Текст книги "Stay Alive"

Автор книги: Simon Kernick

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Thirty

Today 19.35

TONY HANSEN HAD had enough of his wife. He and Jackie had been married for twelve years now, and he reckoned that for most of the last ten of them she’d been driving him insane. It was the constant nagging. She nagged him about literally anything: his haircut; his job; his clothes; the way he left the toilet seat up when he peed in the middle of the night. At first he’d tried to react to her complaints by modifying his behaviour (when she’d told him she hated his flowery shirts, he’d stopped wearing them), but all that happened was that she’d start on about something else, and slowly it dawned on him that his wife was never going to be happy unless she was picking holes in him about something.

The fact was, he’d have divorced her years ago, but then she’d got pregnant with Jody (Christ, he’d hated that name, especially for a boy, but Jackie had been adamant and he knew better than to argue), and now there was no way he could leave her. He was trapped in a loveless marriage, and there was no way out of it. He’d tried to make things better by buying the holiday cottage up here in the country. They both liked walking, and wanted to encourage Jody, who was now six, to enjoy the great outdoors. In fact, when he was up here amidst the forests and hills, Tony was at his happiest. Even Jackie’s nagging seemed to slip effortlessly off him like the morning mist over the nearby river.

But right now she was driving him mad. She’d wanted him to drive up here via the A9, but he’d chosen the A93 instead, because the A9 had major roadworks between Dunkeld and Pitlochry. Unfortunately, it had taken him longer than he’d thought, and Jackie had been giving him trouble about it ever since. This was their first time away from Jody in over a year. They’d left him with Jackie’s mother while they spent four days up here celebrating (and he used the term loosely) their anniversary. They’d originally wanted to head for the Canaries for a bit of sun, but it seemed too far for such a short space of time and, anyway, money was scarce now that Tony had had to take a ten per cent pay cut at work – another thing she’d nagged him about, as if he had a choice in it.

The car had thankfully descended into a truce-like silence as he drove down the hill towards the cottage on the final leg of their three-hour journey. They’d picked up a curry at the only takeaway in Tayleigh and Tony had some beers in a cold box in the boot. He was finally thinking about properly relaxing. They’d get the heating on, watch a bit of telly. God forbid, maybe even have sex . . .

‘Look, Tony. The lights are on in the cottage.’

Disturbed from his reverie, Tony looked up and saw the sloping roof of the cottage through the trees. Jackie was right. The bedroom light was definitely on, and there could be no innocent reason for it either. They never left the lights on when they left, and they no longer had a cleaner, or even a neighbour who looked after the place.

‘Can you see, Tony? Can you see?’

‘Aye, course I can see.’

‘I think we should call the police.’ Jackie fumbled in her pocket for her mobile.

‘Let’s take a look first,’ he said, slowing down as he got nearer the cottage. He could see now that the lights on the ground floor were on as well.

‘But what if it’s burglars and they’re still there? Come on. You need to call the police.’ She tried to hand him the phone but he didn’t take it.

‘And tell them what? That the lights are on in our cottage and they shouldn’t be? We need to see what’s happened first.’

‘I don’t like this,’ Jackie announced warily as he drove into the driveway and stopped, switching off the engine.

‘Ah shit, we’ve been burgled,’ he said, seeing the broken kitchen window. ‘God knows what they were after. There’s nothing there.’

‘I knew we should have got a bloody alarm. What did I tell you? The place is too bloody isolated.’

But Tony was looking up at the bedroom window. ‘Christ Almighty. There’s someone moving up there. They’re still here.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Jackie fearfully as he fumbled for his keys, suddenly wishing he hadn’t turned off the engine. ‘Come on, come on.’ She shook his arm as if this would speed him up, her eyes wide with panic.

Behind her, a shadow moved outside the passenger door and the next second there was a deafening bang, very close.

Tony shut his eyes instinctively, and when he opened them a split second later, his face had been sprayed with a warm liquid, and Jackie was tottering in her seat, with a large chunk of the side of her head missing. One eye was gone, and the other was open and staring sightlessly into the distance. Blood and pieces of brain covered the whole of the car’s interior, and Tony knew that that was what was covering his face too.

Jackie fell sideways and slumped in her seat. Dead. Gone. Finished. Outside, the man who’d fired the fatal shot was standing beside the bonnet aiming his rifle at Tony. Tony couldn’t see his face, and didn’t want to.

