Текст книги "Stay Alive"

Автор книги: Simon Kernick

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Eleven

KEOGH CLOSED HIS eyes and shook his head angrily. They’d lost Amanda Rowan and now he was in a lot of trouble.

He’d driven the dead cop’s car off the road and concealed it in undergrowth where it was unlikely to be seen unless someone was looking for it. The cop himself was scrunched up in the boot, and by the time anyone found him, they’d be long gone.

Now, as he jogged back up to the four-by-four, keeping his head down, the radio in his jacket pocket crackled into life. It was MacLean, the big cop who’d let go of Amanda when she’d whacked him in the balls. ‘Have you got her?’ Keogh demanded, the frustration obvious in his voice.

‘There were some canoeists down by the river,’ answered MacLean, sounding out of breath. ‘She jumped in one of the canoes with them.’

Keogh cursed. ‘How many canoeists?’

‘Four of them, I think. A family.’

This was the problem when you worked with someone you hadn’t chosen, thought Keogh. Things went wrong that much more easily. MacLean worked directly for Keogh’s employer, and Keogh had only known him a week. The guy was supposedly good but he’d messed up by letting the girl go. Still, there was nothing to gain by dwelling on that now. It was time to think fast. ‘How far have they got?’

‘Not far. We can still see them, and there’s no mobile reception down there, so they won’t be able to phone for help. There’s a lookout point about half a mile downriver on this side, called Eagles Reach. If we get there in front of them, we can cut them off.’

‘Okay, leave it to me,’ said Keogh, jumping in the four-by-four and reaching down behind the driver’s seat for the rifle as he started the engine.

*

‘Who the hell do you think you are, charging into our boat like this?’ demanded Jean, a real anger in her voice. ‘You could have got us killed.’

The two canoes were side by side, on the other side of the river and out of sight of where the two men had emerged, and they were all sitting upright again now. The river was a good fifty yards wide here, and Jess took a deep breath, feeling safe and shocked at the same time. She took a close look at the mystery woman. She was slim and pretty, and she had that well-off look about her that was only slightly marred by the fact that her hair was all over the place, and a pair of plastic handcuffs hung accusingly from her right wrist. She was paddling fast, while Jean sat glaring at her back, waiting for an answer to her question. From behind her, Jess could hear Casey crying. Turning round, she leaned down and lifted her sister into a sitting position, feeling an intense burst of protective love for her as she wiped the tears from her face.

‘It’s all right, baby. It’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you.’

‘But who were they?’ Casey asked Jess, her voice small and quavering.

Tim grunted from his position in the back of the canoe, where he too was paddling. ‘We still need an answer to that,’ he said, looking over at the woman in Jean’s canoe who was facing them all, an apologetic expression on her face.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice breathless, but calmer now that the immediate danger had passed. ‘I was out walking. I live up in the village on the other side of the hill. And those men just tried to abduct me.’

‘No one abducts anyone up here,’ snapped Jean. ‘I’ve lived in these parts all my life and I’ve never heard of such a thing. Have we, Tim?’

‘Never,’ said Tim firmly.

‘I’m telling you the truth. Why would I lie?’

‘Because you’re on the run from the police.’

‘I told you: they weren’t police.’

‘They didn’t look much like police,’ said Jess, feeling the need to stand up for the woman, because one thing was for sure, she didn’t look much like a criminal. ‘One definitely had a gun and it had a silencer on the end. How many police do you see with them?’

That quietened everyone for a few seconds, but Jean still didn’t look convinced. ‘We’ll drop you off on the opposite bank and then you can be on your way. Those men can’t cross the river here, so you’ll be safe. You’ll be able to call the police.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ said Tim. ‘Calling the police.’

‘Shit, I didn’t even think about that,’ said the woman, pulling a mobile from the pocket of her jeans.

Jess did the same, hoping that one of them had reception. She was still pretty pumped up herself from what had happened. She wouldn’t say she was scared, though. If anything, she’d just experienced a real adventure. Escaping from men with a gun. It would be one to tell Joe and her friends when she got back to the civilization of Clapham. She was just sorry that Casey had been involved. Jess gave her hand a squeeze as she examined her phone.

No service. Jess frowned and shook her head, then looked across at the mystery woman, who was also shaking her head. ‘I’ve got nothing on mine either,’ she said. ‘This is a bad place for reception. It gets better a couple of miles downriver. We can call for help then.’

