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

by Dean Carson

  What did he think I was, an amateur? Of course he had to kill me. That was the game. So I said nothing. I waited. Another minute. Two. Not five. Not this time. He broke first. I heard him move. I knew he would. I put myself in his position and I thought it out. He had only one sensible option. If he could get to the door, I was trapped. So he was moving towards the door. He was moving quietly, but you can’t move completely silently. You will always make some noise. And I don’t think he was too worried. He had the gun.

  I sensed rather than saw the shadow move across the room. Perhaps I was hearing micro-noises and my brain was interpreting them into a sense of where he was. Perhaps it was telepathy. But I was fairly sure he was in a crouch and moving slowly in a diagonal towards the door. He would pass within about half a metre of me.

  I could feel his body heat, smell his sweat and the stink of garlic on his breath. I was right. He was passing right by me. And then he had passed.

  That was when I moved.

  I stood up and jumped, landing on his back to bring him down with a tackle. I didn’t time it quite as well as I hoped, but close enough. Instead of catching him cleanly across the shoulders I was slightly to the side, but I got my right hand hooked around his arm and we both dropped to the floor. He began to spin but I got his back. Now we were locked into a hand to hand battle. All soldiers are trained for it and the way he tried to shift me from him, the moves he used, told me he was ex-army. He had the moves.

  I let him spin me onto my back. Now he was on top. But I had both arms around him, pinning his upper arms to his body. Which took his gun out of play. He could only use it if he could free his arm. And I wasn’t going to let that happen. He tried to headbutt me, but I moved my head to the side and he missed me. He kept struggling to free his right arm, as I knew he would. If he had dropped the gun and fought hand to hand, he might have beaten me. But he focused too much on the weapon.

  I moved my legs up around his waist, hooking my ankles and squeezing. The pressure was on his lower ribs, and I was preventing him breathing. He needed to break out from my legs, but he couldn’t. I moved my legs up a bit more, increasing the pressure. Soon my ankles were close enough to my hands, and I let one of his hands go free. He squirmed, but I reached the fork that was taped to my ankle. Then I released my other hand. Now his gun hand was free. I had to move fast because I knew he would be.

  I grabbed his face, feeling with my left hand. Then I brought the fork up and stabbed viciously for his eye. My first blow went a bit wide, striking the bone around his eye socket. He screamed. My second blow found its target. I could feel the slight resistance, then the tines of the fork went straight into his eye. The goo in his eyeball, the vitreous humour, squirted out and down my hands, making the fork slip from my grip. But the damage was done. He had dropped the gun and stopped struggling. He was screaming. I pushed out from under him and stood up. I reached into my pocket and took out my flashlight. I stood back and took aim, then I kicked him in the head.

  He went down. Was he dead? Was he alive? Did I care? I have an ethical thing about collateral damage, but he ceased to be collateral when he had tried to kill me.

  I picked up his gun and was straightening up when the door opened and there was a clatter as something was thrown in. Then the door closed.

  The gleam of my flashlight picked it up. It was a hand grenade.

  TWENTY-NINE

  A grenade is very much a niche weapon. If you encounter one in an empty parking lot, you can lie down three metres away and the blast will spoil your hairdo but do very little other damage. But stand up and it might kill you. From fifteen metres away, you are safe. Grenades fragment when they explode, and the fragments can be lethal. Or they can miss you completely. A hit and miss sort of weapon. But it is different in a small room. You can stand up, lie down or walk around on your hands. It makes no difference. You are dead.

  When I saw the grenade roll across the floor and the door being pulled closed, I knew I was in trouble.

  Hand grenades have a time delay fuse of seven seconds. Pull the pin and throw the thing and it will blow up after a slow count to seven. Which meant that in the early days, brave soldiers would pick up the grenade and toss it back. So the time delay was reduced to four seconds. An experienced soldier would pull the pin and count to two before throwing the device, which left very little time to take evasive action. But only a soldier with a death wish would count to three. So that left me a tiny window.

