The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

and washed his hands thoroughly. He dried them on his shirt then took out the 9mm Makarov pistol and checked it over. He unloaded the magazine, inspected the bullets. They looked like factory loads as far as he could tell, and the shell cases were in good condition. He never fired anything he hadn’t re-loaded himself, or that wasn’t factory-loaded if he could help it. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. He unloaded the second magazine, checked the bullets, then stripped the pistol down. An easy weapon to take apart – he simply pulled down the trigger guard, slipped it sideways onto its internal holding lug, then pulled back the slide all the way, lifted and dropped it forward and off the barrel. He sprayed the weapon well with what he guessed was Georgia or Russia’s equivalent of WD40 and rubbed it all over with a dry cloth. He oiled the spring, inspected the barrel, squirted a little oil down it and allowed it to drain. Drug dealers tended to pose and threaten with their firearms, but there was no telling whether this weapon had been fired in forty-years. King suspected it had started off life as a well-used military piece but would have been stolen and sold on many times over since then. It looked in ok condition. He oiled and checked the magazines, reloaded them checking the spring tension. He put them down, put the pistol back together, checked the action, then loaded one of the magazines, chambered a round and applied the safety, which dropped the hammer onto the safe bar. He tucked the pistol into his right trouser pocket and put the spare magazine into the other.

“Well, you managed to get a piece, more than I could do.”

King spun around, but he had already figured out who it was and refrained from grabbing the pistol. “You made decent time,” he said lightly, but he was mad with himself for being crept up on. Fatigue and circumstance was putting him at a disadvantage.

Rashid walked up, held out his hand. King took it, shook it warmly. It was relief to have help, to see a friendly face.

“How is it on the outside?”

“Flying blind,” King replied. He told him about Sweden, what he had been about to do, and the idea that Simon Grant had unwittingly given him about using leverage. He told him about Anna and the way she had played both sides. The two men that he had killed, the unknown number of men in the burned-out Mercedes. He hadn’t seen the need to check.

“You’ve been busy,” Rashid commented as he looked inside the boot of the car. He saw the IEDs. “Blast radius?”

“A hundred feet for the electrical charges, fifty-feet for the taper fuse ones,” King said with a shrug. “Or thereabouts.”

“Shrapnel?”

“About two-hundred grams of screws in each. The taper fuse ones will be less powerful, but still enough to wreck a vehicle.”

“I’ll be sure to duck, then,” Rashid said. He updated King on what he, Ramsay and Marnie had found. He told them about South Africa, working with Ryan Beard from MI6 and what had happened at Botha’s property. And then he told him about the IP address and that Marnie and Ramsay were heading there to investigate.

King listened intently. This last piece could lead them directly to Caroline. He wondered whether he should pack up and go, but he was so close, and they could find themselves at another dead end. He needed to hold his nerve.

“I’ll stick to what I’m doing here. I just want a hand with a diversion,” King said. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m getting Catherine Milankovitch out. Romanovitch is Helena’s problem. With Catherine, I have a bargaining chip, a fair trade for Caroline. Anna Sergeyev told me that Romanovitch snatched Catherine and has kept her ever since Helena funded some mercenaries to move in on the Bratva’s assets. He covered his arse, even taunted Pyotr Sergeyev about it, telling him to hide.”

Rashid nodded. “So, what do we know about Romanovitch’s place?”

“I’ve found it with Google Earth, worked out the borders, which way is north, seen the gates. Nothing more.”

“So, flying blind,” Rashid said flatly. “I haven’t got a weapon,” he said.

“If all goes well, I just want some big bangs. There are outbuildings, cars, and of course, a huge gate. If some of those things go skywards, I plan on slipping in through the back and finding Catherine.”

“And if she’s being held in one of those outbuildings and gets blown to kingdom-come?” Rashid shook his head decisively. “No, we need to do a thorough recce. You’ve come so far, buying time, getting Helena to trust you, discovering both the existence and whereabouts of Catherine. Now you have an edge. We can’t risk harming the one person who can get Caroline back unharmed.”

King nodded. He was not only fatigued, he wasn’t thinking straight. “Agreed,” he paused. “I bought some binoculars. There is plenty of high ground above his property. If we can work our way up there, it will be worth it.”

“What about a recce, then hitting him in the middle of the night? We can be stealthy, use the demolition stuff to aid our escape instead of storming the castle, so to speak. Could keep the body count down too.”

“We’ll see,” King said. The end was in sight. He was so close to transferring the power between Helena and himself, so eager with anticipation, that he felt like a child at the end of term. He was glad that Rashid was here to play devil’s advocate, lend a sense of perspective. He looked at Rashid and nodded. “I guess you’re right,” he admitted.

Rashid patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll get her back,” he said. “It isn’t over till it’s over.”

60

 

 She had waited two-hours and twenty minutes and it had felt like a