The Shadow Project

Chapter Sixty-Five

As she and the tall man scoured the upper level for the missing boy, Irina knew something was badly wrong. She couldn’t understand the strange sensations she was feeling, like ants crawling under her flesh and the worst headache she’d ever known building swiftly to an alarming crescendo inside her skull. She was sure it was something to do with the sound that was throbbing through the walls around them.

For several minutes now she’d been trying to raise Pelham on the radio and getting nothing but strange interference. The lights were acting strangely too, dimming and flickering as if all the electrical systems in the facility had gone haywire. Her instincts were telling her that this whole operation was quickly going into meltdown, and it was going to be time to evacuate.

They emerged into the wide open space that was the aircraft hangar, scanning left and right for any little hiding place the boy could have curled himself up into. Irina eyed the derelict Me 262, then clambered up onto one of the jet fighter’s rusty wings and brusquely tore open the cockpit canopy. Empty. She swore loudly.

‘He has to be around here somewhere,’ the tall man said.

Irina jumped down from the plane wing, dusted the red powder off her hands, and strode onwards across the hangar.

Suddenly she stopped. Pointed. ‘Look.’

A glistening blood trail traced a weaving line across the hangar floor. It led from the lift shaft gallery entrance. Her nostrils flared. She glanced at the tall man, and they began to follow the trail.

It led them away from the hangar and down the passages. Irina stopped to examine a bloody palm-print on the wall. Made by a man’s hand, the blood still sticky and warm.

That was when they heard a ragged, hoarse voice calling out a single name over and over again. ‘Rory! Rory!’

They found him just moments later, staggering along as if drunk, dragging his leg behind him and using the walls for support. It was the child’s father. O’Connor.

The tall guy took out his pistol and aimed it down the corridor. O’Connor just stood there, swaying on his feet as though he was either resigned to a bullet in the head or he was just too crazed to understand what was happening.

Irina pushed the pistol aside. ‘Let me.’ Drawing the knife from her sheath, she began walking towards O’Connor.

The migraine in her temples was thumping violently, but she blinked the pain away. She had a job to finish. Pelham had told her that when this was all over, the child and his father had to be eliminated. And Irina Dragojević always honoured her contracts.

Her lips twisted into a thin smile as she approached him. He lowered his gaze down to the knife in her hand. She made no attempt to hide it. Better like this, when they knew it was coming.

‘I know you,’ he said. His voice was cracked with emotion and fatigue, barely audible over the growing sound that was shaking the ground under their feet.

She raised the knife. The flickering lamplight shimmered down the blade. She took another step closer to him.

‘You’re the bitch who hurt my child,’ he said more loudly.

‘That’s right. And now this is for you,’ she told him.

‘And this is for you.’ His bloody hand went to his pocket, and before she could react he’d drawn a gun. He pointed it at her and his face contorted as he squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing.

Despite the pain exploding viciously through her skull, Irina began to laugh. Behind her, the tall man raised his gun and fired a single shot that blew O’Connor off his feet.

Adam felt the bullet tear through his shoulder and spin his body round. He hit the floor on his belly, gasping. The woman was howling with laughter as he scrabbled for his fallen pistol. His fingers closed numbly over its grip.

His vision faltered. The lever. The lever by his thumb. He pressed it, and it clicked upwards. He could sense her walking up to him, standing over him. The knife was coming. He was going to feel the cold steel any second now, carving into his flesh.

No. He mustn’t give up.

For Rory.

He rolled over on his back and with all the strength he could muster he punched the gun out with both hands. Felt the smooth face of the trigger under his finger and squeezed it once, twice, three times, as fast as he could. The searing blast of the gun exploded in his ears.

The woman called Irina was standing right over him when he shot her. The first bullet took her under the chin and blew away half her face. The second blasted into her chest, and the third went through her hand.

The woman’s tall companion let out a cry of rage as she went down. Adam fired at him, but even as the pistol went off in his hand, he knew the pain and dizziness had made him miss. Before he could get off another shot, the tall man had come running towards him and lashed out with his foot and kicked the gun out of his fingers. Adam tried to scramble away, but his strength was quickly failing him.

The tall man squatted down on his haunches in the blood and picked up the woman’s knife. ‘Now you’re going to die bad,’ he said.

Adam gasped as he saw the blade plunge towards him. Then, in the next instant, he heard the shot and he was spluttering the tall man’s blood out of his mouth.