Christopher Brookmyre - Parlabane 04 (43 page)

'Right.
Slainte
, you bastards,' he shouted, hurling it from the central window towards the open rear doors of the truck. It impacted on the tailgate, but not before its journey through the night sky had quickly extinguished its flame.

Beneath them, two more of the footsoldiers, one of them dragging the chain, had disappeared under the protection of the stone canopy, while the ramming parties checked above for incoming and prepared for relaunch. The sound of breaking glass could be heard even through the fire-door, accompanied by raised and anxious voices. Vale's call had alerted them that the assault was finally under way, though it was an eerie half-minute or so after that before Emily heard the crashes that confirmed they were under attack. There was no sound from beneath them in the stairwell, so Rory was eyeing the door anxiously, having wondered aloud whether they would be better deployed elsewhere.

'They know we've got barricades here. Even mob-handed, it would be tough to launch an attack coming
up
these stairs. They've had plenty of time for a rethink.'

Emily looked at the kitchen knife she'd been given to replace the one lodged in Baxter's shoulder. It was half the size, a fraction of the weight, good only for stabbing if you were up close. If they did attack up these stairs, Rory might as well be on his own.

Then they heard another crash, this time much closer, and a buzzing sound like a small motorbike.

'That's a fucking chainsaw,' Rory announced, opening the door and heading into the corridor to investigate. 'Not exactly medieval.'

263

'It doesn't need to be medieval, just messy,' Emily remarked, following him out.

Once they were through the door, the buzzing became louder, joined suddenly by a repeated banging. Both sounds came from the side of the corridor to the front of the house.

The fourth of the arrhythmic bangs saw the blade of an axe jut an inch through the dining-room door behind which Grieg's incomplete remains had been locked. At the same time, the buzzing changed its pitch, slower and deeper as the chainsaw bit into the wood of the door to the adjacent drawing room. Another crash then sounded from the opposite side of the corridor, this time behind the door to the kitchen. They were trying to open up as many routes inside as they could, spreading the defences wide and thin.

'We need support down here,' Rory shouted. 'Now!'

The axe blade was withdrawn, then reappeared, coming through further, close to the handle and the lock. A hammering began from inside the kitchen, rapid and insistent.

'I said we need support here,' Rory shouted again. He looked to Emily. 'Get help. And if you can't get help, at least get clear.'

The chainsaw blade emerged through the drawing room's heavy oak. Across the corridor, the hammering from the kitchen repeated its indignant tattoo.

'I said we need support here.'

Alison heard Rory's second call for help, little as she was in any position to respond. The first had been drowned out by the revving of the truck's engine as it prepared to pull away, both ends of the chain now connected to a tow bar on its tailgate. As she'd watched them rig it up she'd been wondering what they might attach the chain to on the outside of the storm doors, optimistically picturing it yanking the brass handles free but leaving the doors locked in place. However, the two men who'd walked under the canopy emerged either side of it almost immediately, each trailing one end of the chain. It was only as the vehicle moved forward and took the strain that the scheme became apparent, each side of the triangle too obtuse for the base to be against the door. They had looped it around the columns and were planning to bring the whole canopy down. After that they could use the truck itself as a battering ram.

She had a glance back downstairs and saw Vale take off in response to Rory's call. He grabbed a canister from her kitchen collection as he did so, ignoring the weapon she'd worked so hard on loading. He'd been very serious when he said he couldn't afford to use it too soon, though surely too soon was better than too late, and too late wasn't looking very far off. 264

'A couple of hits and then they'll know how to protect themselves, you understand?'

She did, and it didn't boost her morale any that it made them sound like the bloody Borg: you only got a few shots before they adapted their defences to neutralise your ray gun.

