Andy McNab - Exit wound

We walked into the lobby through a set of wooden doors with Victorian-wired glass panels. The harsh white light from the overhead fluorescents did the cleaners no favours. Hastily swished mop marks showed as plain as day across the black marble floor.

Sweet, flowery disinfectant did battle with the stench of boiled cabbage. There was no lift, so we climbed the stairs to the first floor. Anna pointed down the corridor. I counted four doors. ‘Last one on the right.’

I signalled to her to carry her wheelie. It was making too much noise.

None of the doors had a bell or a knocker. They didn’t even have numbers. Each was just a plain sheet of veneered plywood with a fake brass knob, dulled from decades of use.

We reached Semyon’s apartment. Anna’s hand was poised to rap against the veneer. I heard a dull thud inside and knew exactly what it was. I pushed Anna clear as the lock turned.

I rammed my full weight against the opening door. It only travelled a foot. I burst through to see the body behind it stumbling back into the hallway. Tattoo’s mate staggered to his feet, one hand tugging his leather jacket away from his waist. I focused on the other and jumped on him, pinning him to the floor. I grabbed his fingers a nanosecond before they could make contact with the pistol-grip in his waistband. His cologne matched the building’s disinfectant. I felt my eyes water and my throat constrict. With him in the room, the boiled cabbage didn’t stand a chance.

He bucked and kicked, trying to head-butt me off him. His stubble rasped at my neck and face.

I pushed my hands down on his, determined to keep the weapon where it was. My knuckles sank into his stomach. I felt the hammer of the revolver and found my way to its grip. We rolled about on the carpet, each scrabbling for some kind of advantage. His fist thumped into the side of my head. I tried to sink my teeth into his face or neck to cause him enough pain to disorient him.

I thrust my right hand between the weapon and his skin, searching for the trigger. At the precise moment my middle finger found the guard he raised his knee to push me away. I used the distance between us to jab my finger onto the trigger.

There was a dull thud.

The suppressed barrel put a round into his lower gut, bollocks, cock or leg. I didn’t know which and didn’t much care. I shoved my left hand over his mouth to muffle the scream.

I suddenly had enough space to draw down the weapon. I jammed the long fat barrel against his head and fired again.

I rolled off his corpse and allowed myself a couple of deep breaths before moving on. I knew there wasn’t time for more. ‘Anna?’ I got up and closed the front door.

Low-level bookcases ran the length of the corridor. Books and magazines lay strewn across the floor. The brown, swirly-patterned carpet at the entrance to the living room was wet with blood. Anna knelt, sobbing, beside Semyon’s body. He lay half in, half out of the doorway, still in his raincoat and scarf. He’d thrown up his right arm in a vain attempt to protect himself. He must have known what was coming. There was no mistaking the exit wound on the left side of his forehead, slap in the middle of his frontal lobe. It wasn’t the only one. His left arm and both legs were stained crimson where he had taken rounds.

I checked the weapon. The chamber was empty. I ran my hands over the second loadie’s body for spares. He was carrying no extra ammunition. I guess he must have brought just enough to torture and kill an old man.

I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a bread knife. Two sets of bike gear lay on the floor, along with the rest of the room’s contents. They were old waxies, 1980s-style jackets. The pockets had been turned out.

The kettle had boiled dry on the stove. Semyon must have put it on as soon as he came in. The loadie had been waiting for him, or maybe he’d just knocked on the door. Semyon had known we were due any minute.

If anybody else had been here, they’d have done their stuff by now. All the same, I had to make sure. I cleared the two bedrooms, living room and bathroom. They’d all been ransacked. Drawers had been emptied, stuff torn apart – even in Grisha’s room, another shrine, still with his teenage football teams and pop-star posters on the wall.

I checked the loadie’s pockets and pulled off his fashionably pointed shoes. I couldn’t stop thinking about Red Ken lying on the tarmac, having taken a mag from this man. It made me feel good that the front of the bastard’s head now looked like Semyon’s. I just wished I’d been able to cause him the same amount of pain.

He had nothing on him at all. He’d come to the job sterile, and there was no sign of whatever he’d hoped to find in Semyon’s apartment.

The old boy must have kept whatever he was going to tell us in his head. That was why he’d been tortured. The leg wounds were kneecappings. The one in his arm had gone through his elbow. The grey woollen scarf that hung loosely round his neck was soaked with saliva. The loadie must have shoved it against his mouth to muffle the screams as he pumped in another round.

There was more blood on the living-room sofa and two or three separate trails across the floor. Semyon had been one hell of a guy: he must have used every ounce of his dwindling strength trying to crawl into the hallway and warn us. The loadie had head-jobbed him on his way to the front door.

Semyon had probably been pinged at M3C as he’d tried to find out where the targets were staying – or to get details of tomorrow’s test firing. He must have held out and said jack shit. The loadie had decided to sit tight and wait for us to arrive.

Anna’s car was now a no-no. They’d see us coming a mile off.

I snatched the jackets, leggings, gloves and helmets off the kitchen floor. The keys were by the cooker.

I went back to Anna. Her sobs were turning into a wail and it was getting far too loud. I grabbed her under the arm and pulled. ‘There’s nothing we can do for him.’

‘No, not yet…’ She stroked what was left of his head.

‘Anna.’ I bent down and took her face in my hands, trying to get eye contact. ‘Anna, I need you to get me to the proving ground.’

She turned and grabbed me. She pulled me into a desperate hug, sobbing into my shoulder. I held her for a while, stroking her hair, comforting her. I knew it didn’t mean anything. She was just clinging to the wreckage. The muffled sobs continued as I gently prised her away from me. ‘Anna, you can’t help him here.’

She nodded slowly and her body sagged. Her arms fell away from me.

I helped her to her feet and we both stood there, knowing there was nothing we could do for Semyon but not wanting to leave him untended. I looked again at his head wound, the outstretched arm. My eyes were drawn to the magazine beneath his pointing hand.

I suddenly realized what he’d been trying to do.

He hadn’t crawled into the corridor to warn us, or thrown out his arm in a last vain attempt to protect himself. He’d been giving us another kind of message.

The magazine cover shot was a group photo, a row of suits in front of a shiny new glass building. I picked it up and jammed it into the bike jacket. I’d try to make sense of it later. Right now we had to get as far away from here as possible. ‘Let’s go.’

I grabbed her case under my arm and closed the front door behind us.

Friday, 8 May

0053 hrs

We drove along the not-so-deserted streets. Anna was riding. I was in the sidecar. She knew the bike and she knew the city. I couldn’t stop thinking about Semyon. I knew I should cut away – I’d always managed to do that in the past. Sometimes my survival had depended on it. Sometimes I’d just used it as an excuse not to look at myself too carefully in the mirror. Whatever, it wasn’t working any more.