Siege

Eighty-nine

MARTIN DALSTON KNEW HE Should have stayed with the others out on the roof terrace, but when he saw the man who’d saved them all earlier run back inside the hotel to try to keep the remaining terrorists at bay, he wanted to help him. He’d had no idea what he could possibly do that would be of any use given that, with the exception of a day’s paintballing near High Wycombe, he’d never had any kind of military training or experience whatsoever, but the way the man was risking his life inspired him. He wanted to do something valuable before he died, something that would make his son proud of him, and now he had an opportunity.

No one noticed him run back into the restaurant. He heard gunfire coming from the corridor, but Martin didn’t hesitate. He ran through the doors into the corridor, not really sure what on earth he thought he was doing.

Two bodies lay on the floor about halfway down. One, by his outfit, was clearly a terrorist, while the other was a guest, lying on his front in a pool of blood.

The shooting had stopped now. There was just silence, and Martin wondered where the man had disappeared to, and whether he was the one who’d shot the terrorist. He walked towards the bodies, remembering that this was the way to the emergency staircase – the route he and the other hostages had taken when they were led up here after the hotel was taken over.

He looked down at the dead terrorist, wondered briefly what he’d hoped to achieve by murdering so many innocent people, and whether he’d died satisfied. Somehow Martin doubted it. It was all such a terrible, terrible waste of life.

But at least, he thought as he opened the door to the emergency staircase, he could try to save some others.

He heard the words straight away. Spat out of her mouth and dripping with hate: ‘Does that hurt, yes? Does it?’

Martin froze. He recognized that voice. It belonged to the cruellest terrorist of them all. The beautiful dark-haired woman who had seemed to care not one iota for any of them.

‘Fuck you,’ came the grunted reply.

It was the man from the restaurant. The one Martin had been looking for. He was clearly in immense pain, the defiance in his voice tinged with resignation.

‘I can make you scream. Perhaps if I cut this eye out, just—’

And then Martin was running down the stairs, letting out some kind of weird battle cry. He came sprinting round the corner, saw the man lying on his back, bleeding badly, unable to move, while she crouched over him, a knife in her hand. She was looking up, having heard his approach, but he was so quick that she hadn’t had time to grab her gun, which he could see was lying on the stairs next to her.

He had two choices: hesitate and die, or keep going and probably die. He chose the latter, diving straight into the woman, his momentum making up for his lack of weight and power, and the two of them crashed down the stairs and into the stairwell, landing on the body of a young woman which, grotesquely, still felt warm.

As they rolled on to the floor, Martin kept her in a tight bear hug so that she couldn’t use her knife. But she was stronger than he was and she wriggled ferociously in his grip, screaming and cursing into his face, her eyes black as coals.

And then they were rolling down the next set of steps and Martin could feel the wind being taken out of him. As they hit the bottom, she pulled her knife hand free, rolled on top of him, and thrust the blade at his chest. He put out a hand to stop her, grabbed the knife by the blade, and screamed in pain as it tore open his flesh.

The knife caught him somewhere in the upper body – he couldn’t see where. He felt a tremendous shock, and then the whole world seemed to slow right down. He felt his head fall back against the floor and his hands slip to his sides. Almost immediately his vision began to darken, as if he was entering a tunnel, and the woman became hazy in appearance as she got to her feet, turning away from him, still holding the bloodied knife in her hand.

And then he heard the sound of bullets echoing round the stairwell and the woman cried out and crashed backwards into the wall. She writhed against it for a moment, and more shots rang out. The woman appeared to perform a juddering little dance before sliding down the wall, leaving a long dark stain behind.

Everything was now utterly silent, and Martin began to feel very, very tired.

A face appeared in his fading vision. He thought it was the man he’d just rescued, but he couldn’t be sure. The man was saying something to him, but Martin couldn’t hear what it was.

Nor, it had to be said, did he care. All he wanted to do was sleep.

He closed his eyes and felt himself letting go, pulling away like a boat from a harbour, heading slowly out to sea.

His last thoughts as he died were not of Carrie, or what could have been. They were of his son, and his wife. Of what was.