77 north, p.1
77 North, page 1
77 North
Cover
Title Page
Praise for 77 North
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by D. L. Marshall
Copyright
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
Praise for 77 North
‘Epic action, mind-twisting mystery and relentless fun. The tension ratchets up page by page until it feels like the book is going to explode in your hands’
Tim Glister, author of A Loyal Traitor
‘An absolute masterclass in how to write an action thriller. Every scene oozes adrenaline. You’re in for one hell of a ride’
Robert Scragg, author of End of the Line
‘Titanically enjoyable and monstrously exciting, 77 North is an electric blitzkrieg of masterfully written thrills’
Rob Parker, author of And Your Enemies Closer
‘John Tyler is back, and 77 North gives fans of the series everything they want and more! It starts at breakneck pace and keeps it up until the final page. There are car chases, gunfights, exotic locations and enough snow to chill you to the bone. John Tyler is at his best – like Jason Bourne on steroids – only wittier and from Yorkshire! This is D. L. Marshall at his very best’
Chris McDonald, author of Roses for the Dead
‘Gritty, witty and explosive – adventure fiction at its absolute best’
Marion Todd, author of What They Knew
‘Another relentlessly pulse-pounding John Tyler thriller from D. L. Marshall, this time giving us Tyler’s origin story alongside the usual non-stop action, scarily atmospheric settings, another of Marshall’s signature locked room mysteries, and more twists and turns than Tyler’s driving’
Alex Walters, author of Bad Terms
‘The end of John Tyler takes us back to the beginning, as ghosts, both literal and figurative, emerge from his past, revealing how a sharp-tongued green recruit became a homicidally efficient black ops scalphunter. Riotously thrilling and deftly intelligent, turning the mayhem up to eleven whilst surgically exploring ideas of duty and honour and betrayal and revenge. Paints a mural in blood of the deadly psychic hinterlands in which intelligence agents operate’
Dominic Nolan, author of Past Life
For L, G and A
Chapter One
The corpse gazed at me from behind the windscreen of an ASBO-green ’71 Plymouth ’Cuda.
I knew the car was a rare ’71 thanks to the distinctive headlights and grille.
I knew the guy was a corpse because it was me who’d put him in there to die.
He’d spluttered, eyes bulging, all the way through ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ on the radio. Three minutes twenty seconds. I’d wanted to switch it off, it seemed disrespectful. Not of him – he was a scumbag who deserved everything he got. But it was disrespectful of the process.
But I couldn’t switch off the radio up in the car dealership’s mezzanine-level office. I wanted to touch as little as possible. I was a ghost: tread light, leave no trace. If he always had the radio on at this volume and tuned to this station, well then, that’s how it’d have to stay.
This meant I’d had to watch his breathing become more laboured, his body slumping lower and lower in the tobacco leather seats all the way through ‘Edge of Seventeen’ by Stevie Nicks. It’s a long song, five and a half minutes. Then Upbeat ’80s, as the cheesy jingles had constantly reminded me was blaring out, had played ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by Guns N’ Roses. That’s another long song, so rather than sit there watching him gasp like a fish I’d wandered around the showroom.
The radio in the office drowned out his slurred pleading as I peered at the immaculate interiors of old Porsches, Lamborghinis, Ferraris. Most looked like they’d just rolled off the production line. These were cars built to be driven hard, but the perfect seats and low odometers all suggested they’d been owned by rich Americans and mollycoddled in centrally heated garages even in this northern Californian town.
Finally I’d walked back to the lurid green Plymouth by the closed roller shutters, and slid up onto the bonnet of a glorious De Tomaso Pantera next to it.
At last his chest stopped moving during the dying bars of a Tears for Fears song – which was fitting, because while it was Eighties, it was anything but upbeat.
I have some proficiency in this field, and in my experience killing doesn’t get easier. Even offing scumbags isn’t particularly pleasant, at least not if you’re anywhere vaguely this side of normal. Especially sitting, watching, waiting for them to die, their eyes burning right into the back of your skull while Men at Work sing about Vegemite sandwiches. Knowing full well they’re thinking, I’m about to go, this is it, it can’t be, surely someone will stop this. Knowing deep down there’s nothing anyone can do about it but still holding out hope to the last twitch.
I could have done something about it, I just didn’t want to. I slid off the bonnet. Now it was done.
The rumble of the idling 7.0 litre Hemi V8 was muted through reams of duct tape securing both tailpipes onto plastic hoses, jammed and taped into the top of the almost-closed passenger window. Clouds wafted as I opened the driver’s door. I held my breath as I reached into the stinking interior to unlock the heavily padded handcuffs from the steering wheel.
