Chris Ryan Extreme: Silent Kill

Book 4: Chris Ryan Extreme

by Chris Ryan

Genres: War & Military; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

The fourth book in Chris Ryan's Extreme series.

The Chris Ryan Extreme books take you even further into the heart of the mission with more extreme action, more extreme language and more extreme pace. Like Call of Duty or Medal of Honour you'll feel part of the team.

Chris Ryan Extreme: Silent Kill has previously been published as four separate shorter missions. Now in one book to keep you at the heart of the action.

Northern Ireland, 1993. For high-flying MI5 officer Avery Chance the real war has only just begun. When Chance is abducted by the IRA's notorious Nutting Squad, her hopes lie in the hands of a young SAS recruit who must risk everything to bring her home.

Twenty years after his act of self-sacrifice in Belfast ex-SAS legend John Bald is a scarred shadow of his former self. But when a face from the past appears and rescues him from deep trouble, Bald is offered one last shot at redemption. His target is Kurt Pretorius, a ruthless mercenary operating deep in the wilds of war-ravaged Somali.

In a world where rogue mercenaries operate beyond the reach of the law, Kurt Pretorius has transformed himself into a god. It is up to Bald to stop Pretorius before he turns Somalia into a terrorist haven. But Bald quickly finds himself sucked into a twisted game of survival, where the stakes could not be higher - and the price of failure is his life...

With time running out, Bald must kill Pretorius before he brings down everyone around him. It's a mission Bald was born to do. Because sometimes, the only way to beat your deadliest enemy...is to be like your deadliest enemy.

Release date: October 8, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 352

Sample

One

Lisburn, Northern Ireland, 1993. 2014 hours.

The voice came down the line like a shiver.

‘Avery, thank fuck,’ the voice said. ‘Arseholes had me on hold for ages. I’m freezing my bollocks off here.’

Avery Chance jerked upright in her chair at MI5 HQ in Thiepval Barracks. She recognized the voice at the other end of the line immediately. John-Joe Kicker was a lieutenant in the Provisional IRA’s Internal Security Unit, otherwise known as the Nutting Squad, responsible for monitoring intelligence within the Provos’ ranks. Chance had flipped Kicker three months ago. For her, as a novice intelligence officer in the field in Northern Ireland, recruiting a guy like Kicker had been a big deal.

‘Joe,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’

‘Backstage with fucking Bono. Where d’ya think?’ Kicker said with a snort. It came down the line heavy and fast, like a sudden blast of wind. He went on, ‘A phone box on the Falls Road. Listen, I can’t stay on for long. Eyes all over the estate.’

Something in his voice alerted Chance. He sounded afraid. But Kicker was an IRA hard man and a convicted murderer, she thought. He’d done his time at Long Kesh. Kicker didn’t do fear.

‘What’s going on?’ Chance said.

‘Not on the phone. Come and meet me.’

‘The line’s secure.’

Kicker forced out a laugh, like a one-man audience doing studio cheer. ‘Bollocks,’ he said. ‘This line surely wasn’t secure when Martin Sheedy spilled his guts to you. In fact it was so bloody un-secure poor Marty got a pair of bullets in the back of his head for his troubles. I might be betraying my own kind, but I ain’t thick.’

Chance leaned back in her chair. ‘I’ll meet you then. The usual place. Nine o’clock.’ She paused. Massaged her brow. ‘But you can’t keep me in the dark, Joe. I need to know what this is about.’

Kicker was silent for a couple of seconds, then said, ‘You know how I said I’d call you if I had something big?’

‘That was the deal.’

Another long pause. Chance listened to the line crackling, the wind blasting, police sirens in the background, the machine-like hum of life in east Belfast. Then Kicker took a deep breath and said, ‘Well, I’m sitting on something big this time. And if you don’t get your arse down here right now, this time tomorrow you’ll be picking through a heap of dead soldiers.’

Two

2057 hours.

Chance was at the RV three minutes early. She hated being late.

She’d bombed up from Lisburn, willing her silver Vauxhall Cavalier to go faster as she threaded her way north up Prince William Road, towards the south-west corner of Belfast. A thin fog had started to spread like a net across the landscape by the time she bounced off the B101 and onto the A501 heading for Andersonstown.

