Shroud of Concealment (Jake Dillon Adventure Thriller Series) (18 page)

He slowly drove back to the house and once he’d left the main road, he used only the side lights as he approached it. He pulled up, reversed the Ford over uneven ground into a clearing at the edge of a wooded area and tucked the car away from sight of the road. Not wishing to take any risks, he went to work covering the bonnet and windscreen with fallen branches and any other foliage that he could find laying around. Satisfied that it was properly concealed, he picked up the powerful torch off the passenger seat, locked the car and then started to walk back through the woods towards the house.

When he reached the corner of the driveway, he took up a position by a thicket of bushes, which afforded him a good degree of concealment from the house and from anyone who might happen to be approaching up the driveway.

Most of the lights in the house appeared to be on; a couple of rooms upstairs, the hall and a very efficient light over the front door. He couldn’t see if the light in the kitchen was on, but thought it highly likely. It was 9.15 p.m.

It was another fifteen minutes before anyone appeared. The front door opened and Dillon heard Conner’s voice and further along inside the hall, a woman’s. Conner was waving his arms around angrily, ran back inside, and the lights started to go out one after the other until the entire house was in total darkness. In such a remote place with no other properties around, the resulting effect was a blackness that you only find in the country. Dillon couldn’t see a thing until a torch was switched on and he could hear Sheila Conner complaining about her husband being over-dramatic as they crossed the gravel drive towards the garage.

The electrically operated up-and-over wooden door started to whir as it opened, but no lights were switched on, suggesting that Conner wasn’t taking any chances of being seen. The torch’s beam picked out a small van and focussed on the driver’s side so that Sheila could see to get in. Then the light was extinguished, a diesel engine fired into life and the full beams came on and seemed to be shining straight at Dillon. The van moved forward and stopped. Harry Conner waited until the door was fully closed, replaced the heavy-duty padlock into its keep and then got into the passenger seat. A moment later, they set off down the driveway towards the road.

Dillon didn’t move a muscle. He was far too experienced to break his cover, but still felt uncomfortable and exposed as the lights of the van swept past him at speed. At the bottom of the driveway they turned left in the direction of Lyme Regis.

Dillon waited. It was somewhat of a strange time to be going out; rather late for dinner. And why was the woman driving so erratically and at such a speed?

The house was now almost invisible in the total darkness. Even the trees around him were difficult to make out. And yet, as he began to tread carefully along the edge of the driveway, he knew it would be foolhardy to use the powerful torch. After the glare of the van’s headlights, his sight gradually improved and as he advanced he could make out the outline of the house. The feeling that he was being watched, as before, had returned. Only this time he was certain of it. It was not just the eeriness of the isolated location. In the middle of the Dorset countryside only the sounds of the night creatures could be heard around him. It was for much deeper reasons.

Something was missing and he suddenly realised it was the barking of the two dogs. A dog’s acute hearing could pick up the most silent approach, even indoors, and as the slight breeze was blowing towards the house they would also have picked up his scent. He was certain the dogs had not been in the van but could have missed them. He continued on, making sure that his footsteps were on the soft grass verge of the driveway and not the gravel.

He reached the front of the house and stood with his back against the wall, listening for any sound coming from inside. There were no burglar alarms; he had satisfied himself of that when he had called earlier. At first it struck him as casual, but who would hear it even if there was one? There didn’t appear to be any houses close by, and the nearest police station was four miles away in Lyme Regis. Just the same he would have expected some form of security but had not spotted any so far.

Keeping close to the wall, he edged his way down the side of the house to the back door and, as expected, found it solid and firmly locked. Squatting down, he pulled out a soft leather wallet which held a number of lock picks. After trying two or three he found the one that was most suited to the job. The house had probably been built in the late 1800s, and had wooden casement windows on both the ground and first floors. There was still no sign of the two dogs and he accepted that they were no longer near or around the house, which, as he saw it, was another reason to be extra wary. He was being lured in, or perhaps they were simply as harmless as they portrayed and strangely trusting.

