Medievsky backed off a couple of steps. ‘Sit down, Efraim.’
Avner pressed in, following Medievsky so that he kept well inside the taboo region of his personal space. ‘No. I will not sit down. In fact, I won’t sit down until I’m aboard a flight out of this nightmare of a country.’ He advanced until his chest bumped against the rifle slung across Medievsky’s. ‘I’m out of here. Gone. And if any of you — ’ he swept his arm, index finger extended, in two arcs on either side of him — ‘if any of you have the smallest clue about what kind of shit is about to go down here, you’ll come with me.’
His words fell into silence. All eyes were on him.
All except Purkiss’s. He faced Avner, but he looked at the person he knew was the killer.
Medievsky took another half step backwards, freeing up a foot of space between himself and Avner. Purkiss used Medievsky’s movement as cover, and edged to his right.
The killer’s head turned a fraction in Purkiss’s direction.
Purkiss said, ‘Efraim.’
Without looking at him, Medievsky held up a hand. He was in charge. Purkiss wasn’t to try and take command of the situation, wasn’t to intrude.
Avner said, looking at each of them in turn: ‘Nobody? Gunnar? Oleksandra? Ryan? You’re all just going to stay here?’
The killer glanced at Purkiss. Eye contact, for the briefest moment.
Purkiss tensed, feeling the first prickle of what would become the adrenaline surge.
He looked at Avner, watched the younger man’s mouth curve in disgust.
‘The hell with you all, then.’
Avner turned away from Medievsky as if to stalk away. With surprising speed he spun back and grabbed the rifle and tried to jerk it free, the pull of the strap across Medievsky’s back hauling him into a stoop.
‘Give me the gun, Oleg,’ Avner shouted. ‘At least give me a chance. I’ll be on my own out there. I need a gun.’
Medievsky prised the gun free, swinging it up and away from Avner’s grasp.
‘For God’s sake, Efraim, control yourself —’ he began.
The killer moved.
Purkiss had been prepared for it, but, as he understood with wrenching shame later, during the terrible journey that followed, he’d got the direction of the attack completely wrong. He had assumed the killer would make the first move on him, would see Purkiss as the primary target to be neutralised.
If the killer had followed the expected course, Purkiss would have been ready. He’d have countered with a double defence-and-attack, keeping low and twisting the gun hand away with his left hand around the wrist while putting the force of a right fist launched using a pivot from the hip into the killer’s throat, causing possible death but certain incapacitation.
Assumptions were often made on the basis of arrogance. Purkiss’s arrogance had been in considering himself more likely a target than the two men who posed the more obvious threat. The two men carrying firearms.
A second after Medievsky pulled the Ruger out of Avner’s grip so that its barrel pointed above and behind him, Montrose drew a handgun from inside his coat pocket and shot Medievsky in the face.
Ten seconds later, reality returned, in the sense that the stimuli feeding into Purkiss’s cortex began to knit together into a coherent whole.
Before that, he was aware of individual sensations, detached from each other and stratified neatly in his consciousness.
The first sensation was the noise. It was the most undifferentiated of the three, the colossal blast of the handgun merging with the wet organic sound of the bullet ripping through skin and bone and brain before the orchestra of screaming rose to dominate.
Second was the smell. It was simpler than the other two stimuli, consisting overwhelmingly of the sharp sting of propellant from the handgun fired six feet from Purkiss’s face.
And there were visual data, the most vivid of all. The lurid colours of the carnage wreaked upon Medievsky’s head as the shot blew it apart and his body rocked sideways and crashed to the floor. The primal postures of the people around him: Clement diving to her left from her seated position against the wall, her arms flung out, Haglund stretching his mouth and his eyes impossibly wide while he hunched and brought his rifle up, Avner holding both palms up towards Medievsky to fend off the violation being done to him while his grimacing face twitched aside.
And the unnaturally fluid blur of Montrose’s limbs, his firing of the handgun segueing into his lunge towards Budian and his engulfing her in his arms before he swung her across his torso, his gun jammed against the side of her head.
Ten seconds, and Montrose was ten feet away from the group, down the corridor, Budian positioned expertly so that her small body provided maximum cover in front of his taller frame. Her glasses had slipped comically. Behind them her eyes were clenched as she struggled to breathe past the arm clamped across her throat.
Haglund aimed down the Ruger, his feet apart, his knees slightly bent.
Montrose said, ‘Drop the gun.’
From behind Haglund, Purkiss watched the engineer’s back tense beneath his snowsuit.
Montrose fired a second time and Purkiss saw Budian’s hair lift on one side. Until he heard the ricochet whine off the ceiling, he thought Montrose had put the bullet through her head. But her legs scrabbled against the floor, her scream muffled as Montrose shifted his arm so that it was over her mouth.
‘Final warning,’ said Montrose.
Haglund lowered the Ruger, crouched, laid it on the floor. Stepped away from it.
Montrose said, ‘Outside. Out that door. All of you.’
Twenty-six
Haglund was the last to leave. He pulled the door shut and leaned against it.
They huddled close, not touching but behaving as if there was a collective understanding that they needed to maintain contact with each other, that to be separated was to die quickly.
Purkiss had moved first, grabbing an orange snowsuit off the hook and stepping into it without prompting. Haglund had kept his on after arriving in the entrance hall. He grabbed two suits off the rack and threw them at Avner and Clement. Purkiss pulled on a balaclava, fitted goggles over his eyes. The others, half sluggish, half scrambling, followed suit.
Down the corridor, Montrose’s face was three-quarters hidden behind Budian’s head. He watched them.
As Purkiss opened the door, Montrose called, ‘Stay out. If you come back inside, I’ll be here. I’ll shoot her. And you.’
They stood in the pool of yellow from the arc lights over the entrance. The snowfall had largely stopped apart from a scatter of slanting flakes. The wind scoured the walls of the building like a vampiric presence, clamouring and wheedling for entry.
Purkiss said, shouting over the wind and the barrier imposed by his balaclava: ‘He’ll find a way to get to the hangar. We need to secure it.’
Haglund leaned in close. ‘The rest of the guns are inside. In the west wing. We have no access.’
‘Then we gain access.’ Clement’s yell was startling to Purkiss. ‘Get in through a window.’
Avner grabbed Purkiss’s shoulder, pressing so close Purkiss could see his eyes through the goggles. ‘What are you talking about? The hangar’s over there, for Christ’s sake. We take the Ural and get the fuck out of here. Leave him for the soldiers to take care of.’
Clement shoved him with a hand placed in the middle of his chest, not hard but enough to send him staggering back a step. Even muffled, and over the keening of the wind, her voice was cutting. ‘He has Oleksandra Budian hostage. If we leave, she’ll die. So shut up.’