Renegade, p.5
Renegade, page 5
He crashed into the gunman and they both clattered to the floor. Ryker hit him. Again. And again. But within seconds he was drifting, his shots already weaker than they should have been.
The second man, somewhere behind, got hold of Ryker, further impeding the counter-attack. Ryker was hauled off, and shoved to the floor. There was nothing more he could do. He lay on the polished stone, struggling against the hold the men now had on him, but his movements became weaker and weaker by the second.
Soon, he was out cold.
8
Ryker didn’t know where they took him. Didn’t know how long he was out for before he came to. All he knew, when he opened his eyes and his brain calibrated, was that he was shackled to a chair, his head covered by a sack of some sort. There were at least two men in the cool room with him, he figured. Ryker could hear their calm breathing, though they hadn’t yet spoken a word. At least not since he’d woken.
Maybe his trip to the hotel to track Yedlin had been foolhardy but then again, he was used to putting himself front and centre to get answers. That approach often got him into trouble. Trouble which so far in his life he’d always managed to overcome. It was a risky approach, but he operated in a world where risk was ever-present; the constant dilemma was in balancing that risk with the chances of getting the answers he needed.
Like walking into Yedlin’s private space, on his own, unarmed, with his trust placed wholly in a low-paid hotel worker who himself was living through turmoil. Garcia had no loyalty to Ryker. He was looking out for himself and his family. Perhaps Yedlin, or one of his associates, had simply offered a better deal.
A knock on a wooden door. The creak as the door was opened. Footsteps. The door closed again.
Then, ‘Okay, take the sack.’
A gruff male voice. It sounded a little familiar. Not Yedlin, but the accent was thick and distinct.
A few moments later, the cloth sack was pulled from Ryker’s head and he squinted as he looked around the sparsely-lit space. The closed door was directly in front of him. What was behind? A grimy window, though it was letting next to no light in – was it painted over? A single bulb dangled overhead, a concrete floor lay beneath his bare feet. Bare feet. Ryker looked down. Still clothed, except for his socks and shoes. Interesting. His legs were secured to the legs of the chair he was sitting on. His wrists were tied to the chair arms – rope. He tried to shift his weight. The chair was secured to the ground.
He took in the three men in the room with him. All were dressed in black. All had balaclavas covering their heads. Two were standing either side of the closed door. The third was standing in front of Ryker.
‘Now, how about–’
‘Where’s Yedlin?’ Ryker asked. His words were a little slurred. The after-effects of the tranquilliser.
‘No. Why don’t we start with you.’ The leader sounded perturbed. ‘Who are you?’
Ryker huffed. ‘If you don’t know that already, that’s your problem.’
The man turned and rattled off something in his native tongue to the men at the door. Ryker didn’t speak it fluently at all, but he knew the language was Hebrew. And he had recognised the voice from somewhere.
The man on the left opened the door and stepped out and returned moments later carrying a fabric pouch.
Ryker laughed. ‘Seriously? Let me guess. Some nice shiny metal tools in there?’
The leader stepped forward and threw a fist into Ryker’s gut. It was a powerful shot that sent Ryker’s brain spinning as the oxygen was forced from his lungs. He needed several seconds to regain his focus, by which point the man was kneeling in front of him.
‘I get it,’ he said. ‘You think you’re strong. I know the type. I see the scars on you. What were you? Army? Marine? SAS? Or just some dumb idiot heavy. Whatever the answer, I like your bravado. I like the challenge.’
Ryker shook his head. ‘Eli.’
The man paused.
‘Eli Benado. That’s your name. Thirty-nine years old. Ex-Mossad.’
Silence. Except for Benado’s now heavier breathing. Anger?
‘You think you’re clever,’ Benado said. ‘But you’ve got an unfair advantage. You already knew me. What I want to know is why. Why did you come after us?’
Interesting. Did Benado not see Ryker as an undercover agent, but someone who’d been sent to capture or even kill Yedlin? If that was the case, was it because they were behind Parker’s death and were wary of a revenge attack, or because they believed they were targeted by the same people who’d killed Parker?
