Better Off Dead: (Victor the Assassin 4) (17 page)

Light flashed in the darkness, sparks and flames rushing out from the epicentre; shrapnel hissing through the air, burying into walls and melting ceiling tiles; debris raining down, clattering on the floor; smoke billowing, filling the corridor, swirling and snaking to fill the space; sound, powerful and excruciating, pulsed outwards, consuming all.

The dull thump of the explosion was colossal, the burst of light so bright it reached all along the corridor and illuminated the room around Victor for the briefest of instants, blinding him while the overpressure wave reverberated through his body.

A disorientation grenade. Or flashbang.

The Russians grimaced and squinted, their ears ringing with a high-pitched whine, their eyes seeing nothing but impenetrable white, streaming tears from the smoke.

A black-clad figure emerged at the top of the staircase, moving fast and assured in a half-crouch, picking out the closest target and hitting him in the chest with a burst of sub-machine gun fire. The Russian stumbled backwards into a doorframe, sliding down it, lifeless by the time he reached the floor, clothes soaked red.

The gunman swept his weapon away even as the Russian was still stumbling backwards; seeking targets, shooting at the next nearest enemy, but missing as he backed off through the doorway of another room. Nine millimetre rounds took chunks out of the door and wall.

The Russians returned fire, sporadic and desperate, blinded by the flashbang.

The gunman kept moving, firing in bursts, taking cover as behind him another black-clad figure followed, reaching the top of the stairs, sweeping the other way, covering the lead man’s blind spot, seeing no live targets but double-tapping the Russian slumped against the doorframe when he saw him twitch.

No enemy could be too dead.

The noise of the shooting was monstrous. The lights flashing were as bright as fireworks illuminating the office around Gisele in staccato strobes. The barrage of noise and light overloaded her senses. She sat huddled in a ball behind the desk, as the man had told her.

Smoke hung throughout the room. The air was a thick grey gloom that deepened shadows and dulled the orange glow of outside streetlamps.

She had her palms pressed over her ears in an attempt to muffle the incredible amount of noise. She kept her chin down, almost pressing against her chest and shoulders hunched.

Gisele flinched and gasped and trembled but didn’t scream or cry out. Despite her fear she knew she had to stay as small and quiet as she could manage. There was nothing else she could do.

Victor pictured what was happening because he couldn’t yet see. He knew about disorientation grenades. He knew how they worked. He knew what they did. He knew it had been thrown in ahead of an assault. The Russians would be deaf and blinded if they were fortunate, or injured or killed if they were not. In either case the staircase would be undefended. The assaulters would advance up it without risk and begin the massacre.

The positions he had assigned them would help. The flashbang would not have rendered them all incapacitated. If they had an advantage in numbers they could fight back. It was possible that they could still pin the assaulters long enough.

Victor’s world came back into focus as the noise of the gunfire grew louder. In between the semi-automatic shots from the Russians’ handguns, he recognised the distinctive click of the MP5SD, almost inaudible thanks to the integrated suppressor. He picked out two rhythms for two shooters. Such firepower was expensive and hard to source. These guys were better than well armed and had breached the warehouse without making a sound. They were no mere street thugs or enforcers but a well-equipped, well-trained assault team.

Bullets blew through the partition wall Victor was using as cover, easily penetrating the cheap material, showering his face with dust and debris.

He ducked and moved away, further into the room, eyesight improving with every passing second. Though barely able to see and hear, the map of his environment in his mind was unaffected, as was his understanding of what was happening behind him.

He switched the pistol to his left hand and stuck it out of cover to let out a few blind shots towards the far staircase, knowing the Russians were out of the line of fire. The
pop-pop-pop
registered in his ears, but far quieter than it should do, masked by the incessant ringing from the explosion.

He turned to cover the closest staircase, but there was no sign yet of any other assaulters. He switched back again, seeing muzzle flashes flare bright through the smoke and darkness. The Russians were returning fire. Whether they had their senses back was irrelevant. Indirect fire could kill just the same as an aimed shot.

Rounds hit the ceiling somewhere above him. A light fixture exploded.

He shielded himself with an arm as chunks of polystyrene from the ceiling tiles and shards of glass rained down over him.

If the sniper and the two assaulters were the sum total of their attackers, Victor and the Russians could force them to withdraw with their superior numbers. But the team’s intel had to be accurate for them to know about the warehouse. Then they would have a good idea of the number of defenders. If there were only three then they would have attempted stealth, silently picking off their enemies. They hadn’t. The sniper had taken the first opportunity to reduce the number of enemies because the assaulters were already in the building. And they weren’t going for stealth. They were going strong. Because they had the firepower and, more importantly, the numbers.

The two at the far staircase were just one two-man fire team. There would be more, sweeping through the warehouse to clear it in a slick military assault. The Russians weren’t going to keep the two upstairs occupied long enough before the other team or teams joined the battle and overwhelmed them. If another fire team attempted to flank them using the near staircase, Victor couldn’t stop them.

The gunfire would eventually draw the attention of the Metropolitan Police, but the warehouse was in an industrial area with no residences and no through traffic. By the time they arrived, this would be over.

