Chapter Twenty-Three

Ben clicked the door shut and walked into the room. In his hands was the stubby AKS he’d taken from one of the men. He had it trained precisely on Kamal’s head. At this range, he didn’t need to use the sights. A three-shot burst at three yards, and the walls would need yet another fresh coat of paint.

‘Lose the gun,’ Ben said.

Kamal was pale. ‘Who are you?’

‘Lose the gun,’ Ben repeated. ‘Or I’ll kill you. I won’t ask you again.’ As he said it, he could see how fast Kamal was recovering from the surprise. He wasn’t their leader for nothing. He was a far more redoubtable adversary than any of them. Quick, smart and very mean. Ben’s senses were on full alert and his finger was on the trigger. The AKS probably had a pull of about six pounds, maybe seven. He had about five pounds on it already.

Kamal frowned. Glanced down at the gun that was still hanging at his side. He relaxed his fingers, and the weapon dropped straight down to the floor, an inch from his feet.

‘Kick it away,’ Ben said. ‘And let’s have that Glock, too.’

Kamal paused a beat. I’m impressed, his eyes said. He nudged the AKS with his shoe. It slid across the floor. Then, very slowly, he drew back his long coat until it cleared the Cordura holster on his belt. He unsnapped the retaining strap and eased the pistol out between forefinger and thumb. Held it out at arm’s length and flicked his wrist. The gun clattered to the floor a couple of feet away.

He kept his eyes on Ben the whole time. There was a glitter of something in them. As though he found the whole thing amusing.

‘Now it’s going to be your turn to talk,’ Ben said. ‘I want to know a few things. Like what you want with Morgan Paxton’s research.’

Kamal gazed down the muzzle of Ben’s AKS, then looked up, fixing him with a cocky glare. The faintest hint of a smile appeared on his lips. ‘You would just love to know, wouldn’t you?’

‘Then make me happy.’

‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ Kamal said. ‘You all will. The day is coming.’

Ben frowned. ‘What does that mean?’

But Kamal just smiled more widely. He took a step backwards, over one of the bodies, away from Ben, towards the window.

Ben took a step forwards, keeping a steady distance between them. ‘Don’t move any further,’ he warned.

A sudden sound behind him made him whirl around, ready to fire. For an instant he thought there were more of them.

It was the landlord. He was bleary-eyed and unshaven, wearing a vest and shorts. ‘I thought I heard someth-’

His voice trailed off mid-word. He took in the guns. The corpses. His face froze into an expression of horror.

Ben turned back to Kamal, but it was already too late. Two seconds was too long to leave a guy like him unguarded. Kamal plucked his hand from his coat pocket and lobbed something across the room, then turned and crashed through the window and out onto the fire escape.

The object rolled across the floor.

Fragmentation grenade.

Ben dived back through the open door, hauling the landlord with him out into the hallway. The guy was heavy and clumsy. As Ben yanked him out of the way of the impending blast, he crashed down on him with all his weight.

About half a second after that, the grenade detonated in the confined space. The explosion ripped through the apartment. Shrapnel tore into everything and a fireball rolled out of the doorway as the frame and door shattered into a million tumbling splinters. The wall burst outwards into the hallway, pieces of masonry spinning through the air.

In the aftermath of the blast was the stunned, deafened, disorientated silence that follows every explosion. Through the smoke and dust Ben could see his hand lying in front of his face. It was white with powdered masonry, spattered with blood. He struggled to focus. Saw his fingers twitch and contract into a fist, and realised the hand was still connected to his body. Something was pressing down on him, making it hard to breathe. He tried to get up, heave the weight off him. It was the body of the landlord, crushing him. A big arm fell limp at the man’s side.

Ben rolled out from under him. Through the terrible ringing in his ears he could hear the high-pitched whine of smoke alarms and, somewhere beyond that, the screams of a woman. He staggered to his feet. Looked down at the landlord. The man was dead. His chest and face were a bloody mess from where he’d absorbed the blast of lethal shrapnel.

Ben checked himself all over with trembling hands. He knew he could be badly injured, even if he didn’t feel it yet. Smashed nerve endings and pumping adrenaline could mask just about anything in the first moments before you even knew you were hit. But all the blood on him belonged to the landlord. He didn’t have a scratch on him.

Then he remembered. Kamal.

With his ears still whining from the blast, Ben leaped over the dead man, sprinted down the burning hallway and bounded down the stairs four, five, six at a time. Burst out into the street. A crowd of people had gathered, pointing up at the smoke that poured from the apartment window. Three or four of them were already on their phones, calling for emergency services.

People stared as Ben streaked past, broken glass crunching under his feet. He couldn’t see Kamal anywhere.

An engine revved. The grating roar of a diesel being pushed way too hard. Someone in a desperate hurry. He whipped around just in time to see Kamal peering wild-eyed out of the van window before it lurched away from the kerb across the street and took off, smoke belching from its exhaust.

Ben sprinted after it. Running for all he was worth, he caught up with the van. His straining fingers closed around the black metal handle of the back door, and he felt the joints of his wrist and elbow and shoulder being stretched as the vehicle accelerated manically down the street. He held on. The van picked up more speed and now he was running in giant strides, the road flashing by under his feet. He tried to wrench the door open, so that he could clamber inside and get at the driver.

But the doors were locked. The van kept accelerating, engine screaming up through the gears. Ben lost his footing, stumbled and felt his knee grate on the road as he went down. For a short distance he was dragged along. Somehow he regained his footing and he was running again. His fingers were screaming to let go of the handle.

A blare of horns. The van swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle. Ben was thrown sideways and the handle was torn from his grip. He tumbled and rolled on the tarmac and came to a stunned halt at the kerbside.

As he looked up, all he could see was the back of the white van rapidly disappearing into the distance. At the top of the street it skidded left, and then it was lost in the traffic and out of sight.

Ben thumped the road with a bleeding fist. He was aware of the people staring at him from the pavement. Someone was yelling in Arabic, words he didn’t register.

He clambered painfully to his feet, and started walking in the same direction as the van. He didn’t look back.

He was half a block away by the time he heard the howl of approaching sirens.