SEVERANCE KILL (26 page)

Saw Blažek hauling Gaines into the Hummer one handed, the rifle pointed now back towards the VW where Jakub was trying to get a shot in.

Gunfire was coming from somewhere else now, the Russians on the other side of the Hummer, but all of a sudden there wasn’t a Hummer there because Blažek had taken off. Calvary stood and saw the big vehicle rocketing away in the direction of the castle. He waved, frantic, to Nikola behind the wheel of the VW, saw the rear door flapping open even as the car swung close to him, and dived in beside Max.

*

‘Darya Yaroslavovna. Can you hear me?’

Usually the city’s lights, especially around the castle, made it hard to see the stars, but Krupina had a perfect view of them now. Something quick and sudden had happened and the darkness that veiled her eyes had vanished. There’d been some sort of impact, and the car was no longer over her.

There was no pain, at last. Just an overwhelming coldness.

Arkady’s face loomed pale and close. He was crouching over her, blood on his hands. She tried to ask him if he was all right. Then she angled her eyes down, saw that the blood was hers. Noticed something odd about her hips, the whole lower half of her body, in fact: it was twisted at right angles to the upper half.

‘Arkasha…’ She couldn’t remember his patronymic. Careless of her, and rude.

‘I have to get you away.’

From nearby came the singing of urban angels: the sirens of emergency vehicles.

It was too late. Arkady knew it; she could read it in his gaze.

Her boys. Arkady and Gleb. Her only constants in a treacherous world.

She gripped his hand in both of hers. Whispered, ‘Did you get him? The Englishman, Gaines?’

His eyes burned into hers.

‘Yes, Darya Yaroslavovna. We got him.’ A beat, then: ‘You’ve won.’

She closed her eyes.

A life well lived.

TWENTY-NINE

The giddiness Bartos had felt as he lurched out of the car and grabbed the skinny old guy was wiped away by the cold air blasting through the gap where the windscreen had been. The bonnet of the Hummer was stove in, one corner lifting like an old piece of lino, but the machine was still going, its rumble harshened to a roar.

I need to get myself one of these
, he thought.

First things first. The old guy had tried to grab at the door handle and although Bartos had locked it centrally, he didn’t like this display of defiance and busted the man in the chops. He remembered to pull his blow – the guy looked seventy or more – but even so there was blood, and when the man slumped sideways Bartos worried for a moment that he was dead. He seized the man’s meagre hair and bellowed at him, shaking his head back and forth. The Brit stirred, mumbling. Bartos cuffed his face once more.

‘Pull that shit again and I
will
let you out. Straight into the river.’

In the mirror Calvary and his loser buddies were picking up speed. Their car wasn’t worth shit compared to the Hummer, but they had the advantage of a vehicle that hadn’t been in two collisions.

He was heading south west, towards Mala Strana, the Lesser Town. A big, fast car wasn’t much use there among all the cobbled streets. Plus, the sirens were all around. The cops would be looking for a car of the Hummer’s description; it was one that would have stuck in witnesses’ minds. Best to ditch it.

Bartos yanked the wheel to the left, took a steep winding street at almost one hundred kilometres an hour, doing some serious damage to the side panels against the narrow stone walls. He banked right again, saw a dead end ahead with a railing and a drop beyond it, slammed on the brakes and killed the engine.

He jumped down, came round to the passenger side and dragged Gaines out, the pistol pressed against his head. Bartos reached back into the car for the rifle, which he hoisted awkwardly over his shoulder. Clamping his hand over the old man’s mouth, he marched him back up to the end of the side street. The mouth of a tiny alley, so narrow it could barely fit them both, loomed blackly.

*

Calvary hated sitting in the back seat of anything: a taxi, a car like this one, with an amateur gunman of only modest ability riding shotgun in the passenger seat up front. He glanced back. Through the still-flaming wreckage of the car that Blažek had blown up with the grenade, he saw no headlights flashing in pursuit. The Russians were out of the game, for now at least.

He craned to look at the surface of the road behind them.

‘Are we leaking oil?’

Nikola said, ‘No.’

‘Then the Hummer is. He hasn’t got much time left.’

In front of him, Jakub cocked his gun ostentatiously. Calvary said, ‘When we find him, keep back. For God’s sake. You’ve done enough. You came at just the right time. You need to leave this to me now.’

Jakub made a sound like a snort.

It wasn’t the time for small talk but Calvary couldn’t help it. ‘Nikola, are you all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘You got away.’

