Chapter eight
Harvey skidded into the hallway, desperately looking for alignments.
There was potential, but there was precious little time. Beyond the main door there was the thunk of car doors closing and feet crunching on chippings. Instead of wasting time with ill-prepared shui traps, Harvey pulled a heavy glock pistol from a holster slung low on his back, checked the magazine and thumbed the safety catch. He couldn't remember the last time he had practiced with the weapon.
'Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run.' MacDonald tunelessly sang a childhood ditty, punctuating it with a raucous laugh.
Harvey felt his heart hammering. Curse his stupidity.
He slid the deadbolt on the main door and looked through the peephole. Six figures gathered around two parked cars, a muffled word or two between them and they moved toward the front door. Size and distance was distorted through the fish eye lens, but Harvey had no doubt at the professionalism of the figures outside. They ran in teams of two, smoothly covering each other. A stocky man rang the doorbell and stood back. MacDonald was shouting something but not loud enough to be heard outside. Harvey decided to take the initiative.
The heavy-set man moved in front of the door, his shadow blocking out the headlights. Harvey levelled the Glock through the letterbox and fired twice. The bullets punched into the other man's stomach and he was flung back onto the driveway.
A voice screamed. Bullets whined at the door like angry wasps. Glass shattered at the impact and wood splintered around the edges. But the door held.
'Solid workmanship,' MacDonald shouted. 'But it won't stop my boys for long.'
Harvey backed away from the door, pulling at a table in the hall, rearranging a tribal mask hanging on the wall and quickly angling an umbrella stand. Weak karma formed slowly in the hallway, a sluggish oil slick of misfortune. Harvey hesitated at the kitchen doorway, wanting to stay and perfect the alignments, but two booming shots blew holes in the front door hinges and figures smashed the door flat and rushed through the opening, crabbing sideways with pistols aimed.
The room blinked into darkness as every light in the house was extinguished.
Ducking through a doorway, Harvey disappeared into the kitchen before the mercenary team spotted him. He recognised the uniocular goggles the soldiers wore. Starlight glasses that would allow lowlight vision and would enable them to view everything with the barest of light.
'Hallway clear,' a bearded mercenary yelled, training a rifle on the kitchen doorway.
'Keep it tight, boys,' a suited mercenary said in a calm tone. 'We have one man down, lets nail this maggot before he slots another.'
A palm jab gesture toward the open study door and two mercenaries stalked through, weapons raised before them. The sound of laughing drifted through the house and the two mercenaries nodded to one another.
They spun into the study, quickly training their weapons on the solitary seated figure. They tensed, the ghost-green image of MacDonald blurred in their starlight sites. A haze of chi created by an alignment of pieces on the chessboard arced to the black pawn in MacDonald's hand. MacDonald raised his glass to the two, a whiskey-fuelled chortle on his lips.
They fired simultaneously, reacting to the perceived threat of a grenade. The sharp cracks of semi automatic assault rifle fire reverberated through the house, MacDonald jerking with each shot.
The two soldiers looked at each other, then moved into the room. The suited mercenary walked in after them, pulling off leather gloves. 'Whoa, whoa, whooooaaa,' he said, staring at the bullet-chewed carcass of Daniel MacDonald. He tutted.
'Ok lads, nothing left to lose,' the suited mercenary said. 'We have an assassin on the premises. Poor old Daniel is dead, so let's put this fella in the same grave. We know he's armed, but we have firepower. Let's take this place apart and him with it, Grozny style.'
Harvey had heard enough. Standing from his hiding place behind the leather chair on which MacDonald's corpse lay slumped, he took quick aim at the suited mercenary and fired twice. The others reacted as the target was flung against the wall, firing at the chair. Bullets peppered the area, leaving an unrecognisable mulch of flesh and bone where MacDonald had sat.
During a brief pause, as the air clogged with gun smoke, Harvey fled through the door behind the chair, flinching as random bullets slammed into the wall beside him. The sharp thuds of round after round in the other room signalled an escalation of violence, the noise as thunder to the deadly lead lightning that tore at the walls and splintered the door into a useless scrap of wood.
The mercenaries gathered together in the study.
'Take it apart,' yelled a bearded soldier, ripping the Starlight goggles from his head as the blaze of light from his rifle muzzle lit up the room. The remains of the door shattered and fell away, and the two figures appeared through the smoke and gloom, continuing to fire a stream of bullets. As the two clicked empty almost simultaneously, they jettisoned the magazines and the other two soldiers stepped forward to continue the deadly torrent.
Harvey twisted furniture in the kitchen, trying to create an area of inauspicious karma. But the hastily prepared feng shui traps were blasted away by the constant rage of automatic fire. He scrabbled from the kitchen into the hallway as the other two soldiers reloaded and the place became a deadly storm of bullets.
'There he is!' A shout amidst the semi-automatic cracks of gunfire.
Harvey ran down the hallway as the kitchen door was blasted into pieces behind him and the angry buzzing rounds pinged into plaster around him. He darted up the staircase in the hall, followed moments later by a searching stream of gunfire, tearing away the banisters and peppering the opposite wall.
'Upstairs.' Another shout. Without pause the soldiers advanced to the foot of the stairs, two of them constantly firing at flickering movement or open areas. One of the men screamed and laughed, he too had removed his goggles so that he could enjoy the lightshow.
Harvey dashed down one corridor, then the next and into the master bedroom. A double bed on a raised platform against the far wall, a walk-in mirror wardrobe to the left and a well-stocked drinks cabinet against the other wall. The staccato crack of bullet after bullet thundered into the upper hallway behind him as the soldiers moved slowly up the stairs, confident that the rat they were hunting was cornered.
