––––––––
Purkiss said: ‘What’s through that door?’ He indicated the far end of the room.
They were on the move, Gideon opening the door to the storage cupboard from which he’d fetched the spare pair of boots for Purkiss. He removed a shotgun which he tossed to Purkiss, who caught it one-handed.
‘More storage,’ said Gideon. ‘There’s no way out through here. We have to go up.’ He produced a handgun and held it out to Delatour.
‘Or, we stay put,’ said Purkiss. He worked the slide of the shotgun. It was a Remington 11-87, a US police weapon. ‘Pick them off as they come down the hatch.’
Gideon shook his head as he jammed another pistol into his waistband. ‘Too much of a gamble. They may have teargas, grenades, whatever. Plus, the bulk of my weapons are up there in the tower.’ He nodded at Rebecca. ‘I haven’t got anything for you down here.’
Gideon reached the rungs in the wall first and began to ascend, Purkiss close behind. He’d glanced at the monitors as he passed them. The men were gone from the screens.
The daylight poured down as Gideon pushed the trapdoor open. Purkiss climbed out after him and crouched, turning through three hundred and sixty degrees, scanning the environment. From where he was, down among the ruins, he couldn’t see the rest of the island.
They moved at a stoop among the ruins towards the ladder leading up to the tower. At the base, Purkiss turned again and did another survey.
No sign of the men.
‘Those screens covered the northern part of the island,’ said Gideon, indicating. The island stretched back towards the sea, longer behind than it was in front. Purkiss estimated the distance to the northern tip at around one mile.
It might buy them some time.
He climbed up after Gideon, feeling as if a target was painted in bright neon on his exposed back. If they have long guns... But he reached the door at the top. Instead of following Gideon through, he turned and gazed across the island while Rebecca, Delatour and Kendrick climbed up the ladder. Kendrick was grinning.
‘Like the old days,’ he said to Purkiss.
Purkiss propped the door open behind them. It meant that, with the window spaces in the front and side walls, they had a view in all directions.
Gideon was busy with the RPG launcher. Rebecca had picked up the other shotgun, while Kendrick laid immediate claim to the M16.
Purkiss said, ‘I’m going down. There’s no point all of us staying up here. If they close in, I might be able to pick some of them off from behind.’
Gideon nodded. ‘One of you needs to stay up here. In case I get taken out.’
Delatour said, ‘I’ve used one of those before.’ He gestured at the RPG. ‘I could take over if need be.’
‘All right.’ Purkiss headed for the doorway. ‘Rebecca, you stick with me. We’ll find somewhere to hole up among the ruins. Tony, you separate out and lie low nearby.’
On the ground once more, they moved out among the ruins. Purkiss found a stretch of wall, about six feet high, along the eastern aspect of the hillock. He signalled to Kendrick to position himself on the other side.
Purkiss sat with his back against the wall, Rebecca beside him. All there was to do was wait. The tinnitus from the grenade blast was still there, not as overwhelming as before but thin and high-pitched and distracting. It meant it would be difficult to hear any footfalls.
Rebecca murmured, ‘How did they find us?’
‘They found us at the hotel,’ said Purkiss. ‘So they may have traced us from there on. Maybe the clerk who organised the boat for us told them where we’d gone.’
He twisted round to look up at the tower. Gideon’s face appeared in the window on the east side. He appeared to be staring into the distance as if he’d spotted something.
As Purkiss watched, Gideon raised the RPG launcher, propping it on the window ledge.
Purkiss shuffled to the end of the broken wall and peered round in the direction Gideon was looking.
At least four men were advancing, picking their way up the rocky slope in much the same way that Purkiss and the others had done, running from boulder to boulder.
Purkiss looked back up at Gideon in the window. He wasn’t going to be able to hit all of them, but there were plenty of grenades in his stash. He was going to do it by a process of attrition, picking them off however he could, individually if necessary.
In the next instant, Gideon’s forehead erupted in red and he dropped out of sight.
