all part of it? All I’d be doing would be exposing the rest of the students to danger.
The only weapon I had on me was the small folding knife in my jacket pocket. I don’t think even the Swiss Army are expected to actually engage the enemy with one of those. Ah well.
As soon as the men had disappeared round the corner of the house I sprinted for the cover of the terrace wall. I blanked out the pain in my chest, pushed it down to another level. There’d be plenty of time to worry about how much it hurt later. I crept up the steps, keeping low, but there was nobody on the terrace itself and nobody else waiting behind the French windows.
The windows themselves were unlocked. I opened them as little as I could get away with and slipped in through the gap. I had a sudden flashback to my covert entry to the indoor range, and hoped this wasn’t going to end the same way. Besides anything else, I didn’t think I was up to much of a fight.
I moved through to the open front hallway, staying on my toes across the echoing tiled floor. It was empty. For a moment I stood there, listening, assessing my options. Then I heard muffled guttural voices coming from the dining hall.
Something told me that opening the dining hall doors would not be in my best interests. Instead I took the small corridor off to the side, the one that led direct to the kitchens. On the run-up towards lunch the place should have been a hive of activity, but even the overhead lights were off. Cautiously, I moved deeper. There was enough daylight coming through from the adjoining room for me not to trip over anything noisy on the way.
I stayed down below the level of the industrial stainless steel kitchen units, comforting myself with the thought that at least if anyone started shooting at me there’d be plenty of furniture that was solid enough to hide behind.
Big serving hatches had been knocked through between the two rooms, so it wasn’t difficult to get a view of what was going on in there. What I saw didn’t exactly reassure me.
Two more men with Uzis were holding the Manor’s cooks and domestic staff spread out along one side of the room. They’d been forced to their knees facing the wall, far enough apart not to be able to communicate in whispers, their hands on their heads. Judging from the way they were drooping, they’d been in that position for some time.
One of their guards stood up on the dais, while the other patrolled along the backs of them, walking with measured footsteps, occasionally pausing behind one or another. It was a move designed to play on their nerves, keep them frightened and on edge. These men were not just professionals, I realised, they were experts at intimidation too.
Carefully, I backed away and returned to the main hallway, with my brain turning over furiously. If they were holding the staff hostage, surely the men couldn’t be working for the Major. In that case, alerting Todd, O’Neill and Figgis was probably a damned good idea, particularly if any of them happened to be carrying the keys for the armoury.
Footsteps coming from the corridor opposite the dining hall snapped me into action. I leapt for the nearest doorway, only to find the door itself was locked. The footsteps were growing louder every moment. Cursing under my breath, I flattened myself against the door, gripping the knife in my pocket.
I didn’t even have time to extend any of its array of useful blades before the man appeared. He passed within inches of my doorway, but fortunately his back was towards me and I remained unseen. He was wearing a good quality dark brown leather jacket and his hair was long, tied back into a ponytail with an elastic band.
He paused, and for a second I thought the game was up. My heart bounced, I stopped breathing, but all he did was tuck something under his armpit so he had both hands free to light a cigarette.
My first thought, whimsically enough, was that the Major would strenuously object. My second, with some amazement, was that the object under his arm was the barrel of a handgun. He’d momentarily let go of it to work his lighter.
I knew I wasn’t going to get another chance like this.
I stepped forwards and silently jammed the cold hard end of the folded knife against the back of the man’s neck, just under the base of his skull where his hair was pulled back. I was close enough to see the dusting of dandruff on his collar.
He tensed instinctively, then froze, too much of a pro to even attempt to outmanoeuvre the gun he clearly believed I was holding on him. I suppose I was just lucky I wasn’t dealing with an amateur.
Still without speaking I reached for his gun. He thought about clamping his arm down tight onto it, but when I jerked the handle of the knife a little harder into his neck he capitulated. It dropped heavily into my hand.
The sight of it made me swallow. The damned thing was enormous, a .50 calibre chromed Desert Eagle with the optional ten-inch barrel. It was a gangster’s trophy piece – and a rich gangster, at that. Not quite what I was expecting from the urban commandos who’d apparently taken over the rest of the Manor.
I slipped the knife back into my pocket and stepped back away from the man, covering him with the captured Desert Eagle. I could feel the pull as my biceps flexed with the effort of keeping the muzzle up. He risked turning his head to look at me then, revealing razored sideburns cut to emphasise the line of his cheekbones.
The surprise and anger flared briefly in his eyes, then died, replaced by a cold blankness that almost made me shiver. This man was a killer without doubt, and would be only too willing to prove it when I gave him the opportunity. There was no “if” about it.
He wasn’t a bulky man. In fact, he was surprisingly slender under that big coat, which gave me the impression he was higher up the food chain than just hired muscle.
Not taking my eyes off him for a second, I indicated with the Desert Eagle that he should retreat a little way back down the corridor he’d just come out of. I was acutely aware that I’d been standing with my back to the dining hall doorway and was terribly exposed. If either of the men in there chose this moment to answer a call of nature and search for the bathroom, I was going to become the filling in a bad guy sandwich.
I gripped the huge gun in both hands, my left wedged to support my right, keeping it high enough to bring into position fast if Sideburns made a move I didn’t like the look of. As he backed away from the hall he never took his eyes off me once. The intensity of his gaze was unnerving. He was totally focused on me, waiting for that moment of weakness that he knew would come.
“OK sunshine,” I said when we were out of earshot of the dining hall. “Just what the hell are you up to?”
His contempt was palpable. If I was important, it said, I would obviously know exactly what the game was. He shrugged, and spat out what could have been total gibberish in something that sounded a little like Russian. He might have been pretending that he didn’t understand English, but the gleam in his eye told me a different story.
I raised my eyebrow and let the barrel of the gun drop a little.
“OK, if you insist on doing this the hard way,” I said, conversationally so there was no way he could pick up the meaning just from my tone. “If I have to ask you again I’m going to put a bullet into your right thigh. With this cannon I’m almost certain to hit your femoral artery, in which case you will bleed out within minutes. Does that make things any clearer for you?”
Just for a fraction of a second, he hesitated. Whether it was because he genuinely believed I might carry out my threat, I wasn’t sure. With a gun this big he must have known that if I did he’d most likely either die from the shock of losing his leg in the blast, or at best he’d face amputation. It seemed that his comprehension of both my words and their meaning was excellent. The reason he hesitated was because neither option appealed to him much.
“We’re here to find the boy,” he said reluctantly, his English heavily accented, but perfectly idiomatic.
“Where’s the Major?”
He flicked his eyes back further along the corridor, in the direction of Gilby’s study.
“OK,” I said. “After you.”
He balked at that, getting his second wind. After all, his courage had faltered for a moment and because of it he’d let himself be captured by a mere woman. Now his pride was goading him towards some reckless action to compensate. By my reckoning, it made him roughly twice as dangerous.
I smiled at him, a thin smile, full of ice. “I know you will kill me if you can,” I said, my voice low and strangely detached, so that it didn’t sound like it belonged to me at all. “If stopping you from doing that means I have to kill you first, I won’t hesitate, I promise you.”
