The entrance to the building was glass. Drummond watched the drama unfold from his position in the lobby. He saw the headlights. He watched the car manoeuvre a tight turn on the road. Now he saw its tail lights. He watched as it gained speed toward them.
“Mad fucker,” he muttered. So much for his prediction of a clandestine attack through the woods. He clicked the radio receiver. “Kill the bastard.”
He saw his men assumes firing stances. Should have fucking rifles. The place was virtually soundproofed. He couldn’t hear the noise of the pistols discharging, but he saw the recoil, and knew they were firing. The vehicle was gaining speed, undeterred. One clean head shot, and it was over. But it kept coming.
He dropped the receiver, aimed his pistol, waited, thinking Somebody stop this fucker.
But the fucker kept coming.
Black was close enough to take his hands off the wheel, and with a gun in each hand, started firing to his left and right, through the open windows of the car. He was moving at high speed, firing indiscriminately. Accuracy was impossible. Luck more than skill. Luck prevailed. There were two groups of men on either side, forced to dodge away last second. Black glimpsed their disbelieving faces. Three crumpled to the ground. Whether dead or merely wounded, Black didn’t know. Nor did he have time to care.
The car rammed through the front of the building, the door and surrounding wall bursting away, then through a main pillar, bringing down the ceiling, until it slammed hard up against the back wall, battered and crushed.
Black thrust open the driver’s door. Dust billowed. Sparks and flashes. Twisted spikes of steel hung broken, like dismembered limbs. The place groaned and creaked, as concrete shifted, as load-bearing walls suddenly ceased to bear the load.
Black stumbled from the car. He saw shapes creep through the great ragged space where the door had been. Keep moving. He crouched, took a second to orientate his senses, picked his way forward, careful with his step. Suddenly, a great surge of noise. Another portion of the ceiling collapsed, raining lumps of concrete and iron, stirring up more dust cloud. Men screamed.
Black leapt to the ground, waited, breath held. He moved forward again, crawling on his belly, inch by inch. Three more shapes appeared. The place echoed to the distinctive sound of gunshots, as they fired at the car. They hadn’t seen Black. Black aimed, fired, three pops. Three figures dropped to the ground, falling within a second of each other, dead before they knew it.
Black waited. A stillness settled. The remaining men – if there were any – wouldn’t dare enter. Easy targets. So Black hoped. He rose to his feet, made his way further into the building. The car had ended in a room with chairs and drinks machines. Like a waiting room. Only now the chairs and drinks machines were smashed to hell and back. The room was open plan into a broad corridor. Doors on either side. The lighting flickered. Rubble drizzled down. He was walking in a nightmare. Of his own making, he thought grimly.
A door opened at the far end. A man appeared. Dark suit, coated in a fine mesh of dust. In his hand, a gun. Looked like a Browning.
“My name is Jason Drummond!” he shouted. “Let’s talk.”
When Drummond realised the car was not for stopping, he ran. Primarily to avoid being crushed, but also to get to his paymasters, warn them, and somehow get them the hell out. He sprinted down the corridor. The building shuddered. The car hurtled through, like a great beast, amid a roar of destruction. Door, walls, ceiling – the world was a sudden mad whirl of glass and metal and concrete. Drummond didn’t stop.
He got to the door of the operating room, barged in. There, standing poised over an unconscious child, was Percy Canning, one hand clasping a scalpel. He stared at Drummond. He pulled the mask from his face, his delicate features a mixture of fear and bewilderment. The plastic curtain swept aside, and Stapleton stood, hands on his hips. His gaze burned into Drummond. No fear or shock there. Unbridled fury.
He spoke, his voice rising to a pitch. “What the fuck’s happening!”
“It’s Adam Black,” replied Drummond. “He’s crashed a car into the building.”
“Adam who?” It was Canning who spoke, turning to Stapleton. Stapleton ignored him, maintaining his focus on Drummond.
“Why aren’t you fucking dealing with this!”
“I wasn’t expecting…” Drummond searched for the right words, “…such a direct assault.”
“Do I look as if I give a fuck?”
“Adam who?” repeated Canning.
The trolleys shook, the equipment rattled on their fixed pendants. A sound like grinding steel emanated from the walls. Then a crash. More ceiling had collapsed, Drummond assumed.
“We can get out of this.” Drummond tried to keep his voice calm. “This guy, Black, he only wants the kids. We give them up, then he’s gone. It’s all he cares about.”
Stapleton took a deep breath, chest puffing up. “Do you think I’m going to give up a fortune just because one fucking jumped up scrapper comes knocking at our door.”
“He’s hardly knocking,” Canning said.
Stapleton turned him a leaden gaze, then resumed back to Drummond.
“Offer him money. Go out, and tell him I can transfer a million from the Remus account into whatever account he wants, anywhere. I can do this now, from my mobile phone. He can have the money in thirty seconds.”
“And then what?”
“Then we deal with it. With him. We find him, and kill the fucker. But that’s for later. We’ll pay him off.”
“It won’t work,” Drummond said. “Not with this guy. He thinks he’s a hero. You can’t negotiate with a man like Black. There’s no common ground. It’s all or nothing.”
“And when did you become a fucking psychoanalyst?” snarled Stapleton. “Everyone has their price. Now go and do your fucking job!”