‘This is one of my favourites,’ Benado said. He was still on the floor and Ryker couldn’t see his hands at all. He felt pressure on his right foot. ‘You know who I am. You know who I worked for. Perhaps you even know what I did for Mossad.’
There was a sudden sharp and horrific stab of pain in Ryker’s big toe. He clenched his jaw and grimaced. The pain didn’t stop. It got worse, sending a rush of nerve pulses all the way up his leg into his spine, but Ryker didn’t let out even a murmur.
Benado cackled. ‘You’re strong. But you don’t need to prove anything to me. Don’t hold back. Let it out if you need to. Scream. Or just talk. Tell me who you are, and what you were doing at the hotel.’
Another shock of pain, more amplified than before and this time Ryker did shout out.
Another laugh from Benado. ‘Can you believe this?’ He brought his hand into view. ‘Toothpicks. A big man like you, and look at you, all worked up about toothpicks. You see, the key is to hit the right spots. The spots where the nerves are tightly bundled together. Under your nails, that’s the spot. But you have to move it slowly. Millimetre by millimetre, prolonging the sensation.’
Benado paused as he stared at Ryker. What was he doing?
‘Okay, I think I’m going to have to show you what I mean. Better for you to see this.’
Ryker held his body tight as he glanced from the toothpick to Benado’s exposed wrist. His watch. A mistake? Ryker could see the time was quarter to twelve. Fifteen minutes. That’s all he had to hold out for.
Benado called to one of the other men, who came forward and grabbed Ryker’s left hand, laying his fingers out straight. Ryker couldn’t help but watch as Benado lined the toothpick up and then ever so slowly slid the point under the nail of Ryker’s index finger. The pain was instantaneous and Ryker locked every muscle in his body and ground his teeth together. As the toothpick sank further and further, he resisted the urge to howl.
‘Hurts more now you can see, doesn’t it?’ Benado said.
Ryker didn’t say anything. Minutes passed – at least it felt like minutes – as Benado slowly pushed the toothpick deeper and deeper. But he didn’t stop when the point was fully wedged under the nail, he kept going, the wood sinking into Ryker’s flesh as blood seeped out onto the chair arm.
‘This is the worst part, right?’ Benado said. ‘Looks like a bug crawling under your skin.’ He cackled and his chums followed suit.
Ryker squeezed his eyes shut and tried his best to remember all the tricks for channelling and ignoring pain. Tricks that had once been second nature to him and that he wished still were.
‘Of course, this is only the start,’ Benado said, holding up another toothpick. ‘Toothpicks are just a taster. Hopefully enough to make you realise how bad it could get, and that it’s pointless to resist. Now. Let’s see. Still plenty more to go before we move on.’
‘Wait,’ Ryker said.
Benado paused. His eyes fixed on Ryker, who could sense the man’s smile behind the balaclava.
‘I work for the UK government.’ Ryker was annoyed that his voice sounded more anguished than he’d expected. ‘MI5.’
‘No. I don’t think so. I know MI5. They don’t have people like–’
‘I’m working with them,’ Ryker insisted. ‘It’s no lie. We were after Parker. Yedlin too.’
‘Don’t expect this nonsense to scare me off, I–’
‘They’ll be here soon,’ Ryker said.
‘Nobody is coming for you.’
‘My phone. Where is it?’
Benado said nothing.
‘I had to check in with my boss. If I don’t call...’
Benado laughed. ‘Seriously?’
But then came the chirp from the corner of the room. Of course, they hadn’t ditched Ryker’s phone. Benado was an ex-spy. Information was key, a phone a source of intelligence. And he’d thought Ryker was nothing more than a heavy. But MI5, with their capabilities…
‘It’s noon isn’t it?’ Ryker said.
Benado said nothing. The call went unanswered. The room went silent as though everyone was waiting to see if the phone would ring again. It would, eventually. That was the way Ryker had set it up, with the preset call seemingly routed through a government number.
