Truly Deadly: The Complete Series: (YA Spy Thriller Books 1-5)

by Rob Aspinall

  “I’m not the one with the extra padding. You don’t need Kevlar with that thing.”

  “Hey, it’s all muscle, son,” the Yorkshireman said, slapping his belly. “There’s a right six pack under here.”

  “Yeah, a six pack of lager.”

  “Cheeky bastard,” the Yorkshireman said.

  The younger one backed up towards the top of the stairs, laughing. I had a split second to think. To act. Did I fight? Did I run? I was stranded and either action would raise the alarm. If I lay here, on the other hand, it would mean exactly the same result. My body shook with panic. What in shitballs now?

  8

  No Way Out

  Thud.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  Come on already.

  The Scandinavian took an age to walk down those stairs. Every step a full second. A second extra for my hands to hold on. My fingers to struggle for grip on the varnished wood. I hung in plain sight for anyone on the ground floor to see. Luckily for me, they were all in other rooms, finishing up. The guy plodded lazily, bin bag in hand, until he reached the foot of the stairs. I saw him through the gaps in the steps. He stopped to pop some chewy in his mouth.

  Meanwhile, I clung on desperately, legs dangling five feet off the empty hallway space beneath the stairs. I’d squeezed through the gap between steps, just in time. My hands were aching from the pressure, slipping a little further each time. I had no choice but to hang tough and quiet until Mr Slow exited the hallway. If he looked in my direction, I was dead. But instead, he stepped into the kitchen. I heard him ask the female cleaner if there was anything good to eat in the fridge.

  “No,” she said. “Not unless you fancy an empty jar of pickles and a pint of off milk.”

  Way to live, Philippe.

  I let my grip slide and dropped to the floor below, bending at the knees into a squat to cushion the bump of my feet on the floor. I ran back around the staircase and skipped quietly up. The Yorkshireman was in the bathroom to the left end of the landing, whistling. I darted right. One bedroom. Two bedroom. Bingo! Study. I eased the door shut behind me. It was a boxy room in plain sight of Philippe’s position on the hill. There was a chair and a computer desk with space for a laptop, plus a shelf unit stuffed with books and a painting of the lake.

  I lifted the painting off its hook and put it down, revealing a solid metal safe in the wall with a keypad. I punched in the combination Philippe had given me. The door whirred open. Inside was a stainless-steel flask. But no key. No nothing. What? I didn’t get it. I picked up the flask and held it up in front of the window for Philippe to see, wherever he was. All I saw were trees and bushes. I pointed at the flask and shrugged. I guess it was inside the flask. An extra security measure. I was about to unscrew the top when I heard a noise. The Yorkshireman whistling. If he came in now, I was a sitting duck. I closed the door to the safe and hung the painting back on the wall. I tugged at the handle on the window. Locked. You needed a key, which was very helpfully elsewhere. The whistling was getting louder, closer. Right outside the door now. The Yorkshireman was coming in any moment. And I was standing here like a total lemon. No way out and nowhere to go.

  The Yorkshireman pushed through the door. He dumped a refuse bag on the floor in the middle of the study and looked around, latex hands on hips. I noticed he was a little thin on top, his hair combed over to cover it. His head stopped. He’d noticed the painting. Put back at a slightly jaunty angle. Shit. It was a tiny error, but he’d know. He’d know something was off. I saw the outline of his weapon and bulletproof vest under his overalls. He moved over to the painting. Paused, then straightened it out. He stepped back and nodded to himself. He slipped an earphone in either ear. Went back to whistling. Singing. Moved over to the bookshelf, his back to me, where I suspended above the doorway in the most awkward position possible. My hands and feet were starting to wobble – left hand pressed against the ceiling, the other pressed against the wall behind the open door. Knees bent and the soles of my feet pushing against the adjoining wall. I’d tucked the flask in the waistband of my jeans, handily a size too big.

