Reaction of the tiger, p.33
REACTION OF THE TIGEr, page 33
part #4 of André Warner, Manhunter Series
Only two handguns were produced – by the two clad in all-weather gear accompanying Maximov. Short of patting them all down, I had no means of telling if anyone else was carrying.
‘I’m not here to start a war with you people,’ I said. ‘Just hand over Jacqui Lyndon and I’ll get out of your hair with no harm done.’
The two guys who had given up their guns edged sidelong, opening up a space between them and the others. As predicted.
‘Watch those two,’ I murmured to Maura.
‘I’m on it,’ she acknowledged.
Maximov spread his hands as if in supplication.
‘But, Mr Andrews, I promised to return the woman in exchange for the body of Ivor Wharfe. Have you forgotten? No body, no woman. That was your arrangement.’
‘Okay, I’ll be in breach of contract. Just give me the woman or I’ll have to start shooting.’
‘If you break a contract you have to accept the consequences.’
Maura or no Maura, I had to demonstrate serious intent. Firing from the waist I put a bullet in the right thigh of the Graf’s companion, the man in indoors dress, short and dumpy. He went down with a howl and everybody scattered, Maximov dragging Sonia with him.
Maura didn’t chastise me. Heart of hearts she knew I had had to do it. She kept pointing the Beretta in a two-handed grip, steady as a tank’s turret gun.
They were more dispersed now, making it harder to cover them. The downed guy was whimpering, nursing his leg.
‘Keep watching those two on the right,’ I said to Maura.
This was where a shotgun would have served me well. The longer this stand-off lasted, the greater the probability other members of the household would join the shooting party.
‘Well?’ I snapped at Maximov. ‘The next bullet’s for your friend the Graf.’
He hesitated. You could almost hear the cogs meshing inside his skull. Profit and loss, profit and loss. The Graf, who was potentially on the loss side of the balance sheet, was looking anxiously at him.
‘Very well.’ He was gritting his teeth as he spoke. ‘We will take you to her.’
The rush of relief was premature. Even he spoke one of his two sidekicks, who had managed to sidle to within a few feet of his discarded gun, flung himself forward onto it. A crash of gunfire beside me, an eruption of blood from the man’s shoulder, a sob from Maura.
I didn’t dare take my eyes off the rest of the bunch.
‘You okay?’ I asked her.
‘Yes.’ A deep intake of breath. ‘I’m okay.’
Maura’s victim was the vocal type. His moans drowned the snivelling of the dumpy guy. The Graf looked as if he were about to rush at me. I discouraged him with a wolfish grin and by aiming the rifle at his belly button.
‘I’ll be charitable and assume he was acting on his own initiative,’ I said to Maximov. ‘Now, do you send someone for Jacqui, or do we play cowboys and indians? Remember, the cowboys always win.
The snigger from Maura suggested she wasn’t totally traumatised.
‘We cannot bring her,’ Maximov said, and there was a hint of resignation in his voice that transmitted a chill through my body. ‘Even if you shoot pieces off me.’
‘All right. We’ll all go together and see her.’
Maximov shrugged. ‘If you insist.’
‘Stay grouped together,’ I ordered. ‘Stragglers will be punished. Somebody help him.’ I used my nose to indicate the guy with the wounded leg.
A waggle with the gun was enough to get them moving under Maximov’s leadership. If it was a wild goose chase he was taking me on, I’d make him sorry.
The end of the hall farthest from the entrance was mostly a wide staircase that split into two narrower ones halfway up. Like a funeral cortege we trudged towards and up it, Maura and I about ten paces to the rear. I glanced Maura’s way as we mounted the first stair. She was pale but otherwise bearing up. This was tough on her. The only blessing was that nobody had died yet, though that was surely just a matter of time.
From the top of the stairs we entered a corridor. Maximov, who was holding Sonia’s hand, came to a stop opposite the first door, his followers bunched up around him. The guy with the bullet in his leg was being propped up by another guy.
‘In here,’ Maximov said.
‘In you go then. All of you.’
