Without warning

Slowly, and as quietly as he possibly could, Melton eased himself off the bed and slid across to the door. He placed his ear against the cool wood for two minutes, straining to hear anything that might indicate he wasn’t alone up here. After that, he gripped the old-fashioned brass knob and turned it gently but firmly until the door clunked open. It sounded as loud as a grenade to him, but there was no discernible change in the flow of conversation from downstairs. He was able to make out a lot more of what was being said, however – not that it did him much good. The men’s French was heavily accented and their Arabic so guttural and fast spoken that his very basic understanding of the language was all but useless.

Then someone spoke whom he could understand. A Frenchman, with a polished, well-educated voice. Again, Melton’s French wasn’t great, but he was certain this guy was giving them a pep talk. Something about how well the fight had gone in the suburbs and how they had to delay the fascist Sarkozy forces long enough to get their leaders out of this area. Or at least, that was what Melton thought he said. He simply couldn’t be sure, and it made no sense. He had no context in which to frame the conversation.

It was infuriating, but there was nothing he could do about it.

* * * *

‘They will be here in fifteen minutes,’ said Captain Rolland, referring to the back-up he’d called in. ‘They are coming through the storm water drains. There is a… how do you call it… a man’s hole in the rear courtyard of the building two doors down.’

Caitlin snickered despite the seriousness of the situation. ‘Okay. You got any floor plans?’

Rolland removed a set of drawings from a plastic tube. ‘There has been some remodelling of the property in the last five years,’ he explained. ‘These were lodged with the city archives. I had a devil’s job getting them.’

‘Yeah, but God bless continental bureaucracy,’ said Caitlin. ‘Now, what’ve we got here?’

They scoped out the plans of the house across the street by torchlight on a foldout card table, in a windowless room on the second floor of their own building. It looked like it may have been used as a storeroom until recently. A few cardboard packing boxes, folded flat, remained.

The target property was not so different from the one in which they stood. Same number of floors, and a similar layout of rooms, save for the ground floor, which had been opened up into one vast living space. It was not bomb-damaged either, as far as they could tell.

‘This will be very hard,’ said Rolland, ‘getting them alive.’

Caitlin nodded. ‘Like a hostage situation, where the hostage doesn’t want to come with. And he’s armed.’

‘We would normally train in a mock-up facility first. But there is no time.’

‘You could let me go in on my own,’ she offered. ‘I’m renowned as a sneaky bitch, you know.’

‘You are renowned as an assassin, Caitlin. I have no doubt you could make it inside. But perhaps only you would come out, non?

‘Perhaps,’ she conceded. ‘But I could make it easier for you.’

‘How so?’

Caitlin explained what she would need, and although the plan was crazy, to his credit, Rolland heard her out.

When she was finished she folded her arms and shrugged. ‘Captain, it is the only way I can think of to kick down the doors, kill everyone who needs killing, and maybe, just maybe, keep Baumer and Lacan in one piece.’

Rolland pinched his lip between thumb and forefinger, a gesture she had already recognised as his giveaway. He was thinking of betting the pot.

* * * *

47 MV AUSSIE RULES, SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake…’

‘I am sorry, Captain, but the storm, it put much stress on the engines, yes, much stress on everything, and this can be repaired but it will take time.’

Julianne examined the length of black steel-mesh tubing that was going to kill them all. It was less than an inch thick and just a foot long and it carried coolant to one of the Aussie Rules’s twin 1492-horsepower Caterpillar engines. Or rather, it would have were it not disconnected and dangling uselessly, having blown as a result of running at maximum pressure for way too long. Her Sri Lankan chief engineer shook his head sadly, as though betrayed by his wife.

‘How much time do you need to fix this, Pankesh?’ asked Jules. ‘The truth. Don’t underestimate the difficulty’

‘It is a very specialised fitting, ma’am,’ he said as his two Dutch offsiders crowded in behind him, both of them looking equally despondent. ‘Three hours, minimum. Possibly up to five. You can run the other engine at half power, but that is all.’

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Her temples were throbbing. They had a break of twenty nautical miles on the Viarsa 1, but their pursuers would eat that distance up in two hours. They were going to have to fight.