Real Tigers (30 page)

The minister at the time had been every senior spook's wet dream: spineless, indecisive, terrified of bad press, and anxious never to be caught in the vicinity of a decelerating buck. Back then, before Ingrid Tearney had begun her programme of stripping power from the Second Desks, Diana had had weekly meetings with him: he liked to keep abreast of developments, he asserted, his choice of wording corroborated by his focus. But on that particular day, he'd been too rattled by the report he'd received to spare her bosom more than a wistful glance.
This
, he'd told her.
Make this go away, can't you?
Which Diana had taken as carte blanche.

It was the kind of op that was under the bridge in all the right ways: no papertrail, no oversight; just a slush-fund payment to a pair of crash-squad near-retirees, eager to build a nest egg before leaving Spook Street for civilian life. The target being military, it was best to have her die in an accident; the combination of a spiked drink and tampered steering had done the trick. It wasn't even Dunn's drink they'd spiked—a bit of lateral thinking there. So in the eyes of the world, Sean Donovan had wound up responsible for Alison Dunn's death, but then, as a soldier, he'd understand the nature of collateral damage. His protestations had been muted—impossible to deny he had a drink problem—and he'd disappeared into the military justice system, his once successful career a pair of skidmarks in the dark.

Diana left the pub. She did not notice the sleek-looking man in her wake. Outside, it had barely cooled with the going down of the sun; the pavements were sticky with heat, and the air hung in hot pockets. It required little imagination to think something was going on with the weather. A detail that had leaped to hand when concocting this new op's legend . . .

Because in the years since dealing with Alison Dunn, Diana's own career had stalled; not as spectacularly as Donovan's, but just as decisively. Her role had become that of another middle-management drone, while Tearney's crusade to transform the Service into a bland, national-security delivery system, with herself as CEO, had marched on relentlessly. Budget meetings. Corporate branding. The whittling away of power from individual departments until
a more vertical structure
was achieved; one in which the traditional routes to power—long service, qualifications, a willingness to crawl over the bleeding bodies piled up in front—had been rendered null. Little wonder Diana's thoughts had turned to alternative methods of advancement. And she had always prided herself on the elegance of her schemes. When looking for an off-the-book joe, who better than one with a grudge and a skill set?

It had taken little effort to persuade Donovan he'd been the victim of a conspiracy; little more to convince him it was of Ingrid Tearney's making. Diana had handed him the opportunity for revenge, and he'd brought his service chum, Alison Dunn's fiancé, along with him.

At the corner, next to a row of bikes, she lit a cigarette and checked her phone. Nothing. And then, before she could change her mind, she called Peter Judd's number. When she'd fed Judd the tiger team idea, she'd told him nothing of the underlying scheme. This afternoon, he'd made it clear he suspected her of holding out on him . . . He'd be a dangerous friend to have, PJ, but sometimes you were left with little choice. Lovers were the only true enemies. All the others were constantly shifting.

He answered on the second ring. “Diana.”

“PJ. I have a small confession to make.”

“You mean you weren't being entirely honest with me earlier?” His tone was flat as a road. “I'm shocked, Diana. Shocked to the core.”

“I do know your tigers. Operationally, I mean.” No names on an open line. “But what they did this morning, that was no part of their mission.”

Sentiment didn't play a large part in Peter Judd's world, or not when the cameras weren't running. “Can't enjoy a scone without spreading a little jam,” he said. “But really, Diana, we'd be much more comfortable discussing this somewhere private. Why not have Seb call you a taxi?”

“Who's Seb?” she asked a dead connection, then started as a sleek-looking man with dark hair brushed back from a high forehead materialised at her side.

“Cab, Ms. Taverner? Your lucky night. There's one coming now,” and he raised an arm to flag it down, his other hand ever so lightly on her elbow.

You don't
get lucky twice, Shirley learned.

Her second opponent was a harder proposition.

