The Game

THIRTY-FIVE

Victor retrieved Leeson’s gun from the bottom of the bin that stood next to the paper-towel dispenser in the restaurant’s men’s room. He had wanted to find an FN Five-seveN that fired supersonic bullets capable of penetrating most conventional body armour and held twenty in its magazine. He would have been pleased with a reliable Glock or a Beretta with plenty of bullets to shoot, whether 9 mm or .40 or .45 calibre. He would have been content with a compact pistol that held fewer rounds but still had enough stopping power for a one-shot drop. He had to settle for a SIG Sauer that fired .22 calibre bullets.

A .22 had enough power to kill — Victor had done so using one several times — but he had also seen a .22 bullet ricochet off a man’s skull. The SIG’s barrel had less than four inches in length through which to spin the subsonic round and create accuracy. Its magazine held just ten rounds.

It would have to do.

He tucked the gun into his waistband and headed back to the table where Leeson waited. He hadn’t touched his food, but he seemed as if he’d shaken off a little of the panic.

‘If you live through this,’ Victor said, as he sat down opposite, ‘get yourself a better sidearm.’

‘I called Dietrich,’ Leeson said. ‘He’s on the way with Coughlin.’

‘They won’t get here in time.’

‘They’re not at the farmhouse. They’re in Rome. They can be here in less than twenty minutes. We just have to stay in here. We just have to wait.’

Victor shook his head. ‘No, we have to get to the car.’

Leeson shook his head too. ‘We wait. I’m ordering you to wait.’

Victor stood. ‘Waiting won’t do any good. They know.’

‘What? How do they know? How do you know they know?’

‘Because they’re not across the street.’ He looked around the room. ‘Did you make the reservation yourself?’

‘Yes. This morning.’

‘You’ve eaten here before?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘With a member of the Georgian cartel?’

Leeson’s face dropped. ‘But it was years ago. Before our relationship ended. I don’t understand…’

‘The time is irrelevant. You should have known better than to come to the same place twice, especially when the people you betrayed are former Russian intelligence. Someone overheard your calls to Dietrich and Coughlin.’

Turning on his chair to face the open kitchen, Victor saw the waiter staring straight at him, backing out of a door on the far side. He looked terrified. He knew what was about to happen.

Victor was already reaching for the SIG as the man in the knee-length leather jacket burst through the same door. He had a pump-action Mossberg shotgun clutched in both hands, the galvanised steel finish glinting under the bright halogen lights of the kitchen. His face was rigid with controlled aggression. His head immediately swivelled to his left, to where he knew his target sat, the muzzle of the Mossberg trailing a fraction of a second behind. Trained, but out of practice.

His right eye exploded in a haze of blood and gelatinous fluid.

There was no exit wound because the low-powered .22 bounced off the inside of the skull and deflected back on itself, tumbling end over end through the Georgian’s brain.

The man’s turn continued after death, momentum pirouetting the corpse as it collapsed forward into a kitchen worker, who screamed and fell beneath it.

Victor shot again, twice, because he knew the second Georgian from the alley would be following behind, and as the dead man collapsed, the next appeared, moving into the line of fire, the second of the bullets catching him in the left shoulder before he was even through the door. The shock and pain halted his charge and he tried to aim with his own shotgun but another .22 hit him in the throat.

A spray of blood arced through the air.

He fired — whether deliberately or from the reaction of his nervous system jerking his finger on the trigger — and the plate glass window at the front of the restaurant exploded.

Glass rained to the floor.

Diners were screaming and ducking or throwing themselves off chairs. Panicked kitchen staff dropped to the ground or scrambled into cover.

Victor squeezed the trigger again and the bullet zipped past the Georgian’s head. Blood continued arcing from his neck in staccato spurts as he racked the Mossberg. The expended shell was ejected from the chamber and spun through the air trailing a grey wisp of gunpowder smoke.

Terrified diners and staff moved into Victor’s line of fire. He tried to sidestep to get an angle but people were dashing to the door and blocked his way.

The shotgun roared and the maître d’s face contorted in front of Victor. She dropped at his feet, opening up a corridor of air between the SIG and the guy with the shotgun.

Victor put a double tap through his heart.

Amongst the tinnitus ring in his ears and the screams of terrified civilians, Victor heard Leeson’s panicked inhalation and the screech of hot rubber sliding on asphalt.

Twisting, Victor saw the big Jeep Commander skidding to a stop on the road in front of the restaurant. The passenger was already looking their way, the barrel of an AK74-SU protruding through the open window.

‘DOWN.’ Victor yelled.

Leeson was slow to react but Victor leapt forward to send them both crashing together to the floor as the sub-machine gun opened fire.

The AK-74SU was a shortened version of the AK-47, designed to be used at close quarters. The Jeep’s passenger aimed low to follow his target, but the SU’s recoil lifted the muzzle as it spat out a cyclic rate of over five hundred rounds per minute in a wild uncontrolled spray because the shooter wasn’t braced in a proper firing position.

Bullet holes appeared in brickwork, tables, diners, kitchen cabinets and even the ceiling.

The roar of the gunshots drowned out the screaming.

Victor rolled onto his back as Leeson lay face down with hands over his head as if those hands could stop bullets. Victor squinted to protect his eyes from the fragments of masonry and brick dust that peppered the air and the blood that misted above him. He counted off the seconds — one — because he knew on continuous fire — two — the SU would unload its thirty rounds in—

Three.

He jumped to his feet and drew a bead on the Jeep’s passenger as he released the spent magazine and fumbled for a new one, but he didn’t shoot straight away. The man was twelve metres away, blurred by gun smoke and shadow, presenting a narrow side-on profile, fifty per cent of his body concealed by an SUV’s door that might as well have been armour plating to a low-powered .22 calibre round.

Victor waited until the SIG’s tiny iron sights were perfectly aligned and squeezed the trigger three times.

The man jerked and slumped in his seat. Blood splashed across the driver’s face.

The Jeep’s tyres squealed and smoked as it sped away.

‘Move,’ Victor said to Leeson.