Fury

by Andy Maslen

  With a bellow from its twin exhausts, the Aston Martin pulled level.

  Gabriel looked out of his window for a second. What he saw almost made him lose control of the car.

  Behind the Aston’s wheel, turning to grin at him, was Sasha Beck.

  She gave him a short wave, then he heard the downshift. With a scream from its exhausts, the black DB9 leapt forward so fast that for a moment, Gabriel had the eerie sensation that his own car had stalled.

  “No!” he shouted.

  Ahead, she pulled in just in time to avoid a head-on collision with a car transporter, earning a prolonged blast from the driver’s air horn, a blast so long that the Doppler shift as it shot past on the other carriageway was audible to Gabriel.

  He glanced at the speedometer. One twenty.

  Then the white numbers and needle blurred.

  His heart rate spiked and a flicker of anxiety ran through his gut.

  He shook his head. Looked ahead. Then glanced back.

  Pin sharp.

  But it was too late. In that split second, the Aston had pulled further ahead of him.

  Now the Maserati was barrelling down a hill towards a lane-merge sign. Traffic had backed up.

  Ahead, the Aston was braking hard. The red lights seemed unnaturally bright to Gabriel and left trails behind them as he shook his head again.

  Gabriel switched his right foot from throttle to brake and dug down hard, pulling back on the left-hand paddle to step the Maserati down through the gears. The transmission protested as he forced each lower gear to accept higher revs than the designers had thought prudent. The car squirmed and wriggled, like a horse resisting a restraining pull on the reins. The rear end of the Aston Martin filled his vision and he began to brace for the impact, buzzing both side windows down in case the doors jammed shut.

  Just Not Cricket

  GABRIEL’S vision had telescoped down to a sharp circle of focus with the Aston at its centre. Everything else became first a blur, then vanished altogether. Tunnel vision, they called it in training. The disorientating phenomenon where your awareness of anything beyond the aggressor facing you diminished until it was useless to you. The instructors had all manner of clever techniques to widen that circle back out again, so that you had other options besides a head-to-head engagement with the enemy.

  But that was just what he wanted right now.

  Anti-lock braking system juddering, the Maserati came to a stop a few inches from the back of the Aston. He reached for the door handle, intending to jump out and wrestle Sasha from her car.

  Then the traffic cleared the pinch-point in the road, and Sasha squealed away, pulling round a caravan and flooring the throttle. The Aston’s six-litre engine roared, and she was gone.

  Not caring who, or what, might be coming, Gabriel wrenched the wheel over and overtook the caravan, earning a bleat from the towing car’s horn. Sasha was a couple of hundred yards ahead, but his desire to catch her was overwhelming and he gritted his teeth, and ground his foot down to hustle the big GT forwards, down the long, straight road that led to the New Forest.

  At the next slip road, a slow, banked, left turn that would take them west, towards the huge empty expanse of moorland and woods, she indicated, dabbed the brakes, and peeled off the main carriageway, scrubbing thirty miles an hour off her speed.

  He followed, wrestling with the Maserati’s wheel as the big sports car fought against him in its desire to pursue a straight path as dictated by physics, rather than the curving one dictated by his muscles.

  Eight tyres screeching, twenty cylinders thrashing, the Aston and the Maserati heeled over, despite their race-bred suspensions, as they flew round the quarter-turn slip road before emerging onto a local road that snaked up towards a series of S-bends and into the forest itself.

  Together, the two cars streaked along the sand-coloured road, their engine notes combining in a hellish shriek. In a couple of miles, Gabriel knew, the road would emerge into a flat, empty, largely featureless area of gorse-studded moorland. The threat wouldn’t be vehicular traffic, but rather the four-legged kind. Donkeys, horses, cows, pigs, sheep – all manner of semi-domesticated livestock grazed and roamed across the more than two hundred square miles of the forest. Hitting a pheasant at these sorts of speeds would be alarming. The same collision upgraded to an impact with a stationary quadruped weighing perhaps a quarter of a ton would be spectacularly, bloodily, explosively fatal.

