Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [8]
Then, through the dust, he saw the Irishman. Gripping a black pistol, he stood between the two jack-knifed wagons filled with scrap metal directly behind the engine. A rucksack hung from his shoulder. It seemed to be full, which meant that if he intended to blow up the hazardous-material containers, he hadn’t set the charges yet.
Bond aimed his pistol and fired two shots close to the Irishman, to drive him back to the Mercedes. The man crouched, startled, then vanished fast.
Bond looked towards the restaurant side of the track, where the Mercedes was parked. His mouth tightened. The Serbian agents hadn’t followed his orders. They were now flanking the work shed, having pulled the Irishman’s Slavic associate to the ground and slipped nylon restraints around his wrists. The two were now moving closer to the train.
Incompetence . . .
Bond scrabbled to his feet and, keeping low, ran towards them.
The Serbs were pointing at the tracks. The rucksack now sat on the ground, among some tall plants near the engine, obscuring a man. Crouching, the agents moved forward cautiously.
The bag was the Irishman’s . . . but, of course, the man behind it was not. The driver’s body, probably.
‘No,’ Bond whispered into the SRAC. ‘It’s a trick! . . . Are you there?’
But the older agent wasn’t listening. He stepped forward, shouting, ‘Ne mrdaj! Do not move!’
At that moment the Irishman leant out of the engine’s cab and fired a burst from his pistol, hitting him in the head. He dropped hard.
His younger colleague assumed that the man on the ground was firing and emptied his automatic weapon into the dead body of the driver.
Bond shouted, ‘Opasnost!’
But it was too late. The Irishman leant out of the cab again and shot the younger agent in the right arm, near the elbow. He dropped his gun and cried out, falling backwards.
As the Irishman leapt from the train, he let go half a dozen rounds towards Bond, who returned fire, aiming for the feet and ankles. But the haze and vapours were thick. He missed. The Irishman holstered his gun, shouldered the rucksack and dragged the younger agent towards the Mercedes. They disappeared.
Bond sprinted back to the Jetta, jumped in and roared off. Five minutes later he soared over a hillock and landed, skidding, in the field behind Restoran Roštilj. The scene was one of complete chaos as diners and staff fled in panic. The Mercedes was gone. Glancing towards the derailed train, he could see that the Irishman had killed not only the older agent but his own associate – the Serbian he’d dined with. He’d shot him as he’d lain on his belly, hands bound.
Bond got out of the Jetta and frisked the body for pocket litter but the Irishman had stripped the man of his wallet and any other material. Bond pulled out his own Oakley sunglasses, wiped them clean, then pressed the dead man’s thumb and index finger against the lens. He ran back to the Jetta and sped after the Mercedes, urging the car to seventy miles an hour despite the meandering road and potholes pitting the tarmac.
A few minutes later he glimpsed something light-coloured in a lay-by ahead. He braked hard, barely controlling the fishtailing skid, and stopped, the car engulfed in smoke from its tyres, a few yards from the younger agent. He got out and bent over the man, who was shivering, crying. The wound in his arm was bad and he’d lost a great deal of blood. One shoe was off and a toenail was gone. The Irishman had tortured him.
Bond opened his folding knife, cut the man’s shirt with the razor-sharp blade and bound a wool strip round his arm. With a stick he found just off the lay-by he made a tourniquet and applied it. He leant down and wiped sweat from the man’s face. ‘Where is he going?’
Gasping, his face a mask of agony, he rambled in Serbo-Croatian. Then, realising who Bond was, he said, ‘You will call my brother . . . You must take me to the hospital. I will tell you a place to go.’
‘I need to know where he went.’
‘I didn’t say nothing. He tried. But I didn’t tell nothing about you.’
The boy had spilt out everything he knew