Dropping the keys, he yanked open the driver’s door and jumped out, moving surprisingly fast for a man who was a good three stone overweight. But he was never going to make it. He heard the second shot ring out, felt a huge pressure on his back, as if someone had dropped a rock on it, and fell forward onto the driveway, hitting it face first.

Moaning more in shock than anything else, still unable to process the fact that his wife had just been murdered, he rolled over onto his back as the man with the rifle came round the front of the car and stood over him.

‘What did you have to turn up here for?’ said the man, in a tone that was more annoyed than anything else. He had a hard, expressionless face, with two thin scars running across it like train tracks, and straight away Tony knew this was a man who was never going to show him any mercy. As if to prove the point, the gunman pushed the end of the barrel against his cheek.

Flinching from the heat of the metal, Tony raised a hand and tried to cry out, knowing it was useless, and thinking in his last moments that he was going to miss Jackie, and that perhaps she hadn’t been so bad after all.

Then the shot rang out.

Keogh turned away from the driver’s corpse, unable to believe how badly wrong things were going. Two more civilians caught in the crossfire. Five dead in all, now, and one of his men missing. And still no sign of Amanda Rowan. The dogs were in the house but, though they’d found a pack of sausages wrapped in wet clothes, which must have been left to attract them to the scent, there was no sign of either her or the two kids. Either they were hidden extremely well in the house or, far more likely, they were gone.

He looked back across the woods, scanning them for any sign of movement, but they were utterly still.

‘You’re round here somewhere, Amanda,’ he whispered into the darkness. ‘And when I find you, I’m going to make you pay for this.’

Thirty-one

JESS COVERED CASEY’S ears and pulled her close as the third shot rang out, its retort reverberating through the trees like a thunderclap, making them all flinch.

They’d stopped in a small clearing twenty yards from the single-track road and about a hundred yards up the hill from the house where, barely five minutes earlier, they’d been sheltering. Jess’s mouth was bone dry and she felt sick. ‘What do you think just happened?’ she asked urgently.

‘I think the car that just drove down belonged to the owner of the house,’ whispered Amanda. ‘I think he must have disturbed the men who are looking for us.’

‘And they just killed him?’ The full force of the danger they were in hit Jess like a sledgehammer.

‘I’m going back for the owner’s car.’

‘What do you mean? You’re going to steal it?’

‘You heard what just happened. The guy didn’t even get a chance to get out of his car. The keys are probably still in there.’

‘You can’t go back there.’ Jess thought of the three shots, and wondered if the little boy who owned the Buzz Lightyear dressing gown was one of the dead.

Amanda’s expression was determined. ‘It’s our only chance. You two don’t have to come. You can wait here. When you hear me drive up, come out onto the side of the road and I’ll pick you up.’

It struck Jess then that she didn’t trust Amanda enough to rely on her to stop once she’d got the car on the track, especially if there were armed men and dogs chasing her. ‘I’ll come with you.’ She looked down at her sister. ‘Casey, you stay here and wait for us, okay? We’ll just be a couple of minutes.’

‘I don’t want to,’ said Casey, looking terrified. She was still clutching her jeans in her hands like some kind of comfort blanket. ‘What if something happens to you?’

‘Nothing will. I promise.’ Jess wasn’t at all sure she believed what she was saying. In many ways going back to the house was madness, but she wasn’t prepared to let Amanda go back on her own and, at least if anything did happen to them, the chances were that the men wouldn’t go after Casey.

She stroked her sister’s head. ‘We’ll be two minutes. Put your jeans on, and when you hear the car, get over to the road, and check it’s us before you show yourself. Okay?’

Casey nodded and Jess pulled away from her, blew her a kiss, and followed Amanda as they raced back through the trees, not daring to look behind them, and all the time she was praying she was doing the right thing.

They slowed up when they reached the laurel hedge and followed it until they reached the entrance to the driveway, moving as silently as possible. Amanda looked round the corner of the hedge, then turned and motioned for Jess to follow her. From somewhere in the house, Jess could hear shouting. It sounded as if the men were trying to get the dogs to stop doing something, but she couldn’t quite make out the words. They were close by, though, and Jess felt her legs shaking as she and Amanda crept onto the driveway and made their way towards the back of the car. The body of a man in a dark tracksuit lay on its back near the driver’s door, a pool of blood forming on the ground round his head. Jess turned away quickly.

‘Go round the other side and get in,’ whispered Amanda as she turned towards the driver’s side.

