Better Off Dead: (Victor the Assassin 4) (3 page)

The Swede heaved open the rolling door, launching from a squat to standing, arms extending above his head, the metal creaking and clanging – loud and echoing.

The beam from the Finn’s LED flashlight illuminated the inside of the storage unit – the camping supplies and equipment, gasoline and cutting torch and a man-sized shape in a sleeping bag in the far right corner.

A Gemtech suppressor and naturally subsonic ammunition meant the Finn’s double tap was muted to two concentrated sneezes, inaudible beyond five metres. The sleeping bag rippled from the bullets’ impact.

She stalked forwards into the unit, Ruger still up at eye level and aimed down at the prone target, seeking confirmation of the kill.

‘
Wait
,’ the Swede said from behind her before she could reach close enough to identify the target.

She did as instructed, surprised at the volume of his voice and utterly trusting he was justified in his instruction.

‘It’s not him,’ the Swede said.

The Finn could not see the body in the sleeping bag from her distance so he would not be able to either.

‘Left,’ the Swede said.

She looked. ‘What the —’

The unit’s walls were corrugated metal sheeting rising two and a half metres to the flat roof. Where the left wall met the floor was a hole, one metre square. The cut-out piece of metal lay on the floor next to it. Cut with the oxyacetylene torch.

‘Cover it,’ the Swede said as he moved forward into the unit.

The Finn trained her gun on the hole, the beam of the flashlight showing the blackened edges where the metal had been scorched by the torch. The Swede kicked the sleeping bag twice, then knelt down to check what was inside.

‘Shit,’ he said, feeling pillows stuffed into the bag to create a man-sized shape. He felt something square and hard. A mobile phone, set to speaker, playing a sound file of recorded breathing.

‘He knew we were coming,’ the Swede said, a slight edge of fear in his voice. ‘He was waiting for us.’

‘Where is he?’ the Finn asked.

The beam of the flashlight shone a little way through the hole in the wall and into the next unit, which seemed empty.

The Swede pointed at the wall – at the next unit. Then he held out his left hand, palm down, and lowered it as he crouched into a squat, indicating for the Finn to do the same. She did, and the flashlight beam illuminated more of the unit beyond as his eye-level descended to see into it. It was as empty as it first appeared.

‘Oh no.’

‘What?’ the Finn said, the volume and pitch of her voice rising. ‘What is it?’

On the far wall of the next unit was another hole and another sheet of metal lying before it. The Swede got on to his hands and knees to get the angle and saw the same was true of the unit after that. And then again. He could see all the way through and the spill of artificial light beyond the final hole that led outside.

The Swede said, ‘Watch the flank,’ glancing towards the Dane, who was still outside the unit.

No Dane.

He let out a panicked exhale and snapped up his pistol. The Finn saw him do so and spun to where he was looking. The female Dane, who had been there mere moments before, was gone. They hadn’t heard a thing.

‘Stay calm,’ the Finn said.

The Swede didn’t seem to hear. ‘He led us here. He wanted us to come after him. Shit.
Shit
.’

‘Stay calm,’ the Finn said again.

‘He picked this spot to attack us and we watched him do it. It’s a fucking trap.’

The Finn didn’t argue. She used her lapel mike to radio the male Dane. ‘We need backup, right now.’

No answer.

She repeated herself.

The Swede stared at her. ‘Not him as well…’

A voice came through the speaker: male, but not the Dane who was supposed to be waiting in the van. The voice was deep and low. Calm. Terrifying. ‘I’m afraid no one is coming to help you.’

‘You bastard. I’m going to —’

The voice continued: ‘It’s nothing personal, but I can’t let any of you live. I know you understand that. You would do exactly the same in my position.’

The Finn pulled out her earpiece and smashed it beneath a heel. ‘
Bastard
.’ She whispered to the Swede, ‘We need to move. Right now.’

‘How? He’s out there.’

‘He’s at the van. If we’re fast —’

The Finn shook her head. ‘No, damn it. Think for a second. He could have killed Jans and taken his mike the second we were through the gate. He could be anywhere by now.’

