The Kill Shot (16 page)

I hoped Barrett was right. I handed him my mobile phone, suggested he hunt up a map app. I, in the meantime, cursed Britain's subtle road signs until, on the outskirts of the city, I took what I believed to be an A-10 on-ramp.

It was.

The night, as thick and rich as blue velvet, descended on us as we left London behind. Off to our left, the lights of the Seven Sisters train twinkled like stars. When I put my foot to the floor to keep up with it, the car coughed and wheezed like an old man.

The vehicle began to complain in earnest. And the train angled away from us, across the English countryside. When I lost sight of it, I slammed the heel of my good hand on the steering wheel in frustration.

“Exit here,” Barrett ordered.

I did as he said, following the scent of the sea and signs that pointed toward Cambridge and Fen Country.

“Turn left.”

I did so, and turned again when he directed. We were on a rustic road now, a single-lane affair that meandered across Barrett's electronic map. Hedgerows as high as houses leaned close to the car.

I drove faster than common sense would allow, blasted past quiet cottages and dozing sheep. My headlights picked out more signs, arrow shapes with black letters on white, directing motorists every place we didn't want to go. And just when I thought I'd driven halfway to Scotland, a sign read F
ENIMOOR, 5 KM
.

The town itself was more of a village, really. It boasted a church, a gas station, and a café. A collection of dark, dingy houses clustered between these landmarks.

Like a boil on the backside of the town, the train station festered under yellow sodium lights. It was one of those old, rural stations where the ticket office, conductors' break room, and manager's office were probably the same place. Passengers could wait for their train inside the station on one of six straight-back chairs, or in the open air of the platform. A surrounding fence kept everyone safe and a single turnstile kept everyone honest. I decided to take my chances with the turnstile.

Ahead of me, a couple of parked cars waited in the dust alongside the fence. They were unoccupied. I rolled to a stop behind them, gave the turnstile my full attention.

“If Ikaat gets off here,” I said, “she'll have to come through that gate.”

“Yeah, but it looks like we're not the only ones waiting to say hello.”

I glanced at Barrett. He chucked his chin at an arriving Ford Rover that had seen better days. Not even the sallow security light glaring over the street could bring back the luster to its murky blue paint job.

Two guys with ugly mugs sat in the front seats. It was impossible to tell if anyone was in back. When the driver turned his head our way, Barrett and I slouched beneath our car's dash.

I racked my brain, tried to remember whether I'd seen the two men at Amir al Amul's party. I was certain I hadn't. But maybe Barrett had—or maybe he'd gotten a good look at them in that Marylebone attic.

“Do those guys look familiar to you?”

Barrett's frown was all the answer I needed.

“I wonder who they work for,” I said. “Think they really have Armand?”

“I think,” Barrett said, “guys like that are capable of anything.”

I shuddered, knowing how right he probably was. These were two of the thugs who'd beaten him bloody. And who'd rigged a firetrap to get rid of him permanently.

“I was out of commission the last time they saw me,” Barrett said. “With any luck, they think I'm dead. I'll go in the station and intercept Ikaat on the platform.”

“What if they have a man on the platform already? What if they have a guy on the train?”

The scream of steel wheels on the distant tracks suggested we were about to find out.

Ducking even lower, I squinted across Barrett's chest and made out the roof of the arriving train as it slowed to a stop behind Fenimoor's station. I heard the metal squawk of loudspeakers as the arrival was announced. Seconds ticked by. One minute passed. Two.

A woman rounded the outside of the station, descended the stairs, and made for the turnstile. It was Ikaat, but I almost didn't recognize her at first. In her rush to leave Rabbit's Revenge, she hadn't covered her head with her customary scarf. But this young woman was she, all right. A multitude of glossy curls framed her familiar, heart-shaped face.

A bald man in a black trench coat followed Ikaat too closely down the steps. When she went through the turnstile, he was right behind her. He had an angry scar that ran like a deep, red channel down the left side of his face and, judging by the way she winced when he grasped her elbow, he also had a grip like a vise.

He steered her toward the waiting Rover, pushed her into the back of it, and climbed in after her.

His friends had the car in motion before he'd slammed the door. They rolled toward an old stone underpass. The structure was so low and so narrow it looked more like the opening to a storm drain.

Once they were clear, I was right behind them, threading my own way beneath the arch. An unseen train rumbled along tracks overhead. It shook loose a stream of pebbles that hit my windshield like hailstones. But then we were through. And in a blink, we left the limits of Fenimoor.

