‘See, this is the path they’ll take,’ said MacLean, running a gloved finger through an area of white on the map lined with elevation contours that looked uninhabited. ‘There’s a farm here, about a mile and a half from the road, which they’ll pass on that route, and if I were them, when I got there I’d stop and ask for help.’

‘How long will it take for them to get there from here?’

‘At least an hour, even if they’re going fast.’

Keogh smiled for the first time in a while. ‘That should give us plenty of time.’ He took out the satellite phone and dialled the number of the handset he’d given to Sayenko, wondering if he’d managed to get hold of the little girl.

If he had, then Keogh would have no choice but to tell him to kill her.

Thirty-nine

UNARMED AND ALONE, Scope moved as swiftly as he could through the trees. He didn’t know this area of the forest very well, but he’d been on a run nearby a couple of months earlier, and remembered the chalet-style holiday cottage, close to where he’d heard all the shooting a few minutes earlier, and rescued Jess from being attacked by the dog.

He doubled back on himself, approaching the cottage from the north in a wide circle designed to keep him well out of the sights of the gunmen, in case they were continuing to look for him. He passed east of the cottage, giving it a wide berth, before trying to pick up the trail of Jess’s sister, Casey. But the problem was, he wasn’t a tracker. He’d found Jess earlier because he’d followed an established path and the protracted gunfire had pinpointed her exact location. But there was no gunfire or established path here, and he didn’t dare call out to her. Casey didn’t know him and, after all that had happened to her today, there was no way she’d respond to his calls. Also, Jess had said that one of the gunmen had gone after her, and was probably still in the vicinity. It was also possible that the other two weren’t far away either and, now that he’d run out of bullets, Scope didn’t want to attract any undue attention.

He stopped for a moment to get his breath back. He must have run at least four miles since he’d left the river, on top of a fast ten-mile kayak, and a fight that had almost cost him his life, and he was exhausted. He also had to make a decision about which way to go. The track that led from the cottage up to the B-road that snaked its way into Tayleigh was about two hundred yards to his right, and from the distance he’d travelled up the hill from the cottage, he guessed he was roughly level with the spot where Jess had abandoned the car she’d been in. That meant he was probably also about level with the place where Casey had entered the forest on this side of the road. She’d have been running for her life and panicking, so would probably have tried to get as far into the woods as possible, which meant running in an easterly direction. That, then, was the direction in which he’d head.

As his breathing slowed, he turned and was just about to start running when he heard it.

The sound of a phone ringing.

Stopping dead, he looked in the direction it was coming from and saw and heard movement coming from deeper in the woods. A second later, a tall, shadowy figure came into view no more than thirty yards away, and Scope could just make out the figure of a child walking closely alongside him. The man was pointing a gun down towards her shoulder and, as the phone rang again, he fumbled for it in his pocket.

Casey shivered in fear. The gun was resting against her neck, and her back really hurt from where the horrible man had jumped on her. She wished she’d stayed where she’d been now, even if it had meant the man weeing on her, because now she’d been captured, and she didn’t know what was going to happen.

The horrible man’s phone was ringing and he fished it out of his jacket, grunting and cursing to himself in a foreign language she didn’t understand.

‘Yeah,’ he said in a growly voice.

Casey looked up at him. He wasn’t looking at her any more. He was busy listening to the voice on the other end of the phone, and his gun was no longer resting on her shoulder.

‘Sure, I’ve got her,’ he said. ‘What do you want done?’

She couldn’t quite hear what the man he was speaking to was saying, but she was sure she heard the word ‘kill’ and it sent a huge shiver up her spine. She knew then that if she stayed where she was, then she was going to die right here.

Without even thinking about it, Casey grabbed the end of the gun and pulled as hard as she could. The man was so busy talking he wasn’t paying attention, and to her amazement the gun came free from his hand.

He shouted out and went to grab it back, but she was too quick, throwing it away as far as she could before turning, ducking away from his clawing hands, and sprinting into the trees, all in the space of a couple of seconds.

Sayenko couldn’t believe the little brat had caught him out like that, or that he’d been so careless as to have let his finger drift away from the trigger. And Christ, she was fast, darting away from him into the trees.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ snapped Keogh, who’d heard his curses. ‘You’ve still got her, haven’t you?’

Sayenko ignored him as he ran over and grabbed the gun. Then, keeping the phone to his ear with his shoulder, he turned and took aim at the fleeing figure, using both hands to steady the gun. She was wearing a dark jacket and she’d already covered a decent amount of ground, but Sayenko was an excellent shot. Squinting a little, he looked down the barrel, moving it ever so slightly until the middle of her back was in his sights.

Then he fired a single shot, the suppressor masking most of the noise, and the brat fell.

‘Bang,’ he said down the phone, and turned away, fumbling in his pocket for another cigarette. ‘Now we’ve got one less witness to worry about.’

Scope saw it all happen from barely twenty yards away. The whole thing had taken a matter of seconds. As the tall, thin guy had been talking on the phone, he’d been creeping nearer, yard by yard, taking advantage of the fact that he was distracted. But then the girl had made a sudden break for it and the guy had shot her, just like that.

Scope had thought about charging the gunman when the guy had had his back to him, but he’d left it just a second too long. And now the little girl was dead and the gunman was saying down the phone that they – whoever they were – had one less witness to worry about. There was a triumphant tone in his voice that set Scope’s teeth on edge.

For a moment, he was too numb to move. It was hard to believe he’d just witnessed the murder of a child. The shock was physical in its intensity. It made his legs weak and his heart surge as his system filled with adrenalin. Then, as the gunman replaced the phone in his jacket and lit a cigarette, the anger came. It wasn’t the hot, passionate anger of someone who loses all sense of reason; it was far colder and harder than that. It was anger that cut through steel, anger that was utterly focused in its intensity. It was the anger of killers, and it was what Scope had felt when the twenty-year-old dealer who’d got his Mary Ann hooked on smack had been on his knees begging for his life. All humanity had left him then. He’d put five bullets in a guy barely out of his teens and, even as he’d left him lying there, bleeding out his last breaths, that cold anger had still pulsed through him.

Taking a deep breath, Scope began to creep closer to his quarry, conscious of the silence in the air.

The gunman took a deep drag on his cigarette and started walking in the direction of the track, the pistol dangling idly by his side.

Ten yards separated them, but for Scope it was at least five yards too far. The gunman was a good shot and cool under pressure. If he ran at him, he’d be cut down before he got there – there was no question of it. And if he moved any faster than he was going now he risked being heard, and already the gunman was increasing the distance between them.