Luc: A Spy Thriller (26 page)

‘All because of his dead sister?’

‘This is it, isn’t it,’ I said. ‘This is what it’s all been about for Giuttieri. This is his ultimate goal.’

‘The idiots will kill
hundreds
.
And
start a war.’

And then light flooded the interior of the car and we looked behind and saw the headlights of four large vehicles storming our way.

***

We tried to outrun them, but we knew we wouldn’t be able to make it to the facility before they got to us. Warita ordered both vehicles to fan out and we stormed down the street, side by side. Warita threw a carbine sub-machine gun at me and we wound the windows down and leaned out, pointing the weapons back down the street.

The pursuers shot their own windscreens out and armed men started firing at us. We were on Constitution Drive in Belmopan, a large wide strip of road.

Glass was shattering all around me, bullet holes were being punched into the bodywork of the vehicles, the noise and the fury was deafening. They weren’t holding back much. If there ever had been an order not to endanger Mortlake, then they were either ignoring it or it had now been changed. My guess was that they were aware that we’d accessed the laptop and had now been told to retrieve or destroy that laptop at all costs.

Warita and I, machine carbines in our hands, returned fire, volley after volley, back down the street.

‘You think we can hold them off?’ Warita asked me.

My sights were on one of the attackers. I loosed off two rounds. He suddenly shot back into his seat, his arms flung wide, his assault rifle thrown into the head of his adjacent colleague.

‘Yes,’ I said. I was entertaining no other outcome.

His colleague shook his head a couple of times and then resumed firing at us.

I moved my sights to the right. The driver. I was lining his moustachioed face up. I was about to squeeze the trigger when I almost fell out of the window and had to grab the hand hold above the door. I then realised that we’d taken a right turning. At speed. I waited until the vehicle followed, and there it was, swinging round the turning. I got moustache man back in my sights, he was a calm looking chap and as Ramos’s team shredded the adjacent vehicle with a pounding of bullets I gently squeezed the trigger and the calm man suddenly looked surprised, but there was no eyebrow to raise above his new third eye and his vehicle lurched to the right and into the path of the adjacent vehicle and there was a crashing sound and the front car tipped over and rolled and the vehicle behind tried to take evasive action and we all now trained our guns on this rear car, the wounded animal, we weren’t showing mercy, we had drawn blood, we were going for the kill.

Volley after volley, pounding into the car. Shredding it. I stopped to reload and quickly resumed.

‘Dammit,’ said the electronics expert, who was huddled up on the floor in front, still working on his computer. ‘What the hell?’

We were all pretty preoccupied, but Warita managed a ‘What?’

‘It’s gone.’

‘What’s gone?’

‘Everything.’

Amid the deafening chink-chink-chink sound we were making with our machine guns, we both nevertheless turned our heads a little at that.

‘What’s he saying?’ I asked.

‘I’m saying,’ he shouted, ‘it’s gone. Everything’s gone. All the evidence has been wiped. ‘Day One’, the lot, it’s gone.’

‘What? How the hell could that happen?’

He sighed, shook his head. ‘I should’ve seen it. He had Time Sensitive Security Armour. Dammit.’

‘What does that mean?’ Warita asked.

‘It means that we should have input a code or a password after five minutes, or however long it was set for. We didn’t, so it knows it’s not the correct user and so it wipes everything.’

‘Oh god.’

‘Can you retrieve it?’ I asked.

‘I mean I could try, but…’

‘
Try
.’

Warita tensed her jaw and gripped her machine gun tighter. She turned back to the oncoming cars, resuming her onslaught with even more intensity.

We had got rid of one vehicle, and the second one was injured, but the two behind were still firing at us. We took another turning and watched as the wounded animal went straight on and crashed into a ditch.

‘Everyone okay?’ Warita called out, speaking into her radio.

One armed officer down in the neighbouring car.

‘Keep alert, everybody. We’re still some way off the facility; this is far from over yet.’

As if to underline her point, the third car now moved up to the front position and inside we could see a man standing up through the sunroof. He lifted a rocket launcher onto his shoulders and pointed it in our direction.

‘Jesus,’ I said.

‘Take evasive action,’ Warita shouted into her radio. ‘
RPG
.’

We all fell to our left as the car swung right and mounted the kerb. A fiery flash of light streaked past us and our neighbouring vehicle suddenly exploded in a fireball. The blast picked up our vehicle and I grabbed the seatbelt and swung it round me and gripped tight. I glimpsed Warita doing the same, just as there was an almighty explosion of glass. We tumbled over and knees and legs lashed at me and I tried to shield my head. There was more crashing sounds and my hip smashed against the ceiling, then I was hurled against the seat, tumbling, over and over.

When I started breathing again I realised we had stopped moving.

My head was spinning.

I released my grip on the seatbelt and sat up.

We had come to a halt the right way up, all four tyres on the ground. Or as I now could see,
floor
. We were inside somewhere. At first I thought there were dead bodies lying all around us. Then I realised they were clothed mannequins. We had been hurled through the window of a women’s clothes store.

I kicked at the door, but it was jammed shut. I climbed out of the shattered rear window and dropped down onto the carpet, realised my balance was none too clever. Groggily, I leaned back against the car. I carefully touched the side of my head, feeling blood. There was a gash, and I gently wiped some of the blood away. Looking inside the vehicle, I noticed movement from Warita. I reached into the open side window, picked up a sub-machine gun lying on the seat. I clumsily made my way to the front of the store, sidestepping mannequins and scattered racks of clothes.

I was aware that something was different, but I couldn’t quite place it. Then I realised: no sound of vehicles moving. I crunched over broken glass and carefully peered out to the left. Immediately a hail of bullets slammed into the store. They were all parked up on the left there.

