Open.
He pushed it gently open and, weapon first, entered to find the iron staircase in front of him. It was being lit with a renewed flickering fusillade of bright flashes from above and he could see all the way up to the upper landing. Not that he needed the lights to identify the location of the action: suppressed pistol reports, the crack of bullets hitting brickwork, and manic roaring laughter were also ringing out from the top of the building.
Ellard pressed on up the stairs, winding around as he climbed, until he arrived at the top of the stairs where he paused and, easing himself onto his tiptoes, peeped up out of the hole.
In the half-light he could make out, to one side of the large open space, a crumpled body lying in a rapidly expanding pool of dark blood. Some distance away, at the opposite end of the space from the stairwell, Steel was stumbling around wildly, in some strange uneven circle, apparently fumbling with a replacement magazine for his pistol. He was trying to do it one handed, his other being clutched at his midriff. The magazine wouldn’t slot home.
Suddenly Steel roared in frustration and threw the empty handgun at the circular window. The glass smashed on contact, spewing its fragments and the errant handgun into the dark night.
Ellard watched as Steel then drew a broad, evil-looking, machete from his waistband, and stood there, holding it above his head.
The man was mumbling something incoherent to himself.
“Steel! This is Deuce. Stand down.” Ellard tensed himself, ready to drop out of sight – he could recover to one of the other floors if threatened. The madman’s head flashed around and began searching for him in the murky darkness.
“I must hold position!” yelled Steel.
Ellard grimaced. His worst fears about this man were being realised. “Stand down, soldier,” Ellard kept his voice calm and assertive.
Steel fell to his knees.
“I’m coming in now,” Ellard took one, tentative, step further up the staircase. “Is the target neutralised?” he shouted.
Steel looked toward the bloody pile of rags lying on the mattress against the wall. The soldier’s expression was one of pure hatred.
“Is the target neutralised?” Ellard repeated calmly.
Steel nodded.
“Stay where you are, solider. We’ll get you out of here.”
“I must hold position,” Steel mumbled, head down.
“Roger that. You hold position. I’m coming to take over. To relieve you.” Ellard stepped carefully up onto the floor of the loft-space. His gun was readied and directed at the soldier.
Steel didn’t respond, or move. He knelt there, hands clenched before him. Rocking slightly back and forth.
Ellard glanced quickly around the space. It was a mess. It looked like Steel had emptied several magazines into the walls and ceiling and it looked strangely like the crumpled body of the terrorist had been savagely beaten with some form of blunt instrument?
Ellard turned back questioningly to Steel. What had he done to the target?
Steel had stopped rocking.
“Steel?”
No response.
Ellard edged closer.
“Steel?”
Still no response.
The soldier remained motionless.
Ellard edged another step forwards and glimpsed the machete handle thrusting out of the dead man’s stomach.
“Oh, fuck!” Ellard rushed over and grabbed the soldier’s head but Steel’s lifeless body collapsed untidily onto the floor to one side.
He crouched and inspected the wound. There were multiple bullet entry holes, all slowly oozing blood across the dead soldier’s midriff. A quick glance behind the soldier confirmed what Ellard had expected – gaping exit wounds – the machete had only served to finish the inevitable.
The older man shook his head, rose and rushed over to the target. The youngster was a mess. There were multiple bullet wounds and the kid’s face was smashed to a pulp. Then Ellard spotted the boy’s backpack and, stepping carefully around the pooling blood, grabbed it. Maybe there’d be something useful inside?
He stood and scanned the empty loft-space again, and saw the answering machine on the floor next to the upturned table. He collected it and stuffed it into the backpack then, dragging the trailing telephone cable with him, rushed down the stairs and back to his waiting vehicle.
In the distance, he could hear approaching sirens.
There was no chance he could clean this level of mess up.
Not without a full team of agents, cleaners, and builders.
He needed to get clear, and quickly.
~~~~~
Barfold
I’m not sleeping very well. The bed feels too big, too empty, and I can still smell you.
Our little home is full of you, full of Lizzie, full of happy memories, full of pain... but, despite all these things, I’m glad I’m here. This was our place. Our safe haven. Our little nest.