Purkiss recoiled instinctively behind the wall as the shot rang out over the island.
Rebecca drew close, confusion in her eyes. Purkiss said: ‘Gideon’s down.’ He ratcheted the shotgun.
From the other side of the wall, he heard yells as the men broke cover.
For a split-second, Purkiss had thought one of the men out there had used a long gun. But Gideon had jolted forward, not back, as the wound had bloomed in his forehead.
It was an exit wound. The shot had come from inside the tower.
‘Delatour did it,’ Purkiss said. ‘Get ready.’
Rebecca didn’t reply, and Purkiss didn’t wait to see what effect his words had had. He strained his ears to try and gauge how close the men were.
When he felt he could delay no longer, he lunged beyond the wall, the shotgun extended.
A man loomed ten feet away as he hauled himself over the edge of the hillock. Purkiss pulled the Remington’s trigger, feeling the shotgun buck in his hands. The blast caught the man in the chest and he dropped back with a scream.
‘Tony,’ yelled Purkiss, without turning. ‘Watch the other side of the hill.’
A second man rolled over the ridge, further down. He was fast, but Purkiss swung the shotgun across and pumped the slide and fired again. The man went down.
Purkiss stared up at the tower. Delatour had appeared in the window. He sighted down the RPG. It was aimed directly at Purkiss and Rebecca.
Purkiss threw himself into Rebecca, knocking her sideways, seizing her awkwardly with the Remington still clutched in his grasp and rolling with her, over and over, the rough rocky ground painful beneath them.
He felt the detonation of the grenade like a sonic punch to his entire body, the heat of the flame that roared behind him. A cascade of rock and stone rained down and he ducked his head, shielding Rebecca’s averted face beneath him. The shock of the blast was almost paralysing, but Purkiss hauled himself to his knees and grabbed Rebecca’s arm and dragged her upright.
Agony seared up his leg. He looked down and saw that his right trouser leg was on fire. Purkiss shook his leg, grabbed handfuls of gravel and sand and flung them over the flame until it had ebbed. He slapped the rest out with his hand.
Delatour would follow with another grenade, was likely taking aim at that very moment. Purkiss saw a shape from the corner of his right eye, whipped his head round, saw a third man a few feet away on top of the ridge with his rifle aimed and knew that this was it, that he hadn’t time to bring the shotgun across.
The man jerked like a marionette as the bullets stitched across his torso, lifting him off his feet before he slammed supine on the ground. Kendrick stood among the ruins to the left, the M16 in his hands. Once again his face was contorted in a grin.
‘Slow, Purkiss,’ he said.
Purkiss said, ‘Up there. Delatour,’ and as Kendrick swung the Armalite to bear on the tower, Purkiss scanned the side of the island nearest to him. There’d been four men approaching. They’d despatched three. The remaining one was unlikely to climb the hillock now, and would be regrouping with the others.
The M16 chattered and bucked in Kendrick’s hands. The wall of the tower around the window shot off chippings of wood and stone. Delatour might not get hit, but at least the return fire kept him from taking aim with the RPG.
‘Three down,’ said Purkiss, thinking aloud. ‘At least seven more, plus Delatour now. Eight against three.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the far side of the island. ‘We need to get to Gideon’s boats.’
‘Nah,’ said Kendrick. He’d stopped shooting, but continued to stare up at the tower. ‘I’m going to get that bastard up there. Fucking turncoat.’
‘No time, Tony.’ Purkiss grabbed at his arm. ‘You’ll waste ammo. And if you go up there, he’ll be waiting, or the others will pick you off.’
‘Shit.’ Kendrick’s grin had been replaced by an ugly clenched-teeth snarl. He glared up at the tower again, but lowered the rifle.
‘We spread out,’ said Purkiss. ‘They’ll be expecting us to come down the western side of the hill, over there, because that’s the side where the boats are. So we go down this side and work our way round.’
