Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

At 02.12 they came to a fork in the road. Luke bore left, then doubled back, heading north-west up towards the Syrian border. Guided by Finn’s GPS, he soon took a right-hand turn off the main road and into the desert. He drove on for some ten kilometres before Finn quietly spoke.

‘Let’s go static,’ he said. ‘The village is about two klicks up ahead.’

Luke came to a halt and killed the lights. 02.58. Three hours till sunrise. They’d be entering the village at dawn. Lift Abu Famir and then swastika it back to Jordan.

But until then they’d just have to wait.

Chet had lost count of the number of pints of cold Stella he’d chucked down his neck that afternoon. He’d headed straight for a basement pub just off Leicester Square where the barmaid looked like a bulldog licking piss off a thistle. He celebrated his birthday surrounded first by the office workers in for a liquid lunch, then by tourists taking the weight off their feet after a day’s sightseeing, and finally by the office workers again, boisterous and increasingly arseholed now work was over.

But Chet had barely noticed any of them. As he sank the beers, he couldn’t stop thinking about the events of that morning. There had been rumblings over the past few days about an anti-war march through London. If it went ahead, Suze McArthur was exactly the kind of leftie who’d be up at the front waving some wanky banner for the TV crews. Chet was the kind of person who’d be at home. The last people asked their opinion about a war, he knew, were those who’d been in one. And if the girl was surprised that the decision to move into Iraq had already been taken, she was more naive than most. ‘This war is good to go,’ the American had said. Well, of course it was. When the hell did people think decisions like that were taken — the day before troops moved in?

No, it wasn’t Suze with her wild eyes and embroidered nose who kept coming to the front of Chet’s mind. It was Stratton. What was so important that he had to come to meet an American businessman, rather than the Yank going to him? Why was he talking to the Grosvenor Group in some anonymous office and not in Number 10? And what did the Grosvenor Group have to do with it anyway?

Fuck it, Chet thought as he signalled to the bulldog for another pint of Stella. Not his business. As long as he kept pulling the pay cheques, the suits could discuss whatever the hell they wanted. Trouble was, after today’s bollocking he didn’t know how long the pay cheques would carry on coming.

At 22.30 he’d gathered up his rucksack of gear and staggered to the tube. Time to get his head down.

As he left Seven Sisters station, the cold was sobering. He walked as briskly as he could down the main road and into his little side street of terraced houses and maisonettes. The street lamps bathed the pavement in a yellow glow, but only a handful of houses had lights on in any windows. The booze and the darkness meant that he fumbled slightly as he unlocked his own front door. Once he was in, he slammed the door behind him and made his way in the darkness along the narrow hallway and towards the kitchen.

As he stood in the doorway of the kitchen he saw a red light flashing. The answer machine on the work surface, indicating a single message was waiting for him. His rucksack still slung over his back, Chet stomped into the kitchen and, still in darkness, pressed the play button.

He half expected it to be his amputee friend Doug, berating him. It wasn’t. A voice — female, posh and brisk — filled the kitchen. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Freeman. This is Angela Glover, Grosvenor Group human resources. I’ve been instructed to inform you that your services are no longer required by the gr…’

Angela Glover, whoever the hell she was, didn’t get to finish her message, because Chet had pulled the wires from the back of the answer machine and hurled it to the floor. The cheap plastic shattered against the floor, and Chet made to stamp on it with his good heel. ‘Fucking bitch… ’

‘You should learn to calm you temper.’

Whoever had entered Chet’s kitchen behind him had done so in absolute silence. Chet felt the unmistakable sensation of cold metal against the back of his head.

He froze.

‘I’ll explain what’s going to happen.’ The intruder was female, her voice quiet and throaty, with an accent Chet couldn’t quite place — not American, exactly, but as though she’d learned English from a Yank.

‘You’re going to tell me the name of the woman you spoke to outside the meeting room today. If you do that, you might live to see morning.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Do you really need me to answer that?’

No, he thought. Not really…

Chet’s eyes were getting used to the dark, but he knew that in the absence of light his peripheral vision was the strongest. He used that now. To his left, within reach, was the half-eaten loaf of bread from that morning, with the kitchen knife lying to its side.

‘I didn’t speak to anyone,’ he said.

Get her talking, he figured. Then, when I make my move, she’ll be distracted.

No reply. Just the continued pressure of a weapon against the back of his skull.

‘Feel like telling me how you got into my flat?’

‘I feel like killing you. I’m going to count to five. If I don’t have a name by the end of it, that’s what I’ll do. One.’

He could grab the knife with his left hand. It wouldn’t take much to overpower this woman, whoever she was.

‘Two.’

His fingers twitched.

‘Thr…’

Chet yanked his head to the left just as he grabbed the knife and spun round. He didn’t fuck around with threats: he just sliced the blade into the back of the intruder’s gun hand. She cursed as the weapon fell to the floor, but used her good hand to swipe a blow at Chet.

It wasn’t just the force behind that blow that surprised him; it was the training too. The side of the intruder’s hand dug sharply into Chet’s neck, startling him momentarily and giving her the opportunity to raise her right leg and kick him hard in the stomach. Chet stumbled back, the wind knocked from him and his balance shaky. He saw the woman a metre in front of him, bending down to pick up the gun that she’d dropped, and he knew that he only had moments. This woman was a pro, no doubt about it, and she wasn’t going to give him a second chance.

He barged towards her, using all the strength in his good leg and the advantage of his greater bulk to knock her out of the way. She clattered against his rickety oven, and as she did so, he listened for the sound of the gun being knocked out of her hand again. He didn’t hear it, but she hissed something in a language Chet didn’t recognise: ‘ Harah! ’

And then there was a gunshot.

The weapon was suppressed, so the sound it made was just a dull thud. Chet saw a spark as the round left the barrel and he felt it whizz just inches from his hip before it thumped into the wall.

She could fire another round in seconds. Chet had to get out of there.

He didn’t give her time to re-aim, but burst out of the kitchen and hurtled back along the hallway, all traces of his previous inebriation a memory. When he got to the front door, he could hear the woman coming out of the kitchen. He could almost sense her raising the weapon again.

As he stepped over the threshold and pulled the door closed behind him, a second round splintered the wood from the inside. Chet limped down the pathway and round to the far side of his dented Mondeo, where he ducked out of sight.

He froze, his heart pumping furiously, and he listened carefully.

At first there was nothing. Then, after about ten seconds, footsteps. The shooter had turned left out of his house and was heading off down the street fast. Chet pulled the keys from his pocket, unlocked the driver’s door and entered. He threw the rucksack of gear on to the passenger seat, turned the key in the ignition and the engine jumped into life. The tyres screeched as he pulled out into the road and sped away. Chet glanced in the rear-view mirror as he accelerated. He could just see her, standing on the pavement, lit up by a street lamp, looking in his direction: black clothes, wavy black hair down below her shoulders, full lips, a beautiful, angry face.