by Andy Maslen
He looked up at the roof. Yes. That’s the way in.
Wriggling along the ground like a snake, Gabriel made his way closer to the house. He held the HK in his right hand, a round already chambered and the safety off. If the back door opened, he was ready to shoot from his prone position. But nobody emerged from the house.
It took him fifteen minutes to reach the rear wall of the house. It took two for him to scale the outside; the tangle of drainpipes fixed on the rear wall made the ascent easier than shinning up a climbing wall in a gym.
Flattening himself on the slates, he edged his way over to the dormer. He could see that the casement window had a flimsy latch on the inside. The room beyond was empty of all but a couple of hard chairs, a dressing table, and a single bed, minus its mattress. He inserted the point of the knife into the gap between the loose-fitting window and the frame and flipped the latch open. He removed his rucksack then slithered through the narrow aperture, pulling the bag through after him.
Once inside the little attic room, he drew the 1911 and racked the slide. In a confined space, pistols were easier to wield than rifles. He felt confident he could match Sasha Beck’s firepower, especially given the surprise factor.
He checked his watch. Three o’clock. Then Mortensen’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked it. A text from Ayers, readable on the lock screen.
Where are you?
Maybe you’re getting twitchy, Ayers. Your man hasn’t turned up yet. With no way of unlocking the phone, Gabriel didn’t have the option to send a reply, so disinformation was off the table. That was fine. He was ready to close with the enemy.
Silence is Golden
CREEPING out of the little bedroom, a pistol gripped in each hand, Gabriel paused on the landing. He could hear women’s voices. From the volume, he was sure they were on the ground floor. One was recognisably Sasha Beck’s. The other was also an English accent, but with a mid-Atlantic inflection, as if its owner was making an effort to shift her identity from Britain to the US. Something about its tone and its cadences pricked at Gabriel’s subconscious mind, but the adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream was blocking all but mission-critical data, and he brushed it aside.
The half-landing floor was bare wooden boards. In a house like this one, Gabriel had no illusions about the quality of the carpentry. Treading on the boards would be like spinning a roulette wheel. Any one of them could have warped enough to pull its brads free of the joists beneath, creating a perfect burglar alarm.
Breathing evenly, he placed his right foot onto the end of a floorboard just at the base of a baluster. He eased his weight over. The board was solid: not even a squeak of protest from the joint. He leaned over the edge of the polished pine handrail, smoothed and discoloured by decades of hands sliding along its length. Beneath him was another, longer landing. Off it were four doors. His assessment: three bedrooms and a bathroom. Behind the door nearest to the foot of the staircase was Britta Falskog. Alive at least, if not in the best of health.
He took a deep breath, let it out with a quiet sigh, and began descending the staircase, keeping the toes of his boots to the edges of the treads.
The first-floor landing was soundproofed with a nubbly brown carpet. Maintaining his wide-legged stance, Gabriel holstered the HK. Holding the 1911 in his right hand, he turned to the door at the bottom of the staircase and used his left to grip and then twist the worn brass knob above the keyhole.
He pushed the door open and slid inside, closing it behind him. He took in the room at a glance. Britta, sitting with her back to a silver-painted, cast-iron radiator, her arms behind her. A strip of white cloth was tied across her mouth, tight enough to dent her cheeks. A single bed. A second door.
Britta looked up as he entered the room. Her eyes opened wide, then she looked away from him, jerking her head at the corner of the room.
He put his finger to his lips and came closer. As he worked the gag from her mouth, he spoke in a low murmur.
“Quiet! They don’t know I’m here. I came in from the roof.”
She still didn’t speak. Just jerked her head again at the corner of the room, eyes signalling something to him, forehead furrowed.
He turned and saw what she was nodding at. Sitting on the floor by the bed, in soft shades of pastel blue and green, a stubby antenna protruding from its top, a green light glowing on its side, was a baby monitor.
Fuck!
Footsteps crashed on the stairs. Gabriel whirled round, aiming at the door.
