The Darkest Day

FIFTY-TWO

It took him an extra few seconds to identify them. He identified them because they used neither umbrellas nor phones and by their clothes, their postures and their actions. They were looking for him and Raven, and looking hard, drawn to the area by the police presence. Maybe they had access to police radios or scanners or were just receiving updates by cooperating agencies.

The specifics did not matter for the time being. What mattered was avoiding them.

He hadn’t seen these guys before. But that wasn’t surprising given the numbers Halleck had access too. These guys looked new. They looked and acted like a competent team brought in at short notice and asked to do a difficult job in difficult circumstances.

One guy with black-framed glasses neared him, gaze sweeping back and forth, intense and thorough. The suppressed Ruger in the guy’s shoulder rig made the canvas jacket bulge. Victor lowered himself to one knee and retied his shoelaces until the man had passed by. Raven drifted away a little so they did not look like they were together.

The team was all male, all fit and in shape, all wearing casual civilian attire. They were working in pairs, three mini-teams converging on their location from different directions.

Whichever direction Victor and Raven headed, they would risk crossing one of the teams’ line of sight. Halleck’s men had been effective at spreading out across the plaza and implementing a sweeping pattern that offered few avenues to chance. But to wait would mean getting trapped between all six and a guarantee of eventual discovery. They had no choice but to go.

Victor timed his move, approaching an arcade on the plaza’s west side using cover provided by a cute young couple with matching umbrellas. He passed behind one of the two-man teams, close enough to hear one say:

‘… we better get double for this…’

As Victor and Raven drew near to the arcade entrance he had to veer away from the cute couple, but saw he had made it far enough in cover that he was going to get through unobserved by the six men. But another problem was waiting for them. Standing to one side of the entrance, in the shelter of an awning, was a squat cop with a huge stomach and neat moustache, who had removed the plastic lid from his waxed takeaway cup and was blowing on the surface of the hot coffee it contained.

Don’t look up, Victor willed as he neared.

The cop’s eyes were focused on the coffee. He lips were wet and pursed. Steam rose into the air.

When Victor and Raven were less than ten metres away the cop raised the cup and sipped. He grimaced, the coffee too hot despite his attempts to cool it, and glanced up.

Right at Victor.

The cop blinked and looked away in an idle sweep of his surroundings while he waited for the coffee to cool. Victor and Raven continued towards the arcade, now only five metres from the cop.

Who glanced back, a line of curiosity forming between his eyebrows as he searched his memory banks for why Victor looked familiar.

When he was two metres from passing out of the cop’s line of sight, it seemed as if he wouldn’t be recognised, but as he entered the arcade Victor saw, via the reflection in the plate glass of a storefront, the cop leaning over to place his coffee cup on the ground, and follow.

The cop followed them into the arcade.

The cop had not reached for his radio. He had not yet called it in. No backup was on the way. He was not sure about Victor. The curiosity had yet to become recognition. The squat cop had no wish to report a false sighting. He wanted to find out more before acting one way or the other.

For that, he needed to get close.

Victor went to one knee as if to tie his shoelaces again. Raven kept walking. Victor left his laces alone while he listened to the footsteps approaching, using the loudening sound to picture the cop at four metres, then three, before stopping two metres behind him.

‘Excuse me, sir…’

Had he been closer, Victor could have sprung up as the cop’s shadow fell over him, driving a fist into the cop’s abdomen and a palm strike into the cop’s jaw, taking him out of action fast and clean and maybe before anyone else saw what was happening. But the cop had stopped a tactical distance away. He was not sure about Victor’s identity, but he was not stupid either.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ the cop said again. ‘Can you turn around and show me some ID, please?’

Victor did not turn round, because he wanted the cop to only see his face when he was standing and ready to act. He rose, nice and slow so as not to scare the cop and draw an unnecessary reaction.

He turned.

The cop’s gaze met his own. The cop recognised him.

There was no mistaking the reaction, which gave Victor a split second to act as the cop went for the pistol holstered on his belt.

Victor launched forward, driving an elbow into the cop’s jaw.

His teeth cracked together and his head snapped back and he tipped over backwards, unconscious before he knew he had been hit.

Victor caught him so he didn’t slam the back of his head on the ground. A hit like that on an unconscious brain could kill.