Maximov grasped the door handle. Hesitated, clearly reluctant to go in. I shot a glance at Maura. She was watching me, perhaps wondering if I was going to make more examples. I mouthed ‘It’s okay,’ which could have meant anything. It must have meant something to her though, because a smile flickered around her lips.
As if he had come to a difficult decision, Maximov pushed the door open and strode into the room. With encouragement from the rifle the rest traipsed after him.
The room was a bedroom. Unremarkable apart from the mock-antique four poster bed and furnishings. A plush rug on oak flooring, lots of gold-deckled woodwork, walls covered in velvety material with abstract patterns, and in the middle of the floor a very basic but unmistakeable coffin.
So. Was this Jacqui’s last resting place? If he, Maximov, had had her killed or whether she had just died from ill treatment, it was the all the same to me. And it was all down to me. They were all looking at me, some curious, some patently nervous. Sonia with sympathy. Expecting a reaction of some sort. Perhaps, to paraphrase Henry V’s rousing speech before the battle of Harfleur in 1413, the reaction of the tiger.
Twenty-two
By gesture with the rifle, I ordered Maximov and his ungodly crew forward, past the coffin.
‘Open it,’ I said, addressing Maximov. He in turn instructed the Graf who, resentment on his face, stepped forward to do his master’s bidding.
‘No!’ I barked. ‘You, Maximov. You open it.’
He didn’t argue. If he sensed this day wasn’t going to end happily for him, he would want to prolong the moment of reckoning rather than precipitate it.
The lid wasn’t nailed down. He lifted it, and I peered inside, and there she was. Not even laid out neatly, just dumped there in her underwear like a bundle of dirty washing. The rest of her clothing had been tossed on top of her. Maura’s cry of distress was the only sound. I felt numb. Too numb even to kill Maximov. He was standing beside the coffin, the lid still in his hands. No fear showing. He wasn’t the kind to plead for mercy.
‘Oh, Drew …’ Maura said, touching me, an attempt to convey some small comfort. She would know I wasn’t feeling bad out of my affection for Jacqui, though affection there had been, but because of my guilt. I was, and always had been, a man of conscience. Even, once, to the point of contemplation of suicide. Jacqui died not simply because she and I had a relationship, but because of the life I led and the people I did business with.
Sonia was clutching her man’s arm, the sympathy transformed into raw fear. She could figure out what was going through my mind.
Maura was leaning over the coffin; I heard her gasp.
‘Drew! She’s alive!’
Even to verify it for myself, I didn’t dare take my eyes off Maximov and his crew.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes … yes, she just moved.’
Why they would have dumped her alive in a coffin was a mystery to be unravelled. First priority was to herd our enemies into a secure location. Any room with a locking door would do.
Off the bedroom was an ensuite. I sent Maura to check it out, while I kept my gun on our prisoners.
‘No lock,’ she informed me.
‘Never mind. They’ll be concentrated in a small space. They can only get out one at a time.’
To an outpouring of curses and threats from Maximov, we herded them into the ensuite and closed the door. The bedroom drapes were operated by cords with tasselled ends. I ripped one off its mounting and knotted the end around the door knob, using a slip knot to ensure that it would tighten if pulled. With Maura’s help I dragged the bed up to the door, looped the cord through the nearest leg, and back to the handle. It wouldn’t hold for long, but long enough to give us a start when we made a run for it.
Back to Jacqui. She was stirring and groaning. Maura and I helped her out of her resting place and onto the bed. She was in bad shape. Her skin around the tops of her breasts and at her midriff level was bruised and covered in gashes, some of them inflamed. Even horizontal it was obvious she had lost weight. Her hair was matted and smeared across her forehead, her underwear torn. Maura moved to my side, stood looking down at her. Her face was full of compassion.
‘What have they done to her?’ she said, her voice subdued.
‘God knows.’
The video had given me notice of the sort of treatment they were likely to have meted out. At a guess, they had used her as a sex toy. They had probably drugged her to boot, to make her compliant.
‘Jacqui,’ I said, perching on the side of the bed and gently shaking her by the shoulder. ‘Jacqui, it’s me, André. You’re safe now. I’m here to take you home.’
