by Chris Ryan
Her eyes fell on the carpet.
‘I’m joking, lass. You’re just in time. I ordered room service for two.’ He popped the core into his mouth, pips, stem and all. ‘Hope you like fish, but I figured you spend most of your life on a boat.’
She smelled onion and tuna. Her tummy growled. God, I’m hungry, she realized. What with the hurry to unload the cocaine, she hadn’t touched a morsel of food in the past twenty-four hours.
The room had a Twenties-style wooden desk and chair, a salmon-coloured carpet and an Oriental ceiling fan that threw out waves of cool air. She propped herself on the edge of the bed and picked at food on a tray: white onion risotto, roasted sea scallops, seared bluefin tuna, all of it smelling delicious. John slid the laptop out of the case and laid it on the desk. He fetched a screwdriver from the drawer and removed the screws at the base of the unit. Off came the cover. Inside, where a tangle of cables and circuit boards ought to have been, was a neat row of white tubes.
‘That’s everything?’
‘Uh, let me see. No, I decided to keep some so I could go into dealing.’ Wright rolled her eyes, picked at a scallop. ‘Of course it’s the lot. Unless you want to count and weigh ’em.’
‘No, I believe you. Honestly, you did good.’
The voice was accompanied by a hand sliding across the middle of her back. She flinched a little. Flinched because his hands were colder than those of any man she’d known. A little, because she knew that resisting John was a bad idea. This wasn’t part of the original deal, but the first night they rendezvoused in Rio, she’d been drunk and off guard and curious about the imposing Scotsman with the dark past and the darker features. She knew better now. But now was too late.
He let her unbutton her shirt and take off her shoes. A small mercy. She spent a couple of minutes undressing down to her panties and bra. It took far longer than she’d otherwise have done.
‘When you get into something,’ her mother had once told her, her face all puffed up, ‘it’s hard to pull yourself out of it.’
There were men who liked it rough, and there was John. He ripped off her bra at the seams. He was playful at first, because that’s how he liked to start things. Then he slapped her. Then he smacked her. When they were both fully naked, he pushed close to her and gripped her neck with a gnarled hand. As she struggled to breathe he whispered in her ear the unspeakable things he’d do to her if she ever dared betray him.
She could hardly breathe as John fucked her. But she knew if she resisted, he’d only tighten his grip. She let him do his worst. He fucked her hard and his grip only loosened when he finally came inside her. Three minutes that felt more like thirty. She got through it by picturing herself disappearing out that hotel door and into the night, fifty grand in her back pocket. A new life.
The bed sighed as he rolled off her. Then she heard the jangle of his belt buckle as he slipped on his jeans.
‘I need to go,’ she said, her voice cracking like thin ice. ‘We’re off again tomorrow morning and all hands have to be on board by 0300.’
No response.
‘You’ve got my money, right?’
‘Right here,’ John said, patting a travel bag resting on the armchair. He smiled at her. ‘Relax. No one’s suspected you of anything, have they?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘No, they haven’t. Or else you’d have been detained by the police. Look at it this way: you’re about to be £50,000 richer than you were this morning. All in all, that’s not a bad deal.’
‘I guess.’
‘The Navy plays such an important role in the war on drugs. Ironic when you think about it.’
‘Yeah,’ she said distantly.
‘All the time the Lizard’s seizing shipments, they’ve got the jackpot right on board.’
She stood up. The white bedsheet stroked her figure.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘Shower,’ she said.
Hot water stabbed her skin. She blinked soapy water out of her eyes and saw a shape through the frosted-glass frame, half pink and half blue. John. What the fuck did that arsehole want now? Wright tugged on the cubicle slider. The glass revealed John grinning at her. Yes, grinning. Like she was the butt of some terrible joke.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing,’ he said.
The first punch knocked her backwards, water cascading on top of her. She tried to get up, but another fist to the face flattened her. Teeth loosened. Blood swam across her line of sight. Each blow vibrated around her skull. He punched and punched. Her world darkened to a bloody twilight.
She blacked out.
Woke up with no sense of time, or place. But she remembered John’s face. He planned to kill her. Too badly injured to move, she moaned as John drew a razor blade across one of her wrists, then the other.
