‘So what are we going to do with you, Mr Mason? That’s the question. You’re the only person who’s ever survived me being paid to kill them. It looks like that’s about to change. I don’t follow events in this country very much but I do know that some very important people want you dead.’
‘So why don’t we put this gentleman out of his misery?’ said Redbeard, giving me a cheery smile, as if he’d just offered to buy me a drink.
‘Let’s see what the client has to say,’ said The Wraith, taking a phone from her pocket and stepping away as she made a call.
I glanced across at Redbeard. He was standing only ten feet away from me. If he was a bad shot and I bolted fast enough he might not be able to put a bullet in me before I made it round the corner and out of sight. But he’d have to be a very bad shot and I’d have to be very, very fast. I was sweating as the adrenalin pumped through me.
‘Don’t even think about it, Mr Mason,’ he said.
‘I’ve got half a million pounds stashed away,’ I told him. ‘That’s a hell of a lot of rands. Let me go, and it’s yours. All of it. You could retire.’
‘It’s a tempting offer, but I’m afraid double-crossing my clients would be no good for my professional reputation.’
‘You’ll end up dead anyway. She’ll double-cross you. She’s a snake.’
‘I think you’re being unduly pessimistic. Even people in our profession have a code of conduct, and my friend here is considered very reliable.’
I looked across at The Wraith as she talked quietly on the phone with her back to me, having a conversation that would effectively decide whether I lived or died in the next few minutes. Now that it was coming to it, I was suddenly terrified.
I swallowed hard. ‘Who hired you?’ I asked Redbeard.
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Why? I’m going to die anyway.’ I wanted to keep him talking, hoping he’d let his guard down for just one second, giving me a half chance to do something – anything.
The Wraith ended her call and replaced the phone in her jeans pocket, turning back to face me.
It was the moment of truth. I felt my jaw tighten and my heart beat faster. It made me recall the phrase ‘better to die on your feet than live on your knees’. I had a feeling that one was written by someone who wasn’t just about to die.
‘My client would love to spend some time making you suffer for all the inconvenience you’ve caused him but there’s no time for that. I’m afraid it’s goodbye.’
She took a step towards me, a relaxed, almost bored expression on her face, and it occurred to me then, even as she raised the gun, that a woman as strikingly attractive and undoubtedly intelligent as her could have done anything in life, and yet here she was: nothing more than a lowlife, flint-hearted murderer.
My whole body tensed. All my attention was focused on the barrel of the gun. My life didn’t even flash before me. I was simply frozen to the spot, knowing that in the next second it would all be over.
And then the shots exploded out of nowhere.
I grabbed my gun from the ground as The Wraith spun round and went down, hitting the concrete hard. At the same time, Redbeard, who instinctively seemed to know where the shots were coming from, took cover behind the van doors, already swinging his gun round towards me.
I was already running round the side of the house as I cracked off a shot at Redbeard. It missed, but it did the trick of putting him off as he fired two wild rounds at me, the sound of his bullets cracking across the night sky. Keeping low, I fired twice back, ignoring the shots being returned, and then I was sprinting along the lawn in the direction of the back gate, almost slipping on the wet grass in my haste.
The shooting that had interrupted my execution and saved my life had stopped now. In fact, all the shooting had stopped.
I took a look over my shoulder and saw Redbeard barely ten yards behind me, down on one knee ready to take a shot.
I dived to the ground, swinging round and opening fire at just the moment he started shooting at me. I felt a bullet whistle past my face, but I kept firing and a round struck him in the shoulder, knocking him backwards.
Immediately, I scrambled to my feet and dashed for the gate and freedom.
But before I got there, I heard the back door to the house open and, as I glanced back, I saw The Wraith in the doorway, unhurt and already taking aim at me. I thought she’d been hit, but if she had, she wasn’t hurt badly.
I had to give these guys their dues, they were persistent, but neither of them was as desperate as I was. I’d been a split second from death and somehow had been granted a second chance, and I wasn’t going to let it go.
The Wraith started firing immediately and I had no doubt she was aiming just in front of me so that I’d literally run straight into her bullets. Instead, I swerved, slipping over on the wet grass in the process, and fired my last two rounds in her general direction. She darted back behind the door frame and I dropped the gun, sprinted like an Olympian towards the back gate and pulled myself up and over it in one go,
