‘They packin’?’ asked Fifi, suddenly on her feet, shotgun in hand. ‘You think I should go get the worm?’
‘Too far away, cannot see.’
‘They’re packin’,’ sighed Pete. ‘Come on,’ he said, pushing himself up out of the chair, ‘it’s started. And yeah, Fifi – go break out the worm. And get your cannon too.’
10
PITIЙ-SALPКTRIИRE HOSPITAL, PARIS
The French girl’s shriek was a raw, animal sound. Within it roiled pain, violation, horror and outrage. Her face, a mask of dark, primal emotions, raged at Caitlin over the unwavering muzzle of the Glock 23. The assassin had long ago stopped counting the number of men and women whose last seconds she’d seen through crosshairs or iron gun sights, and she knew from that face that Monique’s cry was not a plea for life. It was a scream of protest at what had already been taken from her. Trust and intimacy and a whole world in which Caitlin (or Cathy, as Monique knew her) was a friend, not a liar and a murderer.
A hot flush washed over the Echelon agent, dizzying, unexpected. She let her gun hand fall to her side, tired of it all. And she might still use Monique to get to al Banna. If that still mattered.
‘If you stay here you will die,’ she said. ‘Come with me right now, and you might live.’
The emergency room remained a still life by Goya. The first cries of staff and patients had been silenced by the shots she’d fired into the heads of her would-be killers – or captors. As Caitlin turned for the exit, a spasm of movement passed through the onlookers, as each flinched away from the line of her gaze. One man in a white coat, a doctor most likely, took a few hesitant steps in her direction, but a shake of her head and a casual wave of the pistol in his direction arrested any further advance. Caitlin did not check to see whether Monique was following her as she exited the ER. She knew the girl would.
Walking quickly but calmly towards a set of sliding doors, she stripped off her bloodied chambray shirt. The white vest underneath was stained pink but she hid the worst of it with a black leather motorcycle jacket, lifted from the corner of a litter on which a man with a heavily bandaged head lay unconscious. It was too big for her but would have to do for now. The guns, identical models, went into a couple of zippered pockets and she plucked the last of the sensor leads from her filthy hair. A roll of thick surgical tape from a nurse’s trolley went into another pocket. In the last few steps she turned and walked backwards, scanning the room quickly for any more pursuers. Monique was glaring at her with unalloyed loathing, but she was following just a few feet behind, victim of a type of Stockholm syndrome that Caitlin had seen and exploited many times before.
The doors closed on the Pitiй-Salpкtriиre with a chime and the protesting grumble of old rubber wheels in dirty guide rails. Early evening had come with a hard frost and she shivered inside the jacket, thankful for its warmth. Transport was her first and most urgent need, then shelter. When they were safely hidden away she would contact Wales, her overwatch coordinator. Her cover was blown. Her image and the fight in the emergency room had certainly been captured on hospital security video.
‘Where the fuck are we going, Cathy? What are you going to do? You killed those men.
Caitlin shrugged her off, scanning the cars parked in front of the building as she hastened down the steps. A blue Renault Fuego had caught her eye – a good car, easily stolen, and as close to invisible in Paris as she could get on short notice. The front passenger-side window was open a crack.
‘It’s not the same,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’ Monique demanded to know, hurrying to catch up beside her.
Sirens were audible, but there seemed to be hundreds of them, the distinctive warble and wail coming from all points of the compass. The city was alive with their discordant jangling sound.
Traffic along the roads around the hospital grounds was heavy, but grinding forward in fits and starts. Caitlin could see the strobing lights of both police and ambulance vehicles in three separate places. It was impossible to tell whether they were headed in her direction.
‘Killing and murdering are not the same thing. I killed them, sure. But I had good reason. That isn’t murder. It’s self-defence.’
‘Self-defence!’ Monique made a grab for her arm but Caitlin slipped out of her grip with practised ease. ‘You expect me to believe that? You attacked them and killed them like… a… machine! A thing. You are no activist. You are no surfer!’ Monique spat the last word at her.
‘Well, I used to surf, but I’m also a soldier,’ Caitlin replied. ‘Now, get in the fucking car, if you want to get out of this alive. Those men back there, they were soldiers too, like me. And there’ll be more of them looking for us.’
Caitlin retrieved one of the pistols from the leather jacket and swung the butt of the handle into the window, smashing it open and causing Monique to jump with surprise. There were over a dozen witnesses watching her, but nobody made any attempt to intervene as she popped the lock. More people came spilling out of the ER doors, some of them pointing her way, but none made any move towards her. It wouldn’t be long, however, before hospital security, the gendarmes or something worse turned up.
‘Clock’s a-tickin’, Monique. Hop in.’
The front seat of the Fuego was cluttered with papers, a bag of onions and a purse from which spilled a chequebook, iPod, mobile phone, make-up and more keys.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Caitlin. ‘Why not just get a big fucking bumper sticker that says “Steal my stuff”?’
She snatched a sturdy-looking steel pen from the jumble of items and used it to lever her way into the car’s accessory circuits, cracking open the plastic cover beneath the wheel with a couple of violent jerks. She sensed Monique hovering outside and swept the detritus from the seat. ‘Just get in. We’re running out of time.’
The French girl climbed in carefully, as if unwilling to touch the belongings of the unknown owner. Caitlin swore
