Hunted (26 page)

The white operating system screen disappeared and was instantly replaced by the desktop showing the photograph of Colonel Zykov and his wife and child. Immediately, dead centre, up popped file C332.

‘OK,’ said the Kid, ‘we’re nearly out of here. First up I’m going to sling in a worm that’ll wipe the colonel’s hard drive the second we pull out, so there’s no way anyone can ever discover what we just took.’

There
… The Kid was still doing it, still talking, still thinking out loud. Just as Danny had hoped.

‘And now we’ve got that out of the way,’ said the Kid, ‘all we need to do is copy our nice decrypted data over on to my phone and we’re done.’

And bullseye
… There it was. The information Danny had been praying for: information he could use.

He felt his whole body tense as he unblinkingly watched the screen. The decrypted file marked ‘C332’ was dragged remotely over to the icon marked ‘APHEX’ that represented the Kid’s phone.

A green light on the top of the phone’s casing flickered.

An onscreen message on Zykov’s computer warned: ‘File Copying In Progress … Do Not Disconnect’.

The green light on the top of the phone faded.

The onscreen message on Zykov’s computer switched to: ‘File Copying Complete’.

The second it did, Danny snatched up the phone and told the Kid, ‘I’ll bring it in person.’

And with that, he tore off the phone’s backing and ripped its battery out. Before the Kid would have had a chance to transmit the data he’d stolen back to himself via the phone.

Leaving me still useful
, Danny thought, snatching the blank data stick the Kid had given him from his pocket and getting to work, moving fast now. And just fast enough, before the bright colours of the colonel’s desktop melted and died into impenetrable black, as the worm set about its dark work.

But much more importantly
, he was thinking, as he slipped the phone into his pocket and headed for the door,
keeping myself useful keeps Lexie indispensable too. Meaning now I’ve just got to find a way of getting her back.

Danny exited the Russian embassy the same way he’d got in. Down through the VIP elevator and then back out on to the street in the dead colonel’s Merc.

The same cop who’d raised the barrier to let him through the first time did the same again now, waving him on. Danny headed straight for the address in Kensal Rise, north of Notting Hill, where the blonde woman had told him she’d be waiting.

He passed by plenty of uniformed police on his way, but no more roadblocks, and none of the police flagged him down. The manhunt, it seemed, for the time being, had halted. At least while their quarry had gone to ground.

Danny kept the car radio switched on to a BBC rolling news service. Views on where he and Lexie had vanished to were currently split between theories of him still being at large in London, or having already somehow escaped the city, or even having fled abroad. Various so-called experts were speculating on who else he might have been working with. And, of course, there were stories – many terrible, moving stories – of the civilian dead and their grieving relatives.

Meanwhile the Russians were continuing to deny any involvement in the assassination of the Nobel Prize-winning writer.
The UN General Secretary had described the assassination and massacre as ‘A tragedy of the highest order. An affront to democracy’. The British prime minister had announced that no expense or effort would be spared in hunting Danny Shanklin down.

It was estimated that over seven hundred million people worldwide had watched Danny run. A statistic that made him feel physically sick.

The BBC’s latest breaking news was that the SAS had now fully occupied the Ritz and cleared it of any further terrorist threat. And that a body had been recovered from the room from which the shooting had taken place.

Breaking news
… As in information that had only just been made public right now.

In other words, when the Kid had earlier used Crane’s avatar in Noirlight to tell Danny that the colonel’s body had already been recovered and its cause of death by natural causes established, that had just been more bullshit. To convince Danny of the plausibility of the data stick and card having been left behind accidentally.

After a thirty-minute drive, Danny reached the address the blonde woman had given him. Mostyn Gardens. A terraced street in a quiet residential area. The sky was grey and darkening. The Transit was waiting for him, parked on the street corner. Its lights flashed once as Danny drove the Merc towards it. He slowed and parked up in front of it. The bearded man and the blonde woman got out.

‘Give me the phone,’ the blonde said, as Danny walked towards her.

The bearded man had positioned himself six feet away from her. He’d made sure to leave the long dark coat he was wearing open enough to ensure that Danny could see the machine pistol, fitted with a sound suppressor, gripped in his hand. He clearly wanted there to be no doubt in Danny’s mind that he could shoot him dead right here, right now, and none of the civilians sitting at home in these houses watching their TV shows and eating their suppers would ever even know.

‘First I see my daughter,’ Danny said.

It was a gamble. That they wouldn’t kill him, not until they knew he actually had the phone on him. And not until they’d checked he hadn’t somehow corrupted the stolen data.

‘Suit yourself,’ said the blonde. No emotion. Nothing. Danny may as well have been debating the price of some piece of junk up for sale on eBay. ‘He wants to check it’s all on there anyway,’ she said, ‘before he lets you go.’

Lets you go
… Danny still didn’t believe either the Kid or the hawk-faced man had any intention of that.