We drove east for nearly an hour. All the while, thick drifts of fog flitted across the road. This was Fen country, the boggy, marshy land not far from Cambridge—and Britain's eastern shore.

I had to cut my speed, but so did the car full of goons, and with their brake lights to lead the way, I had an excuse to cut my headlamps. I didn't know if this fooled them into thinking they were alone out here—or if they didn't care one way or the other. Maybe they had a heck of a welcoming committee ready to greet whoever followed them to their destination.

“They're turning,” Barrett said, as the Rover's taillights flashed red.

I let them turn into some sort of private lane—and drove on as if I didn't have a care in the world.

“What is that place?” I asked, peering through the mist.

“A country house,” Barrett said. “An old one, from the looks of it.”

Barrett was right. Like the boundary to an estate, a crumbling stone wall ran along the road. The big boulders at the base of it had probably been set in Tudor times. The park would be small if the house dated to that era. And the manor itself would be within easy walking distance of the wall. But I couldn't be sure of that in the fog.

I let the car coast along the road while I figured out what to do. Where the wall ended, woods began. Some kind of track peeled off the road at that point, only to get lost among the trees.

And that gave me an idea.

Barrett and I could get lost, too.

I turned onto the rutted trail, eased down the rough excuse of a road. The wall turned the corner with me and ran alongside the track, separating the house's grounds from the wilds of the woods. Stone on stone, the wall had to be eight feet tall.

Inside the enclosure, in the distance, pinpoints of light glowed through the fog.

I'd have bet all my money they were lamplights on the second floor of some kind of mansion.

While I backed the car behind an obliging bramble patch, Barrett ransacked the glove box. He found a screwdriver and pair of wire-cutters. In a fight, they wouldn't be as useful as the nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun he carried as an army officer, or the little .22 I liked to keep strapped to my ankle, but they were better than nothing.

“Pick your poison,” I told him, and held out my hand for whichever tool he'd give me.

“You're not going in there.”

“I don't know why not.”

“Because the Oujdads are my responsibility. That's why not.”

I didn't dignify his remark with a response.

I simply plucked the screwdriver from his palm, stuffed it in my jacket pocket, and climbed out of the car, taking care not to slam the door.

The surface of the wall was rough-hewn rock, but every crag was slick with mist. Even if it weren't slippery, with my bum wrist, I still couldn't climb it like a cliff-face. But I wasn't about to give up. A few feet farther on, an ancient oak had broken free of the forest. Its twisted trunk grew against the stone wall and its gnarled branches paid the barrier no mind.

I had one foot braced against the tree's bark and one hand grasping for its limbs when Barrett grabbed me around the middle.

He pulled me from the tree, spun me around, and backed me against the wall.

“I'm serious, Jamie. I don't want you going in there.”

For all we knew, the thugs had a man patrolling the perimeter of the property. Motion sensors or closed-circuit TV cameras could be wired into the trees. So I did my best to keep my voice low and level.

“I don't give a damn what you want.”

Barrett splayed a palm against the rock. He leaned so close to me, I caught the sharp, clean scent of lemon soap on his skin. “Is that a fact?”

“Yes.” I wasn't entirely sure it was true, but it sure felt good to say it. “All I care about is getting to the Oujdads.”

Barrett's mouth went hard. “Just remember I care about more than that.”

He kissed me then, pressing me into the cold stone and scrambling my synapses with his intensity. In the next instant, he was gone, up and over the wall. And I was alone, shaking with an emotion I didn't dare name.

“Get a grip,” I scolded myself. Barrett would need backup, no matter what he said. And I needed to use my head, no matter how I felt.

The primeval oak made little noise as I quickly scaled it. The cooperative fog swallowed the thud my boots made as I dropped to the grass on the other side. Now, only overgrown shrubbery stood between me and the house itself.

A haze hung over the place. Or rather, behind it. It was as if someone had left the lights on at the mansion's obligatory tennis courts. I heard the buzz of a car or truck engine from that direction, too. It sounded like the driver was doing donuts in the back garden.

If that were the case, I hoped the thugs from the train station had gone along for the ride.

And I hoped Ikaat and her father had been left unattended in the house.

That was wishful thinking, though, and I knew it as I took advantage of misshapen boxwoods and rhododendrons that had been allowed to run riot, darting from one to the other, and drawing ever nearer the mansion. It was pretty small as far as mansions went and probably had only a dozen rooms. Still, that was eleven more than I wanted to search.

