Havoc (10 page)

And maybe a reward to cash in, I thought.

He stepped out into the alley and came face to face with the wrong end of a gun.
An agent. One of Dash's team, almost certainly.

The agent yelled at Sandor, ‘You! Hands in the air!' He edged around the skip, gun
raised, aiming straight at Sandor's head. ‘And you.' He nodded at Lanya and me. ‘Get
up. Slowly.'

We stood up carefully. The gun was like Dash's, but this one was not attached to
a person I knew and more or less trusted. The man holding it was narrow faced with
flat dark hair and a uniform as black and as sleek as his gun.

He smiled. ‘Got you. Easy as that. Rats in a trap. Keep
your hands in the air! Right.
You and you.' He pointed the gun at Sandor then Lanya. ‘Turn around. Face that wall.
Do it!'

I watched Sandor hesitate. His own gun was in his jacket pocket, within reach, but
it was no match for the heavy-duty piece trained on us. If he even looked like going
for it, he'd be dead before he got a hand to it. He turned and faced the wall, leaned
on it, peered back over his shoulder. Lanya did the same. The agent drew a steady
bead on Sandor. Ice formed in my gut and crept through my veins. I could rush the
guy, but he was too far away. At least one of them would be dead whole seconds before
I got there. On the plus side, he hadn't called for backup or reported his position;
maybe the lane was a comms black spot.

‘Okay,' I said. ‘Who do you want? You want me? I'll go with you. Forget about them.'

The agent's eyes flicked between the wall where Sandor and Lanya stood, and me. ‘Kneel
down,' he said. ‘Fucking kneel down or one of them's dead! I mean it!'

‘Okay, okay.' Kneeling down under a gun is a scary thing: you can't move anywhere
fast, you can only look up at the gun and the hand holding it and the finger on its
trigger.

‘You do what I tell you, right?' he said. ‘Do what I tell you, and only what I tell
you, you hear me?' He smiled over the gun. ‘Or this happens.'

He shot Sandor.

CHAPTER 13

I yelled and he fired again, above Lanya's head. I spun back to her. She'd collapsed,
screaming and weeping hysterically beside Sandor's slumped body.

The agent fixed the gun on me. His eyes narrowed and his teeth showed in a grin.
‘See? That was so easy I might do it again. I mean what I say—you remember that.
Now, you and the girl are coming with me. Get up.'

I stood up and went to Lanya who was still crying like crazy beside Sandor. But Lanya
and hysterics didn't go together. I cleared the line between her and the agent, wondering
if she'd found Sandor's gun. She looked up at me dry eyed.

Then her hand shot out, her knife whipped through the air and lodged deep in the
agent's thigh.

He went down with a scream—many short screams in fact.

I ran to him, kicked him hard in the ribs and wrestled away the gun. He was yelling
for backup so I kicked him again and ripped out his earpiece. The gun was heavy and
smooth and my hands shook holding it. Keeping it trained on him, I walked backwards
to Sandor and Lanya.

Sandor was lying horribly still, blood soaking his jacket. Then he groaned. A sweet,
sweet sound.

‘He's alive,' breathed Lanya.

She lifted his shirt and grimaced at what she saw. She pulled the scarf from her
hair and pressed it against his side. He yelped.

‘Yeah, I know,' she said. ‘You have to hold it here. Press hard. Come on, Sandor.
Press!'

The agent was still squealing and gasping, trying to pull the knife out and watching
to see what I would do with his gun. I looked up and down the alley: agents usually
work in pairs. We had to hurry.

‘We gotta get out of here,' I said. ‘Sandor? We have to move. Can you walk?'

‘He's too heavy for me,' said Lanya.

The agent was yelling, ‘You'll be sorry, you'll be so sorry, you'll be so fuckin'
sorry! Help! Somebody! Agent down!
Help!
'

‘Shut up!' I said, and walked towards him, still aiming the gun at him.

He went quiet, watching me.

I said, ‘You shot my friend. Why don't I shoot you.'

‘I…' he gasped. ‘I…No!…But…'

I pointed the gun at his head. His eyes went wide. I said, ‘Tell me about Operation
Havoc.'

