Close Quarters

TWENTY-THREE

I don’t get surprised by much. Not after the stuff I’ve seen. But a woman sniper isn’t something you come across every day, although clearly they exist. This one was even more surprising because I put her age at somewhere in the late forties or early fifties — which is high for anyone in that profession.

The name on the ID card was Olena Prokyeva. She had experience and pain in her eyes — although the latter might have been entirely due to the damage I’d done to her nose — along with a coldness that was entirely focussed on me. Even though I had the upper hand it didn’t seem to bother her much.

If I’d been looking for trouble, the look told me, I’d found it in spades and had better watch my back.

‘Well, I know your name,’ I said, and got to my feet, gesturing with the Grach for her to sit up. Nobody can talk easily lying on their back, not when they’re suffering a blunt-nose trauma and impaired breathing. ‘But why are you trying to kill me?’

She didn’t reply. Just stared at me and waited, then slowly sat upright. She was rail-thin and whippy, with weathered skin and a sideways slant to her jawline as if she’d been hit hard and the bone hadn’t been set right. With the swelling around her nose and eyes, she wasn’t going to be winning beauty contests anytime soon. She looked as if she’d lived a hard life and I wondered what had brought her to this point. I was guessing she was a gun for hire.

‘Who sent you?’ I asked. I had to get something out of her, but it was better if she gave it voluntarily.

She still didn’t reply and I realized she wasn’t even looking at me, but at a point over my shoulder. Then I saw a flicker in her eyes. It was a ‘tell’ — the giveaway that something was going on behind me. Something I wouldn’t like.

I hit the ground a split second before the crack of a high-velocity round split the air right where my head had been.

Shooter number two. She hadn’t come alone.

I twisted round and found I was half lying on her rifle. I’d called it right: it was an OSV, a beast of a weapon for long-range work. It was coated in dirt and bits of grass from where it had hit the ground, but was still good to go. I stuffed the pistol in my pocket and lifted the rifle, which made my shoulder muscles crack, and checked the load. She had loaded a fresh five-round magazine after taking her shots. I inched my way up to the lip of the gulley and took a look around.

Her partner had to be on high ground if he wanted to reach me, so I checked the ridge where it ran away to my right, jagged and untamed like a line of broken teeth against the skyline. The big bits were rocks the size of cars, easy to hide behind and a good platform for a long-range shot.

Except he’d missed with the first one and now wouldn’t be feeling so cocky. He — or maybe another she — would have to play duck-and-dive because they would know I was still in play and now in a position to go on the offensive.

A second shot slammed into a rock thirty yards away, and a rabbit skipped out of cover and streaked away across the grass. With it went another dent to the shooter’s confidence. I heard the woman swear softly behind me and smiled. What she said wasn’t complimentary about the other hired help.

That told me the second shooter wasn’t the primary gun. The woman had come down first, confidant of having an easy target, leaving the other gun in the back of the Isuzu just in case. Only he hadn’t been up to the job.

The move had been clumsy on both parts and she knew it. I smiled at her and nodded up the slope towards the ridge. ‘Friend of yours? Someone you value?’

She shook her head and told me to go screw myself.

I eased my head back up to the lip and saw a movement two hundred yards away. It was very brief before disappearing, but if it was another rabbit it was wearing an old style camouflage smock and a beanie hat. It was also carrying a rifle fitted with a big scope. Smaller than the OSV but just as deadly in the right hands.

I waited, reading the situation ahead and knowing what was unfolding. The shooter was thinking tactical. He knew where we were and was making his way down and round to my flank, where lower ground would give him a view up the gulley. He was also thinking I’d expect him to stay on higher ground where he had the advantage.

I stayed where I was, eyes on the ridge and the ground below it, nestling the rifle on a piece of out-jutting rock for a firing platform. He’d find some dead ground, a smaller gulley or a fold in the land, which he’d use like a fairground slide to take him downhill fast and safe. He’d have already picked out a spot from his higher position where he would stop and find a safe firing point.

If I allowed him that much leeway, he’d have me in a corner and I’d be dead.

I shuffled over to the woman, keeping low, slapping her hand away as she tried to punch me, and pulled her across to lie on the ground. I pulled out one of her bootlaces and tied her little pinkies together, then shuffled back to the rifle and took up a firing position.

I was now looking over her head at the ground beyond.

She took one look and the stiffness in her shoulders said it all. She saw immediately that if her partner did what we both knew he was going to do, which was to come up shooting, she would be right in his line of fire with no way out. She threw me an angry glance but other than tugging futilely at the bootlace, she didn’t move. She certainly had some guts.

‘Go back,’ I said, pointing to her original position. I wanted her to know that I had complete control over the next few minutes in her life, just as she’d thought about mine as she descended off the ridge and tracked me down the gulley.

She hesitated, fearful of a trick, then ducked her head and rolled over and over until she was behind cover.

I counted slowly to thirty, eyes on a small rise in the ground where the gulley followed the line of the slope. He was being cautious, but I figured he was also in a hurry to prove himself. Number twos always have their eyes on the top spot; it’s human nature, especially in a competitive industry. Nobody likes being second best.

A flicker of movement came six feet away from where I expected it, and the ground twenty feet in front of me was churned up by a volley of shots, throwing up grass, mud and chunks of granite. One round passed too close for comfort but it wasn’t aimed; none of them were. But a stray bullet would have been curtains just the same.

‘He didn’t even check his target area,’ I told her, nodding at the torn-up ground. It was exactly where she’d been lying moments before. ‘That would have been you.’

She said nothing, but looked away, her jaw clenching as the truth sank home. So I focussed on waiting for the other shooter to stand up. One. Two Three.

And he did just that, rifle at his shoulder, but several degrees off the mark. When he finally saw me, his mouth dropped open in surprise.

I centred on his body mass. Squeezed the trigger.

Using a strange rifle without firing a test shot is always risky. But I figured the woman was professional enough to have looked after her weapon and kept the sights zeroed in.

The punch of the recoil was a surprise, but nothing like the shock the other man would have felt if his nervous system had been fast enough to pass on the message that he’d been shot. He flipped over like he’d been hit by a truck and went down, his rifle flying clear.

I didn’t need to inspect the result, but I jogged over and looked down at the body anyway. It pays to be sure.

It was a man. Somewhere in his thirties, unshaven, gaunt and dressed in rough weather clothing, he had a ring on one finger which looked like heavy gold. I pulled back one sleeve and checked what remained of his chest. Tattoos. Difficult to see what they were now, but one on his arm was a large spider. I didn’t know the significance of that but it pointed at a possible gang involvement or a contract shooter. Ivkanoy. It had to be.

I checked his pockets. He had nothing. No wallet, no papers. Clean.

A pro, like the woman, but less experienced. Now dead.