Jess continued round towards the passenger door, keeping as close to the car as possible, thankful that it was a concrete rather than a gravel driveway, so that her approach wasn’t quite as audible. Suddenly she saw a tough-looking guy appear in the kitchen. The light was on in there and she could see him clearly, only a few yards away. He had scars on his face and he was carrying a rifle and looking down at something at his feet. Then he turned and looked out in Jess’s direction.

Jess froze where she was, praying he wouldn’t notice her, because if he did, she was dead.

For what felt like a long time but was probably only a couple of seconds, the man stayed where he was, looking out, then he turned away. ‘Come on, they’re not here,’ she heard him call out to whoever was in there with him, his voice carrying through the broken kitchen window. ‘They must have made a dash for it.’

Creeping forward quickly, Jess opened the passenger door, flinching when she saw a woman lying with her back to her in the passenger seat, a great chunk missing from the top of her head. The windscreen and dashboard were covered in gore and thick splats of blood, some of which were still dripping, and a horrible smell of shit hung heavily in the air.

Amanda was leaning in the other side of the car, searching frantically for the keys. ‘I can’t see them,’ she hissed. ‘Are they over your side?’

Jess looked on the floor, trying hard to ignore the corpse in the seat. She couldn’t see them anywhere, and when she looked back up, the scar-faced man was no longer in the kitchen. A shadow appeared through the frosted glass panel in the front door, and she heard the sound of the dogs’ paws scrabbling against the woodwork.

Fear surged through her. ‘We’ve got to go,’ she whispered desperately. ‘They’re going to see us any second . . .’

‘Hold on,’ hissed Amanda. ‘Give me one moment.’ Turning away, she crept quickly over to the driver’s corpse while Jess stared at the door, waiting for it to open, racked by indecision.

‘I’ve got them.’ Amanda lifted up the keys and jumped back in the car. ‘Get rid of her and get in quick,’ she added, motioning towards the woman’s body as she shoved the key into the ignition with shaking hands.

A day ago the idea of handling a freshly murdered corpse would have been impossible to imagine for Jess. But now her survival instinct kicked in and she grabbed the dead woman by the collar of her lurid pink tracksuit top and yanked her out, dumping her on the driveway before jumping in the passenger seat just as the front door to the house flew open, and the scar-faced guy appeared in the gap, the rifle held out in front of him, the dogs already pushing past him as they made a dash for the car.

At the same time, Amanda switched on the engine and threw the car into reverse.

‘Duck!’ screamed Jess as the man raised the rifle and pointed it at straight at them. Without waiting to see whether Amanda followed her prompt, Jess threw herself down in the seat as the car accelerated backwards. A shot rang out and in the same instant the windscreen exploded, raining glass down on her as she squeezed her eyes shut and covered her head.

A second shot rang out, then a third and a fourth, and the car mounted a bank as it came hurtling out of the drive. As Jess opened her eyes again she saw Amanda crouched uncomfortably in her seat, eyes level with the dashboard as she yanked the wheel round, and the car fell back onto the road.

They were now temporarily out of sight of the gunman and they both sat up in their seats, Amanda craning her head round as she reversed the car wildly up the hill.

‘Don’t forget Casey!’ yelled Jess. ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t forget my sister!’

‘I won’t, I won’t. Just hold still and keep your head down.’ Amanda had her foot flat on the accelerator. The car was wobbling all over the place and she was going as fast as she could in reverse, but it wasn’t fast enough and there was no room to turn round, although for the moment they were just about outrunning the dogs. And now they were coming up towards the bend in the road close to where Jess reckoned Casey would be. If they could get round that and out of sight, then they might just have a chance of escape.

And then, as she looked back down the hill, Jess saw the scar-faced gunman come into view again. In one movement, he crouched down, took aim with the rifle and opened fire, letting off shot after shot.

As Jess ducked back down, she felt the car spin out of control. Amanda was yanking the wheel this way and that but it didn’t seem to be doing any good, and suddenly they were leaving the road. The car swerved wildly and hit a tree before coming to a halt, facing back down the hill.

‘Out! Out! Out!’ yelled Amanda. ‘Out your side!’ She gave Jess an angry shove as another shot rang out, its impact making the car shake. Smoke was rising from the bonnet now and it was clear the car was going nowhere.

‘What about Casey?’ yelled Jess.

‘Just go!’ No longer willing to wait, Amanda scrambled over her and yanked the door open.