‘You made a big mistake.’ Ryker felt and sounded more with it now, even with the toothpicks still wedged in his flesh. ‘You should have dumped the phone.’
Benado began an exchange with his men, rattling off words in Hebrew at speed.
‘It doesn’t matter that nobody answered,’ Ryker said. ‘The fact the phone rang is enough. It’s on. It’s receiving a signal. They’ll already know the location. You don’t have long.’
Benado straightened up and the men moved over toward the door where their hurried conversation continued.
The phone rang again.
Ryker laughed. ‘They’re already here. Probably traced us as soon as you took me. They’re not calling to check on me. They’re calling to negotiate. This is your last chance to save yourselves.’
Benado turned around. All three men strode toward Ryker. One went behind him. A thick arm came around Ryker’s neck and squeezed tightly. Ryker struggled but could do nothing. Benado pulled out the toothpicks then he and the other man went to work on Ryker’s restraints.
Ryker bided his time, waited for the chance. There had to be a chance.
His right wrist was freed from the rope. A handcuff was slung over in its place. Then his left foot was freed. Another metal click – another set of cuffs. Ryker’s left wrist came free, but was quickly slung into place in the cuffs. Not ideal. But workable.
Finally, his second ankle was freed.
This was the moment.
Ryker planted his feet and pushed up to stand, roaring with effort as he countered the force of the man holding his neck. He hauled his knee up, catching Benado under the chin, and hammered his clasped fists down onto the head of the man who’d been untying his wrists.
Both were sent sprawling, but they weren’t out of the fight. And Ryker still had a brutishly strong arm around his neck, choking him.
Ryker clasped his wrists over the arm, heaved and leaned forward and swivelled, sending both of them crashing down on the ground. The grip loosened and he threw his feet and his elbows into whatever flesh of the man he could find as he squeezed himself out of the hold.
He rolled away. Saw the boot coming toward his face. Benado? It didn’t matter. Ryker grabbed the boot. Jumped to his feet and sent the man flying. The man’s head made contact with the floor. A horrific squelchy smash. Now he was out of the fight.
But there were still two left.
An elbow, arcing for Ryker’s temple. He ducked, avoided the blow, then barrelled forward. With his wrists still bound, Ryker somehow scooped the man off his feet. Okay, so this was Benado. Ryker had already noticed the ex-Mossad agent was smaller than his two beefy accomplices, and Ryker easily carried his weight.
He crashed Benado into the wall, then with him pinned in place, grabbed Benado’s head and cracked it off the mottled plaster. Once. Twice. Three times until Ryker sensed movement behind him.
He let go and Benado slumped to the ground. The arm came back around Ryker’s neck. Squeezed. Even harder than before. Ryker rasped for breath. The man twisted or leaned back, trying to take Ryker off his feet.
No chance. Ryker heaved again and leaned forward, the strain on his neck almost unbearable. But he kept going. Then, with the attacker’s feet off the ground, he propelled himself backward. Awkward clumsy steps, teetering as he carried more than four hundred pounds at speed. Four hundred pounds of battering ram. Heading straight toward the window.
The glass was obliterated. Momentum carried both men out and into the open air. They were in free fall, Ryker staring up to the blue sky above. The man’s arm loosened around his neck, but Ryker grasped hold of it and held him close. One second passed. Two. Ryker had no clue how far up they were.
Crash.
Three storeys. Survivable. At least for Ryker. The man beneath him, however, direct contact on the ground, plus Ryker’s weight slamming down on him...
The arm flopped from Ryker’s neck a moment later.
He achingly got to his feet. Looked back up to the window they’d fallen from. Was sure he could hear voices from within. More men?
He glanced down to the man by his feet. Blood was pooling around his head. Ryker quickly checked his pockets. No luck. No key for the cuffs on his wrists. No anything. Except for a decent watch on his wrist. Still ticking away. Ryker took it.
He stared ahead. Past the chain-link fence of the industrial yard. A row of warehouses stretched into the distance. To Ryker’s right, traffic noise. To his left, green space.
