Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2) (21 page)

Jack ignored Barry’s question and concern as he continued to gather as much information as he possibly could before the actions of their
attackers forced him to stop. In his
mind Jack had already won the
shoot
out with the goons. What he had moved on to in his head was
how to get past the police and safely away to freedom. That freedom
was to be found on the city highway at the back of the complex, and
it was only a ten minute walk from his house—with so much danger
waiting for him
outside, the highway
might well have been an hour
away for all the difference it
made. Jack almost forgot himself as he
continued to gaze out through the glass.
“Jack... Jack... Do you want to get your
bloody
head
blown
off?
Personally I
don’t give a shit if you live or die, but at least wait until
we get through this.”
Barry hissed the variation of his previous rebuke just to be certain
that Jack heard and understood him. Jack paused for
one last look at
the housing complex below. Even the nosey neighbours were nowhere
to be seen.
“What are you looking at?” Barry asked. “And is it really so interesting that you would be prepared to die for it?”
“Nothing,” Jack said, simply. The calm in his voice somehow made
Barry’s frenetic tone seem silly and misjudged—Jack may
have been
acting in an odd and reckless way, but it was Barry who sounded like
a madman.
“Eh? What do you mean,
nothing
?”
“That’s just it Barry, my
as
much as a
dog
out there
means?” Jack asked.
old mate. The place is
empty. There isn’t
on the street.
And you know what that

Barry looked at him with confusion. “They
are already in the house, Barry.”
Jack
quickly
moved away
from the window.
He
picked up the

shotgun from the floor next to the door where he had left it before he
went to the window. Jack left the room with the gun raised. It took
Barry a
brief
moment to process all
of the information,
but
once his
mind had caught up, he was quick to follow Jack’s lead.

intently for sounds of movement coming from the ground floor of the
building; there was nothing. His eyes dashed from shadow to shadow
as he tried to pick up on any movement. There was nothing. For a few
serious,
deadly, intense moments, the whole house was gripped
by a
suffocating sense
of foreboding. Jack knew that
sooner
or later
one
of them would lose their nerve and fire first. It would be a blind shot
in the dark because if Jack could not see them, then they
could not
see him.
And unless it was a very lucky shot, all it would serve to do
would be to betray the position
of the shooter to Jack and Barry, and
as the unlikely
comrades responded, their first shots would be much
more considered, and deadly.

Several tense minutes passed. It seemed like hours. The adrenaline that was pumping through Jack’s body had completely numbed
him to the pain that he had suffered as a result of the car bomb. The
hormone also gave strength to his muscles to such an extent that he
hardly noticed the shotgun in his hands, and holding his arms in what

amounted to a stress position didn’t even cause him a second thought.
What happened next was so incredible that it completely caught
both Jack and Barry
off guard; if only for a brief moment. There was
sudden movement from the living room, to the side of the front door. A
busy shuffle was accompanied with a long shadow moving out of
the room and into the hallway. Jack took a double take when the gunman left the living room and he then stood in the open in front of
the door. Jack wondered if the others hadn’t told the man that they
were upstairs; why else would the man be looking in the direction of
the kitchen, and without even giving a slight glance upward? Another
bloody amateur, Jack thought scornfully.

Jack looked at Barry. The shot somehow
didn’t seem fair; to either
one of them. But this was war; this was life and death; this was survival of the fittest at its most basic, and most devastating. Barry took
aim.
Although the shotgun was already
primed, Jack simply
had to
do something to give the man a chance to defend himself—even if it
really was nothing
more than a token gesture. He pumped the gun,
sending a perfectly good shell spinning
out
of the side of the weapon,
only to be replaced by an identical, fresh cartridge. The sound from
the shotgun caught the attention of the man standing in the hallway.
As he looked up towards Jack and Barry, he began to raise his gun. It

was a machine gun of the type that the housing complex guards had
been carrying; and there was every possibility that this man actually
took the weapon from one of the dead guards.

Jack would have loved to allow the man just a little more time so
that he could get his gun into a position to get a meaningful burst
of
fire, but he couldn’t take the chance. The blast from the shotgun had
two devastating and very powerful effects on the unfortunate target; it
blew a football sized hole in his
chest.
Blood and tissue
exited
the
man’s body at the back and it sprayed the wall next to the front
door
with
bloody
human
slurry.
The
second
effect
was
to
send
the
mortally wounded man spinning backwards, landing in an undignified heap on the ground in front
of the door. To say that the exit was
now blocked would have been to exaggerate, but the body would still
have to be moved, and while that was taking place either Jack or Barry
would have to hold back the rest
of the attackers, as they allowed the
other one time to shift victim number one.

Barry looked at Jack with comic annoyance on his face. Barry was
enjoying this far too much, in Jack’s opinion.
“The next one is mine,” Barry said.
“Mate, you can take all of them if you want,” Jack replied.
“OK then, I
might
just
do that,” Barry
added,
before
stepping
onto the stairs.
Barry
quickly
moved back up
onto the landing when bullets tore
through several of the steps, sending large splinters of
oak several feet
into the air in an unnatural eruption. Barry looked to Jack for instructions. Jack was already one step ahead of him. Barry watched Jack with
a
mixture
of genuine interest and blind panic as Jack pulled
out the
pin on a grenade. Without even pausing to take aim he threw the grenade as hard as he could. The small device flew through the air at high
speed, which looked even faster given the confined space in which it
was moving. It bounced off the wall at the side of the front
door, almost hitting the blood splatter caused by the shotgun blast. It then hit
the hard wood floor with a loud thud, before rolling back towards the
kitchen. The explosive device was now directly under Jack and Barry.
Jack turned to Barry and grabbed him.
“Run!” Jack said, as he pulled Barry towards the stairs.