Sasha Beck burst through, firing a pistol directly at Gabriel. Four or five rounds. Lucky or not, her first shot took him in the left arm, clipping his bicep. He fired back with the 1911, three shots in rapid succession, aiming centre mass. But the shock of the bullet wound had messed with his aim. His shots went wide and the .45 rounds tore holes in the plaster to the right of the door instead of through Sasha.
The reports of the unsuppressed pistols were deafening in the confined space of the bedroom. The room filled with blue gun smoke, and the acrid stink of burnt propellant and hot brass filled the air.
Sasha ducked out of the room again, heading to Gabriel’s left.
He emptied the rest of the magazine at the wall, chest height, hoping to catch her with at least one round.
“Gabriel, look out!” Britta cried out.
He felt a searing pain in the back of his head then Britta’s cry faded, his vision turned black, and he crashed to the floor.
RIP Britta Falskog
THE Colombian drug lord was screwing the point of his knife into the back of Gabriel’s head. He pushed his stubbled face close to Gabriel’s, close enough for Gabriel to smell his garlicky breath.
“You fucked me up, Englishman. Now I’m gonna fuck you up. Real good.”
He pulled the blade from Gabriel’s skull and inserted the tip into the soft flesh on the right side of his neck. He slashed right to left, pushing the blade deeply into Gabriel’s throat. Then he withdrew it, reached through the bloody rent in the flesh, dragged Gabriel’s tongue out through the slit and jerked it down so it flopped onto his shirt front.
“How you like your Colombian Necktie, huh? Fuckin’ sharp, man.”
Then he screeched with laughter and dissolved into the blackness.
Groaning, Gabriel opened his eyes. His wounded arm was hurting, but not too badly. Adrenaline is a wonderful painkiller as well as a performance-enhancer. When he looked down he could see that somebody had bandaged it.
His wrists were strapped to the arms of the chair with cable ties, the go-to bonds for modern criminals and military personnel for whom the bulk and weight of handcuffs weren’t worth the trouble. He tried moving his feet – same problem.
Sitting facing him on an identical wooden dining chair was the woman he loved, the woman he had proposed marriage to a few weeks earlier. Britta Falskog, late of Swedish Special Forces and now a permanent employee of MI5. Her freckled complexion was grimy and her normally shiny red hair was lank and greasy. She looked tired, but still had a defiant spark behind her eyes. The gag was gone. She smiled at him, then spoke.
“This is another fine muck you’ve got us into.”
He smiled back, amazed at her ability to go for humour in any tight situation.
“It’s ‘mess.’”
“I know, idiot. I’ve been brushing up on my English while I’ve been here. They let me have books.”
“You OK?”
She nodded.
“Yeah, fine. You?”
“Apart from the obvious, yes.”
“You should have checked the other door. It’s a connecting door to the next room. Ayers smacked you on the back of the head with a pistol.”
“Sorry. I was distracted by your dishevelled beauty. Next time I will, I promise.”
“Any bright ideas for getting us out of this? Any of that Chinese voodoo shit Master Zhao taught you going to come in useful?”
“He’s dead. She killed him in Hong Kong.”
“
Oh, God. Sorry. I overheard them talking sometimes but I couldn’t tell who they were going after. They just used numbers, like off a list or something.”
The door burst open.
Erin Ayers walked in, the Walther CCP gripped in her right hand. The ArmaLaser sight was switched on, and she played the red dot over Gabriel’s face, making him squeeze his eyes shut as she aimed at each in turn.
She strutted into the space between Gabriel and Britta, forming a shallow triangle so she could look at each of them in turn.
“Well, well, well,” she said. “Look what the cat dragged in. The famous freedom fighter, Gabriel Wolfe, MC. Come to rescue his Swedish girlfriend.” She adopted a hammy Swedish accent for the last two words. “Oh, no, wait. She’s not your girlfriend, is she? She’s your fiancée.”
