Dead or Alive: A heart-pounding assassination thriller with a shocking twist (Eliot Locke Thrillers Book 1)

by Dean Carson

  Then the air shattered and the noise of a thousand screaming demons filled my head, and the debris began raining down from the sky.

  THREE

  You got it in one — my instincts had trumped my brain.

  The carriages in the train of thought filled in rapidly. The phone must have been connected to a sound activated switch. Probably an untraceable burner phone that someone rang as soon as I called in the successful hit. The switch was connected to a fuse, which was connected to the explosive. Simple. Except it had been planted by an amateur. A pro would have made sure that the phone was not set to vibrate before ringing. That mistake had given me two seconds, enough to leap out a window and hit a tree, which saved my life.

  I took my arms off my head and stood, feeling shaky. I turned and looked around the tree trunk. Where my room had been there was a big hole in the side of the building, and the floor above had fallen in on it. A cloud of dust rose into the air, but there was very little smoke and what was left of my room wasn’t burning. That meant high explosive rather than incendiary. Whoever wanted me dead had not been afraid of overkill.

  Then I heard the screaming, and all trains of thought pulled into the station. I had a choice: run for my life or stay and help. The best course of action was obvious. Someone was trying to kill me, and I didn’t know who he was or whether he was in the vicinity to finish the job. Despite this, I moved towards the wreckage of the building. I can be stupid that way.

  The back door was open. Inside, the ground floor looked relatively undamaged. But it was strewn with wreckage from my room above, and there was a gaping hole in the ceiling. The blast had set off a sprinkler system and water was cascading from the roof. A cloud of dust billowed down the stairs. Zloti was standing at the reception desk, slack-jawed. He had the vacant look of a cow before the milking parlour. I punched his shoulder hard enough to get his attention, then bellowed right in his face: “Phone the cops and ambulance. Then get the fuck out. The building might collapse.”

  He looked at me. I pointed towards the phone and he came alive, reaching for the receiver. Then I was up the stairs, trying to reach the screaming girl. The first eight steps were fine, but a pile of plaster and wood blocked the top flight and made progress impossible. There were long wooden joists and sheets of plasterboard, but I couldn’t see any bricks. The interior of the house was simple sheet rock construction, and what I was looking at were not the remains of a supporting wall. Which meant I could move it.

  Easy to say, not so easy to do. It took me several vital seconds to get one long bit of wood out of the way, and when it moved all the plasterboard settled. But it left me a passage through to the top of the stairs and the corridor. I could see right through where my door — and my wall — should have been, through the wreckage of my room and out into the yard at the back and the verdant cliffs behind, through a shimmer of settling dust that looked like a heat haze. This could not be stable.

  The floor of the corridor was still intact. It looked safe, but I clung to the wall furthest away from my room just in case. I followed the sound of the screaming and came to the room next to mine.

  I didn’t need to knock. The door was hanging loosely in the mangled frame. I wrenched it out and tossed it aside, then entered the bedroom. It looked just like mine had once done and had the same open view of the cliffs — most of the view coming from the huge hole in the wall dividing it from my room.

  There was a girl sitting on the bed with earphones on, connected to the remains of what might once have been an iPod. Or a cheap knock-off, like mine. She was about twenty and as pale as moonlight on fresh snow. She was immobile, but her mouth was open and she was screaming.

  Her right arm lay by her side, bent at an angle that evolution had never intended. Unless she was a circus worker with a double-jointed elbow, this was the source of her screams. She must have been in agony. From her elbow the arm stretched backwards in a bloody mess, resting along a cushion on the sofa. An ugly lump of masonry with jagged edges lay across the arm, touching her side. Blood had sprayed all over her t-shirt, but it wasn’t spraying now. That was good. She wasn’t going to bleed out.