‘Then what do we do?’

The Finn thought about this for a moment, then pointed at the hole in the unit wall and made a walking action with her index and middle finger.

The Swede shook his head. ‘No way. That’s suicide.’

‘Then what do you suggest?’

He didn’t answer.

The Finn inched closer to the hole.

‘I’m not going through there,’ the Swede whispered.

‘Fine.’ She pointed to the open roller door. ‘Stay here and cover that entrance until I get to it.’

‘We can’t split up. That’s what he wants us to do.’

‘We have to do
something
. Do you want to end up like the others? If we wait here, we’re playing into his hands.’

He nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘It’s going to take me no more than a minute to crawl out and come back round the front. If I’m any longer than that, I haven’t made it.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Listen to me, please. You wait one minute for me. If I’m not in front of you by then, he’s got me. So you need to take advantage of that and run. Just run. He can’t be in two places at once. You count to sixty and at sixty-one you run for your life. Do you understand me?’

He nodded and swallowed.

She exhaled, then kissed him on the lips. It surprised him, but he kissed her back.

‘Don’t be late,’ he said.

She didn’t want to be late. Late meant dead.

‘I won’t be.’

The ground was cold beneath the Finn’s elbows and knees. She crawled through the first hole and into the unit next to the target’s. It was empty. When she stopped, she could hear the rapid breathing of the Swede. She wanted to shout back and tell him to be quiet, but she daren’t give her position away. The target – not that he could still be thought of as such – could be anywhere in the facility, but he was close. The Finn knew that. Had their roles been reversed she would stay near, within eyesight or hearing range. She’d called him a lion before. Now, she pictured a lion stalking through tall grass.

She crawled through the next hole. Only one more unit before she was outside. The cool air on her skin made her more aware of the sweat coating her face. The current unit was full of musty smelling cardboard boxes crammed with magazines and books. The Finn stepped around them.

The final unit was empty. She released a breath and crept over to the hole leading outside. If the killer was waiting to ambush her, it would be here. But there was just as much chance of him covering the unit where the Swede waited, which meant this hole would be safe to crawl through. There was no way to know for certain until it was too late. At least for one of them.

Thirty seconds remained until the designated minute had been depleted. What had she told the Swede?
You count to sixty and at sixty-one you run for your life
.

She stopped. There was no need to crawl through the last hole and risk an ambush, because in less than half a minute the Swede was going to run. Then, either he wouldn’t make it or he would. If he did, the Finn would know the killer wasn’t covering his rented unit and therefore must be watching the hole. However, if the Swede didn’t make it, then the hole was safe because the killer couldn’t be in two places at the same time.

The Finn waited.

She didn’t want him to die. But she wanted to die less. She breathed in shallow exhales and inhales to limit the noise. She needed to hear. She needed to hear whether the Swede made it or not. She willed him not to make it.
Sorry, my sweet
. Twenty seconds remaining.

With ten seconds left, she tensed, readying herself to make a break for it, or if it sounded like the Swede made it, to turn around and hurry back the way she had come. She wondered if the Swede had come to the same conclusion. She wondered if he was silently willing her to die like she was him.

At four seconds she heard the Swede move. He had counted too fast. Not unsurprising, given the heightened circumstances. Or maybe she was counting too slow. It didn’t matter.

She heard the scrape of the soles of his shoes on the ground as he launched into a run, as she had instructed. She heard the urgent footfalls. She pictured him powering out of the unit, veering left towards the exit, sprinting down the alley of space between the rows of units, reaching the —

Two muted clacks reached her ears. The footfalls stopped.

Bad news for the Swede. Good news for the Finn.

She dropped to her knees and then her stomach, crawling fast, not worried about noise, knowing the killer was out of line of sight, over near the facility’s reception building and main gate. He couldn’t be in two places at once.

The Finn crawled through the final hole and out on to the far side of the last unit. The cool night air felt magical on her sweat-slick skin, but there wasn’t time to enjoy it. She had a single moment of opportunity – a single advantage – and she needed to make it work. She rose to her feet.

