‘As soon as it stops,’ Donna said.
‘If it stops,’ Julie added quietly, gazing up into the heavens.
The rain continued to pour down.
7.08 p.m.
The sky still wept.
The ceaseless deluge had turned the small front yard of the cottage into a swamp. Water poured through the guttering and splashed noisily from the eaves. It was falling so fast that rivulets of rain streaming down the window-panes made it difficult to see out at all. Darkness had come prematurely with the deluge, the gloom summoned early by such an abundance of black cloud. The sky looked like one massive mottled rain cloud.
Donna sat in the sitting-room, glancing endlessly at the sheets of paper they’d picked up from the bank that day and also at the notes Ward had left. She knew the words off almost by heart.
‘Destroy the book and you destroy them.’
She exhaled deeply and massaged the back of her neck with one hand.
‘They must be stopped.’
A throbbing headache was beginning to gnaw at her.
‘They have infiltrated everywhere.’
Donna closed her eyes for a moment.
‘No one can be trusted.’
‘Donna.’
Julie’s shout caused her eyes to snap open. She looked round and saw her sister standing at the window, gazing out.
‘Come here,’ the younger woman said, a note of urgency in her voice.
Donna did as she was asked and stood beside her sister, peering through the rain and darkness.
Two cars were moving towards the house, both with their lights turned off.
‘Who are they?’ Julie wanted to know.
Donna was reasonably sure she knew. When she spoke, her voice was low.
‘Lock the doors and windows,’ she said. ‘Hurry.’
Sixty-Six
The cars stopped about twenty yards from the front of the cottage. One of them parked across the narrow track leading away from the building; it acted as a barrier.
Donna saw men scuttle from the vehicles, two of them running towards the house, slipping in the mud but keeping their balance.
She recognized one of them as Peter Farrell. Julie was busily locking the doors and windows, sliding bolts and turning keys. Donna seemed transfixed by the approaching men. She saw two more of them move towards the sides of the cottage. She turned and ran upstairs.
‘What’s happening?’ Julie asked breathlessly, hurrying to secure a window-lock on one of the kitchen windows.
The face loomed up out of the darkness and leered at her through the rain-soaked glass.
Julie screamed and took a step back.
The man held something in his hands.
Something he was swinging towards the window.
The iron bar struck the frame and the glass simultaneously, shattering the glass, sending shards spraying into the kitchen.
Julie screamed again and threw herself to one side, hissing in pain as a silver of broken glass sliced through the flesh on the back of her left hand.
The man outside struck at the window again, smashing more of the wooden frame, then he dropped the iron bar and snaked one hand inside, trying to slip the catch.
‘No,’ shouted Julie. She picked up a knife lying on the draining board by the sink, and drove it towards the man’s hand. She heard him shriek in agony as the blade pierced it, cutting through the web of skin between his thumb and index finger. Embedded in the wood, it momentarily skewered him to the window-frame. Julie saw blood pumping thickly from the wound.
With a shout of pain he tore his hand free, the flesh ripping as he dragged himself away from the knife, leaving it embedded in the wood.
Julie snatched at the knife as the man disappeared back into the blackness outside. Rain now poured in through the broken window, the wind also whipping through, buffetting Julie as she moved across to the back door.
The impact against it was enormous.
It seemed to bow in the centre; for one terrible second she thought that it was going to split.
The second blow sent the door flying open. For fleeting seconds Julie found herself staring into the rain-soaked face of the intruder. He fixed her in a maddened stare and she saw the blood running from his gashed hand.
‘Fucking bitch,’ he hissed and lunged towards her.
On the cooker to her right stood a frying pan the two women had used for their meal less than an hour ago.
Julie snatched up the heavy skillet and swung it with all her strength.
It smacked savagely into the man’s face, flattening his nose. The bones splintered under the force of the blow and blood spilled down his chin and the front of his jacket. He staggered.
She struck again, wielding the frying pan like a club, bringing it down hard on the top of his head with a blow hard enough to cut his scalp.
He dropped to his knees and tried to scramble away but Julie hit him again, kicking him hard in the ribs as he fell to the ground.
She dropped the frying pan and used both hands to push the back door shut, heaving with all her strength as the man tried to block it with his body.
She pulled the door back a foot or so then slammed it forward, catching him between the heavy wooden door and the frame. He grunted in pain.
She slammed it on him again.
And again.
He let go and ducked back into the driving rain.
Julie banged the door shut and slid the bolts into place.
Donna had been rummaging beneath the bed upstairs, where she’d pulled out both of the metal cases. She flipped one open and took out the Beretta and the .38, jamming one into the waistband of her jeans. Then she rushed back towards the stairs, almost falling in her haste to get back to the ground floor.
