Killing for the Company

Luke made to discharge the Sig almost on autopilot. Nothing. He hurled the handgun in her direction and it hit her wrist just as she fired the snubnose. There was a dull thud, but the round flew harmlessly a couple of feet to Luke’s left. He dived towards her, knocking her head back down on to the ground and wrestling the gun from her fist. Jumping back, he aimed the suppressed weapon at its owner.

‘Two seconds,’ he said.

Maya Bloom was a mess. Her nose gushed blood and the side of her face was bruised and swollen. Neither injury looked like it bothered her a bit. Her eyes flashed.

‘ What’s he planning? ’ Luke pressed as he pushed himself back to his feet.

‘You stupid squaddie, you’ve got it all wrong… ’

‘Listen to me, you bitch. You think I’m not going to kill you? I want to kill you. Does the name Chet Freeman mean anything?’

Her eyes narrowed.

‘Friend of mine,’ Luke said.

‘You’re going to fuck everything up…’ She painfully, defiantly started to stand.

He lunged forward and, with brutal force, brought his knee up into her stomach. She doubled over and Luke slammed his gun down on the back of her head with all the strength he had.

The woman collapsed. A limp, silent heap on the floor.

Luke stood there for a moment, sweat pouring from his body, breathing heavily. A number of gulls landed back on the perimeter walls.

Bending down, he put two fingers to her jugular. A faint pulse. He knew how hard he’d knocked her. She wasn’t waking up any time soon.

Time check: 10.36 hrs. Twenty-four minutes to go. No time to get information out of her. Too dangerous to risk her waking up and becoming active again. He looked her up and down. He bent down and started to remove the laces from her boots. Rolling her on to her front, he yanked her arms behind her back and tied her wrists together, binding one of the laces several times round and finishing it off with a sturdy sledge knot — impossible to untie. With the other lace he bound her legs together. Tied up like that, the only way she was getting off the roof was by jumping.

With Maya Bloom immobilised, Luke turned his attention to her weaponry. The sniper rifle was still lying in its position. To its right was a black rucksack. Luke emptied the contents on to the roof. There were rounds for the snubnose and the sniper rifle; a set of binoculars; and a knife. Its handle was black, its blade white. Luke picked it up. It was light.

Ceramic. Which meant no metal.

He looked over his shoulder at the woman as she lay there out cold. Why would she have a ceramic knife unless she intended to pass through metal detectors with it? Luke felt a brief, grudging measure of professional respect. She knew her trade.

Suddenly he became aware of something from the corner of his eye. He looked over the edge of the rooftop, back towards the Dung Gate. A white van had pulled up on the side of the road nearest the building. Even from this distance Luke could tell it wasn’t a tourist bus. Nor did it have the yellow and white paintwork of a shared taxi. He got down on all fours and took Maya Bloom’s earlier position at the sniper rifle, closing his left eye and examining the scene through the scope with his right.

The scope was powerful, with fine, calibrated cross hairs. Luke moved the sights so they were focused on the palm trees by the gate. He was looking for movement of the leaves, anything that would tell him which direction the wind was blowing. The rifle might not have been zeroed in for him, but he could increase the accuracy of his shots, if it came to that, by taking account of the conditions.

No movement. The wind was still. He redirected the rifle to the white van.

His heart was thumping. What if he did see suspicious individuals? He had no way of making a positive ID. No way of knowing whether he was shooting terrorists or innocents.

A minute passed.

Two.

No movement from the white van. That in itself was suspicious.

A second vehicle approached. A bus. It passed behind the white van before parking up immediately adjacent to it. Luke trained his scope on the side of this second vehicle. He saw Hebrew lettering along the side, and then, underneath, in English, ‘scheiber elementary school’.

‘Shit,’ he muttered.

There was another thirty-second pause before anything happened.

The side door of the van slid open. Luke concentrated on the interior of the vehicle. He could see movement, but there was insufficient light in there for it to be distinct. On the periphery of his vision, he could see the front passenger door of the school bus opening and was aware of a figure stepping out.