Without warning

Bloody footprints led away up the stairs and she heard the creak of a footfall overhead. Oh yes, Caitlin thought, pointing her shotgun at the ceiling. We’ll have that reckoning right now.

She pulled the trigger two, three, four times without giving a second thought to any collateral damage. Not a thought about the families who lived in the building or the crib she had fired beside. Each blast gouged giant plumes of plaster dust and atomised floorboard, which erupted and dropped down, coating the two women like a snowfall. She was rewarded with a strangled cry and a brief, uncontrolled snarl of gunfire, before a dead weight dropped to the floor above.

She looked over her shoulder, out the door behind her, still wary that someone else might show up. But there was no one in sight.

Taking off at speed again, she rushed up the stairs for the second time that morning. A round in the chamber, the Benelli’s muzzle described tight little arcs, as she aimed where she expected to find the body.

He was lying face down and still moving, but barely so. The last shooter, she hoped. Struck three times, once in the femoral artery, to judge by the rivers of rich, almost purple, lifeblood flowing out of him and onto the tacky brown carpet. He’d dropped the assault rifle in his dying spasm and Caitlin used her boot to kick it away, never once taking her aim off the back of his head.

She heard a door open somewhere and yelled out again: ‘Police. Revenez, maintenant!’

The door slammed shut. A child screamed endlessly elsewhere in the building.

Cautiously approaching the downed man, Caitlin kept her eyes on all of his hands and feet, aware that even now he might lash out at her. In his position, if at all possible, she would have. But a thick, glutinous, gargling sound told her he was on the way out. She shouldered the Benelli again, where it clanked against the barrel of the Heckler amp; Koch. Her pistol replaced the long guns and she dropped a knee right into the small of the man’s back, jamming the Glock up against the base of his ear. A pellet had torn off a bite-sized chunk and she ground the gun sight into the bleeding wound for emphasis. He groaned pitiably, but there was very little fight left in him.

‘You don’t have long, Pepe Le Pew. We both know that,’ she snarled, addressing the killer in French. ‘But I could make the last few minutes of your miserable fucking life feel like an eternity’ To drive the point home, she shifted her balance to focus her weight onto a rib that was protruding from an ugly chest wound. A weak, liquid groan escaped from the man beneath her as she felt a nub of bone dig into her knee.

‘Okay, questions. First one: did you shoot my friend downstairs?’

‘I don’t…’

The Glock gouged out a chunk of meat from his ruined ear and he found the strength for a full-bodied scream.

‘Yes. Yes. I did,’ he babbled in heavily accented English.

‘Question two: who sent you?’

Lighter pressure was all that was required this time. The answer told her half of what she needed to know. ‘Noisy-le-Sec’

An iceberg in her stomach. Just as she’d thought – they were from the Action Division of the DGSE.

She didn’t bother with her last unanswered question: why? This loser wouldn’t have a clue, only a target. Her and Monique. But she had a new enquiry.

‘Last question: how many in your team altogether? How many shooters? How many on overwatch?’

‘Fuck you,’ he groaned.

Caitlin drove a short, sharp punch into his injured rib cage and he screamed.

‘How many?’

But his howling did not abate. If anything it grew worse.

Her skin crawled and every nerve ending under it seemed to tingle. Time to go.

She stood up carefully, making sure to give him no chance of entangling her legs or feet, and then she fired once into the back of his head, silencing the caterwauling cries, before turning and hurrying back downstairs to Monique.

Not that she needed to hurry. She already knew her friend -and yes, ‘friend’ was appropriate – she already knew that her friend was dead.

The body lay still and heavy in that telltale way, as though slowly melting into the floor under the pressure of its own dead weight. Black petals of light bloomed in Caitlin’s vision and her head began to spin again, this time around the axis of a bright, sharp pain. She staggered against the wall, which seemed to fall away from her. She had to get out; she had to abandon her friend. More killers would be on their way.

As the floor rushed up to slam into her face, she thought she heard the dull metallic thudding of a helicopter. But it could have been her own heartbeat.

* * * *

26

US ARMY COMBAT SUPPORT HOSPITAL, KUWAIT