to stop Eddie making a mistake?
Kit broke off from pacing the catwalk to check his watch. Over twenty minutes had passed since the phone call, and there was still no sign of a helicopter. The Group’s representative might simply be being cautious . . . but might also have decided that the risk was too great and abandoned the meeting.
And their operative. The thought twisted his stomach into a knot. He glanced at the gas tank. Stikes’s sniper was still lying on the platform. The Interpol officer had no doubts whatsoever that Stikes would kill him the moment he felt things had gone wrong . . .
A new sound over the unceasing rumble of the gas pumps. Rotor blades. The helicopter.
Unable to conceal a sigh of relief, he looked for the noise’s source, seeing strobe lights in the sky to the west.
Eddie also heard the incoming chopper, and froze behind one of the tanks. Stikes and Kit showed no signs of surprise or alarm, so they were expecting it. Who was aboard?
For now, that was irrelevant. What mattered was that it gave him a deadline: it was no more than two minutes away from touching down. He had to be finished before it arrived.
He set off again, moving through the pumping station’s shadows until he reached the ladder up one of the tanks. From here, the sound of the pumps was a steady, churning rumble, backed by the low-frequency hiss of gas rushing through the main pipeline. It would mask the sound of his climb – and better yet, he realised as he took hold of the ladder, there was a vibration running through the framework that would camouflage his steps.
He began to climb. The tank was about thirty feet high. As he approached its top he slowed, cautiously peering on to the platform.
A man dressed in black lay upon it, back to him.
One of Stikes’s men, armed with a SCAR rifle with a telescopic sight. He wasn’t looking through the scope, though; he was watching the approaching helicopter.
Eddie waited, poised at the top of the ladder. If he climbed any higher, the man might catch him in his peripheral vision and raise the alarm. The chopper was now only a minute out. Look away, dammit!
After another agonising few seconds, the man finally moved his eye back to the sight. Eddie carefully climbed the last few rungs to crouch on the platform just behind the sniper . . .
Then he lunged, grabbing the mercenary’s head and yanking it back as hard as he could, wrapping an arm tightly round his throat.
The sniper made a choked gurgling sound, dropping the SCAR and trying to claw at his attacker’s face. Eddie squeezed harder, twisting sharply – and a crunch of crushed cartilage came from the sniper’s neck, followed by the muffled snap of bone. The man went limp.
Eddie dropped him and caught the SCAR by its strap just before it tipped over the platform’s edge. He lay beside the dead man, recognising him as Voeker, and quickly and expertly checked the gun. A full load of thirty 5.56mm rounds, and the scope was a high-quality night vision unit, a sharp red chevron superimposed over the centre of the shimmering green image.
He lined up the chevron’s point on Stikes’s head. The mercenary leader was completely unaware of him, a sitting duck. All he had to do was pull the trigger . . .
It wasn’t mercy that stopped his finger from tightening – he had already decided that Stikes was going to die. Instead, it was the urge to find out what was going on, to catch everybody involved. The helicopter swung overhead, kicking up dust as it settled on the pad. Stikes picked up the case, and the two men on the catwalk headed for the metal stairs.
Eddie moved the sight to the helicopter. A young, beefy blond man in a dark suit climbed out. Was this the contact? No - he hurried round to the aircraft’s far side to open the door for another passenger.
At first, all he could see beneath the fuselage was a pair of black stiletto-heeled boots. Then the new arrival strode into view.
He was so shocked that he almost dropped the rifle.
The person meeting Stikes was someone he knew. Someone he thought was dead.
His ex-wife. Sophia.
41
‘I know you,’ said Stikes with a suspicious frown as Sophia Blackwood descended the steps, her long black coat billowing in the idling helicopter’s rotor wash. ‘You were Chase’s wife.’
‘I know you too,’