Someone had once told Chance that Belfast was more British than the Queen’s Christmas speech and more Irish than a pint of Guinness. That was still true. But times were changing. Bill Clinton had been elected President. Reagan made Irish jokes; Clinton wants to make Irish peace, ran the joke in the tobacco-choked social clubs up and down the province, and there was a kernel of truth in it. Clinton was pushing hard for a ceasefire and wooing Gerry Adams. Closer to home for Chance, the Whitehall rumour mill was working overtime. Whispers abounded that the British and Irish were poised to make a joint declaration on the peace process. Belfast was now divided between those who wanted to hang up their rifles and those who vowed to keep up the armed struggle.

The streets were empty as Chance reached the junction of Andersonstown Road and Suffolk Road. She shunted into Park but kept the engine running and the heater on full blast, the heat caressing her neck and face. She was grateful as outside it was the kind of cold that needled your skin and chipped away at your bones.

The council estate was a bare-knuckled sprawl of mean-looking houses and a parade of shops. Rusted shutters hung like heavy eyelids over the windows of a rundown betting shop and a cab office. A republican flag flew from the roof of every house. Murals on the end walls of the terraces commemorated hunger-strike victims and Palestinian terrorists, vivid splashes of colour amid a sea of grey, while mountains sagged on the horizon like a pair of casually shrugged shoulders. A sign on a nearby building carried a quote from the Old Testament: ‘Prepare to Meet Thy God.’

Andersonstown was the kind of place where peelers were dragged from their vehicles and knifed in broad daylight and well-meaning civvies were kneecapped just because they had the wrong surname. Belfast in those days was one of the four Bs, along with Baghdad, Bosnia and Beirut. Places that festered like open wounds. Places the world had left behind.

Chance knew she was taking a big risk arranging the RV in the enemy’s back yard. But she figured this was the perfect meeting spot for her source, working on the principle of hiding in plain sight. It would protect her source better than having him march up to the gates of the nearest RUC constabulary with every conspiring Jack and John in west Belfast looking on.

Besides, she got a kick out of the risk. From an early age, when her father walked out on her university lecturer mother to shack up with his PA, Chance had learned that if she wanted to get ahead in life, simply matching her male rivals was simply never going to cut it. She had to be better than the men. She had to work harder, longer, and above all smarter. And she had to be prepared to put her neck on the line.

Chance knew that she was not classically attractive. Still, she had something about her. She was the kind of woman that intrigued men, rather than made them fawn over her. Her cropped brown hair was streaked blonde at the fringe and her small lips parted a little to reveal a prism of pearly-white teeth. She wore a dark suit that accented her hips and disguised her small breasts – the one part of her body that she hated. At sixteen she had been accepted by St Hilda’s College, Oxford, to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She’d gone on to get a PhD in Logic at the Sorbonne, before joining MI5 at twenty-two.

She was one of the new breed of female fast-trackers: career women ready and able to climb the previously male-only intelligence ladder. Stella Rimington had blazed the trail for her sex in the security services in the late seventies, and her appointment as Director General in 1992 meant that MI5’s glass ceiling had been smashed at last. Already the place was filled with highly capable female graduates determined to make the most of the opportunity.

There was just one problem. The men didn’t like the fast-trackers.

For the first couple of years in Five, Avery Chance fast-tracked her way to nowhere, real fast. She transferred from one menial desk job to the next, sifting through reams of pointless int. She was an office junior in everything but name. The men had succeeded in pulling the rug from under the female fast-trackers. For a while, Chance considered leaving the service. That was in 1990, when the Cold War was over and MI5 felt more and more like a relic from a bygone age.

Her luck changed on a snow-caked February morning the following year. That day Provisional IRA terrorists parked a van on Horse Guards Avenue and fired three mortar rockets at Downing Street. They failed in their mission to assassinate Prime Minister John Major, but the attack signalled a ramp-up in PIRA’s bombing campaign on British soil. Under pressure from a badly shaken government, MI5 was instructed to crush them from the inside. Chance volunteered for assignment to Belfast. A month later she finally got her wish. The fast-tracker was back on track.

She was tasked with identifying PIRA members who might be lured into working for the security forces. Keeping her ear close to the ground, she got to know just about every Mick and Shay north of the border dealing brown to the blacks, or getting some Proddy slag from the Shankhill Road up the duff. The more dark secrets Chance learned, the more leverage she had with potential recruits. Kicker had been her first success. The first of many, she hoped. Like several young women in Five, Chance had adopted a siege mentality towards her male colleagues. She lived and breathed a compulsive desire to better them. The victory the old boys had achieved proved their downfall. In the long term they didn’t stop the fast-trackers. They just made them mad.