The five levers inside the lock were one by one clicking into the release position. This he thought was a contradiction to the otherwise lack of security. The lock was a modern security five-lever Euro-lock which, luckily for Dillon, Tony De’Luca had shown him how to open. After a minute of jiggling around, Dillon was able to pull down on the handle and push the door ajar. He stayed where he was for another couple of minutes without anything happening or a sound from within the house. He drew out the Glock and screwed on the silencer.

He crawled back around to the front of the house, leaving the kitchen door open, and tried the window to the right of the front door. It opened easily. Again he squatted, waiting for something to happen. After five minutes he crawled off again, trying the other ground floor windows. Some were locked and some were not.

Dillon waited again and smiled to himself. It was all too easy and he was being guided in by predetermined routes. Time was passing but he wasn’t concerned. His instincts told him that the Conners wouldn’t return until they were instructed to. That they had been deliberately sent away until it was all over. He had many hours of darkness ahead of him and he was a life-long master of the waiting game.

After another five minutes he decided to open every window that was off the catch. There were three – one at the front, another down the side of the house and one at the rear. If anyone was waiting for him inside, they must surely have felt the cool air coming through and they must also be wondering what he was actually going to do next. Let them sweat, he thought.

He crouched down behind a timber shed at the rear of the house – completely out of sight of the first floor windows, the Glock held loosely between both hands, and his thoughts strayed to why there was virtually no security around the house. Why had Conner had been so particular about ensuring the garage door was firmly locked before leaving? His one act of security had been completely out of character. Keeping close to the house, he crawled down the side of the building and then over to the garage.

The main door was made of hardwood, as he’d noticed during his first visit to the property. It was held remarkably solidly with multi-point locking bolts and then the big padlock at ground level. Not so surprisingly, there was the single obscured glass window at the rear. It was virtually impossible to see anything on the inside, but was of a good size and would easily take two or three cars. Dillon had thought it strange that it had most likely not been built more than twenty years ago and that the size of it was completely out of proportion with the house. Dillon tried the window, but it was stuck fast. The casement frame was also of hardwood and firmly locked. As he turned to go back round to the front, the blue light high up in the apex caught his eye. Dillon studied the alarm bell box that was hidden under the deep soffit, which accounted why he hadn’t noticed it before.

An alarmed and heavily locked garage, but for a house that any would-be burglar could simply walk into without any resistance. He used the torch to take a closer look at the bell box, and picked out the wire running back to the house. As he searched for any other wiring he realised that the alarm was simply to warn those in the house if the garage was being broken into and he was almost certain that it wasn’t linked by a telephone line to the local police station. He killed the torch and started to look for a way in.

He went carefully around the outside of the garage again, took a closer look at the up-and-over door, and decided that it would be better to erase from the equation whoever was waiting for him in the house. After which he would be able to take his time and make as much noise as he liked without fear of interruption.

He gazed towards the dark outline of the house. Whoever it was in there was professional. Anyone else would have been tempted by now into some form of action with three ground floor windows open and no one coming in. It was a game of nerves and Dillon had played it many times before. His primary problem was that he didn’t know how many of them there were and, more importantly, where they were positioned. But there was one certain way of drawing them out. He crawled back around to the back of the garage and smashed the obscured glass window with the base of the torch. The alarm went off immediately, a siren wailing into the night and the blue light flashing above his head. He sprinted away from the garage and the house, made the edge of the woods and threw himself flat onto the soft ground.

Even then there was no movement or panic from those inside the house, as if they knew they had the situation well under control. They made use of the open windows and came from four different directions. It was difficult to make them out in the darkness and at first he had to rely solely on his hearing. They moved almost silently, the nearest just a silhouette running fast at an angle towards the garage, and Dillon was sure that he was wearing black and was completely hooded.

