Hard Knocks (21 page)

We ran back behind Figgis’s car, keeping low. I looked across to where the first Audi had taken a nose-dive into the trees. The occupants had all managed to scramble out and now they fell back to join us. It was getting crowded back there, but I was amazed to discover that nobody had been seriously injured in the pile-up.

“Keep the bastards pinned down,” Todd shouted.

“I’m doing my best,” Figgis said with surprising calm. He let off another shot, exploding the rear tyre of the Peugeot and peppering the wing.

“What the hell are Blakemore and O’Neill doing?” Todd snapped. “Can’t they hear this lot going down?”

One of the shooters popped up from behind the front end of the Peugeot and let loose another burst. The gun was short, similar to an IMI Mini-Uzi, but with a bulky foregrip just under the business end of the barrel. I didn’t recognise the make and didn’t feel inclined to spend time finding out.

“We have to get into the forest,” Jan said curtly. “With this mist we can find better cover there.”

Todd, Rebanks and Figgis exchanged glances, then nodded. “When I give the signal,” Rebanks said, tense, “we all scatter, OK?”

“Who are these people?” Elsa asked, her face dead white. “Why are they shooting at us?” Nobody bothered to answer.

Hofmann picked up McKenna, who was starting to come round, but was still groggy. Rebanks drew a SIG from inside his jacket and cocked it. Did the instructors go armed at all times, I wondered, or had they just been expecting trouble today?

“OK, now!” Rebanks shouted. The three of them jumped up, firing, and the rest of us ran for the trees.

We ran in an outward dispersal pattern. I ended up on the extreme left, a lot closer to the ambush than I would have liked. I resisted the urge to run directly away from the gunmen. Too many of us clumped together presented too tempting a target.

As it was I heard the high-pitched whine of several rounds whistling past me and thunking into the surrounding tree trucks. My imagination placed them closer than reality, but I tried not to think about that.

It wasn’t a new experience to be faced with people shooting at me. Still, this time they hadn’t been sent with the express purpose of killing me. At least, I hoped not.

A revving engine made me glance back over my shoulder. I’d come maybe a hundred and fifty metres from the ambush site, and already the fog was making the view back dusty and faint. I slowed, jumped over a fallen trunk, and crouched down behind it. As I watched, another of the school Audis slithered to a halt behind Craddock’s car and Blakemore and O’Neill jumped out of it. O’Neill was holding another Beretta twelve-bore. He hung the gun round the front of the Audi and pumped three fast rounds into the front end of the Peugeot. The tyres blew out immediately and the car collapsed down onto its rims.

The four gunmen must have realised by this time that the balance of power had begun to swing against them. The arrival of the second shotgun tipped it altogether. One of them jumped back into the car and tried to start the engine. Blakemore, Todd and Rebanks started pouring shots into the front screen, while Figgis and O’Neill pounded the engine bay with the Berettas.

Within moments there was a small explosive woof as leaking fuel was ignited by the spark from the car’s own ignition system. The driver abandoned his efforts and dived out as the flames started to lick around the edges of the bonnet. The four of them fled into the forest.

The other three must have gone in the opposite direction, but I didn’t see where. The driver, on the other hand, was heading straight for my location, pausing every half a dozen strides or so to rake the trees behind him with automatic fire.

I ducked down out of sight, adrenaline coursing through my body, shouting at me to get out of there, fast. It was much harder to stay put than to run, but right now I was fairly well hidden and I knew it was my best option. That didn’t mean I had to like it. I glanced round, and my eye lighted on a weighty branch close by. I carefully eased it within reach, and waited.

Blakemore came pounding through the forest on the driver’s tail, unheeding of the bursts of fire splintering the trees around him. I was reminded strongly again of Sean. That head-down sheer bloody-minded determination.

Blakemore was firing as he ran, keeping the SIG out in front of him. Even so, it was luck more than judgement that he winged the driver in the right arm as he hurdled a pile of logs. I suspect that he was aiming square for the centre of his body.

With a yell of pain the driver let go of the machine pistol and stumbled, going down on his knees less than ten metres from my position. Before he could rise again, Blakemore was on him.

He lifted the man off the ground and slammed him back against the nearest tree.

“What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?” he demanded.

When the man didn’t answer, Blakemore reached down and gripped him hard round his bicep, digging in cruelly to the leaking wound with his thumb. I saw the driver’s body twist with pain, but still he wouldn’t speak.

Frustration bloomed across Blakemore’s face. He brought the SIG up and shoved the barrel into the other man’s mouth. The driver’s eyes widened as his head was forced back, smacking into the trunk behind him. The raised foresight dug into his palate, burning him, drawing blood.

“You’ll speak now or you’ll never speak again,” Blakemore hissed.

Something in his eyes told me he wasn’t kidding. The instructor had the flat cool eyes of someone who could take a life without sweating over it and still look himself in the mirror every morning afterwards.

I knew what it was to take a life, but there wasn’t a day went past when I didn’t wish the circumstances had been different. That didn’t mean I couldn’t do it again, but I wouldn’t go deliberately looking for the opportunity, either.

I stood up. Blakemore’s head snapped round to face me, and didn’t relax when he saw who it was.

“Charlie,” he said, not shifting the SIG from the driver’s mouth. “Get out of here.”

I knew what he was telling me to do, but I wouldn’t play. Instead I stepped over my protective log and moved forwards to pick up the man’s machine pistol from where it had fallen. It was surprisingly lightweight and with the stock retracted it seemed shorter than the nine-mil SMGs I’d fired in the army. I settled the gun in my hands and pointed it in Blakemore’s direction. He didn’t look surprised about it.

“Either let the police deal with him, or let him go,” I said. “I’m not going to stand by and watch you commit murder.”

