by Stevens, Tim
Across his lap was the assault rifle he’d chosen from the stash in the boot. He didn’t know the make but it looked Russian and modern, futuristic even. There’d been a spare box magazine and he’d taken that as well. Best of all, mounted under the barrel was a grenade launcher. He’d found a single grenade clipped into its own compartment.
It was as though an invisible police cordon had been drawn across the road running along the northern edge of the park. Cars were stalled or reversing. One or two idiots had climbed out and were frantically motioning at the oncoming traffic to turn back.
Bartos barrelled past, leaning on the horn. He was invisible behind the darkened windows, a masked king of the city that was his once more.
He took in the tableau ahead. The Audi had crashed into the pavement, looked wrecked. A body lay near the driver’s door. Between the Audi and Bartos was a dinky VW, some guy with a gun ducking behind the passenger door. In an instant he recognised the man: that dickhead journalist, one of the ones Bartos had captured earlier. On the far side of the Audi, the pickup was turned to face the scene. There was the Brit, Calvary, behind the wheel.
Beyond the pickup two other cars were hurtling towards them.
Bartos braked, pressed the button to lower his window. Fitted the grenade on to the launcher. Hefted the rifle and leaned out.
Eeny, meeny, miny…
TWENTY-EIGHT
The end game. And it was going to play out as so many of her contemporaries and her superiors had privately predicted the Cold War would: in an all-obliterating, man-made rain of fire.
Krupina was on her knees behind the open passenger door. It was, bizarrely, a relatively comfortable position; any attempt to straighten sent lances of pain through her chest, her abdomen. Her mouth had hit something in the collision and she tasted blood and broken teeth.
She couldn’t see what was happening behind, had no idea if the occupants of the car that had come out of nowhere and blown out the Audi’s tyre had got out and were stalking her. She could see the pickup, and the two cars approaching it from behind. That would be Voronin’s remaining men, and Arkady.
Closer by, she could see Lev’s body, his face turned away. His gun lay on the road a few feet from her.
Krupina shuffled forward on her knees, holding on to the side of the car for support. The pain pounced. The scars of a life lived well. She reached the pistol, gripped it.
She didn’t like guns. They were useful, but in the right hands, which hers weren’t. She had undergone basic firearms training as had all KGB staff, and she’d had occasional refresher courses which she’d attended for the show of it. She had never fired a gun in anger.
With the Makarov as awkward as a dumbbell in her hand, she began to crawl the distance between the Audi and the pickup truck.
*
The first volley came from the lead car. Calvary ducked his head low, hoping the gunman was aiming at him and not at the car’s fuel tank. He felt the shots pass overhead and exit through the space where the windscreen had been. Calvary raised his head again and saw that Jakub was returning fire. Nikola was still behind the wheel of the car but had the window down and was aiming the other gun, the Glock, at the approaching cars. She withdrew her hand as a salvo spattered the VW’s windscreen and wing mirror, sending up a burst of glass.
The two cars were almost on him now. Calvary took quick aim and squeezed off two shots at the blinding glare of the lights, aiming low. Vaguely he realised that they weren’t firing at him any more, nor even at the VW.
He glanced back, saw the Hummer had pulled to a stop. A man leaned out of the driver’s window, aiming something a lot bigger than a handgun.
Blažek.
Calvary understood what was about to happen. He grabbed at Gaines’s collar and shouted, ‘Get out,’ and began to drag him across even as he kicked open the driver’s door, knowing he’d be too late, he was tilting at windmills. Then came the crack of the firing mechanism followed instantaneously by the rocketing whine past the side of the car.
Calvary looked back, actually saw the grenade smash through the windscreen of the car closest to him even as the driver braked and the vehicle skidded sideways.
The first flash lit up the interior. Calvary imagined he could see screaming faces.