  I did the only thing I could. I stepped over the guy I had kicked and ran into the inner room. As I stepped behind the door, the grenade exploded. The bang, magnified by the small space, nearly burst my eardrums. I would hear that ringing in my ear for the next ten minutes. But I suffered no other damage. I couldn’t say the same for the guy I had left on the floor. I wasn’t sure what condition he had been in after I had kicked him in the head, but I knew what condition he was in now. Mincemeat. Well tenderised.

  There was a pause of a few seconds, during which the ringing in my ears reduced a little. Then a voice called into the room. The words were in Italian. It’s a language I don’t speak, but I am vaguely familiar with. I got the gist: “Are you all right?”

  If he was so concerned, he might have checked on his colleague before he threw in the grenade, not after. I said nothing, just waited. It wasn’t long.

  After about a minute, I heard the door open and the second man walk into the outer room. I knew what he would do. He would check the body on the floor, to see if it was me or his colleague. He had to check.

  I counted to three, then stepped into the room with my flashlight. I shone it right at where I knew the body was. The Italian looked up at me. I put a bullet straight through his forehead.

  Then I stepped back into the inner room and switched on the light. It was time to assess the damage. My shirt was a write-off. The arm was ripped where the bullet had slashed through the fabric and it was covered in blood. The blood was still flowing freely, but not spurting. That meant no arterial damage. No fear of bleeding out. And there was no exit wound, just a long deep gouge in my arm. It needed stitches, plenty of them. And that wasn’t an option right now. So I did the next best thing. I tidied up the arm with a towel and wrapped the wound with duct tape. It was painful as the tape went over the raw wound, but it stemmed the flow of blood. The real pain would come later when someone would have to rip off the tape. Hopefully there would be anaesthetic available, or at least a very large double whiskey.

  Finally, I ripped the bloody sleeve off my shirt and put the shirt back on.

  As I was about to relax, there was a crackling hiss from the outer room. Someone was trying to raise one of the bodyguards on his walkie-talkie.

  I picked up the walkie-talkie and pressed the receive button. La Donna’s voice filled the small room. She spoke in rapid Italian, but again I got the gist. Was I dead?

  I hit the transmit button and covered the microphone part with my hand, to distort my voice. In my best imitation of a spaghetti western villain, I said: “Il bastarda e morto.”

  Even as I threw down the walkie-talkie, I knew that bastarda was wrong. It’s a feminine noun, if the word exists in Italian. But I didn’t think she’d be standing outside criticising my diction. I would get away with it. So I checked the gun I had taken from the guy whose eye I had forked. It was a Walther PPK, and he immediately went down in my estimation. It’s not that it’s a bad gun. It’s perfectly fine. But owning one is like owning a Porsche 911. It says more about the owner than anything else. The guy was a James Bond wannabe. Now he was dead, like most Bond villains.

  The PPK is a semi-automatic and packs a far bigger punch than my Baby Browning ever could. But it only held eight rounds. No wonder he hadn’t chosen to just fire wildly and hope to wing me. In my head I went over our encounter. He had taken four shots at me. And I had shot the second assassin. So five rounds were gone. I had only three shots left. But I knew La Donna. She would be on her own. Three would be enough.

&nb
sp; I left the chamber of death with all its carnage and walked across the floor of the factory. I knew my way now and I walked fast. I didn’t hit anything. I could hear the outer door open, then the second door, the one with the keypad, opening. I stood in the shadows and waited. Through the windows I could see her pass along the corridor. She flicked on a light. She had no worries.

  She opened the door to the print floor and stood there, her full figure revealed against the back light. She struck a pose and called: “Guido?”

  I should have shot her then and there. Instead, I stepped forward.

  “Why did you betray me?” I asked.

  THIRTY

  She reacted fast — faster than I expected. Her hand was a blur and she shot at me one-handed. The bullet missed me by a foot and ricocheted madly off the machines around me. I got one shot off and clipped her hand. She dropped her gun. And then she was running.