We spent a long time getting it decorated and looking the way we wanted it to.
I gently roll my sore body over, so I’m on my side, and stretch my arm out around the ghost lying beside me.
“I love you, Iuli,” I whisper into the emptiness.
~~~~~
Berlin
Ellard called in from the car as he headed out of Berlin. “It’s a mess,” he said simply.
“Are you clear?” asked Greere, frostily.
“Yes, I heard sirens. Did someone hear the gunfire?”
“It’s not police, it’s BND. A Secret Service SWAT team. Get well clear and keep going. You did the right thing to get out.”
“I’ve got the kid’s pack, and an answering machine he was guarding. I ripped out the cable as I left. They may not notice it’s missing.”
“Amongst the dead bodies, and Steel’s bloodied arsenal, you mean?” Greere was, not unsurprisingly, bubbling on the edge of another fit of apoplexy. “Paris and Madrid have both gone dark. The kid mentioned a message in his phone call. Perhaps it’s on the machine?”
“That’s what I was wondering. I think they might have been using it to keep in contact with each other.”
“If so, the machine will not be available for the kid’s brother to listen to. At the moment he’s still in the Baltic, heading for what looks like landfall on the Polish coast. We need to try to get him tagged, before he finds out something’s happened and goes to ground too.”
Ellard pulled the rental to the side of the road and fished a tablet laptop out. “I’ll head up that way,” he said, firing up his satnav mapping application.
“Yep. Head directly to Gdansk. I’ll send Tin up to you. Meet him there. He can do it.”
“Why?” Ellard frowned. “I can do it.”
“Madrid is dark. Tin is useless there now. Give the gear to him in Gdansk and then get back here. I suspect it won’t be long before we’re ‘summoned’ about Steel and, if so, we must make doubly sure we don’t lose the trail while all the Agency bleating and chest-beating is going on. You can run Tin from here. You said he was the best of them, now it’s time to find out.”
“Why Gdansk?”
“Tin can get there quickly. I’ll find him a seat on a scheduled flight, and confirm his arrival time shortly. I’m fairly certain that the brother won’t be planning to travel directly toward Berlin, the cell’s exit routes have been too carefully separated until now. Tin can be near the landfall before the boat gets in sometime tomorrow night.”
~~~~~
Madrid
The ringing phone startled Jack from his sleep and he rolled his naked torso, across the single bed, to grab it off the nightstand. “Tin,” he muttered croakily. The cheap hotel room, with its broken thermostat, was swelteringly hot and he could feel a trickle of sweat running down his chest.
“This is Ace. Change of plans,” said the voice.
~~~~~
Barfold
Steve’s beaten up hatchback appears at the end of the street and splutters toward me. I’m waiting in front of the house. I’ve been here for a while. Steve is late – as usual – but he isn’t entirely responsible for my lengthy loitering.
The days are proving even harder than the nights. At night, I have drugs which help to carry me into a parallel existence, where my family are still alive and where my existence is a blissfully normal cycle of too much work and too little quality-time. Then daytime comes round, at some unearthly hour, and I’m awake again, aware, and reality floods back.
The silence.
The emptiness.
I’m developing a routine, to help me get through each day. The doctors and psychologists have recommended that I structure my time. Steve kindly volunteered to help, and I was pleased when the hospital allowed him to participate in my physiotherapy. But Steve’s slot in my schedule doesn’t arrive till midmorning, and that’s a lot of long minutes away from the moment I stir. That’s a whole lot of push-ups, a whole lot of sit-ups, and a whole lot of time on the, previously dust-gathering, exercise bike and weights machine in our little garage. That’s a whole lot of time for me and Vengeance to walk out to the woods, which are a mile or so away, and for me to let loose my anger at distant drinks cans, and any other litter the local lovers choose to leave behind after their evenings of clandestine passion.
There’re also a lot less pigeons around the woods...
My anger is surprising me. I’ve never really been one for anger, or violence, or shooting pigeons. I’ve always preferred to find compromise, to seek happy solutions, to talk down antagonists, but now I find myself embracing fury and enjoying its bitter, destructive, pointlessness. The doctors say it’s only natural. “Part of the process,” they mumble sagely.