As she dashed into the sitting-room she heard movement outside the front door and immediately swung the automatic up into firing position.
It had been a while since she’d fired a pistol and the initial retort took even
her
by surprise. In the confines of the cottage the noise was thunderous.
The 9mm bullet left the barrel travelling at over 1,200 feet a second and cut a hole through the door. She fired again, and again.
Movement by the window.
Donna fired.
The glass exploded outwards and rain suddenly came pouring in through the hole. The curtains billowed madly as the wind caught them and Donna dashed across to the light switch and slapped it hard, plunging the room into darkness.
With her ears ringing from the massive blast of the weapon she threw herself down and crawled across to the wall by the front door, able to see back through the sitting-room to the kitchen.
She could see Julie also crouching down, one hand closed around the handle of the frying pan.
Outside she heard footsteps in the sucking mud.
The lights upstairs were still on; if she could only get to a window she might be able to see what the men outside were doing.
Rain continued to sweep into the cottage, driven by the strong wind that screamed around the building.
For interminable seconds the only sounds were the wind and rain and the heavy beating of her own heart.
Donna crouched where she was, the Beretta held close to her, the stink of cordite strong in her nostrils.
The attackers had obviously been surprised by the ferocity of their defence. Perhaps, she reasoned, they had left, not expecting to be greeted with guns.
There was no sound from outside, although it was difficult to pick out anything in the torrential rain that battered both cottage and landscape.
Donna got to her feet, still keeping low, and moved towards the small round window close to the front door in the hall.
If only she could get a look, see what they were up to ...
It was pitch black; she could scarcely see a hand in front of her. Her breathing was deep and she tried to control it, tried to stop herself hyperventilating. She gripped the pistol more tightly as she reached the wall beneath the window and rose slowly.
Just one quick look.
Her heart thudded madly against her ribs and the blood sang in her ears.
She steadied herself, ready to look through the window.
Then the first burst of gunfire tore across the front of the cottage.
Sixty-Seven
The roar of the UZI sub-machine gun was deafening. In the howling wind and driving rain the burst of 9mm fire looked and sounded like man-made thunder and lightning. The muzzle flash illuminated Farrell and the yard around him for several feet as he raked the sub-gun back and forth, spent cartridge cases spewing from the weapon; smoke and steam rising into the damp air.
Windows were blasted inwards by the fusillade. Bullets drilled into wood or stone or sang off the walls with a loud whine. Lumps of plaster were torn free. Part of the guttering at the front of the cottage was blown away.
The hammer finally slammed down on an empty chamber. Farrell angrily ripped the empty magazine free and rammed a fresh one in.
A dark figure appeared at his side, limping.
‘She locked the back,’ said Frank Stark, wiping blood from his broken nose away with the back of his hand.
‘I didn’t expect her to have a gun,’ said Brian Kellerman, peering at the cottage, shielding his eyes from the driving rain.
‘I don’t care if she’s got a fucking cannon in there,’ Farrell snapped, pulling back the slide on the UZI. ‘Get inside.’
He fired another short burst from the sub-gun, blowing in an upstairs window.
Fragments of glass and shattered window-frame fell. He raised his eyebrows.
The porch was directly beneath the window. Anyone managing to get on top of the porch could easily clamber up through that bedroom window.
Farrell grabbed Kellerman and pointed at the window.
‘You and Stark get in through there,’ he said. ‘Ryker, you go round the back again. Listen, all of you, we need Ward’s wife alive, got it?’
‘What about the other woman?’ Stark wanted to know.
‘Who gives a fuck?’ said Farrell and opened fire.
More bullets spattered the front of the cottage, drilling lines back and forth in the stonework. Dust was washed away as the rain continued to pelt down.
Stark and Kellerman ran towards the house, keeping low, as anxious about Farrell’s erratic covering fire as they were about Donna’s possible retaliation.
Three bullets suddenly hit the ground only inches ahead of Stark.
The muzzle flash that accompanied their arrival came from inside the house.
He pitched forward, throwing himself down in the glutinous mud, covering his head with his hands as Farrell replied, bullets slicing through the air and singing above the prone man’s body, missing him, it seemed, by mere inches. He kept his face pressed to the muck as bullets drilled holes in the wall and door. Lumps of wood were blasted free.
More shots from the Beretta came back, one of them striking the car. The 9mm slug exploded one of the Orion’s headlights, smashing the housing and causing Farrell to jump back and seek cover behind the vehicle.
Kellerman reached the porch and hauled himself up onto it, hoping that the wooden canopy would take his weight. He looked down and saw his colleague still lying in the mud, not daring to move. Kellerman wondered if he’d been hit. He turned and saw that the window ledge was about three feet above him. He steadied himself, then shot out both hands and gripped it, hauling himself up the wall to the beckoning entrance.