The car leapt, its chassis lifting ten feet into the air, cushioned on a flattened ball of orange and black flame, and the sound was a muffled crump which seemed to suck all peripheral noise into it before hurling it out again in a screeching blast of rending steel and fragmenting glass. Something was flung past Calvary’s ear and jammed in the gap between the front seats of the pickup. He glanced at it: a windscreen wiper, absurdly whole. The black skeleton of the car crashed down on its side and swayed there in a grotesquely parodic ballet stance before toppling back with a low groan on to the wrecked arches that had held its wheels.
*
Bingo.
Bartos let out a whoop.
King once more. Fuck that. Emperor. Bloodied but, by Christ, unbowed.
The car behind had been following too closely – stupid assholes – and although the driver managed to handbrake it round in a squealing semicircle he couldn’t avoid bashing the side of the car against the burning wreck.
Bartos flicked the switch to fully automatic fire.
They were fast, these Russaks, he had to give them that. And they had balls. They were already returning fire, three or four of them, from the far side of their crappy little car, with their tiny water pistols. He raked an arc back and forth across the car, the glass from the windows dancing, the body juddering. He’d got at least one guy inside the car, judging by the scream.
Pick them off, nice and easy. Then: Calvary.
*
Calvary reached over and gripped the top of Gaines’s head with and crammed him down into the footwell. Over the rim of the passenger door he watched the exchange. The remaining car was at right angles, three men crouched on one side, returning Blažek’s fire in a systematic way: they were laying down a hail of lead, each of them emptying one handgun before opening fire with another, taking turns to replace the clips in a co-ordinated way.
They were ignoring Calvary. He could have shot at least two, possibly all of them from where he was. But they were keeping Blažek occupied, and that suited Calvary fine.
Something hit at his arm and he glanced down and saw Gaines’s white face, his eyes frantic and looking past his shoulder. Calvary whipped round, saw the vision of hell looming at the window – bloodied mouth and chin, wild hair, yellow flaring eyes – an instant before the shot came.
*
Just for a second, she had seen the target. Gaines.
She thought, dimly, that that was what had thrown her. The shock of recognition, of realising how close she was to her goal.
Calvary had reacted with unbelievable speed, had kicked at the unlatched door at the very moment she pulled the trigger. The door crashed into her, knocking her back and down, and her head hit the tarmac.
Stars. Scars. The scars of a life lived…
She embraced the pain, then. Sucked it into her lungs, her blood, her marrow. It was fuel, just like the petrol and diesel that saturated the air and the ground with their stink all around her.
Fired up by this fuel, fuel that was miraculously replenishing itself, she rolled.
*
The shot flicked against Calvary’s hair. He flinched back. The kick against the door had sent her down, the devil woman. Calvary leaned out the open door and fired again twice, heard the ricochets sing off the road
She was under the truck.
He didn’t think she’d risk firing upwards through the chassis because it was too confined down there and she’d be more likely to shoot herself, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He heaved himself up and through the gap where the windscreen had been and slid down the bonnet, crumbled nuggets of shattered glass gritty between his torso and the metal. It was an extreme risk because hanging there on the bonnet he was
an open target for both the Russians and Blažek, but he had to hope they were otherwise occupied with each other.
Calvary let himself slip over the front of the bonnet and braced himself against the tarmac with his left hand. Upside down, he aimed under the car and saw her splayed there on her back, one eye glinting at him. He pulled the trigger.
The hammer slammed down on an empty chamber, once, twice.
He’d failed to keep count.
Her shot sang past as he jerked himself up on to the bonnet. He threw the empty SIG aside and rolled sideways off the bonnet and landed hard on the tarmac next to the driver’s side. She had already crawled so that her head was at the passenger side, but she heard him and was quick with her feet, one of them catching him on the cheekbone. It wasn’t hard enough to put me off. Calvary began to crawl beneath the chassis alongside her.
She brought her arm down and around so that it was pointing down the length of her body and the gun’s muzzle was pointing directly at Calvary’s head. He got his hand across her wrist and slammed it down on to the road surface so that when the gun went off the shot whipped past her and between them, nearly catching her own leg. She tore her arm free and as she did so Calvary punched her in the armpit. Her hand released the pistol reflexively and it went skittering across the tarmac, out from under the car on the passenger side.