  Slowly, achingly, I took my left hand off the ceiling and gripped the door. I pushed off the wall with my feet and brought my right hand around so I had hold of the door frame. I lowered myself down slowly. He didn’t see or hear me touch down on the floor. I tip-toed out of the study and hurried towards the stairs, thinking I could skip down them fast and out of the front door before the cleaning team knew what was what. I’d skirt around the side of the house and pick up my trainers once I was out around back. Yep, that would have been a plan, except I heard feet slapping and rustling on the hard floors of the house. Ground floor, coming up the stairs. Two of them by the sounds of it. The Scandinavian guy and the woman, yakking about a nearby drive-through. I returned to the top of the stairs and stood flat against the wall, waiting for those footsteps to find me. Did I do the door trick again? How about the back bedroom window? I scampered off into the room. The window. It was locked too. Same deal as the study. I could slide under the bed, I thought. But, shit, it was one of those faux leather storage beds. No room underneath. I was stuck, the man and the woman hitting the landing. I got behind the door and peered through the tiny gap between hinges and frame. The woman was coming my way, looking over her shoulder at the Scandinavian.

  “You check the spare bedroom, I’ll double-check the master,” she said. “If we miss anything, we won’t hear the end of it.”

  Holy shit, this was it. Fight time. Get ready, Lorn.

  BANG! A gun shot echoed outside. It made me jump. It made the woman in the hallway spin around. The Scandinavian too. Even the Yorkshireman heard it, popping his head out of the study.

  “What was that?” the woman asked, zipping down the front of her suit and producing a handgun.

  The other two did the same and they shuffled to the top of the stairs as a three. I heard the black guy downstairs shouting up.

  “Rifle shot,” he said.

  “Stick your ugly mug out the door, there’s a good lad,” said the Yorkshireman.

  “No thanks,” the guy downstairs said. “I quite like my mug.”

  “I suppose someone’s got to,” the Yorkshireman said.

  “Let’s just wait a second,” said the Scandinavian guy.

  The three of them disappeared, moving down the staircase, discussing what to do. I came out from behind the bedroom door and snuck out into the hallway. This was my one and only chance. I flattened out against the wall once again near the top of the stairs and peered around the corner. The cleaners congregated by the front door.

  BANG! Another shot rang out. Philippe, surely. But either he wasn’t firing at the house, or he was the lousiest shot ever.

  “It’s just someone out hunting,” the Scandinavian said. “You get it a lot around here. Moose game is big business.”

  “Poor creatures,” the female cleaner said. “It’s disgusting.”

  “You’ve aware of a thing called irony, right?” said the black guy. “Bearing in mind what we do for a living.”

  Glad he said it, so I didn’t have to.

  “It’s different,” said the woman. “What has a moose done to anyone?”

  Nothing, you stupid cow. Just like Auntie Claire.

  While the cleaners chatted, I looked around for any possible exit strategy. Downstairs was out. Windows were a no-no. Put mildly, I was fucked. I looked to the heavens and blew air quietly out of my cheeks. I stopped mid-blow. There was a skylight in the roof. The handle didn’t have a lock. All I had to do was wait for them to make some noise.

  “Okay, back to the grindstone,” said the Yorkshireman.

  Feet came slowly thudding and rustling up the stairs again. I could jump without them hearing. On my first jump, I missed by a whisker. The second, I caught the handle, but my hand slipped off. Come on! I had one jump left before the cleaners hit the top step and found me in the hallway. I bent lower at the knees and gave it everything I h
ad.

  9

  Cold Storage

  I caught the skylight handle on my third go. Both hands. Twisting it open. Hanging off. Walking up the wall and wriggling my way through the tight space, just big enough. Suddenly, the flask slipped out of my jeans and fell. I reached down and caught it with a spare hand, the other still holding on to the skylight handle. I heaved myself up, along with the skylight, just as the cleaners reached the landing. I pulled it to, but didn’t lock it shut. I waited in still silence as the three of them broke off and went about their business in each upstairs room. Painfully slowly, I turned the skylight handle until it clicked. Okay, next problem. I was now on the roof, with a great view of the lake (and the ground). The slate roof slanted thirty degrees from left to right. It was wet, slippy, dangerous. And I was in my socks. I took them off and stuffed them in my pockets. I moved slowly, quietly, carefully towards the rear of the roof, not wanting to fall and not wanting to be heard. I edged forward, crouched low like an ape, spare hand acting like a third foot. I reached the back edge of the roof. Scanned the wall below. A square, steel drainpipe the only way down. Okay, Lorna, you can do this.