He got into the back of the van and sat down cross-legged on the cold metal floor. He had no choice. There was no point trying to overpower these two. He’d never find his daughter then. The best he could hope for now was that they actually would take him to Lexie, and not to some other location, where they’d take the phone from him and check its data was intact before executing him.

So long as he got to Lexie, he might still just figure out a way to get them both out alive.

Not might …
Would
, he corrected himself. Because he couldn’t just hope. He had to
believe
.

They slammed the Transit doors shut, locking him inside. The Transit engine rumbled into life and drove away. There in the darkness, Danny tried not to think of all the things that could now go wrong. He concentrated instead on clearing his mind. On readying himself for what was to come.

He knew that when an opportunity did arise to save his daughter, he would only get one shot.

One shot.

He tried to think of the future, but he felt himself dragged into the past. 

A ripping of duct tape. A hissing of air. A buzzing noise inside Danny’s skull. Nonsensical words flowed from his bleeding tongue. He couldn’t look at Jonathan and Sally. He would not look.

His skull jarred. It snapped back, struck. It jarred again. Purple and red flashes blossomed and died before his eyes. More pain. The stranger was staring into his eyes.

‘Where is …’ the stranger began to say.

‘Ker-murgh …’

Danny’s tongue wouldn’t frame the words. The stranger relaxed his hold on his jaw.

‘KIIIILLLLMEEEEE.’ Danny screamed it. He wanted death. He wanted to be dead like Karl Bain. He wanted the top of his skull blown off.

The stranger tightened his grip.

‘First tell me where she is …’

‘Gurghterhellll …’

The second the stranger released him, Danny bit at his gloved hand, then spat at him. A gobbet of blood and drool slipped from his torn lower lip.

‘Fukyaou …’

The stranger punched Danny’s head back and watched it loll
forwards again. He walked to the table and picked up the
blood-drenched
shears. He snapped the blades shut so that they turned from an X to a Y. He plunged them down two-fisted into Danny’s right thigh.

Danny roared, choking on his blood as he writhed. The stranger twisted the shears slowly, then pulled them out. Danny bit down so hard he cracked his back teeth. The stranger stood and watched, and waited for Danny’s hyperventilating to subside.

‘Don’t die,’ he said. ‘I need you.’

To watch.

He didn’t need to say it. He knew Danny already understood.

The stranger pulled on a thick winter coat. Knee-length. Navy blue. He slowly buttoned it. Then he took off his face mask and folded it neatly away in his coat pocket. He checked his appearance in the mirror on the wall. He slowly wiped the blood from his brow back across his shaved head, as if slicking back invisible hair with some new cosmetic product. He smiled.

A keening noise started deep inside Danny’s throat, a wailing he could not stop.

The stranger knelt beside the fire and picked up the Browning semi-automatic. Danny’s eyes stayed on him, his neck twisted and cramped. He watched the stranger instead of what was closer … instead of what was over there …
Them
… the two red shapes on the chairs, both silent as a scream …

The stranger vanished from his line of sight. Footsteps crossed the floorboards. A click. The cabin door creaked open. A blast of chill wind raked across the sweat on the back of Danny’s neck. His head lolled again. A pale shaft of winter daylight stamped itself on to the wooden floor. Blood. There was so much blood.

Danny prayed he was actually dying. That he’d been in a crash. That he’d imagined all this. That he was in a coma. That he would soon be dead. But that Sally and Jonathan were both somehow still alive.

He begged God to let him take their place.

The door slammed shut and he was alone.

Only not alone. Because they –
they
– were still here with him.

Sally’s dead eyes stared back at him. The stranger had cut off and removed her left ear. Danny could not look at his son.

A coldness filled him then. As if he were no longer made of flesh and blood. As though he were made of stone.

But looking away, he saw the photograph of Lexie holding Jonathan as a newborn, and he remembered his son alive … He remembered the first time he’d walked and stumbled into Danny’s outstretched arms … he remembered the love that still burned for him and Sally … And
Lexie
… he remembered her.

He would not let the stranger take Lexie from him too.

The knife … He reached for it …
nothing
. He twisted and turned. Then something … wedged up tight against the wooden strut of the chair back …
a blade
…

He gripped it, turned it, slitting his finger to catch it, then dragged it nearer, snagged it between his fingers … and finally raised it upwards, then round, pinning its grip tightly between the cups of his bleeding palms.

The tip of the blade snicked the duct tape that was binding his wrists. He started to saw.

Sally’s dead eyes watched him, begging him even in death to succeed. Blood ran freely from his wrists as he finally cut through the tape binding them and tore them free.

He still had the knife gripped in his right hand. He slashed through the duct tape securing his torso to the back of the chair. He severed the noose binding his ankles. When he tried to stand, he nearly fell. He sliced through the tape binding his knees to the chair.

Then he stumbled forwards, free.

He checked Sally and Jonathan. Robotically. Without hope. He was too late. He did not look at them again.

He focused on the living. On Lexie. The stranger was hunting her down in the snow.

