The Vanishing (7 page)

There were only two choices – move back behind the wall, drop the chair and run, or go for the man. But he was already in view. There was no turning back now, so he stepped in and threw the chair.

The gun went off as the man was still twisting towards him, firing off to the left, smashing something. The chair hit the man’s arm, raised to ward it off. The man staggered backwards, not falling, but going down on to one knee, off balance. As he went down Tom was running forward, all his attention on the gun. He was right behind the chair as it clattered to the floor. He needed to close the man down, get him to the floor, pin him. Or at least hit him, kick him. All he could see was the gun, swinging round towards him. It looked massive, double-barrelled – a shotgun, not a rifle. He had to get his hands on it. But the chair was in his way now, between himself and the man. He was stumbling over it already. Behind them, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sara diving towards her bed, getting clear.

He knew before he got over the chair that the gun would be pointed at him before he could get to it. So he dived low, trying to get under the barrels, going for the man’s legs. It went off again, right above his head, deafening him. But he was already into the man’s thighs, pushing him backwards and down to the floor in a clumsy rugby tackle. Something hit his shoulder and the man started to yell. Tom got his head up and started to thrash out with his fists, not feeling anything as they connected, his brain flooded with adrenalin, everything a chaotic blur of movement. He was on the floor, on top of the guy, so close he could smell the sweat on him. He struggled against the sheer weight of his body – trying desperately to get up by pushing off him, feeling only slightly the blows from the guy’s free hand – but then the butt of the weapon caught his head. He reeled backwards, falling against the chair, lights spinning through his vision. But he was up almost immediately, coming right back at the man, striking out at him again. As he got to his knees he saw the guy was again trying to get the barrels on to him, but it was point-blank range now – there wasn’t even enough room to aim. If he pulled the trigger it would blow Tom’s legs off. In a blind panic, Tom kicked out at him, catching his face, then the gun. Surprisingly, it spun out of the man’s hands and slid across the floor. Tom rolled away and started scrambling towards it. He got into a crouch, took two steps then heard a loud, percussive crack. He spun round to see Sara leaning across the bed, pointing something. The man was flat out on his back, blood spreading rapidly over his shirt, chest heaving. He opened his mouth to gasp for air and blood ran out in a thick stream. He started to convulse, back arching, fingers clawing at the floor, eyes still open. The blood was already puddling around him, spreading quickly across the boards.

Tom started to shake uncontrollably. He put the shotgun down. Sara was clutching something that must have been a hunting rifle. Something very large calibre. There were telescopic sights, but she was staring past them, watching the man, her eyes wide, her face trembling with shock. Tom pushed himself into a standing position. He could hear shouting from outside. Her eyes came off the man. She looked at Tom and he stared back at her. ‘We have to get out of here,’ she said. ‘Right now.’

‘It’s kidnappers,’ Sara said, her voice breaking. She was over by a small window, opening it. ‘Jean-Marc got me on the intercom. They were coming for him …’ She turned back to him and her eyes crossed the body on the floor. She flinched, then started to cry. ‘It’s finally happening,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘I’ve had this fear all my life. Now it’s happening. They’ve come for me. We have to get out of here. I think they killed Jean-Marc. There are more of them. They will be coming. They’ll kill you, kidnap me. We have to get out.’

Tom looked back at the body. It was trembling, like there was still life there. He should walk over to it, check it, do first aid, he thought. He was standing in the middle of the room uselessly, in a daze. But if the man were alive, what could be done? She had shot him through the chest. He could see the hole where the round had entered. If they got him to a good casualty unit within minutes he might live. But the exit wound would be a mess, too big to patch up with any facilities they might find here, if they had time. And the nearest hospital was hours away.

Was the man what they called a pirate? He looked like one. He looked like all the Somali pirates Tom had ever seen on TV, the same height, the same distinctive facial features.

‘I think I killed him,’ Sara said, very faintly.

‘He might not be dead …’ Tom had seen dead people before, seen violence, but never anything like this, never anything so close up. All his muscles were tight with the shock of it. He didn’t know what he should do. Then, from the stairwell beyond her door, he thought he could hear voices, raised, getting nearer. He wrenched his eyes from the body. ‘How do we get out?’ he asked, his voice betraying his panic.

