Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

They sat there for a full minute, not speaking. The choir grew quieter too.

It was Suze who broke their silence. She sat up straight and stared at the bronze cross on the altar. ‘You knew Chet,’ she said. ‘Do you really think he died in a simple house fire?’

‘He was badly wounded,’ Luke replied. Even as he said it, though, he doubted himself. Chet was wounded, but had that ever stopped him getting around? Like hell it had. Chet Freeman took some killing. Luke knew that better than anyone.

He closed his eyes briefly.

‘Why are you telling me all this now? Why didn’t you come to me immediately?’

‘Haven’t you listened to anything I said?’ she snapped. ‘I was scared, all right? I still am. Chet told me to hide and that’s what I did. I’ve been hiding ever since that night.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere,’ she said, suddenly full of hopelessness. ‘ Every where . I move around. I know they’re still after me. I know that if they find me, they’ll… they’ll do to me what they did to Chet. And there’s Harry…’ She paused to inhale deeply. ‘But something’s happened. Something important. These bombings. You know about them?’

‘You could say that.’

Suze pulled her mobile phone from her pocket. Luke noticed that her hands were shaking as she pressed a couple of buttons and handed it to Luke, nodding at the screen.

The image that it displayed was slightly blurred, but he could make out a black and white CCTV still, and the edge of the TV screen from which the photo had been taken. Two men, their heads circled. It looked familiar. ‘I’ve seen this?’

‘The bombers,’ Suze whispered, her face earnest. ‘They released it yesterday.’

‘What’s it got to do with you?’

Suze tapped the screen, pointing not at the circled men but at a dark-haired woman behind them.

‘What?’

She looked up at him. ‘It’s her,’ she said. ‘The woman who came for us. The woman who… who killed Chet.’

Luke stared at the picture.

‘How can you be sure?’

Suze took a deep breath. Her hands were still shaking. ‘Has anyone ever tried to kill you?’

‘Once or twice, as it goes.’

She quickly recovered. ‘Do you remember their faces?’

Of course he did. Some things you never forget.

‘Chet said she works for Mossad. I don’t know how he knew… something about her gun?’

‘ Mossad? That doesn’t make any sense.’

Suze shrugged. ‘All I know is that someone wanted us out of the way because of what we knew. I don’t care who she was working for.. but Alistair Stratton had something to do with it.’

Luke shook his head. ‘Listen to me. If Chet was right about her, about a Mossad connection, she could be working for anybody.’ Because official allegiances change, he thought to himself. One day you fight for one man, the next day you fight for another. Hadn’t the Regiment trained up the Mujahideen before they were public enemy number one?

Suze stood up and walked towards the small altar. For a moment she didn’t move, gazing up at the bronze cross, before suddenly turning towards him again. ‘Alistair Stratton’s a warmonger. He always has been. Don’t you see? Doesn’t anybody see? First the Balkans, then Iraq, now this. Don’t you see what he’s…?’

Her words stopped abruptly. Her expression changed.

She wasn’t looking at Luke, but beyond him. And though she whispered something, it was drowned out by the choir as the piece they were rehearsing entered a crescendo. The colour had drained from her face and her expression changed. Luke recognised it: the look of absolute dread.

He shot to his feet. ‘What is it? What the hell?’

He turned and looked back down along the side of the cathedral. And that was when he saw her.

The woman who approached them was thirty metres away, but walking quickly along the shadowy, vaulted wing of the cathedral. The few people who were in her path drew away at a single look. She was dressed all in black — the same colour as her hair — and she walked with purpose, her head slightly bowed but her eyes fixed on Luke, Suze and Harry.

‘ Go! ’ Luke barked. ‘ Now! ’ He pointed back towards the dome and the milling crowds.

Suze moved like a dart, grabbing Harry, who, for the first time since they’d entered the cathedral, looked suddenly worried as he jumped to his feet. Mother and son ran awkwardly, hand in hand, towards the choir, who were now singing louder than ever.

Luke stayed with his back to the bronze cross, facing the newcomer. His mind was racing. He had no weapon. His Sig was safely locked up in the armoury back at base and even though it was just a woman moving towards him, her right hand was buried inside her jacket. And he knew what that meant.

She was twenty metres away and closing in. She had started to remove her hand from her jacket.

Decision time.

‘Choose your fucking battles, Luke,’ he whispered to himself. He turned, whipped the bronze cross from the altar — it was fucking heavy — before turning and running after Suze and the kid.

The two of them were about five metres from the conductor and just turning to head back down the aisle when Harry tripped. He fell heavily on to the hard stone floor. By the time he’d scrambled to his feet, all arms and legs, Luke was there with them. If he could get them out of range…

‘ Get down! ’ he urged them, the choir ringing in his ears. As he spoke, he saw someone else approaching them up the aisle. It was the cleric who had greeted them, only this time his face was a lot less serene as his cassock flowed behind him.

‘ Please ,’ he said above the singing once he was just a couple of metres away. ‘This is a place of worship. I must ask that you keep silent…’

‘ GET DOWN! ’ Luke barked at Suze and Harry. ‘ GET DOWN! ’ The priest drew himself up to confront Luke and was rewarded by the force of the Regiment man’s forearm against his chest, pushing him to the side of the aisle and towards the pews.

‘ FUCKING GET… ’

The gunshots were inaudible, clearly fired from a suppressed weapon. Their consequences, however, were there for everybody to see.

The boy was the first to go. The round hit him in the side of the head, just in front of the left ear. There was a spray of blood over the stone floor of the cathedral, but he didn’t fall fully to the ground because he was still being pulled along by his mother, who looked over her shoulder in annoyance that he appeared to be slouching.

One glance, however, and she realised what had happened.

By now Harry had crumpled to the floor and slid slightly along the stone, smearing the spatter of his own blood as he went. Luke saw Suze silently mouth her son’s name, her face melt into an expression of the purest horror and anguish. Then he heard her voice. ‘Harry! HARRY! ’ Behind him the choir, still oblivious to what had happened, soared towards another mighty climax.

‘ Hit the ground! ’ Luke bellowed at Suze. ‘ HIT THE GROUND! ’

The shooter was standing in the shadows of the third arch along, and had her suppressed handgun pointed, ready to take another shot. Suddenly she was knocked sideways. An old lady appeared where the woman had stood, wearing a grey woollen overcoat and brandishing a heavy, old-fashioned handbag that she’d just swiped at the assassin. The have-a-go-heroine was clearly furious, but in an instant the barrel of the assassin’s gun was touching her head. There was a flash of blood and skull as the old lady’s body absorbed the cartridge and the propellant.

The shooter had turned again. Suze was kneeling in the aisle, cradling the body of her son. A dreadful, desolate moan escaped her lips. Luke had dropped the bronze cross with a clatter. As he ran towards her he sensed the vicar chasing him. He could see that the top three inches of Suze’s head were visible to the shooter above the pews.