The Hit List Read online

  When he stuck his head into the common room there was a pair of soiled knickers on the TV screen.

  'What's this?' he asked one of the boys, a rangy computer-fanatic named Tyrell.

  'It's the documentary I asked you about, sir,' said Tyrell.

  The camera panned across a wrecked bed, paused to [ examine a discarded condom. '

  'How much longer has it got to go?' If Latimer, the Delves housemaster, came in now there would be questions asked.

  'About fifteen minutes. Do you agree that this is art, sir?'

  An unshaven man in square-framed glasses was now standing in front of Tracey Emin's bed. 'Bad sex, skid marked sheets - today it's all up for grabs,' he was saying.

  'I'm afraid it's not my special subject, Tristram,'

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  I' Slater replied. It was a weak answer and he knew it. He should watch this business of Christian-naming the boys, too. The other staff-members didn't like it, and he'd been warned about it more than once. Undercutting discipline, he'd been told. Tracey Emin was now on screen, topless. 'What do you think of that, sir? She's quite fit, isn't �she?'

  'I'm sure she'd value your approval,' said Slater If drily. He glanced round the room. All eyes were on f ITracey. 'How did you goons get to be made prefects, j anyway?'

  'Born to it, sir,' drawled a general's son named f Springell, looking pointedly at Slater. 'Natural selec- I tion.' Running his fingers through expensively barbered I hair, he turned back to the screen. 'Oh, you dirty, dirty Igirl. . . Bloody hell, that's a used Tampax, isn't it?'

  'I think you should discuss it with Mr Parry in the art room, Springell. And less of the bloodies, please.' 'It's not my Tampax.'

  'Don't wind me up Springell, OK?' Suddenly ISlater's voice was raw steel. The temperature in the | room seemed to drop several degrees. The boys stared |at the TV screen, where Tracey Emin was dancing and aughing.

  'How're al-Jubrin and Ripley, sir?' Paul Reinhardt [.said eventually.

  'I don't think Masoud's going to be in that three I quarter line on Saturday, if that's what you mean. Gary Ripley should be OK.'

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  Slater was grateful for the change of subject. Even after fifteen years hard soldiering he was still vulnerable to the suggestion that he had been put on Earth for the casual amusement of the likes of Springell. I'll give him natural fucking selection, he thought.

  Reinhardt's question also reminded him that he had promised to look in on the flu-stricken team members. It shouldn't be too late.

  'How much longer does this go on?' he asked for the second time.

  'Fourteen minutes now, sir,' said Tyrell.

  'Right. I'm just going over to the sick bay and when I come back I want you all upstairs in your rooms. Springell, you're responsible for making sure everything's turned off. TV plug out of the wall, please.'

  'Sir,' said Springell, injecting the single syllable with all the irony he could muster.

  The sick bay was at the back of the main building on the top floor, well away from the classrooms, kitchens and other centres of activity. Pupils were only ever detained there with minor conditions. Anything that exceeded the expertise of Matron - a corpulent body who regularly contacted her late husband by means of a spiritualist - demanded a visit from the Henley GP or transfer to a hospital in Reading. That, in turn, often meant a second transfer to a private clinic in London; the school had given up trying to explain to foreign parents that for most conditions the local NHS hospital

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  was a better and safer bet than even the most expensive clinic.

  ( The lift was waiting on the ground floor. Slater thought this strange: it usually remained on the top floor once Matron had retired to her quarters for the night. She slept next to the sick bay. There was also a knight nurse, a willowy redhead named Jean Burney. j1 Slater had caught Jean's eye once or twice and detected 14 definite twinkle. Since she was always on duty in the Lfvenings, however, he had not had the chance to poliow it up.