‘Down here,’ she said, her voice rushed. She was pointing at the open window. ‘There’s a ladder. It’s a fire escape.’

He moved quickly to the window. Outside he could see a ladder on to a roof section. ‘Is this the only way?’

She nodded. ‘They’re in the house, below us. I can hear. We can’t go down the stairs.’

‘OK. You go first,’ he said. ‘Give me the gun. I’ll cover us.’

‘Do you know how to shoot it?’

‘Point it, pull the trigger.’

‘It’s not that simple. You go first. I’ll cover you.’

She was right, of course. She’d already proved that. ‘Just go,’ he said. ‘Go now. Hurry. I don’t know where I’m meant to be going. I’ll follow you.’

She slung the rifle over her shoulder and went straight over the sill. He was immediately behind her, over the short wooden sill and down on to the metal-runged ladder fixed to the wall of the house. He went down expecting a shot to hit him, or that he would fall off, clatter across the roof, give them away. But he made it down despite his sweaty palms, then stood panting in the warm darkness, on the short sloping first-floor roof, beside her. She was listening into the silence. ‘We jump down from here,’ she whispered. ‘Jump down and run over there, to the lab block.’ Like she had a plan. There wasn’t time to ask her about that, but to get over to the lab block made sense. There was plenty of shadow, bushes against the wall. They could crouch down and hide, think about it.

She went a second before him, jumping with the gun in her hands. The drop was a bit more than her height. He landed easily and started immediately to sprint across the short open space to the lab block. But halfway across he realised she hadn’t followed. He doubled back into the shadow at the base of the house wall. She was leaning against it, vomiting. He put a hand on her shoulder and asked her if she was OK, at the same time glancing back across the open space behind the house, watching for movement. She was sobbing between retches, sobbing and gasping for breath. ‘I killed him,’ she hissed. ‘I shot him.’

He kept his head moving, watching. They were too exposed. He turned her face up towards his. ‘Look. You had no choice,’ he said, not looking at her, watching instead the gap over by the summerhouse. They would come from there, he thought. Any minute now. ‘He would have killed us both,’ he said. ‘He was armed …’

‘I killed him …’

‘You did. But now’s not the time to fucking worry about it. We have to get into cover.’ He pulled her away from the wall and dragged her into the open. They ran together across the space between the house and the lab. He still had hold of her arm. He took her round the back of the building. The jungle was right there, breathing on them. He thought they should bolt into it, keep running, get some distance between themselves and the house. Then he could talk to her, find out how they could get off the island, or where the emergency button was, or whatever it was they must have had planned for this kind of thing. But she pulled him back as he stepped towards the bushes. ‘I can’t,’ she said.

‘Can’t what?’

‘I can’t just run.’

‘If you don’t they’ll kill you.’

‘I don’t think so. I’m valuable alive. You should run, though. You should get away from me …’ She stopped. He saw in her eyes that she was terrified he would actually leave her. ‘Get away from me,’ she said again, her lips twisting. ‘You’ll get killed if you’re with me. Leave me.’

‘No fucking way,’ he said. ‘I haven’t a clue where I am. And we both need to run. I can’t just leave you. It doesn’t work like that.’

‘I have to help Janine,’ she said. ‘She’s my friend.’

He caught himself. Friendship was one thing, but this was extremity. It was everyone for themselves now. Besides, Janine had probably already been caught. God knew what had happened to her if this really was some kind of pirate attack. He held his tongue, went down into a crouch, listening intently to see if anyone was following. Still no noise. ‘OK,’ he said, gritting his teeth. ‘Where is she?’

‘In the house. Where we’ve come from. Ground floor.’

‘We can’t go back in there. There were …’ He stopped abruptly. They had both heard something. Footsteps coming from the area between the house and the lab. ‘Down here,’ she hissed. Before he could stop her she was flat on her belly and crawling fast through the undergrowth, back towards the lab wall. He went down but kept completely still, too nervous to move. Within seconds she was ahead of him, up by the concrete lab wall. He couldn’t see her but she was making too much noise. He wanted to shout at her to shut up, keep still. If someone came round the side now they would hear her at once. Then all they would have to do was fire at the noise. He could hear more shouting now, but from much farther away.