The plan had been to defend. It wasn’t going to work.

Victor hurried over to Gisele. She was shaking and even in the dark looked white with fear. He held out the pistol he had taken from Ivan’s corpse.

‘Is it true what you said before about knowing how to use a gun?’

She managed to nod and he passed her the weapon. She took a deep breath then released the magazine to check the load before pushing it back in place with her palm. She racked the slide.

Victor said, ‘If anyone approaches without identifying themselves, you shoot. Don’t hesitate.’

Her eyes were wide. Fear. Disbelief. But she nodded.

He didn’t know if she would. He didn’t know if she was capable of taking a life. He hoped that neither of them would have to find out if she was.

Victor descended the near staircase, fast but quiet, gun up and sweeping. He reached the ground floor offices. There were multiple rooms and corridors, leading both outside and into the rest of the warehouse. He paused and listened. He heard nothing.

The attackers must have entered the building from the west side, at the furthest point from the offices, where they wouldn’t be heard breaking in. There were rolling doors and loading bays along the west wall. They could have entered through any one of them or any number of them at the same time, either staying together or splitting up. They knew there were people in the offices upstairs, but they couldn’t know where else threats might wait, so had to move with some caution, but it wouldn’t be long before they reached the office segment. From the main warehouse, there were multiple ways in, but still only two staircases up for the attackers to converge on. Victor didn’t know where they were now, but he knew where they had to end up.

Shooting the attackers in the back wasn’t complicated. Doing it without getting caught in the Russians’ line of fire was far from simple.

He hurried, because there were no enemies at this staircase.

He was behind them.

Victor heard the second team before he saw them. A door – leading to the warehouse itself – was kicked open in a room behind him. He spun around and moved laterally because that room was divided from his only by glass. He managed to get off two snapshots before the assaulters spotted him, but missed because he was moving and so were they.

MP5s opened fire, bullets following him, punching holes through the glass until it gave way and collapsed in a shower of glittering shards. He shielded his face with an arm as he ran and slid through a doorway, shooting back under his armpit to buy him some time.

He gained only a couple of seconds before he heard, then saw, a grenade bounce off the doorframe and then a wall and then roll along the floor towards him.

He dived over a table, trailing a hand to tip it over as he fell, bringing the tabletop down on its edge behind him.

The flashbang exploded.

His eyelids were already squeezed shut but still he saw white. The overpressure wave thumped against the table and pushed it, and him, across the floor.

Shrapnel embedded in the tabletop. The plastic veneer melted and the chipboard beneath smouldered and burned. The grenade wasn’t manufactured to kill, but at close range could do so or maim. Had the table not protected him, he would now be out of the fight.

His eyes could just about focus and he heard nothing, but knew the two men were moving the second after the explosion, thinking him incapacitated.

He waited a moment – picturing them headed through the doorway, fast and well trained, hesitating because they couldn’t see him behind the table – then rolled to his side, arms and head coming out from behind it, squeezing off rounds.

The first man was hit in his centre mass, falling backwards into the second assaulter, bringing him down too as he fell.

Victor was up and moving, not risking further engagement because he had to get back to Gisele.

Muzzle flashes illuminated the first-floor corridor in intermittent bursts of light. The loud reports of the Russians’ handguns drowned out the suppressed automatic fire from the sub-machine guns that hissed through the air and tore through the thin interior walls.

Lumps of polystyrene fell from the ceiling. Dust swirled with the smoke from the flashbang. The air stank of cordite and fear.

The Russians backed off under the relentless stream of automatic gunfire, shooting back blind as they darted between doorways.

The lead assaulter ejected the empty magazine, slipped it back into the assigned pocket of his tactical vest, pulled out a full one and slammed it home. He worked the breach and resumed shooting.

The second put down suppressing fire while the other man was vulnerable, then reloaded himself while the first covered him in return.

The Russians were not elite but they had picked their positions with a frighteningly good tactical sense. The two-man fire team had expected to clear the office floor within sixty seconds. That wasn’t going to happen. This was going to drag on for at least another two minutes before the inevitable victory was achieved.

Victor hurried through the ground-floor offices, staying in the centre of rooms and corridors despite the natural inclination to seek safety near to walls, because in close-quarters battle it was along walls that bullets tended to travel.

He took a circuitous route through the offices to avoid any pursuers and to prevent rushing blindly into another fire team.

The din of the shooting upstairs grew louder as he neared it – the loud pops of the Russians’ handguns above the suppressed automatic fire of the sub-machine guns; the clinking of expended brass and the thump of bullets striking walls; urgent commands and desperate screams.

He could tell the assaulters had taken the stairs and were fighting back the defenders. It wouldn’t be long before they were killed – or fled. He didn’t know the strength of their courage or how deep their loyalty to Norimov or Gisele went.

Victor slowed as he neared the hallway where the staircase was located. He saw no one on the ground level.

He approached the staircase, gun leading, aiming up as he moved before it, stepping through a swathe of orange gloom spilling through a window on the west wall. He smelled the acrid odour of cordite and the sulphur of the flashbang smoke. The assaulters were out of sight above him, but the suppressed fire of their sub-machine guns was loud and distinctive to his ear. The return fire from the Russians was sporadic.