  I tucked the flask back in the waist of Agnes Holgersson’s jeans, the thought of me being thinner than a fourteen-year-old giving me some kind of oddball thrill at the most pointless of times. (I know, I know, I’m weird and I’m shallow as a puddle. I’m working on it.)

  I lowered myself over the edge of the roof, gripping the drainpipe so tight I thought it might crumple in my hands. That’s when my feet slipped. I hooked an arm around the drainpipe in a panic and hung there, legs swinging free. It wasn’t anywhere near as far up as the motorway bridge I’d hung off in Manchester, but it was far enough. The vertigo kicked in and the ground spun. I gripped on to the sides of the pipe with both feet. Okay, this was better. I lowered myself, inch by inch, coming down the left side of the master-bedroom window. I saw the female cleaner in there, storage drawers pulled out from beneath the bed, bent over rooting through Philippe’s stuff.

  I scooted down the pipe before she could see me, down the side of the glass door in the living room, touching down on the decking.

  The black guy was in the living room, flipping through a set of vinyl records. These guys really were thorough. I guess spies and assassins hid secret stuff in all kinds of nooks and crannies. The cleaner pulled a record out and peered inside a sleeve. Abba. Ha!

  While he wasn’t looking, I darted out across the sliding door and grabbed my pumps on the other side of the glass. I ran back the other way as softly as I could, down the steps and on to the rough paving stones that ran alongside the house. Then on to the cool, wet grass that led back to the hill I’d slid down earlier.

  Philippe had already squirrelled away his hunting rifle and covered the box with mud by the time I scrambled up to the top, pumps in hand.

  “Please tell me this is it,” I said, pulling the flask out of my jeans and tossing it over the roof of the Volvo.

  He caught it and climbed in the car.

  “This is it,” he said, wedging the flask in a plastic recess at the bottom of the dash.

  I plonked myself down in the passenger seat of the car. Philippe started the engine as I dried my feet off with a corner of the hospital blanket. He turned the Volvo around and we made off down the hill.

  “I heard gunfire,” I said. “Was that you?”

  “A couple of shots in the air,” Philippe said. “You looked like you could use a distraction.”

  We left the quaint surroundings of the lake and hit the main roads.

  “So why keep a key inside a flask?” I asked, slipping on my shoes without the damp socks. “A bit weird if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “But go ahead, open it.”

  I reached for the flask and unscrewed the lid on the top. It was stiff, but it opened. A wispy white cloud like dry ice poured out of the top. Freezing cold. The top was attached to something inside. I looked at Philippe.

  “What is this stuff?”

  “Liquid nitrogen. Take a look inside,” he said.

  I pulled the lid up to reveal a … oh, gross … a human eyeball with a pale-blue iris inside a clear plastic pouch. I turned my head away, ready to yak. “What the hell are you doing with an eyeball?”

  10

  Mobutu's Eyes

  “Shit.”

  “Talk to me, Alpha.”

  “I missed the shot. The big man’s in the house.”

  Clarence came on the radio. “Outside master bedroom. Electronic lock. Tripping the circuit.”

  “No wait,” Inge said. “Alpha?”

  “I’m on it,” I said, already unclipping what looked like a large, black tape measure from my belt with a metal buckle hanging out.

  The buckle was attached to the end of a thin, but very strong black cord. I hooked it on the wire mesh floor of the watchtower, clipped the contraption back onto my belt and hopped over the edge, as if it wasn’t the scariest thing ever.

  Three soldiers broke out of another building with rifles at the ready. Shit, we were rumbled. One cranked on a set of floodlights over the courtyard. They looked up towards the watchtower, shouting. But they saw me too late. My free hand was on my weapon. Phtum-phtum-phtum. All three down in the dirt in a neat pile. I approached the ground at terrifying speed, but pushed a button on the cord winder. It slowed me a second away from the ground, enough for me to land on two feet. I detached from the wire and ran to the back of the main house. In through the sliding door. Cool again. Dark. Fans beating softly. I trod as lightly as I could over the floorboards, rifle at the ready, green laser sweeping the house. The staircase was to my immediate right. I caught the tail of a whisper. Gold Teeth, halfway up the stairs with the other soldier. “I think I heard someone up here,” he said. “But don’t wake the general. It could be nothing.”

