No Tomorrow

Book 4: Victor

by Tom Wood

Genres: Crime Fiction; Spy Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

When Victor is called to meet with an old friend who ultimately betrayed him, what he thought was an ambush is in fact a plea for help. As a Russian gangster, Norimov is accustomed to death threats, but now an unknown enemy wants more than his life. They intend to kill everyone he cares about, including his missing daughter Gisele. This time, Victor's job is not to kill but to protect. Unfortunately, locating Gisele is his first mistake-because someone is watching his every move.



Before she went into hiding, Gisele had uncovered a secret worth killing for-and now Victor has brought the enemy right to her doorstep. The least he can do is help her escape. But the ruthless network they're up against has the police, MI-5, and every major news outlet joining in the manhunt across London.

Release date: September 2, 2014

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 512

Sample

Praise for The Game

Also by Tom Wood

SIGNET

For my parents

A Price Worth Paying

Bonn, Germany

Chapter 1

Today was all about waiting. Some things could not be rushed. Patience and preparation were necessary for the successful completion of even the most routine professional killings. Such jobs could be considered routine only because of the preparation that went into them and the patience displayed in their execution. If corners were cut in the lead-up to the job—should any contingency not be considered and planned for—mistakes would surely follow. Mistakes would also occur if the job was undertaken with anything less than the requisite calm and diligence. In this instance, considering the target, adherence to these two protocols was not only necessary but imperative.

He was a man somewhere in his mid-thirties, but maybe older, maybe younger. It was hard to be sure because almost all of the intel on him was unverified. It was either speculation or hearsay, rumor or guesswork. He had no name. He had no residence. No friends or family. His background was nonexistent. He was not a politician or drug baron or war criminal. He was not military or intelligence—at least actively serving—but he could not be called a civilian either. The only thing that was known with any certainty was his profession. He was a killer. The client had referred to him as the killer, warning that he had recently dispatched another team sent after him. If a book had been written on the art of professional assassination, he would have authored it. No such book existed, of course. If it had, the team getting ready to murder him would have memorized every word.

He had an unremarkable appearance. He was tall, but no giant. He had dark hair and eyes. The team’s women could not decide if he was handsome or not. He dressed like a lawyer or banker in good-quality suits, though ones that were a little too big for his frame. When first they saw him he had been clean-shaven, but he now sported a few days’ beard growth. The only notable thing about him was his slight limp, as he favored his right leg over the left. Not severe enough to take advantage of, they agreed.

A million euros sat in a Swiss escrow account. It was theirs upon providing proof of the killer’s death. His intact head, preferably, or at the very least irrefutable photographic or video evidence.

They were a tight quartet—two men and two women. All Scandinavians: two Danes, a Swede, and a Finn. They had worked together for years. Always the four of them. Never using anyone else. Never operating if any of them could not be present. They were friends as well as colleagues. It was the only way to guarantee trust in the business of contracted killing. When they were not working, they socialized whenever they could. They took turns hosting the others for barbecues, dinner parties, and movie nights. They had been more than friends at various times, but those times had passed. Interteam relations were bad for business, they had eventually agreed. Their assignments were inherently dangerous. They could not afford to be distracted.

There was no leader because they each had unique skills and talents and therefore inherent superiority in their own fields of expertise. When a bomb was used it was used under the instruction of the Danish demolitions expert, who named his devices after former lovers. When performing a long-range kill the Finnish woman, who had the most rifle experience, held seniority. When poison was required the Swedish chemist made the decisions in his authoritarian baritone. When shadowing a target the second Dane, who was an exceptional actress and knew the most about surveillance techniques, gave the orders. They operated democratically when no single team member held obvious authority. The arrangement worked well. Egos were kept in check. Jobs ran smoothly. No one got hurt—except the target. And never more than they were paid to be. The Scandinavians were not sadists. Except when they were hired to be.

It had been a unanimous conclusion that today they could only wait. The target was even more difficult to corner than they had been led to believe from the intel provided. He had no idea he was under surveillance, but his routine preventative measures bordered on the obsessive. Yet he was smart to use them. He was, after all, being hunted, and so far had given the team no opportunity to strike. Not only was he reputed to be an exceptional killer, but he was also proving exceptionally hard to kill. A good combination of talents, they all agreed, similarly agreeing that they should adopt some of his precautions into their own repertoire when this was over. Like him, maybe one day they would find themselves on the wrong end of a contract.

