Stay Alive (25 page)

But still she kept praying in her head, knowing that she just had to keep quiet for a little bit longer and it would all be all right. The horrible man looked as though he was bored of searching for her now. Soon he’d go away, then she’d keep running until she found the edge of the wood. It had to end somewhere. She’d never before been in a wood this huge and empty with no people around anywhere. All of Scotland seemed to be like that, just miles of empty space, and though she liked her new home, and the kids at her new school who’d all been really nice to her, she missed the noise and bustle of London.

But of course she might be going back there, now that Uncle Tim and Auntie Jean were . . . She couldn’t say it. Even to herself. Her face crumpled as she thought of them then and she almost started to cry. She’d really liked Uncle Tim and Auntie Jean. She’d miss the stories her uncle used to tell her at night of the places he’d seen in the world when he’d been in the Merchant Navy and the people he’d met. She’d miss the way Auntie Jean would hug her really, really close and stroke her hair, and tell her what a beautiful girl she was . . .

She scrunched up her eyes and forced back the tears. She was a big girl now. She had to be brave.

The horrible man dropped his cigarette on the ground and stamped on it, all the time looking round with his big nose in the air, as if he was trying to smell her out.

Behind her, Casey could hear the faint rustling of leaves. Something was moving.

Very, very slowly she turned round, terrified of what she might see.

And had to stifle a gasp.

It was a baby deer, and it was standing next to a tree just a few feet away, looking over at her with big, dark eyes.

For just a couple of seconds, Casey forgot all her terror as she stared in wonder at it, amazed that it didn’t run off. She’d only ever seen deer in Richmond Park and they always seemed to be a long way away, but this one was so close she could almost lean over and touch it.

And then the horrible man let out a sharp, hacking cough and the deer tensed, then bolted, scattering dead leaves.

Casey looked back quickly, just in time to see the horrible man swing round fast, eyes narrowing as he pulled the trigger on his big gun.

Behind her, she heard the deer fall. Then she squeezed her eyes shut as she heard his footsteps coming towards her.

Sayenko lowered the gun, and walked over to the bush, peering over into the darkness. The deer – one of those small, rat-like ones you get in this country – bucked a couple of times on the ground, then lay still. Sayenko cleared his throat and spat a lump of phlegm against a nearby tree. He’d thought it was the little brat he’d been chasing, and was immediately disappointed. It annoyed him that he was out here running round after her when what he should have done was shoot her the moment he’d seen her. As far as he was concerned, there was no point in letting any of them live, especially when they’d seen their faces, but Keogh had yelled at him to take the brat alive. No doubt he wanted to use her as a hostage to try to get the others out into the open, but now she’d escaped and was beyond the reach of any of them. Like everything else today, it had been a fuck-up, and that was the fault of this idiot, Keogh.

Sayenko didn’t like having to work with anyone he didn’t know and trust, and with good reason. This whole thing should have been easy. Three of them with guns, and all they had to do was grab an unarmed girl in the middle of nowhere, jab her with a needle, then chuck her in the trunk of a car and drive away. Sayenko knew if he’d been there, rather than keeping watch in the village, it would have been a different story. Once in Moscow, he and two other gunmen had grabbed a journalist out of her car at some traffic lights in the middle of rush hour, shot dead her two bodyguards, and still got out of there without any problem. Yet the three men he’d been working with today had failed completely, and now here he was, running around these woods, trying to find someone who was surely long gone by now.

Sayenko decided he wasn’t going to carry on this chase any longer. He’d go back and find the others, which wasn’t going to be easy, as the satellite phone they’d given him didn’t have their numbers programmed in. But he’d worry about that in a minute. First, he needed a piss.

He glanced round briefly just to check that he was definitely alone before placing the gun carefully on the ground (he remembered only too well the story of a guy in the army who’d tried to take a leak with a pistol in his hand and who’d shot off the end of his cock when it had gone off by mistake).

Then, with a deep satisfied breath, he unzipped his trousers, relaxing for the first time that night.

