Nemesis - John Kane's revenge (19 page)

Harold slipped the empty pistol back into its holster.

“Time to go loud,” Harold said to himself.

He reached inside his coat for the pump action shotgun, and immediately blasted the two officers sitting in the cell corridor. The buckshot rounds at close range literally ripped them to shreds. He stepped over the tangled, slippery mess of blood, bone and flesh, and unhooked the keys from the belt of the young policeman.

Harold slotted the key into the lock of Kane’s cell door and swung it open. John was already on his feet, having heard the gunshots. He didn’t say anything and just eyed the strange man, and waited to receive the blast from the smoking shotgun.

“John Kane?”

“Yes,” John said and stiffened his body and waited for the shotgun to cut him in two.

“Step outside, if you please, and be quick about it. You’re coming with me,” Harold said as he pulled John from the cell.

Harold pointed the single-barrelled shotgun at John’s face as he slowly moved around him, and then pushed him into the corridor. He quickly got in behind him and wedged the barrel of the short shotgun between his shoulder blades. As they passed the inspector’s office, the door suddenly swung open and the inspector stepped out into the corridor with his police issue pistol, only to be met by the blood-drenched, deranged figure of Harold Harper. Harold turned and fired instinctively, and the single fat black tube spat vicious thick white sparks of death into him, which tore segments from his portly torso like bites out of an apple. While Harold was busy murdering the inspector, John noted that his rucksack was on the desk. He quickly swiped something from the side pocket of the rucksack without Harold noticing. Harold spun around quickly, and once again got in behind John and shoved him out of the front door and down the steps, with the barrel of the shotgun firmly lodged against his spinal column.

Johnnie Carter ran to the waiting vehicle and opened the rear door as they exited the police station. He jumped into the front seat as Harold calmly shoved John Kane into the back of the vehicle. Harold wiped the blood from the face of his watch.

“Who would have thought that you could accomplish so much in so little time?” Harold said, as John Kane eyed the strange, disfigured, blood-drenched killer sitting next to him.

“Put your foot down, Bill,” Johnnie said.

Billy duly obliged and gunned the accelerator and headed back the way they had come.

“That was amazing, Harold. To go in there and pull that off alone is nothing short of a miracle,” Billy Brooks said.

Harold said nothing and just kept his eye and his shotgun trained on his quarter of a million pounds sitting next to him.

Chapter 18

Andy Ryan was suddenly woken at two-thirty a.m. by a hard dig in the shoulder blade with the edge of a clipboard by the sergeant at the Hounslow barracks. Doris Clarke was on the line.

“Ma’am?” he said warily, as he picked up the headset.

“Ryan, I have just had a rather disturbing communication from the Chief Constable which may interest us. He says that our man Kane has been unofficially released from his cell.”

“Sorry, I don’t understand, ma’am.”

“Apparently someone has murdered a number of police officers in a West London police station and John Kane has escaped. It’s a real mess down there and I have the PM breathing down my neck again on this one, so you have got a reprieve and we have another chance to get this one right.”

“Yes ma’am, I’ll not fail this time.”

“Report to Chief Inspector Lyons at
Cressy
Police Station, they have an incident room set up. There’s bloody mayhem down there, Ryan, and most of it is revolving around this Kane character again. You need to find him. Your orders are the same as before: he must be eliminated.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Draw whatever weaponry and any kit you require from the armoury. You seem to be leading a charmed life at the moment, and you now have another chance to put everything right, so good luck, Ryan.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Ryan said as the line went dead.

Andy Ryan arrived at the police station half an hour later and jogged up the steps of the police mobile incident room, which was basically a huge trailer on the back of a lorry which was parked up in the road outside the police station.

“Inspector Lyons?” he said, as he went inside.

“Over here,” a tall, dark-suited thin man said. “I’m Inspector Lyons, and you must be Sergeant Ryan, pleased to meet you. What a bloody night. So far we have had this
nutter
Kane running around hanging judges, surveillance drones being shot out of the sky, the Old Bailey in ruins and now, to top it off, six officers and one inspector shot to death inside a police station. Just what the hell is going on here?”

