The Drop

spun round in time to see the Glock drop from my hand and head in a downward trajectory towards the gravel, certain to give away our presence as soon as it hit the ground.
    I don’t know how I did it and I don’t really want to think about how close we came to disaster but, at the last available second, I stuck my foot out. It was an entirely instinctive gesture but I managed to get the top of my foot under the gun just before it crashed to the ground. The effect was a bit like trapping a football, much of the speed was taken out of the falling gun as it bounced off the top of my foot and with a nerve shredding bump it fell off my toes and onto the gravel.
    The sound was audible, but not half as bad as it would have been if I hadn’t interrupted the Glock’s fall with my shoe. I froze, my foot still hanging pointlessly in the air. Palmer raised his SLR and pointed it at the door, ready to drop anyone who burst through it.
    We gave it a second then another.
    Nothing. No sound from inside. Jesus Christ, we were off the hook.
    Palmer nodded for me to pick up the gun. I wasted no time in obeying him and we both edged slowly to the far wall of the building then disappeared around it. We went down on our haunches and kept back in the shadows. I could just about see his face and I gave him a look that I hoped would appear apologetic. He just nodded like he understood but he looked like a ghost. It seemed I had managed to shit him up almost as badly as I had myself.
    We weren’t about to go bursting in on them. We didn’t know what Vitaly and his mates were doing right now, how alert they were and how much weaponry they had nearby. To take men like these on we’d have to do it on our own terms.
    All we could do now was wait until it got light. That’s when it would happen. I looked at the dark sky around me and wondered how many of us would still be alive when night came around once more.

THIRTY-FOUR
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    W e’d been waiting for hours, crouched down, in silence, freezing our bollocks off, trying not to think about what would happen if it all went wrong
    It was just after eight in the morning when the Russians finally got their act together. We heard the latch on the door snap back and started, immediately going on the alert. Both Palmer and I had our guns ready. We listened intently as the door swung open, squeaking on its hinges, and low muffled voices reached us as they trudged out of the farmhouse. We were out of sight but knew we’d be able to see their backs in a moment as they walked across the farm yard towards their car. I was praying the others were as wide awake and alert as we were.
    Seeing nothing amiss, they ambled towards the blacked-out Porsche Cayenne that was parked some way from their front door. It must have made a lot of sense to them to have somewhere isolated to lie low after hitting our organisation, but being this far from the city had its disadvantages, as they were about to find out. We knew they’d all be armed but we didn’t want to give them time to reach for weapons.
    We’d worked out the crossfire in advance, thanks to Palmer’s recce the night before. We waited till they had almost reached the car then I shouted. That was the signal. What happened next was a blur. I saw the Russians spin round towards us in surprise, then Kinane and his sons stepped out from behind a skip with their shotguns raised. They didn’t hang about, they just let them have it. At the same time, my brother opened up from behind the hedge. Palmer and me, we were behind their backs, blind-siding them as we stepped out from the side of the farmhouse.
    We’d been waiting a long time in the cold but it was worth it to see the looks of comprehension on their dumb faces. They had just enough time to work out what was going to happen to them before we let loose but no time to react to it. The noise was incredible. Where all had been deathly quiet, there was a sudden explosion of gunfire and shouting. They were shouting because they were dying. We were shouting because we were killing them. The bodies twitched and were thrown about as they took the shotgun blasts from Kinane and his sons, the rifle bullets my brother was letting loose at a hell of a rate and all the rounds from the automatic pistol and the SLR Palmer and I were pumping into them. The glass from the nearby car’s windows popped and burst, the metal of the bodywork sang as the bullets bounced