Calvary crawled up so that he was right alongside her. She began to lash out with a knee and a fist. When Calvary twisted his thigh to protect his groin, the movement made his head bang against the chassis, a protrusion of some kind grinding through the dressing into the hole in his forehead.
He thought he was going to be sick from the pain, cried out in agony and rage. It was no good, she’d got the upper hand and was already crawling out from under the car, her left hand reaching for the gun gleaming on the road surface. Although Calvary managed to get his right hand up and grab on to her belt it wasn’t enough to stop her inching towards the gun. Her hips were just behind the front passenger wheel now, and Calvary saw what he had to do, his last chance.
He used his purchase on her belt to haul himself forward till his head protruded from under the car on the passenger side. Although she reached her right hand round to press down on his forehead, he managed to half turn his head away and called up, as loudly as he could, ‘Gaines. Handbrake.’
Gaines’s head and shoulders loomed above them from the footwell and his eyes were frightened. For a second Calvary thought he wasn’t up to it, or hadn’t heard. Then he disappeared from view.
Just as Krupina’s fingertips met the butt of the gun and drew it into her grasp and she began swinging it down for the killing shot, there was a creak as the Ford pickup began to roll backwards, , the gradient some thirty degrees .
She screamed long and harsh as the passenger wheel rose up on to her buttocks and eased down again on the other side. Her hand opened, releasing the gun, clawing at the air, before shaking a last time and dropping limp.
Calvary scrambled clear, grabbed the gun and slapped the side of the car for Gaines to reapply the handbrake. He crawled round the rear to the driver’s side again and got in behind the dashboard.
The shooting was sporadic but ongoing. He saw two men by the side of the car, still firing. A third lay sprawled, his foot still jerking. Directly ahead, Nikola and Jakub sat in the VW, Max in the back, he now saw. They stared alternately at the exchange of fire and at Calvary, uncertain.
Calvary jacked the magazine of the Makarov. One bullet fired. Eight left. He slammed it back.
It was time to end this.
*
Bartos was annoyed. Not worried, yet, but the feeling of ecstasy he’d had five minutes earlier had disappeared. He was on the second and last of the magazines for the rifle. The first had been emptied disappointingly quickly, after perhaps thirty or forty rounds. He’d killed two of the four men, one of them the driver when he’d first opened fire, the other when the guy had put his head round the rear of the car to take aim. Apart from that he’d shot the car up so that it looked like a shack that had been hit by a tornado, but there were still two armed men behind it. Plus Calvary in the Merc, and those losers in the VW, who didn’t look like much but who he knew were armed with at least one piece.
Sirens were massing in the direction of the river, probably on the other side but getting closer. He couldn’t be caught there, in the open.
Bartos grabbed the handgun from the passenger seat beside him, a Makarov he’d taken off one of the men guarding him in the back. He took it in his right hand, which he also used to grip the steering wheel, awkwardly. With his left hand he hefted the rifle across the dashboard so that the barrel protruded through the hole in the Hummer’s windscreen.
Then he put his foot down, aiming straight at the pickup, opening fire with the rifle as he advanced. Once he was sure he was on course he let go of the steering wheel and stuck his left hand out the window and began firing on the Russians and the car they were crouching behind.
*
The moment Calvary understood what Blažek was doing, he turned the ignition key of the truck, letting the clutch out too quickly and stalling it.
There wasn’t going to be a second chance.
He dived across Gaines and scrabbled for the door release on the passenger side and shoved the older man out, following him and rolling on the tarmac, feeling the slap of the car door against the very sole of his boot as the Hummer smashed into the pickup, not quite head on. The impact spun the truck on a vertical axis through almost one hundred and eighty degrees so that it was facing the opposite direction.