I wondered how this was going down with Maura. Her natural sympathy for Jacqui’s suffering might be tempered by a suspicion that she represented a prospective rival. As a woman of some sensibility, she would quash any resentment, but it would put her humane instincts under strain.
Jacqui stirred. Her eyes opened. Her pupils were enlarged and she looked blindly at me. More evidence of drugs.
‘It’s André,’ I said again. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of now.’
Her lips were dry and cracked. They parted but no words passed between them.
Maura was standing by my side now, a hand on my shoulder. She had nothing to say at this point. She was a stranger to Jacqui and an unrecognised voice was more likely to frighten than reassure her.
‘Get some water, will you?’ I said.
She went off in search of a bathroom.
‘We’re going to get you out of here,’ I said to Jacqui.
Maura wasn’t gone long. She returned sporting a large tumbler of what I hoped was drinkable water. This was not the moment to worry about bacteria. I supported Jacqui’s head, brushed strands of hair away from her mouth, and put the tumbler to her lips. She drank from it. Weakly at first, then in bigger gulps, noisily, some of the water escaping from the corners of her mouth and running over her chin and down her neck.
‘Are you in pain?’ I asked her.
She nodded weakly.
‘Is it really you, André?’ she said, her voice husky, almost inaudible.
‘Sure it is. You can see me, can’t you?’
Her gaze shifted leftwards, took in Maura.
‘This is Maura,’ I said. ‘She’s a good friend.’
‘Hello, Jacqui,’ Maura said on cue.
‘Hello,’ Jacqui whispered.
I figured she was too traumatised to weigh the implications of my being here in the company of an attractive woman. That would come later.
‘We have to get out of here, honey,’ Maura said. ‘Don’t we?’
‘Yeah, and the faster the better. Can you find some warm clothes for Jacqui? Either gender will do.’
As Maura went to rummage in a large, baroque closet, I said to Jacqui, ‘Can you walk?’
‘Walk?’ she said vaguely, frowning, as if I were speaking a foreign language. She elbowed herself laboriously into a semi-sitting position. ‘I can try. I’ll do whatever it takes to get out of here. Can I have some more water?’ Her voice was already strengthening. I handed her the tumbler and she emptied it.
‘Sorry, love, but you’re going to have to get up. We need to see if you’re mobile. If not, I’ll have to carry you.’
She cautiously eased herself off the bed and stood. She was shaky, began to totter and grabbed frantically at my arm.
‘Easy … easy. I won’t drop you.’
She steadied and flicked me a wan smile.
‘Do you think you can walk?’ I asked.
She puffed out her cheeks and, with me acting as a crutch, took a couple of tentative steps.
‘I’ll be okay,’ she said.
Okay if we went at a shuffle.
Together we managed to go as far as the door. As we turned to retrace our steps, Maura was backing out of the closet with an armful of clothing.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked Jacqui.
‘I’ve felt better … thanks.’ Her voice was that of an old woman, thin and tremulous.
‘What next, André?’ Maura said, dumping the clothes on the bed and proceeding to sort through them.
‘Next, we get Jacqui dressed and get out.’
Maura regarded Jacqui as I set her down beside the pile of clothing.
‘She’s not up to it.’
‘She’s got to be up to it,’ I said harshly.
Jacqui’s bra and briefs were in dire need of laundering, but personal hygiene was not high on our list of tasks to do. Working as a team, Maura and I dressed her in two pairs of black leggings, a pair of jeans, two T-shirts, a thin sweater, with a heavy knitted sweater to top it all off. All women’s stuff, not that it made any difference, she wasn’t participating in a fashion parade. Maura’s raid on the closet had turned up no parkas or waterproof coats, but an olive-green thigh-length safari jacket made an acceptable substitute. A pair of mittens with fur lining and a fur trimmed Cossack hat, and some boots with zip fasteners provided protection for her extremities. The boots were a size or more too large. No matter. Walking wasn’t on the agenda for Jacqui. She would be travelling on my back.
