Revenger

41

Donny Bakunin had given the order to the truck driver to smash into the supermarket and then stood in the middle of Netherton Street urging on his foot soldiers as they had run towards their target. Only when most of them had been past him had he joined the surging mass, and he had only just run by the side of the truck and up to the mangled remains of the security shutters when the bomb had gone off.

The force of the explosion had punched into him and flung him several feet back the way he’d come. He had landed on the road and skidded across the tarmac like a human skimming stone until he’d hit the front wheel of an abandoned car. He had been winded so badly that several terrifying airless seconds had passed before he’d been able to take his first rasping breath and drag some air down into his bruised and battered lungs.

His face was scorched. His glasses had been thrown from his face and his eyes were in any case so dazzled by the explosion that he was virtually blind. He could hear nothing beyond a tinnitus shriek because his eardrums had been shredded by the pressure-wave passing through him. His clothes were torn almost to shreds and his body was covered in small, deep incisions that were all now bleeding profusely. His spine, ribs, elbows, thighs and even the back of his head were scraped and bruised from his impacts with the ground and the car.

All in all, Donny Bakunin was a sorry, fucked-up mess of a man, but he was still alive, and though every breath was agony his lungs were just about functioning. He screwed up his eyes, trying to see through the bright white glare imprinted on his light-blasted retinas, and gradually, over a period of minutes, he was able to get a blurred, shortsighted picture of the devastation that had been wrought on the supermarket and the people in it. Looking around, he could just make out the shadowy outlines of local people, venturing out on to the street now that the riot appeared to have ended. He saw two men by the garbage truck trying to hold back a screaming woman, preventing her from entering the supermarket as she kicked and fought against them. Another man came up to him and leaned down with a worried expression on his face. Bakunin could just about make out his lips moving, but he had no idea what they were saying. He pointed at his ears and shook his head. The man nodded his understanding then reached down a hand to help Bakunin up.

Bakunin got unsteadily to his feet. Everything hurt. Nothing was working properly. The man was trying to guide him away. Somewhere in the periphery of his vision Bakunin caught the blue glimmer of an approaching emergency vehicle. He didn’t want to be around when the police appeared, so he impatiently waved his helper’s arm away and set off as best he could in the direction that seemed to lead to his flat.

Bakunin didn’t hear the man who’d been trying to look after him say, ‘Suit yourself.’ Let alone mutter, ‘Ungrateful old bastard,’ a few seconds later.

Nor did Bakunin see the man in the jeans and the long suede jacket, his face hidden by a baseball cap and a scarf, come out of the supermarket and, using the bulk of the garbage truck to hide himself, slip on to Netherton Street.

Carver could see that the riot leader was badly injured, disorientated and suffering severe sensory damage. Good, he was glad to see him suffer. And if those wounds made his target far, far easier to tail without any risk of being detected, then so much the better.