Bodyguard: Ransom (Book 2) (6 page)

Connor slumped on the bench and reached inside his training bag for his water bottle. Popping the cap, he almost drained it in one slug. Amir lay at his side, breathing hard, a weary arm draped across his forehead.

‘I shouldn’t have … made that joke … about hiring us too late,’ panted Amir.

Connor looked over at his friend, unable to believe Amir had the energy to dwell on the buddyguard assignment after such a gruelling circuit session. ‘The colonel’s choice had nothing to do with your joke. He’d have made up his mind before the briefing.’

Amir propped himself up on one elbow, sweat dripping from his brow. ‘Then why didn’t he choose me? I’m the only one in Alpha team who hasn’t yet been on an assignment.’

‘Must be because you’re so good with the tech stuff,’ said Marc, chucking Amir a towel. Amir wiped the sweat from his face but his dejected expression remained.

Connor nodded encouragingly. ‘That’s it! The colonel’s playing to your strengths. During the mission, you’ll be needed in HQ to maintain comms and run the IT. Remember
last time, it was
you
and Bugsy who figured out the Cell-Finity bug.’

‘Great,’ said Amir without much enthusiasm. ‘So while you’re off sunning yourself in the Seychelles with “Miss Swimsuit”, I get stuck in wet Wales doing circuits!’

‘Look, Amir,’ said Connor, trying one last time to console his friend. ‘Ling was the most obvious choice.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she’s a girl.’

‘
Just
because I’m a girl!’ remarked Ling, shooting daggers at Connor as she leant against the ropes of the sports hall boxing ring.

‘No … I didn’t mean it like that,’ Connor stammered.

‘Whatever,
Boss
,’ she replied, her tone laced with sarcasm.

Connor sighed. This didn’t bode well for their forthcoming
assignment. ‘Let me explain –’

‘Be my guest,’ she said, lifting the ropes of the boxing ring and inviting him to join her.

‘But we’ve just done circuits!’ exclaimed Connor.

‘Is that your excuse?’ Ling gave him a withering look, somehow still appearing as fresh as a daisy herself. ‘Or is it because I’m a
girl
you don’t want to fight?’

Connor shook his head, wondering how he was going to avoid the sparring challenge. Although he was a black belt in jujitsu and kickboxing, that didn’t mean he took a match with Ling lightly. At their very first encounter, she’d demonstrated she was a supremely tough combatant. In Amir’s words, ‘Ling
always
wins her fights.’

It was as if she had something to prove. And Ling wasn’t to be dissuaded now. She bounced nimbly on her feet and pulled on the sparring gloves Jason offered.

‘I don’t think Connor’s up for it,’ Jason remarked, handing Ling her gumshield while eyeballing Connor. ‘I hope he’s not going to be a liability on your mission.’

Members of Bravo and Delta teams were soon drawn to the ring by the excitement of a challenge fight.

‘I thought you were Battle of Britain Kickboxing Champion,’ remarked Luciana, still gloating over her victory. ‘Let’s see you prove it.’

‘Go on, Connor,’ urged Sean. ‘You know how “Lightning Ling” only sees sense in the ring!’

Connor looked to Amir for a way out. But his friend just shrugged his shoulders. ‘You don’t seem to have much choice,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to play to
your
strengths.’

Despite his exhausted state, Connor ducked under the rope, entered the ring, put on a pair of sparring gloves and turned to face his opponent –

An explosive jab almost took his head off. Only blind instinct enabled him to spin away in time. A right hook came flying in and Connor had to weave sharply aside again. Ling certainly wasn’t waiting around to start the fight officially.

‘So the colonel’s choice,’ said Ling, launching a roundhouse kick to his thigh, ‘has nothing to do with my previous experience?’

‘Of course it does!’ Connor grunted, blocking the kick with his shin and countering with a front-kick.

Ling skipped out of range, then came back in with a body hook punch to his ribs. ‘Or my surveillance skills –?’

Connor grimaced as the strike hit home. Ling might be small, but she was
lightning
fast.

‘Or my fighting ability?’ she demanded.

Like a whirling dervish, Ling came at him with a flurry of kicks and punches. Connor fought hard to defend himself. He ducked her spinning backfist, blocked her cross and evaded her crescent kick. As he retreated from Ling’s relentless onslaught, Luciana goaded him from the ringside, ‘Some champion you are, Connor!’

Needled by the taunt and wanting to get a word in edgeways with Ling, Connor now went on the attack.

‘Ling, I meant you got the job,’ he replied with a blistering combination of jab, cross and upper cut, ‘because … our two Principals … are girls. It therefore makes sense –’ he almost floored Ling with a back fist – ‘to have a
female
buddyguard.’

Ling was driven into the corner by a pounding side-kick to the chest. She tried to fight her way out, but Connor kept her trapped with a series of punishing body blows.

‘You can go places I can’t,’ he said. Ling, taking the hits, fought hard to escape, but Connor maintained the pressure. He still had more to say. ‘And their protection is supposed to be low profile, so a
girl
bodyguard will be even less noticeable than a boy.’

Connor grunted as Ling thrust a front-kick into his gut, forcing him backwards.

‘Is that low profile enough for you?’ grinned Ling, relishing the buzz of the fight.

Connor ignored her and retaliated with a front-kick of his own that propelled Ling back into the ring’s corner pad.

‘So, apart from your core skills, being a
girl
makes you the obvious choice,’ explained Connor, moving to finish her off with a couple of head shots.

But Ling displayed some nifty footwork and escaped the corner. ‘Fair enough,’ she said, with a disarming smile. ‘My mistake, please accept my apology.’

