The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 31

With a muted crash, a ten-inch circle in the middle of the door suddenly exploded outwards in a swarm of splinters. It looked as if a giant fist had punched right through the wood. A sawn-off 12-gauge would do that, at close range; and the blast would have separated Ben’s upper half from his lower if he hadn’t got out of the way.

The string fuse had about two seconds left to burn before the fizzling flame touched off the volatile mixture. Ben quickly stepped back to the door, shoved the box end-on in the hole and punched it all the way through so it fell inside the room. By then, it was too late for anyone to stop it.

Ben had long ago been taught the art of improvising munitions out of whatever makeshift ingredients an SAS unit might be able to lay its hands on behind enemy lines. It was amazing what you could find lying around in old barns. Certain agricultural chemicals, mixed with things like sugar, could be made to go bang to powerful effect. But the concoction he’d prepared in Lena’s kitchen wasn’t going to hurt anyone, unless they were already half dead with asthma. It was a smoke bomb, not as effective as the British L83A1 smoke canister grenade but pretty useful nonetheless.

In the final second between the box hitting the floor and going off, Ben heard pandemonium break out inside Dragan’s apartment, everyone thinking BOMB. If the guy with the shotgun had had either sense or reflexes he would have blasted the box to pieces where it lay before the fuse ran out. Instead he discharged his second panicked shot through the door, to lay waste to whoever might be standing the other side of it. The payload ripped another ten-inch bite out of the woodwork just above the first, turning an O into an 8.

Next, thick grey smoke started billowing out of the hole in the door. Within seconds, the yells of panic from inside were turning into guttural coughing and spluttering. Nobody would be able to see much as the smoke enveloped them, and it was very unpleasant to breathe. They had a dog in there with them. Ben could hear it barking frenziedly in fear and confusion. He felt sorry for the animal.

The door opened. A wall of impenetrable smoke poured out into the corridor, and from the smoke staggered the big guy with the shotgun. First-line troops, cannon fodder, an expendable footsoldier dispatched to tackle the threat outside. But he was so badly choked by the noxious fumes that he could hardly see. His face was a mess of tears and he was doubled over with coughing. Ben came at him out of the darkness and hit him a single hard blow to the forehead with the rubber mallet. The big guy’s eyes crossed, his knees folded and he hit the floor with the shotgun pointing at the ceiling.

One for one. Ben snatched the sawn-off from his hands, ejected the two live rounds, pulled the fore-end and barrels off and threw the bits away into the darkness.

He didn’t have to wait long for the next thug to come charging out of the smoke-filled apartment. This one was brandishing a machete and screaming at the top of his lungs. If the first was a big stupid bear, this one was a mean little ghoul. He looked like he knew how to handle the machete, and had probably done damage with it in the past.

But not today. Ben sidestepped the swing of the blade and dropped the guy with a solid rap of his hammer to the crown of the head. Two for two.

By now, the smoke alarms all over the top floor of the building were screeching. The grey fog spilling from the doorway of Dragan’s apartment was thickening to a black pall, so much so that Ben could hardly see a thing himself. His eyes were burning. Maybe he’d overdone the baking soda. He retreated into the darkness once more, unshouldered his bag and waited.

Just then, the apartment door nearest the fire escape opened. A tall hippy guy in his twenties, with lank ginger hair and a tie-dyed T-shirt, stood framed in the light of the doorway, thrown into a panic by the whoop of the alarm. One thin hand was still holding the bottle of beer he’d been halfway through when he’d realised something was going on. Noticing neither Ben standing in the shadows nor the unconscious bodies on the floor, he saw the smoke billowing down the corridor, and his bleary eyes opened wide to stare as if it was a living mist creature coming to get him.

‘What the fu—?’

But the hippy guy’s yell died on his lips, because at almost the same moment Dragan Vuković appeared out of the dark pall swirling from his own apartment doorway. Dragan stepped over the slumped shapes of his men without a downward glance. In one hand he had a towel pressed over his nose and mouth. The other hand was tightly gripping one end of a taut steel chain, at the other end of which was a large brindled male pit bull. The dog had half an ear missing and its muzzle was laced with white scars from dog fighting. Strings of drool flew from its jaws. It was so wild with desperation to slip its leash and rip something apart that it was rearing up on its hind legs, all solid muscle and sinew, its teeth snapping like castanets over the noise of the alarm.

In Dragan’s wake came Lena, pale and coughing and retching from the smoke, and two more of her brother’s associates, both of them variations on the same muscles-and-ink hardman theme. Danilo and Miroslav, Ben supposed. One of them had his fists locked around the hilt of a long, wicked-looking samurai sword. The other had an Uzi. One long thirty-two-round magazine protruding from its pistol grip, and another sticking out of his jeans pocket.

The sword was one thing. Ben was more worried about the Uzi.

The hippy guy was either too far gone from his evening’s beer drinking to recognise the gun for what it was — or else maybe Serb gang heavies toting Israeli-made 9mm machine pistols were such a common sight on the Blackbird Leys estate that residents barely noticed any more. For the moment, he didn’t seem that worried about the dog, either. ‘What the fuck are you bunch of fascist fuckheaded nutters doing in there? Lighting a fucking barbecue?’

Dragan Vuković had more pressing matters to deal with than complaints from his hippy neighbour. His quick eyes, red from the smoke, were scanning the darkness of the corridor beyond the hippy’s doorway, searching for the assailant that his sister must by now have described to him in plenty of detail. He was looking right at Ben but couldn’t see him, or the pistol in Ben’s hand whose sights were trained right on Dragan’s centre of mass.

But Dragan must have sensed the presence in the darkness. He jerked on the dog’s chain and yelled in Serbian, ‘Go, Demon! KILL!’

He let go. With a savage yowl, the dog instantly flew down the corridor, straight towards where Ben was standing hidden in the shadows.