  Oh, it was something all right. As they moved into the first-floor hallway, they didn’t see or hear me come up the stairs behind them, little more than a fleeting shadow. I saw past them to the end of the hall, where Clarence was kneeling down by a large door padded in leather. Gold Teeth barked at him to stand and put his hands up. Clarence turned, ready to draw a back-up weapon from his belt.

  “Ah, ah,” said Gold Teeth, he and his soldier training their weapons on him.

  “Ah, ah yourself,” I said, coming up behind Gold Teeth.

  He spun to find a green dot zeroing in on his chest. “Keep your rifle aimed at the short one,” he said to his man, who did as he was told, keeping Clarence’s hands away from his holster.

  “Weapons down,” I said. “Now.”

  “No one’s putting nothing down, little man,” Gold Teeth said, his rifle pointed square at me.

  Okay, this was officially what’s known as a pickle.

  “What are you carrying?” I asked Gold Teeth. “An AK-103? Ex-Russian army? This is a next generation custom M4 rifle. Two years ahead of production. It will blow a hole in you and your boy before either of you can twitch. So I suggest you do the smart thing and put those second-hand pieces of shit down on the floor and back the fuck away.”

  Gold Teeth mulled it over. “Okay, little man. We put them down.”

  He and the other red beret placed their weapons down on the floor, never for one nanosecond taking their eyes off me and Clarence. I was all set for the inevitable moment when Philippe unburdened the global population by another two souls. But then this happened …

  “Boss!” a voice shouted from behind. Another soldier. Before he could fire, I spun and put a bullet in him. As I turned back around, Gold Teeth ripped the rifle from my hands, snapping the strap off my shoulder. No sooner had he got hold of it, I’d knocked it from his grip against the wall, while Clarence wrestled for control of the spare AK with the younger, smaller soldier.

  Gold Teeth cracked his knuckles and neck. “Time to bring the big guns out,” he said, slapping both biceps. “I’m gonna tear your fuckin’ head off, little man.”

&nbs
p; I braced myself for a beating, forgetting exactly whose body I was trapped in. As Gold Teeth swung a giant fist, I stepped in low and wedged a flat hand up hard under his ribcage. He coughed and dropped to one knee. I put a hand against either temple and snapped his head fast and hard to the left. Oh God, the sound of it. A deep, bony crack I still can’t forget.

  Gold Teeth flopped sideways. I looked over at the young soldier, his eyes rolling into the back of his head – Clarence choking him out and letting him drop to the floor. I picked up my rifle and moved to the padded door. There was a panel on the wall that Clarence had been toying with. He’d pulled out the wires from behind the keypad and went back to stripping and fusing them. They sparked and smoked and the door clunked. We pushed it open. It weighed a solid steel tonne and revealed a room so hideously opulent it made your eyes want to take a shower. We’re talking a circular king-size bed on a raised podium with a mirrored ceiling above. Behind the headboard, an oil painting of Mobutu in a Chelsea FC shirt, sitting on a throne flanked by a pair of black panthers. Surrounded by writhing, naked women from all different parts of the world. Entire fleets of men stood to attention in the background. An eagle perched on a forearm.

  Then there were the swords on the walls. The ivory tusks. The tiger-skin rug on the floor by the bed with the head still attached, caught and skinned in the middle of a snarl. But there were no windows. No skylights. This was the world’s plushest panic room. Mobutu slept with a silk eye mask and earplugs in, snoring away flat on his back in a kimono under satin sheets. Probably gold. With the night vision on, I couldn’t tell. The good news: he was alone, and the first he knew of me and Clarence, either side of his bed, was when we removed his mask. He opened an eye, instinctively reaching for the gun Clarence had just removed from beneath his pillow. I shook my head and held a finger to my lips, the barrel of my M4 to the side of his head.