Ryker contemplated ditching the car before he got to the location. Thought about circling around and heading in on foot from the north side, opposite to the most obvious route which Lange would surely assume he’d approach from.
Instead, he just kept on going, following the GPS directions, largely because as he closed in on the destination, he became more and more curious – suspicious, too – as to why he was out here at all. The last houses of the nearest town were miles behind him. All he could see outside the car windows was the twisting road and the thicket of trees on either side of him, in front, behind. The checkered flag was in view on the GPS screen but there was no indication of anything out here. No town or village, no place or road name. No amenities. Just blue and green shapes, indicating the outline of forested areas and water, plus three thin, snaking black lines, intercrossed over the map to indicate the only roads in this barren area.
Ryker took the final turn. Less than a mile out. He kept going and was soon emerging from the woods into a huge clearing. A frozen lake. Up ahead were two parked cars. Not far beyond them was a boathouse. A single story, not big enough to fit anything in it other than a couple of basic rowing boats or dinghies.
He slowed the Range Rover right down, cut the engine off, and used its momentum to roll to a stop a few yards from the other parked cars.
He stepped out into the bitter cold. It’d been several hours since he’d last been out of the car and the temperature had dropped significantly in that time. A far cry from the positively balmy Spanish coast.
He edged toward the two parked cars, his eyes busy as they worked the area – the cars, the boathouse, the iced-over lake, the woodland that surrounded him in every direction.
A biting wind blasted across the open space, whistling and howling in his ears. Serene, but hardly quiet. Yet as he approached the cars, hunkered down in a poor attempt to keep the chill at bay, he was sure he could hear a noise. Banging? Clattering? Intermittent, and not particularly loud or forceful. But it was definitely there, just somewhere beyond the wind noise, and growing more distinct with each step he took.
The sound was coming from the Mercedes. From its trunk. Ryker reached the car. He carefully, subtly, tried the trunk lid. Locked. He edged around to the driver’s door. Unlocked. He opened the door and reached in and found the button for the trunk. A click as the lid popped open. Then moaning.
Ryker moved back around, ready for a surprise attack.
He peeked over the edge.
‘Lange?’
She was bound and gagged.
Ryker moved with more purpose now. He reached in and grabbed her under the armpits and hauled her out. He untied the rope on her wrists and ankles, ripped off the tape that covered her mouth. Her legs were weak and wobbly and for a few seconds, he had to hold her to stop her from toppling over.
‘What happened?’ he said.
‘It’s… her.’
A tear escaped her eye.
Her. Devereaux. Ryker’s beady eyes darted about, but he could see no one else here. He knew where Devereaux most likely was, though. The boathouse. A simple trap?
‘Where’s Diaz?’
Lange looked confused. ‘Diaz? Ryker, she’s dead! Everyone’s dead apart from me and you.’
‘No,’ Ryker said. ‘Not everyone.’
He rooted around in the boot. Lifted the false bottom to reveal a spare tire and toolkit. He took the wrench. When he straightened up he saw the pleading look in Lange’s eyes.
‘We have to go,’ she said to him. ‘Kaspovich is still in Copenhagen. I have to tell him what’s happened. What’s happening.’
The Range Rover was right there behind them. He didn’t have enough fuel to get them to Copenhagen, but he did have enough to get them to a town. He had his phone too. He took it out of his pocket. No signal. But if they traveled away from here there would be soon enough.
Then a scream cut through the pummeling noise of the wind. Ryker could pinpoint it exactly.
He looked at Lange. ‘Go if you have to, but I can’t.’
She didn’t say anything, but he could see the doubt in her eyes.
He took his keys from his pocket and held them and his phone out to her. She only hesitated for a second before taking them.
‘I’ll get help,’ she said.
Ryker didn’t say anything, just nodded before she turned and rushed over to the Range Rover. She was in the midst of a hurried U-turn when another scream – even more panicked than before – cut through the air.
He turned to face the boathouse, then set off toward it. His eyes darted about. No one in sight. But as he edged forward he was sure he spotted movement just beyond the tree line to his right. He stopped and stared but saw nothing more, other than the thick branches of the firs which swayed this way and that, non-stop in the wind.
He continued to the boathouse, the wrench held out at the ready. A clatter came from inside the flimsy structure. A surprised shout. Then another. Then a gunshot. More banging.
Ryker rushed forward. Crashed open the door. Two bodies down. One was a man he didn’t recognize. Glugging his last breaths, his eyes wide as he held a hand to a gaping wound on his neck. Next to him was a woman. Devereaux. Crumpled and grasping her side. Her hands were covered with blood. Her eyes met Ryker’s and he was sure she very nearly smiled.
‘You,’ she said.