I realized a brick terrace had been laid against the end of the building when I tripped over its first step. A greenhouse or conservatory of some sort hooked up with the house proper. Its lights were off and massive shapes loomed inside—but just beyond it, lamplight glowed and shadows shifted like men moving around in a drawing room or study.

The glass was gone from the greenhouse door. Nothing prevented me from entering. The room smelled of tired dirt and rotting plants, and my nose wrinkled of its own accord. A man's voice reached me through the door to the house. It wasn't Barrett's.

And it wasn't happy.

The door to the house was set with twelve panes—an old-fashioned arrangement of six over six—and shone with the light of the room beyond. Squeezing between a dilapidated potter's bench and a stack of vintage lawn chairs, I peered through the glass. The space had been converted into some kind of generic office. I'd seen better paint colors on the walls of U.S. government facilities. The modular desk was the kind our Department of Defense bought in bulk.

The man with the hideous scar paced the cheap carpet covering the floor of the room. His back was to me as he said ugly things to a small, slender woman perched on a hard, plastic chair. The woman was Ikaat and she sat facing me.

Had Barrett witnessed this view from the dark greenhouse?

Had he seen Ikaat and her captor inside?

He was a professional soldier, so I had no doubt he'd taken advantage of the situation and taken a look. And knowing these two were in this room, he'd certainly have moved on to locate Armand. So I needed to bide my time.

And when Barrett made his move, I'd make mine.

For now, though, I had to listen to Scar Face threaten Ikaat.

“Your father is an old man.” His accent was as thick as Yorkshire pudding. “How much blood can he stand to lose?”

He flicked open a butterfly blade with a fancy flip of his wrist and let the knife play with the lamplight before he used its tip to clean his nails.

Ikaat trembled like an aspen leaf.

A shrill scream came from elsewhere in the house. The sound churned with agony and fear and it made Ikaat gasp. It also rattled the windows where I was hiding—and it made my blood run cold.

Scar Face didn't seem surprised by the noise. He didn't seem troubled by its anguish. Until another shout overrode the cry.

This was a shout of surprise.

Footfalls thundered across the floor above. And so did the scuffle and tumble of a fight. Scar Face darted into a connecting hall—and that gave me the chance I'd been waiting for.

I kicked in the conservatory door, stepped into the room.

Ikaat sprang from her seat.

She ran for me, got halfway across the room. Quivering with fear, she halted, pointed mutely past my shoulder. I spun—just in time to meet a man in the door frame behind me.

He wore dark blue fatigues and combat boots and carried a big, black assault rifle across his chest. But he couldn't raise it to his shoulder in the doorway. I stepped into him, grabbed the barrel of the weapon. I jerked it up and in—and kicked him in the crotch while I was at it.

His hands came off the gun to cup his groin. He doubled at the waist and began to wretch. That's when I nailed him in the back of his head with the butt of his own weapon.

He hit the floor like a drugged rhino. I ejected the magazine from the rifle, tossed it into the dark. With my broken wrist, I couldn't free the bullet from the chamber, so I aimed it at the floor and pulled the trigger.

Answering gunfire tore across the second story.

And shouts echoed across the terrace outside.

Ikaat and I wouldn't be able to get out the way I'd come in. I seized her hand, dragged her toward the adjoining hall. It was a small hall. More of a foyer, really. A blocky Tudor-style staircase cut up one side of it and a massive front door of seasoned oak hung on another.

The door's brass lock-plate was the size of a pizza box and centuries strong. A key protruded from it. It was as long as my forearm and as thick as my thumb. It was also locked. The knob spun back and forth uselessly as more men tried to enter from the front of the house.

Another doorway yawned beneath a second-floor gallery. Unfortunately, Scar Face blocked it with his body. And he had a Sig Sauer .45-caliber pistol in his hand.

He aimed the weapon at my head.

I froze.

Ikaat jumped in front of me—like my own, personal human shield.

Scar Face cursed her. His arm dropped to his side. Whoever he was, and whoever he worked for, he clearly considered Ikaat a valuable commodity.

He couldn't risk killing her.

But gunfire exploded on the second floor. Boots battered the floorboards overhead. The three of us swiveled toward the top of the stairs—just as Barrett charged into the upper hall with two goons hard on his heels.

Barrett had slung an unconscious Armand Oujdad over his shoulder like a cast-off raincoat. Ikaat shrieked at the sight of her father. And Scar Face swung his pistol to draw a bead on Barrett.

