Джеймс Паттерсон - Liar Liar

He turned his head slightly and frowned at me, bewildered. I took that as a sign that I was right.

‘I’m going to give you two choices,’ I said. ‘When I leave here, you can kick and holler and scream and try to get the rest of your team to come over to this side of the valley. If that’s your plan, I’ll leave you cuffed. You’ll look like an idiot, and you’ll blow the whole operation, which is probably why you haven’t tried that already.’

He lay silent, his face in the dirt.

‘Or –’ I pointed into the dark ‘– if you stay quiet, I’ll leave your rifle leaning against a tree two hundred metres that way. I’ll hook the handcuff key on the front sight. You can un-cuff yourself and walk back to the mobile command unit with some dignity.’

The young officer didn’t answer. He was giving me the silent treatment.

I nudged him in the side. ‘Hey.’

‘Option two,’ he grumbled.

‘Good choice.’ I patted him on the shoulder and walked off into the dark.

When I was a good distance away, the rifle and key left for the young man I’d subdued on the ridgeline as promised, I hooked his radio onto the waist of my jeans and fed the earpiece into my ear. As I made my way through the dark, moving quickly down the slope towards the bottom of the valley, the speaker in my ear burst into life.

‘Command to ground units, unit one has been compromised.’

There was silence, and then a flurry of male voices.

‘Command, can we have more information?’

‘Command, this is unit five. Is there a casualty report?’

I heard fear in the voices ringing over the radio. I didn’t know if that fear was directed at me or Regan. No one had asked who had taken out the scout. For the first time, I felt a chill rush through me at the thought that the men out there in the dark might be afraid of me, might be assuming that I had hurt or killed one of their number. I knew I had a violent reputation among my colleagues, but just how dangerous did these men think I was? If they found me, what degree of force had they been authorised to use? Would they kill me to take me down?

I stopped and pushed the button on the radio.

‘Come in, tactical units,’ I said. ‘This is Harry Blue speaking.’

Chapter

91

THE RADIO WAS silent for a good twenty seconds. I guessed suddenly hearing the voice of one of their quarry might have stunned them into speechlessness. When no one spoke, I clicked my radio open, hardly knowing myself what I wanted to say. The bush around me was unnaturally silent and still.

‘I just took down one of your men,’ I said. ‘I didn’t hurt him. I’m not here to hurt any of you.’

No answer. I crept slowly further down the slope towards the clearing where the house was situated.

‘I came here to stop Regan Banks,’ I said. ‘Regan is a merciless killer. I’ve seen his handiwork. I’ve seen it, because it was meant for me. This is my fault. If anyone’s at risk trying to stop this man, it should be me. If he has as much trouble taking one of you down as I just did, you’re all in real danger right now.’

There was a small crackle on the radio, two of the men out there speaking to each other.

‘Unit seven, are you hearing this?’

‘Yeah, two.’

The men’s voices were shocked, high with tension. Still, no one answered me directly. I clicked the mic again.

‘I’m asking you not to consider me a target,’ I said. ‘And I’m asking you to leave now, while you still can.’

The radio cracked to life again. A voice heavy with anger, clipped with the certainty of someone in command.

‘All tactical units, this is Command. Switch radio frequencies, and disregard rogue transmissions,’ the voice said.

My radio fell silent. I tore it from my ears and dropped it in the dirt. I’d never find the secondary tactical frequency, even if I scanned the airwaves all night. All I could hope was that the men had heard my plea, and that they would at least pair up so that if Regan came he would have two men in each position to contend with.

I also hoped that if I ran into any of them, they’d remember what I’d said and not shoot me.

Chapter

92

POPS COULD HEAR the voices, but had lost all sense of where they were coming from. It seemed to him that Harry was in the mobile command centre with them, but through the hazy red light he couldn’t see her. Woods had instructed two of his officers to escort Pops to the furthest end of the truck, where they sat him on a fold-up chair and cuffed his wrists behind his back. The pain across his chest, the one he had been experiencing for days, was not receding the way it usually did. If anything, it was becoming more specific, a sensation like a belt tightening endlessly around his chest, pulling inwards at his sides. It felt to Pops as though his ribcage wanted to collapse in on itself.

Pops could just make out the broad figure of Woods at the other end of the truck, Nigel Spader standing restlessly beside him, watching the screens on the desk.

‘He’s not coming,’ Woods grunted. ‘The bastard’s not coming tonight.’

Nigel didn’t answer.

‘Any minute now we’re going to get our first press van up at the roadblock,’ Woods complained. ‘These country hicks are smarter than you think. Some local yokel will see through the road crew charade. Half the population out here works on road crews. Before you know it our failure to trap Banks will be on the national news.’

‘None of the press spotted the Bristol Gardens sting,’ Nigel reasoned.

‘If this whole thing comes to nothing, Spader, I’m pinning it on you,’ Woods snapped.

Pops listened to the argument, trying to keep his breathing even. One of the officers guarding him bent and looked closely at his face, and when Pops tried to return the gaze he saw the man’s features were clouded with green and yellow bursts of light.

‘Deputy Commissioner Woods, sir,’ the man said. ‘Chief Morris ain’t lookin’ so good over here.’

‘He’s fine,’ a voice said from the other end of the narrow red room.

‘Should we at least loosen the cuffs, sir?’ the officer persisted.

‘I said he’s fine.’

Pops panted as the two young men sat again on either side of him, their rifles leaning between their uniformed knees.

‘If ole mate here drops dead on us,’ Pops heard one of them murmur, ‘I know who’s getting the blame. Take the cuffs off.’

‘You reckon?’ the other whispered.

‘I reckon. He’s not gonna cause any trouble. Chief Morris? We’re gonna take the cuffs off. But you just sit there and take it easy, alright?’

‘Yeah,’ the other officer whispered in Pops’s ear as he leaned back in his chair, discreetly pulling the old man’s wrists towards him. ‘And don’t go croaking on us, boss.’

Chapter

93

THEY WAITED IN the dark, lying on their bellies, each with an eye pressed to the infrared scope of their rifle. Stephen was glad that when the order had come through from command for the tactical officers to team up, it had been Shona who had made her way through the dark towards him. He knew from their academy training that she had the ears of a rabbit, and she could take the bullseye out of a paper target at a kilometre’s distance.

He’d never admit it, but Stephen was a little nervous. He’d been on special operations before, but the danger had always been clear and present. Once, he’d laid sniper cover for a hostage situation for three hours outside a bank in the CBD, the back of his neck searing in the sun as he watched the negotiator pacing behind a truck at the front of the glass building, trying to talk the man down. Stephen had known exactly where his target was, had eighteen other sets of eyes anticipating his every move and reporting it through the radio. Target is heading north, approaching doors. Target is retreating from doors, heading south .