A gun lay on the floor between the two of them. It wasn’t clear who had originally had it, though neither of the wounded had the strength to go for it now.
What on earth had happened in here?
Ryker crouched down, dropped the wrench, and picked up the pistol. Movement caught his eye again. Beyond the partially open doors at the end of the building that led out onto the lake. Gun in hand, Ryker stepped over there and pushed the right-hand door further open.
Two men on the ice. Heading away. One hobbled along, the other had his arm wrapped around the injured man’s shoulder, helping to drag him.
‘Aldern!’ Ryker shouted out.
The men stopped and turned. Sure enough, the one on the left, carrying the other, was Aldern.
‘Ryker,’ Aldern shouted back. ‘Good to see you again so soon.’
‘Just tell me why.’
‘Why what?’
Ryker continued to edge forward, gun held out.
Aldern said nothing.
‘Was it just money? Is that all it took?’
Aldern scoffed as though Ryker was talking nonsense. ‘You make it sound like a bad thing. I only did what was best for me. What? You’ve worked the last twenty years for another reason? The greater good? But who gets to decide on that?’
Ryker was reminded of what Gerardo had said to him on the yacht. Gerardo and Aldern were two men who’d found themselves on very different sides, yet apparently, both had the same outlook: money trumped morals. Trumped pretty much everything.
‘I’ve seen men like you my whole life,’ Aldern said. ‘You think you’re moral. You think you’re superior because of it. But you’re no better than me. We’ve both done horrible things. And why? Because someone in an office in England says it was okay?’
Ryker wasn’t about to argue that one. A key reason why he’d left behind his life in the JIA was because he could no longer correlate the actions he was being told to take with the justification that he needed. But he hadn’t simply headed after money instead. He still wanted to make a difference, somehow, however small.
‘I saw your wife recently,’ Ryker said.
That got a flicker on Aldern’s face.
‘Her life’s been destroyed because of your lies.’
‘You know nothing about that.’
Except the way he’d said it told Ryker exactly how Aldern felt. Ashamed. For all his bravado, he knew he’d let his family down.
‘You left them alone.’
Nothing from Aldern now.
‘All so you could carry on your shady life.’
‘I did it to protect them!’
Aldern’s hand twitched. Ryker fired.
Somehow, Aldern had already decided to use his injured comrade as a shield and hunkered behind him just in time. The bullet hit the man in his back before Aldern tossed him to the ice and whipped out his own weapon. He unleashed several shots and Ryker dove to the ice which creaked and cracked under his weight.
Aldern didn’t let up as Ryker scuttled away and he was soon out of ammunition. Ryker got back to his feet as Aldern turned to slink away. He lifted the gun to fire again.
Another crack in the ice. Behind him. Not from his weight.
Ryker spun and saw the man lunging for him, slicing a serrated knife through the air toward Ryker’s throat. Ryker reeled back, pointed the gun up, and fired. The bullet shot upward through the man’s chin. Blood spattered onto Ryker’s face as the dead body thudded down.
Another man coming at Ryker from the right. Had they come from the trees?
Ryker sank down to his knee, readjusted his aim, and fired off two shots just before the man had a chance to unload his own weapon. Neither were hits. Ryker adjusted again and pulled again. Once, twice, three times. The first two were hits. One in the belly, one in the chest. The third pull resulted in nothing but a sorrowful click. The magazine was empty. And Ryker had no more on him.
He turned back to where Aldern had been. Except rather than running away, he was now bearing down on Ryker.
Aldern launched himself forward. Ryker sidestepped as Aldern barged into him and they both clattered onto the ice. A deep crack this time. The sound splintered outward. Water dribbled up to the surface.
They grappled on the flimsy ice. Ryker took a blow to the chin. He delivered one back in kind, then pummeled Aldern’s sides as they twisted and turned on the ice. He grasped hold of Aldern’s shoulder, the one with the bullet wound from Spain, and squeezed as hard as he could. Aldern roared in agony and his grip loosened and Ryker pushed himself away and then rose to his feet. Aldern did the same, albeit more gingerly.
Movement off to Ryker’s side again. But this time he was unarmed and there was no quick solution as he turned to see Leia Devereaux edging across the ice. Despite the glistening patch of wet on the side of her coat – bullet wound, or knife? – she walked unimpeded, an almost satisfied look on her face.
‘What do we have here?’ she said. She came to a stop. The three of them in a triangular stand-off. There was a gun in her hand. From where Ryker didn’t know. She was wafting it about casually like it was a toy. ‘Are you two fighting over me?’
Her voice was warm and her tone… Ryker didn’t know how to describe it, but it didn’t fit the mood here on the ice at all.
‘Come on, Leia,’ Aldern said to her. ‘You’re so close. Finish him, then we’re done. You get your life back, just like we agreed.’