The two of them rolled out together and scrambled into the undergrowth as another shot whistled past somewhere not that far over their heads. Using the bushes as cover, Jess leapt to her feet, still clutching the knife she’d taken from the kitchen, and looked round desperately for any sign of her sister. But she couldn’t see her anywhere and didn’t dare call her name, in case it alerted their pursuers to her whereabouts. She could hear the dogs racing up the hill towards them, coming close now.

Amanda yelled at her to run and took off herself into the trees without looking back but, for a long second, Jess stood where she was, cursing herself for not staying with Casey, knowing that she couldn’t let the dogs catch her sister’s scent. She had to distract them. ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ she called out as the dogs – two lean, powerful-looking Dobermans – raced into view.

Knowing she had their full attention, Jess turned and sprinted into the darkness of the woods, running faster than she’d ever run in her life, knowing that it was never going to be fast enough, but praying that Casey at least would make it out of here in one piece.

She could hear them right behind her now. Closing in for the kill. Could hear their hot panting breath only feet away.

Swinging round, she held out the knife as the closest dog leapt through the air towards her, jaws open wide. The knife connected with the dog’s chest and it let loose a strange gasping howl as it impaled itself right up to the hilt on the blade, the momentum of its leap sending both the dog and Jess crashing to the ground. Warm blood poured onto her chest from where she’d stabbed the dog, and she just had time to see its eyes roll back in its head before the second Doberman was on her, sinking its teeth into her knife arm.

Jess yelped in pain, trying and failing to retrieve the knife, kicking out wildly at the dog as its teeth tore her flesh. With a huge, desperate effort, she tried to fight her way to her feet, but the dog’s grip was too strong, and already she could see the shadows of the men who were hunting her on the road.

But she wasn’t going to go down without a fight and she kept up her struggle with the dog, trying to gouge at its eyes, even as she saw a man approaching her at a run in the periphery of her vision, a gun with silencer attached in his hand, the weapon outstretched in front of him.

It was over. She’d tried everything to survive but – when it had come down to it – she’d failed.

Taking a deep breath, she clenched her teeth against the impact as the shot rang out.

Thirty-two

SCOPE TOOK IN the whole scene in the space of a couple of seconds. The girl – pretty, mixed race, no more than eighteen, tops – fitted the description of the older of the two kids on the canoeing trip. She was sitting on the ground staring up at him, her mouth open in shock, the confusion written all over her face as she tried to work out who on earth he was. Her left forearm was bleeding and she was clutching hold of it with her free hand. Two dead Dobermans lay next to her – one she must have killed herself; the other he just had.

Thirty yards away, just visible inside the tree line, were shadowy figures some distance apart. Scope had counted three of them and they’d stopped, clearly having heard Scope’s shot, and were crouching down.

Panting from the exertion of running the last half-mile in the direction of the gunfire, Scope leaned down beside the girl, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the shadowy figures. ‘How many of them are there?’ he whispered.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered back, her voice surprisingly calm given the fact that she’d been bitten quite badly. ‘But they’ve got guns, and they’re trying to kill me.’

Scope had three shots left. If they were going to make a dash for it, he was going to have to use those shots to hold off the girl’s pursuers and give them a few seconds’ head start, which might be enough now that it sounded as if there were no more dogs with them. But as he took aim at the nearest figure, one of the men called out excitedly to the others. ‘There’s the young one!’ he bellowed in a rumbling Eastern European accent.

‘Grab her, and keep her alive!’ someone else called back, his voice carrying through the darkness. This time the accent was English.

‘No! My sister!’ the girl next to Scope screamed.

The next second, the powerful beam of a torch swung round towards them, temporarily blinding Scope. This time he didn’t hesitate, aiming his pistol towards the light and pulling the trigger twice in quick succession, before grabbing the girl and yanking her to her feet. ‘Move!’ he hissed, cracking off his third and final shot from the hip, and hearing the tinkle of glass as the torch shattered, plunging them back into welcome darkness.

‘My sister!’ the girl screamed again, resisting Scope’s efforts, but her voice was drowned out by a succession of shotgun blasts. Scope remembered giving the girl a shove and her taking off into the gloom, holding onto the kitchen knife she’d killed the first dog with, and then he felt a sudden, very hard, impact in his side and his legs went from under him. ‘Run!’ he managed to yell, and then he hit the ground with a hard thud that tore the wind right out of him.