  Gabriel jammed his right foot down all the way through the soft carpeting under the accelerator pedal to the steel beneath. The engine screamed as the auto box sensed the change in fuel/air flow and dropped two gears. He came up hard behind the rear end of the Aston then pulled out to overtake. He had a vague idea of running Sasha Beck off the road but nothing beyond that.

  The cars’ engines set up a weird beat in the air between them, a pulsing sound that was almost palpable. Gabriel’s ears throbbed uncomfortably under the onslaught.

  He edged up on the Aston’s front and turned to look over at Sasha.

  She lowered her own window. She was still smiling.

  The muzzle of the pistol that appeared above the lower edge of the frame was black, but a satin finish where the car’s bodywork was glossy. Decent calibre, Gabriel thought, as time started to slow down. A .40 or .45, maybe. He could see the individual lands and grooves of the barrel’s rifling. They would put the twist on the bullet she was about to fire at him.

  She pointed it straight across the gap between them, then lowered her arm and aimed down towards the front of Gabriel’s car.

  And fired.

  This close, Gabriel could see the flames that spurted like an orange tongue from the pistol’s muzzle.

  This close, he could smell the burnt propellant ejected across the two-foot gap between the cars.

  This close, he could feel the burning particles of smokeless powder that burst into the Maserati’s cabin and stung the skin of his face.

  His nearside front tyre exploded with a bang almost as deafening as the report of the pistol. As the big coupe shimmied and bucked, time slowed down still further.

  The steering wheel shook itself free of his grasp and spun wildly back and forth as the remaining earthbound front tyre bounced and struggled against the competing forces tearing at it from left and right.

  Then the rear end lost traction, and as its momentum caused the car to begin a clockwise rotation, the front tyres hit a raised ridge of earth and grass at the side of the road. The nose dug in and the rear lost contact with the ground. Slowly, oh so slowly, the two tonnes of Italian steel, leather, aluminium and plastic climbed skywards, spinning and twisting like a big game fish trying to avoid the gaff.

  Inside the cabin, as the cocoon of airbags inflated around him, Gabriel had time to observe the objects floating around him. A pair of Ray-Ban Aviators that had come unclipped from the sun visor. A notebook tucked into the door pocket, and the pen that he’d slipped under the elastic around its cover. A road atlas of the United Kingdom, whose pages flapped lazily as it flew above his head. His pulse was loud in his ears and he could feel the sharp tug of the seatbelt around his stomach. Then he was buffeted into unconsciousness, travelling down, down into a spiralling kaleidoscope of reds, yellows, blues, browns, greys, and black.

  But every journey, however colourful, has its end.

  The Maserati landed on its nose, seesawed two or three times, then flailed sideways through the bumpy scrub, bursting the driver’s and passenger’s doors open until it skidded and rolled to a halt, on its roof, in the middle of a cricket pitch someone had created in the centre of a couple of acres of flat grass. Having protected the driver from the worst of the impact, the airbags deflated with loud hisses.

  Conscious again, his ears ringing, Gabriel was dimly aware of a black figure approaching the car. She seemed to be floating. Then he realised she was upside down. No. Wrong. Not her. Me. I’m stuck. I’m fucked. She has a knife. The figure came closer.

  He watched as
the silvery blade of the knife entered the cabin and headed for his heart. He closed his eyes. Felt the point searching beneath the seatbelt. Sighed deeply. Goodbye, Britta. Sorry it had to end this way.

  Item Two

  GABRIEL heard the knife go in over his heart, a rough-edged sound, halfway between a snap and a tear. Then a second, swift slash over his groin. The roof leapt towards his face and dealt him a hard blow to the temple. He landed in a compressed tangle of limbs, his head thrust hard against his chest, almost cutting off his air supply.

  Strong hands grabbed him under armpits and dragged him clear.

  “Come on, darling,” the black figure said. It smelled lovely. Like an angel. “Help a girl out, can’t you?”

