Ryker didn’t hold back on his way out of the town and into rural Suffolk. Darkness had arrived, and with it the unlit, narrow country roads became all the more perilous, but Ryker traveled at speed. He wanted as much time, as much advantage as he could get when he arrived at his destination. A destination which the traveling armed crew had already had the benefit of scoping out.
Even so, Ryker decided not to approach the building from the front. The GPS showed that another road lay behind the property, across fields and through a small area of woodland. No direct access by car that way, but Ryker didn’t mind making the final approach on foot. Plus, having an alternative escape route to the soon-to-arrive ambush had to outweigh the negatives of the need to traverse unknown territory on foot.
He parked the car off to the side of the road. He hadn’t seen another vehicle for more than two miles. No signs of any houses out here. The night was cold and quiet, pitch black, barely even any moonlight given the thick cloud cover.
Ryker opened the creaky metal gate and stepped into an expansive field. He could make out little so used the GPS on his phone to help guide him. He quickly read the messages from Winter as he walked. They did nothing to deter him. Winter flitted from outright ultimatums to urging caution, but the conclusion was that he had no idea what Podence was doing out there and there was no sanctioned operation to recover Karaman tonight by MI5, MI6, anyone.
That was enough for Ryker. He didn’t need to understand the whys and wherefores. There were only three options. Podence was there to either kill Karaman, take him back into custody, or free him. Ryker saw the first of those as the least likely and the third the most likely as it explained the unsanctioned operation, even if it didn’t explain everything else.
Ryker didn’t need a full explanation right now. He just needed to make sure he got to Karaman first because none of those three options helped his objective of breaking open the Syndicate. He’d figure out the rest after when Karaman was back under his control.
Ryker put his phone away as he emerged from a thicket of oak and beech trees, and the building came into view a hundred yards away. A converted barn, he thought, the outline of a vehicle visible by it, although too indistinct in the darkness to figure out the make and the model. Ryker wasn’t able to do that until he’d crept right up to it.
He felt no real satisfaction on confirming it was the car he was looking for. Only a renewed sense of urgency. Even standing a few yards from the building, he saw and heard no signs of life. At least he didn’t yet hear anything amounting to an attack. But he didn’t have time to dwell. He knew he’d at least face Karaman and two armed assailants in the building, but possibly more. And he wasn’t armed.
Nothing he could do about that now.
He edged toward a back door, every step delicate but deliberate. He picked a fist-sized rock from the ground as he moved, held it tight in his right hand. Better than nothing.
He reached the door and stopped. Still no sounds from inside, no lights on that he could see, although the door was solid wood and at least half of the windows at the back of the barn were boarded up.
Ryker tried the door handle. Locked.
Given time was of the essence, he had little other choice. He lifted his foot and crashed it into the hinges side of the door. The door creaked and strained. Ryker hit it again and punched the door inward. The hinges wrenched free, taking a hefty amount of the frame with them.
Ryker burst into the room. A kitchen?
He stopped dead when he sensed the presence. Even before she spoke. Even before the pressure against the side of his skull.
‘Don’t—’
Move, he presumed she was going to say, but she didn’t get the second word out before Ryker burst up, swatting at her arm with the rock, pushing the handgun away from him. She fired and the room lit up in a burst of light as Ryker dropped the rock and grabbed and twisted on her arm. She tried to move with him, spinning her body around to avoid him pulling her into a hammerlock. So Ryker changed tactic and let go and snapped the gun from her grip and lifted his heel to push her away from him.
He pointed the gun her way as she reeled back. He didn’t need to give the same instruction she’d intended moments before. As she righted herself it was clear she got the message.
‘How many of you are there?’ Ryker said, risking a look to his left, toward the corridor, making sure no one else was about to rush him from there.
She didn’t answer. So he lowered the gun and fired and she flinched as the bullet sank into the wood floor, throwing up splinters onto her legs.
‘I said, how many?’
‘It’s you. Again.’
Her eyes pinched as she spoke, and the words came out with pure hatred as though she thought he was seriously out of line for spoiling her party a second time.
‘How. Many.’
‘Me. Just me.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘Actually, there’s me too,’ came a shout from another room. Karaman?
Everett laughed. ‘He does that.’
‘What about—’
‘I shot him in the face,’ Everett said, not sounding bothered by that at all. ‘You wanna see the body?’
Actually, he kind of did, as he really didn’t believe her.
‘Once I’m happy, I’m taking Karaman,’ Ryker said.
‘Like hell you are.’
She took a half step forward, as though egging Ryker on. But then both of them looked to the smashed in back door. Both of them had heard the noise outside. The ever so light movement of feet. Indistinct really, if they hadn’t both been so alert, so on edge.
‘They’re not with me,’ Ryker said, speaking more quietly.
‘No?’
‘Although I have seen them already. Five men, maybe more. Tactical gear. Plenty of big guns judging by the bags they were lugging.’
He could see the confusion, the dilemma on her face, which only cemented that she wasn’t expecting this crew’s arrival. That they weren’t on her side. Did that mean she was on his?
Yes, at least for now.
‘You’re lying,’ she said.
‘Wait around to get shot up by them if you like.’
The sounds outside had died down again. Which likely meant everyone was in position and they were simply waiting for the green light from whoever was in charge. Podence? Or was he too important to be out on-site?
‘He’s in the second room on the left,’ Everett said.
He guessed she meant Karaman, rather than her dead friend.
‘Show me,’ Ryker responded.
She dashed off, Ryker right behind her, ready and waiting should she try to attack or should her ‘friend’ not have a bullet in his head and jump out on him.