“Who the fuck are you? And why do you call yourself Fury?” Gabriel asked, maintaining an even tone even though he wanted to shout and scream at the woman who had stripped him of almost everything and everyone he cared about.
“Oh, please. Don’t tell me your great strategic mind hasn’t figured it out yet?”
“I know you hate me. I know you think I committed some sort of crime against authority. You see yourself as an avenging goddess of the underworld”
“Ooh, who’s been brushing up on his Greek myths! Yes, you clever boy. I do think all of that about you. You see, by now, I should have been running things across the pond. We were so close. Then you fucked things up for me. Killing Daddy was always part of my plan, but you jumped the gun, pun intended.” She came to him and bent down to whisper in his ear. “Now, do you know who I am?”
As he inhaled, he caught her perfume, a fresh, floral scent that took him spinning back to a huge kitchen in a manor house just outside Salisbury. This close, he noticed a fine, silver scar behind her right ear, and another in the corner of her eye.
It all came together. The gait outside the apartment building. The turns of phrase. The coded messages. Lizzie Maitland.
“They shot you! The Home Secretary himself told us.”
She patted herself down, then smoothed one hand over her breasts and down to her hips, never taking her eyes off him for a minute.
“I must have got better, then, mustn’t I? The woman they couldn’t kill. Maybe they’ll make a film of my life one day.”
“How? The place was crawling with soldiers. You couldn’t have just walked away.”
“Actually, that’s exactly what I did. When Daddy bought Rokeby Manor, I was nine. An only child,” she pouted, “and all that space to rattle around in. I used to explore. And guess what? I found a secret passage. It was originally built by a Catholic family who owned the place in the sixteenth century. Oh, yes, I know it looked Georgian, but it was built over the ruins of an Elizabethan place. I told Daddy, and he brought the tunnel out into the garage, under all those lovely cars I showed you, remember? So when the heavy mob arrived, I just climbed down and as you say, just walked away.”
Gabriel was trying to formulate another question, mainly to keep her talking, when Sasha Beck entered the room.
“Hello, darling,” she said with a smirk.
“How’s the side?” he asked, eyes hard.
She looked down to her left. Just above the waist, her white shirt was bloodstained.
“Just a scratch from a splinter you blasted out of the wall with that hand cannon. I’ll live.” She paused. “Which, I’m sorry to say, is not a prognosis I can offer you and the charming Miss Falskog here.” She turned to Lizzie. “Ready when you are, Erin.”
She drew a slim, horn-handled lock-knife from her pocket and opened it with a click. Standing behind Britta, she placed the edge of the blade against her throat, dividing a triangle of freckles.
She looked down at the top of Britta’s head.
“Rest in peace, darling.”
Bright, White Light
GABRIEL stared at Britta, straining with all his strength against the plastic ties, but only succeeding in digging their edges deeper into the flesh of his wrists and ankles.
“No!” he shouted at Lizzie. “Don’t kill her. Please. I’ll do anything you ask.”
She squatted down in front of him, then, and smiled.
“Oh, I know you will. Believe me, by the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll be pleading to make me happy. But I’m afraid the Swede has to be sliced and diced. She was the final item on my list. Not counting you, of course.” She sighed. “Poor old Gabriel. Before you betrayed me, I had thought that one day, you know,” she lowered her eyelids and looked at him coquettishly, speaking in a breathy voice, “you and I might have formed an alliance. All that power and nobody to share it with would have been so boring.” Then she stood, abruptly dropping the little-girl voice. “But you put the kibosh on that, didn’t you? So now it’s time for your hubris, to use another Greek word, to be punished.” She looked at Sasha. Then down at Britta. “Goodbye, Miss Falskog. I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure, but you’re such a cunt, I’ll be glad to see the back of you.”
Sasha smiled and gripped the knife tighter.
Gabriel closed his eyes.
Felt his heart bumping against his ribs as if trying to burst free.
Then the room exploded. Three bright, white flashes burst into his retinas through his eyelids, and three deafening bangs made his ears sing.
