by Andy Maslen
Crawling on his belly towards her voice, Gabriel keeps the M4’s muzzle aimed about four feet off the ground dead in front of his position. He crawls twelve inches closer.
“You killed innocent people, Sasha. Friends of mine. People I loved.” Another foot closer.
“We all kill innocents, Gabriel. You of all people should know that.”
Shit! She’s right. Philip Agambe was a good man. A decent politician in a corrupt government, and I wiped him off the face of the earth. “Maybe I do.” Another foot. The thick, sappy growth bending without crackling as he pushes it aside. “But you made this personal.”
“Me? It was Lizzie who made it personal. After all, didn’t you kill Daddy?”
Another foot. There’s a sudden rustle to his left. He looks up. Sasha is on her feet. He sees her drawn face through the fronds at the top of the bracken stems. She’s pointing the pistol down at him, holding it unsteadily in her left hand. Her right is clamped over her midriff. His M4 is aimed in completely the wrong direction. Somehow, she’s circled around him.
“I’m sorry, darling. I always thought there could have been something for us. Beck & Wolfe, Assassins has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?”
His thoughts spiral, lightning fast. Everyone’s arrived for the party.
You need an idea, mate. Now! It’s Dusty’s voice.
Quick, Old Sport. Don.
Love is a strange thing, Gabriel. Fariyah’s voice.
Do a trick for me, Gable. Michael.
Gabriel speaks.
“Me, too, Sasha. But Britta was always so possessive.”
“Was?”
“Lizzie hit her when the flashbangs went off. She’s dead.”
He watches as she processes this information. The lips she’s tightened against the pain ease upwards.
“I’m hurt, darling. Rather badly.”
“We can get you out. To a hospital. Then once you’re patched up, you and I can talk, properly. No guns.”
She grunts out a sound halfway between a cough and a laugh.
“Then off to a black site in Thailand? I don’t think so.”
“No. Don wants to talk to you. About joining us. You’re very good at killing people. We need those skills in The Department.”
Her gun arm is wavering. The colour has left her face again. She is pale from blood loss.
“If you let me up, Sasha, darling, I can help you back to the house. I’ve got a trauma kit right here on my belt.”
He waits, heart racing, eyes glued to the pistol, which is dropping inch by steady inch.
“Hurry, darling,” she says, finally. “This is a bad one.”
Gabriel stands, keeping the M4 pointed at the ground and a smile on his mouth, and takes a step towards Sasha.
Love is Blind
SMILING wearily, the two assassins stand facing each other, fifteen feet apart.
Neither loves the other.
Sasha, because although she doesn’t know it, she is incapable of feeling emotion.
Gabriel, because right now emotion is all he can feel: a burning desire to kill Sasha Beck.
This disparity in emotion gives Sasha the trump card.
She sees it. In his eyes. The mouth is lying; the eyes are telling the truth.
“Bastard!” she hisses as she sees, in slow motion, the M4’s barrel rising.
Summoning all her strength she takes her right hand away from the wound in her side to steady the pistol.
She screams with pain as she begins firing and the blood floods out from the bullet wound in her abdomen.
Three rounds hurtle towards Gabriel.
Gabriel fires simultaneously: a five-round burst.
Exploding propellant shatters the calm of the forest.
Sasha is bleeding profusely from the wounds to her left thigh and her internal organs. The NATO rounds Don shot her with yaw on contact with soft tissue, and her chances before contact with Gabriel were already slim. Now, standing, and haemorrhaging badly, her balance is gone and her aim is wild. The .40 explosive rounds bury themselves in the soil several feet from Gabriel. If they do explode, the devastation is underground and drowned out by the noise emitted from the muzzles of both guns.
Gabriel’s aim is unaffected by the tear in his cheek, or the wound in his left arm. Three of the five rounds hit Sasha, one in the side of her neck, two in the face. At this range, the damage is catastrophic. The shot to her neck tears through the muscle and blood vessels, ripping a chunk of flesh free as it exits, spraying blood into the bracken behind her. The two shots to the head kill her instantly. Her skull bursts outwards in an explosion of bone fragments, bloody flesh tatters and brain tissue.
