Luc: A Spy Thriller Read online

  I picked up Ned’s fallen Glock and with one knee in the mud I returned fire and the Jeep swerved away to the side.

  I leaped over Ned’s body and got in the driver’s seat. I slammed the door shut, the engine was still running and I depressed the clutch and put it in first and pressed down on the accelerator and the tyres bit into the wet ground. They eventually got proper traction and more bullets now slammed into the windscreen, shattering it, glass spraying the inside of the car and I snapped my head away to protect my eyes and we tore off, leaving Ned’s body behind. There were two dark-skinned men inside the Jeep firing semi-automatics at us and I thrust the Glock out of the driver’s window and fired two rounds. I shouted behind me: ‘Get your seat belts on, now. Now.’ I accelerated hard and swung the wheel around, pointing the car straight at the Jeep, and the two men’s faces immediately opened in surprise and I fired the Glock through the now open windscreen. Tore the flesh out of one of the men’s shoulders. The next shot got him in the cheek and his head slammed backwards and I shouted, ‘Brace yourselves,’ and I did just that as it was going to be a massive impact. Our vehicle smashed directly into the front of the Jeep and we bolted forward, jammed against the seatbelts, the shockwaves going right through us, the sound loud and crunching, and I saw both men in the other vehicle flung back like dolls. I punched the seatbelt button and I was out of the car, striding round to the Jeep’s driver’s door, gun pointing in front of me. One of them was dead, I knew that.

  I could see through the passenger window the other man trying to push the dead man off him. I flung the passenger door open and pointed the Glock at him.

  ‘Don’t move,’ I said.

  He looked warily up at me. Then he went for his gun. I grabbed his hand, shot a bullet through his palm. After a couple of seconds he let out a few screams.

  ‘Listen to what I say. Do not move.’

  I grabbed both of their guns. They both had Browning 9mms, and I shoved one down my belt and threw the other into the undergrowth.

  I looked back at him. He was doing his best to control the pain he must be feeling. Blood was pouring from the wound, making little slapping sounds on the carpeted floor of the Jeep.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked him.

  He stared straight ahead of him, the sides of his mouth curved downward and he was breathing heavily through his nose, sucking up the pain.

  ‘Who are you? Who is it you are working for? Tell me and I’ll see to the hand.’

  He said nothing, stared straight ahead. For him, I didn’t exist. I wasn’t there.

  With the Glock pointing at his head I began rifling through his pockets. He did not like this and started lashing out at me. I’d had enough and I brought the butt of the gun down on his head. He slumped to his right, over the crumpled body of the dead man.

  I went through his pockets again. Found a brown leather wallet.

  I glanced up through the shattered windscreen. Saw the Nissan X-Trail rammed up against us, like some dreadful, destructive kiss. Saw Lucia and Frank huddled together in the back, Lucia sobbing. I had to get this done quickly. Get them back to a safe place.

  I grabbed the unconscious man’s shirt and pulled him back to an upright position. I leaned over him and went through the pockets of the dead man. The smell of these two men’s sweat was strong. The dead man had a mobile phone in his shirt pocket, which I took. I opened the glove box. It was empty apart from a rag and a warm can of unopened Pepsi. I looked in the back of the Jeep. Nothing.

  I got back in the Nissan.

  ‘Everyone okay?’ I asked. I threw the mobile phone and wallet onto the passenger seat. I didn’t get a reply so I looked behind me and two pairs of scared, angry, shocked eyes stared back at me. This was no time to get into a discussion, so I started the Nissan up and reversed back, got out and opened the boot.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  We threaded through dusty chalk roads until we got into Belize City proper. The Nissan X-trail’s front end was a mess, but despite some handling issues, it still sort of went forwards and backwards and round corners, and that was all it needed to do.

  I turned into Citron Street.

  ‘You can drop us here,’ Frank said gruffly.

  I looked around. ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘I am serious.’

