Better Off Dead: (Victor the Assassin 4) (31 page)

Victor heard one of the Range Rovers driving away, tyres squealing under the hard acceleration. The law firm was maybe ten minutes’ drive through London’s busy streets at this time of day. Gisele would be nowhere near finished by then, let alone out of the building.

‘Rogan, don’t take your eyes off him until I get back,’ Anderton said to the remaining mercenary. ‘I mean it. Not for a second.’ Then, to Victor: ‘Just in case you’re not as hurt as you seem. I have no intention of underestimating you as you did me.’

Victor looked away.

The mercenary called Rogan said, ‘It’ll be a pleasure, ma’am.’

Anderton winked at Victor and then approached the second Range Rover, the footsteps of her snakeskin boots echoing around the vast, almost empty space. Victor watched the vehicle drive out of the hangar and disappear into the night. He didn’t know if she was going to join Sinclair and the other mercs, or heading somewhere else. Victor lay on the floor and thought about Gisele in the law firm, alone and vulnerable, with no idea people were on the way to kill her. He’d failed her. He’d failed her mother.

He refused to give up. While he breathed, it wasn’t over.

Every inch of his body seemed to throb or ache or sting. He twisted his head until he could look at Rogan as he paced about nearby. The man had short greying brown hair. He wore black jeans and a denim jacket lined with wool. About six feet tall, solidly built, late thirties. His heavy workman’s boots glistened with Victor’s blood. He noticed the mercenary was clean shaven.

They made eye contact. When Victor didn’t look away, the man’s face creased in anger and aggression.

‘What the fuck are you looking at?’

Victor didn’t respond.

Rogan said, ‘You killed three of my mates.’

Victor spat out more blood.

‘You hear me down there, you prick?’

The mercenary came closer. He put a light kick into Victor’s flank.

‘Forrester. McNeil. Cole,’ he said, punctuating each name with a kick. ‘They were my friends and you killed them. You rammed a fucking handgun barrel through Cole’s eye socket, you sick fuck.’

Victor said nothing. One corner of his mouth upturned.

White showed all round Rogan’s irises. ‘You think that’s fucking funny, do ya?’

Hands grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him to his feet. He winced as he tried to support himself, shifting his weight on to his right foot to spare his injured left ankle. He didn’t need to. The mercenary kept him upright. He was strong and had no trouble supporting Victor’s weight. Rogan stared into Victor’s black eyes.

‘They were good lads.’

‘But not so good at their jobs,’ Victor said.

Jaw muscles bunched beneath the mercenary’s skin. His grip on Victor tightened and he half scowled, half smiled.

‘When that little bitch is dead, I’m going to really enjoy sending you to join her. That psycho Sinclair is going to have to fight me for the privilege of cutting you up.’

Victor grinned.

Rogan shook his head, disbelieving. ‘Who in the name of fuck do you think you are?’

‘I’m the man who’s going to kill you.’

He burst out laughing. Spit and sour smoker’s breath struck Victor’s face. If Rogan had any fatigue from holding Victor up for so long, he didn’t show. Victor was glad the man was so strong.

When he stopped laughing, he said, ‘And please, just for my own personal fucking amusement, tell me how you’re planning on pulling that off when you’re beaten to a pulp and cuffed?’

Victor stared back hard as he said, ‘Do you mean the handcuffs I’ve already picked?’

Rogan hesitated, surprised, then took a half-step away – in part in the involuntary reaction to danger; in part to create a better viewing angle. His gaze dropped to see:

The handcuffs still locked around Victor’s wrists.

Rogan glanced up in time to see a blur of movement before Victor’s forehead collided with his nose.

The rest of his body was weak, but no punch or kick could damage the strongest bone in the human body. The mercenary’s nose was paper-delicate in comparison and he’d created the perfect amount of space between them for Victor’s to generate the momentum to crush it flat.

Blood exploded across both Rogan’s face and Victor’s. The man’s hands retreated from their hold on Victor to protect himself as he stumbled backwards. Victor stumbled too, unable to properly support himself, but he grabbed the man’s belt with both cuffed hands as he put his left leg behind Rogan’s and they fell to the floor together.

His enemy was stunned from the headbutt and blinded by the tears and blood in his eyes. Rogan didn’t know what Victor was doing until palms pressed down over his mouth and teeth sank into the thin layer of skin and tissue to the right of his trachea.

The palms muffled the man’s scream as Victor ripped a chunk out of his neck.

He turned his face away to spare it from the arcs of pressurised blood from the severed carotid artery.