  She hadn’t seen me come in. She hadn’t noticed anything. She was just staring at where the wall once had been, wailing like a lost banshee. I am used to violence and its effects, but I am more used to the dead than the living in this condition. Her wailing was unsettling me. Every fibre of my being screamed at me to run, but I could not. Not now. She was in shock, and when the shock wore off it was only going to get worse.

  I stood in front of her, blocking her view. But as she was just staring vacantly, I wasn’t really blocking anything. Her eyes were dead. I needed to get her moving. She couldn’t stay here. Even if the emergency services were on their way, the room might not be stable. So I did the only thing I could think of. I drew my hand back and slapped her across the face, hard.

  She blinked, then turned and took in my face. “My arm,” she whispered.

  I bent and grabbed the lump of masonry. It weighed several kilos, but I work out and I throw several kilos about the gym for breakfast. I yanked hard and it came off her arm. I rolled it onto the floor.

  “Can you stand?”

  I didn’t wait for an answer. Taking her by her good arm and shoulder, I lifted her off the sofa and began to cross the room. I was none too gentle, but I figured she was in so much pain and shock a shove was not going to count in the grand scheme of things. And I might be saving her life.

  When we got out to the corridor, I threw caution to the wind. To hell with hogging the wall — she didn’t have the capacity to understand that right now. So I hurried her along to the top of the stairs and tried to manoeuvre her through the debris. Luckily, Zloti was there, clearing the passage. He took my walking wounded and led her downstairs.

  I ran back up, determined to finish my sweep.

  There were two more rooms on the second floor and both doors were closed. I tried the first and it was not locked. I ran in and the room was empty. Out again, on the double. The second door was locked.

  A hit man by trade, I can be a bit of a macho guy. But I am not brainless. Countless television shows have cops kicking through doors or driving through with their shoulder. Try it in real life some time. It is not as easy as it looks. A kick is not going to move a good door and, in line with Newton’s laws of motion (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction), if your foot does not go through the door the force of your kick goes right back through your body. You end up on the floor looking foolish most times you try to play the action hero. And as for the shoulder — surgery for a dislocated clavicle is expensive and uncertain.

  Brain kicking in at last, I ran back to the girl’s room and picked up the lump of masonry I had pulled off her arm. My fingers closed on a wet section and I tried not to think about it. I knew it wasn’t water and that was as far as I wanted to know right now. I ran into the corridor and up to the closed door. It took two swings, but with the second the wood around the lock splintered. Now it was time for the shoulder.

  Here is a thing; if a door opens outward, no amount of shouldering is going to move it in. But this door opened inwards, so once the lock had splintered I was able to barge through. It took only a minute to verify the room was clear. So far, only one casualty on the second floor and she would live.

  I moved to the stairs, but here my progress was impeded. It wasn’t debris; I could have cleared that. There were no stairs. There was a gaping hole where they once had been. Anyone trapped on the upper floor was going to have to take the window like I had or wait for a fire truck and a ladder.

  I bellowed at the top of my voice but heard nothing back. Not a sound. It was mid-afternoon. Perhaps the hostel had been empty? I bellowed again.

  “Is no one up there. Is afternoon. All out,” came a shout from downstairs. Zloti.

  “All?”

  “I don’t know.”

  That was helpful. But what could I do? If an angry husba
nd had been chasing me with a machete, I don’t think I could have got to what was left of the third floor.

  Reluctantly, I turned. There was only one room left to check, and I knew there was no one in there. My own room, the epicentre of the explosion. I knew there was no point in opening the door (metaphorically — as there was no door left), but some ghoulish instinct forced my hand. That, and I wanted to check if was there anything I could salvage. We don’t carry travel insurance in my line of business.

  Half the wall was missing where the door should have been, so when I edged along the corridor I got a clear view. Most of the wall opposite the door had been blown out, and the tree that had saved my life had taken a bit of a battering. The floor was mostly intact, but there was a hole where part had fallen through to the floor beneath. I knew if I stayed near the edge of the floor and avoided the jagged hole I should be safe. So I stepped over the rubble into the room.