She backed off from the fight and Connor dropped his guard.
Finally
he’d got through to Ling. ‘Of course I do. We’re teammates. I didn’t mean any offence –’

Ling spun on her heel, shot out a leg and caught him bang on the jaw with a spinning hook-kick. ‘There’s my apology.’

Connor went down like a sack of potatoes, his last conscious thought:
Ling
always
wins her fights
.

Harry Gibb hurried through the deserted government office. He knew even his most eager civil servants wouldn’t show their faces until at least 8 a.m. That gave him two hours of solitude. Still, he glanced nervously around before unlocking the main archive room and ducking inside.

Flicking on the switch, he waited for the fluorescent strip lights to cast their stark white glare over the rows and rows of grey filing cabinets. Each one was a carbon copy of the next, impossible to tell apart, but Harry knew exactly what he was looking for. Heading straight over to the sixth cabinet in the third row, he pulled out a thick binder of documents marked
MINING RIGHTS, GOLDFIELDS, WA.

Despite everything being stored digitally nowadays, there was
always
a paper trail in government. While he’d been careful to remove any evidence from his computer, these damning documents were the remaining crumbs that could lead to him and his under-the-table dealings.

Yet he
wouldn’t
destroy the files. The contents of this folder, detailing his co-conspirators, were his insurance policy. Harry Gibb knew that those who had profited from
the shady deals also had a vested interest in protecting his reputation. If he went down, so would they.

Smiling to himself, Harry closed the filing cabinet, switched off the light and locked the archive room. Clutching the files to his chest, he scurried across to his office and bolted inside. Only when he’d secured the door behind him did he feel safe in his domain.

Turning to his desk, Harry almost jumped out of his skin when he discovered a man in a grey suit sitting in his chair.

‘M-my secretary didn’t mention any meetings this morning,’ he blustered.

‘She doesn’t know of
this
meeting,’ replied the man. ‘No one does.’

The uninvited guest did not get up or introduce himself. He just studied Harry with unblinking eyes that seemed chiselled from ice.

‘Who are you?’ Harry demanded, gathering his wits and now becoming angry. ‘Are you a reporter? Get out of my chair!’

The man was indifferent to Harry’s outrage. ‘I represent a certain investor.’

‘And who might that be?’ Harry challenged.

‘Your primary investor.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Harry. He felt himself becoming flustered. There was something deeply unsettling about this man. Like a spider crawling across his skin, Harry wanted him gone. ‘If you don’t leave right now, I’ll call security.’

‘I’d advise against that.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

The man sat as still as a block of stone, his silence more unnerving than any reply. Then he said, ‘Equilibrium.’

‘What?’ snapped Harry, frowning in disbelief.

‘You heard me.’

‘Ahh,’ said Harry, relaxing slightly. This man
had
to be from his key investor. There could be no other way he’d have known of the organization’s name. It had taken Harry weeks to discover it for himself – Equilibrium, the parent investor behind all those false ‘shell’ companies who’d invested in the mining rights.

Feeling once more in charge of the situation, Harry strode over and dropped the thick binder on to his desk.

‘I’m dealing with the problem,’ he said, waving a dismissive hand in the man’s direction. ‘Equilibrium need not be concerned. Neither their existence nor their involvement will be revealed. Plans are in place to handle Mr Sterling and his prying newspaper.’

‘But
you’re
familiar with Equilibrium.’

‘Of course,’ said Harry. ‘I was
thorough
in selecting my investors.’

‘And are they fully protected from the current crisis?’

‘Oh yes,’ Harry assured. ‘I’ve erased all evidence from my computer records.’

‘So have I,’ said the man, pulling a tiny USB drive from the back of Harry’s computer. ‘A malware virus has just wiped your hard drive.’

‘You can’t do that!’ exclaimed Harry.

‘And what about those files there?’ asked the man, ignoring Harry’s protest and nodding at the thick wad of documents on his desk.

‘These? They’re just an insurance policy.’

‘Hmm, that’s the problem,’ said the man, adjusting the crisp white cuffs of his shirt. ‘Not only do you know Equilibrium’s name but you possess evidence of its existence.’

‘I … I’m not going to expose Equilibrium’s involvement in this. The file is just for my own protection from the other parties. They know nothing about Equilibrium,’ said Harry, suddenly feeling a chill run down his spine from the man’s sinister casualness. ‘Trust me. I’m a man of my word.’

‘You’re a politician,’ the other corrected sharply, his ice-pick eyes fixing him with a contemptuous look. ‘But I’ll take your word … for what it’s worth.’

Without further discussion, the man stood and left. Once the door closed on him, the room seemed to breathe again.

Harry opened his desk drawer and pulled out his silver hip flask. With an unsteady hand, he removed the stopper and took a swig to calm himself. As the whisky delivered its familiar warming kick, the burn continued down his throat, into his stomach … and kept spreading.

His chest began to tighten, his throat constricted, his breath became short and pained.

Harry hunted for his tablets. He fumbled with the lid, scattering beta blockers across the desk as his heart was seized in a vice-like grip. Harry rolled from his chair on to
the floor, his lips foaming with spittle. He clutched at the little white tablets strewn around him. But his body was racked with pain, fire raging through his veins.

‘
H … h … help!
’ he moaned. ‘
Heeelp …
’

The man in the grey suit re-entered the room.

‘
P … p … please
,’ Harry begged, clawing at the tablets.

But the man merely observed Harry writhe on the carpet with an almost inhuman detachment. Harry’s eyes bulged, unable to comprehend the man’s indifference. A sharp pain speared his chest. He shuddered once more then lay still.

The man in the grey suit checked Harry Gibb’s body for signs of life. Satisfied, he picked up the documents from the desk and the poisoned hip flask from the floor. Quietly closing the office door behind him, he headed for the emergency exit, the first phase of his mission accomplished.