‘Oh, Paulo, he won’t be my last though, will he?’ Ryker glanced between the two of them. Paulo? Aldern’s new identity? ‘I’ve saved that honor for you.’
She lifted the gun to fire. A leg shot. Aldern sank down to the ice, growling in pain through clenched teeth.
Devereaux winked to Ryker then continued forward to Aldern. She stopped not even a yard from him and leaned over.
‘But you can be damn sure, my sweet, that I’m not going to let you off easily. Not after what you’ve done to me.’
Then she turned to Ryker. Pulled the gun up.
Ryker flinched.
But the shot never came. Instead, there was a crash and a chunk of ice, eight feet square, disappeared into the water. Aldern and Devereaux both went with it. Ryker flung himself back and scuttled a few feet away as he stared aghast.
Devereaux and Aldern both flailed about in the water, trying to grasp the edge of the ice. Conflicting thoughts tumbled in Ryker’s mind. What was he supposed to do? Leave them both to die in there? Head over and make sure they stay under?
He didn’t know. Before he could talk himself out of it he was flat on his stomach sliding across the ice toward the hole. But who was he going to save? Even he didn’t know.
By the time he got there, Aldern was clinging on to the broken ice, trying to haul himself out. Ryker reached out to Devereaux who was still flailing, her head only intermittently above water. She tried to grasp his hand but couldn’t. Moments later she was gone.
Ryker used his arm like a brush to sweep the snow off the ice. He spotted the shadowy movement underneath – Devereaux floating away, desperately banging on the ice to try and break it from beneath. Ryker hammered down on the frozen surface. The ice creaked and strained, but didn’t break.
He slid along the surface, following her movement. An even bigger creak beneath him this time. He soon realized why. Aldern was out of the water and right next to him. Bad move. The added weight was once again too much and the ice gave way and both of them were soon under.
Ryker’s heart thudded erratically from the sudden shock of the icy water. He gasped for breath as he tried desperately to keep afloat. He managed to push himself to the edge and grabbed the brittle slab of ice, but as he went to haul himself out another chunk broke away and he was under the water again.
Something further beneath brushed his leg. Aldern? Or just a piece of broken ice? He kicked out, thrashing about. Grasped the ledge once more. No, that wasn’t ice below him. The arm grabbed him around the waist. Dragged him under once more. He and Aldern tussled under the water. Ryker did everything he could to pull himself free as Aldern slipped further and further down.
Ryker managed to wrench a leg free from Aldern’s grip. He hammered it down. Aldern’s head? Whatever he hit, the contact was solid, and Aldern’s arm finally came loose. Still, Ryker hit down again, then again. The next time he did so he connected with nothing.
He pushed his body back up, broke the surface of the water and took a desperate gasp of air.
He grasped the edge of the ice once more. His body was leaden and depleted. His heart felt like it would explode from his chest. His body quivered from the cold. He wasn’t sure he could hold on to the ice, never mind haul himself out.
A sound caught his attention and gave him focus. Sirens. Not too far away. Then the clatter of a helicopter. He saw it a moment later. Racing in, low down, just above the treetops. For a flash his mind took him back to Spain. The Med. The yacht. The helicopter with the gunner on board. What would he do? Dive back under the water for safety?
But a few seconds later he spotted the insignia on the side of the chopper as it came in to hover above him. Police.
That somehow gave Ryker the strength he needed. He clambered out of the hole. Pushed himself across the ice until he was clear of the sloshing water, then rolled onto his back to stare up to the sky as he continued to gasp in heavy breaths.
The sirens got louder by the second. The helicopter disappeared from above, but the sound of it hardly dulled. Ryker lifted his head a little to see it landing over by the boathouse where two police cars were racing in past the woods.
Ryker found the strength to lift his torso and then he sat there on the ice watching the cavalry descend. Half a dozen officers, all armed. Within seconds there were a dozen. They were shouting over. It took Ryker’s brain a couple of confused seconds to determine what they were saying.
Don’t move. Stay where you are.
Or something like that at least. But were they shouting at him, or…
He turned to look back to the hole.
Devereaux. Out of the water. On her knees, shivering violently as she coughed water from her lungs. When she was done she lifted her head and caught Ryker’s eye.
She smiled.
There was a splash of water by her side, by the hole, and as Ryker glanced there, a body bobbed to the surface, face down. Aldern. Or Paulo, or whoever the hell he was.
‘Ryker?’
Lange. Ryker turned to her. She was warily heading across the ice toward him and Devereaux, police flanking her on both sides.
‘Are you okay?’ she shouted.
He didn’t answer that. He couldn’t. He really wasn’t sure what the answer was.