Read Online Silencer by Andy McNab - Free Book Online Page A

held my breath, listening for any sound above the rain pounding against the windows. The flashing red-and-blue neon sign further down the street told me it was Miller Time.
    I straightened slowly, pushing the door shut, then hit the light switch. Her black raincoat was back over the arm of the dark blue settee. I quickly scanned her bedroom and shower room, half expecting to find her lying in the same condition as her mate in the leather jacket in our flat.
    Her clinic pass, which hung from a red lanyard because she was always forgetting it, and her flat keys were both missing from the key-press stuck to the side of the fridge. The light was still flashing on her answering machine.
    I rang her mobile and heard three rings coming from her coat pocket. The bulletin board above her landline was empty.
    I tucked the HK firmly into my waistband and legged it back into the corridor – as you do when you have a vanishing woman and a missing photo to locate, a dead body to attend to, and another attacker on the loose.
    The rain pummelled my head as I fumbled with the VW lock – the fob hadn’t worked since way back – and jumped in. The engine started at the third time of asking and the windscreen steamed up, to match the fog in my brain.
    I didn’t drive off straight away. I had another phone call to make.

18
Perinatal Clinic
    27 August 2011
    05.54 hrs
    I sat inches from Anna’s bed, our heads bathed in the glow of coloured lights on the ventilator and monitors. My high-backed chair stank so badly of disinfectant it was a miracle she’d managed to doze off. My boy was asleep too – or so I assumed. There had been no movement from the Perspex box on the other side of the bed since I’d got there. All I could see of him was a reassuringly pink nose poking out from a blanket. He was still wrapped up like a parcel, with the same Tubigrip beanie on his head.
    The only sound was the steady bleeping from the machines and every couple of seconds the gentle hiss of oxygen. The clinic was still in night mode and all blinds were down. The window that divided us from the corridor was double-glazed. I opened the venetian blinds a touch to allow me a clear view down towards the lift and the stairs. Anybody entering this floor would have to come that way. Right now it was quiet, apart from the occasional squeak of a nurse’s shoe on the polished floor.
    Anna hadn’t been too worried about Katya going AWOL. Everything in her private room was as it should be. The boybeside her was in good shape now, and so was she. And at last she had the chance to get her head down.
    The sight of her lying there reminded me of the moment she’d told me she was pregnant, and held my head against her chest. She’d stroked my hair and whispered, ‘I’ve got responsibilities now.’
    Stomach lurching, I’d managed to grin back. ‘Sounds like I have too.’
    I kept the HK under my right thigh and my shoulders straight against the back of the chair. Less than thirty minutes later the light at the end of the corridor bloomed, then faded. The lift doors had opened and closed. Now I saw shadows flicker against the far wall. It looked like there were three or four of them.
    I eased the weapon sideways, gripping it in my right hand and resting it between my thigh and the chair arm. My eyes were fixed on the corridor. Whoever this was, I was going to know soon. There were definitely four of them. The one in the lead was a nurse. Her shoes squeaked; the others’ didn’t.
    Frank’s men were in dark suits and ties, as if they’d been taking fashion tips from the agents in The Matrix . I hadn’t seen Genghis and Mr Lover Man since Frank’s private jet had dropped me in Egypt five months ago. They hadn’t wasted any time with the 5:2 diet. These boys were still big; it was part of their job spec.
    The one I didn’t recognize stood like a guardsman, eyes alert. I guessed he was ex-Spetsnaz, or at least trained by them. Mr Lover Man was a Nigerian