Fightback Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Advertisements

  Praise for Steve Voake

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  ONE

  ‘I’m sorry I missed it,’ said his father as they made their way out of the brightly lit hall. ‘Something came up.’

  Kier stuffed the trophy into his bag, along with his gumshield and karate suit.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.

  When they got into the car, his father was the first to break the silence.

  ‘I hear he was a tough opponent.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But you were tougher?’

  Kier shrugged. The final jump-kick had been a risk which nearly disqualified him. But, after some discussion, the judges had ruled that it was controlled enough to win him three points and the tournament. His father had missed it of course, same as he missed everything else.

  ‘I guess I just hated him more than he hated me.’

  His father turned in his seat, studying him in the half-light.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My instructor told me the secret of winning is to hate your opponent. He said it was the only way to be the best.’

  ‘Well, he’s wrong about that.’

  It was raining now; people were running across the car park, silhouetted against the sky.

  ‘Love is stronger than hate, Kier. Find out what matters, that’s the real secret. Find out and go after it the best way you can.’

  Yeah, right, thought Kier. Maybe you could have come after me once in a while.

  As they listened to the rain drumming on the roof, his father wiped a patch of steam from the windscreen with his sleeve.

  ‘Listen, Kier, I’m sorry I’ve not been around much these past few years. But you know, when your mum died, with my job and everything, I didn’t really have a choice.’

  For a moment, Kier allowed himself to think about how the man sitting next to him could have been someone he knew. But when the other kids had gone home from boarding school for the holidays he had been left watching dust dance in the sunlit hall, waiting for the taxis and planes that would take him away; off to the summer camps and ski camps where he would swim and trek over mountains with strangers, trying not to think about what might have been.

  Kier shrugged.

  ‘Lots of parents send their kids away to school,’ he said. ‘It’s no big deal.’

  For a moment it seemed as if his father was about to say more. But then he just rubbed his eyes, turned the key in the ignition and drove in silence towards the exit.

  Kier checked the passport in his pocket, knowing that tomorrow the awkwardness would be over and they would be miles apart once more. Closing his eyes, he listened to the clunk of the wipers and the hiss of tyres in the rain.

  He awoke to the roar of engines as the car swerved violently to the left, making him bang his head against the side window. A car horn blared and wet tarmac glistened in the glare of headlights.

  ‘Stupid idiot,’ said his father, hands gripping the wheel. ‘What the hell does he think he’s doing?’

  Kier turned to see a white van drawing alongside them. The passenger pointed through the window and then the van veered sharply to the left, smashing into the side of their car. They slid across two lanes of motorway, Kier watching his father wrestle with the wheel as they skidded along the hard shoulder in a squeal of smoking rubber. They finally came to rest with a loud thump against the side of the embankment and the white van pulled over, parking at an angle in front of them.

  ‘Bloody maniac,’ said his father angrily, releasing his seat belt. He turned off the engine and wrenched the car door open. As he walked along the hard shoulder towards the van, Kier watched in a daze as the van door slowly opened. Suddenly his father was running back towards the car again, his face white as he threw himself into the driver’s seat.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Kier asked, watching him fumble with the keys.

  ‘We have to go,’ replied his father.

  Then the windscreen dissolved in a hot, blinding roar and Kier felt a rush of air as the back window blew out. Suddenly he was staring through a glitter of broken glass at a hooded man with a pump-action shotgun. As the man took aim again, Kier’s father floored the accelerator and the back seat exploded, fragments of foam and leather spinning off into the night.

  As they accelerated away, Kier turned to look through the shattered window and saw the two men running back towards the van.

  ‘Who were they?’ he asked, unable to believe what had just happened.

  But his father didn’t seem to hear.

  ‘I think I need a hospital,’ he said, and when Kier glanced over he saw that his father’s shirt was soaked in blood.

  ‘What can I do?’ Kier asked.

  His father shook his head.

  ‘You have to run,’ he said. ‘When we get to the hospital, you have to run and not look back.’

  TWO

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ Kier reassured him as they drove through the hospital entrance, ‘everything’s going to be all right.’

  But as the car mounted the central roundabout and came to rest in the middle of some flowerbeds, Kier’s father slumped over the wheel and closed his eyes as if, having done enough to get him there, his body was incapable of anything more.

  Kier kicked the door open and tumbled out on to the sloping earth, running as fast as he could towards the entrance. Two paramedics emerged, off-duty and smiling at the thought of the evening ahead.

  ‘Help me,’ said Kier, grabbing one of them by the sleeve. ‘Please. You have to help me.’

  They were quick, efficient and professional. Kier walked with the trolley as they pushed his father along the corridor, holding his hand as he slipped in and out of consciousness.

  ‘Kier,’ said his father weakly, trying to raise his head from the pillow.

  ‘Shh,’ said Kier. ‘Don’t try to talk.’