The two manual ramming parties were persisting with their efforts, hampered by the bottles and cutlery that were raining down upon them. The group on Alison's side had at one point attempted to use their corpse as a shelter as well as a ram, holding him above their heads as they approached, but it had not proven conducive to getting much power behind the launch. Liz had scored a direct hit with a litre of vodka, the sight of it in her hand giving Alison a taunting glimpse of happier times. She thought wryly how Liz wasn't the first person to get a result with a bottle of Stolichnaya. The bottle had smashed into the side of the man's head as he moved to dodge another one fired by Sir Lachlan. He collapsed to the floor, causing his partner to drop their corpse before other comrades moved in to assist. The slug in command did a bit more pointing and shouting, then another figure emerged from the rear of the truck and knelt down to one side of it. Alison stepped back from the window to grab a fistful of wooden-handled steak-knives. As she did, she heard Liz yelp and saw her recoil from her position, clutching a hand to her shoulder. When she lifted her fingers, she revealed a tight cluster of coloured fibres around a small patch of blood. Sir Lachlan turned around to see what had happened, then winced himself, reaching a hand around to his back. His fingers stretched in vain towards an identical cluster between his shoulderblades. He looked at Liz's injury with a pained expression that was more to do with what he saw than what he felt.

'Tranquilliser darts,' he said.

When she heard this, Liz made an abortive attempt at removing hers, her face immediately contorting with pain when she pulled on it. She took a couple of deep breaths, steeling herself for another go, but before she could do so, her legs buckled beneath her and she slumped to the floor. Ger, who had been waiting on the grand staircase with the remainder of his own personal knife set, came bounding up to the gallery, ordering Kathy to follow.

'We've got to get them out the way,' Ger said, as Sir Lachlan wavered and put a hand out to Alison.

'Where?' Kathy asked.

'Other side of the gallery, for now.'

Alison could hear the engine whine and the tyres spin on the monobloc as the truck strained against the stone columns. She and Kathy held Liz upright between them, her arms across their shoulders, and began dragging her along 265

one side of the gallery. Across the drop, Ger was propping up Sir Lachlan, as though helping a staggering drunk, but ended up hauling him, arms under oxters, as the older man's legs gave out. All the while, the securing bedsheets and curtains strained and tore as the mattresses were driven against them, now unhindered by aerial bombardment. Toby waited before the windows, his machines primed to deliver a desperate single shot each. She'd experienced terror, shock, anger, loss, fear and dread, but this was the first time she really, really felt like crying. What her mind wouldn't allow her to feel - over Charlotte's death, over the horrors she'd endured tonight, over the people she'd never say goodbye to, the things she'd never do, all that
life
she'd never get to live - was threatening to swamp her now, like the hordes outside were about to swamp the building.

She glanced at Ger, but he was bent over Sir Lachlan, who appeared to be straining to say something, valiantly fighting the inevitable onset of unconsciousness. Like all the others tonight, it was just one more battle in vain. 266

Good Time for a Bad Attitude

'Fuck's sake, let me in, it's Jack,' called a voice from behind the kitchen door as Emily rushed past. She almost crashed into Vale at the dog-leg in the corridor, both of them running flat-out in opposite directions.

'They're coming in, they've got--' she said breathlessly.

'I can see what they've got,' he replied, though she couldn't imagine how he'd be in much of a position to do anything about it, carrying as he was only a small blue cylinder. Perhaps it was bampot repellent. She turned around again as he hurried past. Rory was standing between the two doors under attack, the one being chewed up by the chainsaw predictably closer to being breached. He held the rapier in both hands, pointing it upwards at forty-five degrees, his knees slightly bent in a defensive stance.

'Will somebody open this fucking door,' Parlabane's voice repeated.

'Be right with you, old chap,' Vale called. 'A bit tied up at the mo'.'

The chainsaw's pitch rose drastically as one more thrust broke through the edge of a panel on the drawing-room door. The buzzing, spluttering implement was then drawn inside and used, side-on, as a battering ram to smash the panel out completely. Rory made to step forward in defence, but Vale signalled him to hold his position. Vale moved to within a foot of the doorframe's near edge, his left hand flicking a lighter into flame with a snap of his fingers. A blackened face appeared in the gap, grinning and wild-eyed.

'Heeeeeere's Johnny,' the intruder shouted through the hole. The fucking macho prick was loving it.

