Assassin

71

Thor Larsson did not stop running. While the men in their black uniforms fled from the blazing barn, he kept moving straight towards it. When he got to the doors, he kicked out at them, sending his foot through the flames that were racing up the green-painted wood and forcing them open so that he could charge right through and into the building itself.

Larsson looked like a man who was already halfway to damnation. His face bore a look of such manic intensity that his old self was all but unrecognizable. Fire was licking at his trouser legs and he held some kind of weapon in his hands. Carver flinched like a whipped dog confronted by a man's passing boot, but then he saw that the weapon was not intended for him as Larsson reached over him, gripped the bungee cord in the alligator's teeth and turned on the chainsaw. He was shouting something, the same words again and again, but the rasping buzz of the saw biting at the toughened rubber was so loud in Carver's ear that he could not make out what it was. It was only by lip-reading that he worked out Larsson was repeating, 'I'm sorry,' in an anguished mantra of apology.

The air was rippling with the scorching heat that had turned the barn into a cross between a sauna and a pizza oven, and smoke was curling up walls that had been transformed into satin curtains of gold and scarlet by the roiling flames and snaking over the inside of the roof. Carver's eyes were watering and he was choking as his battered lungs tried to extract oxygen from the scorching, toxic atmosphere. The flesh on his back, exposed by Tyzack's cane, felt as though it was cooking, basting in the sweat that poured from the pores of his remaining skin, the burns adding a whole new layer of pain to his torment.

At the end of the barn, by the doors through which Larsson had entered, a roof-beam gave way, eaten through by fire, and crashed to the ground, bringing a sheet of corrugated iron roofing down with it. Carver glanced up and saw that the beam from which he was hanging had caught fire. It would give way soon, and he would be directly underneath it.

'Hurry up!' he croaked.

Larsson grimaced. There were burning embers floating down on his head but he ignored them as the loppers tore all too slowly through a cord designed to resist the massive stress imposed by a human body falling hundreds of feet through the air.

The flames were creeping across the floor towards them, forming a predatory circle around the two men. The roaring fire and crashing timbers were now as loud as the chainsaw, but Carver just made out the words, 'Almost there!'

Larsson's demonic transformation was complete. He had become a creature of flame, all but consumed by the inferno his own incendiaries had created. The last strands of the cord gave way. Larsson threw the loppers away and shouted, 'Go! Go!'

Carver looked around, searching for a way out, but there was none. The flames were everywhere. Their only hope was to race towards the doors and pray that they could get through to the outside world before the fire consumed them. Carver took a first tentative step towards the blaze, girding himself for the final effort.

And it was then that one end of the beam gave way. It swung downwards, as if on a hinge, hitting Larsson with a sickening impact, caving in the left side of his skull and dropping him to the ground before it crashed to a halt. Larsson lay motionless on the floor. The beam was angled over him, one end on the floor, the other jammed against the far wall. Calling up the last reserves of strength that adrenalin always provides, the berserker energy that is any fighting man's last resort, Carver dragged Larsson's long, spindly body out from beneath the beam. He got down on one knee and hauled Larsson over his shoulder, then forced his legs to straighten, pushing him upright.

As he faced the wall of fire, an image suddenly came into Carver's mind. He saw Tyzack grinning at him and heard his mocking laugh. 'Screw you,' Carver said, and ran full speed into the flames.

It was only twenty feet to the door. Call it five racing strides, eight maybe with a man on his back. An Olympic sprinter could do it in a little over half a second. Carver took five. He had his head down and his eyes closed: a blind, broken man with an even more ruined creature on his back. The noise, the smoke and the heat seemed to engulf him as he charged on.

And then he was through, stumbling out into the cool, clear air and falling to the bare earth. He had just enough self-possession to land on his front, protecting both Larsson and his own griddled back. As the two of them lay there, side by side, Carver saw Larsson's blistered right eyelid open a fraction, just for a moment, and his lips move as he whispered, 'The sky. Look to the sky…'

Then the black-uniformed figures were on them. Someone was covering Carver's body in a thick blanket. Dimly he realized that they must be putting out flames, but then there was a pinprick in his upper arm and oblivion wrapped itself around him in a blissful, soft cloak of darkness. And he was out.