Carver - By Tom Cain Page 0,94

wrong direction. Then more commands.

Alix nodded and slipped one of the handcuff loops around the driver’s left hand, tightening it hard enough to make him wince.

More footsteps, coming in their direction.

Alex passed the cuff around the back of one of the upright struts that supported the wire racks, then took the driver’s right hand and secured it.

As she did so, Carver got behind the wheel of the buggy and executed a quick three-point turn, so that it was facing back the way it had just come. He slid across the seat so that Alix could get behind the wheel.

‘Floor it,’ he said.

The buggy trundled away, gradually picking up pace towards its top speed of sixteen miles per hour. Carver turned around in his seat so that he was facing backwards, half-kneeling with one knee on the seat, his weight pushed forward so that his thigh was braced against the vertical seat-rest. He reached around to the small of his back and took out his gun. Then he held it out in front of him, sighting at a point in the middle of the corner round which the Chinese were about to appear.

The footsteps got louder.

The kid tied to the wire-rack was darting his head from side to side like one of the spectators on the courts up above them, staring with terrified wide eyes at Carver, then back towards the sound of the approaching footsteps. He started desperately trying to clamber up and over the pipes to give himself a little cover.

‘OK,’ Carver told Alix, ‘hit the brakes.’

The two fastest Chinese came racing around the corner. The first almost skidded to a halt as he spotted Carver up ahead, aiming a gun directly at him, and there was almost a touch of slapstick about the way the next runner crashed into him, nearly knocking him off his feet. But that comedy moment saved the first runner’s life. It meant that Carver’s first shot missed him, and the second hit him high on his right shoulder, smashing into the joint between the shoulder blade and the upper arm. The impact knocked him backwards. He screamed in agony and his gun dropped from his limp, useless arm. But he was still alive.

Carver didn’t have time to finish the first target off. The second was already steadying himself and bringing his gun to bear on the buggy. Carver went for a head shot. Two more quick-fire rounds hit their target, splattering a mess of scarlet blood and grey brain matter against the stark, bare breeze blocks.

Eight rounds used, seven left in the magazine. Three men down …

No, make that two.

The man Carver had wounded was struggling to his feet. He switched his gun to his left hand, and staggered forwards.

Carver winced as he killed him with a pair of shots to the chest, almost resenting his victim for forcing such a clinical execution rather than being smart enough to count himself lucky and stay down.

He pointed his gun up at the neon strip lights and fired off the rest of his rounds, throwing that section of the tunnel into semidarkness. Then he released the magazine, slammed in a new one and passed the gun to Alix. ‘Get round the next corner, then wait for me,’ he said. ‘If I don’t come for you, shoot whoever does.’

Carver got out of the buggy and she drove away. He jumped up and grabbed hold of the framework that ran along the ceiling, carrying the red pipes, wires and shot-out neon lights. Then he swung his legs up into the framework, and pulled his body up until he was lying flat alongside the pipes and wires, hoping that the thin metal struts that supported them would take his weight as well; hoping, too, that he had taken out enough lights to hide his presence from the other Chinese, who must now have realized that they had gone in the wrong direction, and be doubling back his way.

Carver reached down to his leg and slipped the knife from his ankle sheath.

More voices came, two of them, one higher-pitched than the other. Their words were indecipherable, but the questioning tone was clear. They were calling out for their mates, and wondering why there was no reply. Seconds later the owners of the voices came into view: a shaven-headed, thickset guy who looked like he could handle himself, and a slip of a girl in a sexy little mini. They both glanced at their dead comrades. The girl visibly flinched,