Dillon remained motionless, discreetly withdrew the automatic and held it loosely in his left hand. It always felt good to hold the cold metal; the power it brought and the devastation it dealt. Dillon spun out of his hiding place and into the path of a surprised black-clad figure; the Glock 9 mm slammed twice in his hand and the assassin was kicked from his feet. Blood immediately erupted from the two holes in his throat as he went down hard, and Dillon did a series of rolls away from the flash point. He came to a halt against a log pile and lay still. The man he had taken down was barely alive, drowning in his own blood, but drew no attention from the other three that Dillon had barely glimpsed.

Dillon would have felt a lot happier had he been deeper into the trees, but the men had reacted quickly as good pros should, and he had got as far away from the garage as their response had allowed. All that he could do now was to wait.

The siren was still wailing and he hoped that one of them would turn it off, but he guessed they had left it on to cover their own movements. But if the continuing sound helped his assassins, it also helped him. And bit by bit he edged back into deeper cover.

It became a cat and mouse game. They were not sure where he was and might even have missed the point of his shots as the silencer kept down the gun’s barrel flash to a minimum. But he had no idea where they were. He could no longer hear or see the man he’d shot. He edged back even deeper into the protection of the trees, for it would be easy for them to work their way around from the garage and outflank him on both sides and from behind.

There was a movement close to his left side. Like him they were not using torches, the more so since they now knew how devastatingly skilled he was with a gun.

Dillon rolled slowly over onto his back to get a better view. It became immediately apparent that a man was standing almost over him but didn’t really see him until he moved – the continuous wailing from the siren had been effective in covering both their movements. He rolled, the Glock out and in his hand as the gun above went off at near point-blank range. He felt the bullet tear through the side of his jacket, only just missing him. He rolled again and again and again, knowing that he was completely invisible in the absolute darkness of the woods. The shots followed him, hollow plops, unearthly as the bullets sprayed up little puffs of dead leaves near him. And in the middle of this life-or-death crisis the alarm suddenly stopped and the silence was instant.

High on adrenalin, Dillon did not take any notice, but in one of his frenetic rolls he glimpsed just the slightest hesitation in the black-clad form pursuing him again when the alarm stopped. Dillon rolled into a crouch as the soft footsteps came close. His brain seized for a split second as the footsteps suddenly increased in pace. Roll, his subconscious screamed at him. He rolled, crouched again and then leaped clumsily, arms encircling the attacker, and they both hit the ground. Dillon felt the full impact of the blow to his face, slammed both arms down, the heels of his hands smashing into the assassins head. One blow; two; three; four; five. He felt something break within the hooded mask. Dillon staggered to his feet.

The assassin’s foot lashed up into Dillon’s groin and he stumbled back. The scene flashed red. The assassin was still wearing the hooded mask; the eyes unreadable. The figure lifted its arms above its head, as if in some martial-art preparatory stance. Dillon scrambled up and the figure’s stare fixed on him, eyes boring through him, and he grinned, bloodstained teeth bore through thick strings of saliva.

“You fucking surprised, motherfucker?” he snarled.

“We’ve danced for long enough,” came the whispered voice.

From hidden arm sheaths the assassin drew two short black blades and lowered his head. Dillon pulled his own darkened blade from his boot and spat blood onto the ground.

“But I like to dance, asshole,” Dillon said softly. “It’s just getting interesting. And you wanting to fight with knives... I will cut you, and you will bleed.”

The assassin charged, blades clashed, and Dillon came away having sliced the razor-sharp blade down the assassin’s bicep. He pulled away with blood weeping down his arm, and the freed muscle within sliced skin took the smile from his lips. They circled and Dillon edged the assassin closer. When he charged again it was with blind fury. Dillon sidestepped and came up behind the assassin. The assassin’s head was snapped to the left – a sudden impact movement, so fast that Dillon was shocked by the speed with which he’d carried out the dispatch.