Whoever was shot continued to scream, though the volume of his cries gradually diminished as the life drained from him. Another few minutes and he’d be silent. Hurry up and die so I can hear again, Victor silently encouraged.
He managed to blink away the last of the grit from his eyes and could once more make out the Glock. The screams reduced to little more than a whimper until Victor could hear his own breathing. He held the Glock outstretched and waited for some indication of where Krausse and his men were located. He heard no movement, no panicked breaths, only the shot guy’s moans. Victor changed positions, moving towards the far side of the elevator.
The floor creaked beneath his foot.
In response two shotgun blasts hit a nearby stack of crates. Splinters of wood flew off in all directions. He felt some snag his suit jacket. He dropped prone as two handguns opened fire an instant later. Bullets thudded into the crates shielding him, zipped over his head.
The firing didn’t cease. They were shooting at the general area, trusting to firepower and hoping to score a lucky hit. The noise was deafening. For Victor it was either stay put or make a break for it. Moving into the line of fire was a bad tactic, but lying still and hoping not to be hit seemed like an even worse course of action.
Rounds continued to strike his position, hitting the floor, crates, and pillars. Shotgun pellets made a crater in the floorboards close enough for Victor to feel vibrations through the wooden planks. He knew he was running out of time.
There was a lull in the shooting. A handgun stopped firing. At first, he thought someone was reloading, but he heard another sound between the other gunshots. Water Music by Handel.
Victor didn’t let the advantage escape. He made his move, quickly peering around the stack of crates. He saw nothing. He tried the other side, and a split second before the phone went silent, Victor saw the faint blue of the screen glowing through the thin fabric of Krausse’s cheap suit trousers.
Victor angled the Glock and fired. Krausse screamed.
Victor was up on his feet and moving before Shotgun returned fire. The huge flash from the end of the barrel briefly illuminated him and Victor shot back with a double tap. Shotgun fell sideways into an area of light near one of the windows. Very dead.
The last gunman took a shot at Victor. The muzzle flashed on the far side of the warehouse, maybe sixty feet away. Victor fired, on the move, rushing closer. Too eager.
He knew he’d missed before the returning muzzle flash made it obvious. The bullet sparked off a metal pillar to Victor’s left. He headed right, not risking firing back again at this range with only one bullet in the Glock.
Forty-five feet and the gunman fired at him again. He hadn’t changed position, somewhere near the sink. The bullet didn’t come close. He was shooting at noise only and Victor was a fast target. He headed back to the right, clipped a crate with his leg and stumbled. The next round blew a hole through a windowpane.
Less than thirty feet. His enemy fired again, this time from a different position, behind a pillar. The bullet came close enough for Victor to hear the sonic snap. Fifteen feet. Another shot missed and Victor braced for the next one that he felt sure was going to hit.
No shot. Empty gun.
Victor heard the magazine clatter on the floor and the gunman frantically trying to reload. Victor closed the last few yards fast and the gunman came into view — a blurry shape of near black against the darkness. Victor heard a new magazine slammed into place and the shape moved, collapsing backwards, Victor’s last bullet embedded in the gunman’s chest.
Victor stopped, took a much-needed deep breath, and listened. He heard one man groaning somewhere in the dark. Everyone else was dead or dying silently. Victor dropped the empty Glock and prised the fully loaded one from his enemy’s hand. He checked the corpse’s pockets, finding a wallet and a lighter. He took both, glad there hadn’t been any cigarettes as well to test his resolve.
He followed the map in his head to where his shoes lay, slipped them on, and then to where Georg had fallen, the groans growing louder the closer he got. Victor used the lighter to push back the darkness and saw Georg lying on her back, hands pressing down over the bloody mess of her abdomen. Blood pooled on the plastic sheeting beneath her and trickled on to the floor and drained through the gaps in the narrow boards. She stared up at Victor, her ghost-white face contorted by agony. Tears glinted on her cheeks.
‘ Please…’
Careful to avoid the blood, Victor checked Georg’s pockets. ‘Please what?’
‘Help me.’ Georg’s voice was thin. ‘I’ll pay you… Anything you want.’
Victor held open Georg’s empty wallet. ‘What with?’
Georg didn’t answer. Victor put back the wallet, ignored a cell phone, and pocketed a set of van keys.
‘ Help me,’ Georg begged again.
‘You’re wearing body armour,’ Victor explained, ‘which is why you took a twelve-gauge to the gut and are still alive. But it’s a concealable vest, so it has maybe nineteen layers of Kevlar. Enough to stop a nine mil travelling at twelve hundred feet per second, but not nine pellets of buckshot at the same speed. Maybe absorbed fifty per cent of the energy though, so none of those pellets reached your spine, but plenty of power left to shred your intestines. And that’s without the slug in your shoulder. You’ll be dead in fifteen minutes maximum. There’s nothing I can do to stop that.’
‘Phone… an ambulance.’
‘And have my voice recorded by the emergency services? I don’t think so.’
He found the guy he’d stabbed and pulled the knife free. Custom-made, all ceramic, with a kris edge and gladiator point. Far too good a weapon to waste in a corpse even without its sentimental value. Victor wiped the blade on the dead man’s jacket before folding it away.
‘I’m sorry… this… happened,’ Georg said.
Her tone of voice really did sound sincere, but in Victor’s experience excruciating pain had a habit of making people very apologetic. He stood.
‘Help me… please,’ she spluttered between grunts, ‘or kill me… it hurts…’
Victor approached and stopped a few inches short of the blood pool. He angled the Glock.
Georg’s gaze tracked the gun, but her eyes closed so she didn’t have to watch. Not that there was enough time to register a muzzle flash and fear the ensuing bullet before impact, or enough time for the brain to recognise its own destruction. But Victor didn’t fire.
Instead, he squatted down and reached into Georg’s duffel coat. He withdrew the cell phone, dialled 112, switched it to speakerphone, and placed it in one of Georg’s hands. Her eyes opened and stared at Victor, shocked.
‘Remember to forget me,’ Victor said before the line connected.
He headed to the elevator as the emergency operator politely asked which service Georg required.
CHAPTER 8
Central Intelligence Agency, Virginia, USA
Associate Deputy Director for the National Clandestine Service Roland Procter took a seat in one of the four black leather armchairs positioned in the corner of his office. The area was set to create an informal space for meetings and discussion, but Procter was usually happier to talk from behind his big desk. His current guest, however, warranted a more even playing field.
Enjoying the chair across from Procter was Clarke, who, though the same age, was at least eighty pounds lighter, several shades paler, and looking not too dissimilar to a French fry in a suit. But if Clarke was a French fry, Procter had to admit he was definitely the hamburger on their collective plate. Though Procter wasn’t sure how much he weighed, it had to be north of two fifty. It wasn’t genetics, it wasn’t big bones, it was just that Procter liked to eat.