And as those thoughts coursed through his mind, Pere swung the pistol round to point directly at him rather than at George Stebbins’s head.
‘I said you were clever, Bronson,’ he snapped, ‘but actually you’re a bigger fool than I took you for. Why on earth did you think I would let you walk out of here alive?’
And that was the gamble. It all depended on what the Spaniard did next.
Pere slowly straightened up from behind the bound man and stretched out his right arm, still smiling as he aimed his weapon directly at Bronson, relishing the moment.
‘I understood that you’d had a spell as an officer in the British Army, and that you’re now a police officer. I’m frankly surprised that you learned so little in your training for either organization.’
Bronson raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.
‘The first rule of close-quarters combat. You never, ever, give up your weapon, no matter what the odds or the circumstances. I thought you would have known that. You certainly should have done.’
‘I do know that,’ Bronson agreed, ‘but in any combat situation you have to make a judgement as to whether whatever rules you’ve been taught really apply. And I decided that they didn’t, because I needed you to make a mistake, which you have done.’
‘I don’t think so. You’re unarmed, and I have both a pistol and a hostage. I’m going to live, and you’re going to die.’
Bronson nodded, and tensed his body.
‘In fact, that’s two mistakes you’ve made,’ he said.
84
A puzzled frown appeared on Pere’s face.
‘What mistakes?’ the Spaniard demanded.
‘First, you’re standing up.’
Bronson had known that he’d never be able to get the pistol out of his shoulder holster before the Spaniard shot him down. But before he’d entered the room he’d decided to give himself an ace in the hole. He’d buttoned the neck of his shirt, and then tucked the second Glock, barrel downwards, into the top of the garment behind his head. Since then he’d been careful to move slowly so as not to dislodge it.
Now, with his arms raised, his right hand was a bare six inches from the butt of the weapon.
Pulling the trigger of a pistol fires the weapon immediately, and nobody can out-run a bullet. But the brain still takes a finite time to send the message to the finger to tell it to squeeze the trigger, and that was what Bronson was counting on.
With a movement so fast that Pere had no time to react, Bronson slid his right hand behind his head, seized the Glock pistol and swung it forwards and downwards, squeezing the trigger twice as he did so.
The first bullet slammed into the Spaniard’s right shoulder, spinning him round and immediately making him drop his weapon, but it was the second one that did the real damage, tearing into the left side of the man’s chest and knocking him backwards. He was dead before his body hit the floor.
‘And your second mistake,’ Bronson muttered, ‘was assuming that I was unarmed.’
Once he’d checked the whole of the top floor and ensured there was no further danger, Bronson approached George Stebbins. He had assumed that the man was out cold, but in fact he wasn’t, just rendered immobile by the plastic cable ties that secured him to the chair, and made speechless by a gag taped over his mouth. He was also plainly terrified, a fact attested to by the spreading damp patch on his trousers where he had wet himself, and in a lot of pain, with three of the fingers on his left hand bent and broken out of shape.
But at that moment, even as Bronson reached into his pocket to take out a knife to cut Stebbins free, he heard the unmistakable sound of approaching sirens, and realized he had no time left. Angela must have blown the whistle.
‘Can you hear me, George?’ he asked urgently.
The bound man raised his head to look at his saviour and nodded, his eyes imploring.
‘The police are on their way,’ Bronson told him, ‘so I’m leaving you here. When they free you, tell them you were kidnapped by this gang and then there was a violent argument which ended up with two of the men shooting each other. Have you got that?’
Stebbins nodded, looking thoroughly upset and confused at what was happening to him.
‘Right,’ Bronson said, and set to work to try to create the scenario he had just outlined.
He took a handkerchief from his pocket and did what he could to rub his fingerprints from the trigger and handle of the Glock he’d just used to shoot Pere, then stepped across the room and placed the gun in the hand of the first man he’d shot, closing his fingers around it. He picked up the pistol lying beside that body, then strode across to Pere, retrieved his weapon as well, and then repeated the cleaning operation on the Beretta automatic he’d been carrying when he’d walked into the room, and placed that pistol in Pere’s right hand.
It was the best he could do in the circumstances. At the very least he had now positioned the weapons in the appropriate places, and the forensic examination of the scene which would surely follow would show that the bullets which had killed the men had come from the correct pistols. Bronson frankly doubted that any halfway intelligent police officer would be satisfied that that was what had actually happened, but he had no time left to do any more, as the increasing volume of the approaching sirens confirmed.
He took one final glance around the office, checked both bodies to remove the spare magazines they were carrying, and made sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. Then he ran down the passageway, quickly searched the unconscious man still lying there and retrieved another two Glock magazines from his body, then made his way swiftly down the stairs and out of the building.
85
Outside, the noise of the sirens was very much louder, and he was sure that Angela would already have driven away from the scene, so he ran in the opposite direction, covering as much distance as he could before the first of the police cars arrived.
There was another industrial building about two hundred yards away, and he ducked around the back of it just as the beams of the headlights on the leading police car swept across it. Bronson stopped for a few seconds and looked back, checking that he hadn’t been seen.
Once he was certain that nobody was heading in his direction, he crossed the road and began making his way between the various industrial units dotted about the estate until he reached the other road where he had asked Angela to wait for him. Almost as soon as he stepped onto the pavement, he saw the hire car parked precisely where he had expected to find it.
Less than a minute later, he pulled open the passenger door and dropped into the seat beside her.
The moment he sat down, Angela grabbed and held him for a long moment.
‘I was terrified,’ she said, a catch in her voice. ‘I heard the shots and I was sure I was never going to see you again. So I called the police and then drove here as soon as I heard the sirens. What happened? Was George there?’
Bronson nodded.
‘He was, and he still is,’ he replied. ‘He was tied to a chair, but as far as I could see he was unharmed apart from two or three broken fingers.’
‘The bastards,’ Angela muttered. ‘Why didn’t you bring him with you?’
‘I didn’t have time to cut him free, and in any case he’ll need medical treatment for his hand. And there’s another reason. I left two dead men inside that building and another one with a really bad headache. I explained to George what he should tell the police, and I’m hoping that will satisfy them that nobody else was involved in there, at least in the short term.’