Hard Knocks

by Zoe Sharp

  Well, maybe I could allow myself just five minutes . . .

  ***

  I jerked awake almost instantly, it seemed, to find that we were barely moving and an hour had passed.

  “Where are we?” I demanded, my pulse suddenly stepping up with guilt at my lapse in concentration.

  “Just outside Nürnberg,” Sean tossed across and the exasperation showed clearly in his voice. “Bloody traffic.”

  I sat up from the slithered position I’d drooped into and looked around me. Ahead all I could see was the tailgate of a massive truck on Swiss plates. Alongside was a pair of middle-aged suits in a BMW. They were either too world-weary, or too polite, to look perturbed at having a car filled with armed desperadoes and a hostage right next to them.

  For the next forty-five minutes we barely made a couple of kilometres. The loudest noise inside the car was the slap of the wipers on intermittent across the screen, like an irregular heartbeat. The traffic grew steadily thicker as the morning filled out into rush hour. It was agonisingly slow.

  “We’re going to have to stop and fill up again,” Sean said at last, glancing down at the instrument panel. “It may as well be now.” He caught Hofmann’s eye in the rear-view mirror and nodded towards Ivan. “Do you want to hood him up again?”

  Hofmann put the SIG in his pocket and slid the knife out of his boot again.

  “No,” he said ominously. “If he makes trouble I will deal with him quietly enough.”

  Sean left the engine running again, despite the obvious disapproval of the filling station attendant, while he poured in litre upon litre of Super bleifrei. The Skyline seemed to have an appetite for fuel that was of alcoholic proportions. It had consumed an exorbitant amount since our last stop, but economy was not supposed to be one of its assets under these conditions.

  I ran in to pay to lessen the time we were off the road and also so that Sean could move the car further away from prying eyes. Even without his hood, Ivan was still handcuffed to the grab rail and looked suspiciously like he was being taken somewhere against his will rather than being rescued. It wasn’t a scenario we wanted to have to explain in detail to anyone, least of all to the police.

  It all took up precious time, minute after minute of it. When we rejoined the A6, now heading west towards Heilbronn, I was aware that Gregor was probably already on route to Einsbaden. The wheels were in motion and couldn’t be called back nor cancelled out.

  I tried to ring Major Gilby again to let him know our progress, but this time the Manor’s phone line rang out without reply. There’s rarely something good will come about from an unanswered phone. My mind started constructing its own spurious reasons, each more fantastical than the last, but I couldn’t ignore the likelihood that Gregor Venko was already there, and that the Manor had already fallen to his forces.

  I caught Sean’s anxious gaze as I ended the dead call. His eyes were red-rimmed from staring into the artificial airflow, fatigue pinching his cheeks into hollows.

  I wondered if he could force himself to this kind of stamina naturally or if he’d taken anything in order to sustain it. I couldn’t think of a way to ask that wouldn’t insult him.

  “It’ll be OK,” I said, more to reassure myself than him. “We’ll get there.”

  “That’s not the worry,” he said, raising a half smile even though his voice was flat. “It’s what we’ll find there when we do.”

  ***

  At Heilbronn we turned south again, back onto the B10 for Stuttgart and the penultimate leg. The traffic stayed obstinately thick and cumbersome. Since Nürnberg we’d been able to average barely eighty miles an hour. I was almost glad when Madeleine II began to give us the countdown warnings to our final junction. That feeling didn’t last for long.

  By the time we were onto the tortuous back roads heading for our destination, Sean’s temper was racked to breaking point by sheer overwhelming exhaustion.

  He drove with a kind of controlled violence now, taking blatant risks to get past other vehicles. Yet still he seemed to maintain a light deft touch on the Skyline’s controls as it screamed and scrabbled and snorted along the narrow roads. Like a master rider on a horse that was totally insane.

  ***

  Ten o’clock.

  The deadline came and went, and still we were half a lifetime from Einsbaden. The village had always seemed so close to the Manor, but now some giant joke of fate kept moving it further away.

  But, when we finally skittered between the griffin-topped gateposts and I checked my watch, I discovered that despite the increased congestion we had shaved a further two minutes off the outward trip from the Manor to the autobahn. Nevertheless, it was now ten-ten.

  Ten minutes too late, perhaps?

  The barrier on the driveway was down. Sean cursed, shifting his foot off the accelerator and beginning to brake. We’d barely shaken off speed when two figures stepped out from behind the guard hut and pointed submachine guns meaningfully in our direction.

  For a second I thought that Major Gilby had posted a couple of his men to watch for our return, but as soon as the thought had formed I dismissed it. He didn’t have two to spare.

  I registered the fact that they were strangers at the same instant that the Uzis they were carrying began to sing. The flashes from each muzzle became a continuous blaze as they opened fire. I ducked down behind the level of the dash top as my side of the windscreen crazed.

  Sean got back on the power without any thought to a progressive throttle. The Skyline leapt forwards, snarling, and ran towards the men with the guns. I heard the whiz and twang of the rounds hitting the bodywork, but the big car shook them off and kept coming.

