Scorpion: A Group Fifteen Novella Read online

  Scorpion

  A Group Fifteen Novella

  Mark Dawson

  with Steve Cavanagh

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  A Word From Mark

  Get Exclusive John Milton Material

  Also By Mark Dawson

  In the John Milton Series

  In the Beatrix Rose Series

  In the Isabella Rose Series

  In the Soho Noir Series

  About Mark Dawson

  About Steve Cavanagh

  1

  Hailey Banks couldn’t breathe.

  She sat up in bed, her mouth open. Eyes wide and fearful. Gasping. Clutching her chest for fear her heart would explode.

  Slowly, she looked around the dark bedroom and her lungs began to fill with oxygen. The familiar surroundings anchored her to reality. Everything was alright. She was at home, in bed, in Bromwood Road, London. She heard a car passing by in the street below, two cats battling it out in the alleyway behind her house, and the rattle of a wheelie bin on the paving stones. The rubbish would be collected tomorrow.

  Everything was fine. She was alone, safe and secure in her little house.

  Her breathing settled. Sweat rolled off her cheek onto her pyjama top. Hailey put her feet on the floor and felt the thick carpet between her toes. She licked her dry lips, running her hand through her long, damp hair. A glass sat empty on the bedside table. The digital display on her alarm clock read one thirty a.m.

  The thought of a cool glass of water seemed too good to resist.

  She felt the chill of the room bite into the sweat on her back. Slippers. Dressing gown. Glass in hand.

  A yawn took her from the bedroom to the landing. She knew that when she returned to bed, sleep would not come easily. Maybe she should finish that article for the Guardian, or read a book instead of tossing and turning all night.

  She could never sleep after that dream. It always seemed so vivid, so real. She even thought she could smell the burning grass.

  Silhouettes of women and children fleeing across a dark field, framed by a blazing, vermilion sky. When she thought of it, only snatches of those images remained, but the smell would somehow stay in her sense memory for longer.

  She didn’t need to turn on any of the lights in the house to find her way. Head down, eyes half closed, her feet brought her to the stairs and then the ground floor. She turned at the bottom of the stairs, past the open door to the living room. Ahead were another two doors. On the right – the conservatory. On the left – the kitchen.

  Hailey opened the kitchen door to the familiar creak of the hinges. Her hand felt for the light switch. She flicked it on. Raised her head.

  The glass fell from her fingers and smashed on the tiled floor.

  In the corner of the kitchen, on the other side of the dining table, a tall, well-built man in a black jacket leaned against the wall.

  He opened his eyes, blinked, and stared at Hailey. She covered her mouth, but couldn’t scream. Frozen in panic. Shock hit her system like a bolt of electricity – shutting down her body.

  The man had clear, almost luminous blue eyes.

  “Oh, Hailey, I wish you hadn’t done that,” he said, raising his arms.

  The man held a silenced pistol. Aimed straight at Hailey’s face.

  As the first scream escaped her lips, the man pulled the trigger.

  2

  There was no time for John Milton to react. The house had seemed structurally sound and in good order. The floorboards were solid, the stone walls thick. He hadn’t heard Hailey coming down the stairs or making her way along the hall. Only when he heard the kitchen door creaking on its hinges did he realise she was awake, and downstairs.

  At that stage it was too late. She’d found the switch beside the cupboard and the room instantly flooded with light.

  He pressed his back to the wall, blinking rapidly. His eyes had become accustomed to the heavy darkness of the old house. Now he needed to readjust – fast. Hailey had put him in real danger. He wished she’d stayed in bed. She didn’t need to see this. Milton saw the look on her face and knew he had to say something. Right then, he couldn’t think of anything appropriate.

  “Oh, Hailey, I wish you hadn’t done that,” he said, then levelled the gun at her head and pulled the trigger.

  Maybe his eyes hadn’t fully adjusted, but as the round passed by Hailey’s head, Milton could’ve sworn he saw a strand of her hair billowing in the wake of the bullet trace. It passed within an inch of Hailey’s left ear, travelling at supersonic speed. The round tore into the skull of the man in the hallway behind Hailey. He’d been in full flight, running toward her with a blade in his hand, having come through the front door silently. The single round had robbed the man of his intentions, spreading them behind him on the hallway floor along with the back of his head, but the gunshot didn’t manage to rob the man of his momentum. The dead man’s body slammed into Hailey from behind, knocking her onto the kitchen floor.

  Milton took one step forward, pivoted and brought the gun toward the archway on his left that led to the conservatory.

  Too late.

  The second man was already on top of him. He wore a black ski mask and dark clothes. Milton felt a strong hand grab the barrel of his Glock 19 and twist it. In the same moment, more on instinct than anything else, Milton saw a flash and darted his head to the right a microsecond before the knife buried itself in the kitchen cupboard beside his left ear.

