Michael’s eyes had no time to adjust to the cabin’s darkness before he was pushed to the floor by an impact from behind. A shot rang out. His first thought was that he had been hit a second time. Mentally examining himself for the wound, Michael stopped when he registered that the impact that had taken him down had come not from the front. It had come from behind.
The realisation increased his panic. Terrified, he forced himself to look towards the doorway.
‘Get up, Michael.’
Haversume might as well have not spoken. His words had no effect on Michael, whose eyes were fixed in horror on Liam, motionless on the cabin floor.
‘I said, get up!’
This time Haversume shouted. Every last vestige of the calm, sophisticated conspirator had been abandoned. He manhandled Claire ahead of himself at gunpoint, pushing his one remaining advantage.
None of which registered with Michael.
It was several seconds before he could move. His body refused to obey the orders it received from his brain. Shock had shut him down. The paralysis did not last, but it was not external stimulus that broke it. It was the need to reach his brother.
Michael dragged his own failing body to Liam’s side and carefully rolled him onto his back.
Blood was seeping from a single hole in Liam’s chest, with a deep red pool of it now on the floor where he had lain. Michael refused to acknowledge either thing. All that mattered was that Liam was alive.
‘Michael, I have Claire.’
Haversume’s voice was now desperate. Almost pleading for a response.
He did not get one.
‘Liam, you’re gonna be OK.’
Michael ignored Haversume’s interruptions. His only thought was his brother.
‘Don’t worry. You’re gonna be OK.’
‘No, Mikey. No I’m not.’
Liam’s words were strained. Almost not there. They were pushed out between irregular, painful breaths. And yet they were more realistic than any Michael could muster.
‘I’m finished.’
‘No. No, Liam, you’re not. You’re going to be fine.’
Michael spoke through a mask of tears. Common sense was beginning to defeat his refusal to accept the inevitable.
‘You get up now. Get up.’
Liam smiled and slowly lifted his hand to his brother’s face. He gently wiped the tears from Michael’s cheek. It said what neither brother could. And it used up the very last of Liam’s strength.
Michael felt his brother’s callused hand against his skin and it blocked out the rest of the world. He did not notice that the gunfire outside had died. That the cabin entrance was beginning to fill with Liam’s men. That none of them – not even the immediately devastated O’Neil – could bring themselves to come closer. Michael noticed none of this. All that mattered was the dying body he held in his arms.
His rational mind told him they had little time. But, for all his eloquence, he did not have the words.
‘Liam, I, I.’ Michael had no idea of what he was trying to say. ‘Liam.’
Unable to say what he wanted his brother to know, Michael joined him in silence. He was content just to feel the heat of Liam’s hand on his face. But even that comfort could not last; Liam’s arm was weakening, his hand beginning to falter. Michael took it in his own palm and pressed it to his cheek, where tears streamed through Liam’s fingers as the light disappeared from his eyes.
As he felt the final strength disappear from Liam’s hand, Michael pulled his brother’s heavy body towards him and hugged it with all of his own. An embrace he wanted to last for ever.
For Haversume this seemed to be a step too far. Gripping Claire more forcefully by the nape of her neck, he turned his gun on Michael.
When he spoke it was with a voice that could no longer be ignored.
‘Enough is enough,’ he shouted, his self-control gone. ‘Get to your feet and tell these fuckers to get out of my way before I put a bullet in her head. Pull yourself together and do as I say. Now!’
Michael looked up, almost quizzically, as if seeing the scene around him for the very first time. He registered Haversume’s threat, and then noticed what was left of Liam’s men crowded around the cabin door.
It made Haversume’s demand clear.
With Liam’s body still warm in his arms Michael could no longer feel the anger – the passion – that had been driving him on. What was left was an empty shell with nothing left to fight for.
He looked first at Claire, held at Haversume’s mercy. Then at Sarah, now standing with O’Neil but who had been in Claire’s position less than ten minutes before. And finally at Liam, dead against his chest.
He knew that he could lose no one else.
‘Let him go.’
Michael’s voice was full of impotent, defeated rage; the words of a man whose world had been ripped away.
‘Just let the bastard go.’
With that his eyes returned to Liam’s face. He did not watch as Haversume pushed his gun into Claire’s neck, preparing to exit through a crowd of men who wanted him dead. Nor did he look up as that crowd parted, in obedience to Michael’s instructions. He did not look up at all. And so he missed the last sight that Haversume would ever see.
Haversume steeled himself to move as Liam’s men parted. It left a channel through which he and Claire could pass. He took a step towards it, but stopped at the sight of a figure who until now had stood unseen behind the crowd.
It was possibly the greatest shock of Haversume’s life. And as Dempsey pulled his trigger from thirty feet away to send a single round into the front of his skull, it was certainly the last.
Haversume was thrown backwards by the force of the bullet. He was dead long before he hit the ground.
What remained of Liam’s men watched as Dempsey strode through the channel they had opened for his victim and stopped directly over Haversume’s lifeless corpse. The hole in ‘Stanton’s’ forehead removed any doubt that the shot had done its job.
‘I told you I’d find you.’
With those words, Dempsey turned and walked away.
It was over.