“Beats the shit out of me! Listen, I’ll need all the details of the getaway vehicle and I’ll need to know its last sighting,” Ryan said.

“The last reported sighting of the black Range Rover registration number KM59 PME was on the M25 about an hour ago, heading in an easterly direction. We have all of our CCTV surveillance camera operators in that region on the highest alert. The black Range Rover they are travelling in was stolen a couple of months ago from Knightsbridge, and its current location is…” he tapped the keyboard of the computer and checked the details on screen, “…as we speak, it has just turned onto the A12.”

“I take it you’ve got some footage of the incident?” Ryan asked.

“I can show you the CCTV footage but I warn you, it’s gruesome stuff,” the inspector said, as he turned the computer screen around so that no one else could see the horror that was about to unfold on screen.

Even Ryan was a little taken aback by the extreme violence. “Jesus, what a ruthless little bastard that is, talk about taking no prisoners,” he said as he glanced up at Lyons.

“Well, he did though, didn’t he? He came in to get Kane,” Lyons said.

 
“Yeah, so he did, but he’s the one with the shotgun stuck in his back, so I don’t think it was a social call. Now, Inspector, I’ll need some wheels, unmarked of course, and I want it to have a bit of poke, if you know what I mean. I don’t want to be trundling along in some
poxy
little
Noddy
car, OK?” Ryan said.

”It’s all in hand. I was thoroughly briefed by one of your colleagues from the Ministry before your arrival, and I believe we might have something suitable for you,” Lyons said, as he walked Ryan to the compound at the rear of the police station.

Lyons stripped back the rain cover that was covering the vehicle, and revealed a brand spanking new Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X sports car.

“This do you?”

“
Wooo
, that’s very nice, very nice indeed, that’ll do fine, thanks,” Ryan said, as he ran his hand over the sleek silver bodywork.

Ryan loaded his rifle bag and rucksack into the back, and as he slipped into the black leather driver’s seat, the mortuary van pulled in behind to take the last of the bodies away.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it? The inspector here was a close personal friend,” Lyons said, as he swallowed back the lump forming in his throat.

Ryan interrupted, “Don’t do it to yourself, mate, it’s all over for them, and there’s nothing you can do except carry on. Now we’ve got a job to do and I need you focussed and on the other end of that phone. You are my eyes and ears, don’t forget. I’ll need you to be switched on when I put the call through so you can bring the cavalry,” Ryan said, as he wheel spun out of the compound gate.

“Just make sure you bring it back in one piece,” Lyons shouted.