‘Only just. I reached the car, came looking for you. I drove around the hospital many times. I thought they had you.’

‘They did.’

In the mirror she touched her forehead. ‘What did they –?’

‘It’s nothing. I’ll tell you later.’

Behind them the first flashing blue and red lights crested the road. Calvary said, ‘Slow down.’

‘He is turning.’

‘All right. Follow him, but be discreet.’

They dipped alarmingly, the streets losing their broad functionality and becoming medieval. Ahead the Hummer had disappeared. Nikola took the VW judderingly down the cobbles, peering left and right. Max pointed: ‘There.’

Nikola pulled in. The side road ended in a railed balcony. Thirty yards ahead, parked sideways alongside the balcony, was the Hummer. The light from the city beyond showed no human silhouettes in the windows.

Calvary said, ‘Stay here.’

He climbed out, keeping low, the Makarov in a two-handed grip.

Blažek was either in the car, out of sight with Gaines, or he’d ducked behind it. Calvary flattened himself against the cobblestones, peering into the blackness beneath the bulk of the vehicle, looking for telltale glints of metal or teeth. Nothing.

He duckwalked to the car, rose up and dropped just as quickly. The snapshot he’d glimpsed of the interior of the car had confirmed that nobody of Bartos’s bulk was inside.

Nikola’s shout made him whirl, on his knees, the gun extended.

From the obscure mouth of an alleyway Blažek had emerged and got his forearm across the throat of Jakub, who’d been standing by the open passenger door of the VW. The big man’s other hand was jamming a pistol against the side of Jakub’s head.

Blažek roared something in Czech. Calvary stood and advanced. Blažek switched to Russian: ‘Step back or I kill him.’

‘Give it up, Blažek.’

Jakub had the Browning in his raised hand. Blažek snarled something at him and increased the pressure across his throat. With a hiss, Jakub dropped the gun on to the cobblestones.

Into the car Blažek yelled, ‘Get out, now.’

Behind the wheel, Nikola stared at him. Calvary took a step forward. Gaines cowered in the mouth of the alley, looking dazed.

Blažek lowered the pistol for a moment, pointing it straight down, and shot Jakub in the foot. Jakub howled, twisting in the bigger man’s grasp, his bloodied leg flailing. Once more Blažek pushed the muzzle agains the side of his head.

‘Last warning. Get out of the goddamn car. Now.’

Nikola and Max swung themselves out simultaneously. Calvary saw that Max had his rucksack with him. They stepped away, watching Blažek.

He said over his shoulder, to Gaines: ‘Get in.’

The man stumbled to comply. As he did so Calvary took another step forward, silently urging Jakub to move his head a fraction to the left, to give him a clear shot.

Blažek threw something heavy, the rifle he’d been using earlier, into the car after Gaines.

‘Now go sit in the Hummer. All three of you.’

Nikola and Max glanced at Calvary. He gave a nod, keeping his eyes on Blažek’s. They moved past him and he heard the Hummer’s doors opening.

Blažek said: ‘You too, asshole. But first, put the gun down.’

‘No.’

Blažek sighed, pointed the gun downward again. For a second his head was a clear target but then Jakub moved in the way, arching his back, and the chance was gone. Calvary said, ‘All right,’ and laid the Makarov down.

As he rose again he saw Blažek lift the pistol, extend it towards him. Calvary dived, taking the impact on his shoulder, as the shots came, spanging off the cobblestones, too close. He rolled past the rear of the Hummer and ducked behind it. From his worm’s-eye view he saw Blažek hesitate, as if debating whether to come after him, and then ram the barrel against Jakub’s head again.

Blažek said, ‘Bye bye, asshole,’ and pulled the trigger.

The exit wound spread the opposite side of Jakub’s head into a fan-shaped spray of bone and blood and brain matter.

From the Hummer, Nikola screamed, harsh and primal.

Calvary scrambled out from behind the vehicle and was going for the Makarov he’d placed on the cobblestones, but although Blažek had let Jakub’s body fall and had dropped into the driver’s seat of the VW, the door was still open and he reached through and opened fire, causing Calvary to flinch back. The VW’s engine revved and the car surged forward. Calvary rolled sideways, coming up hard against the wall hemming in the narrow street. He saw that the Hummer’s door had opened and Max had clambered out. Calvary shouted a warning as the kid leaped forward on to the bonnet. Blažek braked, punched the car into reverse, and Max dropped off on to the cobblestones. Again the car lunged forward. A wheel caught Max’s arm, pinning it with a crack, and the kid yelled.

