Hard Knocks (20 page)

“So,” he said softly. “
That’s
how you did it.”

We spent the morning of Day Seven back in the classroom, brushing up on our table manners. I don’t know if Major Gilby had been paying particular attention to the way most of this batch of students handled a knife and fork, but they made Napoleonic naval surgeons look refined. It must have made him cringe enough to do something about it.

Gilby had laid out a white cloth onto the desktop in front of him. He identified and demonstrated the correct use of the selection of cutlery he’d placed on top of it with a delicacy that was almost effeminate.

As I watched Hofmann’s face crease into a frown of concentration, I silently thanked my mother’s insistence on nice table manners. He was wrestling with the novelty of having different spoons for soup, dessert, and to stir his coffee.

“So,” the Major said now, pointing to the array of wineglasses, “which of these would you use for red, and which for white?”

A few people obligingly indicated different glasses, eager to display their genteel upbringing.

Gilby waited a moment before giving us a chilly smile. “Wrong,” he said. “You don’t, because the last thing you people should do when you’re on the job is drink. You don’t drink when you’re in a restaurant with the client. You don’t drink in a hotel bar even after he’s turned in for the night, and you certainly don’t ever charge alcohol to the client’s tab. Is that clear?”

Chastened, we murmured our understanding and he moved on to restaurant behaviour. It was lightweight, skimming the surface kind of stuff, but there were a few nuggets, even so. How you should always order the fastest thing on the menu so you were always finished before the client. How you should tip well so the staff were especially helpful.

“You’d be amazed how fast a waiter will get a meal on your plate,” Gilby said dryly, “if you tell him up front that he can add a thirty percent gratuity onto the bill. You’re going to need to eat quickly because when the client stands up to leave, you’re finished, whether there’s food still on your plate or not.”

As a closer, Gilby briefly went over dressing the part. It was at this point that he went completely blind to the three remaining women in the group. “A double-breasted suit is cut best to conceal a weapon,” he said, “and make sure the trousers are loose enough to move in if things get nasty.”

It was Jan who waved her hand at him. “What about us?” she asked. She managed, for once, to keep the belligerent tone out of her voice.

Gilby had the grace to look uncomfortable, at least. “Just something smart casual,” he muttered, which wasn’t exactly a great deal of help. “No high heels.”

A few of the group were starting to look bored by this time. Clearly this wasn’t quite what they’d signed up for. The Major noticed the restless edge and wound it up.

“Right now you probably don’t realise the importance of what I’m telling you, but you will,” he said meaningfully. “Looking presentable, and not eating your peas off your knife won’t, by itself, get you any work in this business, but try behaving like a slob in front of the client and see how fast they dump you.”

He allowed his eyes to travel slowly over his students, most of whom suddenly found their interest renewed. “Don’t worry,” he said, cracking another of those icy smiles, “this afternoon Mr Figgis is going to take you out for some ambush drills in the forest. That should wake you all up a bit.”

***

We went out in a fast convoy made up of all five of the school Audis. Figgis was driving the lead car, which was where I would have preferred to be, given a choice. I wasn’t, and ended up in the third, with Todd behind the wheel.

Hofmann had claimed the passenger seat alongside him, with McKenna, Elsa and me squashed into the back. It was so tight a fit I could barely fasten my seatbelt, despite the comparative skinniness of the three of us. McKenna and I were at the sides, so our forward vision was limited to the small gap between two pairs of beefy shoulders.

Figgis led us at breakneck speed along the rutted driveway and out in the direction of Einsbaden. The weather was dry, but with a hint of a foggy mist hanging in wisps around the dips in the road. Before we reached the village itself the lead car slowed suddenly, turning off the road and onto a side road that was little more than a wide forestry track.

I held onto my door pull and tried not to let my head bounce against the roof of the car as Todd aimed for every pothole. It was like being back in that damned taxi.

Just when I thought I was going to need all my fillings replaced, Figgis brought the convoy to a halt and we all de-bussed.

“OK everyone, as you probably know we’re going to practise ambush drills this afternoon,” Figgis said. “For this we wanted a space that was a bit more enclosed than the driving arena back at the Manor, to simulate a built up area.”

He waved a hand at the trees that surrounded us. They went off in all directions as far as you could see. The mist had penetrated between the trunks of them now, beginning to thicken.

“Further along this track is a big crossroads, like an intersection,” Figgis went on. “Those of you with Mr Todd, Mr O’Neill, and Mr Rebanks will form the principal vehicle and two chase cars and attempt to drive through that intersection. Myself and Mr Blakemore’s vehicles will attempt to stop you. We’ll run through it once for you, then you’ll all get to have a drive.” He glanced around at the trees and sniffed. “If this bloody fog doesn’t get any worse.”

We got back into the cars and waited until Blakemore and Figgis had disappeared. That left Todd with the lead vehicle. He checked his watch, then turned and grinned at me. “Don’t look so scared, Fox, you won’t need your seatbelt,” he jeered. “This isn’t a full contact sport and we know what we’re doing.”

I smiled sweetly at him and pointedly belted up anyway.

Todd set off with lurching gusto, leaving the other two Audis scrambling to keep up. We got up to a ridiculous speed for the conditions, the trees whipping past outside my window. They seemed so close if I’d put my hand out I would have lost my fingers.

Then the trees widened out into the clearing Figgis had mentioned. Suddenly the two ambush Audis were streaking out from the other tracks. One slewed across in front of Todd. I twisted in my seat and saw the other come screaming out from the opposite direction, aiming to cut off our escape route to the rear. It was timed to perfection, I had to give them that.

Todd wrenched at the steering wheel, sending the Audi slithering sideways, and just managed to fishtail round the car that was blocking us. We came within a hair’s breadth of slamming into the side of it in the process.

