Standing on the peak of the roof, silhouetted against the skyline, Rickard should have felt exposed, but he didn’t. He felt invincible. Like he was a god towering over the mortals below him. He watched the car speed along the street and then come to a skidding halt. His first thought was that this was an unmarked police cruiser responding to the shots fired, but the two men leaping out the car weren’t cops. They were tough guys with guns, but no one of any consequence to him. They were just a couple more of the drug dealer’s gang called in as reinforcements. They would die as easily as every other man that got between him and Alisha.
The two newcomers took cover behind the car, and he could hear them swearing in that clipped manner of gangbangers. From further along the street came another curse and Rickard realised where the other guard had gone. He was hunkering down behind some trash cans. Unless they were full of building bricks, the cans were no cover for the man. Rickard braced his feet each side of the roof, while with both hands he drew a gun from his belt and flicked off the safety catches.
He fired seconds before the men below him did. His intention wasn’t necessarily to kill, only to keep them down and unable to get a clear shot at him. His guns rolled a double volley, one at the car and one at the trash cans. The men’s return fire was disjointed and badly aimed, but even so he was too obvious a target where he stood. His thoughts of giants and invincibility could only last as long as was pragmatic. A bullet drilled the roofline next to his right foot and he felt the sting of splinters in his shin. He crouched now, and depleted both guns at his twin targets. A yelp came from the man behind the trash cans but it sounded more a shout of alarm than that of someone taking a mortal wound.
Rickard dropped both empty guns; they clattered down the roof and thumped to the ground. Rickard heard none of that because he was already reaching for the third gun: his own. He fired repeatedly, swinging his aim from one target to the other. Then, in a practised move, he dipped his hand into a pocket and came out with a full magazine. He ejected the empty one from his gun, pushed the other in and racked the slide. Fired one round. All in the space of two seconds.
In the next two seconds he grabbed the roof at its apex and swung down and kicked through the window. To the men below ducking for cover it would have been like he’d done a disappearing act. He forgot all about them for now. Unless they intended climbing the roof they were stuck outside and no immediate threat, so he went after those who were inside. The room he found himself in was a cramped and jumbled space, little more than a peaked crawl space filled with junk and old furniture. There was no bulb in the ceiling fixture, but enough ambient light was coming through the shattered window for him to negotiate the junk and make for the exit door. He didn’t observe niceties, just booted open the flimsy door and leaned out and fired his gun in a short volley of three rounds. The man he’d expected to find waiting on him didn’t disappoint: he took two of the bullets in his chest and went down screaming. An illegal machine pistol clattered on the floor beside him. Rickard quickly stooped and grabbed the gun in his left hand. Distractedly he noted that the gun was a Czechoslovakian Scorpion — the old type that still used .32 ACP rounds. It was a popular machine pistol throughout the world; he only hoped that there weren’t any more in the house.
Earlier he’d counted three male voices from inside — the mathematics were subjective: maybe there were others who were more disciplined and could keep their mouths shut, so he had no idea how many he was going up against. He didn’t care because the Scorpion kind of levelled the playing field in his favour.
He was in a short hallway with a flight of steps leading down to the living space: a bottleneck if he didn’t move. He went down the stairs at a run and ducked into the nearest doorway he could find, the machine pistol extended in his left hand. Without looking he unloaded a burst of fire into the room, sweeping low where people would naturally crouch. The bullets churned the furniture, and struck flesh. Rickard barely flicked a glance at the man lying dead behind a grimy settee. He turned and looked back out into the hallway. Whispering voices filtered to him from rooms nearer the back of the house. He quickly scanned over his shoulder and saw that the main entrance was indeed barricaded by a steel door with a single slot cut in it through which money would be exchanged for drugs. The reinforcements couldn’t come on him that way.
Immediately he went along the hall. On his right was a kitchen area. Of course this house wasn’t where the drug dealer lived — he’d have a fancy-assed pad somewhere — so the kitchen wasn’t used in its conventional sense. He saw counters with weighing scales and stacks of polythene bags and there were traces of white dust on many of the surfaces. No way any of these guys were going to call for police assistance, not with that amount of evidence lying round.