That man will be the death of me, her mother had said of her father.
The following week she died in a car crash.
That man will—
7
2222 hours.
At its most south-easterly point Sir Herbert Road abruptly ended and the Rock became a sheer cliff, offering no passage along the south coast. Gardner knew he had no choice but to loop back north along the Devil’s Tower Road. With Terry Gill already en route to the King’s Hotel, Gardner needed to be there fucking yesterday. On foot wouldn’t cut it.
A Ford Focus drifted towards him. The only car in sight. He hid the Sig behind his back and ambled into the middle of the road. The Focus came to a halt eight metres from Gardner, the headlights blinding him. Shielding his eyes with his left hand, he scoped the driver. Male, balding, forties. Beer gut threatening to burst out of his buttoned-up Hawaiian shirt. No threat.
‘Help you?’ the guy said as he stepped on to the road and approached Gardner.
‘Give me your car.’
‘Oh shit.’
The man was determined to leg it. By the time he’d returned to the car and flung open the door, Gardner had whipped out the Sig. The gun snatched the guy’s attention. He paused, one foot inside the car, his body shivering with fear.
‘Don’t… don’t kill me. I have a wife and two daughters.’
‘Make yourself scarce then.’
The man ran towards the beach faster than his fat body had ever run. Gardner hopped into the car and raced back up Devil’s Tower Road and down Winston Churchill Avenue. He dumped the wheels outside the King’s Hotel and scrambled up the steps.
The automatic doors couldn’t open quickly enough. A woman at reception asked if she could help him.
‘Maintenance,’ he shouted back to her as he broke through the emergency doors to the right of reception, then bolted up the stairs. Screw this one up and you can wave goodbye to a future in the Regiment, he told himself.
I won’t.
Three flights up. His calves and quads had healed since the gruelling slog through the favela, muscle fibres enlarging as they repaired themselves. He scaled the treads effortlessly. His palms depressed the crash bar. The door obliged.
He faced a wide corridor, musty and air-conned and flanked by a series of rooms. A sign on the beige wall indicated left for rooms 30–34 and straight ahead for 35–39. So, the fifth door. Forty metres, end of the corridor, next to the lift.
Gill was standing outside room 39. His left hand rested on the door knob. In his right was a Glock 9mm pistol, a Gemtech Tundra suppressor fixed to the end of the barrel and a GTL-22 tactical light attached to the underside, shining a white-hot spotlight on the carpet. The bang of the crash bar had alerted him. His head shot up. His face did a flip book of emotions as Gardner unhooked the P228 from his jeans.
Thirty-five metres and closing. Gill raised the Glock. Gardner knew he had to peel off a shot before the Glock was fully level: the tactical light acted as a powerful flashlight to disorientate targets, and would blind him when he fired.
Twenty-five metres. Gardner went for the shot.
Ca-rack!
Gill hissed as the bullet pinged his Glock, knocking it from his hand. He gripped his wrist with his left hand.
‘What the fuck?’
‘Step away, Terry.’
‘Fuck it. Get it over with then.’
Gardner would have happily pulled the trigger. But first he wanted to find out the link between Gill and Hands. Killen’s waffle about the blood-diamond gig didn’t ring true, because Hands had been blacklisted on the Circuit for a good few years. He was more likely to be down the bookies’ in Dagenham than in some African hell-hole.
‘How the fuck did you find me?’
‘I met Johnny and Eddie. On a fishing trip.’
Gill grunted. Time hadn’t been kind to the ex-Para. His muscles were flabby, his pecs drooping halfway to man-boobs. Love handles sloped out at his sides. His ginger hair was thinning, the whites of his eyes grey and dull.
‘Who hooked you up with Dave Hands?’ Gardner asked. ‘Killen and Stone reckoned you met on some diamond job, but them boys talk such shit.’
‘Fucking do one.’
Gill glimpsed the Glock lying two metres behind him. He has any bright ideas, the walls get a fresh lick of paint.
A click to Gardner’s six o’clock. The noise distracted him and he half-turned, spotting a woman in his peripheral vision as she ran out of her room. ‘He’s got a gun!’ she screamed.