He was staying in a grand hotel in the city’s central district. Aside from the main entrance, the hotel had three other ways in and out. They could watch them all, given their number, but in doing so spread themselves out too thinly to act when he showed. He never departed via the same exit nor returned through the same entrance twice in a row—until he did, obliterating any chance they had at predicting his next choice. The Finn, who was something of a statistician in addition to being an accomplished sniper, snapped a pencil in annoyance.

The target had a deluxe guestroom on the second floor. He had also booked the room next to it. That made it problematic to know in which he slept. The door that joined the two rooms made it impossible. It seemed he slept during the daytime. At least, he spent most of his time at the hotel during daylight hours, though never for a duration that would be conducive to a proper sleep pattern. The single longest period of time he could be verifiably in either of his rooms was five hours. Often he was in the hotel considerably longer, whether in the bar, restaurant, fitness center, or just reading a newspaper in the lobby. He never arrived at or left the hotel at anything close to the same time. The only habit he showed was in opting for the stairs, never the elevator, despite the limp.

Not that the hotel was a good strike point. The rooms he’d booked were located near the elevators, where foot traffic was common. They had little to no chance of orchestrating a kill without the interruption of other guests. It was hard not to become frustrated. They were used to choosing where and when to finish a job, not having their target decide for them where not to make it. They kept their annoyance in check, reminding one another to stay cool. This was all to be expected. Preparation and patience.

He appeared to have no routine outside the hotel. Sometimes he patronized street vendors peddling artery-clogging junk food. At other times he dined in restaurants serving the most exquisite and expensive cuisine. One afternoon he might spend several hours browsing exhibits in a single museum. The next he’d read a book, moving from café to café with it, never staying in any one establishment for more than an hour at a time, and sometimes for only a matter of minutes. When they had figured him so impersonal as to be almost a recluse, he then spent an evening charming women in a cocktail bar.

He had no mobile phone, but at what the Finn deemed random intervals he used Internet cafés or pay phones. They found no traces of his activities when the Danish surveillance specialist then used the same terminal or phone booth. They debated whether such activities were even necessary for him or if they were merely for show, to trip up and distract any undetected tail.

“It’s working,” the Swede said.

They had no idea why he was present in the city. It could be for any number of reasons. Perhaps he was preparing for a job of his own, getting to know the city and his area of operations. Maybe he was on the run and keeping incognito where he hoped his enemies could not find him. Or could this even be how he lived day-to-day when he was not himself working? It was no life, they all agreed, however many zeroes he could command for his services. If every waking moment had to be spent in a perpetual sense of alertness, then there had to be better ways to make a living. It made them appreciate how fortunate they were. They looked forward to this job’s completion and their next get-together. It was the Swede’s turn to host and his wife was universally adored. She taught physics but could be a professional party planner, as they would often tell the Swede to his pride.

A hit on the move proved just as troublesome to organize as one based on location. The target used buses, taxis, subways, aboveground trains, and walking with no discernible pattern. Distances were irrelevant. He might walk three miles to visit a coffee shop, yet take a cab for two blocks or spend an hour on the subway only to exit via the same station. How much the limp bothered him on such journeys, they could not tell.

In open areas he stayed in crowds and never walked in straight lines. When on narrow streets he kept away from the curb and close to storefronts. His hands were always outside his pockets. When he drank coffee on the move he did so by holding the cup in his left hand.

“So his primary hand is always available,” the Finn observed.

“What if he’s ambidextrous?” one of the Danes asked.

The Finn replied, “Less than a one percent chance of that. For all we know, he uses his left hand to make observers think he’s left-handed.”

“Let’s assume he is ambidextrous,” the second Dane said. “Whatever hand is occupied, we consider him just as dangerous.”

The other three nodded.

They operated from a vehicle that was changed daily, renting a different van each morning. They would take turns sleeping in the back compartment while the others worked. They had multiple changes of clothes and other accessories to make sure he never recognized who followed him on foot. Sometimes they lost him in order to maintain their cover, but that was to be expected. Take no risks, they would tell one another. They knew he would return to the hotel at some point, because the Danish surveillance expert had hacked into the hotel’s registry system. They knew how long he was staying, how much he was paying for the two rooms, even what he ordered from room service and that he had requested feather-free bedding and smoking rooms.

“But he hasn’t smoked a single cigarette in all the time we’ve watched him,” the Swede noted.

“No assumptions,” the Finn reminded him. “This guy’s only consistency is inconsistency.”

“You sound like you respect him.”

“I do,” she said. “He’s a lion.”

“A lion?”

She nodded and grinned. “His head will look great mounted above my fireplace.”

Chapter 2

Two days later the voice of the female Dane, who was one of the pair shadowing on foot, sounded through the speaker of the mobile radio unit set up in the back of the rental van.