  He could smell the sweat on this man, feel the heat of his breath. The man tried to tear the knife out of the cupboard, then abandoned it and wrapped both hands around Milton’s gun. Milton’s grip began to weaken. Pain shot up both arms as he felt his wrists hyperextend. The attacker was going to wrench Milton’s gun from him at any second. Then it would be all over.

  The gun was between the two men, pointed at the wall on Milton’s left and angling closer to his stomach with every second. The attacker had all the leverage. It was only a matter of time.

  Milton’s training kicked in.

  The military had trained Milton how to shoot, how to survive and how to fight. The SAS had taught him not to fight, but to think and plan. And his current posting, well, they’d only taught him one thing. Group 15 taught him to kill.

  Milton needed to take the gun out of the equation.

  He hit the magazine release on the side of the weapon, let it fall and then pulled the trigger. The attacker gripped the slide with both hands, but it wasn’t enough to stop the explosion from the primer racking the slide back and ejecting the spent cartridge. The Glock spat a round out of the muzzle that travelled at one thousand two hundred and fifteen feet per second. A bullet ripped into the wall and the man pulled his hands away, the skin on his palms torn from holding the muzzle as the weapon discharged.

  Milton flung the cupboard door into the man’s face and then delivered a fierce uppercut. He placed his hand on the back of the man’s head and drove his teeth into the edge of the oak dining table.

  The fight was over, but Milton wasn’t finished. He worked the attacker’s knife free of the cupboard door and knelt on top of him. Most of his front teeth were on the floor, and he was br
eathing hard, coughing and choking on his blood. Milton bobbed up and down on the man’s large barrel-like chest as he fought for air.

  By contrast, Milton wasn’t even out of breath. He hadn’t broken a sweat. And his heart rate never got above eighty-five. Not even when he drove the knife under the man’s chin – all the way to the hilt.

  The attacker’s last breath left him. His chest became still.

  Milton stood, walked around the dining table and saw Hailey passed out on the white tiled floor with the first attacker’s corpse on top of her. He nudged the dead man off Hailey’s back, cradled her limp body in his arms and carried her to the sofa in the conservatory. Her airway was clear, and Milton rolled her onto her side in the recovery position. Carefully, he brushed her long brown hair away from her oval face. The light from the kitchen fell upon her. Her skin looked like milk and honey, thought Milton. Her lips bore a trace of blood, probably from the fall. Long, dark eyelashes swept down like the frills at the bottom of a stage curtain. Milton thought it his business to know whom he was protecting. She’d been a war correspondent for half a dozen newspapers. In his time in the service, Milton had met a few journalists who chased after bloody conflicts. Most were adrenaline junkies. Not Hailey. He’d read her work. She’d put herself in real danger, a number of times, just so she could tell the story of the ordinary people torn apart by war. You could only tell so many of those stories before it became too much. Hailey had put that aspect of her life behind her and was trying to write about more sedate matters. He didn’t blame her. She had earned a quiet life. And now someone was hell-bent on taking that life.

  He stood and gazed down upon her. There was a bump on her forehead, but nothing to worry about. She would live.

  But for how long?

  He returned his attention to the men in the kitchen. They’d been watching Hailey for only two days, and he’d guessed that they would come for her tonight. Milton had got into the house an hour before they did, and found the perfect position in the dark kitchen. He could see the front hall in case one attacker managed to pick the lock on the front door. If he turned, he could see the conservatory door that he’d come through. The men wouldn’t get through the back door in the kitchen because of the deadbolt. All points of entry covered from a single position.

  Milton had planned to take out both men without Hailey even realizing she was in danger.

  He wished she’d stayed in bed and not turned on that light, giving away his position.

  Milton checked the Glock, unscrewed the suppressor and slipped the gun into the shoulder rig that he wore inside his jacket. Two shots fired. He found the spent brass on the floor and put the cartridges in his pocket along with the suppressor. The attackers had both wielded short, double-edged knives. They wanted Hailey’s murder to look like a burglary gone wrong, or perhaps a darker crime.

  Neither of the attackers had a gun. Too much noise for such a highly populated urban area. It would attract a lot of attention. Plus, they were expecting only a sleeping, single female.

  They hadn’t expected Milton.

  Even with the suppressor, the shots Milton had fired made a lot of noise. Hailey had screamed, and the struggle in the kitchen with the second man had not been a silent one. He moved to the living room and gently pulled aside the curtain. No one in the street outside. This was 159 Bromwood Road. A terraced house in South London. The house next to it was unoccupied, and thankfully the other side, at 157, was a business, long closed up for the day.

  He was about to let the curtain close when he noticed a light on in the house across the road. A single image filled that window: the figure of a man staring at Hailey’s house with a phone pressed to his ear.

  Milton guessed he had nine, maybe ten minutes before the police arrived.

  He couldn’t allow the police to know of his presence. If he was caught, he would be disavowed by the British Government. Group 15 didn’t exist, officially. No government pass, no free kills. It would be a double murder charge.