‘We all okay?’ It was Warita, climbing out of the back of the car. She immediately checked on her colleagues.

I took a couple of steps towards her.

‘Lined up on the left. How are we for ammunition?’

‘Low.’ She removed her head from inside the car. ‘Earl didn’t make it.’

I took a glance around.

‘Go,’ I said. ‘The back way. Get Mortlake and the laptop back to a secure environment. I’ll hold them off.’

‘On your own?’

‘Just do it, Warita. We haven’t got time.’

For a touch of a second she gazed down the road at the burning wreckage of Ramos’s vehicle. Then she looked back at me and nodded. ‘Good luck,’ she said.

‘Same to you.’

She and the driver quickly disappeared out the back, dragging Mortlake and his laptop bag. I turned and fired a volley over to the parked cars on the left, earning a massive retaliation in return. The onslaught tore up the flooring of the store, right up to the right wall. I ducked back out and released another storm of firepower and then hurled myself back in as the floor shredded behind me. Landing hard on my shoulder I rolled, crunching over broken glass, and came to a halt next to a dead body. Not a dead body, it was a mannequin. Had to keep reminding myself of that. I looked up. And saw a white phone lying on the floor.

It was a landline phone and I scrambled to my feet, ran over and picked it up. Putting it to my ear I was grimly satisfied to hear the dialling tone.

I dialled the number and hoped Warren didn’t answer.

‘Charlie.’

‘Hello Charlie. It’s Luc. Have you got any air support in Belmopan?’

***

I jogged back over to the shopfront. Had to keep them occupied or they might decide to come in. I edged round and was surprised to find two of them tramping towards me, massive Heckler and Koch assault rifles aimed. Startled, I loosed off a volley of bullets before launching myself back inside. I was massively punched in the arm by something and I span round and landed on my back and rolled over. Blood down my arm. I’d been hit and I raised my machine gun and fired. I was still on my back but I had to stop them getting closer. Bullets sprayed the floor in front of me and I rolled swiftly to my left and they wouldn’t be long in coming in and I heard a distant rumble, a sort of drilling sound. I fired again at the shopfront, keep them out
,
and then, click, I was out of bullets, and I could hear their footsteps, careful, deliberate, professional. Shadows swept across the floor, two shadows, two men, filling the shop front, armed men, professional men,
grinning.
The drilling sound from above was loud now and they looked up and all hell rained down on them.

They spasmed for a few seconds as they and the ground around them was torn apart by the firepower from above. The sound was intense, it echoed like a cathedral of noise and violence. The rest of Giuttieri’s men must’ve returned fire but as I staggered to the front of the store I saw men and cars almost disappear under a hail of bullets from above. The vehicles twitched, men were thrown helplessly about, smoke filled the darkened street. The helicopter swung round and the firing continued and shrapnel and blood was being sprayed everywhere and the smoke was almost a blanket and then suddenly…

…It stopped.

Peace.

There was a ringing in my ears, the drilling sound from above continued, but, still, peace.

Crunching over broken glass and stepping over dead bodies I emerged from the store into the smoky street. The hovering copter lowered gently to the road and I padded over, the down draught rippling my hair and clothes, Earl’s dead body slung over my shoulder. I raised a hand to the pilot and lowered Earl into the cabin and climbed inside. We lifted off and swept around, our nose tilted forward and we soared off into the night.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Thurton was a dull speaker. But he was getting his points across, if in the usual politician speak. The assembled audience of about a hundred were listening blank-faced, mostly, so it was difficult as an outsider to gauge how well he was doing.

‘Could you hold this?’ Lucia held a dressing to the oozing wound on my head. I was looking at her soft neck. I could feel her breath on my hair. I held the dressing and she began cleaning away the dried blood from my head. Her throat was inches from my face and it was crying out to be kissed, but I remained strong and disciplined.

Thurton and the interviewer, a bald brown-skinned man of about fifty, with bushy white sideburns, were sitting, facing each other, on a raised platform. A small table stood between them. Behind them, a large TV screen had the graphic logo, ‘
Ask The Question
’.

‘And you can guarantee a decrease in prices? Really?’ the interviewer asked.

Thurton smiled uncomfortably. ‘I didn’t say that, and of course, I can’t
guarantee
it, but…’

‘I could have a nice scar after this,’ I said to Lucia. She was using a cotton bud, softly stroking away the blood from above my eyes.

‘I don’t like scars,’ she said.

‘Probably heal quite nicely, to be honest.’

She threw away the cotton bud and picked up a bag of cotton wool, pulling away a ball and dipping it into a small bowl of liquid.

‘This might sting,’ she said. She smelled of jasmine and as she wiped my face with this solution I kept my mind on that smell and focused my eyes on her lovely throat. Because it did sting. As if the solution was acid or vinegar.

I had phoned Warita as soon as I’d got into the helicopter.

She said she was safe. She and her driver had used the back streets and then one of their team had picked them up in a secure car.

‘What’s that noise?’ she had asked.

‘I’m in a helicopter,’ I said. ‘What about you? You at the facility?’

‘No. We’re with Falcao. He wants to confront Thurton.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘What, after the interview?’

‘Nope.

‘No?’

‘No. Not after.’

I had straightened up. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘He’s going to confront Thurton live on TV?’

‘That’s his plan, such as it is. He’s angry, Luc. When you land, get to a TV. Channel 5.’

Lucia was softly pushing the cotton wool up through the top of my forehead and into my hair. Small, successive movements, cleaning away the wounds, stemming the flow of blood.