“He’s buying camping supplies.”

The Swede pressed the SEND button on the radio control panel and spoke into the microphone. “What kind of supplies are we talking about?”

“A stove, solid fuel, waterproof sleeping bag, bungee cords, padded sleeping mats, a walking cane . . . items like that. I can’t see everything he’s loaded into the trolley.”

The Finn was also shadowing, but currently outside the store. Her distinctive red hair was hidden beneath a wig. “Any cold-weather gear?”

The Swede waited for the Dane to respond when there was no danger of being observed. After a moment’s silence she answered, “Not from what I can see. Shall I get closer?”

“Maintain a safe distance,” the Swede replied. “This could be a ruse to draw out potential surveillance. We make no assumptions about this guy. Take no risks. Okay?”

“Got it.”

The Finn said, “I think he’s planning for a job.”

“You can’t be certain of that,” the Swede replied.

She responded without pause because while outside the store there was no danger of being exposed. “He’s not going camping for the fun of it. I know that much.”

“We can’t be sure he is going camping.”

“Talk quieter,” the male Dane said, and rolled over.

•   •   •

The next day was the same: more waiting. During that time they had witnessed him buying used mobile phones from a market trader and top-up credit from two different stores. The Finn had point for the foot surveillance. She enjoyed watching the target from relatively close proximity. She enjoyed pitting her skills at remaining unseen against such a careful mark. She didn’t take risks, of course, however much she wanted to impress the others. Particularly the Swede, who aroused her and frustrated her in equal measure in those moments when she did not think of her boyfriend or the Swede’s lovely wife.

The Finn wanted to be the one that ended this. Not necessarily with the kill itself, but by providing that advantage they had so far struggled to acquire. Perhaps if she did not lose the target, as the others often did, she would be led to somewhere that could be used as a strike point, or learn some extra intelligence that they could exploit to create one.

Gunning him down on the street wasn’t their style. They wanted to live free and enjoy their hefty tax-free commissions. It was rare they even left a body behind. A combination of the Swede’s cocktails of flesh-dissolving enzymes and acids and the Finn’s willingness to use power tools ensured that after they had made a kill, not enough of the target remained to be identified. They charged extra for such cleanup, but would do it regardless. The Finn kept her thrill at putting to use circular saws and belt sanders a secret from the other three. As a girl, gutting reindeer had always been her favorite part of hunting with her father.

She inspected such tools while following the target around a hardware and DIY superstore. They had on sale a handheld circular saw produced by her preferred manufacturer. It had a 1900 mm blade and used 1300 watts of power. Fun times could be had with that, providing one wore the right protective clothing. So much mess.

“He’s bought himself an oxyacetylene torch,” she whispered into her lapel mike. “It’s a good one too.”

The deep, sweet voice of the Swede responded in her ear: “What’s this guy up to? I know you’re going to say he’s preparing for a job.”

“Maybe he’s building something.”

“But what?” the Swede said in return.

She kept the target at the limits of her sight and observed as he added a set of protective goggles, fuel tank, and heavy-duty gloves to use with the cutting torch. He then went on to buy a small generator, diesel, and a folding four-wheel trolley to transport his purchases. At the till, he spent a minute flirting with the much older woman who served him. The smile that lingered on her face long after he’d gone told the Finn she had enjoyed the experience.

The Finn didn’t follow the target outside. She updated the Swede on his new acquisitions, and the Danish man was put into rotation, wearing smart business clothes—the opposite of the casual jeans and leather jacket he’d worn the previous day. Though arguably more attractive than the Swede, the Dane didn’t endure in her fantasies. She didn’t feel that electricity between them. The Finn took her place at the radio to let the Swede sleep. She watched his chest rise and fall beneath the sleeping bag.

While the male Dane kept them updated on the target’s movements, the female Dane drove the van around the city, always staying at least a street or two away from the target’s current whereabouts, but never staying so far away that they would be unable to exploit an opportunity. That opportunity never presented itself, of course; or, more accurately, the target never allowed himself to give one away.

It must be exhausting, the Finn decided, to live such a careful existence, in which one’s guard never lowered and each and every movement had to be not only considered but executed with perfection. The Finn couldn’t do it, and she was thankful she didn’t have to. She would never work alone. It was suicide. There was safety in numbers. No individual, no matter how good, could be as effective as a team. They were about to prove that on this particular job.

“I think we have something,” the male Dane’s voice announced through the speaker.

“Go on,” she said.

“He’s entered a storage facility.”