They spaced themselves along the top of the hillock, Kendrick glancing up repeatedly at the tower. There was nobody visible on the plain below. Purkiss scrambled down the side and waited for the others to do the same.
If they made their way round the northern aspect of the hillock, they’d pass beneath the façade and the tower. On the other hand, the men would probably be around the southern end since they’d approached from that direction.
Purkiss nodded. ‘Tony,’ he said, keeping his voice low. ‘You head round that way. You’ll be able to keep the tower in sight, and you’ve got the range to hit Delatour if he appears in the window. We’ll take the other way.’
Purkiss and Rebecca moved quickly along the circumference of the hillock, keeping close to its slope. The shotgun looked too large for her hands, but she seemed to handle it with familiarity, Purkiss thought.
The first of the men darted his head around a jutting pillar of rock in the hillside a few feet ahead. Purkiss fired the Remington reflexively, from the hip, blasting away a chunk of rock and dust, and he heard a cry of pain.
They charged forwards, Purkiss and Rebecca, and on the other side of the outcropping found the man reeling, clutching his bloody face where the shot had caught him, while a second man tried to shove him out of the way. Purkiss and Rebecca fired at almost the same time, hurling both men back against the rock.
Five down, thought Purkiss. Maybe five left, plus Delatour. Maybe more.
They worked their way rapidly round to the western side of the hillock. Kendrick emerged from the other direction, walking sideways some distance away from the base of the hill, his gaze trained on the tower. Purkiss scanned the rocky plain.
‘Where are the others?’ said Rebecca.
‘They’ll know we’re headed for the boats,’ said Purkiss. ‘They’ll be waiting for us down there. So we need to try and find where their transport is moored.’
They struck out northwards across the long extension of the islet, Purkiss and Rebecca spaced apart in parallel at the front, Kendrick behind them, walking backwards, the M16 trained on the tower. At one point Purkiss heard the sharp report of a single shot from the assault rifle, and he turned his head.
‘Saw him there,’ muttered Kendrick. ‘In the doorway. He was having a look out to see if the coast was clear. I’ll get him next time.’
The islet sloped towards the north so that the edge could barely be described as a cliff. The ground dipped sufficiently over the final fifty yards or so that the hillock, and the tower, disappeared from view. It meant they could no longer keep tabs on the tower, but it meant also that Delatour wouldn’t be able to see them to launch another grenade.
They found the boats, two of them, on a flat stretch of rock in a tiny cove. They were inflatables, both of them, with outboard motors and each capable of carrying probably six people. It suggested to Purkiss that his initial estimate had been correct, and that there were indeed ten of the men, or at most twelve.
He pulled the cord on one of the motors and it barked into life, the sound carrying out across the water and, presumably, back across the island. He nodded to Kendrick, who put two single shots from the M16 though the floor of the second boat.
They launched out, Purkiss at the tiller. He steered them north, intending to put as much distance as he could between them and the islet before thinking about where exactly they were headed.
It took little more than a minute for the throb of a second, sleeker engine to reach Purkiss’s ears. He scanned the sea all around, and saw the boat approaching at speed from the west.
Gideon’s boat. The men must have heard the motor, or guessed what Purkiss and the others had in mind, and set off in pursuit.
*
The first shots came when the speedboat was more than two hundred yards away.
The water around the boat sizzled and churned under the multiple impacts. Purkiss flattened himself as best he could while keeping his hand on the tiller. Rebecca lay prone at the bottom of the boat, alongside Kendrick.
It was an inflatable dinghy, and they had no hope of outrunning the faster vessel.
Purkiss made the kind of gut-driven decision which in calmer, more reflective circumstances he would never have considered.
He waited for a lull in the firing, then grabbed the Remington and heaved himself belly-first up onto the side of the boat and braced his feet and leaped overboard.
He’d angled himself forward and outward so as to avoid the propellor, but even so he felt its foamy churning frighteningly close as the water engulfed him.
