room, command room, maybe?’
Katya cut in: ‘No – the tack room. Where they keep the horse tack.’
How was I to know? There weren’t too many polo games in my world. I wished there had been: I might have got away.
‘Nick, the party, he was going to—’
‘Later, Katya. Dino, the tack room, can you get me there?’
‘No problem. But you gotta go now, man.’
I gripped Katya’s arm and made sure I had her full attention.
‘The only three people who know how to get past that keypad are me, Peregrino and the guy on the end of the phone. So get ready for a problem if I fuck up and he isn’t dead.
‘I’m going to knock four times before hitting the buttons. If you hear that lock unwinding without it, start running down the tunnel and hit the exit bar at the far end. You’ll find yourself in a helicopter hangar. Get straight out of there. Run like fuck across the grass and into the scrub. After that, you’re on your own. Got it?’
It was pointless telling her about the CamelBak. It would slow her down big-time trying to find it in the dark.
She didn’t acknowledge.
‘You got that? Do you understand that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Have you got a watch?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you see it in the dark?’
‘No.’
‘You’re going to have to count then. If I’m not back within an hour, go for it. Above all, make distance. And as soon as you’ve got the chance, ring Anna. That’s all I can do for you.’
24
I got the rest of the water down me, then took a deep breath to get my head in gear.
‘Dino?’
He was firing on all cylinders. ‘Yep!’
‘I’m ready.’
‘OK – out of the tunnel, turn left, go up the stairs, exactly the same as before, man.’
‘Wait. I’m going to put you on FaceTime. Take the call.’
His face uploaded onto the screen, real close and ugly. I dug out my neck pouch and slid the gold iPhone into it so the camera lens was exposed but the screen remained hidden. Instead of getting my face on his screen, he’d be seeing what I was seeing.
‘Nothing, I got nada …’
‘I haven’t gone anywhere yet. Wait out.’
I hit the bar and light seeped into the tunnel.
Dino swung back into sat-nav mode. If I ever got out of this shit I’d take him on a date with Maud. ‘OK, go up the stairs into the banqueting hall, then head right. It’s going to be a motherfucker – you have to get to the other side of the house.’
The hall doors were ajar. I lifted the pouch away from my neck, eased it through the gap, and moved it around.
‘Looks clear to me, man. Make entry and go right. I repeat, go right.’
I turned the phone towards me, nodded and put it back in the pouch. I pushed the doors open enough to slip through. I found myself in a large rectangular room with a long, highly polished table down the middle that could have seated thirty or forty people.
Several of the huge oil paintings on the walls were of Peregrino’s sisters, but pride of place, at the far end of the room, went to one of him, looking much slimmer and more presidential, standing beside the Mexican flag. Every dinner guest would be under his shadow.
I headed right, as Dino had instructed. I hoped the damaged bits of my body would soon warm up; my feet just had to take the pain.
‘You’ve got a drinks-before-dinner kind of place the other side of this room. Be careful, man, it’s one big fuck-off foyer that leads into the hallway. It’s really open out there …’
I shoved my finger against the left earphone to make sure it stayed in and threw the other round the back of my neck. At least I had half my hearing.
I opened the next door far enough to poke through the iPhone, right at the bottom, and moved it left and right, up and down to show Dino as much of the area as I could.
‘Wait … wait … There’s movement. Stay where you are. Wait … OK, it’s just house staff. But wait …’
I could hear Dino breathing heavily, living the moment as if he were right beside me. ‘OK. Move, but be careful. That main door can be opened anytime, and there’s always somebody outside. Cross the hallway as if you belong. And don’t forget the landings.’
Dino was getting excited. The man with the mallet was about to check out of his nightmares.
I shoved the phone back into my neck pouch so Dino could have a ringside seat at whatever happened next. My Timberlands squeaked gently on the marble as I made my way past plush leather chairs, oriental rugs and massive flower arrangements on every table. As far as I was concerned, the hallway was just an open expanse that I had to cross.
The bottom of the staircase came into view, then the door I’d come out of earlier, and the main entrance. The front door was wide open.
Dino sparked up in my ear. ‘Any problems, you go to the right of the stairs. There’s a door there that takes you down to the cages.’
I gave him a quick thumbs-up. There wasn’t a clever way of getting past the hallway. I had no choice but to keep walking. Not especially fast or slow, just one foot in front of the other.
My eyes swivelled as I passed a window. Two technicals were parked among the SUVs in the floodlit area at the front of the casa. A number of bodies milled around them, talking in low tones and swigging from cans as what looked like the domestic staff climbed into the back of one of the Escalades.
I lifted the mic to keep my voice low. ‘Where the fuck is everyone?’
‘She doesn’t like too many people about. She trusts nobody, except maybe the dogs. The staff come, play, eat, whatever, and then go. Even the gardeners are shipped in and out. Only Miguel stays permanently.’
A few more steps and I was past the staircase.
‘You see that turning to the right of the stairs, in the far right-hand corner?’
Thumb up.
‘Go there. That’s it. We got it, man. Keep going.’ He was taking every step with me. ‘That’s it. Keep going.’
