Tim Stevens - Severance Kill

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 Blazek 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.’u g

‘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.

Blazek 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 Blazek 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.

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

‘Give it up, Blazek.’

Jakub had the Browning in his raised hand. Blazek 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 Blazek 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.

Blazek 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 Blazek 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 Blazek.

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.

Blazek 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 Blazek’s. They moved past him and he heard the Hummer’s doors opening.

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

‘No.’

Blazek 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 Blazek 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 Blazek hesitate, as if debating whether to come after him, and then ram the barrel against Jakub’s head again.

Blazek 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 Blazek 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. Blazek 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.