‘That’s convenient,’ muttered Tim.

‘It’s true,’ said Jess. ‘I can’t get reception.’

‘Let’s just get across the river and drop this lassie off before we hit the rapids,’ said Auntie Jean, calmer now, ‘then we can all be on our—’

The shot exploded out of nowhere, cracking across the still of the water, making Jess jump in her seat. The next second, she felt a warm splash on her face. She shut her eyes reflexively and, when they opened again, Jean was tottering in her seat in the adjacent canoe, a gaping red hole in the side of her head, blood pouring down her face and onto her neck. Jess would never forget the slightly confused expression in Jean’s eyes in the half-second before they closed and she toppled heavily in her seat, falling sideways so that her ruined head hung over the side of the canoe, grey hair hanging down towards the water as if she was leaning in to wash her hair, barely touching distance from Jess.

Then everything happened at once. Casey screamed; Tim cried out like an animal in terrible pain; and the mystery woman dropped her phone and jumped into the water, keeping Jean’s canoe between her and where the shot had come from on the opposite bank. A second shot rang out and Jess’s canoe lurched hard to the left as she and Tim instinctively tried to dive for cover in the same direction.

Their canoe was capsizing as more shots shattered the silence, and suddenly Jess was in the water, flapping wildly, unable to touch the bottom, her clothes already feeling like dead weights as she reached across and grabbed a screaming Casey, pulling her close. But she was already struggling to keep the two of them afloat, even with the life jackets on, as she swam desperately for the bank, still a good twenty yards away, hoping that the upturned canoe would give them some kind of cover from the shooter.

‘Get back here!’ shouted the mystery woman from somewhere behind her. ‘We need to use the canoe as cover!’

Jess felt something whistle past her head, causing a big splash in the water no more than a few feet away. It could only mean one thing. Whoever was shooting wasn’t just aiming at the woman. He was aiming at Jess herself, and Casey too, and for the first time she felt truly scared. She was a target. Someone she’d never met before wanted to kill her.

At that moment, she came as close to panic as she’d been on that fateful night eleven years before, when she’d been just a child, and had witnessed things that no child should ever see. But she’d refused to buckle then, and she couldn’t afford to do so now.

Still hanging onto Casey, Jess turned round in the water and saw the woman hanging onto their canoe as it continued to float down the river. A few yards away, Tim was swimming out towards the other canoe, where Jean still lay with her head hanging over the side. He was trying to reach her, and even in the midst of the drama happening all around them, Jess felt a pang of sorrow for him. But Tim was struggling and he had to grab the empty canoe for support as it came past him.

Jess’s face dipped underwater as she tried to swim towards the woman, and she took in an involuntary gulp of cold river water, making her choke. Holding onto Casey was making progress worryingly slow. Casey was trying to help by swimming, but all she was doing was making it harder for them both.

‘Don’t move, Case, I’ve got you,’ sputtered Jess. ‘Just stay still.’

‘Here, grab my hand,’ called the mystery woman, reaching out towards them.

Taking a deep breath, Jess kicked with her legs with everything she had, grabbing the woman’s hand and hauling Casey over to the canoe. ‘Take hold of the boat, babe,’ she gasped at her sister, but when Casey tried to get a grip on the top of it, she couldn’t reach and slipped back into the water, bobbing upright thanks to the flotation device she was wearing. ‘Just hang onto me,’ Jess told her, her voice an exhausted gasp. She wasn’t as fit as she should be, and she could feel her energy levels sapping fast.

‘I can hold her,’ said the woman. ‘Give her to me.’

Jess turned round and looked at the woman who, though clearly tired, appeared in far better shape. She was tempted to do it too, she was that tired, but in the end, she couldn’t risk it. This woman had brought all this down on them out of nowhere, and she wasn’t going to entrust her with the care of the one person in the world she truly loved. She gave Casey a reassuring smile. ‘I’m going to let you float for a bit, okay, Case? But I won’t let go of you, I promise.’

Casey nodded but, as Jess untangled her from the crook of her arm, a shot exploded out of nowhere, blowing a hole in the canoe up near the front where Uncle Tim was clinging on. A split second later, he cried out in pain and clutched at the side of his face. Blood poured through his fingers, and Casey screamed, forcing her way back into Jess’s grip.

‘It’s okay!’ shouted Tim, looking at the hand. His cheek was bleeding quite heavily but – unlike Jean had been – he didn’t look seriously hurt, and there was actually an expression of relief on his face. ‘I think it only grazed me.’