I reached into my jacket pocket, closed my hand around the handle of the screwdriver Barrett had found in the car. In two steps I was at Scar Face's flank. He fired at Barrett. And I slammed the side of my fist into his face. The butt of the screwdriver broke his nose.

Blood geysered everywhere.

I hit his nose again. And again. He dropped his gun, hands to his face, before passing out from the pain.

Upstairs, the goons lunged at Barrett. He hefted Oujdad higher, vaulted over the gallery's handrail. Like a paratrooper with a full pack on his back, Barrett cleared the lip of the balcony and hit the foyer floor, his ankles and knees flexing to soak up the shock.

I grabbed Ikaat by the hand, towed her toward the door Scar Face no longer blocked.

Barrett brought up the rear with Ikaat's father, still out cold, over his shoulder.

We emerged behind the house, where gravel walks and reflecting pools had once made a rarified retreat for English nobility. All that had been freshly paved to make a parking lot. And a series of buildings resembling a small university campus.

Finding such a complex made sense. Many country houses had been bought or borrowed by the British government during World War II. And many businesses and foundations had moved into them since.

But I didn't know of too many businesses or foundations that had uniformed paramilitary guards on the payroll.

And these guards weren't shy about shooting in our general direction, fog or no fog, and whether Ikaat was with us or not.

“Hold fire!” someone bellowed through a bullhorn, and the shooting stopped.

We didn't stick around to find out who gave the order.

Using the manor house to get my bearings, I led Ikaat around the side of the building. We skirted the brick terrace, where men with machine guns had taken up positions outside the greenhouse. In the mist, we barely avoided falling over them. But our inability to see them before we were on top of them meant they weren't able to easily see us, either. So I turned my back on them and pushed blindly into the thick of the fog.

I needed to find the estate's stone perimeter wall. I needed to follow it to the old tree growing up its outside. It offered our only chance to escape.

But the fog that hid us from the guards also obscured the wall. It turned overgrown shrubs into hulking monsters rather than landmarks. I couldn't tell one bush from another or recognize whether we'd passed the same one twice.

Worse than that, I couldn't hear Barrett bringing up the rear. In the thick cloud cover, I couldn't see him, either. Still, Ikaat and I ran, and the damp grass of late autumn muffled our footfalls. She panted in fits and starts thanks to shock and the need to run like a track star. Not too far away, men shouted as they searched for us. My heartbeat thudded in my ears. Silence was our friend in the fog and I knew that. But I still wanted to hear Barrett.

Not even the wall springing up in front of me made me feel better. I hooked a left to run westward along it and, within a few yards, reached the overhanging tree. I slid to a stop. Ikaat bent at the waist, struggled to catch her breath. I swiped water droplets from my lenses and squinted into the fog. I still didn't see Barrett and I still didn't see Ikaat's dad.

I heard our hunters searching for us, though.

“Listen,” I whispered urgently to Ikaat. “I'm going to boost you up. You're going to climb down that tree. Do you know how to drive a stick shift?”

She nodded.

I told her how to find the car. Told her to get the hell out of there. Told her to meet Katie at Heathrow.

“But my father—”

She said it on a sob and my heart broke to hear it. My father was safely ensconced in a red Moroccan leather desk chair—behind the fortified walls of the U.S. Capitol. But he hadn't always been so tucked away. In his youth, he'd been a soldier who'd gone off to face the uncertainties of Vietnam. And later, as a single parent, he'd left a worried daughter as he took his place among the leadership in the First Gulf War. I'd been afraid for him. But had I cried for him?

Had I ever felt the way Ikaat felt now?

Her slender fingers clutched my sleeve. “Please—I cannot go without my father.”

“You won't have to,” Barrett said, appearing through the fog.

His gait was off, as though his leap from the mansion's second floor had knocked something loose in his leg or foot, but he'd never looked better to me. And he wasn't the only one who was limping. Armand Oujdad staggered through the mist behind him. Ikaat ran to him, embraced him, whispered to him in their shared language. He leaned on her heavily. And he smiled from ear to ear.

“You're not safe yet,” Barrett warned them.

That was for sure. The searchers shouted to one another. And they were closer than ever.

Barrett boosted Ikaat to the top of the wall. With help from his daughter above and Barrett below, Armand made it over, too. All the while, I kept one eye over my shoulder. Because somewhere on the grounds, an angry dog had begun to bark. And he was much too close for my liking.

When the dog's snarls were joined by the voice of a second, Barrett glanced my way.