The snow had been falling for a few hours and there was nothing to suggest anyone had approached the house since they had left it the day before, all that marred the pristine white blanket was a single set of footprints that came from the front door, up the path and turned right, heading away down the lane. Stokes recognised the shape and tread of his colleague’s trainers, which had yet to be covered over with fresh snow.
“Bloody hell… you’d think he’d have given the run a miss today.” Although both of the police firearm's officers worked hard at keeping up their levels of fitness, Pell was the keener of the two men.
“He’s probably gone to fetch the newspapers.” Scott commented, too tired to get over excited about the antics of a fitness fanatic. If the man wanted to run all the way into the town of Kinloss and back in the snow, then that was his business. Crunching through the crisp snow to the door Stokes put his key in the lock and swore when it wouldn’t turn. He tried jiggling it and then removed the key and putting his mouth in front of the lock he blew, thinking that moisture could have frozen the lock immobile in the sub-zero temperature. When the attempt failed he turned to Scott and Constantine and shrugged.
“Sorry, I’ll hop over the wall and try the kitchen door… gimme a boost up please.”
Constantine linked his fingers and crouched for Stokes to put an icy foot into the stirrup they formed, and then heaved up, boosting the policeman up so he could catch the top of the ten-foot high garden wall. Stokes pulled himself up nimbly and dropped out of sight, leaving the Russian major shake the snow off his hands and blow on them to restore some warmth.
Scott stamped his feet to keep the circulation going, his mind again on what his kids would be doing in all this snow if it were snowing in Virginia too. A slight movement from the door caught his eye, it opened a few inches and then he saw a flash of light.
Constantine heard a grunt followed by a muffled thud from behind him, and turned with a grin, thinking that Scott had slipped and fallen, but the CIA man was lying flat on his back on the footpath and the snow under his head was turning dark.
Constantine rushed over to his friend, and then froze when he saw a small hole just left of centre of Scott’s forehead, a trickle of blood running from it down the side of the Americans face to join the steadily growing stain in the snow.
“Be so good as to remain completely still Major!” a woman’s voice ordered him from the doorway, and Constantine could do nothing except comply.
Stepping through the kitchen door from the garden, the tanned man took out a mobile phone and summoned their back-up crew as he went to join his partner at the front. He was enjoying a feeling of quiet satisfaction in their having managed to trace the traitors from such a small lead as the telephone number of a public call box, miles away in Edinburgh. Hotels, guesthouses and rental addresses such as this one had been visited throughout Scotland, the Borders and Scottish Isles. The girl was missing, but the major would tell exactly where she could be found, as pliers applied to the testicles were a proven method of loosening tongues.
Constantine was hoping desperately that Stokes was still alive, and would be coming through the house at any moment, but the only sound he heard was that of the woman stepping out of the house, her right foot making the snow on the top step crunch, and then with her left foot she stepped down onto the footpath, onto the spot where the milk bottle had broken. Constantine heard her grunt as her foot skidded on the patch of ice created by the milk from the broken bottle. As she fell she put out a hand to save herself, and Constantine turned as she screamed, having put her free hand on broken glass from the bottle.
The instructors who had taken himself and Svetlana through the tedious hours of unarmed combat had stressed that the aim was to inflict the maximum damage to your opponent, because if it got to the point where you had no weapons left to fight with, it was all or nothing. The woman’s eyes were screwed up in pain as he took a pace forward but then they opened, and the handgun with its sound suppresser, which had wavered off target, was now starting to move back toward him. Constantine kicked out, but not at the hand holding the pistol. The human body has points of varying vulnerability the instructors had stressed, eyes can be gauged out, ears can be pulled off and groins can be punched or kicked, but the throat is the most vulnerable of all. His right foot came forward, and he drove the toe of his shoe into the exposed throat with all the force of a striker taking a penalty, crushing her trachea.
The tanned man appeared in the hallway; Constantine straightened up, having taken possession of the woman’s handgun. The tanned man’s weapon was in his right hand, pointing down at the floor, but he whipped it up and was turning his body sideways on to present a smaller target to the major who snapped off a shot one handed, hoping for the man’s chest but having a sound suppressor on the muzzle was new to him, it altered the balance and he snatched the shot. There was little more noise than that of the working parts cycling back and forth in the weapon but it bucked in his hand, muzzle heavy and hitting the tanned man’s right knee, causing the leg to collapse. As the man fell to his knees Constantine fired again, this time two handed and aiming as taught, double tapping and both rounds struck the wounded man in the upper body. His targets arms dropped to the sides, and then the gun fell from the hand that had held it. The head lolled forward as though he were a puppet without strings and the body fell face first onto the mat inside the doorway. Constantine kept his weapon pointing at the fallen man, but looked down at the woman, distracted by the gurgling sound she emitted as she rolled over onto her side, her blue face burying itself in the snow and then became deathly still, the body relaxing completely. He aimed at the body inside the door as he stepped indoors. He didn’t know how to feel for a pulse at the side of the neck like they did in the movies, so he did the other thing actors did, and he nudged it with his foot. Satisfied that he was as dead as the woman he knelt and retrieved the man’s fallen pistol. Constantine’s gaze then fell upon the form of Pc Pell, lying like a broken doll at the foot of the stairs with the back of his head missing and his training shoes gone. Sorrow and anger welled up inside him. He had liked both Scott and the policeman but now both were dead, gunned down by these people. The tanned man’s hand moved, the movement catching the majors eye and Constantine shot him three times in quick succession, bulky sound suppressor doing its job, the ejected spent cases ringing like chimes as they struck the old and burnished brass artillery shell casing that acted as umbrella stand before clattering onto the polished oak floorboards and rolling away.
Constantine rolled the body over, taking a hand and using a lifeless arm as a lever and avoiding the expanding pool of blood. Inside the man’s jacket were photographs, a copy of Constantine’s embassy ID picture, along with a photo of a bare breasted Svetlana wearing a G-String and a grin, stood on a windsurfing trainer board on a beach, her instructor smiling smugly at the camera with his arms about her hips.
His fingers left dark smudges on both and he straightened up, examining his fingers before wiping them on the side of his coat to remove the fake tan make-up that smeared them. It then occurred to him that he did not know if these two were alone.
Pell’s MP-5 was visible, still attached to its harness and discarding the pistols he knelt quickly, unclipped the MP-5 and checked the pockets for spare magazines. He found two and stuck them into his own coat pocket before checking the load on the MP-5, and then moving as he had been taught, butt in the shoulder and weapon in the aim as he made his way to the back of the house.