Sharp Shot. Justin Richards

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ to assume they’ll find us. Were they close behind you?”

      The man shook his head. “But they’ll be here. We have to go. Now!”

      Rich nodded. But to Jade’s surprise he opened the desk, and hunted through for a photograph.

      “This isn’t a Kodak moment,” she told him. “It’s a get the hell out of here moment.”

      Rich had found what he was looking for. It was a faded photo of four men standing by a wall in the desert. He pointed to one of the men.

      “That’s Dad. And that’s Dex Halford…And that…” He tapped the man standing beside their dad, then pointed to the man sitting on the floor.

      Jade took the photo and held it so the man could see. “So, are you Mark or Ferdy?”

      The man blinked. “McCain—Ferdy McCain. That was in Iraq, back in 1990 with the Regiment. We took out a secret nuclear facility.”

      “Hey, cool,” said Rich.

      “Yeah, OK—in that case you really are a friend of Dad’s,” said Jade. She gave the photo back to Rich who stuffed it in his pocket. The she helped Ferdy McCain to his feet. “Now, let’s get you out of here and call for help.”

      “Got my phone,” said Rich. “We’ll do it on the way.”

      Outside, the security light had gone out. With the lights in the room turned out too, they could see out into the gloom of the garden. Jade was sure she could see movement, down by the fence. “Time to go,” she said urgently.

      “I’ll be all right,” McCain assured them. “I’ve been through worse. Just tired.”

      Rich led the way out of the dining room and into the hall. The front door had a frosted window set high in it. Through the glass they could see the silhouette of a man’s head and shoulders.

      The sound of the doorbell was deafeningly loud, and made Jade flinch.

      “Gunmen,” Rich hissed.

      “Who ring the bell?” said Jade. “Yeah, right.”

      “You’re not going to answer it?”

      Jade didn’t reply. She marched down the hallway and opened the front door. Outside was a man in uniform. He turned towards them and smiled.

      “Supermarket delivery. From our shop to your step, guaranteed.” His uniform was bright green and he was holding a clipboard. “We didn’t have any concentrated vita-mineral supplement drink, I’m afraid.”

      From the dining room came the sound of breaking glass followed by a shout.

      “Don’t think we’ll be needing it,” Jade told the man, and pushed him out of the way.

      “Healthy exercise coming up,” Rich agreed, as he and McCain ran past.

      The supermarket lorry was almost blocking the narrow lane. The delivery man wouldn’t be so happy, Jade thought, when he found out he had to back nearly a quarter of a mile before he could turn it round. Quarter of a mile to the main road through the village.

      A quarter of a mile they were never going to make. A car was coming. Its lights raked across the hedges either side of the lane as it slewed along having taken the corner too fast. The roar of its engine was louder than the idling of the lorry.

      “Not going that way,” said Jade.

      “What’s going on?” the delivery man called. His voice was drowned out by the sound of gunfire from inside the cottage. The dining room window overlooking the lane exploded. Bullets ripped into the tarmac close to where Jade and Rich were standing.

      McCain was already running. “Come on!” he yelled, hauling himself up into the cab of the lorry.

      “Hey!” the delivery man yelled, running after them.

      Jade and Rich were round the other side of the lorry, pulling themselves up into the cab as it started to move off.

      “You driven one of these before?” Rich asked as he sat in the middle of the wide bench seat. Next to him, Jade heaved the door shut.

      “Not with a freezer compartment stuck on the back,” McCain told him. The lorry was picking up speed. The lights from the car behind were approaching rapidly, dazzling in the mirror.

      There was a loud bump from the back of the lorry. Jade could see in the wing mirror that plastic crates were falling out of the back, scattering across the road.

      “That was your pizza,” she told Rich.

      The car had to slew and weave to avoid the fallen crates. It was catching them up, but there was no way it could get ahead of them in the narrow lane. The lorry was picking up speed.

      Then Jade realised something that made her throat go dry. “Where exactly are we going?” she asked.

      Rich worked it out at the same moment. She could see it in his eyes, the way he had gone pale. There was a rattle of gunfire, and the wing mirror crazed. The glass held for a moment, a spider’s web criss-crossing it, then it fell away.

      “This is a dead end,” said Rich. “It doesn’t go anywhere—just a gate and field and the brook.”

      “Now you tell me,” Ferdy said. “Still, she’s a big powerful beast.” He dropped down a gear and the engine roared.

      A metal field gate loomed in the headlights. The lorry shuddered as it slammed into it. The gate squealed and ripped free, flying sideways. The lorry lurched, skidded on the muddy field, but kept going down the shallow incline. Sheep scattered.

      “A brook won’t give it much trouble,” said McCain confidently.

      “ ‘The brook’ is just a name,” Jade told him. “It’s a river. A big river. And we’re heading straight for it!”

      The headlights were bouncing as the lorry bumped across the uneven field. They shimmered on the wide stretch of water beyond the trees ahead. McCain swerved to avoid a tractor parked at the side of the field, before lining up with a gap in the tree line.

      What wasn’t obvious until they were too close to stop was the drop from the field down to the level of the river. Jade felt the moment the front wheels left the ground. The front of the lorry hung in the air for a moment, then crashed down.

      The cab lurched, and the muddy edge of the river rushed towards the windscreen. There was a terrific crunch of metal.

      Jade’s legs jarred painfully against the dashboard. Instinctively she braced with her hands, just stopping her head from hitting the windscreen. Rich wasn’t so lucky—he banged his head hard against the tape deck as the impact threw his body forwards.

      The windscreen crazed, then shattered. Water splashed in. The lorry skidded onwards for a few more metres, sagging to one side as the axle gave way. A wheel bounced ahead of them into the water. The sound of metal on mud, then on stones, then on water, was deafening. Steam erupted from the bonnet of the lorry, rising in front of them.

      Then СКАЧАТЬ