Blakemore snorted. “What do you think this bastard and his mates were trying to do to you?”

I didn’t answer, just stood there and kept the gun steady. After a moment Blakemore removed the SIG from the driver’s mouth, looking disgusted with himself that he’d been manoeuvred into doing so, and straightened up.

The man didn’t need telling twice that this was his chance. He started to scrabble away, but before he’d got far Blakemore leaned down and grabbed his coat collar, pushing his face close and speaking in fast, almost garbled German. Then he shoved the man aside and moved towards me, not even bothering to watch the driver’s frantic, lurching escape into the mist-shrouded trees.

Blakemore took the machine pistol out of my hands carefully, as though he still wasn’t quite sure if I was going to shoot him with it. I let him take it because my brain couldn’t think of a good enough reason to stop him. I jerked my head to indicate the rest of the instructors.

“You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?”

He sighed. “Come on,” he said, side-stepping my question. “We need to find the others. Make sure nobody’s hurt.”

I stood for another few seconds, my feet rooted, then I followed his lead. All the time I was searching through little-used areas of my memory, piecing together a ragged translation of Blakemore’s rapid words to the driver of the Peugeot.

My German vocabulary came back to me with painful slowness. When I thought I’d got all the words I didn’t believe the sense I’d made of them, so I went back and checked them again.

By the time we were back at the crash site I knew I hadn’t made a mistake about what Blakemore had said.

The other students and instructors gradually congregated near the three remaining Audis that were relatively undamaged. I could tell straight away the ones who’d been under fire before. They were taking the whole thing much better than those who’d been civilians all their lives.

O’Neill was one of the last to regroup. He came sauntering in with the Beretta resting on his shoulder like a machete. He nodded at the machine pistol Blakemore was holding. “Did you get one of them?”

Blakemore flicked his eyes momentarily in my direction. “No, he got away,” he said. “At least I tried.”

O’Neill didn’t respond directly to that, just turned and walked away. Blakemore watched him go, not looking any more cheerful than he had done when I’d forced him into releasing the driver.

I barely listened to the exchange. I just stood on the outskirts of the crowd watching the Peugeot burning, but didn’t see any of it. My mind was too full of what I’d heard in the woods.

If my translation was correct, I thought, then I now knew what had happened to Kirk, how he’d died, and who had killed him. But that didn’t mean the whole thing was solved and over.

If anything, it had just become a whole lot more complicated.

“No,” Sean said. I heard his breath escape in a sharp hiss. “No way, Charlie. You’re not going to convince me that Gilby’s mob are a criminal gang who recruited Salter – a man they’d only known for a couple of weeks – and involved him in the kidnap of Heidi Krauss.”

“Is it so far-fetched?” I argued. “Heidi’s bodyguards said they fired at the kidnappers as they fled the house. They could have hit somebody and that somebody could have been Kirk. Gilby gets him away, but he dies on route and they dump the body. How else would they explain it? I know what I heard Blakemore say to that guy—”

“You know what you
think
you heard,” Sean cut in.

“‘Try this shit again and next time we send you the kid’s ears.’ He was quite specific,” I said mildly. “If you can put another, more innocent meaning on those words, Sean, I’d like to hear it.”

I’d already been through the whole story of the afternoon’s ambush in the forest and the firefight that had followed. Sean’s German was fluent, much better than mine. Even he had to admit that, if I’d heard correctly, my translation was right, too.

He’d asked me twice if I was sure I was OK, and again if I wanted to call the whole thing off and come back to the UK. I’d answered yes to the former question and a firm no to the latter.

Sean had gone quiet, locked down, terse, like he always did when he was in the field himself. He was sending Madeleine out to Einsbaden, he’d told me then, so she’d be close at hand to liaise if things got hairy. She was arriving tomorrow. I’d wished that Sean was coming himself, but would have bitten out my tongue before I’d put that longing into words.

Now, he sighed. “It still doesn’t fit,” he said at last, sounding tired. More than tired, bone weary, defeated. “The dates for the Krauss girl’s disappearance and Salter’s death don’t fit. Unless they managed to keep him on ice for a couple of weeks after she was taken.”

Disappointment came down over me in a grey wash. “Damn,” I said. “It was neat. I thought I’d got it.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Sean said, and there was a smile in his voice now. “We’ve been going over every permutation at this end and not come up with anything better.”

I was alone in the women’s dormitory after dinner, sitting on the window ledge with my feet tucked up in front of me. I held the phone cradled in my right hand, next to the glass. It was dark outside, cold enough for snow, but I couldn’t suppress the warm delight I felt at speaking to Sean again.

“It doesn’t mean that Kirk didn’t find out about the kidnap and try and do something about it,” I said, screwing my eyes up as I let the memory of Sean’s words in that deserted pub scroll back behind my eyes like an autocue. “Didn’t you tell me that in his last phone call Kirk said he wished he’d stood up for me, that it had been on his conscience, and that he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice?”

“True,” Sean said slowly. “I suppose it could fit with him having discovered that the girl was being held at the school somewhere and not wanting to stand by and do nothing. Did you ever find out where Gilby was going when he was being followed that night?”

“No,” I admitted. “There’s been rather a lot going on here since we last spoke. I’ll give it another try soon.”

“OK, but be careful. If we’re right about this, the Major could be a very dangerous man to cross. We’ve checked his finances, by the way, to find out how he can afford his flash new car. He’s been receiving large sums of cash from a Swiss account, starting about six months ago.”

“Which was when the kidnappings started,” I realised. “Coincidence?”

“Could be, but I’ve never liked them,” Sean agreed. “Thing is, they’re regular payments and they don’t coincide with the ransom amounts.”