  I pounded up the staircase and set off after her.

  When I reached the door, she was well ahead of me. She had an advantage of about twenty metres. I had two bullets left. With a full magazine, I might have paused and tried a shot. But it was too risky. Could I hit a moving target in the dark with a strange gun? If I could, I would have been the most surprised person there. So I began to run.

  She turned right on the street, away from the main road and the town. This was a bit foolish, because lights and people meant safety. But she was still reacting instinctively. She was running into the harbour, into darkness and isolation. So I followed.

  You have two options when pursuing someone on foot. The first is to run like the clappers and catch them. The second is to run slowly and keep them in sight. Everyone runs like crazy. Here’s why that doesn’t work. I am a fit man. I can cover a hundred metres in less than twelve seconds, just. But not without a warm-up, and not in street shoes. La Donna could probably cover it in fifteen seconds. She had a twenty yard lead. I wouldn’t catch her in 100 metres. And if I ran that distance flat out, I would be knackered. I couldn’t maintain that pace, and she would escape. So I slowed down and ran hard, but within my comfort zone. I kept the distance between us to twenty metres, allowing her to run herself into exhaustion. I stayed the right side of exhaustion. This way I had some hope of catching her, eventually.

  She ran down the road, between where the cruise ship had been half an hour earlier and the blocks of the industrial estate. She passed out of the industrial estate and deeper into the harbour. I followed. The light was less here, but there were still plenty of street lamps. A busy port is never completely dark. We ran past small boats, big boats, fishing boats, cargo vessels. She hesitated for a moment, then resumed her headlong flight. That hesitation told me. She had realised her mistake. She was running down a long pier, and at the end of the pier there was only water. And behind her was only me. She would need to find concealment or jump onto a boat. But I was too close behind her. So she kept running.

  She began to slow, and I could see her shoulders shaking. This was a big effort for her, and her lungs and heart must be screaming for mercy. Mine were too. I slowed. No point in getting to her too exhausted to do anything.

  By the time we reached the end of the pier, we were both walking. There were no lights here, and the nearest boat was fifty metres away. We were alone. She got to the very edge and could go no further. Like a cornered cat she turned to face me.

  “Why?” I asked again. We were standing about three metres apart. She had her hands on her knees, and her breath was coming in heaving gasps.

  “For the money, dear. Why else?”

  We stood looking at each other, our breathing gradually returning to normal.

  “You would have done the same to me,” she said.

  I doubted it, but I let the remark go. “Were you against me from the start?”

  She shook her head. “When you walked into the hotel that first night, I knew the word was out that you weren’t to be helped. But I wasn’t going to get in your way. We’re friends. We go way back. I was going to slip you what you needed and pretend I had never seen you.”

  “What changed?”

  “I told my boss back in Naples that you were here. I had to do that much. And he sent word back that I could pick up the contract on you.”

  I sighed. “How much?”

  “A hundred big ones. Someone really wants you dead. I’ll get a very big payday when I make that happen.”

  “If you make that happen.”

  She shrugged. “If.” Then she said it again: “You’d have done the same.” She looked at my face. “Maybe you wouldn’t have. But baby, that’s the game we play.”

  I said nothing.

  “I suppose you shoot me now.”

  I hadn’t thought it out that far. Was I going to shoot her? It’s one thing to shoot at someone who is shooting at you. I have no problem with that. I have no problem putting a bullet in the head of a scumbag who has it coming, especially if there is a fat fee lodged to one of my bank accounts. But this was a woman I had known for many years. I had shared good times and bad with her. Could I end it all like this?

  “Will you at least permit me a last cigarette?”

  I nodded, but held the gun on her.

  She moved her hand slowly, reaching for her pocket. Slowly she removed a pack and took out one cigarette. She put it in her mouth and tossed the pack behind her, into the water five metres below us. I heard it splash.