  The more pressing concern was Hailey. If the police detained Milton, Hailey would not survive the night.

  She was on the Scorpion’s list.

  And that meant she was as good as dead, already.

  3

  Milton had two choices.

  None of them good.

  He could leave Hailey for the police. That would mean she would live. At least for a while. Scorpion couldn’t get to her in a police station. Short-term solution, but it laid the foundation for long-term problems. It meant surrendering her protection to local police, who were ill equipped to protect her from Scorpion.

  Option two. Take Hailey to a Group 15 safe house and wait for Scorpion to pick up her trail. He would try to trace her. And Milton would be waiting at the likely points of enquiry.

  Milton typed a number into his mobile phone from memory, put on his Bluetooth earpiece and listened to the multiple dial tones as his call was rerouted through a dozen satellites until it found a friendly home – an encrypted satellite cell relay.

  Control picked up the call.

  “Confirm call secure. Status?” said Control. No greeting, no formality. The head of Group 15 spoke with a dead, cold tone.

  “Contact,” said Milton.

  “Is it the target?”

  “No, contractors. Two of them. They’ve been neutralized,” said Milton.

  The sigh that escaped Control’s lips came through loud and clear to Milton. The head of his service didn’t hide disappointment.

  “Is Banks aware?” asked Control.

  Milton stalled. He had to frame his next answer carefully – Hailey’s life depended on it.

  “She’s had a visual only,” said Milton.

  “You or the contractors?” said Control, with what little patience he had left.

  “Me. Fleeting only. Not enough for an ID. We’re still on mission, but I have to move Banks,” said Milton.

  “You will do no such thing,” said Control.

  “I think I have a concerned neighbour. The police are on their way,” said Milton.

  “You’re still on site?”

  “I’m in the kitchen,” said Milton, kneeling down beside the corpse. He searched the man’s pockets. No wallet, no identification. Fifty pounds in notes, half a packet of Java cigarettes and a lighter. Milton left the money, but put the cigarettes and the lighter in his pocket. Russian cigarettes were an acquired taste. Milton preferred Arktika, but he would take what he could get. He unzipped the dead man’s coat and hauled up his shirt. A tattoo of the Madonna and child spread from his belly over his chest, framed by a single star on each clavicle.

  “Get out, now,” said Control.

  “I should take her with me. If I leave her with the police, the target will pull back. He won’t make a move with that kind of attention around her. He’ll come back for her a month from now, we’ll miss him, and she’ll be dead.”

  “That’s a chance she’ll have to take,” said Control.

  Milton approached the dead man in the hall. He had forty pounds in notes and some loose change. Other than that, no ID, no wallet, no cards. Nothing except the money and a key to a Renault. He could tell by the logo on the key fob. This man had a crucifix tattooed on his chest. No stars on his shoulders.

  “The contractors were Russian,” said Milton.

  “You have names?” asked Control.

  “I can’t find IDs, but I can tell by the cigarettes and the tattoos. Russian mafia. One of them has stars on his shoulders – a captain. The other probably of a much lower rank.”

  “Well, they are no danger to her now. Get out of there,” said Control.

  Milton sighed and said, “This is a mistake. I can put her somewhere safe and then watch the house and her office. He’s bound to scout those locations to pick up her trail. When he does, I’ll be waiting.”

  Control’s tone changed. His anger flared. “Number Six, in case you didn’t understand, let me make it perfectly clear. You are to leave that house, alo
ne, right now. That’s an order. Protection for Banks is your secondary mission. Primary is to kill Scorpion as he makes the attempt. Get your mission priorities straight and call me in the morning with an update.”

  He’d pushed it as far as he could.

  “Yes, sir,” said Milton. “As he’s using contractors for Banks, the others should be on their guard. He’s in the wind and could hit a target at any time.”

  “It’s all in hand,” said Control.

  Milton took one last look at Hailey. She began to stir on the couch. The last thing she saw before blacking out was Milton pointing a gun at her head. In the next few days he might need to get close to her, for protection. Looking around, Milton found a pad of sticky notes on the fridge with a pen dangling by a piece of string below it. He scrawled a note, returned to the conservatory and left by the door.

  He traversed the small garden, lit now by the light in the kitchen, vaulted the back wall and landed in the alleyway. Holding his breath, Milton stood still and listened. He could hear traffic in the distance, but nothing other than that. Five minutes later Milton was on the other side of the street, across the road from Hailey’s house. A liveried police car pulled up on his side of the street. Two policemen got out of the car and spoke to the neighbour who’d called them. Some two hundred meters away, Milton could just about make out the neighbour standing in his front garden, talking to the policemen and pointing at Hailey’s house. The policemen crossed the road and stopped at her front door. One of them pushed it open.

  The Russian who’d crept up behind Hailey must have crowbarred the front door. Milton stopped at a hundred meters from the house. The neighbour had gone back inside. The policemen lit their Maglite torches and slowly entered the house.