Ultimate Weapon (49 page)

He took the Beretta from his pocket, and held it in the palm of his hand. He knew the gun was certainly capable of an accurate shot across the fifty yards that separated him from the man. One movement, however, and he would alert the man to his presence. An AK-47 was nestling in his ribcage. His finger was on the trigger. He looked fit and alert: no risk of this guy grabbing some kip while he was meant to be on duty. He knew a dozen of his mates had gone out to see what the trouble was, and he knew they hadn’t come back. He was expecting trouble. As soon as Jed showed himself, the guy would start spraying the cave with bullets. The AK-47 might not be a precision weapon, but with that much lead flying through the cave, some of it was bound to hit the target.

One shot. That’s all I’ll get.
Miss it and I’ll join the fossils in this cave.

With one sudden movement, Jed leapt away from the
wall and started running. His right hand was straight out in front of him. Forty yards. The soldier looked up, saw the gun and took a second to react. Thirty yards. Jed levelled the pistol, looking through its sights and placing it so the bullet would strike just a fraction of an inch above the man’s nose. Twenty yards. The soldier started to raise his own AK-47, his finger ready to slam down on the trigger.

Fifteen yards.

I can’t miss from this distance.

Jed squeezed his finger tightly on to the trigger of the Beretta.

One shot.

Then another.

The bullet smashed into the man’s face. He rolled back, shaking. The second bullet blew into his skull, splitting it open. He collapsed to the floor, dead.

Jed ran towards the back tunnel. He could hear movement. There was light from the soldier’s torch, and he could see into the tunnel, and the cave beyond. People moving. Two, maybe three. Jed ran through the entrance to the tunnel, looking straight ahead of him. It stretched for thirty yards, with the stream running through it. He pushed on, his legs hammering against the rocky surface of the ground. He could hear voices, then a shout: the noise echoed through the stone, so that within seconds it sounded like a hundred voices were surrounding him.

As he reached the end of the tunnel, Jed glanced through the cave that confronted him. It was much smaller than the last one, just thirty feet in length and twenty wide,
and there was a single torch in the corner, spreading a pale light over the grey rock. Right ahead of him, he could see a man, shrouded in a thick, green overcoat, starting to run into another tunnel. Salek, he thought.
It has to be.

‘Stop,’ he shouted. ‘Stop, you bastard, or I’ll blow your bloody brains out.’

There was a woman at his side. About five foot six, dressed in a burka, which covered her face. Sarah, Jed told himself. It
must
be. The bastard has made her dress like a local. The man was starting to shove her towards the tunnel that led out of the cave. The woman tried to turn, but the man slapped her forward.

‘Sarah,’ shouted Jed. ‘Sarah, it’s me.’

He was standing still now, holding the Beretta in his outstretched hand. He pointed it straight ahead, but it was impossible to get a clean shot on the man’s back without risking putting a bullet into the woman. ‘Move aside, you bastard,’ said Jed.

At his side he heard a noise. A soldier was lunging towards him, just a few feet away, the blade in his hand glinting in the pale light from the torch. How the hell did I miss you, Jed asked himself. He moved swiftly to the left, dodging the man’s blow. He looked older than the rest of the soldiers. At least forty, with a few inches of fat around his waist, but his eyes were strong, and his expression determined. Jed spun round on his ankles, raising the Beretta straight in front of him, positioning the gun for a clean shot. He fired once, then again. One bullet pinged into the rock. The second blasted into the man’s shoulder, punching a hole through the muscle and
flesh. Blood was starting to stain his shirt, but there was plenty of fight in him yet. He roared, his lungs stretching with anger, and lunged forward with the knife again. Jed backed away, stumbling across rock, trying to keep his balance and stay out of range of the knife, and yet avoid turning his back on his attacker. Jed fired the Beretta twice more. One bullet went nowhere, but the other struck the man in the chest. Still he kept coming. Jed stepped back another yard, then another. The soldier made one last desperate lunge. The wounds were taking him apart, and he was coughing blood, choking on it as it foamed up in his mouth, but he still had enough momentum to carry himself forward. Jed stumbled, crashing to the floor, and in the next instant, the soldier was falling on top of him. The man was heavy, like a hod of bricks smashing down. His breath was stale, and there was blood dripping from his mouth. The impact knocked the Beretta from Jed’s hand, sending it skidding across the wet rock towards the gushing stream.