He lowered the cop down and into a recovery position as if he were nothing more than a good Samaritan, glad no one seemed to have seen the attack and not too surprised by this. City folk more often than not went out of their way not to see trouble.

As he stood again, he heard a cry. A child, closer to the ground and not jaded by city life, saw the unconscious cop and the blood pooling out of his mouth. The child burst into tears.

The mother looked to see what had upset her child, and gasped.

Other people reacted and turned and stared at the cop, and in doing so at Victor.

He didn’t speak. There was nothing he could say to change the fact he was standing over a knocked-out police officer. He fell wasn’t going to cut it. No explanation was going to convince anyone they weren’t seeing what was right before their eyes.

He ignored the accusing stares and hurried away to where Raven waited for him. A teenager turned his phone in Victor’s direction to take a picture or record or whatever else kids did. Victor snatched it from the teen’s hand and hurled it at the closest wall. It smashed into pieces.

‘HEY, MAN. What the —’

Victor ran.

He didn’t have to look back to know someone from the team in the nearby plaza would have seen or heard the commotion and if not pursuing right now would be in moments.

He followed Raven, vaulting over a barrier at the end of the arcade and on to the road. They weaved through the slow-moving traffic to the other side of the street.

Victor heard the roar of revving engines and ahead of him two black Audi sedans turned a corner on to the street, bright xenon headlights sweeping over him. The cars roared closer, then swerved to pull over, tyres sounding a squelch of temporary resistance on the wet asphalt. Doors were open before the cars had stopped. More men in dark clothes spilled out. Four — two from each Audi.

Victor and Raven took a sharp change of direction, crossing the street, heading east.

The men followed, jogging while signalling commands and relaying updates via wrist-mikes to the team in the plaza. At least he hoped that was the case and there were not even more out there to cut him off.

The street sloped at maybe fifteen degrees. Buildings dark with grime and pollution, made darker by the blackout, lined the road. Vehicles were parked nose-to-tail along the kerbs.

Victor increased his pace to a run. Raven did the same. The team had seen them. They were following. There was no point trying to remain inconspicuous. He dashed across the street. On the far side the slogan on the huge billboard stretching wide above a bank was unreadable.

The men sprinted. He heard the clatter of their shoes on the asphalt behind. They were fit and fast and determined to catch them or kill them and succeed and receive praise and glory and promotion. But his determination was to survive and remain free, and no other potential reward could equal that most basic of motivations. Raven had to have the same desire, else her need to stop Halleck was as strong.

They ran under signs, once illuminated, hanging dull and lifeless. They passed through the warm yellow glow spilled out from a bar’s windows; inside hundreds of candles had been lit to keep the business running. The front door had been wedged open to let the cold air in to counteract the heat of all the flickering flames.

Behind them, the men shoved people aside who were too slow to move or too wrapped up in their own existence to notice what was going on. A coffee cup was knocked from a woman’s hand.

Victor leaped over a pushchair and skidded round a corner. A guy walking his Rhodesian ridgeback almost collided with Raven and hurled four-letter words as they ran past.

The dog barked as their pursuers rushed by a few seconds later.

He ran fast, breathing hard, breath clouding in the cold.

He felt himself pulling away from them. He had a sprinter’s pace and a marathon runner’s endurance fuelled by the unparalleled will to survive. He could outrun the men, but not their bullets if they opted to shoot him down on the street. The two Audis were out there as well, unseen for now, but closing in. It was only a matter of time before they became trapped between the Audis and the men pursuing them on foot.

On the next street, when they had created enough distance, Raven hailed a cab and it pulled over in front of them. She gestured to the driver — a nonsense hand movement, but enough to distract — and approached the driver’s window, mouth open as if struggling to find the words or with a language barrier.

The window descended so the driver could better hear. He was a skinny Indian guy in a string vest, arms and shoulders covered in dark hair, teeth bright and crooked.

Still gesturing with one hand, Raven wrenched open the door with the other. The driver, distracted, was too slow to react and stop it from happening. By the time he understood his predicament, Raven was dragging him from his seat and throwing him to the road surface.

She ignored the man’s cries of protest and climbed behind the wheel. She slammed the door shut. Victor jumped into the passenger seat.

Flashing lights alerted him to the approaching cop car.