  “Do you have a light?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Of course not. You don’t smoke. Mr Goody Two-Shoes.”

  “They’ll kill you,” I said.

  “Do you think I’ll live long enough for that to happen?” Her hand came down to her pocket, tapping it. No lighter. Her hand moved around to her back. She was smiling at me. “Found it,” she said.

  Her hand came back into view slowly. Nice and easy. As it registered with me that she wasn’t holding a lighter, her hand began to move a hell of a lot quicker. It was coming up to shoulder height, ready for the shot. She was holding a pistol.

  I had been lulled into carelessness, and my gun was by my side. I began to bring it up at the same time as she did. She was fractionally ahead of me, so I shot from the hip and aimed low. I squeezed the trigger and felt the recoil against my wrist. The bullet caught her in the knee, which surprised me. That was where I had been aiming. Some shot in the dark in a hurry. I impressed myself.

  Her shot rang out wildly, the bullet missing me completely and pinging off the concrete of the pier way behind me. She staggered backwards and fell to the ground. Her gun clattered uselessly away from her.

  Her face was pale and strained with the pain. For the first time she looked worried. I think it was finally dawning on her that she would not be picking up the hundred big ones.

  “I told you that smoking would kill you,” I said.

  I stepped forward and placed my foot against her hip and pushed. She was heavier than she looked, and she tried to grab my leg with her hand.

  “I can’t swim,” she squealed.

  As her hip rolled over the edge, she let go of my leg and grabbed for the concrete side of the pier. Her hands scrambled desperately but couldn’t latch on. She fell five metres and hit the water with a dull splash.

  I looked down. She had hit the water feet first and sunk, but she bobbed up fairly quickly. Her arms flailed wildly, and she tried to dig her nails into the sheer wall at the base of the pier. I could see her nails scraping but finding no purchase. Then she went under again. This time she stayed under longer, and I could see some bubbles rise to the surface. Her face reappeared. For a moment our eyes locked and she tried to scream at me. It came out in a hoarse rasp: “Fuck you.”

  Then she sank for the third time.

  When I was sure she wasn’t going to reappear, I turned and walked away.

  THIRTY-ONE

  It had been a tough night and I needed a whiskey and a hug, and I wasn’t fussy where they came from or in what order. With no f
irm plan in mind, some instinct drove me to the hotel where Jelly was staying. She had said to look her up in the morning if I was still in Croatia, and it was now past midnight. That was technically morning.

  The hotel was a small modern one, a good walk away from the old quarter. I got there around four. It was cheap and cheerful, the sort of place popular with backpackers and interrailers. It would have free wi-fi and a buffet breakfast and few guests over thirty. It also had a door that locked at midnight and a night porter on the reception desk. I could have asked him to buzz me in, but I wasn’t a guest so he wouldn’t have obliged. Instead, I walked around the back and found a service entrance near the kitchen. It is a little known fact that these doors are used by hotel staff who want to sneak off for a cigarette break and are always unlatched.

  I let myself in and walked through the dark and deserted kitchen into the dining room, laid out for the buffet breakfast in a few hours’ time. The cereal was already out and so was the fruit, but not the milk or the bread. I grabbed a banana and made like a monkey. I was ravenous. The door from the dining room to the main body of the hotel was unlocked, so I walked out into a corridor. Left led to the reception, right further into the hotel. I knew her room number and it was on the other side of the hotel. But I wasn’t going to walk through reception. So I went the wrong way, found some stairs, got to an upper floor, walked a maze of corridors and dropped down close enough to her door. I knocked softly.

  There was no answer, so I risked a louder knock. I heard sheets being shuffled, so I knocked more insistently.

  “What?” came a grumpy and sleepy voice.

  “Message for Miss Jenny.”

  Even with the trauma of the night, I had the wits about me to remember her real name, the name she would have registered under. A real porter would have had her surname as well, but I wagered she was too sleepy to notice the discrepancy.