Jed grunted, then heaved upwards. With one movement, he’d turned the man off him, so he was lying flat out on his back. He managed to retrieve his gun and hovered over the soldier. His eyes had closed, and although he was still just breathing, it was clear the fight was out of him. You’ll be dead in a couple of minutes, mate, thought Jed grimly. No point in finishing you off.
It’s a waste of a good bullet.

As Jed glanced back up towards the tunnel, he could see the man and woman had escaped. ‘Fuck it,’ he muttered. ‘They’ve gone.’

Moving fast, he grabbed the torch from the ground, and shone it into the tunnel down which they had disappeared. It stretched for a hundred yards, narrowing at one point to just a few feet, before twisting round a corner. There was no way of telling where it led.

One way to find out, Jed thought.
Throw yourself into it.

He started running. The tunnel sloped uphill, stretching a hundred yards into the distance, and the stream was gushing down through the rock. He slowed to squeeze himself through the narrow passage, wading through two feet of water to do so. As he reached the corner, he darted around it, looking into another stretch of tunnel. Still no sign of them. The climb was getting steeper, and he had to use the rock to get a grip as he pushed ahead.

Where the hell are they, he asked himself as he flung himself up yet another turning.

Daylight.

About two hundred yards ahead, he could see a narrow crack in the rock. Sunlight was streaming through it, with a light that seemed sudden and dazzling after being incarcerated inside the mountain for the last ten minutes.

But still no sign of Salek. Or the woman.

Jed threw himself harder forward. Fifty yards passed, then another fifty. He was getting closer. As he drew up to the light, he gripped on to the side of the rock, and pulled himself up and out of the tunnel. The stream was coming into the mountain through this opening, and
he had to move through the rushing water. His clothes were soaked, and his hair was matted and slicked against his head. It was bitterly cold and the icy water he’d just emerged from was still biting into his skin. But he was back on the mountainside. Looking around, he could see an expanse of rugged, grassy rock, with a waterfall where the stream originated about three hundred yards away. To his left, he could see Nick and Laura. To his right, maybe five hundred yards away, he could see Salek, dragging Sarah after him, running over the rough terrain.

He glanced back towards Nick and Laura, not sure how far his voice would carry against the stiff wind that was blowing down from the mountain. ‘This way,’ he yelled.

Turning, he started to run. The ground was heavy, and wet with dew, and his muscles felt punched and sore. But he was making good progress. Salek and Sarah were racing up the side of the mountain, but Jed could tell he was closing on them. Three hundred yards separated them now, he calculated.
Soon it will be two …

‘Sarah,’ he yelled again.

The man glanced round, and Jed could see him clearly. He gripped on to the Beretta, but it was impossible to take a shot from this distance, and not risk hitting the woman he was still clinging on to.

What the hell is he running towards, Jed asked himself.
What’s up there?

Salek was moving up a steep incline, towards a formation of huge circular stones. Some kind of hiding place? Jed pushed himself harder. He was using his hands to
grip the ground, to help lever himself upwards, but the cuts on his palms meant the dust and the gravel were starting to sting him. Salek disappeared briefly from view, vanishing into the thicket of stones. As Jed pulled himself up level with the rocks, he looked around wildly for any sign of them. Nothing. He listened. The wind was still blowing, rustling the tall grasses growing between the stones, but he could hear nothing else. No movement. No breathing.
Where the hell were they?

The stones formed a rough semicircle. Some were as high as thirty feet tall, others just ten, but each one was at least six feet wide. There must be at least twenty of them, Jed reckoned. And each one big enough for a man to hide behind.