We carried on another fifty metres or so down the track, then Todd stood on the brakes and reversed back to the intersection. Everyone else was already out of the cars by the time we arrived.

“Very good, Mr Todd,” Figgis said, and I couldn’t help but hear the note of lazy amusement in his voice. He nodded towards the vehicles which had been following us, and which had been neatly boxed in. “Only trouble is, you’re the lead car, not the one containing your principal, which was in the centre. So, although you’ve managed to evade this ambush, your principal is now in the hands of kidnappers or assassins.”

Todd glowered at him. Figgis turned to the rest of us, smiling. “I’m sure you’re all aware of the old maxim in this industry – never outlive your principal. It’s no good you making good your own escape and leaving your boss behind. It’s bad for your professional reputation and besides anything else, if you lose him, who’s going to pay your wages?”

We grinned back at him. It was difficult not to, and once Todd had finished sulking we climbed back into the cars for another run. This time, Todd was in the passenger seat, with Hofmann behind the wheel. Figgis swapped the order round, too, so that now we were the filling in the three-Audi sandwich, and then sent us back up the track to our starting point.

Hofmann was a big lumbering figure, and his reactions just didn’t seem fast enough to evade Figgis and Blakemore’s trap, even though we all knew it was coming. Jan, behind us at the wheel of Rebanks’s car, did manage to zip past, but received the same criticism that Todd had.

We went back and did it all again. And again.

In fact, we went backwards and forwards a dozen times. I fared no better than the others. I was thankful when my turn was over, and I could relinquish control of the Audi to McKenna. Besides, he drove so badly it even made me look good. Romunstad’s rallying experience made him the star of the exercise.

Getting back up the forest track to our starting point had become a race for most of the boys. They were treating it like their own personal closed stage, safe in the knowledge that they weren’t going to meet anyone coming the other way. Even the gradually encroaching fog hadn’t slowed them down, although visibility was worsening all the time.

Declan was driving the lead car, and Hofmann was behind the wheel of ours, sticking to the Irishman’s tail like he was slipstreaming him. I daren’t look, but I was pretty sure that Craddock, at the wheel of the car behind us, was just as close to our rear bumper. We were approaching our turnaround point.

“I dread to think what Major Gilby’s going to say,” I remarked loudly over the frantically revving engine, “if we prang all three cars at the same time.”

In the front passenger seat, Todd turned round to grin at me. He opened his mouth, no doubt to make some smart alec reply, but if he actually spoke, I never heard it.

At that moment we seemed to pick up the most enormous stone chip. It landed with a crack in the centre of the front windscreen, which split right the way across in both directions.

Ahead of us, Declan’s brake lights blazed. Hofmann hit the brakes and the back end of Declan’s car at almost the same instant. The impact was a jarring crunch that threw me forwards against my jammed seatbelt, the diagonal jerking my shoulder. I saw the lead Audi flick out sideways off to the right of the track, bouncing down nose-first into the trees.

If I’d had the time to think about it, I would have put the accident down to sheer bad driving. It was only when Declan’s car was out of the way that I saw the familiar black Peugeot sideways across the track less than fifty metres in front, blocking the way.

Behind it stood four men with machine pistols, their muzzles flashing like strobes as they fired at us.

Hofmann suddenly went into overdrive. He spun the wheel over to the left and grabbed for the handbrake without having to be told. The move would have been textbook if it hadn’t been for the car behind. Craddock rammed the Audi’s rear wing just as we started to swing round.

Our car flipped over, still travelling at speed. My world went haywire and turned upside down. I wrapped my arms round my head as the side window nearest to me crazed and shattered, showering me with chunks of glass. Sticks and leaves and stones were scooped inside as we scraped along the forest track on our roof.

It seemed to take a long time before we came to a stop. The floormat had dropped onto my feet, trapping them in the footwell and for a moment I panicked. I released my seatbelt without thinking about it, dropping painfully into the roof of the car in a tangle of arms and legs. Beside me, Elsa was moving groggily, bleeding from a cut on her forehead. McKenna was hanging slumped alongside her, not moving.

In the front Hofmann was uninjured, but the windscreen pillars had folded down slightly, encroaching on his position, and his size meant he was struggling to get free. He was wrenching at the steering wheel, heaving at it with enough strength to set the car rocking.

The smell of petrol burned the back of my throat. Behind me I could hear the fuel pump still whining, even though the engine had stalled. It was Todd who reached over and switched off the ignition.

“Is everybody OK?” he demanded.

From somewhere above us came the rattle of automatic gunfire. I flinched and thought of the petrol. The desire to get out of that car was overwhelming. I bit down hard on it.

Hofmann had managed to bend the bottom edge of the steering wheel almost double. He pulled his legs free, swivelled in his seat, and kicked the buckled driver’s door so hard it exploded open.

Todd grabbed his arm. “Wait,” he said. “Where are they?”

I ducked down and peered out through my side window. After he’d punted us up the rear end, Craddock had brought the last Audi to a halt about five metres behind us, slanted across the track. Figgis, who’d been with him, was out of the car holding a Beretta twelve-bore pump-action shotgun. As I watched, he jacked the first round into the chamber, brought the butt up to his shoulder, and fired. I don’t know what kind of slugs he had in that thing, but the noise was incredible.

The men from the Peugeot weren’t expecting an armed response. They ducked back behind their car.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got some covering fire.”

My door wouldn’t open, but the broken window was plenty big enough to squeeze out of if you were determined you could do it. Elsa followed me out and we dodged round to the other side to help Hofmann drag McKenna clear. By the time Todd was out of the car, one of the school SIGs had appeared in his hand and he looked itching to use it.