Rogan was too overwhelmed by pain and terror to fight back but thrashed in panic as blood escaped his neck in machine-gun blasts.

Victor’s weight pinned him down for the few seconds it took until Rogan lost consciousness. Victor rolled and lay for a moment, recovering from the exertion while the mercenary bled out next to him.

His hands were slick with blood and he wiped them on the man’s clothes. He then searched through Rogan’s jacket pockets, then through the pockets of his jeans. He found keys for the Audi, a Zippo lighter and cigarettes, but no handcuff key. He found the man’s knife, but it was no good against his restraints. He spread his palms across the ground through the pool of bright arterial blood, but still no key.

He cleaned his hands again and forced himself on to his knees and tried to stand. A buzz of pain rushed through his head and his balance faltered. He managed to stay standing, weight balanced on his right foot. It was an improvement to be able to remain upright. Every part of his body seemed to be sending pain signals to his brain but the damaged ankle and bruised ribs appeared to be the worst of his injuries. Anderton had spared him before any irrecoverable damage had been done.

He glanced around the hangar. No sign of any handcuff keys or where they might be. He would have dislocated his thumbs, but the cuffs were on too tight and his hands too big to make such a means of escape possible. He staggered to where the Audi was parked. He opened a door and checked the glove compartment and door pockets, but still no key.

He used the vehicle to support himself and shuffled until he could rest his elbows on the bonnet. He reached out and with both hands twisted and pulled until he detached a windscreen wiper. With the aid of his teeth he tore away the rubber wiper to reveal the long, slender wiper blade.

He turned around and leaned against the bonnet to prop himself up while he fed one end of the wiper blade into the narrow gap where the handcuff bow fed until it could go no further. Despite the pain, he forced the cuff tighter so the teeth drew the end of the wiper blade further into the mechanism, covering the next tooth and stopping it locking. The bow could then be pulled back out of the mechanism and Victor had one hand free.

In seconds, his other hand was released and the cuffs clattered against the hard floor.

Lester’s computer was password protected. Gisele had expected as much, but was still hoping for a minor miracle. She tried a few guesses: his date of birth; his wife’s name; the usual kind of thing people had. She gave up after a couple of minutes. There was no telling how much time she had before someone would catch her. The alarm still sounded, but inside Lester’s office it was a little more bearable, muted by the walls and door.

Having given up with the computer, she turned her attention to hard copies of case files. He had a filing cabinet full of them, but she limited the search to the priority cases – those with upcoming deadlines – and ones she had assisted with by scanning or copying documents or filing. She found herself reading about a man named Adeib Aziz, an Afghan policeman currently imprisoned at Bagram Airbase for killing a British intelligence officer named Maxwell Durant. She read the case against Aziz, or the lack thereof. He had been convicted based on the testimony of a single witness who had not been contactable since the conviction. Lester had taken on Aziz’s appeal, working pro bono on behalf of an international human rights charity. Lester was as ruthless and driven a barrister as Gisele knew, but he’d had a good heart too. If Aziz’s case was not heard in a week’s time, his appeal would be turned down by default and he would spend the rest of his life in an Afghani prison.

Could this be why the blonde woman had killed Lester, and was mistakenly after Gisele, to stop Aziz being released?

She searched further into the file, reading between the lines.

The blonde didn’t want Aziz released. She’d had Lester killed to stop it happening. But why? What was so important about keeping him in prison? Unless he was innocent. If she knew he was innocent then maybe it was she who was guilty instead. Were Aziz’s conviction to be overturned, the investigation into Maxwell Durant’s murder would be reopened.

Assuming Aziz had taken the fall for killing Durant, for the intervening years the woman must have thought she’d got away with it, that she was safe. But then Lester took on the case no one wanted. Now, she was trying to protect the truth.

Gisele read on, because she couldn’t believe anyone would go through so much purely to prevent Aziz being released, regardless of the questions that might follow. There had to be something more concrete.

The file contained an after-action report pertaining to the arrest of Aziz. The investigation and arrest had been carried out by a three-person team consisting of a private military contractor, William Sinclair, and two officers of the Intelligence Corps, Marcus Lambert and Nieve Anderton.

Gisele smiled to herself. The plan was working.

The fire alarm ceased blaring. The sudden silence startled her, snapping her attention from the file in hand. She dropped it. Pages scattered across the floor.

‘
Shit
.’

She tried gathering them up, but paused when she saw a line of shadow under the door to Lester’s office. She held her breath as the handle turned and it opened.