Andy Ryan was now burning up the tarmac and zipping in and out of lanes along the A4, heading toward the M25. On the open road, he’d be touching one hundred and fifty mph in the high performance turbo-charged sports car, and nothing or no one could touch him. Like the people he was pursuing, he was also a law unto himself.

~~~

George’s decomposing rust bucket of a Land Rover chugged along at a top speed of fifty-five mph and they were now only twenty-nine miles from Nick’s location, which they had no idea of as nothing had been showing on the tracker app since they left the office.

“Bloody hell, Anna, where do we go now? We’re in the middle of
bleedin
’ nowhere and we’ve got nothing on the tracker,” he said as they pulled over onto the hard shoulder of the A12.

Anna studied the map under the torchlight, and had to agree as the map showed nothing, no buildings or houses, just a long straight road.

“Shit! We’ve lost him, George, I can’t believe it, and I was so confident of finding him with this thing,” she said out loud as she screwed up the map in frustration.

“Look, Anna, I think we may have to face the facts, no matter how much we don’t want to.”

“Drive,” she said, and suddenly turned away so that George couldn’t see the huge tear welling up in her eye.

“OK then, we may as well just keep going for a while longer I suppose. We’ll give it another ten miles and then we’ll turn back and go home and get some shut eye. We’ll come back out here refreshed when its light, how does that sound?” George suggested.

The old Land Rover rattled on for another few miles along the long gloomy, deserted road. They felt they just had to keep going, even if it was more or less now a futile search, but Nick was out there somewhere. He meant the world to the pair of them, and they also knew that if the roles were reversed he’d never give up and would be searching for them until he dropped.

The milometer cranked up another ten miles on the aged engine, and Anna switched on the BlackBerry. As the screen came to life George glanced across at her profile, which was illuminated by the tiny lights from the small device. He didn’t have to ask. He knew by her cold silence that the screen was showing nothing, and so George pulled over to the side of the road.

Chapter 19

Billy Brooks floored the accelerator, and the tone of the powerful engine rose as it went into overdrive and almost collided with an old Land Rover sitting on the roadside.

“Bloody hell, that old crate shouldn’t be on the road,” Billy grunted as he just managed to swerve around the old jeep.

Ten minutes later the black Range Rover skidded to a halt in the gravel-covered driveway of the hotel entrance.

A few minutes later, George and Anna were still deliberating over what to do next when out of nowhere a sports car came screaming out of the darkness and flew right past them.

“Who’s that,
Ayrton
bloody
Senna
?” George shouted.

“Bloody lunatic, where’s he off to in such a hurry, I wonder?” Anna said.

“I
dunno
, but I know where he’ll end up driving like that, the stupid bastard. We’ve got some right
nutters
on the road out here. Listen, love, I’ll drive down to the end here and then I think we should turn back, as it’s getting very cold, Anna. And I’m falling asleep, mate.”

“OK, George, it makes sense, I suppose,” she said despondently, and looked out of the window away from him. She then offered up a silent prayer, closed her eyes and switched the BlackBerry on for one last desperate attempt.

“We’ll come back in a few hours, Anna love. What we need to do now is go back and rethink our strategy and get something to eat and a nice hot cuppa tea inside us,” George said, as he turned the steering wheel ninety degrees.

“Got him! George, look, I’ve got his car! There it is, right on the outer edge of the map. We’ve literally been just a few miles out of its range. Now put your foot down,
Georgie
!” she gave him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, then looked up and mouthed a silent “thank you” toward the heavens.

“YEEEEHARR! We’re coming, mate. Hang on, my old son, Uncle George is on the way!” George shouted, with tears streaming down his chubby cheeks as he put his foot flat to the floor. Even the old tired engine seemed to find a new lease of life.

“He’s about another ten miles out and according to this he’s dead ahead, so keep going straight on. The map says that the only thing that’s out there is a hotel, which must be stuck right in the middle of a bloody field or something,” Anna said as she quickly showed George the screen. He smiled as he clocked the tiny red pulsating blip of hope on the minuscule map.

She then quickly clambered into the back of the vehicle and unzipped the black sports bag. The rasping sound of the zipper suddenly put a damper on George’s high spirits, and he swallowed hard as he remembered what was in the bag.

Andy Ryan killed the lights on the sports car and skidded off the road and into a muddy field. He parked the Mitsubishi next to a low, thick hedge which concealed it from view. He took out his rucksack and rifle bag, sat on the boot of the car and pulled on his chameleon
ghillie
suit. Almost immediately he disappeared as he blended in perfectly with his surroundings. He checked his side-arm and flicked on the night vision scope to take a quick look around. Al was absolutely still.

Well, this was the last known location of the Range Rover and the only place out here is that hotel,
Ryan thought as he spotted the white structure. He stayed close to the hedgerow and sneaked a little closer to the hotel, and was now roughly five hundred yards out.

He found the vantage point he’d been searching for, and climbed to the very top of the largest oak tree in the vicinity, which now afforded him a perfect view of the huge gothic banqueting hall window. Directly outside it sat the black Range Rover.

He strapped himself to a thick branch with some lengths of webbing and slipped another thinner strip around a branch that was extending just out in front of him. The other end of this strap was looped around the rifle barrel. He then twisted the rifle around a few turns, thus tightening the webbing which now gave the rifle a stable firing position. He zeroed in the scope on his L115A3 British Army sniper rifle onto the roof of the white building, where he could now clearly see two figures holding long barrelled hunting rifles. At this range his high velocity ammunition and state of the art optics would virtually guarantee a one-shot kill. He squinted through the binoculars and spotted a large individual creeping around in the shadows by the front of the Range Rover.

Nope, that’s not my man he’s too damned big, I can wait,
Ryan thought, as he observed the window again.