Retribution

by Retribution (retail) (epub)

  So Richter floored the accelerator pedal, but at the same moment he swung the steering wheel hard round to the right and aimed the car directly at the man with the Kalashnikov. That immediately shortened the distance between himself and the gunman, but it also placed an additional biggish lump of heavy metal – the Vauxhall’s diesel engine – in front of him. Nothing like as efficient as armour plating, obviously, but possibly enough to stop a 7.62mm bullet. Perhaps even enough to stop a salvo of such rounds. Or that was what he hoped. And there was one other factor that might help him survive the encounter.

  As Richter turned the car, the gunman opened fire. The Kalashnikov is not the most accurate weapon in the world, with most expert marksmen finding it difficult to achieve much better accuracy than a six-inch group at a range of one hundred yards, and firing prone. But at a distance of around ten yards, accuracy, even against a moving target, was never going to be a problem.

  Bullets slammed into the front of the car as the distance closed between the vehicle and the gunman, the staccato clamour of the automatic weapon shockingly loud in the quiet of the lane. The first rounds stitched a pattern across the front of the Vauxhall, ugly holes instantly appearing in the bonnet. The point of aim rose, as it always does when an assault rifle is fired on full automatic.

  As the first bullets hit the car, Richter grabbed the bottom of the steering wheel and threw his torso sideways to lie across the passenger seat, where he hoped the metal of the engine would protect him. As he did so, he took a final glance to ensure the Vauxhall was heading the right way, and kept his foot rammed down as hard as possible on the accelerator pedal.

  Three bullets ripped through the laminated glass windscreen and buried themselves somewhere at the back of the car. Or maybe went right through it. Richter had no idea where they went, and cared less. He was more concerned with taking out the shooter, and even the sudden stabbing pain in his right side – undeniable proof that at least one of the bullets or a ricochet had found its mark – didn’t distract him from that.

  When he’d steered the car around the bend, Richter had been in second gear and accelerating steadily, his speed about twenty-five miles an hour. Cars fitted with turbocharged diesel engines can accelerate very quickly if the engine is running at the appropriate revolutions, and the Astra’s engine had been at pretty much the optimum rev range when Richter planted his heavy right foot on the accelerator pedal. Because of that, by the time the car reached the opposite side of the road it was doing over thirty.

  The right front side of the Vauxhall smashed into the rear wheel of the Honda, toppling the bike over onto its side. The front wheel of the Astra completed the job, buckling the rear wheel of the motorcycle beyond repair. And a split second after that, the front of the car made contact with Richter’s primary target, the Kalashnikov-wielding biker. The front bumper smashed into his knees, slamming his body down onto the bonnet of the car, and an instant later his head crashed into the windscreen, the assault rifle tumbling from his hands. The car continued forward another three or four feet, then jerked to a stop when it met the unyielding concrete gatepost. The engine raced for second, then spluttered into silence.

  Richter saw none of that, the explosion of the airbag from the steering wheel filling his vision, and the right-hand side of the car, with a huge and softly impenetrable white balloon. He sat more or less upright, pressed the seatbelt release with his left hand while he pulled out the Browning with his right. Then he scrambled across to the passenger side of the car, grabbed the handle and pushed the left-hand door open.

  Standing upright seemed like a really bad idea, because that would expose him immediately to the gunman – at that moment Richter had no idea whether the car had hit the man or just his motorbike – and the increasing crescendo of pain from his right hand side meant he probably wouldn’t make it if he tried. So he more or less crawled out of the car, keeping low down, close to the ground, and headed towards the rear of the vehicle.

  Holding the Browning in front of him like some kind of lethal talisman, the safety catch off and with his left hand holding his right wrist to provide triangulation and a stable shooting platform, he peered around the right-hand side of the vehicle.

  He saw the mangled motorcycle a few feet in front of him, the smashed front of the Astra wrapped around the gatepost, and steam rising from the bonnet of the car. But what he didn’t see was the gunman. And that worried him.

  He shifted his gaze slightly, and saw that the rear window of the Astra had been blown out, and through the jagged opening left by the collapse of the safety glass, he could see a vague lumpy shape on the bonnet of the car. It could be that he’d hit the gunman and killed him with the vehicle. Alternatively, the gunman might just be crouching at the front of the car waiting for him to show himself, so he could finish him off with a quick burst from his Kalashnikov.

  There was only one way to find out.

  Richter moved cautiously to his left, keeping all his attention focused on the shape he could see, but after a few seconds he relaxed slightly, because he’d just seen the assault rifle lying on the ground on the left-hand side of the vehicle. He ignored the weapon, and walked forward a few paces, the Browning extended in front of him, until he could clearly see the biker.

  He looked dead, his head lying at an unnatural angle, which probably meant his neck had broken when he was propelled headfirst into the windscreen. When Richter checked for a pulse in his neck, he felt nothing.

  Only then did he glance down at his own body, because survival in Richter’s world was always a matter of priorities.