The killer was at one side of the facility, she was at the other. All she had to do was —

She felt something brush against her face – fast and surprising – then pressure on her throat as it tightened. An image flashed in her mind: the killer buying bungee cord.

It formed a noose around her neck, closing off her windpipe, sending burning pain and panic flooding through her. The Finn grasped at it, dropping her gun, trying to dig her fingers behind the cord, but there was no room. The slack had been stretched out of it by her own weight and the killer above her – on the roof of the unit – pulling upwards.

Her feet struggled for purchase. Her face reddened. Her eyes bulged. She tried to speak, to beg, but only a gurgling wheeze escaped her lips.

The upwards pressure of the noose kept her jaw locked shut and the cord away from her carotids. Otherwise, she would have passed out within seconds as the blood supply to the brain was cut off. Instead, the bungee cord suffocated her, extending the agony to over a minute. Her teeth ground and cracked. Her lips blued. Capillaries burst in her eyeballs.

Eventually, oxygen deprivation induced a euphoric state of calm and well-being. The pain ceased. The Finn stopped fighting. Then she stopped moving altogether.

Victor was still for a moment as the night breeze flowed over his face and through his hair. It slithered down his collar and up his sleeves. Cold, but gentle and soothing. His heart rate, slightly elevated from the exertion, fell back to a slow rhythm. He opened his hands and let the bungee cord fall away. Below him, the body collapsed to the ground. He felt nothing except a little soreness in his palms. Without the heavy-duty welder’s gloves protecting his hands the friction burn would no doubt have taken away skin along with sweat. The bungee cord’s inherent slack wasn’t ideal for strangulation, but its light weight and flexibility meant it was a fast, manoeuvrable noose. The proof was in the result. The woman couldn’t be any more dead.

He rolled up the padded groundsheets that he’d laid across the unit’s roof to muffle the noise of moving back and forth across it, and lowered himself on to his good leg. Once inside his rented unit he put on some shoes and began packing up his equipment. He hadn’t required all of it, but the more superfluous items he purchased the less chance there was of the team working out what he really needed and therefore what he had planned. Once it was all loaded on to the trolley – barring the waterproof sleeping bag – he wheeled it out of the unit, through the facility and out of the open gate.

They’d parked in a good spot. It only took a couple of minutes to transfer it all into the back of the team’s van, alongside where the dead driver lay. The other corpses followed, pushed on the loading trolley and concealed by the groundsheets. Victor took his time. There was no need to rush. They had kindly disabled the facility’s security cameras for him. In any case, what few cameras there were had been positioned to cover the doors of the units, not their roofs, and he’d been careful to pick a spot outside of any camera’s arc in which to cut the hole with the oxyacetylene torch.

He’d used it to burn over the outside edges of the holes he had cut and placed the rectangles of metal on the opposite sides of where they had lain. When the morning shift arrived at six a.m. and saw the disabled gate lock and watched the camera footage they – and the subsequent police investigators – would conclude a break-in had taken place. Upon discovering they could not contact the owner of the thief’s – singular, because only one assassin had been recorded by the cameras – target, they would deduce Victor had been storing something valuable and illegal, hence the false identity. With nothing stolen being reported, the police would look no further into what seemed to be one criminal ripping off another. Nothing pleased a cop more. Karma, they would say, and do the deep belly laugh that only true joy could create.

There was little clean-up to do. He removed the man he’d shot first, using the waterproof sleeping bag to ferry him in so none of his blood and leaking bodily fluids would be left behind. Victor had killed him with a subsonic .22 to ensure the round stayed inside the body and didn’t cause a messy exit wound. He figured the red-headed woman he’d strangled had been carrying a similar gun for the exact same reasons. He liked that. He felt he knew her a little better. There wasn’t much opportunity for relationships in Victor’s line of work and, even separated by death, he felt a connection with the woman. Maybe they had other things in common beyond consideration of armaments. He found himself wondering if they shared a similar taste in music or books. Perhaps she enjoyed the same kind of food. In another life they might have been friends. Even lovers.

He threw her corpse down on top of the others.