A Hostile State by Adrian Magson (reading eggs books txt) 📗

‘Small enough.’

‘Right. In that case they’ll be scouring the town for her.’

Jesus. Moscow killers and now right-wing terrorists converging on my ass. Correction: mine and Lindsay’s. It was getting to be a crowded field.

‘Wait one.’

Lindsay was tapping me urgently on the arm and pointing towards the open section of the park. Two men with shaved heads and neck tattoos were kicking at a bouncy Labrador that had got a little too friendly. The elderly woman owner was screaming at them in outrage and dragging the dog away as fast as she could.

The men were dressed in tight jeans with head-kicker turn-ups, jump boots and leather jackets, the go-to fashion statement for hard-nosed, right-wing street punks with a bent for aggression. Right here and now, though, after what Callahan had just told me, I knew they were worse than that; they had come looking for Marie-Josée Chesnais.

And they both had their eyes firmly on Lindsay.

‘Portman, what’s going on?’ Callahan’s voice came out of the phone.

‘What does Chesnais look like?’ I asked him.

He gave me a rough description. It matched Lindsay plus fifteen years or so.

‘Stand here and don’t move,’ I told Lindsay, and pushed her against a tree with her back to the men. I gave her the cellphone with Callahan’s voice still squawking out of it, then took the Sig out from my waist and held it down by my leg. The gun felt instantly comfortable, the grip almost moulding itself to my hand. I’d used Sigs a lot over the years and trusted them implicitly.

‘What are you going to do?’ Lindsay asked. ‘There are two of them. You can’t face them both down.’

‘I can’t walk away, either.’ The men had seen Lindsay and drawn an obvious conclusion – that she must be Chesnais. Visual on target. ‘Stay here until I move, then head into town. Don’t look back and don’t stop for anyone. I’ll find you there.’

I stepped out from the trees, checking the position of other visitors to the park. The elderly woman and her dog were far enough away to be safe, helped by a couple of women who’d heard the ruckus. One was on her cellphone, no doubt calling the police. There was nobody else close by, which was a good thing.

I checked that Lindsay wasn’t hanging around and placed myself between her and the men, then walked directly towards them, drawing their attention. We were about fifty feet apart and closing fast. Any second now they’d have to make a decision about who or what I was, whether to go after Lindsay or deal with me first.

I made sure that I stayed centre-point in their field of vision and kept walking.

TWENTY-EIGHT

‘Fous le camp!’ one of the punks snarled at me and motioned for me to get out of his way. He was bean-pole thin and the ugly zig-zag tattoo on his throat was shaded red like a blood vessel about to burst. He probably thought it made him look mean and tough, but it didn’t.

When I didn’t move he upgraded the threat level by producing a handgun. He pushed it towards me, waving me to move to one side. I figured he’d written me off as a no-threat bystander who’d scare easy. Big mistake.

The way he was holding the gun, gangbanger-style and sideways on was a sure sign he’d been watching too many lousy gangster flicks and thought it looked cool. It was no way to get off an accurate shot but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

His colleague meanwhile was moving off to one side and shouted something I didn’t catch, but the meaning was clear: he was telling him to blow me the fuck away so they could get the woman and finish the job.

By now we were twenty feet apart. The man with the gun shouted something else and I could see his knuckles going white as he debated pulling the trigger. That’s the trouble with extremists: they’re short on limitations and high on hate. Anyone who doesn’t agree with them is an enemy and therefore to be pulped.

It was about as close as I wanted to get.

I stepped two fast paces sideways and tossed the baguette in his face. He flinched and used his free hand to bat the bread away and discovered that accurate shooting, especially up close, is all about cool nerve and alignment. He had no nerve and the idiot way he was holding his gun meant he instinctively over-adjusted and the barrel wavered off-target.

Even so he got off a panic shot which went past me by about a yard and snapped harmlessly into a tree-trunk. He pulled the trigger again and scowled when nothing happened. He gave it another try.

Trigger-jam.

I didn’t want to take a chance on it clearing, so I shot him in the leg. All this happened within a second or two. The shots were loud, setting off a flurry of birds from the trees above our heads. Someone screamed in the distance followed by some shouting and barking, the dogs latching on to the tension in the air.

In a hunting-happy country like France and with an armed police force, a lot of people and dogs knew what a gunshot sounded like.

The wounded skinhead squealed and dropped his gun, then fell over with his leg pumping blood. His pal swore in shock and dragged a gun from his jacket, but he was way too slow reacting. I ran at him before he could untangle the safety on his weapon and slapped him hard under the chin with the Sig. The blow knocked him backwards onto the grass, his eyes wide open with shock. Then the lights went out and he lost all further interest.

I quickly checked his pockets for ID and found a licence, a cellphone, a crumpled pack of cigarettes and some cash. Extremism on a budget. The phone was switched on but there was no photo. So, not part of the kill-me plot. I didn’t have time to check the