A second shot rang out, then a third and a fourth, and the car mounted a bank as it came hurtling out of the drive. As Jess opened her eyes again she saw Amanda crouched uncomfortably in her seat, eyes level with the dashboard as she yanked the wheel round, and the car fell back onto the road.

They were now temporarily out of sight of the gunman and they both sat up in their seats, Amanda craning her head round as she reversed the car wildly up the hill.

‘Don’t forget Casey!’ yelled Jess. ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t forget my sister!’

‘I won’t, I won’t. Just hold still and keep your head down.’ Amanda had her foot flat on the accelerator. The car was wobbling all over the place and she was going as fast as she could in reverse, but it wasn’t fast enough and there was no room to turn round, although for the moment they were just about outrunning the dogs. And now they were coming up towards the bend in the road close to where Jess reckoned Casey would be. If they could get round that and out of sight, then they might just have a chance of escape.

And then, as she looked back down the hill, Jess saw the scar-faced gunman come into view again. In one movement, he crouched down, took aim with the rifle and opened fire, letting off shot after shot.

As Jess ducked back down, she felt the car spin out of control. Amanda was yanking the wheel this way and that but it didn’t seem to be doing any good, and suddenly they were leaving the road. The car swerved wildly and hit a tree before coming to a halt, facing back down the hill.

‘Out! Out! Out!’ yelled Amanda. ‘Out your side!’ She gave Jess an angry shove as another shot rang out, its impact making the car shake. Smoke was rising from the bonnet now and it was clear the car was going nowhere.

‘What about Casey?’ yelled Jess.

‘Just go!’ No longer willing to wait, Amanda scrambled over her and yanked the door open.

The two of them rolled out together and scrambled into the undergrowth as another shot whistled past somewhere not that far over their heads. Using the bushes as cover, Jess leapt to her feet, still clutching the knife she’d taken from the kitchen, and looked round desperately for any sign of her sister. But she couldn’t see her anywhere and didn’t dare call her name, in case it alerted their pursuers to her whereabouts. She could hear the dogs racing up the hill towards them, coming close now.

Amanda yelled at her to run and took off herself into the trees without looking back but, for a long second, Jess stood where she was, cursing herself for not staying with Casey, knowing that she couldn’t let the dogs catch her sister’s scent. She had to distract them. ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ she called out as the dogs – two lean, powerful-looking Dobermans – raced into view.

Knowing she had their full attention, Jess turned and sprinted into the darkness of the woods, running faster than she’d ever run in her life, knowing that it was never going to be fast enough, but praying that Casey at least would make it out of here in one piece.

She could hear them right behind her now. Closing in for the kill. Could hear their hot panting breath only feet away.

Swinging round, she held out the knife as the closest dog leapt through the air towards her, jaws open wide. The knife connected with the dog’s chest and it let loose a strange gasping howl as it impaled itself right up to the hilt on the blade, the momentum of its leap sending both the dog and Jess crashing to the ground. Warm blood poured onto her chest from where she’d stabbed the dog, and she just had time to see its eyes roll back in its head before the second Doberman was on her, sinking its teeth into her knife arm.

Jess yelped in pain, trying and failing to retrieve the knife, kicking out wildly at the dog as its teeth tore her flesh. With a huge, desperate effort, she tried to fight her way to her feet, but the dog’s grip was too strong, and already she could see the shadows of the men who were hunting her on the road.

But she wasn’t going to go down without a fight and she kept up her struggle with the dog, trying to gouge at its eyes, even as she saw a man approaching her at a run in the periphery of her vision, a gun with silencer attached in his hand, the weapon outstretched in front of him.

It was over. She’d tried everything to survive but – when it had come down to it – she’d failed.

Taking a deep breath, she clenched her teeth against the impact as the shot rang out.

Thirty-two

SCOPE TOOK IN the whole scene in the space of a couple of seconds. The girl – pretty, mixed race, no more than eighteen, tops – fitted the description of the older of the two kids on the canoeing trip. She was sitting on the ground staring up at him, her mouth open in shock, the confusion written all over her face as she tried to work out who on earth he was. Her left forearm was bleeding and she was clutching hold of it with her free hand. Two dead Dobermans lay next to her – one she must have killed herself; the other he just had.

Thirty yards away, just visible inside the tree line, were shadowy figures some distance apart. Scope had counted three of them and they’d stopped, clearly having heard Scope’s shot, and were crouching down.

Panting from the exertion of running the last half-mile in the direction of the gunfire, Scope leaned down beside the girl, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the shadowy figures. ‘How many of them are there?’ he whispered.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered back, her voice surprisingly calm given the fact that she’d been bitten quite badly. ‘But they’ve got guns, and they’re trying to kill me.’

Scope had three shots left. If they were going to make a dash for it, he was going to have to use those shots to hold off the girl’s pursuers and give them a few seconds’ head start, which might be enough now that it sounded as if there were no more dogs with them. But as he took aim at the nearest figure, one of the men called out excitedly to the others. ‘There’s the young one!’ he bellowed in a rumbling Eastern European accent.

‘Grab her, and keep her alive!’ someone else called back, his voice carrying through the darkness. This time the accent was English.

‘No! My sister!’ the girl next to Scope screamed.

The next second, the powerful beam of a torch swung round towards them, temporarily blinding Scope. This time he didn’t hesitate, aiming his pistol towards the light and pulling the trigger twice in quick succession, before grabbing the girl and yanking her to her feet. ‘Move!’ he hissed, cracking off his third and final shot from the hip, and hearing the tinkle of glass as the torch shattered, plunging them back into welcome darkness.

‘My sister!’ the girl screamed again, resisting Scope’s efforts, but her voice was drowned out by a succession of shotgun blasts. Scope remembered giving the girl a shove and her taking off into the gloom, holding onto the kitchen knife she’d killed the first dog with, and then he felt a sudden, very hard, impact in his side and his legs went from under him. ‘Run!’ he managed to yell, and then he hit the ground with a hard thud that tore the wind right out of him.

Everything was happening extremely fast for Keogh. First he heard the shot ring out from somewhere inside the woods – only twenty, thirty yards away. Even though he was half deafened from all the shooting he’d been doing, he knew straight away that the shot had come from a pistol, and one with a suppressor attached. He could no longer hear the barking of the dogs either.

For a split second he wondered if the shooter was Mehdi. After all, guns with suppressors were unheard of in a remote place like this, but there was no way Mehdi could have found them back here. Not wanting to take any chances, Keogh crouched down at the edge of the tree line, motioning for Sayenko and MacLean to do the same, but Sayenko appeared to be looking at something further up the hill on the other side of the road.