A second bullet exploded out of the boat only a foot in front of Casey, leaving a golf-ball-sized hole in its wake.

‘Jesus Christ!’ yelled Jess. ‘We can’t stay here. It’s a death trap.’

‘We need to pull the boat towards the shore!’ shouted the woman, a calm authority in her voice that made Jess listen. ‘It’s giving us better cover than swimming for it. Everyone keep as low as you can in the water and kick as hard as you can.’

‘I can’t hold you much longer, babe,’ hissed Jess through gritted teeth, feeling Casey getting ever heavier in her free arm.

Up ahead the river eddied and rippled, its noise growing louder, as the canoes approached the next set of rapids. Jess could see an exposed rock sticking up ahead of them and she knew that the moment it got shallower they’d be easy targets again.

Another shot ricocheted off the top of the canoe and Jess felt the vibrations in the wood close to her hand. Suddenly she could feel the bottom of the river beneath her feet as they sank into silt. They were only about five yards away from shore now and it was getting shallower all the time. The water ran up to a small muddy spit backing onto woodland. There’d be no scrambling up a bank. It was a straight run, tantalizingly close now, and already Jess was having to crouch down as she waded through the mud. The water went down to barely three feet deep. Any second now they would no longer be able to conceal themselves behind the canoe, and already Uncle Tim’s head was poking over.

The next shot was way above their heads. They were finally putting some distance between themselves and their attackers.

‘All right,’ shouted the woman, ‘this is our best chance. On the count of three, run for the bank. And don’t stop for anything. One, two—’

‘They’ll kill us!’ screamed Tim.

‘Three.’

The woman let go of the canoe and dashed through the water, and Jess immediately gave Casey a shove. ‘Go baby, go. I’m right behind you. Run!’

But it was still waist-deep for Casey and she could only wade, so, with a last burst of strength, Jess picked her up under the arms and staggered through the water with her, thinking that any second now her life could be ended by a single bullet.

More shots rang out. One after the other, but Jess kept going as if in a daze, the shore seeming to take forever before it was beneath her feet.

And then Tim was by her side, helping to lift up Casey, and together the three of them ran out of the water and into the undergrowth after the woman, out of sight of the men who wished to kill them.

Twelve

KEOGH STOOD AT the lookout point watching the river curve away beneath him into the distance through the binoculars, the .303 rifle he’d been using propped up against a litter bin. The two canoes, each marked with the name of the canoe hire company, had come to a rest in the shallows two hundred metres away, their progress impeded by a sand spit sticking out from the trees on the other side. The woman’s body lay sprawled out in the nearest canoe for the whole world to see.

He swung the binoculars to his left, looking upriver, just in case another boat was coming down it. But, thankfully, there was nothing. At this time of the year, already deep into autumn, there would be few people using the river, and Keogh was surprised that the canoe hire company was still even renting out boats. He lowered the binoculars and sighed loudly. ‘Jesus, what a disaster! Why didn’t you take her out earlier?’

He was addressing the man standing next to him. The Algerian, Mehdi. The one who’d shot the local policeman a few minutes earlier and who, in Keogh’s opinion, should have managed to intercept Amanda Rowan, before she ran into whoever these day-trippers were and messed up everything. Keogh had worked with Mehdi on and off for several years. An ex-military policeman in the Algerian army, he’d always been as reliable as he was ruthless. Unfortunately, he’d picked a very bad time to make a mistake, and now they had the kind of damage limitation exercise on their hands that was going to be fraught with risks and complications. Not to mention a dead police officer.

Mehdi stared at him, his dark, heavily lined features twisted into a defiant frown. ‘You said the orders were to take her alive. I didn’t have a choice.’

‘You could have shot her in the leg. We need her alive, but she doesn’t have to be walking.’

‘I tried, but it’s hard getting a good shot in when you’re running down a hill in the middle of the woods.’

Which Keogh had to admit was true. Ultimately, as leader of the operation to capture Amanda Rowan, the failure was his responsibility. The question was: what did he do about it?

He turned to the man on the other side of him: the big cop, MacLean. MacLean was their local contact, although he was based over forty miles away which, to Keogh’s mind, meant he wasn’t local at all, and therefore of little use to him. But Keogh’s employer had insisted he come along, so Keogh had had no choice but to use him. ‘We need to secure those canoes and get them out of sight,’ he told MacLean. ‘Where’s the nearest river crossing?’