Gill shoulder-barged the walnut door of room 39. Busted it and lunged through the gap.
Gardner hesitated. John can’t know you’re alive, he told himself. But if I don’t stop Gill, he’s a dead man.
He had no choice, and dived inside with the Sig close to his chest, the elbow of his shooting arm tucked in at his side.
He expected to find Gill. But the room was pitch-black. A strip of light from the bathroom outlined the bed, desk, wardrobe. Then he saw movement ahead. He steadied himself, depressed the trigger a little, and as his eyes adjusted he made out net curtains flapping like a dress above an air vent. The doors leading on to the balcony were open.
Gardner stilled his breath. Heard blood rushing in his ears. Stepped deeper into the hotel room. It looked for all the world like Bald had jumped.
He felt a pressure in his right ear. The horizon slid like a boat on its beam ends and next thing he knew, his head was crashing into the wardrobe. Gill.
The fucker stood in the bathroom doorway. He swung a boot at Gardner’s torso. Something cracked. He felt a rush of air shoot up his windpipe, and, shit, everything hurt.
Gill gave it everything he had and then some. He stomped on Gardner’s right hand, grinding the knuckles under his heel.
He then started to aim a kick at Gardner’s gut. But the slow backlift gave Gardner enough time to expel the air in his body. He pushed out his abs, honed by years of crunches, creating a rock-solid wall between his stomach and Gill’s Caterpillar. The blow was painful, steel toecaps meeting hard flesh, but it didn’t knock him for six.
Gardner took a hold of the leg pressing down on his gut, flung it high into the air, shoulder and forearm muscles working overtime. Gill unbalanced. Fell flat on his arsehole.
In for the kill.
Gill had his fingers on the brass threshold in the bathroom doorway when Gardner gave him the good news, grabbing hold of a clump of his thinning hair and yanking his head up. Then he brought it down to the floor. Hard. Again. Three, four, five times. Six, seven. Until the carpet was a Sangria stain.
Gill launched a hand at Gardner’s face, fingers crawling over his neck and mouth like angry spiders. Then Gardner saw he had something in his other hand – a four-inch Sebenza blade. He crunched Gill’s wrist with his Timberland, forcing him to release the knife.
‘Stupid cunt,’ he breathed into the guy’s face.
But he’s not going to give up, a voice warned him. It’s him or you.
He kicked Gill in the face to daze him, then hauled his body into the bathroom, the fucker clawing at his legs. A year of being forced to rely on his right arm for heavy lifting had strengthened Gardner’s biceps, triceps and flexors on that side, but he still found Gill a heavy load. Steroid-pumped muscles surrounded by several inches of boozy fat made it feel like dragging a two-ton truck. Gardner was breathless by the time he dumped Gill by the toilet. As he sucked in air he felt the entire valley of his ribcage sting.
Gill wasn’t stupid: the old Para could see what was coming as Gardner stunned him with an elbow to the jaw. Lifting the toilet seat, Gardner thrust him head-first into the can. Forced him down far enough that his face was submerged in piss water. Pressed a boot to the nape of his neck and nailed his head in place. Gill thrashed about. But Gardner’s control was total. He held his stance and listened to the life gurgle out of the man’s mouth.
Gill’s hands flapped wildly in mid-air. His legs kicked back and forth. Gardner stayed firm. The bowl water reddened.
After a minute, Gill shit his pants.
Gardner was getting impatient.
‘Fucking die,’ he shouted.
Gill gargled furiously.
Two minutes and his arms flopped by his side. His legs slowed.
At the three-minute mark, Gill was dead.
Gardner hoisted his leg clear from the toilet. Hit the flush button. His foot was drenched with piss and bloodied water, and the air stank of shit and citrus. For a moment he stood numb in the bathroom, staring at the corpse as a torrent of water splashed over the back of his head. By now the stinging pain in Gardner’s ribcage was sounding a high-pitched note that drilled holes in the sides of his skull.
No time to waste. You’ve got to follow John. He’s got – what? – four minutes’ head start on you? Maybe more. Got to find him.
