Tim Stevens - Severance Kill

Bartos barrelled past, leaning on the horn. He was invisible behind the darkened windows, a masked king of the city that was his once more.

He took in the tableau ahead. The Audi had crashed into the pavement, looked wrecked. A body lay near the driver’s door. Between the Audi and Bartos was a dinky VW, some guy with a gun ducking behind the passenger door. In an instant he recognised the man: that dickhead journalist, one of the ones Bartos had captured earlier. On the far side of the Audi, the pickup was turned to face the scene. There was the Brit, Calvary, behind the wheel.

Beyond the pickup two other cars were hurtling towards them.

Bartos braked, pressed the button to lower his window. Fitted the grenade on to the launcher. Hefted the rifle and leaned out.

Eeny, meeny, miny…

The end game. And it was going to play out as so many of her contemporaries and her superiors had privately predicted the Cold War would: in an all-obliterating, man-made rain of fire.

Krupina was on her knees behind the open passenger door. It was, bizarrely, a relatively comfortable position; any attempt to straighten sent lances of pain through her chest, her abdomen. Her mouth had hit something in the collision and she tasted blood and broken teeth.

She couldn’t see what was happening behind, had no idea if the occupants of the car that had come out of nowhere and blown out the Audi’s tyre had got out and were stalking her. She could see the pickup, and the two cars approaching it from behind. That would be Voronin’s remaining men, and Arkady.

Closer by, she could see Lev’s body, his face turned away. His gun lay on the road a few feet from her.

Krupina shuffled forward on her knees, holding on to the side of the car for support. The pain pounced. The scars of a life lived well. She reached the pistol, gripped it.

She didn’t like guns. They were useful, but in the right hands, which hers weren’t. She had undergone basic firearms training as had all KGB staff, and she’d had occasional refresher courses which she’d attended for the show of it. She had never fired a gun in anger.

With the Makarov as awkward as a dumbbell in her hand, she began to crawl the distance between the Audi and the pickup truck.

*

The first volley came from the lead car. Calvary ducked his head low, hoping the gunman was aiming at him and not at the car’s fuel tank. He felt the shots pass overhead and exit through the space where the windscreen had been. Calvary raised his head again and saw that Jakub was returning fire. Nikola was still behind the wheel of the car but had the window down and was aiming the other gun, the Glock, at the approaching cars. Shreturnie withdrew her hand as a salvo spattered the VW’s windscreen and wing mirror, sending up a burst of glass.

The two cars were almost on him now. Calvary took quick aim and squeezed off two shots at the blinding glare of the lights, aiming low. Vaguely he realised that they weren’t firing at him any more, nor even at the VW.

He glanced back, saw the Hummer had pulled to a stop. A man leaned out of the driver’s window, aiming something a lot bigger than a handgun.

Blazek.

Calvary understood what was about to happen. He grabbed at Gaines’s collar and shouted, ‘Get out,’ and began to drag him across even as he kicked open the driver’s door, knowing he’d be too late, he was tilting at windmills. Then came the crack of the firing mechanism followed instantaneously by the rocketing whine past the side of the car.

Calvary looked back, actually saw the grenade smash through the windscreen of the car closest to him even as the driver braked and the vehicle skidded sideways.

The first flash lit up the interior. Calvary imagined he could see screaming faces.

The car leapt, its chassis lifting ten feet into the air, cushioned on a flattened ball of orange and black flame, and the sound was a muffled crump which seemed to suck all peripheral noise into it before hurling it out again in a screeching blast of rending steel and fragmenting glass. Something was flung past Calvary’s ear and jammed in the gap between the front seats of the pickup. He glanced at it: a windscreen wiper, absurdly whole. The black skeleton of the car crashed down on its side and swayed there in a grotesquely parodic ballet stance before toppling back with a low groan on to the wrecked arches that had held its wheels.

*

Bingo.

Bartos let out a whoop.

King once more. Fuck that. Emperor . Bloodied but, by Christ, unbowed.

The car behind had been following too closely — stupid assholes — and although the driver managed to handbrake it round in a squealing semicircle he couldn’t avoid bashing the side of the car against the burning wreck.

Bartos flicked the switch to fully automatic fire.

They were fast, these Russaks , he had to give them that. And they had balls. They were already returning fire, three or four of them, from the far side of their crappy little car, with their tiny water pistols. He raked an arc back and forth across the car, the glass from the windows dancing, the body juddering. He’d got at least one guy inside the car, judging by the scream.

Pick them off, nice and easy. Then: Calvary.

*

Calvary reached over and gripped the top of Gaines’s head with and crammed him down into the footwell. Over the rim of the passenger door he watched the exchange. The remaining car was at right angles, three men crouched on one side, returning Blazek’s fire in a systematic way: they were laying down a hail of lead, each of them emptying one handgun before opening fire with another, taking turns to replace the clips in a co-ordinated way.

They were ignoring Calvary. He could have shot at least two, possibly all of them from where he was. But they were keeping Blazek occupied, and that suited Calvary fine.

Something hit at his arm and he glanced down and saw Gaines’s white face, his eyes frantic and looking past his shoulder. Calvary whipped round, saw the vision of hell looming at the window — bloodied mouth and chin, wild hair, yellow flaring eyes — an instant before the shot came.

*

Just for a second, she had seen the target. Gaines.

She thought, dimly, that that was what had thrown her. The shock of recognition, of realising how close she was to her goal.

Calvary had reacted with unbelievable speed, had kicked at the unlatched door at the very moment she pulled the trigger. The door crashed into her, knocking her back and down, and her head hit the tarmac.

Stars. Scars. The scars of a life lived…

She embraced the pain, then. Sucked it into her lungs, her blood, her marrow. It was fuel, just like the petrol and diesel that saturated the air and the ground with their stink all around her.

Fired up by this fuel, fuel that was miraculously replenishing itself, she rolled.

*

The shot flicked against Calvary’s hair. He flinched back. The kick against the door had sent her down, the devil woman. Calvary leaned out the open door and fired again twice, heard the ricochets sing off the road

She was under the truck.

He didn’t think she’d risk firing upwards through the chassis because it was too confined down there and she’d be more likely to shoot herself, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He heaved himself up and through the gap where the windscreen had been and slid down the bonnet, crumbled nuggets of shattered glass gritty between his torso and the metal. It was an extreme risk because hanging there on the bonnet he was an open target for both the Russians and Blazek, but he had to hope they were otherwise occupied with each other.

Calvary let himself slip over the front of the bonnet and braced himself against the tarmac with his left hand. Upside down, he aimed under the car and saw her splayed there on her back, one eye glinting at him. He pulled th. Helf againe trigger.