‘
Gisele
,’ he called. ‘I’m coming up.’

There was no response. He didn’t know if that meant she couldn’t hear him over the gunfire or because she was dead. He ascended the first step, but stopped. A noise.

Footsteps in the hallway leading to the rest of the ground-floor level – where he’d come from a moment before.

He made out a man-sized shape in the darkness, realising at the same time that with the nearby window he was more visible than the new arrival – who would have seen him first.

Victor leapt from the staircase as another MP5SD opened fire. Rounds buried into the wall and staircase where he’d been standing, blowing out splinters of wood and a cloud of paint dust.

He hit the floor in a roll to disperse the impact, scrambling into the cover of an arrangement of office desks and chairs. Bullets chased him, taking chunks out of the cheap veneer and plywood furniture.

He dodged out of the line of fire, popping up to shoot back as his attacker moved forward to the mouth of the hallway, driving him back. Bullets sparked on steel supports.

Victor moved again – staying in one position would only make it easier for his assailant – and aimed where the gunman would next appear.

On the upper level the two assaulters moved positions, putting bursts along the hallway, outnumbered but not outgunned, suppressing the Russians until they were in cover. At random intervals the Russians returned fire, shouting indecipherable instructions to one another, maybe coordinating their attacks or just keeping the others informed that they were still alive.

Another one was hit as he popped out of cover, caught in the throat and face with a long burst that made the Russian dance, a geyser blood spurting from him, before he dropped. That left two. There was no danger of not triumphing, but they were burning through time they didn’t have. This warehouse may be empty but other units in the industrial estate were not. Each second the firefight continued increased the chances of a passer-by or a worker on a cigarette break hearing the gunshots.

The police would be on the way soon after that, if they weren’t already.

Victor waited, drawing a bead on the darkness where the room met the hallway. Any movement would be greeted with a double tap. Another flashbang exploded on the floor above him. He was unable to move to the stairs and ascend to help the Russians above because he had to cross through the path of his attackers’ vision. But five seconds waiting became ten.

He moved because he knew his enemy was in the process of outflanking him. The gunman was the aggressor, better armed and with allies nearby. He would press the attack, not wait for a defender to engage him.

There were two other ways into the room – one door on the east wall leading directly into the main warehouse, and another to the north that fed into a series of storerooms, that were also accessible from the rest of the warehouse. The gunman could come through either.

No way to know which, and it wasn’t possible to cover both effectively. Victor dashed towards the hallway, away from both, throwing himself into a dive when he heard a door kicked open behind him.

Bullets whizzed over Victor’s head and sparked where they struck the steel supports. He zigzagged as he ran, knowing his attacker would be in pursuit. He weaved ten metres along the hallway, shouldering a door open and half-running half-falling into the room on the other side.

Nine millimetre rounds cut through the air behind him. He could feel the change in pressure and air temperature on his neck. Splinters of doorframe caught in his hair.

The firing stopped, the shooter no longer able to keep him in his gunsights. He could be in pursuit, closing fast, but already proven smart enough not to rush into an ambush.

Victor grabbed anything he could and threw it in the direction of the door to create obstacles to slow his enemy.

He needed time. He had to maintain distance. He kept moving, utilising the cover provided by desks and tables, chairs and cabinets, running in diagonal lines, ducking as he heard the rapid spit of the MP5SD opening fire somewhere in the darkness behind him.

Glass smashed. Metal sparked. A fluorescent ceiling light exploded.

Victor ran, relying on speed, distance and angles to make himself a target too hard to hit. He hurried, knowing his way through the offices better than his pursuer, who would move at a slower pace, expecting an ambush.

‘
Gisele
,’ he called as he powered to the top of the staircase.

He exchanged glances with Dmitri, who had retreated here from his original position.

Victor said, ‘The others?’

The Russian shook his head in way of an answer. He was drenched in sweat and bleeding. ‘Get her out of here,’ he panted.

Victor nodded, knowing what Dmitri meant and respecting his sacrifice. ‘There are others downstairs. They’ll breach this staircase soon.’

Dmitri said, ‘Then hurry,’ and squeezed off some rounds down the corridor.

Victor hurled the desk aside, expecting to see Gisele dead from a stray round, but instead she lay in a huddle, hair disguising her face, and for a moment Victor saw not Gisele but her mother, Eleanor. She had Ivan’s pistol clutched in both hands but her eyes were shut. She didn’t even know he was there.

He pulled the gun from her grip before he touched her on the shoulder so she didn’t shoot him by mistake.

‘Are you hurt?’

She shook her head.

‘We have to go.’

She nodded and he heaved open a window. ‘Climb through after me,’ he said.

She nodded again.

He hauled himself through and dropped. It was four metres to the ground. Far enough to break bones, but he slowed himself with the wall and rolled to disperse the energy of the impact.

‘Hurry,’ he shouted up. ‘I’ll catch you.’

He figured she would take some coaxing, but she didn’t need any. She dropped and he caught her, falling with her into a half-roll to spare them both injury. She took a second longer getting to her feet.

‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘It’s not over yet.’