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

‘What are you doing?’ she shouted, untangling herself from the car.

‘Get into the trees and stay down,’ I shouted and started running back towards the turning. I could hear the Evoque coming up fast, its engine sounding brutally stressed as the driver fought to catch us. Then I heard the engine note drop sharply and the tyres protesting as he braked hard to follow us into the turn.

By the time the busted grill and headlight came into view round the corner I was standing just fifty feet away in the centre of the track. I had my feet planted and both hands held out front holding the pistol steady, waiting and breathing easy. It threw my mind back to an exercise a million years ago, just one of many battle scenarios we had to train for that were unlikely ever to happen yet still had to be practised, testing the nerves and the will.

The look of shock on the driver’s face as he clocked me in the centre of the track was almost funny. Pity I didn’t have time to enjoy it.

Just for a second I thought he was going to stop out of instinct. Then he hit the gas and the engine fought to gain forward traction on the soft surface, suddenly growing larger as it roared towards me.

I fired twice at the driver and twice more at a man on the passenger side who’d been waving the machine pistol. Then I stepped off the track and watched as the big car gave a frantic wobble before the front wheels turned and took it off into the trees.

There was a ripping sound of devastated vegetation as bushes and saplings were torn down by the big car, ending with a bang as it buried itself into something solid and unyielding. A long hiss of steam and the engine stalled and went dead. In the silence that followed, someone screamed once, then stopped.

I checked behind me to make sure Lindsay was out of the way, then crossed the track. The car was still upright but only just. It was tilted over towards the passenger side, and I could see an arm hanging down limply out of the remains of the window. I moved up carefully alongside the rear door and saw a body crumpled in the rear foot-well. There was a lot of blood and he’d got a visible head-wound, his neck at a crooked and impossible angle.

I placed the Sig’s barrel against the front passenger’s head as a precaution, but he was no threat. A thick branch had entered the front window space and pinned him to the seat. The machine pistol was lying on the floor at his feet.

The driver was still alive but only just. He was breathing with difficulty and I could see why: he hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt and the air bag had only partially inflated. The air around him was a haze of white corn-starch used to keep the bag pliable while stored, and the steering wheel had done major damage to his face.

I reached in to his inside pockets and found a cellphone. The screen opened and there was my photo again. I debated going through the other men’s pockets because they were sure to be carrying the same image, but we didn’t have time. I had to face it that sooner or later this was going to get out if it hadn’t already and I would become the mystery man everyone wanted to speak with.

I trekked back to the car and met Lindsay as she stepped out from the trees.

‘Are they still alive?’ she asked, as we climbed in. She dropped the Beretta in my bag almost with a gesture of relief and sat back, her face frozen.

‘Mostly,’ I lied, because she didn’t need to know that she had killed at least one of them, the guy in the back. ‘But they’re pretty busted up.’

She nodded while I turned the car round and got us back on the road. She didn’t look at the Evoque as we passed and I didn’t blame her.

A little while later she said, ‘How do you deal with this each time?’

‘I push it down,’ I replied. ‘It’s the only way.’ As explanations went it wasn’t deep or clever and a psych would laugh at it. But it was as near to the truth as I was ever likely to get.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘You did brilliantly back there.’

‘Thank you. It didn’t feel like it.’ She took a deep breath and said, ‘Is this ever going to end?’

‘It has to,’ I said with as much optimism as I could manage. It had to end sometime; the only thing I couldn’t figure out was how. Or when.

THIRTY-THREE

The lobby of Bradley Dalkin’s Rockville, Washington apartment building was neat, clean and devoid of character, a unit by appearance more suited for worker ants to live in but apparently not to socialize. Modern living for the mid-level governmentally employed. To David Andrews it had all the excitement of an office block and he half expected to have a uniformed guard pop out from a cubbyhole and ask to see some ID.

In fact getting inside had been simple; no lock-picks or forced entry, not even waiting for one of the residents to come along and provide a simple open door for them to slip through. The door opened at the first push by Agent Cahill and they were in and staring at a bank of mail lockers against one wall. Discreet LED lights in the ceiling tiles gave off a cold light reflecting from the metal boxes, lending the scene a slightly clinical air.

Warner tapped on the locker assigned to Dalkin. It didn’t spring open but gave off the hollow boom of an empty space. He turned and headed for the stairs with Cahill and David Andrews close behind. They arrived on the second floor without encountering anyone and stopped at Dalkin’s door. Warner motioned Andrews