Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [74]
There, on the baked-dirt forecourt, was Milligan’s body, face down in a pool of his own blood.
‘Head shot,’ Paynter whispered, flattening himself against the garage wall and pulling Tegan with him. ‘Shit, I shouldn’t have left him.’
Tegan stole a glance past his shoulder. To her surprise she felt nothing. A hollow numbness.
‘Pull yourself together,’ hissed Paynter, regardless of whether she had done anything to warrant such a rebuke or not. ‘You can’t help him now.’
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‘No,’ answered Tegan automatically. ‘That’s the story of my life.’
They faced each other and for a fraction of a second there was eye contact, and a shared pain. Then it passed and Paynter risked putting his head around the corner. A shotgun blast narrowly missed him and sent him sprawling to the ground, out of sight of the gunman. ‘Stupid idiot,’ Paynter said in self-flagellation. ‘One target. Double-barrelled shotgun. He’s got himself a sniper’s nest behind the middle petrol pump. I can draw his fire but we’ll need . . . ’
Then he stopped as if he had only just realised that it wasn’t Barrington at his shoulder, but an unarmed Australian girl. ‘Never mind.’
‘What’s Plan B?’ Tegan asked.
‘Gimme a few minutes and I’ll tell you,’ muttered Paynter.
Tegan pulled a small mirror from her skirt pocket and handed it to Paynter.
‘Any use?’ she asked.
Paynter looked at her in surprise. ‘This hardly seems like the time to ask, but . . . ’
‘I always carry one,’ answered Tegan. ‘Helps with the application of make-up, don’t you know?’
Paynter held the mirror out in front of him and adjusted the angle until he had the garage owner in sight. ‘He’s got a clear line of fire this side,’ he noted,
‘and we can’t go round the back because he’s at an angle where he’d see any movement to his right.’
‘So?’ asked Tegan anxiously.
Paynter withdrew the mirror and handed it back to Tegan. ‘No transport, so he must have been dropped in. I’m not generally a cynical man,’ he began, clearly lying, ‘but matey out there is a rank amateur. And I’m not.’ He removed his jacket and bundled it into Tegan’s arms. ‘I’m going up on the roof to teach this redneck a lesson he won’t forget for the rest of his short life. Stay here and don’t move unless you want to be hamburger.’
Tegan didn’t see any point in arguing. She watched as Paynter clambered up the external drainpipe beside the rest rooms and flattened himself on the asphalt roof. She used the mirror to track him crawling across it as far as she could, then turned her attention to the man with the shotgun. He had advanced beyond the gas pump and was slowly making his way towards an abandoned car three-quarters of the way to the corner. Tegan offered up a silent prayer to the God she had stopped believing in when she was nine that he wouldn’t turn around and look skywards.
The two rapid shots that shattered the man’s kneecaps from behind told her that Paynter’s plan had swung, effectively, into operation. Tegan saw the reflection of an ill-defined shape sweep through the mirror’s field of vision.
Paynter, if that was indeed who it was, became blurred by the vibration of her hand which, she suddenly realised, was shaking.
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She pocketed the mirror and placed the palms of her hands flat against the bare concrete wall trying to control her breathing. Then she put them over her ears to cut out the tortured screams that were coming from around the corner.
Hands are useful things, she decided, when they can be used to obliterate the outside world. Even gunshots.
‘Tegan.’ Paynter’s voice sliced through the noise of her pounding heart. He shouted her name again and she emerged from the shadows, blinking, into the sunlight. Paynter met her halfway and placed himself between the body of the man and her.
‘Best not to look, love,’ he said.
Tegan, frankly, believed him.
Instead, she turned and looked at Dave Milligan, dead on a Nevada dirt road many miles