Lynch (19 page)

‘Is she taunting us?’
Clark
asked. ‘And where the fuck is Fernandez in all of this?’

‘Shoot her,’ Jesse said.

The woman sent a single shot their way and Clark and
Rhodes
opened fire on her. She ran for cover beside the white van and
Rhodes
said, ‘If everyone can walk, I want you all out now. Keep left and run fast. Go, go, go!’

Scott pushed Jesse in front of him and took hold of Katherine. He looked at John. ‘You okay?’

‘I’m fine. Let’s go.’

They slipped out of the van. Rhodes and Clark continued to fire round after round, pinging the white van and shattering the front windscreen. They heard the woman shouting what sounded like a name, like Lucy, and saw the man in the passenger seat duck out of the way.

If they could get a head start, Scott thought, at least they won’t be followed in vehicles. With everyone on foot, there was no unfair advantage.

He held Katherine up. She was walking with a limp. As they rounded the overturned van, Jesse was coming back towards them. His eyes were red and puffy.

Over the sound of the shooting, Scott asked, ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Jesse said.

‘We have to keep moving,’ Scott said.

‘Let me help,’ Jesse put his arm around Katherine’s waist and as they ran forward, Katherine pointed back to the van.

‘I think Mick’s dead,’ she said.

They stopped and looked back. Mick had come through the windscreen and his hair was matted in blood. He wasn’t moving.

‘Let’s go,’ Scott said. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’

Chapter 23

‘How do we do this?’
Clark
asked.

Rhodes
fired another shot and they ducked as the woman retaliated. As she slipped back inside her van,
Rhodes
said, ‘Make a run for it. Follow the guys and get them to safety. I’ll hold her off as long as I can.’ He fished in his bag for a fresh clip.

‘Are you trying to be a hero?’
Clark
asked.

‘I’ve trying to save lives. If there are any more of those bastards out there, your friends are already open and exposed. They’ll wander around the streets like lemmings until they’re picked off one by one. Go.’

Clark
weighed the decision in her mind—it always came down to a fight-or-flight response. Life, she figured, is always fight or flight. She took another shot at the white van.

She stepped out of the UPS van just as the woman re-emerged. In her hands was what looked like a semi-automatic rifle. Clark rounded the van as she opened fire and, as she ran, she heard an unmistakeable grunt from
Rhodes
followed quickly by the slap of shoes on the ground.

Clark
kept her speed up, heading forward, no idea where the others had gone or if they’d walked straight into a pocket of Fernandez’s men ahead of them. Looking back over her shoulder, the woman stood by the UPS van and shot point-blank at
Rhodes
.

She couldn’t fire a shot off here, not with a few houses on either side of her. She stared ahead, thought she saw a glimpse of the others, and she ran.

By the time they had caught up with John, Scott and Jesse were panting and sweating. Katherine begged to be allowed to walk on her own, promised her ankle was fine, and when they thought they were far enough away and didn’t hear anyone coming behind them, they released their hold of her and she tested her left leg gingerly.

Scott looked around. He knew they were close to
Oxford
before that crazy woman had derailed them, but he didn’t have a clue where they actually were. They had come around onto what looked like an industrial area with single-storey warehouses aligned on either side.

‘What do we do?’ John asked. He had an air of confidence about him that surprised Scott. Perhaps the guise of Daphne was more of an emotional mask than he had considered, granting him a lockbox for his fears, but whatever it was, John was ready to fight.

‘We have no weapons,’ Scott said. He turned to Katherine.

She was wheezing and rubbing her thigh and her skin was tight and thin, blue veins tracing a map over her forehead and hands.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Let’s keep moving.’

Jesse said, ‘Where to? We’re lost.’

‘We need to hole up somewhere and wait for Ann and that
Rhodes
guy.’

‘Did you see Mick’s face?’ Katherine asked. Her eyes were cloudy.

‘We don’t have much time,’ John said. ‘We need to decide what to do.’

‘Call the police?’ Jesse asked.

‘Jesus!’ Scott said, as though the idea had never struck him before. He took Jesse’s head in his hands and he kissed him. Then he reached in his pocket for his phone. But it wasn’t there. ‘It must’ve fallen out in the van when we toppled.’

Jesse pulled out his own phone. ‘Advantages of tight jeans,’ he said. He handed it to Scott.

As Scott dialled 999, they started fast-walking into the industrial estate. ‘Find a street sign or something,’ he said. ‘Hello? Police, please. Yes, it’s an emergency. We’re being shot at!’

He looked behind him as a figure rounded the corner of a building. He saw the glint of a gun and panicked before he realised it was Ann Clark.

‘You fool,’ María said. Thomas Walter was still in his seat in the van. His eyes were wide and staring at the toppled van before them. His fat fists were pressing against the dashboard and she could see beads of sweat running along his temples.

‘Walter,’ she said, but he made no response. ‘Walter, look at me.’

Thomas Walter looked at her, cocked his head without recognition.

‘Get out of the van and help me,’ María said. She watched as Walter looked at his seatbelt, still buckled, and his shaking fingers fought for the release button.

‘This is not good,’ Walter said. ‘Not good.’

‘Help me get Lucia out of the back.’

Walter stepped out of the van, stumbled on weak legs and fell to the ground. María came round and helped him back to his feet. ‘Not good,’ Walter repeated.