I moved out at an angle so I could see down the corridor. Light grey carpet all the way from the threshold, not the concrete slabs of the basement.
‘That’s good, man. It’s all clear.’
I could see that for myself.
‘Follow the corridor. Stairs on the left take us down.’
I pulled up the mic. ‘You sure? The horses underground?’
‘Fuck, no, just the tack room. She didn’t like all that shit on display. And she hated having too many places people might hide.’
25
The body lay face up in the middle of the tack-room floor. Even from the doorway I could see that one side of his head was a mass of contusions and puncture wounds. There were a couple in his cheek the exact shape of the steel-pronged tool that lay in his right hand. It looked like a hoof pick I’d seen the Lone Ranger use one Saturday morning when I was glued to the TV as a kid. I guessed she must have left the thing sticking into him when she ran and the last thing he did before he died was pull it out. There were other wounds in his shoulder, some in his chest. He was wearing an open-neck shirt and the damage was clear to see. She’d really gone to town.
I left the door open and stepped into the room. Dino was still banging on in my ear that I had a body to confirm, but I wanted that hoof pick. It had some blood-soaked wire mesh at one end and a steel pin the opposite side that wasn’t long enough to do much damage to any organs, but would do until I found something better.
A row of waist-high worktops lined the room
, probably where they polished saddles and did other horsy stuff after a game. They were covered with bits of leather and all sorts; I checked them out, in case I came across a better weapon.
When I drew level with Peregrino I gave him a nudge with the toe of my Timberland.
It wasn’t good enough for Dino. ‘Check his breath, man, or his pulse.’
I knelt alongside him as best I could without getting my jeans soaked with the red stuff, and breathed in a blend of cologne and blood.
I moved two fingers towards the site of his carotid pulse and reached across him for the hoof pick. Bad mistake. His eyes snapped open and his left hand shot up and clutched my throat like a vice. His saliva sprayed my face as he rammed his thumb into my Adam’s apple and tried to push it out through the back of my neck.
I struggled to get my hands around his throat too, but he tensed his neck muscles and breathed between his teeth. His right hand, still gripping the hoof pick, soon joined the party. He was trying to crush the life out of me.
My head swelled to bursting point. I was going to black out. I writhed and kicked and flailed. I knew it wasn’t working, but there was nothing else I could do. I fought to fill my lungs with oxygen. My Adam’s apple felt like it was about to choke me.
‘Miguel!’
The shout was feeble, but it was a shout.
I tried to suck in air but my Adam’s apple was still glued to the back of my throat. I wrapped myself around Peregrino, hanging on to him like a drowning man, trying to get his arms down and the weapon neutral.
The hoof pick clattered to the floor and I slithered on top of him. I fought for breath. He screamed, more with anger than pain, as he squirmed beneath me. The hoof pick was just over a metre away. My brain shrank. That weapon became my whole world.
I fell sideways, arm outstretched, but Peregrino managed to slow me down, grunting with the effort, trying to beat me to it. My hand was no more than six inches from the hoof pick. I could feel his fingers scrabbling at me. He rolled towards me, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t suck in any air.
I touched it with my right hand; tried to turn the thing round. He climbed on top of me, crushing the air from my lungs, forcing the weapon down between me and the tiles. Eighteen, maybe nineteen stone of him pressed down on me. My ribcage started to collapse. I kicked and bucked to try to dislodge him, but it was like being trapped under a grizzly.
I pushed up with my arse, trying to make space below me, trying to spin the weapon round, stripping the skin off my knuckles. If I didn’t get some air into my lungs soon, I was going down. Starbursts of light flickered across my retinas; my head was about to explode.
I managed to get the weapon in my hand, but his weight was still pressing down on me too heavily to move it. I twisted left and right, jerking up and down, trying to free my hand.
His hands shifted from my throat to my arms. I rolled onto my right side and jabbed the hoof pick into his wrist. He shrieked and recoiled, clutching the wound. I could see bone and blood as I lay there trying to breathe. The only sound louder than my rasping attempts to regain my breath was a yell from the end of the corridor.
I had to act. I sat up, bringing my head level with the worktop. My fuzzy vision locked onto a large glass bottle, shaped like a two-litre moulded-plastic milk container, complete with handle. It looked like it held some kind of brown liquid. Whatever it was, most of the label was taken up with a big yellow flame warning graphic.
‘Miguel!’
Peregrino was a couple of metres to one side of me and the bottle was one metre to the other. I squinted at the heavy glass canister and, taking a deep breath, I launched myself off the floor.
Muffled shouts came from halfway down the corridor. That didn’t matter: the bottle did. Jabbing out my arm like I was throwing a punch, I slipped my fingers around its neck, gripped hard and swung round. Focusing on his head, I took three paces towards him, brandishing my fistful of bottle like a bludgeon. I closed in, my eyes fixed on his face, and swung the bottle downwards, making contact above his cheekbone. His skin folded over below his eye, then split open. He gave a scream that echoed round the room.
His scream was answered by a shout from the corridor.