Two minutes and thirty seconds after she arrived at the RV, a figure slid from the shadows and walked quickly towards the Cav. The guy wore a light-coloured anorak, a dark sweater and grey trousers. He could have been any fucking Jack on his way to get pissed. His face was thin and angular, as if someone had carved out his features with the tip of a blade. His skin was stretched tight across his gaunt cheekbones and a neatly brushed mullet trailed down past the nape of his neck. All things considered, John-Joe Kicker looked like a two-pound shit stuffed into a one-pound bag.

Kicker stopped by the side of the car and rapped his bony knuckles impatiently on the front passenger window. Leaning over, Chance flipped open the door. A blast of chill air bit her nose, slapped her cheeks. Kicker climbed inside, rubbing his hands together like he was trying to get a fire going.

‘You must have some brass fucking balls, coming down here,’ he said in his clipped west Belfast accent. ‘The only peelers you ever see round these parts are behind the wheel of an armoured Landie.’ He frowned at the back seat. ‘Where’s your mate? The posh wanker.’

‘Busy,’ Chance replied quietly.

It was SOP for all agents to attend meets with sources as a pair. But Charles Grealish, Chance’s usual partner, had been promoted, much to her annoyance, since he’d achieved little of note in Belfast. But Grealish was one of the old guard, one of the good old boys. As long as he didn’t piss anyone off, he’d smooth his way to the top. And Chance was still awaiting a new partner.

‘Were you followed?’ she asked.

Kicker laughed deep in his throat. ‘Was I fuck.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I got a taxi to the cemetery and walked the rest of the way here, sticking to the side streets. Just like you told me to do. I took more precautions than a bird on the pill.’ Kicker’s lips twisted into a bitter smile. ‘Don’t be forgetting that I’ve more to lose than you Brits. If the boyos ever find out I’ve been talking, I’m properly shafted.’

Chance moved the conversation on. ‘Tell me what’s going on, Joe.’

Kicker shook his head stiffly. ‘First things first. After tonight, I want out. I’m done working for you. So before I give you the spread, we need to agree a few details.’

Chance jerked an eyebrow halfway up her forehead. ‘What kind of details?’

‘I’m talking about my dues, like.’ Kicker licked his fingers and counted off a list. ‘I want a house. Big, fuck-off garden. Somewhere nice and boring, where nothing ever happens. Like Surrey. A new identity to go with the house. And I want some shekels, too. A little hedge fund, to get me started. I want that in writing and all.’

‘You’re on a retainer. That’s what we pay you for.’

‘Bollocks!’ Kicker growled, banging his fist on the dashboard. ‘You pay me a couple of grand for the information I normally feed you. But this is different. This is top-level shite and I want to be compensated accordingly.’

Chance said nothing. She waited for Kicker to finish his rant. Watched the guy slump back in his seat, his muscles jumping with anger, his head thumping back against the headrest. She patiently waited for the rage to deflate, like a slashed tyre. When Kicker had calmed down, Chance looked him hard in the eye.

‘You’re done,’ she said evenly, ‘when I say you’re done.’

Kicker opened his mouth but Chance cut him off before he could get a word in. ‘The only reason you’re here,’ she told him, ‘meeting with an agent of the British government, is because you were dumb enough to fool around with Victor Costello’s wife.’

Kicker flinched at the mention of Costello. With good reason, Chance thought. Costello was the chief of the Nutting Squad. He was also a notorious sadist. He didn’t just torture people. He took them on a personal tour of the seven circles of hell. He sewed the severed testicles of informants into their mouths. He cut off eyelids with playschool scissors. As a kid, rumour had it, Costello would tie two cats together by their tails and hang them over a washing line, watching them scratch each other to death.

‘You’d better cooperate with me,’ Chance continued, ‘or tomorrow Costello will open his post and find an envelope full of pictures of you getting real cosy with Caitlin.’ She spoke in a delicate but sharp voice. Like a blade slashing silk. Kicker squirmed. Chance paused, milking it. Then she twisted the knife. ‘You’re a big boy, Joe. I don’t need to tell you what Costello would do to you if he found out you were sticking one up his missus.’

Kicker pulled a sour expression. ‘You’re a bitch.’

‘Maybe I am.’ Chance’s bright blue eyes smiled at him. ‘But I’m the bitch who has you by the balls.’

Kicker chewed on the tepid air for a long beat. He clamped his lips and eyes shut and stewed. Chance left him to it and scoped out the estate. The Devlin Social Club stood on the nearest corner. Its windows were boarded up and graffiti scrawled over a poster to the side of the door read: ‘BRITS FUCK OFF.’ A few old men with too much time and too little money, their hands stuffed in their pockets, miserable faces like picked scabs, shuffled in and out of the place, busily pissing away their Giros.