The body falls backwards into the bracken with a soft clump. Sasha Beck, lonely schoolgirl, wide-eyed tourist, reluctant killer, professional assassin, disappointed lover, is dead.
Ursus Americanus
JUMPING to his feet, Gabriel ran on for two hundred yards, following Lizzie Maitland’s trail. He skirted the massive trunk of an oak tree and pulled up in a sharp stop. Dead ahead, in a small clearing bathed in golden sunlight like a stage set, stood Lizzie Maitland. Pistol in hand, she was facing two bear cubs and behind them, rearing up on her stumpy hind legs to a height of seven feet, their mother.
The bear dwarfed the woman. As it towered above her, forepaws clawing the air, it bellowed its rage at this threat to its family.
Lizzie aimed at the bear’s exposed chest and fired two-handed: a rapid sequence of five shots. Her 9mm rounds were man-stoppers. But not bear-stoppers. Gabriel saw bright spurts of blood as the bullets found their target, but the damage was clearly superficial and only enraged the bear further. It launched itself forward and down, swiping at Lizzie with one massive paw, the long, steel-grey claws raking across her torso.
She went down with a scream, emptying the magazine into the bear.
Gabriel looked on in horror as the mother bear bellowed with pain and rage, exposing massive fangs. She reared back and came down again with both front paws, smashing them over and over onto Lizzie Maitland’s head and body.
He sighted on the bear, then changed his mind. He raised the rifle’s muzzle and aimed at a spot above her blocky head and fired a burst into the trees behind her.
It was enough. The bear stopped her attack and stared at him, panting and grunting. He backed off a few paces, keeping the M4’s muzzle pointing at her head. Then, from the edge of the clearing where it had been cowering, one of the cubs cried – a sound almost like that of a human baby. The sound distracted the mother. Gabriel kept still, watching as she weighed up her options. Then she decided. She called to the two cubs, roared a final time at Gabriel, then turned and trotted away into the forest, her offspring gambolling behind her, perfectly in step as they disappeared into the greenery.
Gabriel came out into the centre of the clearing and knelt beside Lizzie’s body. She was almost unrecognisable. Her face was gone. The blows from the bear’s front paws had fractured her skull. Her chest and abdomen were bleeding heavily from multiple closely-spaced sets of gashes, and he could see a glistening coil of silvery-purple intestine through a gaping wound in her belly.
“Help me, Gabriel.”
He jumped back in shock as her mangled jaw and torn lips struggled to form words.
“There’s nothing I can do. You’re too badly wounded.”
“I know,” she whispered. “Help me.”
Her eyelids fluttered, and he took one final look at her.
He took the bloodstained pistol from her unresisting hand.
Stood and took a couple of paces back.
Turned.
Aimed.
And fired.
A double-tap between her closed and bloodied eyes.
The head jerked upwards, then flopped back into the leaf litter.
Lizzie Maitland AKA Erin Ayers AKA Fury, was dead.
Back Together Again
AFTER propping the M4 in the corner of the kitchen, Gabriel sat do
wn at the table next to Britta and opposite Don.
“Any more coffee?” he asked.
Don got up, poured a mug from the drip machine on the countertop and handed it to Gabriel.
“Everything OK?” Don asked.
Gabriel nodded. “They’re both dead. You hit Sasha three times; she wasn’t going to live long anyway.”
“And the other one, Fury?”
“Her name was Lizzie Maitland. Daughter of Sir Toby Maitland. Dead, too.”
Don took a sip of his own coffee. “Ah. Well I suppose that makes sense. I thought you’d dealt with her in that business at Rokeby Manor.”
“There was a tunnel. Built by the original owners.”
“I’ll have to make a few calls. Get a clean-up team out here.”