  Somehow, he found the energy to dig his heels into the ground and backpedal, pushing himself from the wrecked sports car as the figure pulled back on his armpits and moved him away, inch by painful inch.

  He felt sick. The ringing in his ears changed to a roar. The lights dimmed, then went out altogether.

  He opened his eyes. His shins and knees were agony. Groaning, he rolled over and vomited onto the grass. The acidic smell woke him up. His back was pressed against something hard. He twisted, wincing at the pain the movement ignited in his neck. The surface was a shiny black mirror. He could see himself distorted in its complex curves.

  A metallic scrape made him look up.

  The figure was standing above him. It was pulling a large, stubby cylinder apart. As he watched, the figure’s blurry outline sharpened, and its hazy details resolved themselves into a woman’s face. Sasha Beck’s face. He remembered. The chase. The gun. The impact of the round.

  “You,” he croaked. “You—”

  “Well,” she drawled. “I suppose that’s better than ‘Where am I?’ But I had expected a little more imagination from you, darling. Now, I’m sorry about this, but orders is orders.”

  She turned away from him and placed the fat tube to her shoulder. Widening her stance, she turned side-on to his car.

  “What are you doing?” he said, looking up and trying to place the olive-green … thing she was pointing at the Maserati.

  She cocked her head to one side and laid her cheek against the side of the tube.

  Raised it a fraction.

  Then did something with her right hand.

  A jet of flame whooshed out of the rear of the tube: he felt its heat singeing the top of his head and half fell, half rolled sideways to protect himself.

  With a hissing wail, like a large creature bellowing in pain, the projectile left the muzzle, trailing a white plume of smoke.

  Two milliseconds later its high-explosive, squash-head payload hit the rear wing of the Maserati, just below the petrol filler cap.

  The world turned white.

  The boom was deafening.

  Pieces of red-hot metal and melted plastic rained down over the neatly clipped grass, and a few pattered to earth just yards from Gabriel’s outstretched feet.

  When he opened his eyes, the Maserati had vanished. All that remained was a blackened, twisted skeleton with four warped brake disc rotors hanging from the axles.

  The Aston’s engine fired up with a low growl, and he had to roll away to avoid being hit by the rear wheels as Sasha executed a wide, sliding circle around the burning wreck, gouging deep, brown ruts into the pristine turf of the cricket pitch, before pulling away, back onto the road.

  A hand slid out from the driver’s side window and waved.

  Just before putting down her copy of Wuthering Heights, and turning out her bedside light, Sasha sent a text to her client.

  Item two completed. Such a shame. SB xx

  Beep. One thousand. Beep. One thousand. Beep. One thousand.

  Pull the ripcord.

  Look up to check the canopy.

  No, wait.

  This isn’t a jump.

  He opened his eyes. Tried lifting his head. Big mistake. He’d experienced worse, but it wasn’t worth comparing different levels of pain this intense. I guess I’m alive.

  He settled his head back onto the pillows and slept.

  “Gabriel?”

  He opened his eyes again.

  A doctor, deep-brown skin, crinkly hair scraped back and tied at the nape of her neck, stethoscope dangling over the outside of her unbuttoned white coat, was looking down at him.

  “Gabriel? I’m Doctor Sendrathan. Do you know where you are?”

  “Hospital. Salisbury District, at a guess. That or Southampton.”

  “Good guess. Southampton, actually. The ICU. That’s—”

  “Intensive care unit, I know.”

  She smiled. “You were in bad shape when you arrived here, you know. Concussion, severe bruising to your lower legs and arms, lacerations. But I wonder if you can help me out with something that’s been puzzling me.”

  “Ask away, doc.”

  “Your car is a burned-out wreck. According to the fire fighters, it looked as though someone had not just torched it but blown it up. And yet you have what I must call, though I am sure they are very painful right now, superficial injuries. You should be dead by rights, may God forgive me.”

