Part 29 (1/2)

'Don't make me shoot you,' James said desperately.

The gun weighed a billion tons in his trembling hands. The man ignored the threat and kept moving closer. James didn't want to shoot, but what choice was there? He held his breath to steady the gun.

'You ain't gonna kill noooooobody,' the man sneered, as he lifted his shoe off the carpet, preparing to take a step that would bring James into reach.

A shockwave ripped through the room. The bullet slammed into the gunman's chest from less than two metres. His feet lifted off the floor as his body crashed backwards into the upturned armchair. Stunned by the fact that he'd just fired a bullet into a real human being, James felt sick as he scrambled over his bleeding victim and out into the hallway.

James ran into the back living-room, planning to escape via the beach, but another gunman was frogmarching Junior across the sand towards the house. He ducked back into the hallway, hoping the man walking up the beach hadn't spotted him. It could only be a matter of seconds before the men in the kitchen came out to investigate the gunshot. The only way out the front of the house was by walking past the kitchen door, which would be suicidal. That only left one option.

Still holding the pistol, James ran upstairs. He went into his room, grabbed his mobile phone off the bedside table and called John Jones. A woman answered.

'Is John Jones there?'

'I'm Beverly Shapiro,' the woman said. 'Is that James Beckett?'

'Yeah,' James said. 'Where's John?'

'He's in the restroom. You sound worried, James. You can talk to me. I'm the Drug Enforcement Agency officer working with John.'

James gasped with relief. 'Thank G.o.d. Listen, I'm at Keith Moore's house. There's a whole bunch of gunmen downstairs. They're beating Keith up, trying to get some kind of information out of him.'

'I'll call the local cops out,' Beverly said. 'Can you make it out of the house?'

'They caught Junior running down the beach. I think they've got guys watching outside.'

'I'm calling the cops right now,' Beverly said. 'You find yourself a good place to hide and keep this line open.'

James thought about hiding, but he didn't think he'd be safe for more than a few minutes. The cops would take longer than that to arrive and even when they did, they'd be unlikely to come charging straight into the house and risk getting shot. James considered hiding out at the top of the stairs and shooting at anyone who tried to come up. It might have worked in a house with one staircase, but Keith's Miami home had three. Four if you counted the metal walkway that led across to the garage.

The garage.

James realised that was his best chance. He leaned out into the corridor as Beverly said something into the phone.

'What?' James asked.

'I said, the police are on their way. Have you found a safe place to hide?'

'I don't think it's safe up here,' James said. 'Someone's gonna come up looking for me any second.'

'I told you to hide,' Beverly said stiffly. 'Keep calm and wait for the police.'

'No way,' James said. 'I've got to bust out.'

He tucked the phone into the waistband of his soggy shorts, without ending the call. He sprinted down the hallway to the master bedroom and found Keith's trousers on the floor. He grabbed a bunch of keys from the pocket and rapidly flipped through them. There were keys to a couple of the Porsches and a Mercedes, but James thought the huge four-wheel-drive Range Rover would give him his best chance of escape.

When he got back into the hallway, he heard footsteps on the staircase. He fired a shot towards the stairs, knowing it would make the men stay back for a minute or two.

James cautiously opened the door at the end of the hallway. He checked no one was around outside, before stepping on to the metal steps that linked the house to the garage. He opened the door into the garage and walked down a set of spiral stairs to ground level, before unlocking the Range Rover and sliding on to the driver's seat.

He put the key in the steering column and started the engine. Clipping on his seatbelt to cut off the annoying bing-bong noise, he pressed the b.u.t.ton on the dashboard that opened the garage doors and the iron gates at the front of the house.

The wooden doors, less than a metre from the front of the car, began parting slowly. James knew someone would hear them if he just sat waiting. He put the car in drive, floored the accelerator pedal and ploughed through. He had to slam on the brake to avoid a brick wall as chunks of wood sprayed in all directions around the car.

As he put on full steering lock and turned towards the gate, James' heart sank. The front gates were still closed. The b.u.t.ton on the dashboard hadn't worked. James realised the gunmen must have short-circuited the automatic gate when they broke into the house. The Range Rover might have been able to break them open, but the gunmen had their two cars parked in front of the gates, ready for a quick getaway.