Drummond said nothing. There was nowhere to go. Black was in the building, doubtless carrying formidable fire power. With all the carnage, Drummond’s men would find it difficult, if not impossible, to catch him as a target. The only way out was back through the now destroyed front entrance. Which meant through Black.
“Men like Black don’t have a price,” Drummond muttered. He turned, opened the door, and entered the corridor. At the far end, a man was approaching.
Adam Black.
Drummond drew himself up, felt the reassuring touch of the Browning in his right hand.
“My name’s Jason Drummond!” he shouted. “Let’s talk!”
“Let’s,” replied Black. He stopped, a distance of about twenty-five yards between them. He considered the man called Jason Drummond. Compact, muscular, capable. Thick neck, wide shoulders. A man, thought Black, exuding that indefinable quality of lethal competence.
Drummond continued. “We can work through this.”
“Work through what?”
Drummond made a show of looking around. “This chaos. It doesn’t achieve anything.”
“It achieves plenty for me.”
“You’re here for the children. But broaden your horizons, Black. We can come to an arrangement.”
“Broaden my horizons? There’s an expression. An arrangement?”
Drummond took a step closer, then another, the hand holding the Browning held loosely by his side with a casual innocence, as if it were a mobile phone, or a set of car keys.
“We don’t want trouble. We want this to go away. You understand? What could make this go away, Black?”
“I’m out of magic wands. So how about handing over the kids you have. That would be a start.”
Drummond gave a cold laugh. “I can tell you’re ex-army, yes? The way you move, the way you act. An old soldier. Fighting for queen and country for shit pay and no thanks. Forgotten by the system. I’ve been there, and didn’t like it. Not one bit. Live a little, Black. Perhaps it’s time for a bit of payback. Let me tell you now, we can put a million pounds in whatever account you want. You’ll be a millionaire before breakfast. Then you go your way, we go ours. You become a rich man. The champagne’s on us. Imagine.”
“I’m trying to. And what do you get?”
“We get your silence, and you stop your… crusade. Or whatever this is.”
“I can see that working out. And the children?”
Drummond had made his way slowly down the corridor, stopped close enough for Black to see the sweat glistening on his forehead.
Drummond responded in a brassy tone. “Fuck them! Who cares about some illegal immigrant kids from some shithole arse-end country. Technically, they don’t exist. A million pounds, Black. That’s a lot of cash. I’ll tell my men to back off. You leave here, and we never see each other again.”
Black nodded contemplatively, then spoke. “I served in the Special Air Service. I didn’t do it for the money, nor the thanks. I did it because, deep down, I suppose I enjoy killing people. Especially bad people. Call it a personality flaw. Which makes me a rather awkward person to negotiate with.”
Drummond blinked away the sweat, opened his mouth to speak, then clamped it shut, clearly at a loss for words. The hand holding the Browning trembled.
“And as for the kids?” continued Black, eyes glittering. “The kids who don’t technically exist? They exist in my book. And I’ll make damn sure they continue to exist.”
He whipped his hand up, shot the man called Jason Drummond once in the upper chest, two inches below the chest, and once in the skull, an inch above the eyes, dead centre in the sweating forehead. Quick succession, two shots morphing into one. Drummond staggered back, took a faltering foot forward, like a drunk catching his balance, sank to his knees, dropped face down onto the floor.
Black stepped round him. “I’ve never liked champagne.”
Drummond had appeared from a door at the far end of the corridor. It seemed the logical place for Black to go.
Stapleton, unlike his friend, Percy Canning, was not scared. He was outraged. An individual had invaded his space, interrupted the money-making process, and worst of all, potentially jeopardised future relations with his Chinese associates, should they ever find out. Which they would. Such a thing was intolerable.
Canning was staring at him, terror plain on his face.
“Who the fuck’s Adam Black!” Canning’s voice was a shriek.
“He’s nothing,” snapped Stapleton.
“Nothing! He’s just fucking smashed a car into the front door. Now you’re offering him a million to disappear. That’s some fucking nothing!”
Stapleton turned, gave him a burning look. “You know what this is? A blip. In this game, there’s always blips. You think, what we do, we’re going to live a trouble-free existence? You think, when you start up the engine on your new Porsche 911, that these things don’t come at a price? When you open the fucking door to your three-million-plus London apartment, there’s no payback? This is the grit that gets under the nails. Get over it, Percy. Drummond will take care of this, like he takes care of all the blips. Then we move on.”
“Move on? To what? Prison? Worse? You haven’t answered my question. This is more than just a fucking blip. Who the hell’s Adam Black?”
Stapleton deigned not to answer. The truth was, he had no idea. But it didn’t matter. Drummond would take care of it. An image flashed in his mind. The picture in the conference room in the main building of the hospital. Chaos. Perhaps that was how he should have answered Canning – This man Adam Black? He’s everything I hate. He’s the picture on the wall. He is chaos.
A sound from the corridor outside, distinct and sharp. A gunshot. Maybe two. Canning, beside him, jolted round.
“See?” said Stapleton, a triumphant ring in his voice. “Drummond does what he does. Who’s Adam Black? A corpse with a bullet in his skull.”
Both men remained still. On the table next to them, an unconscious girl, oblivious to the turmoil around her. The door opened. A man stood, framed against the flickering strip lights outside. In one hand, a pistol.
The man was not Jason Drummond.
Chaos had arrived.