Then the VW reversed again, all the way up the side street this time. Calvary rolled and got his gun and loosed off three shots after the car, just as it executed a three-point turn into the main street. He heard glass give way. By the time he reached the junction, the tail lights were weaving away, heading further down the cobbled street.

*

Son of a bitch.
The shot had been a lucky one, but Bartos had been lucky, too. The bullet had passed through the windscreen and through the big fan of muscle joining his neck to his shoulder. The pain was enormous, as though a fiery boot had stamped on his shoulder, and he found he couldn’t raise his left arm. But he didn’t think anything vital had been damaged.

Behind him the old guy raised his head and Bartos snapped at him, wincing at the stab this provoked. The road before him twisted to the right and plunged even more steeply, down into the Lesser Town. He braked, too quickly, and felt the tyres slip on the cobbles.

He’d put some distance behind him, then ditch the VW and get himself a new car. Then he’d be away and dry. Let the cops find Calvary and those other assholes at the Hummer.

*

Calvary ran, staggering because of the slope and the uneven surface, the town before him with its medieval quaintness tilting crazily. Yet again the bandages had come loose from his head and he tore them away. He barged past a late-night couple, their faces agape.

The brake lights ahead kept flickering on, the VW moving uncertainly through the streets not meant for cars.

Calvary found his phone in one of his pockets and punched the button while running.

‘Nikola, it’s me.’

Her reply was halfway between a cry and a gasp.

‘Is Max okay?’

‘His – I think his arm is broken.’

‘You have to get away from there, Nikola. Get Max away and to a hospital. Drag him if you have to. Get clear of the Hummer, and then call an ambulance. The police will be there any moment. Oh, and don’t take the guns with you.’

‘What –’

‘Make up some story. He slipped and got run over. It’s not a bullet wound, it won’t be treated as suspicious.’

‘Jakub –’

‘He’s dead, and you have to leave him there.’

‘Where are you?’

‘After Blažek, on foot. I’ll find you later.’

‘Martin –’

He stumbled on, listening.

‘You must kill him. Blažek.’

‘I promise you, he’s not getting through this alive.’

*

The bullet might not have hit anything critical but there was still blood loss, and it was starting to get to Bartos. Through the windscreen the Baroque buildings rippled. A lamp post toppled towards him and he jerked the wheel aside, felt the front bumper on the passenger side hit something hard and buckle.

He restarted the engine, tried to reverse. No good: he was jammed against the obstruction, a hydrant or something. The hell with it.

He took several attempts to open his door, reaching across his body with his right hand to do it. He almost fell out, grinding his teeth against the fire in his shoulder. But he had a degree of movement in the joint, he realised.

A tiny dog on the end of a lead began yapping near his feet and he brought the pistol to bear and watched the terrified owner back away, hauling the mutt after her. He glanced up and down the street. Nobody about, all the windows dark. Beside him was a narrow church, Gothic spires barely visible against the dark of the sky.

Bartos dragged open the rear door and seized Gaines’s collar. The man collapsed on to the pavement. Bartos hauled him to his feet.

Footsteps, and he turned and looked back the way he had come.

Calvary was lurching down the street towards him.

Bartos took aim but the ground tilted again and there were suddenly two of the Englishman. He shook his head and blinked.

Need to get a grip.

Drawing breath deeply, he yanked Gaines in front of him, ignoring the pain in his shoulder – he was, after all, the Kodiak – and stumbled towards the church.

*

When Calvary became aware that Blažek wasn’t going to shoot – could barely stay upright, it seemed – he lifted his own gun, but his phone buzzed and he fumbled it out.

A text message, from Nikola:
Max took this
.

He looked at the attached photo.

Calvary put the phone away. Down the hill, Blažek had disappeared with Gaines around the side of the church. Calvary heard glass smash.

He ran almost headlong into the church wall, his own co-ordination failing him. For a few seconds he stood with his eyes closed, fighting down the tide of fatigue and nausea.

He ejected the magazine from the Makarov. He’d fired three at the VW. Five bullets left.

He’d noticed Blažek had the same handgun, doubtless taken off one of his Russian captors. He’d be close to empty, given the shooting he’d been doing back there at the Hummer. Two bullets into Jakub, four at Calvary as he’d rolled away. Three left, at most.