He gazed towards the dark outline of the house. Whoever it was in there was professional. Anyone else would have been tempted by now into some form of action with three ground floor windows open and no one coming in. It was a game of nerves and Dillon had played it many times before. His primary problem was that he didn’t know how many of them there were and, more importantly, where they were positioned. But there was one certain way of drawing them out. He crawled back around to the back of the garage and smashed the obscured glass window with the base of the torch. The alarm went off immediately, a siren wailing into the night and the blue light flashing above his head. He sprinted away from the garage and the house, made the edge of the woods and threw himself flat onto the soft ground.
Even then there was no movement or panic from those inside the house, as if they knew they had the situation well under control. They made use of the open windows and came from four different directions. It was difficult to make them out in the darkness and at first he had to rely solely on his hearing. They moved almost silently, the nearest just a silhouette running fast at an angle towards the garage, and Dillon was sure that he was wearing black and was completely hooded.
Dillon remained motionless, discreetly withdrew the automatic and held it loosely in his left hand. It always felt good to hold the cold metal; the power it brought and the devastation it dealt. Dillon spun out of his hiding place and into the path of a surprised black-clad figure; the Glock 9 mm slammed twice in his hand and the assassin was kicked from his feet. Blood immediately erupted from the two holes in his throat as he went down hard, and Dillon did a series of rolls away from the flash point. He came to a halt against a log pile and lay still. The man he had taken down was barely alive, drowning in his own blood, but drew no attention from the other three that Dillon had barely glimpsed.
Dillon would have felt a lot happier had he been deeper into the trees, but the men had reacted quickly as good pros should, and he had got as far away from the garage as their response had allowed. All that he could do now was to wait.
The siren was still wailing and he hoped that one of them would turn it off, but he guessed they had left it on to cover their own movements. But if the continuing sound helped his assassins, it also helped him. And bit by bit he edged back into deeper cover.
It became a cat and mouse game. They were not sure where he was and might even have missed the point of his shots as the silencer kept down the gun’s barrel flash to a minimum. But he had no idea where they were. He could no longer hear or see the man he’d shot. He edged back even deeper into the protection of the trees, for it would be easy for them to work their way around from the garage and outflank him on both sides and from behind.
There was a movement close to his left side. Like him they were not using torches, the more so since they now knew how devastatingly skilled he was with a gun.
Dillon rolled slowly over onto his back to get a better view. It became immediately apparent that a man was standing almost over him but didn’t really see him until he moved — the continuous wailing from the siren had been effective in covering both their movements. He rolled, the Glock out and in his hand as the gun above went off at near point-blank range. He felt the bullet tear through the side of his jacket, only just missing him. He rolled again and again and again, knowing that he was completely invisible in the absolute darkness of the woods. The shots followed him, hollow plops, unearthly as the bullets sprayed up little puffs of dead leaves near him. And in the middle of this life-or-death crisis the alarm suddenly stopped and the silence was instant.
High on adrenalin, Dillon did not take any notice, but in one of his frenetic rolls he glimpsed just the slightest hesitation in the black-clad form pursuing him again when the alarm stopped. Dillon rolled into a crouch as the soft footsteps came close. His brain seized for a split second as the footsteps suddenly increased in pace. Roll, his subconscious screamed at him. He rolled, crouched again and then leaped clumsily, arms encircling the attacker, and they both hit the ground. Dillon felt the full impact of the blow to his face, slammed both arms down, the heels of his hands smashing into the assassins head. One blow; two; three; four; five. He felt something break within the hooded mask. Dillon staggered to his feet.
The assassin’s foot lashed up into Dillon’s groin and he stumbled back. The scene flashed red. The assassin was still wearing the hooded mask; the eyes unreadable. The figure lifted its arms above its head, as if in some martial-art preparatory stance. Dillon scrambled up and the figure’s stare fixed on him, eyes boring through him, and he grinned, bloodstained teeth bore through thick strings of saliva.
“You fucking surprised, motherfucker?” he snarled.
“We’ve danced for long enough,” came the whispered voice.
From hidden arm sheaths the assassin drew two short black blades and lowered his head. Dillon pulled his own darkened blade from his boot and spat blood onto the ground.
“But I like to dance, asshole,” Dillon said softly. “It’s just getting interesting. And you wanting to fight with knives… I will cut you, and you will bleed.”
The assassin charged, blades clashed, and Dillon came away having sliced the razor-sharp blade down the assassin’s bicep. He pulled away with blood weeping down his arm, and the freed muscle within sliced skin took the smile from his lips. They circled and Dillon edged the assassin closer. When he charged again it was with blind fury. Dillon sidestepped and came up behind the assassin. The assassin’s head was snapped to the left — a sudden impact movement, so fast that Dillon was shocked by the speed with which he’d carried out the dispatch.
Dillon was on his feet in an instant and searched around the body for its weapon. After a moment he found it: a silenced Uzi-K2. A lethal weapon in anybody’s hands let alone a professional’s. He went back to the body and pulled off the hooded mask, but the light was too poor for any kind of identification, and he realised then that he must have dropped the torch.
Two down and two to go. One of the others must have heard his colleague go down. Dillon faded once again into the woods and waited, and whilst he waited, he fervently hoped that the two men he’d killed did not belong to MI5. However, there were still two more men to deal with, and their nerves would be just as frayed as Dillon’s.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dillon crouched with his back to a tree and waited so long, he almost began to think that the two remaining men had gone. Both the house and the garage were out of sight and it was so dark that he had to keep a grip on his senses to know which way he was facing; he could barely make out the next tree.
He glanced at his watch. 11.15 p.m. He had been there for almost two hours. From the time he had smashed the garage window to the present must have taken up about an hour. The temptation was to move, but he resisted and remained where he was, slowly straightening up against the tree every now and then in order to ward off cramp.
It was a stand-off. If he was to discover anything at all, he had no option but to stay. The night stretched ahead. There was plenty of time, but the unrelenting concentration of listening was making him edgy.
The longer he stayed in the woods the more intrusive the natural sounds all around him became. Nearby owls were hooting high up in the trees, the sudden shriek of two foxes fighting brought with it a cacophony of noises from above and on the ground. He continued to stay rooted to the same spot, knowing that any movement would carry through the night to ears as attuned as his own.