I lashed out again. The heavy glass hammered twice against his skull, both times with such force that my arm jarred as it made contact. I jumped onto his chest and continued to rain blows on the top of his head. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I’d lost it, but I didn’t care.
Three times there was a crunching, cracking sound as glass hit bone and tooth. Not even a top-of-the-range Jesus for Peace dental plan was going to save his day.
The glass shattered. Liquid erupted from inside, filling the room with a stink like ammonia and menthol.
I raised my hand, ready to hammer him again, but stopped myself. I’d done enough. Thick, almost brown blood oozed from his head wounds. His stare was empty, eyes wide open, pupils fully dilated.
I glanced down and read the label. It was horse liniment, altamente inflamable, and his clothes were soaking it up like blotting paper.
He was choking now. Wheezing, gurgling noises tumbled from his nose and mouth. His hair soaked up the spilled contents of the bottle.
I knew I couldn’t just lie there watching him; I knew I had to get up.
Miguel hurtled into the room, drawing down his bright yellow weapon. He wasn’t about to fuck up and shoot his boss.
I heard the electronic initiation, the nitrogen kicking off the barbs, and all I could do was drop behind Peregrino and use him as my shield.
26
The barbs crackled like a bonfire as they made contact, but I felt no pain.
Peregrino juddered, and then there was a vivid flash, yellow and orange like an oil-rig flare, as the liniment combusted and he burst into flames.
His screams echoed up and down the corridor as his body sizzled and my lungs filled with the acrid, gagging stench of burning flesh and hair.
Within seconds he was a human torch, his hands and cheeks melting, the skin bubbling and flaking away. His eyes pierced through what was left of his charred features like those of a demon from Hell.
I rolled away from him, my hands against my face for protection, but I was too late. My shirtsleeve and the side of my jeans ignited. Peregrino’s arms and legs were bouncing around the floor like a puppet dancing a horizontal reel. He squealed like a pig, his blistered hands outstretched as he called for his mama and the fire peeled back his lips in a hideous grin.
Miguel pulled a fire blanket off the wall; I knew it wasn’t for me. I kept low as he barrelled into the room, then jumped up and scrambled round the corner, swatting frantically at my clothes to kill the flames.
I finally got the better of them, but smoke still billowed around me as I ran. I kept on going, my hand on the pouch to stop it bouncing into my face. I passed more expanses of bare concrete left and right – more admin cubes like on the other side of the house.
I turned left by the tack room and reached the steps. I threw myself up them three at a time, still pursued by ear-splitting screams.
Swivelling right, I pounded down the carpeted corridor towards the hallway. As my boots hit the marble, the hired help poured into the casa from the technicals, hollering, weapons up, confused.
I ran across the hallway shouting, ‘Fuego! Fuego! Fuego!’ I motioned behind me. ‘El Peregrino! Fuego! Fuego!’
They headed the way I’d pointed and I lunged for the door under the stairs, but as soon as I came level with the front entrance and saw the vehicles gleaming in the floodlights, I had a change of plan.
Miguel would know where the tunnel started and where it ended. He’d also know that only Liseth and Peregrino had the combination – so if he couldn’t find Liseth, where was she going to be, and where was she going to emerge? It would only be a matter of time before he went to the hangar – and he might get there before we did.
I took the nearest technical. The keys were in the ignition.
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It was pointless trying to sabotage the others. There were too many of the fuckers: it would take too long.
I flicked it into drive and headed for the road to the hangar, not wanting to leave sign on the grass; they’d have to work that one out for themselves. Behind me, the HK spun on its firing post, a box of 5.56 link sliding around on the flatbed beneath it.
I kept one eye glued to the rear-view; there was no follow-up yet. I guessed they were flapping about Peregrino, and running around looking for Liseth. Miguel would save me for afters.
I braked to a halt, with the tailgate protruding far enough from the corner of the hangar to give me an arc of fire. I climbed onto it, checked back to the house, and brought the MG4’s cocking lever down into its horizontal position. The handle was loose on its way back and forward; the working parts were already to the rear, cocked for when I squeezed the trigger.
There was still no threat emerging from the flood-lit house. And nothing outside looked any different from last night.
I pushed the cocking lever back into its upright position then jumped off and made for the inside of the hangar, hoping like fuck that Katya was this end of the tunnel – and fearing that she might have lost count and already legged it into the scrub.
27
I knocked four times. The whirring of the lock was a whole lot quieter than my breathing.
‘Katya!’
I propped the door open with the tool-box and moved inside.
‘Katya, it’s Nick! Hurry up – come to me. On me! On me!’
My shouts echoed down the tunnel. There was nothing in there to absorb them. In the darkness, I skimmed a hand along the concrete and was soon pushing against thin air. I turned into the money cave.
‘Katya!’
I could hear her reply, but I couldn’t understand it. ‘Move to this end! Move to the hangar end! Hurry. Move!’
I heard her again, this time a bit louder.
‘Come on! On me! On me!’
As I swung one of the thirty-kilo bags onto my back, a strap over each shoulder, I heard the steel walkway taking a pounding.