  He stepped out of the lift, heard the doors slide shut ehind him. The sick bay was arranged around a ijuare lobby containing a pair of sofas, a low table and le night nurse's desk. On two sides of the square were lined-off enclosures; these were for junior boys, id none appeared to be occupied. Nor was the night nurse's desk. Perhaps Jean Burney gone to the toilet. Slater decided to go straight jugh to the sixth form bay. Passing the desk, jwever, he saw that a table lamp had fallen and ashed, leaving curling fragments of glass on the Jrhite linoleum floor. Among the glass were smears of Gently shed blood. More splashes led towards the for to Matron's quarters and the sixth form bay. Had accidentally knocked the lamp to the floor and len cut her hand on the broken glass? She didn't look

  clumsy type.

  $' And then, at the edge of a smear of blood by the sr, Slater saw a faint chevron-shaped imprint. It was

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  no more than an inch long, but he recognised it instantly. No member of the teaching or medical staff wore commando-soled boots, and the boys all wore regulation lace-ups.

  He froze, instantly alert, felt the familiar thud of his heartbeat as the adrenaline kicked in. For a moment he paused, ears straining for the slightest sound, and then moved at a crouch to the passage door. It opened, but not easily. Something heavy had been laid against it. Silently he raised himself to the level of the glass panes in the upper half of the door. The lights were offin the corridor but he made out a human shape - two bare legs, the faint scrabbling of fingers. Gently, Slater forced the door open, pushing the figure away from him until there was room to squeeze through.

  It was Jean Bumey. Slater recognised her by her hair. She had been blindfolded and gagged and her | wrists were taped behind her back. Drying blood ran | from both nostrils, her lower lip was split, and her nose i looked broken. She was unconscious.

  She was breathing, though, and Slater quickly ripped off the gag and the blindfold and cut the tape from her wrists with the Mauser penknife he carried on a lanyard in his trouser pocket. For the moment this was all he dared attempt. The intruder, or intruders, could still be in the building.

  There was sufficient light for Slater to see that all three sick bay doors were closed. An attempt to enter any of them could invite a bullet. The fourth door bore a nameplate marked matron - Mrs T Mackay.

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  Silently, he turned the handle and slipped inside. He had barely closed the door behind him when a bedside light snapped on and a nightie-clad figure struggled to an upright position.

  'Yes?' she began sleepily, assuming Slater to be Jean. Seeing that he wasn't her tone changed to alarm. 'Mr |$later, may I ask what on Earth--'

  'Keep quiet!' he hissed. 'There are--' 'Come any closer and I'll scream,' hissed Mrs ackay. 'What the hell's going on? What are you--' 'Intruders. They've knocked Jean out. I think ley're after one of the boys - probably already taken I want you to ring security, the police and the admaster in that order. And I need a weapon.' 'You whafi Mr Slater, they might be--' 'Armed? I know. They could also be getting away one of the boys.' His eyes searched the room, ited on the reproduction Hepplewhite chair in ich Mrs Mackay liked to watch Emmerdale and tEnders.

  hard, downward stamp and a violent wrench re the Matron's horrified eyes, and Slater was ting one of the chair's curved mahogany legs, of yellow damask trailed from the heavy less end.

  'Phone,' he whispered, and slipped from the room, the corridor he stopped and listened again, all his racing. Jean Burney still lay unconscious by the s. From the furthest sick room came a broken, luring sound.

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  Slater kicked open the three doors, the chair-leg raised to fend off any attacker. In the first, he found only darkness and silence. In the second, gagged as Jean Burney had been but half-conscious, he discovered a boy he recognised as Christopher Boyd-Farquharson a dreamy
fourteen-year-old excused from games on account of his asthma. The boy had received a nasty bang on the head, and judging from the confusion in his eyes was badly concussed, but - thank God appeared to be breathing more or less regularly. Cutting him free, whispering to him that on no account was he to leave the room, Slater hurried on.

  Behind the third door he found Gary Ripley and an empty bed. Ripley, twisted beneath a grey school blanket, had been beaten badly; his face was bruised and lacerated and he was bleeding from one ear. His knuckles, Slater noticed, were also bleeding and there was blood beneath his fingernails. He had not gone down without a struggle.

  'How many men?' Slater asked gently.

  'Two.'

  'They took Masoud?'

  Ripley nodded, a movement that was clearly agonising. 'I did my best, sir,' he whispered. 'One had a gun.'