The ensuite door opened a crack and tested the integrity of the restraining cord. I put a bullet through the door, aiming high, to avoid hitting anyone. The rattling ceased.
‘We’re as good to go as we’ll ever be,’ I announced, and Maura nodded grimly. Hauling Jacqui wasn’t going to improve our chances. That said, she was the reason we were here in the first place. Leaving her was never on the cards.
The footsteps came from the corridor, arrived at the door as I spun round, ready to pump bullets.
‘Hey, what’s this?’ English, with a Transatlantic inflexion. A guy of medium height, chunky build. Not one of ours, which made him a bad guy.
While I hesitated, reluctant to gun down an apparently unarmed man, he shot off down the corridor, yelling for reinforcements. Going after him was out of the question. We needed to get moving in the opposite direction, and make ourselves scarce.
Jacqui protested when I hauled her onto my back. Maura grimaced when she realised what I was planning, but both of us knew it was the only alternative.
‘Wrap your arms around my neck,’ I told Jacqui. ‘I can take your weight, but I need you to hold on to leave my hands free. Can you do that?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, and proved it by almost throttling me.
Almost certainly we were in for a scrap before we got clear of the castle. On my own, mobile and well-armed, that would have been fine by me. But with Maura and Jacqui both in the line of fire it wasn’t fine at all.
A choice now had to be made. We could retrace our steps to the world outside, or make for the front entrance, or hide out somewhere and hold them off. For how long though, with limited ammunition at our disposal?
The front entrance was the closest point of exit. I settled for that.
‘Follow me,’ I said and went flat out for the stairs. Jacqui had never been heavy when healthy; now she weighed so little I was barely slowed by her weight on my back. At the corner I pulled up, Maura bumping into me – actually, into Jacqui – a second later. A quick peek assured me that the alarm had not yet spread this far. We went down the stairs hand in hand. I didn’t need to force the pace, Maura was right there alongside me.
As our feet hit the stone flags simultaneously, a gun cracked over to our right.
‘Down!’ I yelled, and again Maura needed no urging.
‘You okay?’ I said to Jacqui, who was still clinging like a vine to my neck, despite my dive to the floor.
‘Yes … yes, don’t worry about me.’
Sprawled on the flagstones, I brought up the rifle and loosed off a few shots at a doorway, where a guy’s head was showing. The shell cases tinkled on the floor. The head retreated fast. I fired again, to make him think twice about getting brave. Then I was up, Jacqui and all, dragging Maura along in my slipstream, and heading off in a new direction towards another archway, as yet unexplored.
We were not yet seriously outnumbered. Three of the original five guys were hors de combat leaving only Maximov and the Graf as threats. Plus the guy in the corridor who might be the same as the one who shot at us. Hence, three, maximum four. I had faced worse odds.
‘Where are we going?’ Maura panted, as we charged under the archway into a short corridor with a door at the end.
‘Anyplace, where nobody shoots at us,’ I answered. ‘Hang on tight, Jacqui.’
She whispered something in my ear. It sounded like ‘I love you,’ so I hoped Maura wasn’t in hearing range.
As far as I was aware, with my sparse knowledge of the geography of the place, we weren’t anyplace near an exit. We needed to get out of the castle, put some distance and a few thousand trees between us and Maximov’s crowd. Behind us came a fusillade of shots, bullets whining and ricocheting, but by then we were through the doorway, finding ourselves in an ultra-modern, sumptuously equipped kitchen. A man popped up from behind a counter unit, fired too hastily. I dropped him with a single shot from the rifle. Not even Maura could object to that. By now she was probably too scared to let her ethics interfere with our survival.
I estimated I had used up more than half a magazine. I replaced it with my other full twenty-rounder. My human backpack wasn’t yet affecting my wind and only slowing me a little. I could feel her breath on my left ear.
We carried on past the guy I had shot. He was dead all right; the steel-cased round had gone clean through his forehead. Maura, thankfully, didn’t look. Then I noticed the key fob attached to a loop on his belt, and came to halt, slithering a little on the tiled surface.
Maura carried on for a few more paces before stopping and turning.