  Nothing was left. The furniture was in bits, the ceiling ripped out, the portion of the floor that remained covered in rubble. I could spend a day searching for my possessions and find nothing. But I wasn’t inclined to spend a day pulling through the rubble. Because in the middle of the rubble was a leg. And the leg was attached to a bloody and mangled torso. I couldn’t see the head, but I was fairly sure Humpty Dumpty had nothing on him. There was an unnatural stillness about the body that told me he was very dead. Probably my upstairs neighbour, the Beyoncé fan. Now I would never get the chance to introduce him to real music.

  I backed out of the room and returned to the stairs, clambering down to Zloti, who was expertly applying an inflatable splint to the broken arm of the girl I had rescued. I was impressed; the hostel had a well-stocked first aid box.

  “It might be safer outside,” I suggested.

  He shrugged. “You been in one bombed building, you been in them all. Is good — will not collapse. Supporting wall is strong.”

  It was my turn to shrug. It is easy to forget that only two decades ago this town had been caught in Armageddon. This afternoon was probably a flashback to Zloti’s teenage years and he seemed completely at home. Bombs going off, pretty girls with their limbs hanging loose, all that was missing was the nineties Euro-pop.

  “I would feel more comfortable if we brought her out to the side terrace,” I insisted.

  I took her gently by the other arm and led her out the front of the house and into the side terrace, which was off the street. By now a dozen gawkers had gathered, and they stared like ghouls at the pale girl. Blood seeped over the top of the inflatable splint, but you could not see the extent of her injury. I sat her down at a table and one of the onlookers came in, placing a bottle of water in front of us. I smiled my thanks and brought the bottle to the girl’s lips.

  “Not so bad,” said Zloti. “In the war we called this a wanking injury.”

  That was a new one on me. “You mean a small injury?”

  “No. I mean she will not wank for a few weeks. Unless she has help.”

  “Or she is right-handed.”

  “No, the right hand is for turning the pages.”

  “You are living in the past — all that stuff is on the internet now.”

  He grinned. “I know — why you think hostel has wi-fi?”

  This was getting surreal. I had to bring him back to reality. “Who was in the room above mine?”

  “Number seven? A German backpacker. Arrived two days ago. He is out.”

  “No — he is in my room, with his neck broken.”

  “Shit,” said Zloti. “He was a nice guy. And he hadn’t paid yet.”

  Just then we heard the first siren and within seconds I could make out a second. One was a cop car and one was a fire truck. No ambulance yet. I didn’t check my watch. I can keep time fairly well in my head, and I knew it had been thirteen minutes since the explosion. In a small city that was a very slow response time. And the girl with the wanking injury would have to wait a bit longer for help unless a third siren began sounding fairly quickly.

  I turned to Zloti. “You look after her, and I’ll go out to the street and show them where to come,” I offered. I stood and walked from the terrace to the growing crowd outside.

  “Is she going to be all right?” asked the guy who had donated the bottle.

  I nodded. I gently pushed my way to the back of the crowd, as if I was going to the street to greet the emergency services. But as I got to the edge of the crowd, I planned to slip across the street and down a narrow lane between two buildings. I turned from the crowd and stepped away.

  I felt a strong hand grasp my shoulder and turned sharply. A big cop had a firm grip on me. As I squirmed slightly I felt his fingers tighten. I looked into his dark eyes and saw nothing but grim determination.

  FOUR

  It took a moment for my heart to stop racing, and I immediately began running scenarios through my head. Had he seen me coming from the building? Was I covered in debris? Did someone tip him off? The most important question was how was I going to escape from him and get away before the rest of the cavalry arrived?

  I was spared having to make a decision.

  “Da li postoje mnoge povreden?”

  I looked at him blankly and made the universal gesture of incomprehension, shrugging my shoulders and shaking my head.

  “Jebeno stranac,” he muttered as he let me go and turned to someone else in the crowd.

