I killed a man three minutes ago, she thought. Maybe two. Possibly three.
The thought felt like an intrusion from an onlooker; someone not immediately involved in the action, and thus able to adopt judgmental attitudes.
A figure popped briefly into sight through the doorway and squeezed off a shot at Donovan that went wild.
He was cutting Traynor’s wrists loose now.
River said, “He won’t make it.”
“Thanks for the input.” Louisa stood again and fired twice, thinking two, three, two, two, two. The magazine held fifteen. If Traynor had fired more than the two she’d witnessed, she was going to be out of ammo very soon.
“Welcome.”
And then River was gone again—he was doing that a lot—had leaped from their cover and was running towards where Donovan was struggling with Traynor. The figure in the doorway popped into sight again: he fired once, then jerked back to safety when Louisa shot back. River shouted Donovan’s name, and the soldier stooped and slid his gun across the floor, then hauled Traynor to his feet. River scooped the gun up and slid to a halt behind the overturned filing cabinet just as the figure behind the broken wall appeared again and rattled off three shots at the two soldiers. Donovan and Traynor collapsed. River stood, aimed, and fired at the precise moment Louisa, somewhere behind him, did the same. The Black Arrow with the gun jerked backwards as if his strings had been cut.
There were smells in the air now: cordite, blood. The dust that hangs around archives was swimming in the air.
A baton slammed into the cabinet next to River’s head, but it had been hurled, not swung. A shape disappeared behind a stack of crates. River thought about shooting, but didn’t; if it was armed, it would have fired at him.
Louisa joined him. “There’s at least one loose in here,” she said. “No idea how many through there.”
The corridor behind the blasted door, she meant.
River said, “They’re sitting ducks if that’s the only way they can get in.”
“We don’t have much ammo.”
“They don’t know that.”
He plucked a ledger from the floor and lobbed it at the doorway. Neat throw: it sailed right through unmolested.
“Good shot,” Louisa said. “Proving what exactly?”
“Maybe they don’t have much ammo either. Cover me.”
She stood and took aim at the doorway, arms steady on the top of the cabinet, but nobody appeared there. River ran in a crab-like crouch for Donovan and Traynor, who were in a heap on the floor; when he pulled Donovan up his face was covered in blood.
But the blood was Benjamin Traynor’s, the back of whose head was missing.
Donovan had been hit too, but a good-guy wound—good guys get shot in the shoulder. His eyes were out of focus, though, and River struggled to get him off the ground. He half-dragged half-carried him back to the cover of the overturned cabinet, then dropped him, panting.
“They’re either mustering their forces or have no fucking clue what to do.”
“Or they’ve gone,” Louisa said. She was unbuttoning Donovan’s shirt; to check his wound, River assumed.
Donovan came awake, and he seized her by the wrist with his good hand. “Don’t.”
Louisa laid her gun aside, and unclamped his hand. “Your friend’s dead,” she said. “And an unknown number of hostiles are shooting at us. I think we can safely say your operation’s fucked.”
“Ben’s dead?”
“I’m sorry.”
He closed his eyes again, and she undid another button, then pulled free the folder he’d been carrying. An ordinary manila one, its top corner stained with his blood, or his friend’s.
She handed it to River. “Let’s keep this safe.”
“By which you don’t mean re-shelve it,” River said, tucking it inside his own shirt, jamming the unbloodied edge into the top of his jeans.
“No, well. It might repay study. Seeing as how people are trying to kill us.” She pulled Donovan’s shirt aside and looked at his wound. “This doesn’t look too bad,” she told him.
“Nice to know,” he said through gritted teeth. “How’s the other one looking?”
Uh-oh.
He’d been hit in the thigh, too; not so much a good-guy wound, with bone showing through his trousers.
River was peering round the edge of the cabinet. “There’s movement.”
“Oh good.”
“We might need a plan soon.”
“No offence,” Louisa said, “but I wish Marcus was here.”
“None taken,” River said. “I was thinking the same about Shirley.”
Something hard and round came flying through the shattered doorway, and bounced off the cabinet.
Then everything turned to white light.
Marcus Longridge’s hands were secured behind him, with a pair of those plastic cuffs that were so popular these days, and he’d been similarly bound at the ankles. He lay on his side in the back of the Black Arrow van, and had clearly clocked that he wasn’t alone, and had registered the very former nature of his companion. A bullet to the head was a decisive punctuation mark. He couldn’t be in much doubt that he faced the same full stop.
What was odd, though, was that his damn baseball cap was still on his head.
Nick Duffy didn’t remove his balaclava because there were rules, and they kept you alive, but he knew Longridge had recognised him. Duffy had approached him once, in fact, before his fall, to see if he fancied a role with the Dogs: they could always use men with Marcus’s skills. The people they were sometimes called upon to apprehend often didn’t want to be apprehended, and were highly trained in methods of resisting said apprehension. So having people on your side even more highly trained in smacking heads off walls was a plus. Hence the offer.
To which Longridge had replied, “Does my ass smell like bacon to you?” which Duffy had paraphrased in his subsequent write-up, but hadn’t needed Google Translate to catch the drift of.
“Is that thing velcroed to your head?” Duffy asked now.
Longridge had taken some heavy blows, and been dragged a few hundred metres across rough ground; the sleeve had been ripped off his sweatshirt, and his right cheek was a mess. He should have lost his cap by now. Duffy leaned down and ripped it from his head. Not velcro but parcel tape, the thick brown kind. Partly fastening the cap to Longridge’s head, and partly securing his gun inside it: small revolver, sissy-looking piece, which frankly Longridge should have been ashamed to be carrying.
“You keep your gun in your hat?”
“Didn’t look there, did they?” Marcus said.
“No, well. I swear, you just can’t get the help.”
“Fuck you, man. If you’re gonna do it, do it.”
“Okay.”
“Prick.”
“Thanks,” said Nick Duffy. “That makes it easier.”
The motorway was quiet in the way motorways sometimes are, its traffic-buzz little more than static, with only the occasional comet of oncoming headlights. Catherine sat in the front next to Ho; Lamb in the back. They’d left Craig Dunn at the farmhouse, having called—at Catherine’s insistence—an ambulance. Lamb was toying with a cigarette, rubbing the filtered end absent-mindedly against his cheek, occasionally losing it in his thinning mat of hair. Catherine had made it clear that if he lit it, he’d be dumped on the hard shoulder.