MacLean fixed him with a bovine stare. He had a very round, slightly pudgy baby face, and thin sullen eyes that made him look untrustworthy. God alone knew how he passed his police entrance exams, thought Keogh. They must be pretty desperate for recruits up here.

‘Tayleigh,’ he said. ‘It’s the first town, about five miles down the road from here.’

‘Is the road good?’

‘Good enough. It won’t take that long to get back to the canoes if we drive fast.’

‘How well do you know the area?’

‘Well enough. I used to have a girl out this way a few years back.’

A short-sighted one, thought Keogh, but he was secretly pleased. It seemed MacLean might be some help after all. ‘So, we should assume the target knows the area a bit too. She’s been up here a few weeks now. Where will she be heading?’

‘Tayleigh as well. There’s nowhere else round here really.’

Keogh looked down towards the trees where Amanda Rowan and the people she was now with were hidden.

‘Which way will they go?’

‘There’s a footpath that mainly follows the river all the way into the town. If they start walking now and go fast, I reckon it’ll take them two hours. We could easily cut them off. The path’s not well used.’

Keogh nodded, thinking about his resources. He had MacLean and Mehdi with him now, and Sayenko, the cadaverous, chain-smoking Ukrainian, who’d been keeping watch on the other side of the village, and was now en route back to them. That was four in total. It should have been a perfect number to snatch an unarmed woman, but it wasn’t many for a full-scale manhunt. ‘I think they’ll suspect we’ll try and cut them off on the path. Amanda Rowan’s no fool. She’s done pretty well so far. But we’ll send someone down there, just in case. What other routes could they take?’

MacLean squinted in the afternoon sunlight, the movement making his face look even chubbier. ‘The only other way would be across country. Once you get through those woods, you head over those hills over there, into the valley, take a right, and keep going.’

Keogh looked to where MacLean was pointing. The line of hills in the distance were bare and rolling, but not particularly high, and looked as though they’d be easily climbable, even for kids. ‘Is there plenty of cover?’ he asked.

MacLean shook his head. ‘Not really.’

‘And what about houses? Could they get to a house?’

‘There’s one or two up there, but not many.’

Keogh grunted. ‘They don’t need many. They just need one with a phone, and then the whole op’s compromised.’ He walked over to the four-by-four and pulled a local Ordnance Survey map from the glove compartment, opening it up on the bonnet. MacLean and Mehdi joined him, and MacLean pointed a meaty finger down at a spot on the map where the river curved through thick woodland on its winding route into Tayleigh.

‘The canoes are here,’ he said. ‘Like I said, they could either follow the path along the river or, if not, they’d probably go this way.’ He ran his finger up through the thick sweep of green on the map that represented forest, then swung it right through a mixture of woodland and exposed hills until he was at the small town of Tayleigh, which straddled the river. From its scale on the map, it looked pretty small – a couple of thousand people at most, thought Keogh – but the point was, if their target got there, the op was over and Keogh would be out of a job. Or worse.

‘How long do you reckon it’ll take them to go that way?’ he asked MacLean.

‘A lot longer. There’s a lot of climbing involved. It depends if she travels with those canoeists or not. There were a couple of kids there, weren’t there? They’d slow her down a fair bit. But I still reckon they’re more likely to go that way.’

Keogh thought about that. He suspected Amanda Rowan would leave the canoeists behind, and make her own way back. If she did that, though, she’d be far harder to track. It might make the whole thing messier if she stayed with the rest, but probably easier for them to deal with. He scanned the route MacLean had suggested they’d take: up through the forest then over the hill and across the valley. It made sense for them to go that way, but, worryingly, there were at least three houses that he could see dotted randomly along the way. Thankfully, the first of them was several miles at least from where they’d abandoned the canoes.

‘I’ve got a couple of hunting dogs back at my place,’ said MacLean suddenly. ‘They can track anyone.’

Keogh smiled. This made things a lot easier. ‘How long will it take to get back here with them?’

‘If I go fast, an hour.’

‘Do it. As soon as you’re fifteen minutes away, call me.’

MacLean nodded and turned away, while Keogh folded up the map, not looking forward to the inevitable conversation he was going to have to have with his boss about the way things were going, but knowing too that he couldn’t put it off. As he was walking back to the driver’s seat, Mehdi, who was back at the lookout point, called out.

‘Hey, look at this. I think we might be getting lucky here.’