Jack let go of Barry
once it became clear that Barry understood
the need to get back down the stairs. The lack of gunfire from below
them told Jack that the grenade had done what he had intended for it
to do; force those on the lower level into a retreat, and in the process
give Barry and himself a small window for
escape. They got to the
dead
man in seconds, and Barry appointed himself look
out, as
he
took up position with his gun trained on the kitchen and living room, in
a nervous, constantly shifting action. Jack pulled the man back by
the
legs until there was enough room for them to get out through the front
door. Jack left the house first but Barry was right
on his tail; almost
pushing Jack
out
of the way as he made his
escape. They
had
only
cleared the small lawn at the front
of the house when the grenade
went off. It was
only a small device but
it was the best.
The high
explosive at the heart
of the weapon gave a new
meaning to the very
description,
high
explosive. The grenade was
designed to
obliterate
rather than frighten an enemy. Jack’s home was at first collateral damage, and then a burning pile of rubble, in very
quick succession. Both
men hit the ground; not from the force
of the explosion, although it
was substantial, but rather in an effort to avoid the shower
of debris
that was raining down on top of them. Luckily
they were not hit with
anything
bigger than a toaster
sized piece
of wood;
but
even those
small, non-lethal
objects left their calling card as both
men suffered
several small cuts and bruises.

When he felt that rain
of
death was
over Barry looked back towards where the house had once stood, and then he turned to Jack.
“You are one crazy bastard Jack. Did anyone ever tell you that? Are
you entirely certain that there isn’t a bit of Irish in you?”
Jack smiled.
“If we had stayed in that building a few seconds longer, there would
have been more Irish in me than I would have liked,” Jack retorted.
They got to their feet.
“We had better get the hell out of here,” Jack said. “If the gunmen
aren’t
dead they will soon regroup. If they are dead then it will not
take the police very long to head this way. Not after that.
And I have
a funny feeling they will be in a shoot first, ask questions later, kind of
mood. There is a garage at the back of the complex, next to the exit. If
we can get there without taking a bullet to the back then I will be able
to get my hands on a car.”
Barry looked relieved.
“OK Jack, my life is in your hands.”
“Barry
old friend, your life has been in my hands for a little while
now, in case you hadn’t been paying attention.”
Barry smiled slightly.
“Right back at you, Jack,” Barry returned.
Jack took the lead as they
to tell if all
of
Robert’s
men
but there simply wasn’t enough time for them to check at the back of
where the house once stood, as there was no way
of knowing when the
police would arrive on the scene.
Jack found new
energy as he ran towards the garage—he wasn’t
sure if this sudden burst
intended to
kill
him,
or
accept Barry seeing any weakness;
or
more likely, it was probably a
mixture of both. Barry wheezed and puffed as he struggled to keep up
with Jack—his obvious respiratory distress a result
of a lifetime spent
smoking cigarettes like they were going out of fashion.
The large garage unit sat in complete darkness; though this wasn’t
always the case,
not
even that late in the
evening, as the residents
could call
on their
drivers and their cars at any time
of the day
or
night. Jack, like every
other resident,
had the combination to a lock
on the small door at the side of the garage. Jack didn’t draw breath as
he
effortlessly
punched in the combination and
entered the garage,
followed immediately
by
Barry, who looked back nervously towards
the smoke rising from the bombed
out
house; no
one was following
them—as far as he could tell.
Jack couldn’t remember which switch operated the lights at the far
end of the garage where two of his cars were currently parked up, and
so he flicked them all into the
on
position. Without saying as
much
to Barry, Jack decided that the lights coming
on would signal to the
outside world that they were in the garage. The fluorescent lights stuttered to life to reveal every small
boy’s dream room. There were over
one hundred luxury, and classic cars; all
of them gleaming with the
made their
escape. There was no way
had
been
neutralised in the
explosion,

Jack had a BMW and a Range Rover. The BMW would normally
have
been his
choice,
but
he had
been stopped a few times
by the
police while driving it, and for no good reason. Jack reckoned if there
was a reason for the unreasonable stops it may have lay in simple jealously. He would have stopped a prick in a flash beamer had he been a
cop. The Range
Rover was a
different
prospect altogether.
He had
never
been stopped while driving it;
probably
because Range Rovers
were one of the favourite modes
of transport for the political elite, as
well as the more powerful, high-ranking cops.

There were a set
of keys in the unmanned office at the front
of the
garage, but Jack kept a set of keys with him at all times. He didn’t have a
driver, like
many
of the
other
car
owners who rented space in the
garage; he did hire a driver from time to time if he felt that turning up
to a particular meeting with a driver would impress.

Jack was in such a rush to get to the Range Rover that he almost
forgot about the roller
door that
needed to
be
could drive
out. The controls for the door were
office—another pointless security measure that never would have been
allowed back home; health and safety would have been spitting fire
had they
encountered a
door, the control for which was at the other
side
of the building. The door to the
office was locked, which was a
sensible precaution considering that the
office contained the keys to
several million pounds worth of automobile. What was much less sensible was the fact that the door to the office was made up of two pieces
of
glass;
both
of which shattered with
ease when Jack picked up a
small,
metal bin and threw it at the door. Barry was taken by surprise
by the sound of the door being obliterated, and he spun round with his
gun raised, pointing directly at Jack.

“For Christ’s sake,” Barry called, “You could have let me know that
you were going to that. I could have bloody killed...”
Jack didn’t wait for Barry to finish his rebuke. He stepped through
the doorway and thumped the large green button on the back wall.
At
any
other time the horrendous noise
of
metal rubbing against
metal
as the
door
began to roll up, would not
have caused Jack a second
thought, nor would the high pitched screeching sound from the pooropened so that they
on the inside
of the