Then a shot. It sounded close. He flinched, covering his head with his hands. He held his breath, waiting. He was in shadow and half covered by the undergrowth. He kept his eyes screwed tightly shut, in a kind of instinctive flinch, certain there was someone standing there, at the very end of the lab block, looking down the line of the building, staring right at him, about to shoot. He started to count.

Nothing happened. He kept counting, reached eighty and exhaled slowly. He held his breath again, all his concentration on his ears. He waited some more. Still nothing. Then he could hear her whispering to him from the shadows, telling him to come, urgently. He opened his eyes and looked. There was no one there.

He began to inch forward, into the thicker bushes growing against the wall of the building, following her obvious trail, where she had flattened everything down. When he got through to the wall he realised she was underneath the building itself. It didn’t look like it was raised off the ground, but it must have been, because she had pulled away a section of fine mesh grilling, about two foot high, revealing some kind of space beneath. She had managed to wriggle underneath the actual building.

He followed her reluctantly into a tight, claustrophobic space like a coffin. He was crawling on compacted mud, into the total darkness. He got past her, his hands feeling the dirt ahead, his head pressed against the floor above, then waited while she pulled the mesh back into place and crept up beside him. ‘We have a drill,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘We go through problems and what to do … Jean-Marc made me do it every month. One plan was to hide here.’

‘And then what?’ he hissed. ‘What’s the rest of the plan?’

‘No more. I don’t have any more ideas.’

‘So why the fuck are we here?’

‘I don’t know. I’m terrified. Sorry. I’m completely terrified. We can crawl ahead, towards the light …’ His eyes must have been adjusting. He could see she was pointing now, see that there was light coming in from other sections of mesh, right over at the other side of the building. ‘We’ll be able to see the area behind the house,’ she said. ‘See what they’re doing …’

‘What good will that do?’ he hissed. ‘We should get out of here. Run.’

‘Not without Janine. And anyway, there’s nowhere to run to. The best we can do is hide until they leave …’

‘Not under here, then. Somewhere where we can breathe … until we can get help …’

‘How will we get help?’

‘There’s no emergency line … or anything like that?’

‘No. There’s a satellite phone facility at the other end of the island. About four hours away, on foot, by daylight …’

‘That’s it, then. We should get to it.’

‘We need to get to Janine first.’ She started to crawl ahead. He rested his head on the mud and tried to control the leaping panic in his gut. Then, very carefully, very slowly, he followed her. She had stopped about three feet back from another section of metal mesh, this one at the other side of the building, he guessed. He came up beside her and she pointed in silence. He looked through the holes and could see the area outside the big house, the flattened, cleared area between the lab block, the house and the summerhouse, beautifully lit by the bright full moon. There were shapes lying there, right in the middle. As he tried to make out what they were he saw two men emerge from a rear door to the house. They were carrying a body. A lifeless body. They dumped it with effort on top of the other shapes. ‘They’re all bodies,’ she spluttered. ‘They’re all bodies.’ She started to sob again, very quietly.

He felt very cold, frozen, like his blood had stopped flowing. He had never felt fear like this in his life. Not even close. It was completely numbing. He put his head down on the hard surface and started to shiver. For a minute or more he couldn’t do anything else. Beside him he could see her face – about twenty inches away from his. She was crying silently. ‘What do we do?’ she started to say. ‘What do we do?’ She kept whispering it, like she was going to really start kicking and shrieking. He took a big breath and reached a hand out to her. She jumped when he touched her, banging her head off the roof. Her eyes turned to him like those of some animal, totally overcome with fear.

‘Shut up,’ he whispered. He put a finger on her lips. ‘Shut the fuck up. Now.’

There was movement above them, inside the actual lab block, over their heads. He heard a door swing open, then there was a man right in front of them, legs moving in front of the grille. He was walking across the space in front of the lab. His legs stopped in front of the grille and Tom heard the crackle of static from a radio set, then words: ‘Max? You there?’