The Evolution of Fear (Claymore Straker #2) - Paul E. Hardisty Page 0,125

Clay.

‘We’ve got to hurry,’ said Crowbar. ‘Medved won’t wait around.’

Clay looked at the boy. ‘Okay, Alexi?’

The boy nodded.

Time looped back on itself and he was carrying another injured boy, back in Yemen, the kid’s body wracked with radiation poisoning, and Clay, through his ignorance and selfishness, somehow responsible. And that other time, many years before, when he had pulled the trigger and the boy had bled to death in his arms, Clay cradling him just like this and the dust from the helicopter covering over everything and the gunfire so loud in his head every night since.

‘This man can carry you better than me,’ he said, his voice far away, over mountains.

‘Jesus, they sure worked him over,’ said Crowbar.

‘I fought them,’ the boy said.

‘Good man,’ said Crowbar, taking the boy in his arms. For a big man he was surprisingly gentle.

‘Get them to the car,’ Clay said.

Crowbar nodded. ‘You?’

‘Give me five minutes.’

‘We don’t have five minutes.’

‘Two, then.’ Clay turned away. Someone was going to get hurt after all.

Crowbar reached out his hand, grabbed Clay’s shoulder. ‘No, seun,’ he said. ‘Not this time.’

48

Each Minute Has a Price

Crowbar gunned the engine and the Pajero shot down the narrow lane.

‘Goddamn,’ the glottal Afrikaans was clear over the whine of the diesel. Crowbar jerked the Pajero onto the broad carriageway of Elefteria Avenue, the centre-median palms swaying in the breeze, lights burning in the tavernas that lined the set-back lanes. Crowbar glanced over his shoulder at Katia and the boy huddled together in the back seat.

‘How long do we have?’ asked Clay.

‘About half an hour.’

‘How far from the RV?’

Crowbar leant on the horn, brushed past an old man in a vintage Hillman. ‘Not sure. About that, maybe a bit more.’

Up there, not far, was the border, the Green Line, the demilitarized zone between Turkish and Greek forces. In places up to two miles wide, a meandering, twenty-year confusion of sandbagged emplacements, barbed-wire entanglements and anti-tank ditches, the farm fields and hills sown with thousands of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. And dotted along this wandering scar, from Kato Pyrgo in the west to Deryneia in the east, a rusty wire and sandbag necklace of UN observation posts. Out there, where they were going, the blue cap patrols were few, the posts widely spaced, the lines far apart.

Clay looked back at Katia, smiled at Alexi. ‘We can’t take them with us,’ he said to Crowbar. ‘It’s too dangerous. And now that we have the boy, Hope will be their target. We have to get to her.’

‘We don’t have time, Straker. The old bitch is jumpy as hell. I tell you, broer, if we’re late, she flies. You can guess what that will mean for Rania.’

Clay swallowed. ‘Call Medved.’

‘What?’

‘Call her now. Tell her you’re caught in traffic. Anything. Tell her we need fifteen more minutes. That’ll do. If she’s as desperate for the illumination as you say, she’ll wait.’

Crowbar shrugged, pulled out his phone, flipped it open, hit speed dial, put it to his ear. He spoke in Russian, listened, spoke again, straight-arming the Pajero through the midnight traffic towards the edge of the city. Then he closed his phone, frowned and pushed hard on the accelerator. The Pajero lurched forward.

For a while he said nothing, just manhandled the vehicle through the traffic. And then he said, voice flat: ‘The bitch will wait. Fifteen minutes. But we don’t have time to get Hope. And these two will have to come with us. Tell the girl to keep the kid quiet. They need to get down on the floor and stay out of sight. You too, Straker.’

A police cruiser flashed past in the other direction, lights strobing.

Clay twisted in his seat, faced Katia and Alexi in the backseat. ‘Did you hear that?’

They both nodded, eyes wide in the glow of the streetlights, the flash of headlights from the road.

Katia unbuckled her seat belt, then the boy’s, and slid down with him into the space between the edge of the backseat bench and Crowbar’s chair back. As she did, her minidress hiked up over her thighs. The delicate pale skin was scarred with red linear welts, as if she had been caned. She curled up on the floor and pulled the boy to her. Except for the bruises and cuts they looked like a newborn antelope and its mother, all arms and legs, tawn and black, the pale of her skin, the boy’s big dark curls.

Clay nodded to her, looked into the boy’s eyes. ‘We’ll see your mother soon,’