Gilby looked round at the silenced faces. He was frowning, as though in disapproval of the fact that he’d caught us relaxed and relaxing. His gaze seemed to linger in my direction. For a moment I wondered if he’d spotted me waiting for him out there in the tree-line and had changed his plans accordingly. If that was so, evidently it hadn’t pleased him much.
In his hand was a piece of paper. He glanced down at it.
“We’ve had an alteration to tomorrow’s schedule,” he said, his voice deceptively mild. The kind of tone that doctors use when they say, “This won’t hurt.” It provoked an instant ripple of distrust and uneasiness.
“Directly after phys you’ll all be taking part in a simulated casualty exercise,” Gilby went on. “A test of your first-aid knowledge.”
He turned to leave, skimming that steely gaze over us again. “You might find,” he said, quiet yet somewhat ominous, “that your time this evening would be better spent on revision. Good night.”
***
They started in on us after breakfast the next morning. Figgis was showing us how to check cars over for booby traps when the Major appeared with a clipboard and took Hofmann away.
Ten minutes later he was back for McKenna, then Craddock, and Declan, all at ten-minute intervals. None of them returned to the group. My nerves screeched under the tension. By the time my name was called, I was so nervous that I had no brain capacity spare to concentrate on Figgis’s warnings of foreign objects shoved up exhaust pipes, or trip wires in the engine bay.
The Major led me into the hallway and motioned me to remain by the foot of the stairs. He disappeared through a side door and for a few moments all I could do was wait apprehensively for something to happen. I had the underlying fear that I was being manipulated, that events were moving beyond my control.
Still, at least I didn’t have to wait long.
A door burst open and Rebanks came charging out, shouting like someone possessed. He practically scooped me up as he ran past and hustled me down a corridor so fast that he pushed me out of my stride.
We rounded a corner at the far end, with Rebanks still bellowing in my ear. Blakemore was standing by a doorway a few metres away, beckoning frantically. He was yelling, too. I skidded to a stop alongside him and looked in, heart thudding from adrenaline as much as exertion.
The clock stopped. I tuned out the shouting around me, had time to take in the whole scene. The room was a study, darkly decorated and dimly lit. The heavily curtained window was opposite the doorway, fronted by a sombre desk. The usual desk furniture was arranged across its surface – in and out trays, an old-fashioned black telephone, a leather-cornered blotter, and a hooded lamp. The lamp was the only thing that offered illumination, casting eerie shadows into the recesses of the room.
In the gloom I could make out the body of a man lying on his back in the middle of the carpet. He was wearing half a dinner suit, dark trousers with a satin inset along the seam, a bow tie and a formal white shirt. He would have looked smart if it hadn’t been for the twisted mass of intestine spilled across his stomach. The front of the shirt was stained a livid scarlet. My heart kicked up another gear.
“Go on! Go on, that’s your principal in there!” Blakemore’s voice was almost a howl. I took a step forwards, innately following his command, then froze. Something was way wrong here, I could feel it.
He urged me on, his hysteria rippling the hairs on the back of my neck. I glanced sideways at him and found eyes wild with blood lust. I stepped back again, and thought he was going to burst a vein.
“It’s not safe,” I said, shaking my head.
“You coward, you fucking coward!” he screamed. “This isn’t about your own safety. That’s your principal in there. He’s down and he’s injured. You get in there and do your fucking job, you bitch!”
I staked him with a short, vicious glare, but stepped across the threshold, staying close to the wall. Everything smelt of a trap, I just knew it. I waited half a beat, straining to hear anything over the breathing of the men behind me. Oh shit . . .
I moved towards the man on the floor, squatted beside him. Through all the gore I recognised Ronnie, one of the cooks, and hoped that it wasn’t part of our lunch he was wearing. I’d got as far as pulling back his shirt cuff to check for a pulse when I sensed movement in the shadows, closing fast.
I barely had time to glance up, to take in a big man dressed in black, saw him moving out from behind the open door. There was a balaclava concealing his face, leaving only his eyes exposed, but the jolt it sent through me was like an electric shock.
His hands were clasped together, stretched out in front of him. The silenced automatic let out a sharp, distinctive flup of sound that sent my reactions screaming.
The fear came down like a falling blade, slashing into me. My choices came down to fight or flight. I went for the latter.
By the time the second round was fired I’d hurled myself sideways. I rolled over the top of the desk, scattering half the contents, and dived under the lee of the big mahogany structure.
My breath was coming in gasps, horribly loud to my own ears. In the light from the doorway I could see his shadow moving silently round towards the side of the desk. He knew he had me pinned down, knew I didn’t have a weapon. He knew he could take his time to finish me off.
I had nowhere to run and my hiding place was about to become useless. My options were running down like a tape machine with dying batteries.
They like to play mind games with you. Like to see how you react . . .
I shut my eyes for a moment, forced my breathing back into a regular rhythm.
This isn’t real.
I almost had to whisper the words out loud in order to believe them. Whatever test of our reactions Gilby and his men hoped to achieve from this exercise, it would not involve any real danger. I had to cling to that thought.
The barrel of the gun, extended by its silencer, edged into view at eye level round the corner of the desk, followed by the man who was holding it. Without speaking, he flicked his head to indicate that I should rise, and he stepped back while I did so.
But as I moved to pass him heading back for the doorway, he came in close, jamming the gun into my back to shove me down onto the surface of the desk. I landed face down, hard enough to bruise, hard enough to frighten, rammed into the smooth wooden surface.
Afterwards, I told myself I could have coped with that, with the rough pat-down search they decided to subject me to. I didn’t like it, didn’t see the need for it, but I could have stood for it, even so.
And then the man grabbed me at the back of my neck, and held me down.
Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay.
I panicked totally. I couldn’t help it.
Terror exploded into rage, expanding instantaneously out of nothing like a chemical chain reaction. Unstoppable and toxic. My emotions were banded by colours. White heat. Red mist. Black.
The heavy old-fashioned telephone was close to my right hand on the desktop. I closed my fingers around it, feeling the coldness and the weight. I heaved and bucked at the man pinning me, twisting under him as I brought my arm round at full stretch, like a pro golfer unwinding his best drive.
I’d selected target by instinct. At the last moment, the last fraction before I hit, I managed to connect with sanity long enough to shift my aim by a few millimetres. It was enough.
The phone smacked up under the side of the man’s masked jawbone, snapping his head back with a nauseating crunch. The phone’s internal bell reverberated as it hit and seemed to carry on vibrating for a long time afterwards.
The man shot backwards and sprawled across the leather Chesterfield sofa on the far side of the room, limbs flopping. I jacked my body upright away from the desk and went forwards automatically, ready to go again. He didn’t move.