‘Christ, Alan,’ she breathed, palm moving to her chest. ‘You scared the hell out of me.’

Big, kind Alan the security guard stood in the doorway. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Maynard. I didn’t mean to startle you. Just checking out the… hey, why didn’t you head to the lobby when the alarm went off?’

‘Yeah, sorry about that. I assumed it was another false alarm. I’ve got so much work to catch up on.’

He looked at her and she saw the suspicion in his gaze. ‘As it happens, it was the switch around the corner that was set off. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’

‘I . ⁠. . ⁠’ She shook her head. ‘I thought it was a drill. I’m sorry, I know I should have gone downstairs.’

His searching eyes took in her hair, non-office attire and file pages scattered across the floor. ‘Perhaps you should come downstairs with me, miss.’

She stood, gesturing to the door and saying, ‘Sure, okay. Let’s go,’ so Alan looked away for a second, giving her time to pocket the after-action report without his knowledge.

He ushered Gisele ahead of him into the corridor. She turned in the direction of the exit and saw a man walking through the open-plan area.

She knew he was one of them as soon as their eyes met. He had tanned skin. He was stocky and wore khaki trousers and a leather jacket. An image flashed in her mind. This was the man who had shot at them in the hotel corridor.

Alan emerged from the office and saw the approaching man. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Never seen him before,’ Gisele said, making no attempt to disguise the fear she felt.

Alan picked up on it and stepped towards the man in the leather jacket.

‘Be careful,’ Gisele said.

‘Don’t worry about me.’

For a moment she was comforted by Alan’s presence. He was so big he seemed indestructible. But then she remembered Dmitri and the others: bigger and tougher than Alan, and now all dead.

‘Run along, and try not to set off the alarm again, eh?’ He winked at her.

She did. As she turned the corner she heard Alan’s commanding voice: ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m the computer guy,’ the man replied in a South African accent.

Gisele pushed open the heavy swing door into the lady’s room. She heard a muted thump from somewhere behind her as she stepped inside.

The man who wasn’t a real computer guy was in the corridor outside. Gisele didn’t have to look to know that he was following her. She hoped he hadn’t hurt poor Alan too much. She pictured him waiting a moment to ensure Gisele was preoccupied when he entered in maybe twenty or thirty seconds. She breathed fast and hard, trying to think what to do. She was trapped. What would her companion do?

He wouldn’t waste time so neither did Gisele. She entered the furthest cubicle, closed and locked the door, shut the toilet lid and stood on it, then climbed up on to the cistern and over the partition wall.

She landed awkwardly on the other side, grimacing as she banged her knee against the toilet bowl. She hurried out, leaving the door wide open and rushed into the first cubicle, put the toilet seat down, took off her shoes and then stood on top of it. She nudged the door to, far enough so it hid her from view but not so far that it might appear closed or locked.

The heavy swing door opened and a man’s shoes clicked on the tiled floor.

Gisele’s teeth clenched and her nostrils rapidly flexed and contracted as she fought to control her fear and stay balanced on the toilet seat. She rested her shoes on the cistern lid and slowly took the can of pepper spray from her handbag. The footsteps paused and she heard the door clunk shut.

For a terrible moment she thought the man would simply shoot her through the thin cubicle wall, but the shoes clicked again. A different sound this time, softer – the man taking a sidestep to view the cubicle doors. She willed him to see that the far door was the only one closed and locked and not see her deception.

Gisele listened to the sound of slow footsteps growing louder. As they came closer she could make out his shadow. She had to stop herself crying out with relief when the shadow moved past the first cubicle without slowing. She waited. Her hands were so damp with sweat the can of pepper spray began slipping from her grasp. The harder she squeezed it, the faster it slid.

If she dropped it and it hit the hard floor tiles…

She lowered her hands and caught the bottom of the can between her thighs, for the first time ever she was glad she carried plenty of weight there. While her thighs kept the can steady, she wiped the sweat from her palms.

The sound of shoes clicking on tiles ceased. Gisele pictured the man standing before the last cubicle door, maybe raising his pistol, ready to shoot.

This was it.
I trust you
, he’d said.

A loud crash indicated the man had kicked open the cubicle door.

Gisele was dropping off the toilet seat while the sound of the door banging still echoed around the room. She dashed out of her cubicle as the man was backing out, realising he had been tricked.

She pushed the can up towards his turning face and pressed the button.

He roared as the vapour found his eyes.

His hands rose to protect them and Gisele ran for her life.