  “Airbags are wonderful things,” he said, closing his eyes again. The room smelled of antiseptic and bleach. The bleeping of the heart monitor was getting on his nerves. He wanted to be out of this place, back at home where he could surround himself with his own things, his music, pour a glass of wine, and try to forget what had just happened.

  A voice came whispering to him on the wind, floating somewhere high above the electronic bleeps and the distant murmur of conversations from the general ward beyond the screens surrounding his bed.

  “A bad thing happened, Gable. A bad lady did it.”

  He groaned. The doctor bent over him.

  “Are you all right, Gabriel?”

  Don’t worry, it’s just my dead brother talking to me. The one I killed.

  “I’m fine. But some painkillers would hit the spot about now, if you have any going spare.”

  “Oh, I’m afraid we can’t give you anything right now. You’re, what shall we say, maxed out? The nurse will be round in one hour with your medication. Until then. I’m afraid you will just have to grin and bear it.”

  They moved Gabriel from the ICU to the men’s general ward the following day. Gabriel joined eleven other men, all ages, though mostly older men with grey or white hair, and liver spots on the bony hands resting on the outside of the bedclothes.

  That night, sleep took a long time to come. Partly it was the symphony of electronic bleeps and the asthmatic wheezing of the man in the next bed. Partly it was Gabriel’s own thoughts that raced each other round the inside of his skull like greyhounds after rabbits.

  In the dark, staring up at the ceiling, with a soft glow from the desk at the nurses’ station at the far end of the long room, he tried to sort through what he knew.

  Sasha Beck was in England. She’d been hired to kill Julia Angell. Apparently to send a message to him.

  The message said, “Fury is coming for you.”

  Then Sasha had lured him – there was no other word – into a high-speed car chase, shot his tyre out, rescued him from the wreck, and finally, blown the Maser into pieces with an RPG.

  But why not simply kill him? Why not use the rifle? Or the pistol?

  OK, Wolfe, think hard. Who have you pissed off so badly that they’d come for you?

  Trouble was, the people who he’d gone up against were all dead. That was the deal with working for The Department. Don’s favourite phrase was that they brought the bad guys, “to justice, not into custody.” The only person who hadn’t met that fate had just saved him from burning to death in his own car.

  He rolled his head from side to side, easing the tension. The last set of painkillers were kicking in and he felt the blissful easing of the pain from his legs.

  Two days later, he was discharged. He took home with him a white paper bag full of boxes of pills. Antibiotics for
an infection that had set in from one of the cuts on his face, and two different types of painkillers: a generic codeine-paracetamol mix – “six a day, don’t go over the dosage,” Doctor Sendrathan had said – and ibuprofen, “for when the pain dies down a bit.”

  The front door scuffed over a disordered pile of post, including the usual junk mail and flyers from local business. One envelope caught Gabriel’s eye. It was brown, long, slim, and carried only his first name, written in a strong, flowing hand in blue ink. The final curve of the “l” was smudged slightly. A fountain pen user, then. Old school.

  He made a cup of tea and while the leaves were steeping in the brown china pot, he sat at the kitchen table and opened the letter, slitting it with a paring knife he pulled from a slotted beech block on the work surface. He extracted a single sheet of pale-blue writing paper. More handwriting.

  Dear Gabriel.

  Don assigned me to keep you company for a few days, just until we can get a handle on what’s going on.

  I’m staying at the Angel Inn.

  Call me when you get this. 07700 900713.

  Best wishes,

  Eli Schochat

  The signature was a bold flourish, and smeared lightly along the top edge of the capital E. Maybe he’s a lefty, Gabriel thought. But then why make life difficult and use a fountain pen? He shrugged. He had bigger problems than puzzling out Department operatives’ penmanship.

  He checked his phone. They’d taken it away from him in the hospital, explaining that patients wouldn’t take enough rest when they had their phones with them. Miraculously, neither the screen nor the case were damaged.

  He opened a text from Britta.

  Think I met Ms Beck. Very odd woman. I’m fine. How are you? X