“Too much wind and debris here! Go up a flight and keep it covered!”
She conceded and took the stairs two and a time. King was sure she thought he’d follow, but he ran across the lobby, battling with the ferocious wind and checked the scene outside.
King could see a figure in white running across the open ground. He raised his rifle and aimed, ready to take fire a burst in front of the man as he ran, but the figure fell to the sound of a single gunshot. King smiled as he thought of Rashid upstairs. If anybody could make a running shot in one-hundred-mile-an-hour winds, then it was him. He doubted anybody else on the planet could make such a shot. King got closer to the front entrance, sheltering in the lee of the supporting wall. He ducked his head, but when he looked up he saw the attacker getting to their feet and hobbling towards cover. King shouldered the rifle, but the man had reached cover, diving over a low wall and into a line of fir trees.
King battled with the wind but could take the cold no longer. He found himself running back to the stairs, his own survival instinct moving him on, aided by the strength of the wind. He took the stairs two at a time, shouted as he rounded the first flight. “Caroline, it’s me!”
He took the next flight, saw Caroline aiming the pistol at his face. She moved the weapon away, beckoned him up. “We need to get snowsuits on,” she said. “It’s colder in here than it was outside this morning!”
King didn’t answer, but he was cursing himself. The hotel had been so warm. He should have anticipated the ferociousness of the storm, the vulnerability of the glass. He ran with her, stopped as they reached their room. King crouched low and aimed his weapon at the stairwell.
“Get the suits,” he said. “Put yours on, then get upstairs and get everybody to regroup down here. Get the chef and the waitress to lie low…” he was cut off by the blast of an explosion, followed closely by two more. The hotel shuddered and above the cacophony of the wind, falling debris was clearly audible.
“Oh my god!” Caroline exclaimed. She was pulling on her suit, the door to their room open. She tossed King’s suit to him and he put down the rifle to get his legs inside. He pulled it over him, slipped the spare magazines and Walther into the outer pockets. The gloves and beanie followed out through the door and King was grateful for them. He asked Caroline for the extra jacket. She was changed now, handed King the jacket and said, “Are they grenades?”
“Mortars,” King said. With that a dull thud sounded and the hotel shook. He looked at Caroline. “IED,” he said.
“They’re on all sides!”
“Get Rashid and Ramsay down here,” he told her. “Then get the asset. Keep her close, but remember where she was working and the exposure she had to god only knows what…”
Caroline looked at him, then flung herself forward and kissed him. He responded but pulled away and shouldered the rifle. “Be careful,” he said.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Hunting,” he said. He turned and made his way down the corridor taking out his phone and looking at the screen. There was no signal, the storm was simply too violent for that, but the positions of the two dots had frozen in an automatic screen-shot activated when the signal died. He studied the layout. It wasn’t current, but it was a good place to start.
71
King checked the side entrance. It had been forced open and the truck had been pulled forward. The storm outside was battering the trees all around and many had fallen or been uprooted. The wild, relentless and unidirectional vortex rocked the truck from side to side. The loose ice which had been covering the ground and trees in a fine powder of crystals had blown away, and now the swirling debris was predominantly broken twigs, pine needles and fir cones. The noise from the wind was like nothing King had experienced before. Now that he was outside, the sound unmuffled from the inside of the building, the storm sounded as if a helicopter was manoeuvring overhead. With the minimal daylight swallowed up by the dark clouds, King cupped his face to protect himself from the debris, strained his eyes in the gloom and tried to look out towards the wall where the wounded man had taken cover. He couldn’t see anyone, but he suspected the man would either be lying dead behind the wall, having succumbed to his injury, or long gone – the bullet absorbed by a flak jacket and trauma plate. King certainly wasn’t going to risk stepping out into the open to check. The debris alone would make it risky and the storm created too many variables, too much distraction. The risk of walking into the line of fire from either the hunter force or Rashid from above was simply too high.
King stepped out into the maelstrom, the dense clouds now creating an early blackout with precious little ambient light to see by. He took the steps tentatively, aimed the rifle down the side of the hotel, then stepped back and aimed the rifle down the other side. He couldn’t make out any unnatural shapes. No shine, shadow or silhouette either. He started out over the snow, but the night turned to day and the sky tore itself apart with a monstrously bright pulse of sheet lightning. The sky flickered, then turned blacker than before. The rumble of thunder carried on, indicating that the lightning was directly overhead. King blinked the white