Casey was holding her breath. She couldn’t believe that the horrible thin man was standing on the other side of the bush, almost right above her. She could see his boots underneath it, no more than three feet away, could hear his harsh breathing. She could see the gun on the ground too.

She knew he was going to pee. She’d heard him unzip his flies. His wee was going to land on her too if she lay where she was, which would be absolutely disgusting.

She had a chance to run while the gun was out of reach. And she knew she was going to have to do it too, because if she stayed where she was, she was going to have to breathe soon – and then he’d hear her for sure.

Almost without thinking about it, she leapt to her feet, seeing the shock on the horrible man’s face, then she turned and bolted into the darkness, knowing she was running for her life, that one mistake and she’d end up like that poor deer.

Sayenko leapt backwards with a startled growl. He couldn’t believe he’d almost been standing on the little blonde brat without knowing it, and for a couple of seconds he didn’t even react.

But then his training kicked in and – with an angry roar – he charged through the bush. He was quick over short distances, and with his long legs he gained on her rapidly, then reached out with one arm, yanking her backwards by the collar of her jacket and throwing her roughly to the ground, before slamming his knee into her back, enjoying the terrified sound she made as he picked her up.

‘
I CAN’T BELIEVE
he killed my dogs,’ said MacLean, staring down at the two dead Dobermans at his feet, his pudgy face dark with rage. ‘I spent months training them. What a fucking waste.’

‘Who the hell was he, though?’ said Keogh, thinking that right now dead dogs were the least of his problems. ‘He just came out of nowhere.’

MacLean leaned down and inspected one of the dogs with a gloved hand. ‘He shot this one in the neck, and he had a silencer on his gun.’

‘He must have used Mehdi’s gun, which is why I can’t get hold of Mehdi. Do you think he’s police?’

‘No way. If the police were involved, there wouldn’t just be one man, and he’d have shouted a warning before pulling the trigger. There are all kinds of rules about that sort of thing. You of all people should know that.’

Keogh ignored the jibe. ‘Did you get a look at him?’

MacLean shook his head. ‘He was too far away, and he didn’t fire back when I was chasing him down the path.’

‘Maybe he’s trying to conserve his bullets.’

‘Or maybe he’s run out of them.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ said Keogh, looking about him. The forest was dark and silent, the only sound the wind rustling through the leaves.

‘We need to get hold of Sayenko,’ growled MacLean. ‘Why’d you send him after the wee bairn? It’s just wasting time, and I’m telling you we don’t have an awful lot of that left. With all the shooting, sooner or later someone’s going to dial 999, and then we’re going to be caught out here. And I’m not going to have that. Understand?’

‘All right, all right,’ said Keogh, trying to stay calm. ‘I thought Sayenko could grab the girl as a hostage, but I wasn’t banking on some unknown gunman shooting at us.’ For the first time he seriously considered abandoning the op, getting in his car, and driving as far away from here as possible. He had money stashed away. He could head to Europe or Asia and lie low for a while. But he dismissed the thought almost immediately. The boss would track him down and exact revenge. ‘We can still salvage this,’ he said. ‘We’ll get hold of Sayenko, then we’ll go after the other two. Where do you reckon they’re going to head for now?’

‘They’ll go the same route they were always going to go. Out of the woods up to the road, then I reckon they’ll cross country, go over the hills, and double back through the valley. I doubt if they’ll try going to Tayleigh by road but, if they do, we’ve got Ma watching the road now, so we’ll know about it.’

‘So we’re going to have to chase them across country? How exposed is it out there? Will we be able to locate them easily enough?’ Keogh didn’t like the hint of desperation he recognized in his own voice.

MacLean put down his shotgun and took the Ordnance Survey map out from inside his jacket. ‘Shine a light over here, can you?’

The light in Keogh’s torch had been shot out by the mystery gunman, but he still had a mini-Maglite attached to his key ring and he shone it onto the map.

‘See, this is the path they’ll take,’ said MacLean, running a gloved finger through an area of white on the map lined with elevation contours that looked uninhabited. ‘There’s a farm here, about a mile and a half from the road, which they’ll pass on that route, and if I were them, when I got there I’d stop and ask for help.’