He started walking. The stones were twisted into strange, ugly shapes, some like animals, others like trees. A few seemed to be looking straight at you. Jed turned round. He felt certain he’d heard a noise behind him. An animal? No, it was louder than that. A person. From behind the rock to his right. He gripped the Beretta tight into his hand, and broke into a run. As he approached the rock, he paused, leaning close into it, edging around its circumference. His finger was hovering nervously on the trigger of the gun. He could see a shadow moving across the ground, just five feet away from him. They were there, Jed felt certain of it. He looked at the shape of the shadow on the ground. Was it the man, or the woman? It was impossible to tell from here.
I’ll just have to take my chances.

Holding tightly on to the Beretta, he leapt away from
the rock. Salek was standing just a few feet from him. The woman had fled, and was hiding behind another rock twenty yards away. Jed looked into the man’s eyes: they were cold and vengeful, the eyes of a murderer. Already he was moving, starting to turn and run the moment he saw Jed. A pistol was in his right hand, poised to fire. Jabbing the Beretta forward, Jed fired once, then again. The bullets rattled out of the gun. One struck against the rock, the other crashed into the side of Salek’s chest. He rocked back on his heels, but although the wound was a bad one, he was staying on his feet.

Sod this gun, thought Jed.
I couldn’t hit a pigeon in Trafalgar Square with this piece of crap.

Salek’s hand was still raised, his gun level and pointing straight ahead of him. Jed swerved, making himself a harder target to aim at as he readied the Beretta for another shot. In the next instant, he could hear the explosion as the bullet exploded through the air. He knew even in the fraction of a second after the trigger was squeezed that Salek’s aim had been a good one. He could see the angle of the gun as it was fired, and even as he swerved backwards there was still no more than twenty yards separating the two men. Salek wasn’t going to miss from there.
Not with an aim that was as true as that one.

As time appeared to slow down, Jed steeled himself. He had taken a bullet once before, in his calf, and he knew that the pain didn’t come at once. First the body numbed up, and you could feel nothing. It was as if you’d been jabbed by an anaesthetic. The nerves froze
up. Almost immediately, the bleeding would start, and slowly, as the shock started to subside, you would start to feel again.
Then the pain would rage through you like a fire.

The bullet smashed into his shoulder. Jed could feel the flesh being ripped open, and he realised with a tremor of cold fear that it had missed his heart by just a couple of inches. The shard of hot metal brushed against the bone of his shoulder blade, and then he could feel it punching a hole through his back and tearing out of his body. The impact of the blow knocked him to the ground, and as he fell the Beretta was knocked clean from his hand.

For a moment, Jed’s eyes closed. His head was starting to spin in shock and consciousness was ebbing away from him. He’d crashed nastily to the ground, catching his spine on the rock, and every muscle in his back was screaming with pain. He could hear feet, running, shouts. Snap out it, he told himself. You’re not bloody dead yet.
While there’s life in you, there’s still fight, man.

His eyes snapped suddenly open. Salek was running towards him, the gun in his hand pointing straight at Jed. He fired once, but the bullet smashed into the ground a couple of feet from where Jed was lying on the ground. Desperately, Jed rolled over, reaching out for the Beretta. Just a few feet, he told himself.
With a gun in your hand, you’re still in this game.

Salek was now just ten yards from Jed. There was blood seeping from his chest, but he was strong enough to take the punishment and keep going. He closed down
the distance separating the two men before Jed could summon up enough strength to grab the gun. With a sudden stamp, Salek slammed his foot down on Jed’s wrist. ‘Good of you to come all this way,’ said Salek. ‘I was planning to kill you back in England. This has saved me the trouble of a trip.’

The gun was five feet from Jed’s face. It was a Viper Jaws pistol, with a sleek black handle and a polished steel barrel: the Viper was a Jordanian gun, designed by the American Widley Moore who created the legendary Widley pistol. It doesn’t make any difference what pistol it is, thought Jed grimly.
Every bullet is the same when it’s blasted its way into your skull.