  ‘Frank, there are murderers out there.’

  ‘There’s a murderer in here,’ he said.

  I ignored that. ‘Look, Frank, we have to work on the assumption that they have seen your faces. They have certainly seen the name of your boat, and I’m guessing it won’t take them long to trace the owner. I can take you both to a safe house.’

  ‘You’ll forgive us, but we have only your word that these people are the bad guys. What if you’re the bad guy? What if you’re involved in the bomb?’

  ‘Frank…’

  ‘Stop the car.’

  ‘Frank, this is a big mistake.’

  ‘Stop the car.’

  This is a free country, and they’re adults, they can make their own decisions. I wasn’t going to kidnap them.

  Sighing heavily, I pulled over to the side.

  ‘This is wrong, Frank.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Frank said curtly, getting out.

  Lucia hesitated. ‘You must understand, this is all very scary for us.’

  I nodded. ‘I know. It’s scary for me too.’ I pulled a card out and handed it to her. ‘Look, if you get any trouble, any trouble, ring that number. They’ll contact me straight away.’

  She looked at it. ‘The British Embassy…’

  I nodded. ‘Stay safe, Lucia. And look after your granddad.’

  She nodded and smiled a fraction. She closed the door. I watched in the rear-view mirror as they walked away down the street, Frank putting a protective arm around Lucia. I silently wished them luck.

  I picked up the wallet that was on the passenger seat. I opened it up and looked inside. Belizean dollars and Guatemalan quetzals. Some time recently the two men had come over the border. Or were expecting to go back over the border.

  There were no other identifying cards or paperwork inside.

  I pulled out my phone. Emailed Charlie the photos of the four men I’d taken - the two clients and the two in the Jeep. Also mentioned the Guatemalan currency. I slipped the phone back in my shirt pocket and picked up the phone that was on the passenger seat.

  Gunshot.

  Echoing. From behind.

  I looked in the rear-view mirror, Lucia and Frank were not visible.

  I shoved the stick into reverse, slammed the pedal to the floor, went roaring backwards, the full length of the street. Lucia, flailing, came around the corner, shielding herself, running, sobbing. Still reversing, I brought the Browning 9mm out, swung it round. Past Lucia. The car went past the corner and I could see a man, gun in hand, sprinting round the corner, going for Lucia. I fired three times at him through the open driver’s window. Puffs of blood exploded from his head and he collapsed at speed into the wall of the building and crumpled to the ground.

  I slammed on the brakes.

  Frank was on the ground about two hundred feet away, another man standing over him. This man turned to face the gunshots, bringing his own gun up and I dived to my right, onto the hot leather passenger seat, as bullets streaked over my head and exploded the passenger window above me. I got the passenger door open and hurled myself out and rolled over on the baking chalky road. I swung my legs round and lay flat on the ground, facing the car. Underneath the car I could see the lower half of the second thug down the street. He was holding a gun to Frank’s head. Frank was on his knees, but his head lolled and there was blood on his T-shirt. I fired once. The thug suddenly snapped his right foot up and I stood, breathed, and fired again and the thug staggered back, dropped his gun, letting go of Frank. The thug then looked confused at his chest and sank to his knees and then fell face first onto the pavement.

  I dropped the gun. I ran round to Lucia who was down the street, stag
gering about, hugging herself and sobbing loudly.

  ‘Lucia, are you okay? Are you hurt? Lucia.’ I grabbed her shoulders. ‘Are you okay?’

  She looked at me strangely. Then she flung her arms around me and hugged me tight.

  ‘They shot Granddad,’ she said.

  I nodded. We rushed around the corner. I did my best to shield her from the sight of the two bodies of the thugs sprawled on the pavement.

  Frank was lying on his back. A large patch of blood was visible on his shirt around the stomach area. Lucia kneeled down next to him and clutched his hand. Frank gurgled and slowly opened his eyes.