Then something caught his eye. Across his right shoulder he noticed the shower cubicle for the first time. The frosted-glass door was closed, but a pink blotch lingered behind, like a cut of stained glass.
Gardner opened the door. Fought the urge to vomit.
He’d seen his fair share of dead bodies in his time. The Wren in the cubicle, however, was worse than anything the Taliban or insurgents did to their women. A cavity existed where her face was supposed to be. A gorge of bones, torn lips and eyeballs sunk in the middle. Her neck, chest and arms were branded with purple bruises. Dried blood on her wrists like wax seals. The woman squatted in an inch of her own blood; the plughole blocked with clumps of hair ripped from her scalp.
Fucking hell, John. What have you done?
He had no time to be shocked. Police sirens carried through the open balcony. You need to bug out, and fast.
Bald must have jumped, he figured. That meant he was out in the streets. Exposed. And what, another voice said, if Bald hadn’t survived? They were on the third floor, a good sixty metres off the ground on a steep slope.
Get downstairs now. If you’re quick, you might be able to trace him.
He scooped up the Sig, nabbed Gill’s Glock for good measure and tucked it into his jeans, then made a beeline for the emergency exit.
No time to lose.
The door opened before he got to it.
A figure thrust out from the stairwell.
8
2300 hours.
Gardner reckoned the guy was the hotel manager. Well over six foot tall, blue-suited and with carefully managed stubble and rimless glasses, he looked every inch the officious thirtysomething with a corporate pension plan shoved up his arse.
Then Gardner’s eyes scrolled down from the single-breasted black jacket and clocked the crowbar in his right hand.
The bar was on a one-way trip to his face.
His fighting instincts took control as he jerked his left arm up to protect his face. The crowbar connected with prosthetic tissue and, though he had no sensation in the myoelectric limb, Gardner felt a sort of shudder in his elbow on impact.
Shudder – but no pain. Mr Crowbar’s face lit up like a distress flare at the sight of Gardner remaining upright. No agonized cry. No recoil.
&
nbsp; No second chance. With his fake hand Gardner swept the crowbar aside. He shaped to give the guy a Glasgow Kiss, arched his head back, tensing his neck muscles, tucking his chin into his neck – and flicked his head forward and up. The forehead nearest his hairline presented the thickest bone on his skull and made for a fearsome weapon. He directed it up towards the tip of the guy’s nose, a prime spot to land a knockout blow.
He heard the snap of a branch being wrenched from a tree. The guy’s nose looked as if he’d snorted a spark plug. He stumbled sideways, backwards.
But Mr Crowbar returned with a vengeance, nailing Gardner with a flat-handed strike to his face. It felt like someone had clipped a couple of jump leads to his cheeks as he stumbled backwards with the force of the punch and crashed into room 36. The door shrieked as it swung back on its hinges, and in the belly of the room a naked woman jumped out of the bed. Both men had dropped their weapons in the struggle. The Sig and Glock were now five metres away, well out of reach of the combatants. The woman reeled away from the guns in horror, as if they were pythons.
A bloated, hairy-backed boyfriend took in Gardner, Mr Crowbar, the two guns – and locked himself in the bathroom, leaving his screaming girlfriend raging at the door.
Mr Crowbar shoved Gardner back, sending him on a collision course with a dinner tray. Glasses, knives and forks clattered.
For someone so tall, Mr Crowbar had agility to spare. He rushed forward in a stretched blur. Gardner had no time to protect himself.
Above the woman’s scream, Mr Crowbar’s counterattack was deadly swift. He delivered a groin kick to Gardner’s balls. Fists hard as kettlebells unleashed in an unbroken stream – a chisel punch to the trench of Gardner’s throat, a low blow to his knees. It seemed as if he were fighting an endless riptide.
But the guy seemed anxious about moving in too close. He encircled Gardner, kicking his knees. Lowered a straightened leg down on to his chest like the blade of an axe. Mr Crowbar’s heel collided with his ribcage.
Another kick. This time Gardner was ready. He chopped his right hand across the floor, cutting down his opponent’s standing foot. The guy slipped, tripped, fell. Gardner picked himself up and Mr Crowbar was back on his feet too.
