Read Online The Killing Club by Paul Finch - Free Book Online Page B

worked down through the gears. ‘See something, guv?’
    Braithwaite pointed. A wrecked vehicle emerged into view on the road ahead, framed in the glare of the motorcyclists’ headlamps: a white Peugeot 106, lying skewwhiff across both carriageways, upside down. Its front end had caved in, and a column of steam rose from its exposed engine. Braithwaite checked his wing mirror as, one by one, the other vehicles in the cavalcade slowed to a halt.
    In front, the two motorcyclists pulled one to either side of the road, and quickly dismounted. It was now evident that a body lay on the blacktop alongside the upended wreck. It wore jeans and a tracksuit top, but by its slim form and mass of splayed-out golden hair, it was a young woman. The immediate signs weren’t good – she lay motionless and face-down in a spreading pool of blood.
    ‘Shit!’ Mulligan said, grabbing for his radio. ‘This has only just happened …’
    ‘Wait!’ Braithwaite signalled for caution, before opening the front passenger door and climbing out.
    ‘Guv, what’re you …?’
    ‘Don’t touch her!’ Braithwaite hollered at the two motorcyclists.
    Both had removed their helmets and knelt down alongside the casualty, checking for vital signs. The first glanced around at the commander, startled. But the second had seen something else. ‘Oh Christ …’
    Braithwaite walked forward, his gaze riveted on the arm of a second casualty, broken and bloodstained, protruding through the Peugeot’s imploded windscreen. He halted, before swivelling around and peering back down the length of the cavalcade. SOCAR Sergeant Alan Montgomery was climbing from the cab of the first gunship. Unlike his gaffer, he was helmeted, but his visor was raised. He evidently couldn’t see what had happened, and was seeking an explanation.
    But Braithwaite was too bewildered to offer one. ‘This … for real?’ he muttered, glancing to the front again, and noting with a deep chill the trickles of blood coagulating on the tarmac.
    Mulligan, who’d also climbed from the command car, joined him. ‘Guv?’
    ‘I thought …’ Braithwaite stuttered. ‘I mean …’
    ‘Sir …?’ one of the motorcyclists interrupted. ‘We need to …’
    Which was when the roadside explosive concealed near the rear of the cavalcade detonated with a volcano-like BOOM .
    They spun around, eyes bugged, faces lit brightly by the searing, fiery flash.
    The noise alone was agony on the ears – a devastating roar accentuated by a twisting and rending of steel as the second gunship was flung over on the blacktop, reduced in less than a second to a smoking mass of blistered scrap. They tottered where they stood, red-hot shards raining down around them, too stunned to respond.
    At a single guttural command, the darkness came alive, spangled with blistering, cruciform gun-flashes. An echoing din of automatic gunfire accompanied it.
    Sergeant Montgomery was the first to go down, flopping to his knees, both hands clutched on his groin, jack-knifing backwards as more rounds struck his face and upper body. But only as the first gunship began jerking and shuddering to repeated high-velocity impacts did it actually strike Braithwaite they were under attack.
    He and his men had been through all the specialist training programmes. They were tough and experienced, routinely armed; an elite cadre within the British police. High-risk prisoner transport was their forte; pursuit and capture of fugitives and escaped convicts their bread and butter.
    But anyone can be taken by surprise.
    The first gunship’s immediate reaction was to get the hell out, but its cab was already so peppered with lead that its supposedly bulletproof windshield collapsed inward, and it skidded and slammed into the back of the command car, which, as it was also armoured, wasn’t shunted sufficiently to allow it through.
    And still Braithwaite and Mulligan could only stand there, rounds whining past them like a swarm of rocket-propelled