  I didn’t need a dictionary to know he had called me a fucking foreigner, but I took no offence. I quickly stepped across the road and into the alley. As I reached the end of the lane, I glanced back and saw the crowd part as more cops began pulling up. I turned my head and kept walking. This was no time to play the hero.

  The first rule of staying alive is to avoid being seen. People who read too many spy books assume guys like me spend our time glancing in shop windows to detect reflected spooks. Not true. The pros don’t waste their time walking behind you, skulking in doorways every time you turn around. A good pro will use the landscape. And in a city that means CCTV cameras. They are all over the place. They were what I had to avoid.

  I walked down the side of the street at a normal walking pace, but with my head down. The cameras are always high up, and keeping your head down nullifies facial recognition software. The alley led to a business street, and these are the ones with the cameras. Residential areas are safe. So I turned from the city centre and began walking out of town. Soon I was on streets with fewer shops, more apartment blocks. Still dangerous but getting better.

  After twenty minutes I was on what looked like safe ground. Rows of small houses, kids playing on the road, occasional corner shops.

  There was a small park with a playground. I entered it but walked well away from the swings. A man on his own near a playground always draws the wrong sort of attention. So I found a shady tree and sat beneath it. There was no one around and I could see most of my surroundings. And if someone tried to approach me from the rear I would hear the snapping of twigs. Of course, I was still vulnerable to sniper shots, but I was not that paranoid. Not yet.

  I took out the cell phone and keyed in a number I knew from memory. There was the inevitable wait as the local network hooked up with the satellite, which bounced back to the network in the States. Longer, because I was using a specially encrypted satellite phone that looked like a regular smartphone. I counted off twenty-eight seconds in my head before the ring tone told me the call had been put through.

  Four rings, then he picked up.

  “Hi man,” he drawled.

  Bill loves a pun. Especially one he considers a bit inappropriate. He thought this was a hilarious way to open a phone conversation. I disagreed. I think anyone who sees a pun there needs to do a lot of growing up. And I wasn’t feeling the hilarity today. Not by a long stretch.

  “What the hell is happening?”

  “And a good day to you too, Eliot,” he replied.

  I sighed. It was going to be one of those conversations. I could picture him
in his office in Langley, looking out over rolling hills and trees, the small figurine of Homer Simpson grinning back at him from the window ledge. He could be an ass at times but, like all good friends, he had my back.

  “Bill, I’m stuck over here and it has all gone to hell,” I said, not wasting breath on the formalities.

  “Stuck where?”

  That stumped me. Surely he knew? “In Bosnia, you moron.”

  “What are you doing in that godforsaken hole?”

  “Working for you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sorry, my mistake. I’m here to collect orchids for the British Museum. Of course I’m sure. You put out a hit on Jarko Radoslav.”

  “He’s small fry. Why would we put a hit out on him?”

  “Ours not to reason why. Ours just to do or die. Or do and die in my case.”

  “Start from the beginning,” he suggested.

  So I did. I told him how I had responded to the ad on the Magic Bistro. That’s when things started to get weird.

  “We haven’t posted there in a while,” he said.

  Around me in the park I could hear the birds twittering in the trees, the distant sound of kids shouting, the most distant drone of traffic. My head felt fuzzy. None of this was right. I should be relaxing in my room, spending one last evening in Mostar, one good dinner and a bottle of wine and a flight home in the morning. I could feel a vein throbbing in my head.

  “You in a secure location?”

  I looked around the park. One of the kids had a clear bead on me if he used a slingshot. There was a bird overhead that could crap on me. No baddies. “Secure enough.”

  “Take the battery out of your phone for an hour. I will be in touch then.”

  Straightforward security provisions and I had already forgotten them. Phones can be tracked. But not when the battery is disconnected. I hung up and disabled the phone. I had an hour to kill. I couldn’t kill it in the park in case someone was tracking.