The Operative (53 page)

‘What about Stratton?’

‘What about him?’ Hobart asked.

‘Any idea where he is?’

‘Take a wild guess,’ Hobart said, looking back around the corner.

Klodi hurried into the ballroom to find Cano briefing a dozen of his men, organising a search of the building. ‘He’s here!’ Klodi shouted.

Cano looked up at him, knowing exactly who he meant, a rush of excitement coursing through him. ‘Where?’

‘Outside. By the statue. He’s just standing there.’

‘Cover him,’ Cano said as he hurried past Klodi and across the lobby to the main doors, followed by half his men. The others trotted up the stairs behind Klodi.

Cano removed a large silver-plated semi-automatic pistol from a shoulder holster and pulled the slide back enough to expose a bullet in the chamber, making sure that it was loaded. He took a deep breath, adjusted his eyepatch, exhaled through flared nostrils, put his free hand on the door handle and paused a moment in thought, like a gunfighter about to head out of a Wild West saloon into the sunlight to face the sheriff.

He turned the handle and pushed open the door, slowly at first, exercising caution. Then the statue came into view as he
opened it further. Stratton stood in front of it as Klodi had described, staring straight at Cano.

Cano kept his pistol held low as he examined the man for a few seconds before searching around for a trap of some kind. There was no obvious place in which to hide a bomb in the immediate area, no planters, alcoves, boxes – nowhere to conceal anything that would harm Cano and his men and not Stratton.

Stratton’s stare remained fixed squarely on Cano. He was confident that an attack would come from no other source without the Albanian’s say-so and was counting on the man’s desire to kill Stratton personally.

Cano’s one-eyed glare went back to Stratton, specifically to the hand inside his jacket that he assumed held a weapon, wondering why the Englishman was out in the open and blatantly facing what he knew would be vastly superior firepower. Perhaps it was desperation: the man had few other options and, Cano speculated, was so consumed with hatred that he had decided to go down fighting.

Cano took a couple of steps outside as several of his men filed out through the door behind him, guns in their hands, moving either side of Cano to where they could get a clear shot at Stratton. Half a dozen more appeared on the balcony above to stand alongside Klodi. Some of them had sub-machine guns.

Cano was beginning to feel more like a bullfighter than simply an executioner. He started to relax and enjoy the role, supremely confident that this was the end of his brother’s killer. There was no way out for Stratton now, not with over a dozen guns against him. Even if the cops were watching, Cano had been threatened with a bomb and was within his rights to defend himself. A smile spread across his face. ‘Come to die, Stratton?’ he asked.

‘Where’s the boy?’ Stratton asked calmly. ‘Hand him over now and I’ll let you live.’

Cano’s smile spread further across his disfigured face before
he burst into laughter, which spread infectiously among his men as those who could not understand English well enough heard the translation from others.

‘You got balls, Stratton. I’ll say that much for you,’ Cano said as the laughter subsided. ‘Forget about the kid. Mine is the last face you’re ever gonna see in this lifetime. No one shoot before me!’ he yelled as he raised his gun, aiming it at Stratton as his men did the same. ‘How d’you like my firing squad?’ he asked.

Stratton’s finger pushed the first button on the transmitter. Less than a second later, the top of every lamp-post surrounding the square exploded with a thunderous crack and boom as six and a half thousand ball-bearings blasted from them, like a battery of howitzers primed with grapeshot firing simultaneously, the steel wall spreading as it screamed towards the glass pyramid. The massive shock wave travelled just ahead of the metal wall, covering the distance to the building in less than a second. It hit the palm trees first, shredding their foliage and banners and bending them towards the building as if a tornado had swiped them. Then the metal balls struck the back of the bronze statue of Skender, smashing away all minor details such as ears and fingers. Before Cano’s finger could finish squeezing the trigger of his gun the tiny steel spheres slammed through him and his men with such force that they were lifted off their feet and their butchered bodies slammed backwards into the building’s doors and walls, dead before impact. Every sheet of glass on the face of the pyramid from the ground to the twelfth floor exploded into fragments, filling the air like a crystal cloud before descending.

Hobart and Seaton hugged the wall, squeezing their heads between their arms as the shock wave ripped down the street bouncing off buildings, trashing windows and tossing those police officers who’d remained on the corners to the ground like paper. The blast cut the tops off the lamp-posts, one landing through the
windscreen of a police car, another a few feet from Seaton and Hobart on the sidewalk. Debris rained down everywhere and onlookers screamed, trying to find cover as the television correspondent slammed into her camera and both went rolling.

The glass in the air around Skender’s building briefly held its upward and outward drive, then hung suspended for an instant before gravity took charge and it began to drop, much of it falling inside the sloped sides now devoid of protection. The rest fell onto the surrounding pathways and gardens like hail. Stratton pushed back into Skender’s statue’s arms, covering himself as the debris bounced around him, carpeting the concourse with tiny crystals. Within a few seconds, as the echoing boom subsided into the distance, it went contrastingly quiet except for the occasional chunk of loosened metal window frame dropping with a clang.

Skender hugged the floor where he had dived when the force struck the structure several floors below. After the thunder and shaking had ceased he pushed himself up onto his knees, all his senses alert, wondering what on earth had happened. He shuffled to the window and saw wisps of smoke rising from each buckled lamp-post but due to the angle of the glass that his face was pressed against he could not see the damage directly below. He got to his feet and, stepping over items that had fallen from shelves, hurried through the glass doors to the other side of the building to find a similar picture.

Skender came back to his desk, grabbed up the radio and found the send button. ‘Cano?’ he shouted into it. ‘
Cano
?’

His guards came rushing down the corridor from the elevator and emergency stairwell looking as confused as their boss.

‘What happened?’ Skender shouted.