  The right-hand side of his shirt and jacket were sodden with blood, and a tentative and screamingly painful exploration of the wound with his left hand suggested it was an in and out, and hopefully the bullet had missed hitting any vital organs. It hurt – Jesus did it hurt – but his side already felt slightly numb and he knew he could function. At least for a while until blood loss became a problem.

  But right then he had other matters on his mind, because he heard the sound of an approaching vehicle and instantly made the connection with the Ford, two-up, that he’d noticed following behind him.

  And he didn’t believe for a second that the men in the car and the motorbike rider weren’t connected.

  Chapter 5

  If the man on the bike had been carrying a Kalashnikov, Richter had to assume that the two men in the car were probably equally well-armed, so not only was he wounded, but he was also outnumbered and outgunned. On the other hand, there was something he could do about that.

  He reached out and grabbed the unmoving figure by the right arm and turned him over onto his back. As Richter had guessed, in the voluminous inside pocket of his leather motorcycle jacket were two full magazines for an AK-47: the weapon ran through ammunition so fast that virtually everyone who used the assault rifle carried at least a couple of spares. He grabbed them, staggered around to the side of the car where the Kalashnikov had ended up, picked up the weapon and as quickly as he could, walked away from the Vauxhall into the field.

  It was bordered by a substantial hedge, and he ducked down behind a shrub that offered a certain amount of concealment. Then he removed the magazine from the Kalashnikov and snapped one of the full ones into place. There was already a round in the breach so he didn’t need to pull back the charging handle, but he did change the position of the fire selector lever because he wanted the weapon on semi-automatic, not automatic, operation.

  Unusually, on the Kalashnikov the fire selector is a large lever on the right-hand side which has three positions: up means safe, the mid position is fully automatic and semi-automatic selection is fully down. The reason for this arrangement is that in the stress of battle a soldier is more likely to push the lever from the safe position and all the way down before pulling the trigger. That means that when he fires it he won’t empty the 30-round magazine in roughly 3 seconds, which the Kalashnikov can achieve with its cyclic rate of fire of 600 rounds a minute. On fu
ll auto, the weapon is impossible to aim accurately. Great for firing into a crowded bar or some other soft target, but useless in a situation where every shot needed to count. Like a wounded man crouching in a field and probably facing two armed attackers, for example.

  Moments later, the noise of the car engine Richter had heard stopped abruptly, and he used his ears to try to work out what was going on, because he could see nothing useful through the hedge.

  Two muffled clicks suggested that both car doors had been opened, and voices speaking softly in a language he couldn’t identify more or less confirmed his suspicion about the occupants of the pursuing vehicle. Two innocent travellers in a car who encountered a crash scene anything like the smashed-up Vauxhall would be speaking loudly and urgently – and in English – to each other, and probably dialling triple nine on a mobile to scramble the emergency services. And the sound of a pair of automatic weapons being cocked, virtually simultaneously, was exactly what he had expected to hear.

  Richter aimed the Kalashnikov at the gateway and waited.

  Then a sudden spike of agony from the gunshot wound seared through his body and despite himself, despite the absolute need to keep as quiet as possible, he let out a moan of pain and clutched at his side. Then he regained control, wiped the blood off his left hand onto the grass – blood is slippery, and he needed complete control of the weapon – and seized the assault rifle again.

  The noise he’d made had obviously been heard by the two men, because Richter heard a brief word of command, followed by complete silence, and he had a very good idea what they were likely to do next. They would now know more or less where he was, and a glance into the car would probably tell them that he was already wounded because there would be blood on the seat. He was sure that they would be cautious in what they did next, because they would also know that the bike rider’s assault rifle was missing, and they would assume that he had it. So they’d probably try for a two-pronged approach, one of them checking the field to see if he was anywhere in sight, while the second man would work his way down the other side of the hedge.

  They’d be trying to catch him in the crossfire between the two of them, and if they did, that would probably be that. He could move, but not very fast, or very far. He had to finish this as quickly as he could.

  What he needed was a distraction. Something to get them looking in the wrong direction for just a few seconds.

  Richter stared through the tangle of leaves and branches at the base of the hedge. He saw no sign of either man, which told him that they were being particularly cautious in their approach. But then he did see movement. Not through the hedge, but just inside the field by the open gateway. A faint shadow glimpsed through the foliage. And then, behind that barely perceptible movement, he saw something else: the black shape of the wrecked Honda, driven several feet backwards by the impact from the Vauxhall minutes earlier.

  He could make out the shape of the saddle and the handlebars, clearly bent out of alignment, and – more importantly – the fuel tank. And it looked to Richter as if petrol was already beginning to leak out of it, maybe from a crack in the metal or a ruptured fuel pipe. That would certainly provide the distraction he needed, and maybe shorten the odds at the same time.

  Moving as little as he possibly could, both to avoid making any noise that would help pinpoint his position and to avoid aggravating the wound in his side, he adjusted the aim of the Kalashnikov, pointing the weapon directly at the fuel tank. Then he gently squeezed the trigger.