Situational Unawareness
GABRIEL opened his eyes, cautiously. Britta still faced him. Alive, though he saw a one-inch cut had been opened on the side of her neck. She was wide-eyed and shouting, but he couldn’t hear her over the ringing in his ears from the flashbangs and the rattle of small arms fire from downstairs. It sounded like an AR15. But it was firing on full auto, so a military-spec weapon. Sasha and Lizzie had both left the room.
Someone downstairs, Sasha presumably, was returning fire, squeezing off pistol rounds in closely-spaced triplets.
Bang-bang-bang.
Bang-bang-bang.
Another burst of automatic fire and then both weapons fell silent.
Gabriel could just make out footsteps on the stairs. He readied himself. Mouthed, “I love you” at Britta. And waited.
Then he laughed.
He laughed, because standing in the open doorway, a smoking Colt M4A1 assault rifle resting nonchalantly over his shoulder, was Don Webster.
“Hello, Old Sport. Hello, Britta. Let’s get you out of those, shall we?”
He unsheathed a knife and cut the cable ties. Gabriel and Britta leapt towards each other. He hugged her tightly until she squawked in protest.
“You’re suffocating me! Let me go!”
Gabriel stepped away from her, then turned to Don.
“Where’s Erin, I mean Lizzie?”
“The other woman? No idea. Just thought I’d come in all guns blazing and rescue you. I think I killed the one downstairs. Sasha Beck? Plenty of blood, at any rate.”
“Shit! Lizzie’s gone. Give me the gun.” He reached out for the M4.
“You need to calm down and regroup. You’ve taken a round in the arm, and you’re in no state to start pursuing anyone.”
“No! Give it to me or I’ll go after her unarmed.” He stuck his hand out again, glaring at his commander.
Don unshouldered the assault rifle and handed it over. He pulled a new magazine from the pocket of his jacket.
“You’ll need this. I think I emptied that one. Be back here in an hour, whatever happens. That’s an order.”
Gabriel snatched the M4 from Don’s hand, slapped in the new magazine and ran for the stairs.
As he ran through the kitchen, he almost skidded in a wide pool of blood by the back door. OK. She’s not dead. Better be careful.
Outside, he ran to check on the cars. The Escalade and the Testarossa were slumped on shot-out tyres. He spun around, trying to get a visual on Sasha, or Lizzie. His ears were still buzzing and ringing from the flashbangs Don had lobbed into the bedroom.
He noticed a broken bracken stem between t
he two cars and a couple more beyond that. One or both of them had run for the safety of the woods. Not a bad move in the circumstances. Pulling the M4’s charging lever back, clack-clack, he ran for the woods beyond the cars.
The trail was simple to follow. Whichever of his two targets had taken this route had left perfect impressions of her shoes in the soft leaf litter on the ground, and she’d crashed ahead in a dead straight line, flattening and breaking the bracken. Here and there he spotted blood spatters on the pale-green ferns.
So intent was he on his pursuit that Gabriel completely missed the sound of a magazine being slotted home into the butt of a pistol.
Wounds
EXPLODING from the tree to his right, the spray of sharp-edged bark splinters threw Gabriel to his side, tripping and tumbling into the bracken. The report from Sasha Beck’s M&P Shield echoed around the forest. He poked experimentally at his face and had to suppress a yelp of pain. A flap of skin was hanging away from his cheekbone. He unzipped the TacMed kit, and, holding the flap in place, slapped on the QuikClot combat gauze and secured it with a fat Band-Aid.
Keeping his head below the tops of the fast-growing bracken plants, he called out.
“Is that you, Sasha? Rubbish shooting, by the way.”
“Oh, don’t be like that, darling,” came a roughened version of Sasha Beck’s normal, teasing voice, from about twenty-five feet to his right. “I am hurt, you know.”
“I saw the blood. Bad?”
“Two in the thigh, one in the side. Your boss has rather put the brakes on my career, I’m afraid.”