As I removed them from his wrists, I checked him over. No marks, no worries. I knelt to avoid the worst of the fumes still flooding the car and reached around the back of the seat, releasing the cargo straps holding him in place. The sponges underneath the straps had held his head nicely, preventing him thrashing around and doing himself a mischief.
Thirty seconds later he was untied with not a mark on him, slumped in the seat, door shut, fumes filling the interior again. I had a sudden thought and reached back in to remove his glasses. Pressing his fingers against the lenses for fresh prints, I folded them and placed them on the dash.
I’d read somewhere that suicides always take off their glasses.
By the time he was found there’d be no question that’s what it was. Especially when they found the receipts for the hoses in the footwell of his blue Carrera S out front, oil-smudged and ripped to obscure the transaction details. But since the smudged fingerprint was his, it could hardly be considered suss. Likewise the fact he wasn’t long since divorced and liked young women, horses, and coke, not necessarily in that order. Plenty of reasons an enterprising detective could find for why he’d topped himself, even before they delved back into his extremely chequered past.
A clattering sound shattered the peace between tracks on the radio. I spun to see movement, an empty Pringles tube rolling across the concrete floor. I traced it back to the door at the side of the showroom. The handle moved again, slowly, all the way down, then just as slowly back up. Even with a key no one could get in, not without a fair bit of force. I’d screwed the door into the frame before sliding the empty Pringles tube over the handle as an early warning system.
I checked my watch: only eight a.m. Customers wouldn’t be arriving to browse yet, and an hour ago I’d forced the owner to drop a text to his three employees telling them to take the day off.
Perhaps it was one of them checking up on him.
I opened the car door again and reached into the footwell where I’d left the owner’s phone, still unlocked and open on his texts, as if he’d been about to type a message to those left behind but hadn’t found the words before passing out. There were no other messages, nothing to suggest anyone was expected. I pocketed his phone and closed the door softly.
The roller shutters were all down over the big glass windows at the front, with their fuses flicked off so we c ouldn’t be disturbed. I wondered if there was another way in that I’d somehow missed.
I jogged across to a staircase, jumping three steps at a time up to the office. There were more windows up here but the blinds were drawn, so I vaulted a desk, landing at the nearest window, sliding against the wall. I moved the blind a crack with my finger. Down below, on the weed-strewn strip of gravel between the back of the building and the high steel fencing, was a man in a dark suit which was far too warm for a day like this. I darted back. An unusual sight round the back of a classic car dealership on an unseasonably sunny Saturday morning, but even more so, the man was crouching, and from his manner and expressions, he wasn’t alone.
I peered round again. He gestured beyond the railings. I followed his hand signals and saw another suit pressed into the corner of the DIY warehouse behind. I ducked back, mind racing, forming conclusions in milliseconds.
Suits on a Saturday morning screamed authority. Two round the back suggested more elsewhere. Crouching and hand signals suggested covert. Conclusion: for some reason the law were about to force an entry into a classic car dealership to find me standing here with a dead guy.
Which would be inconvenient.
I dropped to the floor and pulled out my phone, swiping to the camera. Pushing it up like a periscope, I watched the screen as it edged above the window sill and automatically focused on its new view. I tilted it until I could see the railings and there, at the corner of the building opposite, was one of the mysterious men. I zoomed in. He inclined his head slightly, looked like he was talking into a radio. I turned the phone around slowly. I couldn’t spot anyone else but did see two distinctly government-issue-looking SUVs pulled up side by side on the path out back. FBI, or one of the worse acronyms?
Time to leave.
I was about to run for the stairs when I had a brainwave. On the wall was a widescreen TV, but on a filing cabinet behind the desk sat a second, smaller TV. I scanned the desk and spotted a remote that matched the brand, and turned it on.
Bingo.
The screen was split between four CCTV cameras, three quadrants showing a different view of the exterior and the last covering the showroom floor and gleaming cars.
Further down the street, at the extent of a camera’s view, four more SUVs were pulled up in a row. A group of suited men were standing next to the first car and looked like they were in a heated conversation. The thing that really grabbed my attention was the guys in the parking lot out front, because they weren’t wearing suits. These guys were dressed in dark body armour, clutching submachine guns.
Someone wasn’t fucking around. There was no way to know if they were here for me, the dead guy, or something else entirely. No matter; a clean getaway had slipped further down my priority list. Now I was only interested in the getaway part.
I brought up the map on my phone, switching to satellite view. Zooming around with my fingers, I quickly oriented myself. I’d studied the layout but it always pays to recap. Directly opposite the loading door, that big steel shutter on the side of the building, was a parking lot. After that was a side alley, then a backstreet behind a row of restaurants and shops that dead-ended not ten metres from where I’d parked my rental car.