  'Describe the gun, Gary.'

  'Revolver . . . heavy revolver. Other had a knife.'

  'And the men?'

  'Two Arabs. In black. Beards . . .' Tears of pain and helplessness began to run down the boy's cheeks. 'My

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  stomach, sir. Could you

  Slater pulled back the blanket. A black, inch-long lit gaped just below the boy's navel. Blood pulsed jm the wound. The sheets and the boy's cotton pyjamas were dark with it. Grabbing a towel from the andrail, Slater pressed it to the stab-wound. Ripley sped and his eyes rolled backwards. 'Gary, you've done well. You've done fucking well, low you've got to hang in there, understand?' 'I'll be OK, sir. You go on.'

  But the voice was barely audible, and as Slater raised self from the bed the boy began to shake. Slater lew what was coming. He'd held men on the edge af death before, seen them move from this world into le waiting room of the next. Convulsing, Ripley lost Consciousness.

  Mrs Mackay, her nightdress smeared with Jean Jurney's blood, stood in the doorway. Taking in the cene at a glance she moved swiftly to the bed and held i finger to Ripley's neck.

  'I've rung an ambulance for Jean, but it's got to :>me from Reading. This boy's not going to last that ang.'

  Slater pulled a pen from his pocket and scribbled a

  lumber on the pillow-case. 'Get back on the phone.

  Tell whoever answers there's been a kidnapping and

  abbing, that there are firearms involved, and that we

  eed an emergency services helicopter immediately.

  Say you're calling on behalf of Neil Slater from B

  Squadron.'

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  Mrs Mackay looked at him uncertainly. 'What is this number?'

  Slater picked up the chair-leg. 'It's the headquarters of the Special Air Service.'

  'And you're . . .'

  But Slater had already vanished.

  Ignoring the lift, he ran headlong down the stairs to the bottom of the tower, then at full speed along the road fronting the main school buildings. The security team was based in a small ornamental lodge half-way up the drive - previously the domain of the estate's head gardener. During the day two men manned the main gates in a car, and at 7pm, when the main gates closed, the night team took over in the lodge, keeping watch over a bank of monitors.

  To Slater's eye the system was all but useless, and he had told the headmaster as much within days of his arrival. Apart from loudly advertising its function, Slater had pointed out, the lodge was at least 200 yards from the main school buildings and highly vulnerable to assault. At the very least the operations centre should be moved indoors. The head had heard him out and then informed him that the system had been set up by a company owned by a school old boy. The old boy in question - and here the head had tapped the side of his nose meaningfully - had spent some time in one of the hush-hush departments, and jolly well knew what was what.

  Slater had shut up. The lodge, with its imposing

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  [Jbank of screens, was clearly a selling-point for nervous rents, and -- equally important to the management -- leant that the security teams could be kept at a istance; the staff and pupils didn't have to suffer their ain-smoking and filthy jokes. Pushing the lodge door open with the chair-leg, he peered quickly inside. The monitors were blank, and 5th men were slumped forward against the control stem console, which was running with spilt tea and blood. A holed and crumpled parka jacket lay on the jor. One of the men had crapped himself before he ied -- probably when witnessing his companion's fate and the stench in the small overheated room was Overwhelming.

  Slater visualised the scene. The terrorists would have jrst in. The man with the knife would have held soud while the gunman -- his weapon muffled in iie parka - would have immediately shot one of the ecurity men. The second man, all but paralysed with would then have been ordered to open the Electronic gates before suffering the same fate as his ler - a single shot below the ear. With Masoud in aw there wouldn't have been any question of Ssabling or gagging; the security men had had to die. far from the main building, no one would have Ikeard anything.

  Slater leant over the dead men and flicked the Miitors back on. Nothing, just the darkness and trees sting in the wind. The main gate, as he had :ed, had been opened. But Slater knew he

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  wasn't far behind the kidnappers, and with luck, assuming their vehicle was laid up away from the gate, they hadn't got Masoud into the vehicle yet. Would a driver be waiting there?

