‘I understand.’
‘Are you proficient with that firearm?’ he said, pointing towards the rifle Shepherd was holding.
‘I’ve fired a few hunting rifles in my time.’
‘Good. Keep it muzzle down, sir. Unless I shout for back-up fire.’
Shepherd sighed. ‘We’re dealing with a television researcher and a camera girl.’
Carl turned to him. ‘With respect, we’re dealing with two people who saw their friend shot dead. They’ll fight or flee. Either way, we’ve got to be ready to bag ’em.’
Shepherd conceded the point. ‘Yes, you’re right, Carl. Shall we?’
Carl took a step towards the hut’s entrance, his pistol with mounted nightscope raised before him, in his other hand the tracking device, still counting down the distance, but now only tens of yards away. He took a step up into the hut, his boots clunking on the dry wooden floor. Shepherd watched him whip sharply from side to side, checking the corners, checking every angle.
‘Clear,’ he reported quietly. ‘Room full of bunkbed frames. A long bench each side, wood stove at this end, some lockers. The signal’s coming from the far end.’
He stepped further inside, making his way slowly to the middle of the floor between the two facing rows of bunk frames. Shepherd stepped up to the doorway of the hut. It was the only way in and the only way out; as good a place as any to hold position. He knelt down in the doorway, holding the rifle muzzle down as Carl had told him, imagining for a fleeting moment that he was a real soldier doing a house-to-house through some Baghdad back street.
He grinned in the dark.
This is fun.
‘Checking this end first,’ whispered Carl, sweeping his nightscope across the stove and around the nearest bunks. He crouched down low and looked quickly beneath the bottom bunks. ‘Signal’s here… can’t see anyone, though.’
Shepherd decided to flush them out. ‘Julian! Rose! We know you’re in here! Your phone was tagged. I’m sorry, but there’s no getting away. You best come out.’
There was no response. A gust of wind played with the skylight shutter in another bunkhouse further along.
‘Why don’t you come out? I don’t really want to add to the body count if I can help it.’
Nothing.
‘Grace was a mistake. Carl reacted too quickly. He didn’t need to shoot her. I’m truly sorry about that.’
Shepherd held his breath and listened more closely to the faint sounds coming from inside the hut: the rustling, skittering sound of a rat, the soft moan of a gentle wind eddying inside amongst the rafters
… and yes, he could hear it now, the stuttering breath of someone trying to be ever, ever, so quiet.
‘Come on out. We’ve got some matters to discuss. We’ll come to some arrangement.’
Carl took another few steps forward, panning his scope left and right between the bunks that he passed by. ‘The signal’s ten yards from my position, right ahead.’
Shepherd swallowed back a nervous giggle. This was getting to be too much fun.
‘Oh, you know what? Screw this… I’m lying. You’re both going to die. I might kill you quickly, or I might decide to have some fun first. It really depends how much you piss me off right now.’
Shepherd listened intently again as the last vibration of his voice faded. He could hear that staccato breathing, faster now, fluttering with fear.
Carl took another few steps forward, whip-panning left-right. ‘I’m nearly on the signal. Can’t see ’em yet, though.’
‘One of them, at least, is in here. Can’t you hear the breathing? It’s the young woman.’
Carl listened. ‘No, not yet.’ He looked at the display in his hand. ‘The signal’s just ahead, to the left, between two bunks.’
Carl took another few steps forward, crouching low to sweep beneath the bunks on both sides, then finally he drew up to where the signal was coming from. His display read just over two yards. Through the nightscope, he saw something lying on the floor.
‘Shit!’ he snapped out angrily.
It was the BlackBerry. He knelt down to pick it up. ‘The fuckers ditched it and ran.’
‘No!’ Shepherd called out from the doorway. ‘I can hear… I can hear her breathing. The girl’s right in here with us.’
Carl held his breath and listened. He could hear nothing. He picked up the phone and then heard something else — the soft puff of exhaled air and the rustle of sudden movement from right beside him. He swung the nightscope to his left, just in time to catch a blurred streak of movement from the top bunk of the frame beside him.
With a sickening penetrative crunch, his eyes saw stars and his ears whistled and rang with a deafening white noise — the sound of his mind going into traumatic shock. His finger convulsed on the trigger and fired off half a dozen rapid rounds.
Julian’s right thigh was punched hard. He heard the crack of his femur.
‘Rose! Get out of here! RUN!’ he screamed, letting go of the wooden handle, and watching Barns slump to the floor with the large, rusty canting hook through the back of his skull, little rapid breaths puffing out of his mouth like a steam train.
He heard the clump and scrape of feet on the wooden floor, someone scrambling. Then he heard Rose whimper and cry out in the dark on the other side of the hut — the sound of a struggle, and her desperate, muffled cries.
Then a heavy thud.
Oh Christ, no.
Julian struggled with the pain in his leg, trying to pull himself out of the bunk.
‘Rose?’ he called out.
It was quiet.
‘Rose!’
Grimacing, he managed to swing his leg over the wooden bunk frame and lower himself to the floor. By the faint, ghostly blue glow of light from a device in Barns’s twitching hand, Julian could see the metallic glint of something smooth on the floor; the man’s gun.
As he reached down for it, everything went black.
CHAPTER 86
Sunday
Sierra Nevada Mountains, California
The young woman was crying, her eyes fixed on the gun. Cooke, lying beside her in a small pool of blood from a cut on his scalp, was unconscious. He was breathing noisily, blowing bubbles in his own blood.
He looked at Carl. He was quite clearly dead. Pity. The man had been an extremely loyal and useful acolyte.
William Shepherd sat on the bunk in silent contemplation, Carl’s pistol held in one hand resting in his lap, the more cumbersome rifle on the bunk beside him.
‘Wh-what are y-you going… t-to do?’ whimpered the woman.
Shepherd put a finger to his lips. ‘Shh.’
He needed quiet to think. There were considerations to make, risk assessments. He had to think this through logically before he did something that couldn’t be undone.
Why are you waiting?
The voice was very loud now in his head, almost uncomfortably so.
‘I have to think,’ Shepherd replied aloud.
Kill them.