Kicker popped open his eyes. Chance looked back at him.

‘I’ll do what I can to help you,’ she said. ‘But you’re going to have to trust me.’

Kicker sighed. ‘There’s a shipment coming in tomorrow. Eight in the morning. On the Galway coast. I don’t know the exact location, on account of the fact Costello ain’t telling.’

Chance greeted the news coolly. ‘When did you find out about this?’

‘Six, seven hours ago?’ Kicker shrugged. ‘I didn’t know anything about it until Costello ordered us all to a meeting. I’ve been trying to reach you ever since. Jesus, you think I’m holding something back from you?’

‘Let’s just say some of your tribe have a history of being selective with the truth.’

‘Go fuck yourself, Avery. I came to you the minute I heard. Getting hold of int these days ain’t easy. Costello is keeping everyone out of the loop. What with all the arrests lately, he’s acting paranoid. Everything is on a strictly need-to-know basis, like.’

‘What’s in the shipment?’

Chance was fully expecting Kicker to reel off the usual shopping list of Semtex, mortars, decommissioned rifles and Second World War pistols, kit that trickled in from East Germany and the former Soviet satellites. But he didn’t do that. Instead the Nutting Squad lieutenant sucked in a heavy dose of air and said, ‘Stingers.’

Chance felt her blood run cold. Suddenly it seemed freezing in the car.

‘Stinger missiles?’

‘Aye, and plenty of ’em. We’re talking enough to blow a hole in every Brit chopper in the province.’

Chance felt her flesh crawl. The Provos had been trying to get their hands on anti-aircraft weapons for years. They knew that the British relied heavily on Chinook helicopters to resupply several of their bases across Northern Ireland, especially the more remote bases inaccessible by road. Armed with the infrared FIM-92 surface-to-air missile launcher, a single PIRA shooter could down British choppers at the click of a button. Each Chinook represented a critical supply line to the military. Blow them out of the sky and suddenly the situation north of the border would look a lot more hairy.

Another thought burst the bubble Chance was in. ‘That’s impossible,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘The FBI has clamped down on the traditional smuggling route from Florida. Of course, the Libyans supplied weapons for a while, but they’ve gone quiet recently. And we monitor all the major shipping channels. There’s no way anyone could smuggle in missiles without our knowing about it.’

Kicker flashed his palms at the agent. ‘I’m just telling you the craic, love. Make of it what you will.’ He shifted in his seat. After getting comfortable he continued, ‘I went to the meeting with the other lads, right. Then Costello starts going on about times being tough. What with all the heat on us from the Brits, you lot infiltrating our ranks, and the shipments from Florida and Libya going Pete Tong.’

‘Go on.’

‘Then Costello suddenly lights up like the Fourth of July, and says we’re gonna turn the tables on the Brits. Says there’s a shipment coming in tomorrow, 0800 hours, and we’re to cache the consignment down by the border. One of the boyos asks what’s in the consignment, and Costello comes right out with it and says, Stingers. The guy looked pleased with himself. Like he’d just landed himself a hot date with that slag from Baywatch.’

Chance stared out of the window, and wondered. A new arms smuggling route? Possible, she conceded. The PIRA leaders had been casting their net far and wide in the hunt for new sources of armaments. So far they had met with limited success. Outfits like the PLO and the Colombian FARC were running low on stocks themselves. Certainly those terrorist organizations lacked the means to provide a shipment of Stingers. And no credible nation state would dare flout international sanctions by selling arms to the Provos.

So who’s behind the sale? Chance was thinking. ‘Where’s the shipment coming in?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You just said you were at the meeting. Don’t lie to me, Joe.’

‘I ain’t lying. We know the when and the what. Costello is keeping the where close to his chest. Eight o’clock in the morning, that’s what we were told. We meet Costello at his house. Then a big pile of us Nutting Squad boyos head down to Galway and load the consignment into the back of several trucks. We’re to be given maps with the coordinates of weapons caches. New caches, mind – ones that you don’t know about.’

Chance looked through the windscreen, soaking up the int. She saw a wafer-thin middle-aged man emerging from the Devlin Social Club. He was wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap and a naff green bomber jacket. The cap’s brim shaded his face, so Chance couldn’t make out his features. He stopped outside the door, reached into the jacket pocket and plucked a cigarette from a packet. Cupped his shovel-like hands around the trembling flame. Chance noted that his fingers were stitched with colourful tattoos. The man stood in the shadow of the club, sucking on his tab.

