Tim Stevens - Severance Kill

The hammer slammed down on an empty chamber, once, twice.

He’d failed to keep count.

Her shot sang past as he jerked himself up on to the bonnet. He threw the empty SIG aside and rolled sideways off the bonnet and landed hard on the tarmac next to the driver’s side. She had already crawled so that her head was at the passenger side, but she heard him and was quick with her feet, one of them catching him on the cheekbone. It wasn’t hard enough to put me off. Calvary began to crawl beneath the chassis alongside her.

She brought her arm down and around so that it was pointing down the length of her body and the gun’s muzzle was pointing directly at Calvary’s head. He got his hand across her wrist and slammed it down on to the road surface so that when the gun went off the shot whipped past her and between them, nearly catching her own leg. She tore her arm free and as she did so Calvary punched her in the armpit. Her hand released the pistol reflexively and it went skittering across the tarmac, out from under the car on the passenger side.

Calvary crawled up so that he was right alongside her. She began to lash out with a knee and a fist. When Calvary twisted his thigh to protect his groin, the movement made his head bang against the chassis, a protrusion of some kind grinding through the dressing into the hole in his forehead.

He thought he was going to be sick from the pain, cried out in agony and rage. It was no good, she’d got the upper hand and was already crawling out from under the car, her left hand reaching for the gun gleaming on the road surface. Although Calvary managed to get his right hand up and grab on to her belt it wasn’t enough to stop her inching towards the gun. Her hips were just behind the front passenger wheel now, and Calvary saw what he had to do, his last chance.

He used his purchase on her belt to haul himself forward till his head protruded from under the car on the passenger side. Although she reached her right hand round to press down on his forehead, he managed to half turn his head away and called up, as loudly as he could, ‘ Gaines. Handbrake .’

Gaines’s head and shoulders loomed above them from the footwell and his eyes were frightened. For a second Calvary thought he wasn’t up to it, or hadn’t heard. Then he disappeared from view.

Just as Krupina’s fingertips met the butt of the gun and drew it into her grasp and she began swinging it down for the killing shot, there was a creak as the Ford pickup began to roll backwards, the gradient some thirty degrees.

She screamed long and harsh as the passenger wheel rose up on to her buttocks and eased down again on the other side. Her hand opened, releasing the gun, clawing at the air, before shaking a last time and dropping limp.

Calvary scrambled clear, grabbed the gun and slapped the side of the car for Gaines to reapply the handbrake. He crawled round the rear to the driver’s side again and got in behind the dashboard.

The shooting was sporadic but ongoing. He saw two men by the side of the car, still firing. A third lay sprawled, his foot still jerking. Directly ahead, Nikola and Jakub sat in the VW, Max in the back, he now saw. They stared alternately at the exchange of fire and at Calvary, uncertain.

Calvary jacked the magazine of the Makarov. One bullet fired. Eight left. He slammed it back.

It was time to end this.

*

Bartos was annoyed. Not worried, yet, but the feeling of ecstasy he’d had five minutes earlier had disappeared. He was on the second and last of the magazines for the rifle. The first had been emptied disappointingly quickly, after perhaps thirty or forty rounds. He’d killed two of the four men, one of them the driver when he’d first opened fire, the other when the guy had put his head round the rear of the car to take aim. Apart from that he’d shot the car up so that it looked like a shack that had been hit by a tornado, but there were still two armed men behind it. Plus Calvary in the Merc, and those losers in the VW, who didn’t look like much but who he knew were armed with at least one piece.

Sirens were massing in the direction of the river, probably on the other side but getting closer. He couldn’t be caught there, in the open.

Bartos grabbed the handgun from the passenger seat beside him, a Makarov he’d taken off one of the men guarding him in the back. He took it in his right hand, which he also used to grip the steering wheel, awkwardly. With his left hand he hefted the rifle across the dashboard so that the barrel protruded through the hole in the Hummer’s windscreen.

Then he put his foot down, aiming straight at the pickup, opening fire with the rifle as he advanced. Once he was sure he was on course he let go of the steering wheel and stuck his left hand out the window and began firing on the Russians and the car they were crouching behind.

*

The moment Calvary understood what Blazek was doing, he turned the ignition key of the truck, letting the clutch out too quickly and stalling it.

There wasn’t going to be a second chance.

He dived across Gaines and scrabbled for the door release on the passenger side and shoved the older man out, following him and rolling on the tarmac, feeling the slap of the car door against the very sole of his boot as the Hummer smashed into the pickup, not quite head on. The impact spun the truck on a vertical axis through almost one hundred and eighty degrees so that it was facing the opposite direction.

Calvary stumbled to his feet and peered about for Gaines, seeing him scrambling away.

He yelled, ‘Gaines, over here,’ and raised the Makarov. Blazek leaned out the window of the Hummer and fired. Calvary leaped and rolled, hearing the rapid fire raking off the tarmac, waiting for the bullets to he ed rip across his back. He took cover beside the wrecked pickup, risked a glance round.

Saw Blazek 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 Blazek 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.