As James looked around, frantically trying to work out an alternative escape, a bullet came out of a first-floor window, ripping through the roof of the car and punching a neat hole through the front pa.s.senger seat. James floored the accelerator and spun the car around. He pointed the Range Rover at the thickly planted terraces around the house, hoping the car was powerful enough to punch through a hundred metres of trees and plants. If it was, he'd be able to escape on to the beach at the back of the house.

The chunky front tyres reared on to a set of narrow steps. The car crawled up a gentle slope, rocking from side to side as it trampled bushes and tore a couple of small trees out of the ground. Chunks of stone and wood clattered against the underside of the car, then it hit a ma.s.sive palm tree and ground to a halt.

The car slipped backwards as a second bullet ripped through the tailgate. The noise made James' eardrums pop. He thought he might have to bail out and run for it, but the car's automatic gearbox slipped into its lowest ratio. The rear tyres dug into the soft ground. James dabbed the accelerator. After a touch of wheelspin, the car toppled the palm tree and bounced over its thick trunk.

At the top of the slope, the ground levelled off on to a tiled patio. James swerved around Keith's brick barbecue and picked up speed as he rolled downhill. It was much easier navigating through the low bushes and flowerbeds on the windswept ocean side of the house. At the bottom, James swerved to avoid Keith's fishpond, then floored the accelerator. He needed to pick up speed to break through the fence at the back of the house.

A thin concrete post shattered as the front of the car ripped a hole through a tangle of plastic mesh and barbed wire. The car nose-dived off a metre-high wall. The back wheels spun in free air until the front wheels burrowed into the soft sand and pulled the front of the car forward. Once all four wheels were firmly planted on level ground, James. .h.i.t the accelerator and began tearing along the sand, dragging a ten-metre section of chain link fence behind him. He nudged the steering wheel from left to right until the wire disentangled itself from the rear b.u.mper.

Once the wire was gone, everything seemed eerily calm; just the gentle whoosh of the air-conditioning and a few hundred metres of level sand lit up by the headlamps. James looked back in the mirror. n.o.body seemed to be coming after him. He reached into his shorts and grabbed his mobile.

'Beverly, are you still there?'

'What the h.e.l.l was that noise?' John Jones asked, sounding like he was in a bit of a state. 'Did I hear gunshots? Are you OK?'

'I'm OK, but I might have just killed some maniac and now they've got hold of Junior. I'm driving along the beach in Keith's Range Rover. When I see a gap between the houses, I'm gonna pull up on to the road.'

'OK,' John said. 'You're sure n.o.body's following?'

'Not so far as I can tell.'

'Do you know how to drive to the IHOP from where you are at the moment?'

'Sure,' James said. 'It's only a couple of kilometres.'

'I'll meet you there in fifteen minutes. Beverly will be with me. She knows you're my informant, but she doesn't know anything about CHERUB, so watch what you say.'

'No worries,' James said.

'Get off the beach as quickly as you can and drive sensibly. You don't want to get picked up by the cops.'

The pancake place was closed, so they ended up in a twenty-four-hour McDonald's across the street. John sat across the table from James, while Beverly got apple pies and coffees at the counter. James looked between his legs at his blood-stained trainers.

'A hundred and nineteen ninety-nine,' James said bitterly. 'The first lot got stolen, now this lot are ruined.'

John Jones laughed. 'Maybe it's G.o.d's way of telling you that a hundred and twenty pounds is an obscene amount of money to pay for a pair of plimsolls.'

Beverly put the tray of coffees on the table and squeezed up next to James on the plastic bench. She was small, about twenty-five, with long chestnut hair and freckles. She didn't look hard enough to be a drug enforcement agent.

'I spoke to the local units,' Beverly said. 'The bad guys got rattled when you escaped. They tried to take Keith Moore away in their car. The police spotted them and there was a shoot-out. Keith Moore took a bullet through his shoulder. It's early days, but they think he'll be OK.'

'What about Junior?' James asked.