  ‘Lucia,’ he said weakly, his glazed eyes trying to focus.

  ‘I’m here, Granddad,’ Lucia said through her sobbing.

  With difficulty, Frank placed his other hand over Lucia’s hand.

  ‘Granddad, I’m sorry…’

  Frank slowly moved his head round. He looked up at me. I thought perhaps I should go. I didn’t want to intrude. But I saw that Frank’s hand was now weakly moving; bending the fingers back in a sort of ‘come closer’ motion.

  I crouched down beside him. He took my hand in his blood-soaked hand. He seemed to nod a little as he looked at me. He tried to speak. All we could hear was a terrible gurgling sound. He was in the grip of an intense pain, but he fought it.

  ‘Look after my Lucia,’ he eventually managed, staring at me.

  I nodded. ‘I will, Frank,’ I said.

  I think he tried to smile then. He held both our hands. He looked back at Lucia and as their eyes met for the last time the light went out in him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Snow lay in clumps on the bushes as I walked along the path. A pair of beaming faces awaited at the front door, waving and marvelling at how high I had grown.

  I was five years old and my parents were visiting my uncle and aunt who lived in Armentières in France.

  Christmas music filled their house.

  I remember sitting on the floor near a massive glittering Christmas tree, warmed by the roaring log fire, and simply watching everybody.

  My mum and her brother could not have been more different. My mum’s an artistic type. She loves to paint and will talk for hours about Degas and the light in Monet and all that sort of thing. Whereas her brother Claude was very much an outdoors man. He loved to travel, learn new languages, get out there. His wife, Agnes, my aunt, was a similar character. Together they would take great delight in planning their next trip. I used to love to sit on the floor in front of them, watching them spreading out maps and leafing through well-thumbed guide books and discussing hotels and different cultures and places to stop at.

  On this particular visit they were talking about a trip to Cairo. And I scrambled closer and my five-year-old eyes marvelled at the pictures of the pharaohs and the Sphinx and the Pyramids. My aunt would occasionally break off to make the strong coffee which I used to love the smell of, but at the time was too bitter for me to enjoy the taste. She would bring the cups and cafetière out on a tray with St Honoré cakes and Petit Ecolier chocolate biscuits which I wolfed down.

  They were writing down an itinerary which sounded like music to me. But apparently the itinerary was never something they adhered to rigidly. They worked out where they would like to visit and once there they would just follow their nose. I think they just liked the planning.

  ‘What’s a good place to go to?’ my uncle asked me in his deep, gruff voice. He handed me a Baedeker guide book of Cairo. I looked up at him with big wide eyes.

  ‘Me, Uncle?’ I couldn’t quite believe he was asking my advice. Looking back it’s obvious he was just being kind in trying to involve me. But at the time his and auntie’s enthusiastic assurances that they valued my help was very convincing.

  I scoured that red-covered Baedeker (I loved the maps), and wrote a long list of places I thought they should go to. And I loved doing it. It was almost like being there myself.

  They left in the New Year. I ran home from school each day, eager to know if my parents had heard from them. Then one day I was pulled out of class. My parents took me home, my mum was unusually silent in the car. In the lounge they sat me down and told me that Uncle and Auntie had been involved in an accident. Their rented car had come off the road. They hadn’t survived.

  It was my first encounter with death.

  I blamed myself. My five-year-old brain reasoned that they were going to a place that I had written on the list. It was my fault. My parents tried to assure me otherwise, but I knew.

  Two days later I received a postcard from Uncle and Auntie. There was a photograph of the Sphinx on the front with the words ‘Greetings From Cairo’. I was hugely excited and relieved and it took my parents a long time to convince me that they had still actually died.

  I have that postcard still.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The explosion had been massive and it was caught on various camera phones by tourists and locals and the pictures were now being shown on TV screens throughout the country.

  Pictures of the blast ripping through the vulnerable iron roofed huts, sending lethal shrapnel flying for half a mile.