He used strips from one of the shirts Sally had hung up by the fire to dry the night before to bandage his waist and tourniquet his right thigh. The killer had aimed carefully with the shears. He’d not severed any arteries. He’d not wanted Danny to quit his game yet.

Danny dragged himself to the front of the cabin. He slumped
against the wall between the closed door and the window to its right. He moved the curtain fractionally aside and wiped the condensation from the glass with his fingertip, before wiping at it again with the front of his jacket to clear the streak of blood away.

He checked outside. Heavy snow was falling. Almost a
white-out
. Only one set of fresh boot prints was now visible leading away from the cabin. The stranger’s. Danny prayed that Lexie’s and his own would also have been obliterated out in the woods.

His cell phone was no longer where he’d left it on the bedside table. Sally’s was gone too. He snatched up his bowie knife from the floor and hurried out into the cold.

Twenty metres from the cabin and Danny felt his strength failing. Blood trickled down his thigh, leaving tiny red splashes in the snow. With each step forward, he felt his leg getting heavier.

It wasn’t hard to find the stranger. He saw him thirty metres away through the trees. He was shouting. To himself, it looked like, when Danny first spotted his blue coat in amongst all that white. But then Danny realized where the stranger was standing. Beneath the tree house. He wasn’t shouting. He was calling out.

He was telling Lexie to come down.

Danny edged forward, keeping low, using bushes and rotting tree trunks as cover. The trees … they must have sheltered the ground here more than outside the cabin. Danny’s boot prints must still have been visible, enough for the stranger to have puzzled over. Before working it out.

So long as the stranger didn’t turn round, he might not see Danny until it was too late. But Danny’s movement was sluggish. He stumbled and fell twice. He was only saved by the wind from being overheard.

Twenty metres to go.

Between the gusts of wind and the shocking hisses of his clothing on the brambles he was edging past, Danny caught snatches of what the stranger was telling Lexie.

‘They asked me to come out and get you. They’re all waiting for you inside by the fire.’

Lexie shouted something back. Danny didn’t catch what it was. Fifteen metres.

Danny saw the blood on the stranger’s gloved hands then. He was gripping the Browning pistol behind his back. The blood slicked back on his scalp as well. Perhaps Lexie had seen it too. Perhaps that was why she was refusing to come down. Because she realized what this man was.

Or perhaps she’d heard the screams.

Ten metres. Danny steeled himself against the pain that would rip through his leg the second he started to run. He’d get up as close as he could. If he could, he’d slit that bastard’s throat from behind. If not, he’d knock him down.

‘Please don’t make me come up there and get you, Alexandra …’

Five metres.

The crack of a twig.

Too late, Danny remembered the Beretta twelve-gauge shotgun and shells locked in the dry steel box inside the cabin.

Too late.

The stranger started to turn. Danny broke into his run.

His leg buckled beneath him on the third stride. It was like he’d stepped into a hole. Even so he somehow kept going, lurched forward two more steps, another after that.

But now the stranger was facing him. He was bringing the Browning up. Danny knew he wasn’t going to reach him in time. If the man pulled that trigger, the hammer blow of the bullet would be the last thing he ever felt.

And Lexie would die.

He threw the bowie knife as hard as he could.

He watched it tumble over and over as he fell. His face smashed into the snow. Then he heard the stranger scream.

Dragging himself up, Danny saw that the knife blade had lanced deep into the stranger’s shoulder, just to the right of his neck, where his coat collar had slipped to one side. The pistol he’d been holding was nowhere to be seen.

Danny roared. Pain ripped across his leg, but that no longer mattered. He ran at him hard again.

The stranger got a grip on the knife handle. He began pulling it out. He didn’t see Danny coming at him. Not until Danny’s forehead smashed him straight between the eyes.

The collision sent both men crashing to the ground. He screamed out again. Danny forced himself up. The stranger did too. He still had the knife in his fist.

Where’s the pistol?

Danny stared desperately round. Then saw it. A glint of metal in the snow. He dived for it with the last of his strength.

The stranger was already running by the time Danny reared up and turned. A rush of motion between the trees. Danny fired once. Twice. The gunshots echoed through the wood. But the stranger didn’t stop. He ran on.

A crackle of branches.

Danny saw Lexie falling. An angel from the sky. He saw his daughter fall from the tree and land on her feet in the snow.

He lurched sideways. He fell against a tree. She rushed to him and clung tightly to him. He locked his body up against the trunk, and raised the Browning, once more tracking the racing, crashing figure of the stranger through the nest of woodland branches and the swirl of driving snow.

Die
.

Danny locked on to his target. He squeezed the trigger slowly. Fired. The stranger stumbled. But still he didn’t stop.

Gritting his teeth to breathe through the pain, Danny brought the pistol round again, getting the stranger back in his sights, waiting for an opening between the trees.

One came. He fired again. This time the stranger shuddered sideways. Danny waited for him to fall.

Die.

Die.

But the stranger just grew thinner. Became blurred. Vanished into the snow storm like a chalk figure that had just been rubbed out.