  ‘No police,’ whispered his father. ‘Spike Russell. Fern behind a fox … it’s great … Russell’s treat … dead …’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Dead … drop … dead …’

  As his father closed his eyes, one of the medics shook his head and gave Kier a sympathetic glance. ‘It’s OK. He’s delirious. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.’

  They took him to an emergency room full of machines and surgical instruments. Kier could hear how quickly and urgently the doctors spoke, giving one another careful instructions.

  Then the door closed and Kier was left to watch porters push clanking trolleys along the brightly lit corridor. After ten minutes the door opened and a young nurse emerged, wiping her hands on the front of her apron.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as if it was her fault, crouching in front of him and taking both his hands in hers. ‘There was nothing more we could do.’

  Kier nodded, numb with shock as he realised that the father he hardly knew was dead. His world was crumbling, dissolving before his eyes.

  ‘Is there anyone we can contact? Someone who
can take you home?’

  ‘No.’ Kier shook his head. ‘There’s no one.’

  He stared past the nurse’s shoulder and saw two men at the far end of the corridor, their faces concealed beneath the dark hoods of their jackets. They were stopping at each of the wards, looking in and checking the beds. As Kier watched, one of them turned to stare at him. He nudged the other man, who looked up and nodded. Then Kier was on his feet and running, the sound of clattering footsteps echoing down the corridor behind him.

  He cannoned through some double doors and sent a startled nurse stumbling against the wall. Dodging a porter with a trolley, he thumped through a second set of doors and skidded round the corner, bouncing off the wall and jumping down a flight of stairs. Momentarily winded, he bent to get his breath and heard voices approaching. As he grasped the banister and swung himself round on to the next stairway, there was a muffled crack and a bullet ricocheted off the handrail, whining past his ear like a hungry mosquito.

  It was a bad dream, a nightmare, except that he was wide awake in the middle of an ordinary hospital and someone was trying to kill him.

  Kier’s heart raced and his muscles cried out for oxygen. But adrenalin kept him moving, sharpening his senses and helping him make the decisions that could save his life.

  Swinging around on to the final set of steps, he heard the deep thump of a shotgun blast and then the huge picture window in front of him disintegrated, sending shards of glass spinning down into the car park below. Clearing the last four steps in a single jump, he hit the floor and crashed through the doors in front of him. To his left was a small cafe with a handful of late-night visitors sipping their lattes and flicking through the day’s news. To the right was a long empty corridor leading to the main entrance.

  Logic told him he would never make it.

  Fear screamed at him to go.

  As the entrance doors slid open, he stumbled out into fresh air just as the first bullet struck the edge of the frame with a noise like a hammer on steel. The second missed his ankle by a millimetre, burying itself deep in the tarmac. As Kier ran across the access road a taxi screeched to a halt and the driver leaned on his horn, swearing at him through the open window. But Kier wasn’t stopping for anyone; as another bullet punched through the Give Way sign, he leapt over a low picket fence and into a small patch of woodland.

  ‘There he is!’ shouted a voice. ‘Over there!’

  With a prrrrrp like sackcloth being torn in half, a hail of bullets ripped through the leaves and branches, exploding bark from tree trunks and kicking up the earth around his feet.

  A machine gun?

  This was insane.

  Ahead, through the trees, Kier could see the main road. Reaching the edge of the woodland, he vaulted the fence, almost colliding with an old woman waiting to cross at the lights. As the lights turned green, a white pick-up truck began to pull away and Kier leapt into the back, throwing himself headlong on to a pile of bricks and plasterboard. He lay there for several minutes, breathing in dust as the truck rumbled on. At the third set of lights he jumped down and sat by the side of the road, staring at a patch of oil and wondering if he would live to see another morning.

  THREE

  He caught the last tube home and watched neon-lit stations slip past as if in a dream. The world seemed unreal, as if he were merely playing a part in a film. But Kier knew that this was just the body’s way of dealing with shock. The world was real and dangerous. And whoever had killed his father wanted to kill him too.

  He took the precaution of leaving the train one stop early, walking the rest of the way. When he reached his father’s road he stayed in the shadows, looking for signs that someone might be waiting for him. But the street was quiet and deserted.

  For now at least, it seemed that he was safe.

  No police, his father had said. Spike Russell, fern behind a fox … it’s great … Were his father’s last words really the ramblings of a delirious mind, as the medic had said? Or had he been trying to tell him something important?

  Kier slotted the key into the lock and stood motionless in the hallway, listening for the slightest whisper or creak of the floorboards. But all he could hear was the ticking of the grandfather clock and the beating of his heart. He was about to switch the hall light on when it occurred to him that this might not be such a good idea. Instead he shut the door and moved upstairs to his father’s study, opening the blinds enough to let the moonlight filter through into the room.