‘What?' He squinted up at me. ‘Havoc? I don't know. They don't tell us. I've only
got Clearance Level One. I've never heard of it, I don't know what it is, I don't
know, I—'

‘Nik!' called Lanya. ‘We have to get out of here before his buddies turn up. Give
me the gun and you take Sandor.' She took it from me and stood staring down the barrel
at the agent.

He was breathing heavily, almost whimpering, but he managed to get his sneer back.
‘You wouldn't dare, little girl.'

‘No?' she said, in Anglo. ‘I want my knife back.'

The sneer vanished.

I helped Sandor stand, and hung his arm round my shoulders.

He gasped and screwed up his face but nodded, ‘Okay. Go.'

‘You go,' said Lanya, still watching the man over the gun. ‘I'll wait here to give
you a start. Wait—tell me where you're going.'

‘I know a place,' I said. ‘It's not far.' We were speaking Breken, hoping the agent
wouldn't understand.

‘Get moving then,' she said. ‘Give me some instructions and I'll join you in a minute.'

I whispered in her ear and she nodded.

‘Don't wait long,' I said.

‘So go!' she said. ‘Hurry!'

I hauled Sandor away.

‘Not far' was three blocks down through Sentinel by way of dingy, cramped alleyways
where, in pre-curfew days, the backdoors of theatres used to spill actors and bands
into the night to join other partygoers in the tiny pubs and clubs that were the
nightlife of Sentinel. It seemed to take forever to go those three blocks because
I was pretty much carrying Sandor and I had to keep stopping for him to rest and
get his breath, and I was desperate the whole time to hear Lanya's steps running
up behind us. It had started to rain. Blotches darkened the cobbles and sent up that
dusty summer rain smell. We were going to get soaked, but at least it soon became
impossible to tell what was rain and what was blood on our clothes.

We came to the end of Bow Lane and I said, ‘We're here. We have to wait for Lanya.'

Sandor leaned on the side of a building and I thought about leaving him there and
racing back for Lanya, but he kept sliding sideways so I stood holding him up and
counted seconds.

At last there she was, tearing down the alley and stopping grim faced but bright
eyed beside us.

‘Did they come for him?' I asked.

‘Not yet.' She looked at the gun. ‘I'd rather have my knife than this, but I wasn't
going to try and get it back.' She walked over to a big metal rubbish skip and hid
the gun behind it, kicking extra rubbish into place beside it.

‘Right,' she said. ‘Where are we?'

The lane opened onto Clouden Street, one block back from the river. Over the road
from where we stood was a row of centuries-old riverside mansions that had had buckets
of money poured into restoring them. They were four storeys high, of clean white
stone with tall windows and balconies and steps flanked by sculpted trees and wrought-iron
fences leading up to weighty doors.

Lanya gave a low whistle.

‘That one,' I said. ‘Number 11. The Hendrys' townhouse.'

She stared at me. ‘Are you insane?'

‘They're not here. Come on, help me get Sandor up the steps.'

‘How do you know they're not here?'

‘They never come to town in summer—it's too hot. Plus, they'd think it was too dangerous
to be in range of Southside rockets right now. And, even if someone is there, we
have to stop Sandor bleeding and short of fronting up at a hospital, which will fast
become a trip to the Marsh, this is the only way.' I looked at her. ‘Got a better
idea?'

She shook her head. ‘But still…'

Sandor tried a grin and said, ‘If you're gonna die, do it in style.'

‘You're not gonna die, Sandor,' I said.

The rain was sheeting down and the street was deserted. Thunder clouds darkened the
sky across the river and rumbled as if huge guns were firing from Southside.

We struggled across the road and up the steps of Number 11. Lanya looked at the massive
door in front of us and the sign on the wall,
Monitored Security—Armed Response.

‘See this?' she said.

‘I know,' I said. ‘Here, help Sandor.'

‘And you can get in here without alarms lighting up all over the place and people
arriving waving guns and shooting?'

‘Yes.'