‘Pull yourself together,’ María said. ‘You have to help me with Lucia.’ Lucia was a priority; the others could wait. She cursed Dr Roth and his hospice for not having an available bed. She opened the back of the van and climbed in, soothing Lucia as she released the brakes from the back wheels of the wheelchair. The bullet that shattered their windscreen had punched a hole in the side of their van less than a foot from Lucia’s right shoulder.

With Walter’s reluctant help, they carried her down from the van and María adjusted the straps on the chair that kept her daughter upright.

Lucia chewed her fist.

‘Take her,’ María said.

‘What?’

‘I can’t take her with me.’ María held up the M16 for illustration. ‘This is not a stroll in the park.’

‘What am I supposed to do with her?’ The look on his face was one of disgust.

In a single motion, María pulled the small Ruger handgun from under her waistband and flashed the barrel in his face, the M16 held down by her side. ‘Keep her safe,’ she said. ‘Get her out of here and I’ll call you when I’m done.’

‘How am I going to get out of here?’

She turned the wheelchair so that the handles were in front of Walter. ‘Take her,’ she reiterated, and Walter gripped the handles.

María crouched in front of her daughter. ‘Eleven years I’ve kept you safe,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to stop now.
Te amo
.’ And she kissed her and wiped the saliva from Lucia’s chin and tried to hold her briefly before she stood erect and looked at Walter. ‘Leave. Keep her safe. Or I swear I will fuck you with a rifle.’

Walter nodded and María turned away.

‘Thank Christ,’ Scott said as
Clark
ran towards him. He held the phone out for her. ‘I’ve called the police. Do you know where we are?’

She took the phone, pressed it to her ear. ‘This is Detective Ann Clark, NCIS. Has he told you what’s going on?’

Scott looked over her shoulder. ‘
Rhodes
?’ he asked.

Clark
shook her head, negative. It was a tough blow to lose the two officers.

‘Can we keep moving?’ John shouted. He, Jesse and Katherine had already moved ahead, both men supporting Katherine as they went.

Clark
said into the phone, ‘Can you get a lock on the phone’s GPS signal? We’re somewhere near
Oxford
, that’s all I can say. Get in touch with Interpol in
London
. My colleague pushed our coordinates to them before he went down.’

A gunshot was fired and everyone ducked. As Scott turned in a squat, he saw the woman standing by the corner.

Clark
had gone to her knees, dropped the phone, and was rolling back to a sniper-crouch, gun extended, and she fired. The woman backed up behind the wall.

‘Go,’ she said to Scott. ‘Get everyone to safety.’

‘I’m not going without you.’

Their assailant blindly fired another round from her protective spot behind the wall and
Clark
retaliated in kind. She got to her feet, stayed low, nodded to Scott, and they backed away.

‘Are we in the O.K. fucking corral?’ John asked.

‘Move it,’
Clark
said.

On a Sunday, the industrial park they found themselves in was deserted. They approached a squat, red-brick, single-storey building that had an iron security gate in front of the entrance door. A single padlock held it closed and a large shutter beside the door was dropped all the way to the ground. The van parked outside was branded
Softerns—Office Supplies and Equipment
, and they stood behind it, out of view from the dark-haired woman. They had no idea how close she might have been, or if she was still behind the corner.

Clark
touched the padlock. It was a circular Master disc lock, stainless steel and solid. The shackle said
Boron Carbide
. She glanced across the lot but couldn’t see the woman.

‘Stand back,’ she said. She didn’t know how many rounds she had left in the gun, but she remembered reclipping it just before
Rhodes
told her to run. How many had she fired since then? Three? Four? It could have been more.

‘Keep behind the van,’ she told them. She didn’t want to waste any shells but to hold their attacker off a few seconds more, she reached around the van and fired unsighted. Then she turned, aimed at the padlock, and fired again. A cascade of glowing sparks fanned from the gate and the bullet ricocheted off the ground near her feet. The lock was broken and she pulled it from the barrel, dropping it and cursing from the heat of the metal.

When she pulled open the security gate, the door that it had screened was sealed with nothing more than a standard Yale lock. She had busted enough of those over the years and knew exactly where to force her foot against the door.

As the doorframe splintered and the door swung inwards, there was a quiet beeping sound coming from the alarm. Alarm systems don’t care who enters the building, or by what means—so long as you can enter the disarm code within the required number of seconds. Within the next thirty seconds or so,
Clark
knew, the alarm would start to scream its violation and—she hoped—would be linked to a security firm who would be on the scene pretty quickly.

‘If we go in there, we’ll be trapped,’ Scott said.

Clark
was already ushering them through the door when the alarm exploded into a dissonance of wails. ‘It’s better than being out in the open. If there’s only one way in, we can cover it and stop them before they can get in behind us.’

She knew the busted door would give their location away, but she was counting on the woman trying to come in the same way. It was too late for capture and interrogation; she was going to shoot and shoot hard.

Inside, they stood by what appeared to be a makeshift reception desk and Scott said, ‘There has to be more than just that woman. Was there anyone else in the van?’

Jesse said, ‘Looked like there might have been someone in the front. Probably more in the back.’

‘So why didn’t they come out?’ John asked.

Clark
dropped the magazine from the butt of her weapon and counted.

‘How many?’ Scott asked.

‘Four,’ she said. ‘And one in the chamber.’

Katherine leaned against the desk. She looked winded and exhausted. ‘Here’s hoping there aren’t any more than five of them, then.’

‘Look around,’
Clark
said as she pushed the clip back in. ‘Find a weapon. Anything.’