“I’m sorry for causing a scene in the US. I know you said not to.”
Don smiled. “That’s OK, Old Sport. Worse things happen at sea, eh?” Then he nodded at the M4. “Incidentally, next time you shout at me like that, I may not take it so kindly.”
Gabriel grinned. “Sorry, boss. Must have been shock.”
He turned to Britta.
“How are you? Did they mistreat you?”
He noticed a momentary cloud flit across her face.
“Did they ‘mistreat’ me? What are you, the police? No, it was fine. Nothing I wasn’t trained for. The worst bit was getting shipped over here like a fucking dog in the cargo hold of some plane.”
“You two can catch up properly once we’re out of here,” Don interrupted. “But I think we really should exfiltrate before the local constabulary arrive.”
“I couldn’t see a third car,” Gabriel said.
“Well, that’s because I tabbed my way here, presumably the same as you did. D’you know, I wondered if my shooting war days were behind me, but it appears I can still handle a search and destroy mission, even at my advanced age.”
Gabriel laughed then, a genuine expression mixing relief at being reunited with Britta with the pleasure of being ribbed by his old commander again.
“Before we go, boss, can I just ask you one question?”
“How did I know where to find you?”
“Yes. I mean I know you have all sorts of high-level contacts over here, but I was acting on my own.”
Don smiled.
“Remember that little drink you had with Eli after you left me last time?”
“Yes. In a tourist trap in Trafalgar Square, why?”
“She give you anything? A little keepsake, maybe?”
Gabriel felt in his pocket, already knowing how his boss had found him with such ease. His fingers closed around the silver insignia Eli had given to him in the pub and brought it into the light.
“You bugged me,” he said.
“Yes, I did. You always were a headstrong so-and-so, and you had a look in your eye when you promised to obey my order that was about as hard to decode as a ten-foot neon sign.”
“I didn’t say I’d obey it. I said I understood it.”
Don chuckled. “So you did. Now drink up. We need to go. I left my car about a mile up the road. Then we’re leaving the US on a military flight on which I have managed to secure three seats.”
Like a Woman Scorned
YEREVAN, ARMENIA
TASHKEND Street was quiet, and the mid-afternoon sun bathed the Soviet-era buildings each side of the roadway in a soft light that relieved some of their ugliness. Very few cars passed along the dusty tarmac, and the pavements were free of pedestrians. Starlings were cackling and calling to each other from the telegraph wires stretching across the street, jostling for position and occasionally flying up in small flocks of ten or twenty birds before settling back down to continue their morning convocation.
In a circle of grey rocks in the centre of the road, three flowering cherry trees blazed with pink. The soft clouds of blossom weighed the thin outer branches down to the ground, where the slight crosswind blew them back and forth as though urging them to sweep the street clean of rubbish. Britta Falskog raised her eyes to the horizon. She could see the four snow-capped peaks of Mount Aragats to the northeast of the city. She looked both ways out of habit before jogging across the road and entering the cool, dim lobby of the red-brick apartment building.
Once inside, she removed her sunglasses and zipped them into a pocket of her jacket. She bent down and slid a couple of fingers into the side of her right boot. The Fallkniven F1 survival knife she’d been issued during her service in Swedish Special Forces was snug in its leather sheath. The holster under her left armpit was strapped around her ribcage. Not so tight as to hamper her breathing, but tight enough to avoid any possibility of its slipping as she drew her firearm. Thanks to a contact of Eli’s, Britta had a pistol fitted with a suppressor. A brown-skinned kid on a moped had sped up beside her at the agreed location, handed her a white plastic carrier bag, and disappeared into the traffic. The SIG Sauer P229 Nitron Compact pistol was chambered for .357 SIG rounds. She screwed on the suppressor.
Torossian’s apartment was on the top floor of the block. Britta glanced at the graffiti-smeared steel door of the lift and shook her head. She took the stairs to the tenth floor two at a time for twenty flights without slowing. She kept her weight on her toes, but her lightweight boots still scraped and scuffed on the bare concrete of the steps.
