The Darkest Day

TEN

Instead, he waited a second, rose, and using the doorframe as cover, adopted a firing position. His pursuer was a phantom — blurring darkness against darkness — swift and noiseless, but was lured into believing Victor was fleeing and she was pursuing; the attacker, in control.

He shot her with his last two rounds, the bullets striking her in the chest for a double tap.

She contorted and dropped, the gun falling from her hand. It clattered on the hard floor.

He approached. Cautious, despite what had to be fatal wounds, but without delay. He wanted answers before she died. She lay on her back, her head, arms and torso still and unmoving while her legs writhed. He could hear pained breaths that were machine-gun rapid. Her right hand was pressed over the twin holes in her chest.

‘Who are you working for?’

She didn’t answer. She groaned and tried to angle her head to see him. He saw the tears glistening in her eyes. The bone structure of her face was prominent — defined jawline and cheekbones — without looking unhealthy. He wasn’t sure of her ethnicity from appearances alone. Her skin was only a little darker than his, and he was pale, but he detected a hint of Persian in her facial features: arching eyebrows, full lips and large eyes. Those eyes were as dark as his, and her hair even darker.

‘Caglayan?’ he asked. ‘The prince?’

She had an athlete’s body, slim but strong. She had been raised well. The good nutrition showed in her height and shoulders.

Victor said, ‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll make the pain worse.’

She didn’t speak. Her rapid breathing grew louder as he neared.

‘A lot worse,’ he added. ‘At this moment you might think that’s impossible, but you should believe me when I say there can always be more. If you tell me everything I want to know then instead I can make it all go away. No more pain. No more suffering.’

‘Okay,’ she spat between breaths and he stopped. ‘I’ll tell you.’

‘I’m waiting.’

‘Please,’ she said, ‘I’m just a shooter.’

‘Trust me when I say that you don’t want me to become impatient.’

Victor took another step, now close enough to see there was no blood seeping out between the fingers of her right hand.

He couldn’t see the other hand.

He was moving before that hand snapped up, the dim light catching the hard lines of a small backup pistol.

She shot at him as he ran, the barks of each unsuppressed shot loud and echoing, the muzzle flashes illuminating his surroundings in a strobe of bright yellow light.

He made it into cover and the shooting stopped. He heard her climb to her feet, now recovered from the winding impact of blunt force trauma caused by his two bullets striking an armoured vest.

It had been a stupid mistake to have fallen for the same trick he had used on her, lured into believing he had been in control. Underestimating an opponent was something he should never do. He withdrew a folding knife and opened the blade. Not much use against a gun, but it was better than nothing at all.

He heard her approaching footsteps.

‘You’re out,’ she called. ‘I saw the bare metal of the gun barrel. The slide was back. You would have reloaded if you could.’

He didn’t respond. He concentrated on plotting his escape route and the odds of her hitting a fast-moving target in the dark with an inaccurate backup weapon.

Then he dismissed running for it because he heard the scrape of metal as she retrieved her primary weapon from the floor. She may be low on rounds but all she would need was a single burst.

‘You’re lucky that cab went by when it did,’ the assassin said. ‘Otherwise you would have taken a seven-six-two in the back.’

Victor said, ‘There’s no such thing as luck.’

‘Regardless, you’re out of it,’ she said. ‘Now, we’re going to switch roles. You’re going to answer my questions.’

Victor was a little surprised because he thought she only wanted to kill him. If she wanted to interrogate him, that gave him options.

‘So let’s go grab a coffee and talk. I could use an espresso.’

She laughed. It echoed. ‘It’s a bit late for caffeine. Besides, I don’t think I want to date you.’

‘Your loss,’ he said. ‘I’m a riot.’

‘I like that you can keep your sense of humour at a time like this, but I’m afraid to say it’s not going to change the fact that I’m the only one who will be walking out of here.’

He heard the sound of metal on metal as she reloaded her primary weapon, followed by her approaching footsteps. He pictured her sidestepping to get a line of sight because those footsteps scraped a little. It was no surprise that she was keeping her distance and wouldn’t round the corner close enough for him to attack. She had already proved herself a good operator. Better than him so far, because she had two guns and he had none.

But then he saw he didn’t need one, because for her to get a line of sight on him she would have to pass by the taped-off piles of building waste.

He rolled the knife around in his palm so the blade was facing up and then darted forward, covering the short amount of open space and flicking out the blade, slicing through the thick tape with an upward motion.

He kept moving because he knew he had exposed himself and heard the dull whip-crack sound of a suppressed shot as he sprinted away.

The round punched a hole in a nearby wall, but no others followed it because without the tape to hold the pile of waste in place the weight of brick and concrete shifted and slipped and became an avalanche of collapsing material that fell into the assassin as she rushed to follow him.

He heard the echoing rumble of the collapse and her cry of surprise and alarm, but didn’t look back — he wasn’t going to be fooled by her play-acting twice — and dashed through the rest of the basement level. The collapsing building waste would only injure her at best, and might have done nothing more than distract her. He wasn’t going to risk investigating either way. She was still armed and he was not.

A kick knocked fire doors open.

It wasn’t often Victor thought himself fortunate to be alive, but cold night air hadn’t felt so good in a long time.

He ran out into the street and kept running.