She hit him with the same tackle that had produced such splendid results two minutes back, already picturing a heap of broken Arrows piling up below, as she despatched the whole platoon one by one. But instead of toppling through the window he threw himself hard onto the floor, regaining the advantage by pulling her with him. She landed hard, felt a sharp metallic crack. For a moment they were spooning almost, and she could smell his body odour, rank in the evening's heat. The cosh he held looked like something you might buy under the counter; short, fat, ugly. But he couldn't swing it while they were wrestling, and when he tried to wrap an arm around her throat she bit his wrist. He howled like a dog, and she pushed free from his grasp only to fall flat on her palms when he grabbed her foot. Shirley let her leg go limp then kicked viciously, catching him somewhere, she hoped his face, but the impact wasn't squishy enough. Her foot came free. She scrabbled forward a yard or two, regained her feet and turned to him, her palms stucco-rough with grit and glass. She brushed them on her trousers, her gaze not leaving the man in front of her.

Bigger than her, but most men were. What mattered more was that he'd tossed the cosh through the window; had produced in its place a wickedly grooved knife.

He grinned, his teeth showing whiter than reality against the black of his balaclava. “I am gonna skin you alive, sweetheart.”

Save your breath, she warned herself.

“Gonna make
holes
in you.”

She backed along the corridor, feet scrunching on the floor.

“Make you squeal like a piglet.”

He lunged and she parried, her forearm knocking the knife aside, and she slapped the flat of her hand into his face. It should have been enough, but she'd lost some balance and didn't connect with the force she might have done. He reared backwards, and she reversed too.

“Doing the old quickstep, eh?”

He'd watched a lot of movies, she thought. That was fine. The more they talked, the less breath they had.

“Let's see what you got, darlin'.”

What I've
got
is anger management issues. Apparently.

“Because we can go easy or we can go hard.”

Fuck it then. Let's go hard.

She aimed a punch at his sternum, high and fast, but not fast enough. He leaned back, grabbed her arm and reeled her in backwards, crushing her against his chest, the tip of his knife suddenly pushing into her chin.

“Got you right where I want you now, honey.”

“Yeah,” said Shirley, “me too,” and flexed her free left arm up over her shoulder to drive the splintered edge of half a compact disc into his eye. When he screamed and released her, she turned and landed a kick where her punch had been aimed. He staggered backwards, his thighs hit the window ledge, and over he went, still screaming.

Shirley made a crosshatch sign with her fingers. Hashtag epicfail, dickhead.

He'd taken the knife with him, but when she patted her jacket pocket the other half of the Arcade Fire CD, broken in her recent fall, was still there. Might come in handy.

On the ground below, a shadow was heading towards the Black Arrow van.

Shirley ran back to the stairwell.

Donovan fired
three times on his way to where Traynor lay, his shots directed at the space where the door had been. When he reached his friend he dropped to his knees and cut the plastic ties binding his feet. Louisa stood and fired twice, both bullets carving chunks from the already battered door frame.

I killed a man three minutes ago
, she thought
. Maybe two. Possibly three.

The thought felt like an intrusion from an onlooker; someone not immediately involved in the action, and thus able to adopt judgmental attitudes.

A figure popped briefly into sight through the doorway and squeezed off a shot at Donovan that went wild.

He was cutting Traynor's wrists loose now.

River said, “He won't make it.”

“Thanks for the input.” Louisa stood again and fired twice, thinking
two, three, two, two, two
. The magazine held fifteen. If Traynor had fired more than the two she'd witnessed, she was going to be out of ammo very soon.

“Welcome.”

And then River was gone again—he was doing that a lot—had leaped from their cover and was running towards where Donovan was struggling with Traynor. The figure in the doorway popped into sight again: he fired once, then jerked back to safety when Louisa shot back. River shouted Donovan's name, and the soldier stooped and slid his gun across the floor, then hauled Traynor to his feet. River scooped the gun up and slid to a halt behind the overturned filing cabinet just as the figure behind the broken wall appeared again and rattled off three shots at the two soldiers. Donovan and Traynor collapsed. River stood, aimed, and fired at the precise moment Louisa, somewhere behind him, did the same. The Black Arrow with the gun jerked backwards as if his strings had been cut.