The MI5 agent turned back to Kicker. Looked him dead in the cracks of his eyes. ‘You have to help me out here, Joe. If what you’re saying is true, then the Provisional IRA is about to get its hands on weapons that could derail the peace process for decades. None of us want that, do we?’

‘I guess not.’ Kicker’s voice was soft and thoughtful.

He had a six-month old baby, Chance knew. Name of Mary. PIRA men always turned a little soft when their women started pumping out babies. Chance played on that, gripping Kicker’s hand. The human touch. ‘You need to give me something more. Something I can go back to my bosses with.’ She gently withdrew her hand. ‘If they see you’re not cooperating, Five will withdraw its protection. Word will get around: Joe turned snitch. All those boyos you passed over to us will be very upset. You don’t want little Mary to grow up not knowing her father, now, do you? Of course you don’t. You’re a good man, Joe. Not a monster, like the others.’

Chance could see her words working their magic. In the periphery of her vision she spotted the guy in the Red Sox cap walking away from the Devlin. Hands stuffed in the pockets of his bomber jacket, chin tucked tight into his chest against the lacerating cold. It was dark and she couldn’t make out his face.

Kicker pulled his hand away. Cracked his knuckles and stared at a spot in the footwell. A small man wrestling with a big problem. Belfast all over. ‘This can’t be traced back to me,’ he said eventually. ‘If the RA top brass finds out I’ve dobbed them in, I’m done for.’

‘You have my word.’

A sharp intake of breath, then Kicker said, ‘There’s this guy.’

‘What guy?’ A strange thrill ran through Chance at the mention of this new arms smuggler. She was on the verge of uncovering something so big it would blow away her male colleagues. She had a vision of following Rimington all the way to the top.

Kicker dropped his voice so low it could’ve crawled under the belly of a snake. ‘All I know is, the smuggler goes by the name of Colonel Jim. He’s like the Father Christmas of the arms trade. Costello reckons he’s sitting on enough kit to start World Wars Three, Four and Five and have enough left over for seconds.’

‘Where can we find him?’

But Kicker wasn’t tuned in. He was facing stiffly forward. Chance followed his gaze. Then she noticed something odd. The man in the Red Sox cap had stopped briefly at the corner of Andersonstown Road and Suffolk Road. He was waving at a pair of headlights thirty metres further south on Andersonstown Road. He hunched his shoulders, looked down at the ground, moved on.

A split second later Chance saw a white Ford Transit surge into view. Speeding directly along Andersonstown Road towards the Cavalier, its growl cutting through the glassy silence. It screeched to a halt ten metres from the Cav, blocking the road.

Then the side doors flew open and four figures in balaclavas streamed out.

Gunning straight for the Cav.

Three

2112 hours.

Chance didn’t panic. Not at first.

The road behind the Cav was completely clear. She quickly selected Reverse. Figured she could back up north along Andersonstown Road towards the Falls Road and the Westlink, and the sanctuary of Protestant east Belfast.

The four balaclava-clad men swarmed towards the Cav. Provos, without a doubt, she thought, from their Denison camouflage smocks and shapeless, acid-washed jeans right down to their fingerless leather gloves.

‘Oh, sweet Jesus, they’re coming right for us,’ said Kicker, trembling as he spoke, each word sounding like a gasp.

Chance saw the weapons then. All four PIRA men were tooled up. The nearest two gripped AK-47 assault rifles. Their muckers a couple of steps further back were toting Czech-manufactured CZ 75 semi-automatic pistols. They clearly meant business.

Chance said, ‘They wouldn’t dare open fire. We’re in a densely-populated area—’

‘That’s more Irish than a bottle of Bushmills,’ Kicker said, his voice shaking. ‘The locals are used to getting shot at by the RUC fellas. Everyone who lives here knows the drill. Look around you.’

Chance glanced up. Kicker was correct, she realized. The streets had suddenly emptied. A tremor of panic tickled her chest as she put her foot down hard on the pedal, the Cav’s engine screaming as she reversed and picked up speed. In seconds the speedo showed thirty kilometres per hour, the steering wheel jerking in Chance’s grip, her wrists burning as she fought to keep the car in a straight line. Kicker stared dead ahead. His eyes had widened to poker chips. He had a look on his face like he’d just seen someone rape his mother.