Everything was happening extremely fast for Keogh. First he heard the shot ring out from somewhere inside the woods – only twenty, thirty yards away. Even though he was half deafened from all the shooting he’d been doing, he knew straight away that the shot had come from a pistol, and one with a suppressor attached. He could no longer hear the barking of the dogs either.

For a split second he wondered if the shooter was Mehdi. After all, guns with suppressors were unheard of in a remote place like this, but there was no way Mehdi could have found them back here. Not wanting to take any chances, Keogh crouched down at the edge of the tree line, motioning for Sayenko and MacLean to do the same, but Sayenko appeared to be looking at something further up the hill on the other side of the road.

Keogh was just about to tell him to pay attention when Sayenko pointed towards whatever he was looking at. ‘There’s the young one!’ he shouted.

Knowing the usefulness of having one of the fugitives as a hostage, particularly a kid, Keogh yelled to Sayenko to get hold of her alive, hoping like hell he had the energy to catch her.

Almost immediately, a female voice called out in alarm from inside the trees. Keogh didn’t catch her exact words, but he distinctly heard the word ‘sister’. Holding his rifle in the crook of his arm, his finger still poised on the trigger, he switched on the Maglite torch and shone it into the undergrowth, trying to catch sight of whoever was in there.

He caught movement twenty yards in, but then two shots rang out in rapid succession, passing between him and MacLean, who was crouched down with his shotgun next to the abandoned car, five yards away. As Keogh dodged behind a tree, swinging round the rifle as he hunted for a target, a third shot hissed through the trees, and the torch bucked in his hand as the light shattered, plunging the world back into a heavy, impenetrable gloom.

That was when MacLean opened up with the shotgun, its retorts cracking across the night air. Dropping the torch, Keogh put the rifle to his shoulder and leaned out from behind the tree. He saw movement – shadowy figures partially screened by bushes, running further into the woodland – and opened fire until he’d run out of bullets.

He thought he saw one of them fall and hoped it wasn’t the target, Amanda Rowan, because if she was dead, he was dead too. But there was little time to worry about that now.

Motioning for MacLean to follow, Keogh started into the darkness.

Casey sprinted for her life through the big dark wood because she knew the horrible bony man with the bald head like a skull, and the big gun, was after her.

He’d seen her in the bushes beside the road, where Jess had told her to wait for them to pick her up. She’d seen the car crash, heard the shots, and didn’t even know whether or not Jess was still alive. She was thinking that she couldn’t lose her sister, not after everyone else. It was like God was trying to do everything he could to hurt her, even though she’d never done anything wrong before.

Then the man had shouted something and started coming up the road after her, waving the gun, a horrible look on his face like one of the zombies in Jess’s Call of Duty 3 game she’d got last Christmas, and then just after that she was sure she heard Jess shout something, but she couldn’t be sure what, and then she was running, because she really didn’t know what else to do.

And she was continuing to run, even though her shoes were hurting, and the brambles kept scratching her face, and she was more scared than she’d ever been in her life. This was worse than the worst nightmare. It was worse than being attacked by the faceless monster with the werewolf claws that she’d always been convinced lurked beneath her bed ready to tear her to pieces and eat her head the moment she shut her eyes and fell asleep. Because the people doing this were grown-ups. Grown-ups were meant to look after children. Her mum had always told her that you had to be careful of strangers. That strangers might want to hurt you. But Casey had never believed it. The grown-ups she knew, even Lily’s mum back home in London who didn’t say much and never looked very happy, were always really nice.

But these men . . . These men wanted to kill her.

She sneaked a look over her shoulder for a moment, but couldn’t see the bony man with the bald head. If she could keep going a bit longer, then she could hide somewhere and he wouldn’t be able to find her. She’d always been good at hiding, and now she could no longer hear the dogs, they wouldn’t be able to sniff her out and hurt her. But her legs were tired, and her tummy ached, and she didn’t know how much longer she could keep going. She needed Jess here to help her. Jess would know what to do.

Casey turned back round so she could see where she was going and spotted the branch hanging out in front of her one second before she ran straight into it with an angry smack.

She cried out – she couldn’t stop herself in time – and fell backwards onto the ground. Her whole face was agony, but her nose especially. It was like someone had smacked it with a hammer. She tried to sit back up, trying desperately not to cry, but her vision suddenly went all blurry and she had to swallow to stop herself being sick.

That was when she heard it. The sound of heavy, rasping breathing.

And it was getting closer.