He set off for the warehouses at a sprint.
9
The day that followed the botched heist at Bastian Fischer’s mansion passed by in a blur for Daisy Haan, not least because of the lack of sleep of the eventful night before. After Chester’s no-holds-barred instruction, the first port of call was to release the intruder from the anteroom outside the ultra-secure vault. Haan recruited Barton, head wound and all, plus four others from the dark-and-dirty security team overseen by Chester to pull the guy out of there and restrain him.
Perhaps so many guards was overkill. The guy was on his feet when the door was opened, his balaclava lying discarded by the door as though he accepted it was now pointless. He growled and shouted as the guards closed in but that was about as much defence as he could muster. The guy had been in the windowless and airless anteroom for hours, and it was clear he was oxygen-deprived and lethargic. He was soon on his knees, dragged out of there.
They took him to the basement. Of course. Stage one was figuring out who he was. Stage two was figuring out who the dead men were. Stage three was figuring out who the runner was.
Haan soon left the others to it. It didn’t require the whole team to beat the crap out of the guy. Instead, she spent the next few hours trawling over the site, trawling through CCTV, counting down the hours until the boss himself arrived home. She needed to have some answers. As friendly and happy and charismatic as Fischer always appeared to be, the very fact that he kept someone like Chester close to him, the very fact that he had a security team that operated above the law and would sooner capture and torture an intruder rather than handing him over to the police, was evidence enough of Fischer’s dark side.
What Haan had found in the intervening hours was both intriguing and worrying. Worrying in that this heist team had been well prepared to say the least. Haan wasn’t a computer expert, but she was no slouch either, and it didn’t take her long to figure out the modus operandi was exactly as she’d first guessed.
The crew had tapped into Fischer’s home security network on two fronts. Firstly, they’d attacked wirelessly. Which made sense, because the system was mostly wireless. This had given them some base-level access to the security system, and they’d blocked the CCTV cameras from talking to the hub, in such a way as to not alert the hub to the fact that the cameras had been compromised. Clever.
With the cameras down, they’d been able to sneak onto site, likely over the perimeter wall as the outer gates would have remained shut at that point. An electrical maintenance cupboard at the side of the house had been the next point of attack. Gaining access to the electrical system through there had allowed the team to hardwire into the security system and take full control. This had, in turn, allowed them to bypass the fingerprint scanners and keypad security on the outer gates to get their van in, and those on the doors to the house to let themselves in, which ultimately got them as far as the anteroom to the vault.
The vault had been the sticking point, apparently. Retina-scanning, facial and voice recognition. Had that been beyond this crew? Or had they simply ran out of time with the sedative gas that had knocked out Haan and Barton quickly dissipating? Perhaps they’d incorrectly measured the concentration needed, because she certainly wasn’t fully under when the guy came to check on her, and when he’d tried to move her she’d woken, gutted him and tripped the failsafe. The falling barriers had killed one of the crew and trapped another.
But one had got away. What about him?
Haan had retraced his path across the gardens, visible on the CCTV. She’d used the dogs to follow his trail through the surrounding pine forest. They’d kept on the man’s scent for a good two miles, twisting around the hilly terrain as he headed back east and toward the nearest town. Or village really, as it contained little more than fifty residences, and nothing but the most basic of conveniences and entertainment choices.
The dogs had lost the trail about a half mile out from the village. Perhaps because of the numerous small streams they’d had to pass. Given the route, the village was the obvious immediate destination for the runner.
Regardless, she’d called off the outside search for now. She could have spent some time going around the village door to door, asking whether anyone had seen the man. The one very good reason she hadn’t was because she was well aware that Chester, and by extension the boss himself, Fischer, weren’t planning on making any official complaint about the break-in. Despite the deaths, the police would not be informed, and nor would anyone else from outside Fischer’s inner circle. They wanted to find the culprits themselves. Deal with them in their own way. These people – these criminals – had to know that Bastian Fischer was not fair game.
