Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

Maya Bloom started to cough and gasp, the air clearly knocked from her lungs. Luke didn’t let up. He nudged the ribcage down again to stop her breathing, then smashed the barrel of his handgun hard against her right cheek. Once. Twice. Three times. He felt something crack, and a spray of blood and mucus spattered from her nose.

Only then did he speak.

‘OK, honey,’ he said. ‘This is what’s going to happen. You’re going to tell me exactly what that cunt Stratton’s got planned. You’ve got ten seconds. Fuck me about and the first round will go in your bladder. I’ll only finish you off when you beg me.’

The woman’s breathing was strained and noisy. She still managed to give him a look of absolute hatred. Luke shunted his weight on to her ribcage again. Maya strained and spluttered once more as he held the gun directly to her forehead.

‘Five seconds.’

‘ I don’t know. ’ Her voice was barely there.

‘Not good enough, honey.’ He hit the weapon against the same side of her face again.

Maya Bloom’s sudden movement came as a total surprise. Luke felt a deadening thump in the small of his back as she raised her right knee and dug it viciously into his spine. Now it was his turn to have the wind knocked from him. With unexpected strength, and in the same movement, she sat up and hurled him away. Luke scuttled hard on to his back two metres from where she was now sitting. He felt the flesh on his back scraping, but more worryingly he saw her retrieve the snubnose from the ground where it had fallen from her hand.

Luke made to discharge the Sig almost on autopilot. Nothing. He hurled the handgun in her direction and it hit her wrist just as she fired the snubnose. There was a dull thud, but the round flew harmlessly a couple of feet to Luke’s left. He dived towards her, knocking her head back down on to the ground and wrestling the gun from her fist. Jumping back, he aimed the suppressed weapon at its owner.

‘Two seconds,’ he said.

Maya Bloom was a mess. Her nose gushed blood and the side of her face was bruised and swollen. Neither injury looked like it bothered her a bit. Her eyes flashed.

‘ What’s he planning? ’ Luke pressed as he pushed himself back to his feet.

‘You stupid squaddie, you’ve got it all wrong… ’

‘Listen to me, you bitch. You think I’m not going to kill you? I want to kill you. Does the name Chet Freeman mean anything?’

Her eyes narrowed.

‘Friend of mine,’ Luke said.

‘You’re going to fuck everything up…’ She painfully, defiantly started to stand.

He lunged forward and, with brutal force, brought his knee up into her stomach. She doubled over and Luke slammed his gun down on the back of her head with all the strength he had.

The woman collapsed. A limp, silent heap on the floor.

Luke stood there for a moment, sweat pouring from his body, breathing heavily. A number of gulls landed back on the perimeter walls.

Bending down, he put two fingers to her jugular. A faint pulse. He knew how hard he’d knocked her. She wasn’t waking up any time soon.

Time check: 10.36 hrs. Twenty-four minutes to go. No time to get information out of her. Too dangerous to risk her waking up and becoming active again. He looked her up and down. He bent down and started to remove the laces from her boots. Rolling her on to her front, he yanked her arms behind her back and tied her wrists together, binding one of the laces several times round and finishing it off with a sturdy sledge knot — impossible to untie. With the other lace he bound her legs together. Tied up like that, the only way she was getting off the roof was by jumping.

With Maya Bloom immobilised, Luke turned his attention to her weaponry. The sniper rifle was still lying in its position. To its right was a black rucksack. Luke emptied the contents on to the roof. There were rounds for the snubnose and the sniper rifle; a set of binoculars; and a knife. Its handle was black, its blade white. Luke picked it up. It was light.

Ceramic. Which meant no metal.

He looked over his shoulder at the woman as she lay there out cold. Why would she have a ceramic knife unless she intended to pass through metal detectors with it? Luke felt a brief, grudging measure of professional respect. She knew her trade.

Suddenly he became aware of something from the corner of his eye. He looked over the edge of the rooftop, back towards the Dung Gate. A white van had pulled up on the side of the road nearest the building. Even from this distance Luke could tell it wasn’t a tourist bus. Nor did it have the yellow and white paintwork of a shared taxi. He got down on all fours and took Maya Bloom’s earlier position at the sniper rifle, closing his left eye and examining the scene through the scope with his right.

The scope was powerful, with fine, calibrated cross hairs. Luke moved the sights so they were focused on the palm trees by the gate. He was looking for movement of the leaves, anything that would tell him which direction the wind was blowing. The rifle might not have been zeroed in for him, but he could increase the accuracy of his shots, if it came to that, by taking account of the conditions.

No movement. The wind was still. He redirected the rifle to the white van.

His heart was thumping. What if he did see suspicious individuals? He had no way of making a positive ID. No way of knowing whether he was shooting terrorists or innocents.

A minute passed.

Two.

No movement from the white van. That in itself was suspicious.

A second vehicle approached. A bus. It passed behind the white van before parking up immediately adjacent to it. Luke trained his scope on the side of this second vehicle. He saw Hebrew lettering along the side, and then, underneath, in English, ‘scheiber elementary school’.

‘Shit,’ he muttered.

There was another thirty-second pause before anything happened.

The side door of the van slid open. Luke concentrated on the interior of the vehicle. He could see movement, but there was insufficient light in there for it to be distinct. On the periphery of his vision, he could see the front passenger door of the school bus opening and was aware of a figure stepping out.

Back to the van. Two men climbed out. They were wearing traditional Hassidic garments and, once they had emerged, they stepped back from the vehicle to allow two more figures to exit. One of these was a man. He was dressed like the other two; the second figure, however, was female. She wore a black headscarf and rather dowdy shawl. But the most noticeable thing about her was her swollen belly. She looked heavily pregnant and waddled awkwardly.

As soon as she was clear of the van, a shadowy figure closed the side door from the inside. The van pulled out into the road and drove away.

Every instinct Luke had told him that these were his people. Every ounce of experience screamed this at him. They’d arrived when Maya Bloom was keeping stag and minutes before the atrocity was planned to kick off. If she was there to cause a diversion, she needed to know they’d arrived. They’d stayed in the vehicle for longer than he’d have expected. Were they receiving a final briefing?

Luke aimed the cross hairs at the head of one of the three men. His finger twitched on the trigger. He didn’t have any more time to delay. The decision had to be made.

Now.

He had to go with his gut…

‘ Fuck… ’

His line of sight was blocked. Four little girls had appeared, all plaits and ponytails, holding hands in pairs and walking across the scope’s field of view. Behind them was a tall woman with dark, curly hair, and then more kids. The woman turned and appeared to announce something to the girls and they congregated in a group in the precise vicinity of Luke’s four targets. Ten seconds later, as one, they all started to cross the road.