The soldiers paired off at the intersection, two stalking down one corridor whilst the other two moved to the master bedroom. Harvey pinched away the catch on the wardrobe mirror door and angled a TV remote from the floor to the hinges on the door. He could see the weak thread of chi reach out, and he hoped that it would be strong enough. But he had no time to reconsider as a line of bullets tore away at the back wall. Torchlight swung through the doorway and shone into the room.
Harvey grabbed a sheet from the bed and opened the French windows leading out to a low balcony. The cupboard that partially obscured him splintered under concentrated fire and Harvey half fell, half jumped from the balcony, bullets tearing at the air around him.
He crashed heavily onto a wheelbarrow full of clay pots at the side of the rear porch and his head snapped back against the barrow rim. The sheet floated gently to the side. A rush of nausea threatened to envelop him and an intense throb pounded at the base of his neck. At that moment the glass from the broken window rained down and he half turned to protect his face.
In the master bedroom a young mercenary stood next to the window, checking the outside area and reloading his assault rifle. Behind him, the hinges on the wardrobe door finally succumbed to the chi and tightened. The door clicked and swung open. Jumping at the noise, he turned to see his own reflection in the dark, obscured by cordite smoke. He slammed a magazine in place and raised his weapon, shouting a warning to his partner who barrelled out of the walk-in wardrobe. The first few rounds splintered the mirror glass and door; the next few caught the other soldier in the head, neck and shoulders. Chunks of flesh and skull flew against the wall and the soldi
er fell to the floor.
In a sudden rush of guilt and fear that had nothing to do with negative karma, the young mercenary realised he had killed his best friend. He upended his rifle against his forehead and pulled the trigger.
Harvey saw the brief burst of light from his position in the wheelbarrow. Streaks of light framed against the night sky. They merged with the celestial beauty of the stars and, for a moment, Harvey wondered where he was. Then the night rushed at him with images of Daniel MacDonald drinking whiskey, strobe lighting effect of multiple gunfire and the brief fall from the bedroom window to the wheelbarrow. With an effort, Harvey lurched from the barrow and stumbled into the sparse wood, crunching on the light snow.
The bearded soldier entered the master bedroom, swinging his assault rifle from side to side. He noted the two fallen comrades, but didn't hesitate as he heard footsteps outside the bedroom window.
'The bastard is in the woods,' he muttered, taking aim at the fading figure and firing a short burst. The figure flinched, but didn't fall, and the soldier rested the barrel on the balcony railing.
'Into the night, then.' His partner, a short, stocky man wearing a zebra-stripe beret said, leaning against the window frame.
The two soldiers took their time moving back through the house and into the crisp night. They made their way through the rear door and below the Master bedroom window.
'Took a hard fall,' the short soldier said, poking at the rubble of crushed clay pots in the wheelbarrow. 'May be disorientated too, there's blood and hair on the edge of the wheelbarrow here.'
'Righto. Let's hunt this wanker down,' The bearded man pulled the starlight goggles back over his eyes. The world shone in luminescent green.
They took up position, one fifteen feet behind the other, as they entered the sparse woods. The bearded soldier took point, creeping along in a half crouch, treading heel toe in the thin snow, watching the breaks in the trees for the telltale bright green image of their prey. He glanced at the snow-covered ground every few yards, catching the dark smudge of footprints that tracked where the quarry led.
Scuffs in the prints indicated the man favoured his right, so he was wounded, but no blood spotted the white ground, so a crushing wound, internal break in the upper body? He had landed heavily on the wheelbarrow. The bearded soldier raised a fist and the squat soldier halted, lowering himself on his haunches, his rifle at the ready.
He moved forward, tracking his prey with slow, sure steps. The tracks meandered into the short distance, as if the walker was drunk. He bumped into a number of trees, and the scuffed prints were becoming leaden. The prey was slowing.
Just past a shallow rise on the path the prints turned sharply to the right. The toe impressions were deep and the heel barely brushing the snow. The prey was running. And he was taking an arcing path back toward the house. That didn't make sense. Backtracking would have taken him barely forty feet from the route they had taken. Surely they would have seen him?
The bearded soldier spun around. 'He's doubled back,' he whispered hoarsely. The dull green outline signalled his understanding and made his way forward. Something wasn't right. A glimpse of a green arm shone along the path they had just walked down. The arm seemed to disappear into a small rise in the ground. No, not a rise, but a sheet, crumpled to look like part of the landscape.
Signalling to the shorter soldier, he raised his rifle and crabbed towards the mound. He took aim and fired a short burst into the lump, which jerked and shifted under the sheet.
'Got him, the sneaky bastard. He was hiding under this sheet,' He walked past the shorter man and scraped the white sheet away with his foot.
The figure under the sheet was dressed in army fatigues, lying at a crooked angle, a zebra pattern beret still wedged onto what was left of his head.
The figure behind him straightened. The bearded man realised his error a moment before the burst of semi automatic rounds tore into his back.
Harvey dropped the rifle to the ground and clutched at his head, the pain a consuming throb at his temples. He retched, but kept his lips closed tight and swallowed the vomit that filled his mouth. He stumbled along the wood path, bracing himself against the trees, thankful that he was still alive.
He managed to open the car door on the third attempt and navigated his way back to the hotel. Along a narrow street he caught the edge of a parked car, removing a wing mirror and triggering an alarm, but otherwise the streets of London were quiet. He staggered unseen into the hotel and collapsed onto bed.