Chance had reversed twenty-five metres when she saw headlights flare up in the rear-view mirror. Her guts squirmed. They were forty metres behind her. Two pairs of them, she realized. Now she could see they belonged to a couple of black cabs, their ‘For Hire’ signs glowing apricot on the roofs.

‘Slow down, for fuck’s sake!’ Kicker shouted.

But Chance just stared numbly as the headlights swelled in the mirror, her foot still on the accelerator. They’re picking up speed, she thought. There’s no escape. Fear sank its teeth into her neck. The taxis were racing towards the Cav.

‘Stop!’ Kicker screamed.

Now Chance snapped out of her stupor and hit the brakes. The Cav wobbled, the rear bumper swerving hard right. The tyres squealed. Then the car stopped in the middle of the road, thirty metres from the Transit, twenty ahead of the taxis. The cabs were still accelerating towards her.

Chance frantically shifted into Drive. The cabs were now just ten metres behind her, their headlights almost whiting out the rear window. Both of them braked at the last moment. And in that same instant Chance yanked the steering wheel hard left and surged forward, steering off the road, towards a grass verge opposite a row of dingy shops. Away from the four gunmen, two now ten metres ahead, the other two just behind, all racing towards the Cav. The speedo was touching fifty now, the engine grinding. Chance still thought she could get away.

Then she spotted the nearest two gunmen drawing their AK-47s level with their shoulders. She heard a roar as the two weapons lit up, flames licking out of their snouts. The gunmen discharged their rounds in simultaneous three-round bursts. The road flashed white, then smoke snorted across Chance’s line of vision. For a breathless second she allowed herself to think they had missed. Then the Cav slumped on its axis as a torrent of hot lead punctured both front tyres. A loud hissing filled the air, soon replaced by the whump-whump of rubber bouncing on tarmac. The car jolted to a halt. Chance’s seatbelt pulled tight across her chest, squeezing her lungs. A hot pressure exploded inside her skull. Her neck muscles tensed painfully. Beside her Kicker was thrown forward, his head banging against the dash before snapping back.

The gunmen each fired a second time. Six bullets punched holes in the radiator grille and glanced off the bonnet. Smoke filtered out of the grille. The car’s alarm shrieked the same insane note, over and over. A single round nicked the windscreen, fracturing the glass like a pickaxe hitting a block of ice. Chance and Kicker ducked under the dash as a third set of three-round bursts fizzed out of the assault rifles. Six more bullets ripped into the car. Chance closed her eyes. She was sure that she would die.

But the shooting cut out. Just like that. The alarm too. The air was filled instead with the hiss of the radiator, the erratic tapping of the engine. Chance put her fingers to her temples. It felt like someone had drilled holes in the sides of her skull.

She heard shattered glass crunching underfoot. Voices shouting. Coming from her three o’clock. Drawing near to her. Beside her Kicker pawed groggily at the mashed-up bridge of his nose.

Chance cleared her throat. ‘Joe,’ she said. ‘Wake up. We have to leave. Now!’

‘Gah—’

‘Get those cunts out!’ a voice spat from outside the car in a bog-Irish accent.

Her door was flung open before Chance could react. A hand thrust into the car and clamped around her right wrist. Meanwhile the second gunman had opened Joe’s door, grabbed his neck and was shaking his head from side to side like he was trying to shake a spider out of his hair.

‘Oh sweet Jesus no!’ Joe moaned in a nasal tone. ‘I ain’t dying. Not here!’

He wrenched himself free and threw himself out of the car. The gunman grabbed at him but Kicker ducked out of the way and ran screaming towards the grass verge. Chance moved to help him, but the hand gripping her wrist yanked her out of the Cav with such violence that she thought her arm would be ripped from its socket. Helpless, she watched Kicker try to escape. He was staggering as if the left side of his body had been anaesthetized. He was never going to make it. She knew that much. He managed to put four or five metres between himself and the car before the other two gunmen rushed at him from one side. One of them jabbed him in the lower back with the stock of his AK. His mucker booted him to the ground. A short, sharp cry of agony pierced the air. Then there was a flurry of grunts as the tow of them attacked Kicker, the sound of hard wood cracking against bone as both now swung their rifle stocks at him like lumberjacks chopping wood. Kicker raised his hands in a desperate effort to shield his head from the flurry of blows.

Chance turned to face the gunman who had hauled her out of the car.

‘You bastard!’ she screamed, trying to shake off his fearsome grip.

No response. Then guy was built like a testicle on a pair of stilts, his zi. . .