Police Constable Stokes was lying crumpled and motionless in snow stained red at the corner of the house; Constantine rolled him over and sighed sorrowfully at the eyes, which stared unseeing at the snowflakes that floated down to land on the dead face. The tanned man had been waiting for Stokes to appear around the corner of the house, killing him with a single bullet in the side of the head as he’d stepped into view. Constantine went through his clothing, ignoring the Glock but pocketing the mobile telephone he discovered there. The house phone had been disconnected when the house had been taken over, and both his and Svetlana’s mobiles had been taken by the CIA debriefer’s as a precaution.
The sound of a vehicle negotiating the slippery, un-gritted road reached the major, and then the engine note altered; it was stopping outside the house. The voices of several men and the noise of cocking weapons indicated that it was hardly likely to be a passing motorist, or the local constabulary.
Constantine ran back into the house, pausing in the living room to peer out through the hall door. The front door was still wide open, and in the lane he saw a battered van, but hurrying towards the gate were four very serious looking men carrying AKM-74 assault rifles. Constantine did not know any of them, but he was certain the cavalry wouldn’t be arriving in a builders van and totting soviet weaponry. As the first of the newcomers caught sight of the woman’s body he froze in alarm and opened his mouth to shout.
Constantine went up the hallway squeezing off aimed shots from the MP-5; he moved quickly in the crouching, knees-together walk that kept the upper body steady enough to permit more accurate fire than running would have.
His first round hit the left side of his targets chest and the leading newcomer dropped with a grunting cry, whilst the other three dived out of sight, rolling for cover. Constantine reached the doorway and fired through the hedge at where he though the others were taking cover before kicking the door closed and stepping aside as he did so. Return fire hammered through the door's woodwork, and straight through the Kevlar panel which could not stop high velocity, steel cored rounds. The gunmen’s leader screamed at the firer to cease fire, because Bedonavich was no use to them dead, and the firing ended abruptly.
Constantine knew he could not defend the house against these men, he had to get clear and call for help, so turning he sprinted through the house, across the garden and through the rear gate into the snow covered field beyond.
At the front of the house, one of the fallen man’s comrades checked him over rapidly; rolling him onto his left side, the injured side, keeping the un-punctured lung upper most, the wounded man was then left to fend for himself. One man covered the front whilst the other two took a side each, leopard crawling along so as to use the cover of the privet hedge that ran around the front garden. Once they reached the cover of the side wall they got up and ran to the far corner at each end of the garden.
Constantine did not look back as he made for the cover of Alves wood, he just put his head down and ran as fast as he could, determined to get as much distance between himself and the house before the men realised he had gone, or shouted a challenge if they did see him. Pulling his mobile from his pocket he keyed in 999 as he ran, and then held it to his ear but heard no dialling tone, just a single beep as it announced that the battery was flat, and switched itself off. He would have cursed aloud but instead he berated himself silently for not checking it when he’d taken it from the policeman’s pocket.
The edge of the wood was looming close when he heard the cracks of high velocity rounds passing, snow was being kicked up where the rounds landed twelve feet to his right, and bark flew off the trunks of trees well above head height.
Constantine dodged to the left, slipped and fell painfully, his full weight landing on his thigh, with gritted teeth he rolled into a slight depression in the ground, moving awkwardly with his injured limb. His leg throbbed painfully as he raised his head to look back toward the house, the firing had stopped as soon as he had gone down, and then it occurred to him that the shots had been aimed wide, they apparently still wanted him alive.
Two men were coming after him across the field, well-spaced so as to flank him if he went to ground, and the van appeared in the lane, skidding and sliding on the icy surface as it headed along the lane towards the far edge of the wood. Constantine knew far too much to allow himself to be taken, and he glanced towards the wood, seeking the best escape route available. Forty feet away lay the woods, between himself and the trees was strung a four-foot high barbed wire fence and a ditch that ran just beyond that. Turning back toward the two approaching men he took careful aim at the man on the left, the closest at about 200 yards. The MP-5A3 that he carried, is a short barrelled weapon meant for close quarters work, and the round he squeezed off did nothing more than to make both men drop to the frozen surface of the field. During the weapon handling sessions the two policemen had been very critical of the ammunition that the police service were given, the BAE produced, 75 grain rounds wouldn’t penetrate clothing at 100m, let alone stop the target from firing back with something more potent. However the aim on this occasion was to buy time, even if trimming the odds would have been a bonus.
Pushing himself up the moment the pair dropped from sight, he broke into a hobbling run, and there was an immediate shout from behind him followed by a resumption of the firing. Constantine ignored the rounds that cracked past as he forced all thought of pain from his mind, willing his leg to work normally as he approached the barbed wire fence like a steeple chaser, legs pounding; he had Pell’s MP-5 held high in his right hand and leapt.
The two men pursuing him saw the top strand catch their quarry below the knee and the sharp barbs snagged the bottom of the coat he wore. Constantine was tumbled head over heels to hang head down, suspended above the ditch by the coat that was caught in the wire, and the MP-5 fell from his grasp into the icy water of the ditch. He kicked and struggled to free himself, but the coat was firmly entangled on the wire, leaving him no option but to rip open the front of the coat, the buttons springing free as the thread that held them parted. He fell the rest of the way into the stream with a splash, and came up gasping with the shock of the cold water. The water made him aware of a deep gash along his calf, gouged by the barbs, but he had no time to dwell on it. Plunging his hands back into the water he rooted around furiously until his fingers found the carbine, and then he scrambled from the ditch, his heart pounding. He wondered when they would be close enough to feel confident in shooting at his legs, avoiding the danger of causing an immediately fatal wound. The answer came moments later when something tugged at the fabric of his wet trousers, and he dived to the side and rolled, turning to face the way he had come. The nearest man was kneeling; the AKM in the aim, waiting for a safe shot at an exposed limb, his partner was a hundred meters to Constantine’s right, still going for the flanking move.
Constantine aimed and fired at the kneeling man, seeing the round strike wide of the target. In reply the AKM-74 fired, but missing quite deliberately, although not by very much, the shooter seeking to pin Constantine in place, but the firer was still kneeling when he should have dropped prone, and Constantine adjusted his aim. He saw the 9mm round strike, and followed through with another shot, which also scored and the man fell on his side.
As he grinned with savage satisfaction he heard the creaking on the barbed wire and fence posts, the second man had reached the fence and was climbing over somewhere to his right, masked by the undergrowth. Constantine got to his feet, the first man was still down, doubled over and gasping with pain. He ran into the wood; he knew that there was a track at the far end and just behind that was a cutting that the Inverness line ran through. He recalled from their exercises with the paintball guns that there was a second bridge, this one for cattle to move between a local farm and the fields. There was a padlock and chain on the gates at either end of the bridge, so if he could reach it then the van driver would have to turn around on the narrow track to go around if he intended cutting him off, if he hadn’t already achieved that feat. Branches whipped at his face as he ran, fallen branches and thick brambles tried to trip him but he pressed on. After four or five minutes of hard running his breath was coming painfully, then he saw the track through the trees and despite the fire in his chest he put on a burst of speed. Skidding to a halt at the edge of the wood he listened, his own breathing was loud and fogging the cold air but he could hear or see nothing of the van, but the bridge was in sight, a hundred or so paces to the left.