‘This is mad,' she said. ‘We need a medic—'

‘Shh. Concentrating.' I was loading the backup pass-code into the keypad because
I didn't want to go through the whole gamut of guessing shortcut codes and getting
them wrong and alerting someone somewhere that a break-in was in progress. The backup
was thirty-two characters long and would default to a screaming siren if I got it
wrong twice. Lou had shown it to me. He wasn't supposed to know it, and I certainly
wasn't. But that was Lou for you: generous to a fault and anything for an easy
life
as long as it was hilarious. Creeping into the townhouse for a weekend of luxury
when his parents were up north was frequently hilarious.

When he'd found out I could remember the backup without writing it down he'd given
his best impression of an evil laugh, burned the written copy he'd bribed out of
a servant and sworn me to secrecy. I kept the secret; only Lou knew I had it, and
Lou was dead.

I typed in the last digit of the code, attempted a totally-under-control smile at
Lanya, and pressed Enter.

CHAPTER 14

The door opened with a click and a sigh, or maybe it was us that sighed. We stumbled
in and shut out the street and the storm.

‘Now,' I said, looking around, ‘Is anyone here?'

‘What?' said Lanya in a loud whisper. ‘You said no one was!'

‘I did say that.' I flicked a light switch. ‘And the main power's off, so no, no
one is.'

We were standing, dripping, on a wide slate floor. Ahead of us glass doors opened
onto the indoor pool with its river view and wide balcony, to our right was the curve
of the staircase to the next level, and to our left, a double door led to the servants'
apartment. The storm outside was really kicking in now; a flash of lightning lit
up the pool room and the atrium where we stood. The place looked deserted—more than
deserted. The floor and walls were
bare where once there'd been rugs and sculptures
and paintings, and the pool was empty. Maybe they hadn't just gone to the country
for the summer, maybe they'd cleared out completely.

‘Come on,' I said. ‘Up!'

We struggled up the stairs to the first floor and stopped at the entrance to the
games room. Lanya stared and Sandor raised his head and swore softly. This room,
at least, was still lived in. I looked around at the luxury of it and saw it now
through Southside eyes. The half-light of the storm through the long riverside windows
lit up the deep sofas and leather easychairs, the giant screen on the wall, the kitchen
space and breakfast bar, the rugs spread on polished wood, the artwork on the walls.
I smelled its familiar smell—wood polish and leather, a clean smell, rich.

I said, ‘There's a bedroom over here.'

The Hendry kids all had bedroom suites going off the games room, plus there was a
spare for friends, which was my room when I stayed, and that's where we went now.
Like the atrium downstairs, the bedroom had been packed up, but the boxes were still
there. Thankfully, there was still a bed, a couch and a chair, and the water was
still on in the bathroom. We helped Sandor lie down, and got busy getting water and
finding towels and then peeling away the remains of his shirt with him trying not
to shout at the pain of it and Lanya and me trying not to grimace at how much blood
there was. The bullet hadn't drilled
a hole in his back, but it had torn a grazing
track across his side, and then it had exploded into the brick wall he'd been standing
against so that bits of brick and mortar were left lodged in the wound.

Downstairs in the emergency room I gawped at the riches in the medicine cupboard:
antiseptics, bandages, painkillers, antihistamines—shelves of the stuff, and all
for a single family. You could fill one of those packing cartons with it all and
haul it back to Southside, and if you weren't mobbed first by a bunch of rampaging
medics you could do very well for yourself on the black market.

When we'd done what we could for Sandor, he lay still, eyes closed, and we didn't
know if we'd done enough. At least the bleeding had stopped and the wound was as
clean as we could make it. ‘I'll look for food,' I said.

I found some tins of lamb-and-barley stew. We ate it cold because I didn't dare turn
on the power in case that triggered a security alert and, anyway, we were too hungry
to care. Then I went downstairs and cleaned up, disposed of the empty cans and tidied
up the emergency room. I told myself I was doing that so no one would know we'd been
here. But it was habit too; it's what Lou and I used to do when we'd crept in here
for a weekend and it was time to head back to school. Most of the weekend we'd slouch
about, games console in one hand, beer in the other, and the place would rapidly
descend into a pigsty. Until it was time to leave, and then we'd go into this mad
cleaning
frenzy that would have astonished Lou's mother. I don't know if we ever
fooled the cleaners or Sarah Hendry, and if Lou got bawled out about it he never
told me.