For what seemed like ten seconds, too long, he twisted and tumbled, struggling to orientate himself in the muffled, green-grey murk of his new environment. The sunlight was thin, and it meant the shapes on the surface were only vaguely outlined.
But he made out, his eyes burning from the salt water, the dark outline of the approaching speedboat.
From above, he heard the distorted sound of automatic fire, and he knew it was Kendrick. Purkiss kicked his legs, needing to put distance between himself and the oncoming boat.
When he’d got far enough away that it would be worth the risk, with his lungs on fire as they protested for air, Purkiss kicked once more with his legs extended straight below him, driving himself to the surface.
His head broke free in a shower of spume. He registered the speedboat almost adjacent to him now, the dinghy further away but with the gap closing.
Treading water hard, Purkiss lifted the shotgun and took aim. As he squeezed back on the trigger, one of the men on board saw him and brought his rifle across.
The blast from the Remington hit the speedboat’s motor at a range of ten feet. Shards of metal tore away and the boat juddered, tipping to one side so that a man toppled overboard. The boat continued forward but veered out towards the open sea, black smoke trailing from the wrecked motor.
Five seconds later, as the remaining men on board turned to continue firing while trying to keep the boat under control, the motor exploded. A ball of orange and black flame rocketed vertically upwards and outwards, the sound thumping and cracking across the surface an instant later.
Purkiss looked round, reorientating himself once again. He saw Kendrick standing in the dinghy, his mouth wide in a berserker’s roar, the rifle shuddering in his hands. Amid the chopping of the water, Purkiss could make out at least one body, possibly two.
He trod water as he watched the dinghy turn in a slow arc and head back towards him, Rebecca steering.
*
They searched the islet from end to end, but Delatour was gone.
It didn’t take Purkiss long to discover how he’d made his escape. Gideon’s yacht, which had been moored alongside the speedboat, was missing. Delatour must have heard, or sensed, that his associates had been defeated. He’d cut his losses and run.
In Gideon’s bunker, they found little of interest apart from dry clothes, which Purkiss put on. Gideon himself lay on his back in the tower room, his lips drawn back in his ruined face, as if he’d been angry and defiant to the last. Without fully understanding why he did it, Purkiss used his phone to take a photo of the dead man. With Kendrick’s help, he hauled the body down the ladder and into the bunker, where he laid it out on the bed.
It seemed more appropriate than leaving him out there for the birds to devour.
‘We need to get moving,’ Purkiss said. ‘Delatour may come back, or send reinforcements.’
‘He killed one of his own associates,’ Rebecca observed without emotion. ‘Back in the hotel.’
‘Yes,’ said Purkiss. ‘It cemented his cover. He must have been the one who tipped them off in the first place that we were at the hotel. And he would have signalled them as soon as he knew the name of the island. They wouldn’t have been far away, because I’d led him to believe we were going to Ressos and he would have directed them there in the first instance.’
The internet connection on the computer in the bunker was slow but serviceable. Rebecca pulled up a detailed map of the archipelago. The closest apparently inhabited island was Kythnos, seven kilometres away.
‘So Delatour’s working with this Oliver Clay,’ said Rebecca as they headed back to the boat.
‘Assuming Gideon’s belief is correct, that Clay’s behind this,’ said Purkiss. ‘Delatour needed us to lead him to Gideon.’
‘That just leaves you,’ she said. ‘As their target.’
‘Unless there are others whom we, or Gideon, don’t know about.’ Purkiss started the motor once more. He was relieved the boat hadn’t been damaged in the shooting. ‘But yes. I take your point. They’ll be after me now, possibly exclusively.’
They cruised across the water. Kendrick sat with the M16 cradled in his lap, as if he was nursing a baby.
Purkiss watched as Rebecca took out her phone.
‘What are you doing?’ he said.
She held his gaze as she put the phone to her ear.
‘Calling my control. Gareth Myles.’
‘I thought you couldn’t contact him directly.’
‘I lied,’ she said.