  His father’s Filofax lay open on the desk next to the laptop. He flicked through the addresses but there was no sign of anyone called Spike Russell. Opening the laptop, Kier signed into the guest account and entered Spike Russell into the search engine. There were a few links to Facebook sites and an entry about a character in a film, but nothing gave any useful clues. He wasn’t even sure what he hoped to find. He tried fern behind a fox, but that just came up with a list of garden centres. And hadn’t his father said something about a treat? It didn’t make any sense.

  Dead … drop dead …

  That was the other thing he’d said.

  Maybe the medic was right after all. Maybe his dad was just delirious.

  Maybe he would just type it in anyway.

  Dead drop dead

  As he expected, a whole list of results came up. A couple of recent movies, a line of clothing called ‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’, an explanation of the phrase in some online free dictionary. There was even an entry for a Christian Death Metal Band. But nothing of any use to him. Without much hope, Kier clicked on the next page.

  Still nothing.

  He clicked again.

  And suddenly, there it was:

  Dead Drop: Information from Answers.com

  A prearranged spot at which one party passes information to another without actually meeting; or, the act of making such a transfer, as in ‘making a dead drop’.

  Kier stared at the screen. Could this be what his father had meant?

  He cleared the search engine and typed ‘dead drop’.

  This time it was right there in the very first entry:

  A dead drop or dead letter box is a location used to secretly pass items between two people, without requiring them to meet.

  At the bottom of the page was a picture of a long, sharp object. Underneath it said:

  Dead drop spike. A dead drop spike is a concealment device used to hide money, maps, documents, microfilms and other items. The spike is waterproof and can be pushed into the ground or placed in a shallow stream to be retrieved at a later time.

  Kier sat back in the chair and looked at the moonlight filtering through the blinds.

  So that was what his father had been trying to tell him. It’s great … Russell’s treat. Suddenly it was blindingly obvious. There was no one called Spike Russell waiting around with a treat. But maybe there was a dead drop spike. And maybe, just maybe, it was hidden somewhere in Great Russell Street …

  He was about to search for a map of the area when his fingers froze above the keyboard.

  The sound from downstairs was faint but unmistakable.

  It was the sound of breaking glass.

  In his panic, potential hiding places flashed through his mind – under the bed perhaps, in the attic. But he knew these people didn’t mess around. If he hid anywhere in the house, they would find him.

  And if they found him, they would kill him.

  Moving silently on the balls of his feet, Kier picked up his father’s high-backed chair and wedged it beneath the door handle before opening the window and peering down into the back garden. There was a thin strip of lawn and a few flowerbeds, but he was two floors up and a straight jump would almost certainly earn him a broken ankle.

  He turned to see the door handle moving.

  There was a creak from the floorboards and a voice whispered, ‘He’s here.’

  Then, as the frame splintered around the hinges, Kier clambered out through the window and leapt sideways on to a honeysuckle-cover
ed trellis.

  Perhaps if he had been lighter, the trellis might have held. But muscle weighs more than fat, and the twice-weekly karate training sessions meant muscles formed a major part of Kier’s body. Good news if you were entering a karate tournament; not so good if you were hanging by your fingers from a piece of wood.

  Kier heard the timber crack and saw the screws pop out of the brickwork before the trellis peeled away from the wall and he landed heavily in the flowerbeds, still clutching fragments of wood and honeysuckle in his fists. Scrambling to his feet, he brushed earth from his jeans and ran to the gate at the end of the garden. Beyond the gate was an alleyway which he knew would take him past the back gardens and into the road again. Glancing around, he saw two figures silhouetted against the window and decided there was no time to waste. Sliding the bolt back, he pulled the gate open and ran out into the alley.

  He should have known, of course.

  Should have realised that he was dealing with professionals who wouldn’t make the basic mistake of leaving an obvious escape route open. With an almost imperceptible movement of his wrist, the man in the black tracksuit palmed the handle of the six-inch knife and smiled.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ he said.

  In the movies, the bad guy usually raises his knife above his head so that the hero can step in and do some fancy kung-fu work. Luckily for Kier, his karate instructor had known that real life isn’t like the movies.

  ‘He won’t advertise,’ he had told him. ‘If he’s got a knife, he’ll come at you fast and hard and the first you’ll know about it is when he buries it in your guts. So watch and learn.’

  Kier had watched and learned, and this gave him two distinct advantages. One: he was expecting the attack. Two: his attacker thought that killing him was going to be easy.

  As the man lunged forward, Kier turned and thrust his left arm up beneath the man’s outstretched right arm. Clamping his free hand down on the man’s wrist, he twisted hard, swept his foot beneath the man’s legs and slammed him down on to the concrete path. Although it was a move he had practised many times, Kier was still relieved to see how easily the man went down. But he wasn’t taking any chances. As the man struggled to his feet, Kier jumped up and scissor-kicked him back into some dustbins.