  The flat crack of the shot, an assault on the silence of the afternoon, was followed almost immediately by a roar from the open gateway as the fuel tank of the Honda exploded, spraying burning fuel in all directions. Richter had no idea whether the fuel had exploded as a direct result of the hot bullet penetrating the tank, or if it had struck some solid metal part of the bike to create a spark which had caused the ignition. And frankly he didn’t care.

  A split second later, a scream echoed from somewhere near the gateway, and a dark-haired man, the upper part of his trousers burning fiercely, lurched into the field and collapsed to the ground, rolling over and over on the grass, desperately trying to extinguish the flames.

  He was no longer a threat and so Richter ignored him, concentrating his full attention on trying to locate the second man, who he knew had to be somewhere behind the hedge.

  But he saw no sign nor sound of him, and as a wave of dizziness passed through his body, the inevitable result of the blood he was losing, Richter knew he had to somehow get him to show himself. And quickly.

  And just maybe the Kalashnikov he was holding could help him achieve that, simply because of the way it worked, and because of one other factor. Actually, two other factors, one of which depended upon exactly how observant the two men had been when they arrived at the crash site. If they’d checked the body of the biker, his vague plan probably wouldn’t work because they would know he’d removed the two spare magazines for the Kalashnikov.

  As silently as he could, he operated the release and removed the curved thirty-round magazine from the assault rifle. The weapon was still loaded, with one round in the chamber, and he aimed it in the general direction of the gateway and pulled the trigger.

  All semi-automatic weapons work in exactly the same way. When the last round has been fired, the action locks open. Pulling the trigger will do nothing, because the trigger is also locked. The clicking sound described by many thriller writers to indicate a trigger pull after the last round has been fired is simply a figment of their imagination. But the sound made by the action locking in place is distinctive, and people who are familiar with such weapons can hear and recognise this for what it actually means: that at least for a few seconds, the man holding the gun is effectively disarmed.

  The only way to keep using it is to discard the empty magazine, insert a new one and pull back the slide or cocking lever to chamber a fresh round. All that takes time, precious seconds, which is why in a combat situation, soldiers and special forces personnel are trained to count the rounds they have fired and remove the magazine before it’s empty and insert a full one.

  Richter hoped that the man looking for him would have heard the sound of the action locking and reached the correct conclusion. To reinforce the impression that he was now unarmed, he muttered a curse in a voice just loud enough to carry for a few yards.

  Moments later, a figure stepped through the hedge a few yards in front of him, his Kalashnikov aimed directly at Richter, who had manoeuvred himself into a sitting position.

  That, of course, was the gamble. He’d hoped that the second man would want to be sure of his shot before he fired, and because of the terrain and the hedge, that meant he would need to expose himself, simply to be able to see exactly where Richter was.

  The man looked at the Kalashnikov lying at Richter’s side, the magazine on the ground beside it, and smiled. ‘Goodbye, Mr Richter,’ he said, took a couple of paces forward and adjusted his aim.

  Then a frown passed over his face, and Richter knew he’d seen that the magazine he’d removed from the AK-47 wasn’t empty, and possibly then, at that last instant of his life, realised he’d walked into a trap.

  And at that moment Richter fired two shots from the Browning he was holding in his right hand, out of sight of his attacker. The classic double tap, used by the police and military around the world to put down an opponent. No fancy stuff. No head shots, because it’s far too easy to miss. Just two rounds, one immediately after the other, and both aimed for the centre of mass, the torso.

  The first round slammed into the man’s stomach. The second hit him about six inches higher, drilling through his ribs and tearing his heart to pieces. For about a second, he stood there, quite literally dead on his feet, then tumbled backwards and lay still.

  Richter listened for a few seconds, alert for the slightest noise that might indicate there’d been a third man in the car, then he picked up the Kalashnikov, replaced the magazine and cocked the weap
on, just in case.

  He leaned back against the hedge, laid the Kalashnikov across his legs and put the Browning on the ground to his right, where it would be immediately accessible if he needed it. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out his mobile phone and used the speed dial facility to call Simpson.

  Halfway through his short conversation, the man in the field who’d suffered severe petrol burns to his legs staggered to his feet and picked up his assault rifle.

  Richter dropped the phone, aimed the Kalashnikov and fired three shots at him. One of them obviously missed, but two found their mark and he fell backwards to lie still.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Simpson demanded when Richter picked up his mobile again.

  ‘That was the third man,’ Richter replied. ‘He wasn’t quite as dead as I thought he was. Now could you stop asking stupid questions and get me some help.’

  Chapter 6

  About five minutes after he’d ended the call, Richter heard a brief squeal of tyres on the road behind him, followed by the slamming of a car door and urgent footsteps crossing the tarmac. He guessed it was probably a member of the public who’d seen the wreckage of the Vauxhall and stopped to see if he or she could help, but he picked up the Kalashnikov again, just in case.

  A minute or so after that, a middle-aged man wearing corduroy trousers and a tweed jacket walked into the field and looked around. His mouth dropped open when he saw the two bodies, and in a kind of reflex action he raised his arms above his head when he spotted Richter sitting against the hedge, holding an assault rifle and with an automatic pistol on the ground beside him.