No need. He spotted the body as they rushed past the first room, sprawled on the floor, a bag draped over the head.
Everett headed on into the next room. Ryker slowed as his eyes fell on Karaman. His hands were cuffed, he was roped to the radiator, but he looked surprisingly upbeat as though this whole thing was a game for him.
‘James Ryker? You keep… appearing.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Everett said sounding sullen as she crouched down and began to work on the ropes.
‘No time,’ Ryker said. He moved over and enjoyed seeing Karaman squirm back as he lifted his heel. He hammered it against the side of the radiator, pushing the fixture away, parallel to the wall. The fittings cracked although the radiator remained suspended. At least until Ryker grabbed the cold metal and yanked it and the whole thing snapped free, chunks of plaster coming with it. Water gushed from where the valve had snapped off.
‘Not… subtle,’ Karaman said.
Ryker said nothing. He didn’t get a chance to retort even if he wanted to because his attention was drawn to the sound of an object bouncing across the floor of the corridor. Then the window behind smashed and the same sound was replicated, but closer by this time as the small metal projectile clanked toward him.
‘Get down!’ Ryker yelled as he threw himself to the floor and buried his face in his arm.
The explosion from the flash-bang grenade made it feel like his whole body had momentarily been crushed in a vice. The intense flash of light was at least mainly blocked out by squeezing his eyes closed and covering his face.
The second grenade exploded a moment later. Ryker battled through the turmoil in his insides and the smoke in the room as he rose up and reached out and grabbed Karaman and pulled the man to his feet.
‘Move!’ Ryker shouted at him and Karaman only resisted for a moment before Ryker dragged him for the doorway.
A volley of gunfire greeted him, coming from the front of the property, the bullets whizzing down the corridor, blasting into the floor and walls.
Ryker edged back to safety, turned to Everett.
‘What weapons have you got?’
She searched a bag in the corner of the room. ‘Only this,’ she said, clutching at an AK-47. Only that, as though the heavy-duty rifle was a water pistol.
‘Blanks still?’
‘Not this time,’ she said.
‘Cover us,’ Ryker responded. She didn’t move immediately, as though she didn’t agree they were on the same team, but then Ryker spotted movement beyond the now-smashed window behind her and he raised the gun he’d earlier taken from her and let off two warning shots and it seemed to convince her.
She moved to the door, pressed herself up against the frame, then nodded to Ryker. He rushed out into the corridor with Karaman, hoping the attackers would at least be careful with their fire with the asset so close. Everett jumped out a beat later, fired toward the front of the house as she backtracked.
The next explosion caught Ryker completely off guard. Not a flash-bang this time. The real deal. An RPG? The force of the explosion, which hit the front corner of the barn, sent Ryker flying. Fire and superheated air and shrapnel blasted over him.
He was dazed. He heard voices. Shouting. Thudding footsteps. Was vaguely aware of sweeping lights. Gunfire. Not aimed at him. Then…
‘We need to go!’ Everett shouted as she surged toward him. ‘Now!’
He took a couple of seconds to get back to his feet. A couple more to look around, through the smoke.
‘Karaman?’ he asked her.
‘Gone!’
More gunfire arrived from the front, beyond the flames, and convinced Ryker to race for the back door after Everett. She headed out and Ryker followed. He saw the man there before she did. Up against the wall, a few yards on the other side of the door. He’d gone around to block them off, no doubt. He pointed his weapon at Everett’s back.
‘Down!’ Ryker shouted at her and his voice caused the attacker to think twice. He should have just pulled his trigger. Instead, Ryker got his shot off first. A narrow miss. But he hit home with the second and third. Two chest shots. Into the man’s Kevlar, but at short range enough of an impact to send him onto his back. A third shot hit him in the leg as he lay on the ground. No chance of him chasing them now.
Ryker continued to race forward, up alongside Everett. Another explosion boomed behind them. Not as powerful as the last, now they were outside, but as Ryker looked behind him… The barn was unrecognizable, an inferno. Beyond the flames, to the far side of the barn, he spotted headlights twisting through the darkness, moving away.
Ryker stopped running.
‘What are you doing?’ Everett shouted at him.
‘They got him.’
And with the prize in their possession, there was no sign that the attackers were bothered about chasing after Ryker and Everett. Or perhaps they thought them dead.
Ryker spun and pointed his gun at her head.
She snorted. ‘Wow. Thanks.’
‘Toss the rifle.’
‘You serious? What if they—’
‘Whether they come after us or not, toss the rifle.’
She slowly took the strap off her shoulder and dropped the weapon.
‘That wasn’t part of your plan?’ Ryker asked although the answer was pretty obvious.
‘You think I wanted to be blown up? I’ve been screwed. More than once.’
‘Do you know them?’
‘Haven’t got a damn clue. You?’
‘Maybe.’
They both went silent.
‘So what? You’re gonna put a bullet in my head out here? Or turn me in?’
‘There’s only one thing I want here.’
She said nothing. He thought she might have understood.
‘Karaman,’ Ryker said.
The look on her face changed. From sullen, defeated, to intrigue.
‘Don’t think I’m bluffing when I say I won’t hesitate to kill you.’
She still said nothing.
‘But I can get us out of here. Away from them. No police.’
‘And the catch is?’
‘No catch. Just an understanding. We get out of here. You tell me everything you know. After that… You’re not my problem.’
She flinched when another boom came from the barn. But it was only a secondary explosion, or part of the structure caving in on itself.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said.