  Too late perhaps, our attackers realised Sean wasn’t trying to evade them. The front edge of the bonnet hit the barrier, snapping it off and hurling it aside like a broken lance. One of the men jumped for cover, rolling into the trees.

  We clipped the other man’s thigh with the front wing as he moved just too slowly to avoid us. He flew backwards with a grunt, dropping the Uzi and disappearing from view. Sean never even looked in the mirror.

  “Well, that gives you your answer about Gregor,” he said tightly. “He’s here.”

  I sat up again and shook the fragments of broken glass off my clothing. I’d picked up a couple of scratches from the splinters on the backs of my hands. Other than that I’d been lucky.

  The holes in the windscreen would have been at head height if I’d been taller. Sean’s height, for instance. I realised they’d been aiming for the driver, but they’d been thrown by the fact that – to them – he was sitting on the wrong side of the car.

  I readied the PM-98, keeping my finger outside the trigger guard for the moment. Hofmann released Ivan’s hands from the grab rail, re-cuffing them in front of him so we could get him out quickly. Gregor’s sighting of his son could be vital if we were going to avoid being shot to pieces.

  The front of the Manor forecourt was deserted, but Sean must have spotted something because he snatched the wheel over at the last moment and headed for the parking area at the rear of the house.

  Gregor Venko had parked his bullet-proof black Mercedes stretch limousine at a slant under the terrace. His men held the high ground above it. Gilby and his ragged crew had been forced into retreat as far as the rear of the car park, and were dotted among the school Audis and the wreckage. By the looks of the damage to the stonework and the cars, they’d been exchanging cordial amounts of ammunition.

  Two separate sets of guns swung in our direction as Sean made his dramatic entrance. We had a few seconds’ respite while shock kept fingers away from triggers. Gilby, of course, must have recognised his own car, but to Gregor’s troops this was an invader, to be repelled. They began to do so then, with enthusiasm.

  Sean slewed the Skyline into as sheltered a space as he could find in the split-second he had to make the decision. We ended up between the trucks, nose facing outwards, so when we flung the doors open they afforded us a li
ttle protection at least. The bullets splattered around us, zinging off metalwork like hailstones. Gilby’s men started to lay down covering fire.

  The Major had strung his people out into sniping positions along the back line of the parking area. Considering the length of time he’d had to plan his campaign, and the fact that he was severely outnumbered, he was well dug in and holding his own.

  Sean dragged Ivan out of the back of the car without regard to hurting him, yanking his head back so Gregor could get a look at his face. Hofmann and I dived behind the back end of the car with Hofmann yelling, “Hold your fire!” over and over in half a dozen different European languages.

  I glanced at Sean, standing half exposed with Ivan gripped wriggling in front of him. He refused to drop into cover with the boy and his defiant stance made me shiver. To come this far and then lose either of them to a stray bullet would be unthinkable.

  Gregor recognised his son in an instant, bellowing to his men to stop shooting. He had to give the order three times before the firing finally ceased, and the look he threw at the last man to take his finger off the trigger was pure poison.

  After the noise, the silence deafened me. The only sound that emerged over it was the quiet tickover of the Mercedes’ engine and the breathless whirr of the Nissan’s cooling fans as they battled to stop the overheated turbos from going into terminal meltdown.

  And then, into the stillness, came the click and rattle of a dozen magazines being changed and hastily rammed home, and first rounds being racked into chambers.

  Gregor Venko, no personal coward, stepped out from behind the limousine. He was wearing another beautiful long cashmere coat, this one the colour of a field of summer corn, over a double-breasted suit that was well cut enough to almost conceal his expansive gut. He advanced as far as the front wing of the Merc, then stopped and gestured impatiently to someone still behind the car.

  Sideburns, the bodyguard whose knee I’d kicked out from under him, appeared then, propelling a young girl in front. I recognised Heidi Krauss from the photographs Elsa had displayed.

  She seemed to be in a better physical condition than Ivan perhaps, but I wouldn’t like to vouch for her mental state. Her eyes showed a mind well past being terrified and into a shock so deep it was almost catatonic. She was shuffling like a convict who’s been too long in leg irons, stumbling over her own feet. If it came to making a run for it, I calculated, we were probably going to have to carry her.

  “So,” Gregor called across the distance between us. “We make the exchange without further – unpleasantness, yes?”

  “Yes,” Sean agreed. “Two men only. We meet in the middle.”

  Gregor nodded slowly, but was unwilling to surrender complete control by accepting the suggestion without his own stipulations.

  As Hofmann went to walk out with Sean, Gregor stopped them. “Wait!” He pointed at Sean, eyes narrowed. “I don’t know you. I don’t trust you,” he said. He waved in my direction, the light flashing from the diamonds on the Rolex at his wrist. “Miss Fox can bring Ivan. Just her and the German. She gave me her word.”

  I cursed under my breath and edged out from behind the car. Aware of the eyes watching me, I took over Sean’s grip on Ivan’s collar. The boy curled his lip at me. I smiled sweetly back at him and jammed the Lucznik into his ribs.