‘Don’t know, boss,’ one of them said.

‘I thought the friggin’ building was gonna fall down,’ said another.

‘One of you go down and find out what happened!’ Skender shouted. ‘And get Cano up here!’

As the man ran off, Skender paused to think. It was obvious that the building had been struck by something and there had no doubt been some damage. But it had held, he himself was in one piece and that was the most important thing. He then considered the possibility that it might be a diversion of some kind. He went over to a cupboard built into a wall and pulled out one of a selection of semi-automatic shotguns, his preferred close-quarter weapon. But after calming himself and taking stock he felt certain that the planned attack was over. Though it had been violent and possibly destructive, he had survived it.

‘What are you standing there for?!’ he shouted at his remaining guards. ‘Cover the stairs and the elevators.’

The men hurried back to their posts. Skender checked that the gun was loaded, then took a box of spare cartridges from a drawer and placed it on the desk.

‘Cano?’ Skender shouted into the radio once more. ‘Where is that prick?’ he muttered as he tossed the radio onto the table and went back to the window to look down onto the square. He then remembered a window in the kitchen that opened and hurried down the corridor.

Josh was in the kitchen under a table, a sandwich on the floor in front of him where he had dropped it. Skender hurried in, opened the window and looked below. His jaw went rigid as he took in the sight of the shattered façade of his glorious pyramid. Every window from four floors below on down was gone.

He stepped back in, thought for a moment and then looked down at Josh who was gaping up at him, wide-eyed and confused. ‘Come with me, kid,’ Skender said as he took hold of Josh’s hand, pulled him to his feet and urged him out of the room. The camel dropped from Josh’s pocket in the corridor and as the boy
tried to retrieve it Skender yanked him on into the conference room, pulling him forward and over to the far wall.

‘Sit down and don’t move,’ Skender growled, any pleasantness gone from his tone. Josh obeyed, looking at the shotgun in Skender’s hand and wondering what was happening.

Stratton stepped away from the protection of the statue, his feet crunching on the glass as he walked towards the ornate front doors that were now dotted with small, splinter-covered holes. He paused to look down on Cano’s disfigured, lifeless body. It was covered in shards of glass, blood oozing from countless holes.

‘How d’you like mine?’ Stratton asked.

Cano’s gun lay by his side and Stratton picked it up, stepped over him, pulled open the heavy door and walked into the lobby.

Two of Skender’s men lay dead behind the doors, killed by a dozen steel balls that had penetrated the wood. The marble floor was covered in shards of glass from the shattered windows on the balcony above where Klodi’s body and those of his colleagues lay bloody and broken.

Stratton walked to the elevators and pushed the call button. One of the doors opened. He stepped inside, hit a button and the doors closed behind him.

A few seconds later they opened on the tenth floor. Stratton stepped out into a strong wind blowing through the building, unchecked now that the win dows and virtually every glass partition on the floor had been smashed by the ball-bearings.

Lying dead were three of Skender’s thugs. Stratton hoped that a similar fate had befallen the rest of the guard force.

He walked to the fire exit and opened the door. As soon as he stepped onto the landing the sound of running footsteps came from below. He looked down through the spiralling banisters to
see a mob of Skender’s men heading up in support of their boss.

Stratton pulled back his jacket, grabbed hold of the rail to brace himself and pushed the second and third buttons on the transmitter. The explosions, almost simultaneous, were deafening as the entire building rocked violently. The lights went out and Stratton almost lost his balance as a huge crack appeared in the outer wall in front of him. Dust and shards of concrete fell all around.

The main spars radiating from the central pillar to the outside corners of both the fourth and eighth floors buckled and dropped, the supports disintegrating as large sections collapsed. As Stratton had calculated, the sides of the pyramid were compromised at this point and they bowed inwards, reducing the overall structural strength. But the umbrella effect remained intact, maintaining the configuration of the floors above.

Stratton regained his balance as the rocking subsided and the thunder gave way to shouts and screams from below. When that ceased all he could hear was falling debris. He looked down to find the metal banisters twisted awkwardly and long stretches of the staircase broken off, with daylight coming in through a massive hole. There was a hand sticking out into the well but it was not moving, the rest of the body having been flattened beneath a large chunk of reinforced concrete.

Stratton looked overhead, unable to see beyond the next floor due to the dust, and made his way up the stairs.

Skender was holding on to a piece of furniture to steady himself while the entire penthouse gradually stopped shaking. It had been whiplashed by the blast travelling up the central pillar and expending itself through the top, sending ornaments flying from shelves and pictures off walls. Several windows cracked and tiles and debris fell from the ceiling, a large chunk landing on Skender’s model village and flattening a row of luxury apartments. Skender was stunned, and not just physically, as the real impact of what
was happening struck him. He was under serious attack and by just one man. Stratton was indeed not a bluffer. Yet the building remained standing and Skender was alive: he could not help wondering if that was because Stratton had failed or because it was not yet over.

Skender looked for Josh, the reason for this assault, and saw him cowering in a corner, holding his knees against his chest and looking terrified. Then a sudden thudding outside the window startled Skender and he spun round to see that it was a helicopter flying past. Then it came around and hovered, a sign on its side declaring it to be from Channel 7 News. A cameraman sat in the doorway, aiming his camera at the building.

Skender wondered where Stratton was at that moment. No doubt he was watching from a rooftop somewhere or perhaps even catching it all on television. Then Skender looked back at Josh as he con sidered holding the kid up in front of the window to let Stratton see, the obvious drawback, of course, being that the Feds would also know that he had the boy. But as the dust settled he warned himself not to be too hasty. Perhaps it was indeed over and, if so, it was now Skender’s turn. He promised that Stratton and anyone to whom he was remotely related would pay for this day. And the first victim would be the boy.