Nemesis by Tim Stevens Page B

Asher dive and roll and come up, fragments of glass glittering in his hair and on the shoulders of his suit jacket, and he saw Asher too had a gun, not the .22 Purkiss had taken off him but a spare he must have had in the car somewhere, a 9 mm pistol of some make. Asher pressed himself against the wall beside the window, out of range of whoever was outside.
    Asher had his gun trained on the security guard nearest to him. He shouted: ‘Drop it. Drop it and tell your friends outside to back off.’
    The double thump and crack of two shots in quick succession came through the broken window. Purkiss braced himself, but the shots seemed to be confined to outside.
    Purkiss hauled himself up to a standing position, lifting Donovan with him so that the man hung straight in front of him. The security guard held his aim, squinting down the sight of his gun, the barrel trained on Purkiss’s eye.
    Purkiss said, ‘If you shoot, I’ll know it. In the instant before you pull the trigger, you’ll give yourself away. I’ll move your boss’s head a fraction to the right, and you’ll put a bullet through his head. Don’t risk it. Don’t. ’
    Without waiting for the guard to reply, Purkiss hissed in Donovan’s ear: ‘How many outside?’
    Donovan emitted a choked noise, half cry, half cough, and Purkiss eased the pressure a couple of millimetres. He saw the guard’s expression shift just a degree, saw the lifting of the face from the line along the gun barrel.
    He felt Donovan go rigid in his grip. Felt the limbs shaking.
    ‘He’s sick,’ said the guard, without lowering the gun. ‘Heart.’
    ‘Drop the gun,’ Purkiss said.
    Against his front, Donovan’s entire torso was convulsing now. The sounds rasping from his throat were like the death rattle of a beast in an abattoir after its throat has been cut.
    ‘For God’s sake,’ the guard yelled. ‘He’s having a heart attack.’
    The second guard kept his gun locked on Asher in a Mexican stand-off. But he was glancing over, his face taut.
    Another single shot outside echoed across the gravel forecourt.
    Purkiss thought: are they firing at Saburova?
    He said, again, very precisely: ‘Put down your weapons and I’ll release your boss.’
    Donovan’s hands were clawing feebly at Purkiss’s arm now. Purkiss felt the wetness of the man’s drool on his wrist.
    Two seconds slouched by.
    The two guards, as if obeying some invisible signal, lowered their guns simultaneously.
    ‘On the floor,’ Asher called.
    The guards knelt, then lay prone, their hands behind their heads.
    Asher was across at them in a moment, ducking to keep below the level of the front window, kicking their guns away, crouching behind them.
    Purkiss lowered Donovan to the carpet and turned him at the same time so that he was on his back. He saw the eyelids fluttering, the spittle white in the corners of the mouth, one hand gripping the chest.
    ‘Medication?’ said Purkiss.
    One of the guards raised his head. ‘In the sideboard over there. The top drawer.’
    Asher moved quickly over and pulled open the drawer.
    Purkiss registered his mistake even as Donovan’s knee came up and connected with his groin.
    The man’s face had been pink, and healthy looking, with no pallor or cyanosis, no sheen of sweat.
    Asher spun and raised the 9 mm but the guard nearest to him was fast and already lunging across the carpeted floor and seizing his own gun. The guard fired blindly, without aiming, the shot smashing into the base of the sideboard but causing Asher to leap aside.
    The sick punch of nausea in Purkiss’s lower abdomen was rising, filling his chest and his throat. He fought not to vomit, waves of dull agony blurring his vision, and bore down on Donovan, but the older man was already slipping out from under him and pulling free.
    Purkiss rose from his knees, staggering, and managed to put up an arm as Donovan’s kick snapped at his jaw, deflecting the foot to one side, not smartly enough to throw the older