Brute Force

107

I sat on the bed and looked down at the picture in my hand.

Duff had gobbed off to the press about a Brit spy hidden away on his ship . . .

Lynn's nickname became common knowledge around the highest levels of Libyan spookdom . . .

We'd killed her precious dad . . .

Fuck . . . It wasn't the Firm cleaning house. It was this bitch.

I ran from the room, into the lounge and out through the front door. Clutching Layla's keys, I sprinted to the gate and produced the only one that would fit a large padlock. I shoved it in, gave it a twist and the chains fell away.

Lynn was already sliding back into the passenger seat. I jumped in and fired up the ignition. The engine caught. I sat there for a moment too long, air con kicking in, working everything out in my head.

Could the device have been her handiwork . . .? Her mother would have shown her the tricks of the trade.

I registered something out of the corner of my eye – a glint, nothing more: metal catching moonlight.

Something on the move; something coming at me – fast. I hit the gas.

Too late.

As the wheels spun I heard the scream of another engine a second before it rammed the Audi side on. It cannoned into my door, catapulting me off my seat and into Lynn as Mansour's car was slammed into the wall. In the same instant the airbags exploded and the side window shattered into a thousand fragments.

Sand and dust and yelling filled the air. The airbags pinned my body back against the seat and my arms to my sides. I couldn't get to my weapon. Boots crunched on the bonnet. Somebody was trying to pull the driver's door open, but it was too buckled to move.

There were urgent, angry shouts and a crowbar crashed down against the windscreen – once, twice, again . . . The lamination crazed like a spider's web, but the glass didn't give. The boots stomped across the roof as I struggled for the weapon. My door was still being pulled at, the distorted metal screeching against the frame.

More shouts, but not in Arabic.

The sunroof imploded. Glass rained down onto me like confetti, then something hard and metallic struck my shoulder then my head and I saw white starbursts in a sea of black.

I forced myself to fight it, but when I was grabbed by my arms and pulled towards the roof, I was too weak to resist.

The shouts were muffled now, but the blows weren't. And then, in the far distance, as I felt myself being lifted, I heard a woman's voice.