There was also a guard.
He was a big man with a network of scars all over his face. He looked like he’d been in a fire once over and had suffered greatly. That’s what comes of cooking your own crack, Rickard thought, as he fired at the man. The guy threw himself down behind a counter and returned fire with an old-fashioned Colt revolver. His shots were blind, and Rickard dodged away from the line of fire even as he rushed towards the man. He leaned over the counter and drilled the man full of bullets, watching the man’s eyelids flicker as each round punched holes in his upper body. Then there was no more reaction and the man slumped down.
Rickard left him there and went back out into the hall.
That made three dead inside the house; which meant there had to be more than he’d originally reckoned. None of the men he’d killed looked like anyone that could have snared Alisha’s attention.
The next room he checked was a bedroom. The only thing that told him so was the presence of a stained mattress propped up against a wall. The rest of the room was devoid of home comforts and it seemed to have become a repository for old newspapers and girlie magazines.
On his left a closet door stood open. He glanced inside to ensure nobody lurked in the dark space and found it empty. Moving on, he found the door that let outside where he’d clambered up on to the porch. The door wasn’t as heavily fortified as the front door, having only a beam nestled in brackets to hold it firm. He paid it little attention, choosing instead to move immediately to the remaining room. Whoever was inside had fallen silent now, but he guessed that was where he’d find Alisha and her ex-boyfriend.
He wanted a personal reckoning with Alisha. He’d teach her what it meant to betray him, but first he wanted to show her the true value of her ex-lover. He wanted to kill him personally too, although not at the expense of walking into a trap. He shoved his gun into his waistband and transferred the Scorpion to his right hand. He braced his wrist against his hip, then let loose the full fury of the gun, firing through walls and door alike. The bullets cut through the flimsy barricade and into the room beyond. Then he dropped the gun and burst open the door and followed inside. As he did he pulled out his ceramic blade and thumbed it open.
He was surprised by what he found: a lone man sitting with his back to a wall. No sign of Alisha. The man was dressed a little snappier than the guards he’d already killed, and he was young and handsome with a full head of wavy hair. He was the tall man who had met Alisha at the door. He was lightly tanned, but some of the colour had drained out of his features, making him look slick and pasty. Rickard glanced at the bullet wound in the man’s gut. The man had one hand clamped over it to staunch the flow of blood, while his other hand still gripped the stock of a Glock 18. The man rolled his head up to stare at Rickard and though he was in agony he still mustered enough hatred to make his eyes flash.
Rickard lunged in quickly and jammed a heel down on the man’s gun hand.
‘Where is my wife?’
The young man twisted, trying to free his gun, but Rickard only pushed down harder with his heel.
‘I asked you a question!’
‘Fuck you!’
‘Once more: where is my wife?’
‘Gone, asshole. You’re too late.’
Rickard heard movement behind him and recognised it as someone removing the beam from the brackets on the side door. Alisha making a break for it. He scolded himself for not checking behind the damn mattress in the bedroom he’d passed, but it was too late for recriminations now. Alisha wouldn’t get far before he could catch her again. He had time to make this man sorry for sticking his nose in his business.
‘Then that means you’re no use to me any more,’ he said. He slashed with the knife and opened up the man’s throat. It was a calculated cut that sliced his trachea wide but missed the major blood vessels. The man would die, but it would take minutes and he had no hope of screaming for help.
Rickard leaned down and took the Glock from the man’s fingers. He stepped slowly off the pinioned hand and watched as the man grasped at his throat. The gut shot was forgotten as he tried to stem his life from ebbing away.
Rickard turned away, left the man to die in silent torment and went back into the hall. Glancing into the bedroom he saw that the mattress was now lying on the floor — so Alisha had been hiding there — and the door to the outside was wide open. Again he felt a trickle of admiration that Alisha was proving more worthy than he’d ever have thought, but it was only fleeting. It wouldn’t stop him from making her scream in agony. He went outside, switching the Glock to automatic fire.