I glanced down at the showroom below, and the car nearest that exit. With bulging wheel arches, an exhaust note that sounded like the world was ending, and a spoiler your family could eat around at Christmas, the De Tomaso Pantera was hardly inconspicuous – but it only had to get me a couple of blocks before the goons outside latched on.
I grabbed a stained coffee cup from the desk and placed it in front of the TV, pulled out my phone and dialled a number. The dead guy’s phone started vibrating in my pocket. I pulled it out and stuck it upright in the cup.
The car keys in the locker were all handily labelled and in less than a minute I was downstairs and at the shutters flicking up fuses. I leaned into the car, stuck the keys in the ignition and twisted them. Thankfully, the electrics came on. Someone had obviously driven this Eighties girl recently. I looked at my phone, still open on a video call to the dead guy’s phone upstairs in the office. Its camera was pointing at the CCTV screen, which meant it was now relaying the CCTV video to me down here. I could see figures had begun to swarm around the main entrance at the other side of the showroom, readying for the breach. One camera pointed along the side of the building; there was no one covering this side exit and the roller shutters yet, but they would. It was time.
I opened the padlock, kicked it away, then pushed a switch on the wall. I was already in the driver’s seat and slamming the door when the roller shutter lifted from the floor. I jabbed the starter button: the motor whined, coughed and died. There was a shout outside, a shape moved in the widening gap. I pressed the button again, holding it down for what seemed like ages as the starter spun. Finally, the big V8 hacked up and blasted into life, blowing black shit across an E-type Jag behind.
Legs appeared in the slowly opening shutter and a suit crouched to peer under. I reckoned the door was just over a metre off the ground, so I gave the accelerator a couple of blips then floored it. My calculations were only a smidge off. I winced as the rising door took a stripe of paint off the roof, but then I was out into the Californian sunshine before the guy could pull his weapon. I glanced at my phone. The throng of agents at the front were moving, some round the side, some back to the SUVs. My attention returned to the windscreen. I was into the alley and up into second gear.
Engine screaming through the narrow strip of gravel, I looked through the flashing steel fencing to my right, along the backstreet. Just a few hundred metres and I’d be away, jump out, over a wall, into my rental car before anyone could get close.
Crunch.
It happened in slow motion. First, a shadow fell across the end of the alley, swiftly followed by a long bonnet. It ended with a huge wheel directly in front of me. I was pressing the brakes before I knew what was happening. Then my brain caught up and told me the Mack truck that’d pulled across the alley wasn’t going to come off worse than a forty-odd-year-old supercar. As the bonnet began to fold up in front of me and the steering wheel came up fast, it flashed through my mind that they’d obviously left that side exit clear for a reason.
They’d planned it.
Chapter Two
The room was uncomfortably bright. Presumably it was designed that way, but the mild concussion, like a hangover gnawing behind my eyeballs, made it worse. That was probably intentional as well. Bare concrete walls vibrated in the glare of the buzzing strip lights, making me squint, but I forced my eyes open to take in the room.
There wasn’t much to see. The cliché of a featureless table, an empty plastic chair behind it facing me, and another underneath my arse. A blank wooden door, most likely locked, was the only way in or out.
I didn’t have much time to take any more in before the door opened and a man strode in carrying a paper bag in one hand. He took off a pair of Oakleys and tucked them into an inside pocket of his grey suit.
He looked my age-ish, with fuzzy greying hair that he was keeping hold of at the expense of his waistline; his suit was fighting a rearguard action and slowly losing. He left the door open, leather-soled shoes clicking on the concrete as he walked.
Whatever was in the bag was bulky and heavy; it thudded and tipped as he placed it on the table.
‘Who are you then?’ I asked.
‘That’s irrelevant,’ he said with a smirk, ‘but I know you’re the mysterious John Tyler.’ He pointed at the zip ties on my wrists. ‘I was told you get angry when you’re cornered.’
‘My name’s Kaplan,’ I said.
‘Sure. George Kaplan. Just like it was Michael Armstrong a couple of weeks ago, and John Ferguson in May.’ He took a large penknife from his pocket and placed it on the table next to the bag and papers. ‘In March it was Ben McKenna. I’m not a Hitchcock fan by the way.’
‘I don’t know those people.’
‘Lemme see, you’ve lost some weight in the last few months. Long hair now, but I think we’ve got the right guy. Forty-three-year-old male? Tick. Wiseass Brit? Tick. Shabby lookin’ motherfucker with a bad attitude? Tick, tick. Then, of course, there’s this.’ He pulled a pistol from the bag. ‘A Heckler and Koch VP70, modified to accept a suppressor and able to maintain burst mode without the stock. No professional killer on Earth is stupid enough to carry around this antique piece of shit.’