  Those little camera phones had caught the lot from a variety of angles and distances: the bang, the dust, the silence, the screams, the panic, the acts of heroism - it was all there.

  I heard a noise behind me and I saw that Lucia had come into the room. I didn’t know how long she’d been standing there. She had changed out of her bloodstained clothes and was now wearing jeans and a grey T-shirt from the stock cupboard. Her hair was still dark and wet from the shower and I could smell the fresh scent of the soap.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Lucia said, her hands pressed together against her nose, as if in silent prayer, her eyes staring at the screen.

  I nodded. I didn’t say anything. What could I say?

  ‘Who would do this?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. But I want to find out.’

  We continued to stare at the pictures. They were being played on a loop. Half the screen was showing the pictures, the other half interviewing a terrorism expert or a government minister or another reporter.

  At the moment the Minister for National Security was speaking to the camera. He was an imposing man with dark brown skin and shining eyes and he wore a navy blue suit.

  ‘…this terrible atrocity today. We mourn those who have died. We care for those who are injured. We hunt those who are responsible. The world needs to know that Belize is a strong, united country - that as Belizeans we are strong individually, and even stronger together. And I speak now directly to those who carried out this cowardly act: you picked on the wrong nation. We are coming after you.’ He turned and walked away from the camera, a myriad of reporters all asking him questions.

  The floor creaked and Mike Haskins entered the room. A short man in a Hawaiian shirt and baggy linen slacks. Haskins ran the safe house here.

  ‘Forty injured. Six dead. That’ll rise,’ he said.

  Both of us already knew that. Neither of us answered him.

  I’d had enough of watching the TV.

  ‘Actually, do you think we could get some food, Mike? Lucia, would you like something? Lucia?’

  She looked blankly at me. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Would you like something to eat?’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t eat.’

  I nodded. ‘Maybe later then. What about something to drink?’

  ‘No.’

  Her eyes were fixed on the rolling pictures.

  I put gentle hands on her tense shoulders to try and steer her away. ‘You don’t want to watch this over and over again,’ I said.

  She stood her ground. ‘I do.’

  After about ten seconds she snapped her head away. ‘No, you’re right,’ she said. She walked out of the room. When she’d gone I turned to Mike.

  ‘Is Molly here yet?’ I asked him. Molly was the resident nurse.

  He n
odded. ‘Seeing to the old lady.’

  I’d arranged for Lucia’s gran to be picked up shortly after Frank was shot. She was resting in one of the bedrooms.

  ‘So you think the two clients are responsible for the bomb?’ Mike asked.

  I nodded. ‘I think maybe they were. They were late for the meet with Steenhoek’s man.’ I shrugged. ‘Final preparations? Making sure they were well away when it went off? I don’t know. But they certainly didn’t react surprised when it did go off. It’s a surprising thing, right, a bomb going off?’

  ‘It would catch my attention. Do we know yet who these men are?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘By the way,’ Mike said, ‘I found a man with a hole in his hand in the boot of your car.’

  ‘Well they’re always telling us to shake our shoes out before we put them on. Never know what you’ll find.’

  ‘Yeah. The phone you brought back from his car - we can’t get into it. It requires a security code,’ he said. ‘Leave it with me though.’

  I nodded. ‘Right.’

  ‘What do you want me to do with this man?’ Mike asked.

  ‘I want you to find out everything he knows,’ I said. ‘Start with who he’s working for.’

  Mike nodded. He would take care of it himself. I think he really rather enjoys it.

  ***

  A single bulb illuminated the room. There were no windows.

  The man sat on a chair in the middle, lightly hugging his bandaged hand. His left leg was chained to the floor. Mike entered the room and sat on a chair in front of him. A wooden desk that was screwed to the floor stood between them.

  ‘How is your hand?’ Mike asked.

  The man said nothing.

  ‘Your hand. Is it painful?’

  I was in the next room, watching through a one way mirror.