‘How long will it take for them to get there from here?’

‘At least an hour, even if they’re going fast.’

Keogh smiled for the first time in a while. ‘That should give us plenty of time.’ He took out the satellite phone and dialled the number of the handset he’d given to Sayenko, wondering if he’d managed to get hold of the little girl.

If he had, then Keogh would have no choice but to tell him to kill her.

UNARMED AND ALONE,
Scope moved as swiftly as he could through the trees. He didn’t know this area of the forest very well, but he’d been on a run nearby a couple of months earlier, and remembered the chalet-style holiday cottage, close to where he’d heard all the shooting a few minutes earlier, and rescued Jess from being attacked by the dog.

He doubled back on himself, approaching the cottage from the north in a wide circle designed to keep him well out of the sights of the gunmen, in case they were continuing to look for him. He passed east of the cottage, giving it a wide berth, before trying to pick up the trail of Jess’s sister, Casey. But the problem was, he wasn’t a tracker. He’d found Jess earlier because he’d followed an established path and the protracted gunfire had pinpointed her exact location. But there was no gunfire or established path here, and he didn’t dare call out to her. Casey didn’t know him and, after all that had happened to her today, there was no way she’d respond to his calls. Also, Jess had said that one of the gunmen had gone after her, and was probably still in the vicinity. It was also possible that the other two weren’t far away either and, now that he’d run out of bullets, Scope didn’t want to attract any undue attention.

He stopped for a moment to get his breath back. He must have run at least four miles since he’d left the river, on top of a fast ten-mile kayak, and a fight that had almost cost him his life, and he was exhausted. He also had to make a decision about which way to go. The track that led from the cottage up to the B-road that snaked its way into Tayleigh was about two hundred yards to his right, and from the distance he’d travelled up the hill from the cottage, he guessed he was roughly level with the spot where Jess had abandoned the car she’d been in. That meant he was probably also about level with the place where Casey had entered the forest on this side of the road. She’d have been running for her life and panicking, so would probably have tried to get as far into the woods as possible, which meant running in an easterly direction. That, then, was the direction in which he’d head.

As his breathing slowed, he turned and was just about to start running when he heard it.

The sound of a phone ringing.

Stopping dead, he looked in the direction it was coming from and saw and heard movement coming from deeper in the woods. A second later, a tall, shadowy figure came into view no more than thirty yards away, and Scope could just make out the figure of a child walking closely alongside him. The man was pointing a gun down towards her shoulder and, as the phone rang again, he fumbled for it in his pocket.

Casey shivered in fear. The gun was resting against her neck, and her back really hurt from where the horrible man had jumped on her. She wished she’d stayed where she’d been now, even if it had meant the man weeing on her, because now she’d been captured, and she didn’t know what was going to happen.

The horrible man’s phone was ringing and he fished it out of his jacket, grunting and cursing to himself in a foreign language she didn’t understand.

‘Yeah,’ he said in a growly voice.

Casey looked up at him. He wasn’t looking at her any more. He was busy listening to the voice on the other end of the phone, and his gun was no longer resting on her shoulder.

‘Sure, I’ve got her,’ he said. ‘What do you want done?’

She couldn’t quite hear what the man he was speaking to was saying, but she was sure she heard the word ‘kill’ and it sent a huge shiver up her spine. She knew then that if she stayed where she was, then she was going to die right here.

Without even thinking about it, Casey grabbed the end of the gun and pulled as hard as she could. The man was so busy talking he wasn’t paying attention, and to her amazement the gun came free from his hand.

He shouted out and went to grab it back, but she was too quick, throwing it away as far as she could before turning, ducking away from his clawing hands, and sprinting into the trees, all in the space of a couple of seconds.

Sayenko couldn’t believe the little brat had caught him out like that, or that he’d been so careless as to have let his finger drift away from the trigger. And Christ, she was fast, darting away from him into the trees.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ snapped Keogh, who’d heard his curses. ‘You’ve still got her, haven’t you?’