There were smells in the air now: cordite, blood. The dust that hangs around archives was swimming in the air.

A baton slammed into the cabinet next to River's head, but it had been hurled, not swung. A shape disappeared behind a stack of crates. River thought about shooting, but didn't; if it was armed, it would have fired at him.

Louisa joined him. “There's at least one loose in here,” she said. “No idea how many through there.”

The corridor behind the blasted door, she meant.

River said, “They're sitting ducks if that's the only way they can get in.”

“We don't have much ammo.”

“They don't know that.”

He plucked a ledger from the floor and lobbed it at the doorway. Neat throw: it sailed right through unmolested.

“Good shot,” Louisa said. “Proving what exactly?”

“Maybe they don't have much ammo either. Cover me.”

She stood and took aim at the doorway, arms steady on the top of the cabinet, but nobody appeared there. River ran in a crab-like crouch for Donovan and Traynor, who were in a heap on the floor; when he pulled Donovan up his face was covered in blood.

But the blood was Benjamin Traynor's, the back of whose head was missing.

Donovan had been hit too, but a good-guy wound—good guys get shot in the shoulder. His eyes were out of focus, though, and River struggled to get him off the ground. He half-dragged half-carried him back to the cover of the overturned cabinet, then dropped him, panting.

“They're either mustering their forces or have no fucking clue what to do.”

“Or they've gone,” Louisa said. She was unbuttoning Donovan's shirt; to check his wound, River assumed.

Donovan came awake, and he seized her by the wrist with his good hand. “Don't.”

Louisa laid her gun aside, and unclamped his hand. “Your friend's dead,” she said. “And an unknown number of hostiles are shooting at us. I think we can safely say your operation's fucked.”

“Ben's dead?”

“I'm sorry.”

He closed his eyes again, and she undid another button, then pulled free the folder he'd been carrying. An ordinary manila one, its top corner stained with his blood, or his friend's.

She handed it to River. “Let's keep this safe.”

“By which you don't mean re-shelve it,” River said, tucking it inside his own shirt, jamming the unbloodied edge into the top of his jeans.

“No, well. It might repay study. Seeing as how people are trying to kill us.” She pulled Donovan's shirt aside and looked at his wound. “This doesn't look too bad,” she told him.

“Nice to know,” he said through gritted teeth. “How's the other one looking?”

Uh-oh.

He'd been hit in the thigh, too; not so much a good-guy wound, with bone showing through his trousers.

River was peering round the edge of the cabinet. “There's movement.”

“Oh good.”

“We might need a plan soon.”

“No offence,” Louisa said, “but I wish Marcus was here.”

“None taken,” River said. “I was thinking the same about Shirley.”

Something hard and round came flying through the shattered doorway, and bounced off the cabinet.

Then everything turned to white light.

Marcus Longridge's
hands were secured behind him, with a pair of those plastic cuffs that were so popular these days, and he'd been similarly bound at the ankles. He lay on his side in the back of the Black Arrow van, and had clearly clocked that he wasn't alone, and had registered the very
former
nature of his companion. A bullet to the head was a decisive punctuation mark. He couldn't be in much doubt that he faced the same full stop.

What was odd, though, was that his damn baseball cap was still on his head.

Nick Duffy didn't remove his balaclava because there were rules, and they kept you alive, but he knew Longridge had recognised him. Duffy had approached him once, in fact, before his fall, to see if he fancied a role with the Dogs: they could always use men with Marcus's skills. The people they were sometimes called upon to apprehend often didn't want to be apprehended, and were highly trained in methods of resisting said apprehension. So having people on your side even more highly trained in smacking heads off walls was a plus. Hence the offer.

To which Longridge had replied, “Does my ass smell like bacon to you?” which Duffy had paraphrased in his subsequent write-up, but hadn't needed Google Translate to catch the drift of.