Outside the apartment door, which, she noticed, was protected by an unpainted sheet of three-millimetre steel screwed to its face, she paused for a few moments. Once her breathing had slowed, she rapped on the steel with the knuckles of her gloved left hand. Three hard, determined blows. She waited.
“Who is it?” a deep male voice called from the other side. Not Torossian’s.
“Pizza!” she yelled back.
She heard muffled male voices beyond the steel. Arguing about who ordered takeout, she assumed.
The door opened wide.
Standing in the opening was a six-foot-six giant: swarthy; short, black beard and matching moustache; suspicious expression on his face; Glock 17 in hand.
A black hole, rimmed with scarlet, appeared between his eyes, and he fell backwards, blood fountaining from the entry wound in an arc that painted the ceiling with spatters of red.
The suppressor damped the explosion as the round travelled the six inches from the SIG to the man’s forehead. But the sound was still loud in the cramped confines of the hallway and it bounced flatly off the bare concrete walls. It also drew a second heavy from the interior of the apartment.
This man was carrying a Mini Uzi machine pistol. As he took the corner into the hallway, he tripped over the corpse of his former crewmate. The stumble hampered his aim, but even without the obstacle, he was a dead man.
By the time he brought the gun up, three rounds from Britta’s pistol were smashing into his chest cavity and bursting his heart. He died without firing, collapsing into a bloody heap on the hall carpet.
Two down, one to go.
She entered the flat, stepping over the two bodies, careful to avoid standing in the blood. She kicked open the three doors leading off the narrow hallway. The first two rooms were empty.
The third contained Dmitri Torossian.
He was standing by a window. His pistol, a chromed Walther PPK, was aimed at the doorway. As she entered the room, he began firing at head height, burning through the eight rounds in the magazine in a couple of seconds and filling the air with acrid gun smoke.
If she’d been standing, he might have scored a hit.
If.
She got to her feet.
Aimed at his groin.
Shot him twice.
With his screams ringing out, she bent to relieve him of his pistol.
“I told you I’d find you, didn’t I, kuksugare?”
Torossian’s eyes were rolling wildly in their sockets. His breath was coming in frantic gasps through bared teeth.
“Don’t kill me,” he managed to rasp out. “I have money. Name your price.”
She smil
ed down at him, watching the way the pool of blood spreading out beneath him was soaking into the carpet.
“How about all those women and girls? The ones who learned to call you Le Démon Blanc? Can you bring them back here from whatever Godforsaken life you sold them into? Hej? Can you do that, motherfucker?” She stood over him, then, straddling his torso and pointed the pistol at his face. “I didn’t think so. This is my price.”
“No!” he screamed.
“Yes! This is for them.”
She shifted her aim from his head to his torso, and shot him three times in the stomach.
“And this,” she leaned down and pulled the F1 from her boot, “is for me.”
She swept the four-inch blade from left to right, so deeply that she exposed his spinal cord, and jumped back to avoid a soaking from the bright-red jets of arterial blood carrying the white demon’s life force away and sending him to hell.
A Promise, Broken
LONDON
SCRATCHING at the dressing on his left arm, Gabriel stood hip to hip with Britta. They were looking down from a stone bridge at a family of ducks paddling around on the surface of an ornamental lake. On this late-May Saturday morning, the grounds of Chiswick House were swarming with families and couples enjoying the sunshine. A child’s squeal made Gabriel look up. On the grassy slope leading down to the lake, a little girl, maybe three or four, was running by the water’s edge, trailing a tiny blue and green kite behind her. Her parents looked on from twenty feet away. They seem unconcerned by the danger she was in. His stomach clenched with anxiety as she ran closer and closer to the water. Then she turned away and ran back towards her parents, and Gabriel let his breath out as her father scooped her up into his arms, laughing and tickling her under the arms, making her squeal even louder.
