One Shot Kill - Robert Muchamore Page 0,56
another slam against the hut.
Marc shook his head as a passenger train whooshed by, tilting him off balance. Justin’s situation was rotten, but he couldn’t get involved in anything that didn’t directly affect the mission.
‘Next time I see you I’ll pay you five francs,’ Justin said meekly, as the noise of the train subsided. ‘But you’re ripping me off so much, it’s hardly worth riding the train any more.’
The older cop slapped Justin so hard that he went down.
‘You remember who you are, and who we are,’ the younger cop snapped.
As Justin got to his feet he was fighting off tears. Marc put a hand on his throwing knife and almost wished for an excuse to use it.
‘Out of our sight,’ the older cop said. ‘And don’t forget our money.’
Justin scrambled away eagerly, but the younger cop tugged on a strap around Justin’s shoulder.
‘And what’s this?’ he asked
Marc’s jaw dropped: Justin was still wearing the small pack he’d taken from Paul when they’d first met. The older cop’s eyes widened, because he knew exactly what it was.
‘Where did you find that?’ he asked. ‘What’s inside it?’
When you jump out of an aeroplane, you need two free hands for steering and the parachute, which rules out carrying anything on your back. Any equipment a parachutist carries has to be inside a pocket, or in a sausage-shaped canvas bag strapped to your thigh.
‘Where did you find a sausage bag?’ the older cop said, as the younger one tugged the strap so hard that Justin’s head snapped back. He then used the strap to lift Justin off the ground and swing him head first against the side of the signal hut.
‘Stop it,’ Justin whined.
‘Best to answer us when we speak,’ the younger cop shouted.
You couldn’t have two untrustworthy cops taking Justin into custody with Paul’s equipment, so Marc went for his knife. Goldberg made the same decision a half-second faster and jumped out from the other side of the hut.
‘Excuse me, officers,’ he said, in French that came with a New York accent.
As the officers turned around, Goldberg fired two shots with a silenced pistol, getting them both between the eyes.
‘Jesus,’ Justin yelled, hitting the ground as his tormentor dropped him.
The silenced gun pulsed twice more as Goldberg put two clinical shots through the policemen’s hearts.
‘Oh, God,’ Justin said, as he crawled away. He felt queasy even before he dared to look back at the blood and brains splattered all over the wooden hut.
‘Justin, you did great,’ Marc said, as he offered the boy a hand. ‘Don’t be scared. Keep your voice low, take slow deep breaths.’
As Justin got up, Goldberg went up three steps and kicked in the padlocked door of the disused signal box.
‘How much water have you got in your canteen?’ Goldberg asked.
‘Not much,’ Marc said.
Goldberg pulled a half-full canteen out of his jacket and threw it to Marc. ‘Use that to wash the worst of the gunge off the hut. I’ll drag the bodies inside. They’ll find them eventually, but it should buy us long enough to clear the area.’
As Marc pulled up a handful of grass and used it to wipe down the side of the hut, Goldberg removed the dead cops’ watches, wallets and identity papers before dragging them into the signal hut. There wasn’t much chance that the cops would think it was a robbery, but there was no harm in trying to make it look that way.
The older cop was twice Goldberg’s weight and Justin had regained enough composure to grab his ankles as the American struggled to drag him up the three steps.
The side of the hut cleaned up fairly well, but there was nothing they could do about the pooled blood on the ground. From a distance it didn’t look as obvious as two dead bodies on the ground, but the next person to stroll around the back of the signal box would dip their boot in blood.
‘Justin, lead us home,’ Goldberg said, after a final glance around.
Rather than go back along the tracks, they walked down an overgrown path, crossed a road and reached Justin’s house via land behind cottages at the base of the railway embankment.
Inside Justin’s home, Luc, Paul and Henderson had ditched their combat gear, scrubbed up and changed into French civilian clothes, while Sam had taken the fourth turn in brown bathwater and was trying to dry off using a ragged and extremely wet towel.
‘Good to see you again,’ Marc said, when he stepped through to the kitchen