  “You don’t have to do this, Charlie,” Sean muttered in my ear, scowling. “There’s no way he’ll refuse to make the swap because of it.”

  “No, I’ll do it,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. “And he’s right. I did give him my word.”

  With Hofmann alongside me, we moved forwards. Every step seemed to make us more exposed, more vulnerable. The parking area had grown in size until it was a very long way to the middle. Opposite us, Sideburns and the other bodyguard I remembered from Gilby’s study shifted carefully to meet us, shoving Heidi before them.

  I was watching Sideburns’s face carefully. The look on it was sly and I knew he was itching for a chance of revenge for the humiliation he’d suffered at my hands. I kept my eyes locked on his, waiting for the first indication that he was planning to double-cross us, despite his boss’s wishes.

  It just so happened, therefore, that I was watching at the precise moment that the right-hand side of his face exploded in a welter of bone shards and brain, and the high-pressure spray of viscous, scarlet blood.

  Twenty-eight

  I didn’t know who’d fired the shot that killed Sideburns, but I didn’t really need to. It was enough to know that somebody was shooting at us.

  I grabbed the back of Ivan’s neck, ramming my fingers and thumb into the sensitive points there to force his head down. I was already twisting him back towards the cover of the Skyline before Sideburns’s body had completed its final dive.

  Heidi had been so close to Gregor’s bodyguard when he died that she was immediately splattered. The noise was like she’d been hit with a wet tea towel. A great swathe of gore was flung across her face and upper body. The pig’s blood scene from Carrie was just a pale rehearsal for this.

  The horror of what the girl had just witnessed jerked her mind out of its zombie-like state and sent her reeling into the far reaches of hysteria. She darted away from the other bodyguard’s clutches, screaming fit to strip her vocal cords raw. Her popping eyes were fixed on the blood on her hands in front of her, her fingers stiffly outspread.

  Hofmann took two calm strides forward and snatched her off her feet as though she weighed nothing. The relentless chatter of automatic weapons’ fire battered our senses from all sides. My bearings were shot. Then I saw Declan beckoning frantically from behind the wreckage of the Audis and Blakemore’s FireBlade off to my right. I ran hell for leather in that direction, dragging Ivan along with me.

  Sean had tried to come out to us as soon as the shooting started, but was forced back almost instantly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the dirt at his feet puff up from the hits. He fired a short burst from his PM-98 in the direction of the house, then threw himself back behind the Nissan and wisely stayed down.

  Whoever had joined the fight had done so with a complement of full clips and the will to spend them. For almost a minute hundreds of rounds came down like hard rain into the parking area. I crouched behind the Audi, instinctively keeping Ivan down, while Hofmann wrapped himself round Heidi’s still-shrieking figure and held on tight. Ivan, for once, didn’t try and get away from me. I guess he was just waiting to see if I was going to get myself conveniently killed, then he could shrug me aside.

  Then, as suddenly as it had all started, it stopped. I lifted my head cautiously and risked a peep round the bottom corner of the crumpled FireBlade. Sideburns’s body lay where it had fallen in the middle of the open ground. One leg was still twitching.

  Gregor’s men were laying low and the man himself was crouching behind his bullet-proof car with two of his largest bodyguards sticking to his back. So who the hell was attacking us?

  And then, high up on the roof of the Manor, I saw movement. Black-garbed figures, armed to their cammed-up teeth. Professionals.

  Declan had crabbed himself round into a position where he could look over my shoulder.

  “It’s the feckin’ Germans,” he said. He glanced back at Hofmann. “No offence, but it looks like your mates have arrived.”

  Hofmann nodded, not looking too surprised about this turn of events. He met my eyes. “Major König,” he said.

  If it was indeed the German security services, they’d picked the best spot for an ambush. The flat roof of the Manor offered a superb vantage point over the whole of the rear of the house. We must have all been laid out below them like a map.

  I wondered why Gregor hadn’t planted a couple of his own men up there just to hold the ground. Then my eye found Sideburns’s corpse again and realised that probably he had.

  From down here I could see along the edge of the parking area. Thinly stretched out to my right were Figgis, Gilby and Todd. They were in good
defensive positions, tucked in behind the cars. Providing Jan didn’t have anything larger than the submachine guns they’d used so far, they were safe.

  But pinned down.

  For Gilby to get either over to Gregor, or to fall back to the woods in the opposite direction involved crossing open ground that was just crying out for the work of a decent sniper. I’d be willing to bet Jan had brought a couple of those with her. There was just too large a gap between the last parked Audi and our position for Gilby to reach us, either.

  As for Sean, he wasn’t going anywhere. Hard up against the back end of the Skyline, he had minimal cover, but he was completely stuck or he’d make an easy target.

  “Major Gilby!” Jan’s voice rang out above us, strangely unfamiliar and harsh with command now. “We want Ivan Venko. Bring him out and save yourself a lot of trouble. Otherwise, my men will open fire.”