I’m not so sure.
In the kitchen, piles of hair are scattered over the floor. The result of an hour, this morning, with an electric razor and a Number Two comb. I might even try a Number One later. I’ll tidy up, when I get back later.
Steve pulls up in front of me in a thin cloud of oily smoke, and leans across to wind down the passenger window. The window gets stuck, as usual, so he shouts through the tiny gap that’s opened, “Crikey! That’s a
mean
haircut! You ready?”
I shake my head in mock disbelief. Steve’s one person I just can’t be angry with. He goes through this routine, every day, with the same cheeky grin plastered over his face, and with the same endless enthusiasm and happiness about him.
I pull open the door, throw my kitbag into the back and climb in. “You’re early,” I grunt sarcastically, and we drive off to the sound of his rattling engine and infectious laughter.
~~~~~
Gdansk, Poland
It was raining in Gdansk when Jack stepped out of the airport building. It was also bitterly cold. He frowned and pulled his thin jacket tighter to him as he scanned the busy roadway. He’d need to get himself a decent coat, he decided.
A nondescript grey car with German plates was making its way toward him amongst a line of taxis and other vehicles. At the wheel, he could make out Deuce’s shock of white hair. The car pulled to the kerbside and Jack nonchalantly pulled open the passenger door and climbed inside.
Deuce nodded once at him and they drove off in silence.
The car wound its way around the airport’s perimeter and then onto the main road toward the nearby city. “Where’s your stuff?” Deuce eventually asked, bluntly as usual.
“Madrid. Station locker.” Jack felt completely exposed without his backpack but the instructions from Ace had been clear. He especially didn’t like not having his familiar Browning to hand, but there was no way he could have flown with it.
“Good...,” said Deuce.
Jack was slightly surprised at what sounded like a tacit endorsement – Deuce more normally preferred to have a go at him.
“...Kit like that is wasted on you.”
Jack grimaced – that was more like what he expected. “So what’s the mission?” he responded frostily.
“You have to meet one of the cell members, called Sergei Ebrahimi, when he finally disembarks the fishing boat he’s been travelling aboard. He’s arriving into Kołobrzeg this evening.”
“He’s been holed up in Scandinavia?”
“No. He’s been on the boat for a long time. We suspect he’s hitchhiking and didn’t realise he was going to be on board for a whole fishing trip.”
“What about Sikand?” Azat Sikand had been his allocated target in Madrid. “What’s happening to him?”
“He’s gone dark. We need this one to lead us back to him.” Jack could tell Deuce was being careful about how much he was saying. “That’s where you come in. You have to tag him, not get noticed, and then get your sorry arse out of Poland.”
“Back to Spain?”
“Wherever you like, as long as you stay in Europe.” Deuce pulled the rental off to one side of the road. “There’s a bin over there. Go and toss your jacket into it.” Jack looked at him incredulously. “Get on with it
Tin
, we haven’t got all day and, don’t worry your soft and tiny mind, there’re a couple of heavy jumpers and a greatcoat in the back for you. Here, in Poland, that pathetic jacket’s about as useless as you are...”
~~~~~
Barfold
I think the training went well today. All except for the part where I decked our instructor with a back kick.
That part hadn’t quite been to plan...
Fortunately, I didn’t hurt him too much, and it didn’t stop him repaying me with a couple of return whacks, later on in the sparring sessions.
I’d forgotten how much I enjoy Taekwondo as a sport. It helps that, thanks to the steroids which are seriously amping me up, I’ve nearly doubled my body weight and muscle mass, and it also helps when your nerves continue to refuse to transmit much information to your brain. Those little pops from my instructor should have left me reeling, but today, they felt like gentle pats on my midriff.
I also suspect that, if I’d really been trying, I could’ve blocked them, but discretion was being applied and, for the sake of the rest of the group, I’d decided that it was best not to rile him too much. Our instructor is a bit of a madman, and his usually perpetual bad temper is a mirror of my own more recent temperament.