Calvary stumbled to his feet and peered about for Gaines, seeing him scrambling away.
He yelled, ‘Gaines, over here,’ and raised the Makarov. Blažek leaned out the window of the Hummer and fired. Calvary leaped and rolled, hearing the rapid fire raking off the tarmac, waiting for the bullets to rip across his back. He took cover beside the wrecked pickup, risked a glance round.
Saw Blažek hauling Gaines into the Hummer one handed, the rifle pointed now back towards the VW where Jakub was trying to get a shot in.
Gunfire was coming from somewhere else now, the Russians on the other side of the Hummer, but all of a sudden there wasn’t a Hummer there because Blažek had taken off. Calvary stood and saw the big vehicle rocketing away in the direction of the castle. He waved, frantic, to Nikola behind the wheel of the VW, saw the rear door flapping open even as the car swung close to him, and dived in beside Max.
*
‘Darya Yaroslavovna. Can you hear me?’
Usually the city’s lights, especially around the castle, made it hard to see the stars, but Krupina had a perfect view of them now. Something quick and sudden had happened and the darkness that veiled her eyes had vanished. There’d been some sort of impact, and the car was no longer over her.
There was no pain, at last. Just an overwhelming coldness.
Arkady’s face loomed pale and close. He was crouching over her, blood on his hands. She tried to ask him if he was all right. Then she angled her eyes down, saw that the blood was hers. Noticed something odd about her hips, the whole lower half of her body, in fact: it was twisted at right angles to the upper half.
‘Arkasha…’ She couldn’t remember his patronymic. Careless of her, and rude.
‘I have to get you away.’
From nearby came the singing of urban angels: the sirens of emergency vehicles.
It was too late. Arkady knew it; she could read it in his gaze.
Her boys. Arkady and Gleb. Her only constants in a treacherous world.
She gripped his hand in both of hers. Whispered, ‘Did you get him? The Englishman, Gaines?’
His eyes burned into hers.
‘Yes, Darya Yaroslavovna. We got him.’ A beat, then: ‘You’ve won.’
She closed her eyes.
A life well lived.
TWENTY-NINE
The giddiness Bartos had felt as he lurched out of the car and grabbed the s
kinny old guy was wiped away by the cold air blasting through the gap where the windscreen had been. The bonnet of the Hummer was stove in, one corner lifting like an old piece of lino, but the machine was still going, its rumble harshened to a roar.
I need to get myself one of these, he thought.
First things first. The old guy had tried to grab at the door handle and although Bartos had locked it centrally, he didn’t like this display of defiance and busted the man in the chops. He remembered to pull his blow – the guy looked seventy or more – but even so there was blood, and when the man slumped sideways Bartos worried for a moment that he was dead. He seized the man’s meagre hair and bellowed at him, shaking his head back and forth. The Brit stirred, mumbling. Bartos cuffed his face once more.
‘Pull that shit again and I will let you out. Straight into the river.’
In the mirror Calvary and his loser buddies were picking up speed. Their car wasn’t worth shit compared to the Hummer, but they had the advantage of a vehicle that hadn’t been in two collisions.
He was heading south west, towards Mala Strana, the Lesser Town. A big, fast car wasn’t much use there among all the cobbled streets. Plus, the sirens were all around. The cops would be looking for a car of the Hummer’s description; it was one that would have stuck in witnesses’ minds. Best to ditch it.
Bartos yanked the wheel to the left, took a steep winding street at almost one hundred kilometres an hour, doing some serious damage to the side panels against the narrow stone walls. He banked right again, saw a dead end ahead with a railing and a drop beyond it, slammed on the brakes and killed the engine.
He jumped down, came round to the passenger side and dragged Gaines out, the pistol pressed against his head. Bartos reached back into the car for the rifle, which he hoisted awkwardly over his shoulder. Clamping his hand over the old man’s mouth, he marched him back up to the end of the side street. The mouth of a tiny alley, so narrow it could barely fit them both, loomed blackly.