Vale stepped in front of the door and blasted a spray of what Emily now recognised as oven-cleaner through the lighter's flickering tongue, sending a volley of instant napalm crackling into the chainsaw-bearer's face. It was accompanied by a hideous scream and the sound of a thump as his tool hit the floor and cut out, both of his hands pressingly required to hold his burning head.

It
was
bampot repellent.

'Johnny, meet Mr Muscle,' Vale muttered, before giving the door a surprisingly powerful kick. Already damaged, it flew open first time, the lock-housing clattering to the polished wood. The intruder was thrashing around on the 267

floor, screaming to the point of rupturing his vocal chords. It was a sight and a sound Emily knew she'd be haunted by if she made it through this thing, but as he was part of the reason that was in doubt, she wasn't in the mood to shed any tears just then. Vale lifted the chainsaw and offered it to Rory. He accepted it with a narrow-eyed grin just as the axe delivered its telling blow on the dining-room door. It swung inwards, revealing another face-blackened assassin, six five if he was an inch, the long-shafted axe gripped in two huge and determined hands.

Rory pressed the button and the chainsaw screamed back into motion.

'My chopper's bigger than yours,' he told the axe-man, who concurred by turning around and getting off his mark.

'Yeah, you better fucking run,' Rory shouted after him. 'Tell them
all
to fucking run.'

The hammering resumed on the kitchen door.

'Any danger you could pleeease let me out of here,' Parlabane called.

'I think Alison's got the keys,' Emily told them.

'Stand back, mate,' Rory warned, before plunging the chainsaw into the doorframe around the lock. There was a horrible grinding of metal as the chainsaw's teeth bumped against the housing, the only sound so far to rival the screams of the oven-cleaner victim in the blood-curdling stakes.

'Sorry,' Rory remarked, like it was a faux pas that needed any kind of apology. He was about to resume his cutting, but Vale opined that it was enough, and another powerful kick proved him right.

Parlabane was crouching on the floor, removing petrol cans, a machete and a pair of heavy-duty gardening gloves from a black canvas bag. Fragments of broken glass glinted on the tiles, testifying to his route back into the house. There was a yellow object beside him, trailing tubes and an electrical flex alongside a metal lance with a black plastic muzzle. It looked to Emily like something for spraying weedkiller or insecticide, though she couldn't imagine how such a thing would require electricity any more than she could imagine what Parlabane planned to do with it.

'Thank fuck,' he said, standing up and moving towards the open door.

'Watch out for the--' Vale warned, too late, as Parlabane walked into a length of piano wire stretched across the frame. It bit into his neck then sprang loose, one end whipping free from where it had been less than efficiently secured.

'Who the fuck put that there?' he demanded, putting a hand to his throat. The wire had broken the skin, but it could - indeed
should
-have been a lot worse.

'Actually, don't answer that,' Parlabane went on. 'I think I know. Because if it had been done properly, I'd be hosing the walls right now. Where's Baxter?'

268

'He's gone off to play with his real friends,' Vale told him. 'How did you find out?'

'Campbell gave me the heads-up, so to speak. Poor bastard didn't have a very pro-active evening.'

'Ah.'

'So what else did I miss?'

'Oh, quite a fair few revelations.
In terrorum veritas.
I'll fill you in, but the condensed version is that I'm afraid, despite what you said last night, this time it
is
all down to a bunch of homicidal right-wing nutters out to kill all the lefties and silence the dissidents.'

'In a retro-Eighties stylee,' Emily added.

'And people say nostalgia's not what it used to be. So why didn't you let me out sooner?'

'Why didn't you tell us it was you?' Emily replied. 'You were just hammering the door. It could have been one of them.'

'This is why,' he said, taking something from his pocket. He held it up in the palm of his hand, ostensibly for the attention of Vale.

'Compact receiver and short-range sub-vocal mic,' Vale identified. 'Damn it, I'm slipping. I didn't spot one on our endurance runner.'

'You wouldn't. Sits pretty snug just inside the ear. I had to take it out before I could shout, so that they don't find out we're listening in. I started off just hammering the door because I made the crazy assumption you might suss it was me, seeing as the bad guys' attempts to gain entry so far haven't included knocking. Hey, maybe that's where they've been going wrong.'