The Finn’s back straightened. “Interesting.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“He’s spending a lot of time in the reception area.”

“So he’s likely renting a unit.”

“Again,” the Dane said, “that was my take. Hang on. . . . Yes, he’s following an employee out. I can see keys and paperwork. He’s being taken to his unit.” He couldn’t hide the excitement in his voice.

The Finn clapped her palms together.

“What is it?” the Swede asked, stirring.

The Finn smiled at him. He looked so cute and disheveled. “We might have something.”

The female Dane used a laptop to remote-hack into the storage company’s system and discovered some useful information. The unit rented was four hundred cubic feet in size and situated in the middle of a row of similarly sized units. There were more than two hundred in total at the facility, all ground level. It was a typical facility—a chain—though not a high-end one. The security was adequate but nothing special. There were a few cameras, but plenty of blind spots because they had used the minimum they could get away with. The target had signed a twelve-month agreement, which was standard, and registered under a different name than he was staying at the hotel with.

“Check flight manifests,” the Swede said.

She did, and learned the target had an economy-class ticket booked for the day after he was due to check out of his hotel.

“Checkout is at eleven hundred hours,” she said. “His flight is at nineteen hundred the next day. Check-in two hours before that means thirty-one hours for him to hang around.”

“Too long,” the Swede muttered.

The Dane said, “He’s going to stay at the storage facility. That’s why he has the camping equipment.”

The Finn nodded. “He’s establishing a safe house. He’s not storing anything there. He’s keeping it stocked with the essentials so when he’s in town he has everything he needs to lie low.”

“But why stay at a hotel for the past week if his intention was to set up a safe house?”

The Finn shrugged. She didn’t know.

The Swede clicked his fingers. “Because he’s coming back to town. He’s got a job lined up here. It must be a big one too, or one that is high risk. One where he wouldn’t be able to slip out of the city straightaway and won’t be able to risk staying at a hotel or guesthouse. But now he’s set up a safe house, he can lie low there until the dust settles while the cops waste their time quizzing receptionists.”

“Man, this guy is slippery,” the Dane said.

“Like an eel,” the Finn added, impressed. “But in two days’ time he’s going to slither into a trap of his own making.”

“You sound like you feel sorry for him.”

“I do.” She smiled. “Almost.”

The target checked out of his hotel as scheduled. They followed him to the storage facility, as they had done twice before while he deposited his various purchases. This time he dropped off a small suitcase, but then left.

“Don’t worry,” the Swede said, because the disappointment in the van was palpable. “We know he’s coming back.”

“Patience,” the Finn added.

“Do we lie in wait for his return?” the Danish woman asked. “He has the door secured with a state-of-the-art combination padlock, but give me a few minutes and I can crack it. Easy.”

“No,” her countryman replied. “He’s bound to have any number of anti-intrusion indicators on or around the door. We disturb the wrong mote of dust and he’ll know we’re inside.”

The Swede said, “Plus, does anyone really want to trap himself in a dark, confined space just waiting for him to return?”

“Not my idea of a good time,” the Finn answered.

The Swede smiled at that, then said, “So, we’re agreed? We wait it out. He’ll come back at some point to sleep. He’s not going to stay awake for thirty hours straight when he doesn’t have to.”

“How do we get the door open without him knowing about it?” the male Dane asked.

“We don’t need to,” the Finn answered. “We stealth it into the facility, nice and slow and quiet. He won’t hear us coming if we keep it smooth. Obviously, he can’t engage the padlock while he’s inside the unit, so once we’re over the fence, he’s defenseless. One of us opens the unit’s door—so maybe two seconds. The other two breach, fast, flashlights on to locate him in the dark and blind him as he stirs. Then: bang, bang. It’s over.”

“Nice,” the Swede said.

Feeling warm from the praise, the Finn turned to the others. “So, it’s settled?” She raised a hand. “The storage facility is our strike point?”

The other three raised their hands in unanimous agreement.

“But let’s make doubly sure every particular is solid,” the male Dane said. “We need this to be one hundred percent.”

“Have we ever gone to work with anything less?”

Chapter 3

Shortly after midnight they made their move. The night sky was clear. The air was mild. The male Dane stayed behind the wheel of the van, parked on the same side of the street as the storage facility, but between the wash of streetlamps and out of line of sight of the security cameras. At a distance the vehicle looked parked and unoccupied. He was the getaway driver, providing surveillance and possible backup while the others were inside the facility. They all wore earpieces so he could warn them of anything happening outside that might compromise the job. It was unlikely. The storage unit was located in a quiet commercial area with all businesses closed at that time of night. Little traffic—whether pedestrians or vehicles—passed through the neighborhood. The only people around were them and him.