  Still carrying the heavy chair-leg - the security men were not permitted to carry firearms or any other salvageable form of weapon - Slater sprinted down the grass verge at the side of the drive. The frost was hard now, and he was grateful for the treads on his Timberland boots. The high winds had dispersed the cloud cover, and the moonlight glimmered on the hard-frosted landscape. He could see tracks on the drive now -- two pairs of cleated soles and one much smaller pair of bare feet - and it was clear from the erratic pattern that Masoud was resisting hard. Good lad, thought Slater. Slow them down. Make it hard for them.

  As he ran, Slater cursed himself for not having followed through on his suspicions about the Cherokee. How could he have been so stupid as to think those security guards would take the threat seriously? He'd known so-called hard men like them all his life - over-the-hill ex-regulars who pitched up with their thickening bodies and their Aldershot tattoos, sitting around on their arses, telling war-stories and hoping that nothing would happen.

  At the open gates the tracks swerved to the left. The lay-by, thought Slater, his mind racing - that's where they've got the vehicle. If I follow them down the quarter-mile along the road they're going to see me 34

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  jtthey could easily risk firing at me, and there's no bloody cover of any kind. If I go through the school ;l grounds, on the other hand, I'll be covered by the wall. He broke back into a fast run, jumping brambles, I hedgerows, dead bracken and frozen ditches. Four hundred yards to go. Despite the extreme cold, he could feel the sweat coursing down his back. At one I moment he stepped calf-deep into an ice-crusted Stream - but barely registered it. The pounding of his I feet echoed that of his heart. His breath sawed in his chest. His hands and face burnt with the cold. Two f hundred yards to go. So fucking go, he told himself. Push it harder. Lengthen your stride. Forget the potholes and the rabbit-holes and the broken ankles. Push it. Push it!

  And then a faint cry reached him on the wind. He froze, and heard it again. 'Itrukni li-hali! Itrukni li-hali!'

  Slater was no linguist but he had picked up enough on missions in Saudi Arabia and Oman to understand Masoud's words. 'Leave me alone!' he was shouting. 'Let me go!'

  Masoud was behind Slater. He'd overtaken them. Fight, he willed Masoud. Slow them down. He pounded through the darkness, brambles nailing at his hands and ankles. The voices on the other'side of the wall were still a hundred metres away or more. If ' he crossed the wall now, fifty yards or so beyond the Cherokee he reckoned, they might not see him. Over we go. Lobbing the
chair-leg over the seven35

  The Hit List

  foot wall, he ran at it -- gave it his best shot. His hands found slick ice. His fingers scrabbled desperately, found no purchase, and he fell back to the bracken.

  Squinting, he searched the darkness for an alternative run-up. Was there a bush or something against the wall - something he could climb?

  Nothing.

  The cries again. Nearer now.

  Desperately he repeated his first attempt. Again the frosted bricks resisted his hands and again he fell defeated to the brambles. It was just too high.

  Breathe. Use the desperation.

  Focus.

  Doit.

  In his mind's eye he was back on selection at Hereford. His twelve-strong cadre had been beasted senseless for forty-eight hours - the previous night's exercise had included a frozen river-crossing in full kit -- and they were almost hallucinating with fatigue. Promised a brew and a ration-break, they'd suddenly been ordered off on another thirty-click tab over the hills -- any waverers to be immediately RTUed.

  'You'll do it,' came the staff sergeant's voice, 'or ye'11 fuck off back to whatever crap-hat outfit was misguided enough to waste this regiment's time with ye!'

  And Slater had done it. He'd got round. Somewhere, he'd found the reserve.

  Ah, came a tiny voice, but you were twenty-three then. You're thirty-six now, and . . .

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  Banishing the voice, Slater emptied his mind.

  There was only the wall.

  The wind roared at his ears as he ran, felt the ijrickwork kick at his chest, the icy nailing of his hands, Ithe desperate swing of his legs.

  And was over.

  He'd judged it spot-on. The Cherokee was icdiately in front of him. Picking up the chair-leg