Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 60

‘Get down!’ Koenig yelled to Carlyle and Margaret. They were still in the Jag. They both dipped from sight. He quickly knelt and searched the wounded fuel guy. He was unarmed. He stood and kicked him in the face. Put him to sleep. ‘Get ready to take off,’ he said to Pete.

But Pete didn’t move. He seemed rooted to the airstrip. Like a big dumb fence post. His eyes were glued to the fuel guy. They were wide and horrified. Scared. ‘What have you done?’ he shrieked.

Koenig ignored him. He saw that Draper had taken out her SIG and was scanning the horizon. She hadn’t hesitated. She’d gone from relaxed to tactical in a split second. She said, ‘What have you seen?’

‘Wrong boots,’ Koenig replied. ‘Leather, not rubber. Leather boots would rot in this line of work.’

‘That it?’

‘He checked his watch when I asked how long left to refuel. He should have checked the gauge. He’s waiting for something, and I doubt we’ll want to be here when it happens. We have less than two minutes.’

‘Get in the plane, Pete,’ Draper said. ‘Start the engine. Essential preflight checks only. Leave everything else until we’re in the air.’

‘Are you crazy?’ Pete hollered back. ‘We can’t take off. We need to call the cops. Get this psychopath arrested.’

‘That’s an order.’

‘I fucking quit then!’

Koenig saw Pete’s head explode before he heard the crack of a supersonic bullet. Pete’s head was on his shoulders and then it wasn’t. All that was left was a bit of jawbone. Koenig could see his windpipe, all pink and wet. To cause that much damage it had to have been a dumdum bullet. Nasty. Designed to expand on impact and inflict maximum damage.

Pete hit the floor like a bag of wet towels. He was so dead he didn’t even bother to twitch. Draper hunkered down behind the corpse. Used him as cover.

Sentimental.

‘Koenig, will you please get behind something!’ she shouted.

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘We need to know where they are. If they have nothing to shoot at, they’ll stop shooting. We’ll be here all day.’

But to stop her moaning, he took a step to his left. As if to prove her point, a bullet pinged over his right shoulder. Right where his head had just been. Stroke of luck really. The bullet clipped the Gulfstream’s undercarriage. Koenig heard the supersonic crack; then, half a second later, he heard the pop of the gunshot. Sound travels through the air at roughly 332 metres a second. Half a second meant the gun was about 150 metres away. Which meant it had come from the gorse thicket. No wonder they couldn’t see the shooter. Gorse was perfect cover. If he was going to ambush someone here, it’s where he’d have laid up.

Draper had reached the same conclusion. ‘Well done, Koenig,’ she said. ‘Now, get behind that fucking guy you shot.’

Koenig lay next to the unconscious fuel guy. The blood from his stomach wound had started to soak into his pants. He could smell shit. He must have tagged the guy’s bowel as well.

‘Ideas?’ Draper said as a three-round burst made her flinch. She immediately bobbed back up. She wasn’t cowed; she was looking for a way out.

‘We can’t stay here,’ Koenig said.

‘No shit, Sherlock.’

‘But I didn’t hear the supersonic crack just then. Means they’ve switched to low-velocity weapons. Their plans have changed.’

‘Probably when you punched a hole in their guy’s stomach.’

‘Almost certainly,’ he said. ‘The fuel guy knew what time the ambush was due to go down, but they panicked when I shot him. Went too early. And now I’m behind the fuel guy, you’re behind Pete. Bess and Margaret have an engine block between them and the shooters.’

‘A stalemate then,’ Draper said. ‘We can’t move from cover, and because the gorse has been cut down at the end of the airstrip, they can’t flank us.’

‘They can’t take potshots at us all day, though. Someone’ll call the cops. I think they’re considering a frontal assault. It’s why they’ve switched to low-velocity weapons. Easier to use up close.’

‘But there’s no cover and they know we’re armed.’

‘With handguns. They have automatic weapons.’

‘Handguns we know how to use.’

‘They don’t know that, though. Average handgun user can’t hit a car at twenty yards. But automatic weapons are idiot-proof. You point, you shoot. The barrel’s just long enough for the bullet to go where you want it.’

Right on cue, another burst strafed the grass in front of the Gulfstream. It kicked up clods of earth, but it was ten yards short. And then nothing. No guns, no shouted orders. No assault. Just sheep munching on the tough, springy grass. Nothing else moved; nothing else made any noise. The sheep seemed oblivious to the sound of gunfire. Probably used to it. There were a lot of grouse moors in the Cairngorms.

‘What’s happening?’ Carlyle shouted from the Jag. She’d lowered the window and had been listening to them. ‘They’ve stopped shooting.’

‘They have, haven’t they?’ Draper said. ‘You still think they’re coming, Koenig?’

He thought it through. While a frontal assault was their attackers’ only viable option, it was a high-risk strategy. Draper was right; handguns or not, the two of them were armed. And the fuel guy’s gaping stomach wound was proof they weren’t gun-shy. Even with the overwhelming firepower of modern submachine guns, their attackers would still be running towards people shooting from cover. They’d suffer casualties.

‘I think they’ve withdrawn,’ he said. ‘They can’t launch an assault while we’re in cover. Our SIGs would be enough to hold them off. Unless they’re bulletproof, of course.’

Which was when three black-clad figures rose from the gorse. Ominous, like fins in a swimming pool.

‘You had to fucking say it, didn’t you?’ Draper said.