The Danish woman, the Finn, and the Swede would complete the hit as the Finn had suggested—the Swede using his strength to open the door in the shortest possible time, the Finn as the shooter, and the Dane watching their backs. The Finn had earned the role of killer because not only was she a fine shot but she was also considerably shorter than the other two team members. The Swede was the better marksman with small arms, but his height meant he was not the best choice. As the target would be prone, a tall shooter would find acquiring the target in the dark more difficult. A split-second delay could prove disastrous. Everyone was happy with their roles and knew what to do and when.

The target had returned to his storage unit a few minutes before nine p.m. At ten, the staff manning the facility’s front desk packed up and went home. The team had no way of knowing how long it would be before the target went to sleep, but they figured waiting a couple of hours made sense, just to be certain.

“He’s not going to sit in there reading a book,” one of the Danes had said. “He’ll get his head down and get out as soon as possible. We know this guy doesn’t like to sit still. He knows he’s vulnerable in there.”

After the kill was completed the storage locker would provide enough privacy for the Finn to go to work with power tools. The target even had a generator to plug them into.

“Thoughtful,” she had joked.

They wore lightweight body armor under their jackets and were armed with suppressed pistols and several magazines of spare ammunition. They each carried their own preferred sidearm. No one was expecting anything more onerous than a double tap to the head—certainly not a firefight—but it was essential to prepare for events beyond the worst-case scenario.

The Dane moved toward the storage facility first and alone. The brim of her cap was pulled down low to shield her face and the hood from her jacket hid her hair. She had an aluminum ladder in her hands and a stepladder strapped to her back with bungee cords—purchased from the same store their target had used. She rushed up to the facility’s gate, extended the ladder, and hooked the support hooks onto the top of the gate. Both the ladder’s hooks and feet had been wrapped in foam. In seconds she had climbed over and dropped down to the other side. She wore athletic shoes with thick soles.

She released the slipknot attaching a set of bolt cutters to her belt and used them to disable the gate’s lock. The locking bolt was accessible only from the inside.

The stepladder—similarly silenced with foam—was set in place, and she used the height it provided to reach a wall-mounted security camera. It covered the gate and space behind it. She coated the lens cover with black paint from a spray can.

“Move,” she whispered into her radio.

The Finn pushed open the gate and hurried into the facility, followed by the Swede. While this happened the Dane used the stepladder and spray paint to disable more cameras. No risks. The camera recording her climbing over the gate had been unavoidable, but her identifying features were appropriately hidden and no record of the Finn or Swede—nor of their activities within the facility’s boundary—would exist.

The target’s unit sat in the approximate center of a row of eight units—four units to the closest end, three to the farthest. They took up their positions. Their soft-soled shoes and skill at stealth ensured they made as close to no noise as was possible. The Swede took a parabolic microphone from his rucksack, held the earpiece in place, and pointed the microphone at the unit’s doors. He listened for a moment, sweeping with the device.

He nodded at the other two and mouthed, He’s asleep. Then he pointed to the right side of the door. The Finn and the Dane nodded back. The Finn shuffled over to the right and held up her pistol. Two seconds to get the door open; another one to acquire the target. No way he could wake up and react within three seconds, the Finn thought.

The Swede set down the parabolic microphone, and the Dane readied her gun: an FN P90 automatic weapon. A long sound suppressor was affixed to the muzzle. It was a beast of a machine, but only backup. The Finn would do the shooting with a .22-caliber Ruger pistol. The low-powered slugs would still kill if they struck vital organs—which they would, because the Finn was an expert shot—but they would stay inside the head or torso. No exit wound meant less mess. Less mess meant less evidence. They had rolls of plastic sheeting waiting in the van, ready to be unrolled before her power tools came out to play. The P90 was in case the Swede couldn’t get the door open. It seemed unlikely that the target could—or indeed would—secure the unit’s door from the inside, but they were taking no chances. If he had rigged some locking mechanism to the inside and the Swede could not wrench the door open within three seconds the Dane would hose the unit down. The P90’s magazine held fifty rounds that would be unleashed in a matter of seconds. Even with indirect fire, there was no way the target would survive.

The mess would be absolute, which was why it was purely a backup plan. A nice, clean kill was how they preferred to operate, but with a target such as this they were prepared to accept that some corners might have to be cut.

The P90 now clutched in both hands, the Dane nodded to confirm her readiness to the Finn and the Swede. He edged into position, squatted, and took hold of the doo