The Darkest Day

SIXTY-THREE

He didn’t know if Raven was alive or dead and it didn’t matter because there were still five live enemies outside. He shook and swept the glass from over him and climbed to his feet. His eyes stung and his ears were ringing.

He peered outside through the gap where the control tower window used to be. Halleck and his men were still there — stunned by the explosion, but all functional.

Victor let off some more rounds, then crawled along the floor, feeling the coldness of the tiles and broken glass beneath his palms and smelling the cordite from expended brass shell casings.

A stationary target, no matter how well defended, was vulnerable against a numerically superior force. Mobility was his best ally. A larger force was a slower force.

He exited the control tower and used the solid metal butt of the UMP to knock out the opaque glass blocks from the window next to the stairs. They had been strong enough to survive the overpressure wave, but five good strikes were enough to clear a large enough space for Victor to squeeze through and fall out on to the terminal building’s flat roof.

Ducking low, he crept along the roof until he could peer over the edge.

He saw four figures. Two were approaching the building, while Halleck and a companion stayed put, ready to provide cover.

Victor held off shooting. If he shot at the two closest, he would no doubt kill them, but would be cut down by the two further away. If he went for the two providing cover, the closest would have easy work killing him, maybe even before he had killed one of his targets.

Instead, he watched.

The man in the lead wore a dark nylon sports jacket, zipped up to the neck, boots, and faded black jeans. His head was shaved to the skin, bone-white scalp contrasting with the tanned face. He was in his mid-thirties, of average height but heavy with excess muscle and fat. He moved like he was used to the weight — quick and assured.

The second man was younger, with dark skin and longer hair tied back in a short topknot. A neat black beard framed a jaw set with aggression. He wore jogging bottoms, trainers and a hooded sweatshirt.

They were dressed like civilians, casual and nondescript, but they were professionals.

They didn’t look much like killers. But the good ones never did.

Victor watched them approach and communicate with hand signals. He didn’t see the fourth of Halleck’s remaining men, which meant either Victor had shot him by some minor miracle or the man had circled the building to enter through the back or to guard it as an obvious escape route.

He backed away from the edge before the two closest moved out of his line of sight. A moment later the sound of glass breaking reached his ears. It had been broken with as little force as possible to lessen the noise, but it would be impossible to smash glass from a door without a sound. He pictured one of the men reaching through and unlocking the door while the other had his gun drawn in cover.

He failed to hear the door open, but detected their footfalls as they passed through the open doorway and into the hallway beneath him. They would spend a minute or more clearing the rooms on the ground floor, one by one. They believed him to be in the tower, but they could not head straight there and risk giving him their backs if he had descended.

Hurried footsteps told him Halleck and the other man were approaching and entering the building too.

Victor waited thirty seconds so the second two would be deep within the building, then slung the UMP over one shoulder.

With his back facing the edge of the roof, he lowered himself until his arms were extended and he was holding on by his fingertips.

He dropped one storey and hit the ground and bounced on the balls of his feet to disperse some of the fall’s energy before going into a roll to absorb the rest.

Halleck and the three men had left the door open for him. Fragments of broken glass lay on the inside of the threshold. Victor stepped over the glass and into the building. The aluminium case sat inside the doorway, containing uranium or plutonium or whatever else made an effective radiological weapon. Halleck had set it down because it was heavy and bulky and a hindrance — and because he believed he was the hunter and Victor the prey.

He was wrong.