Redeemer by Chris Ryan Page B

down the cool main corridor, joining the entrance to the rear of the building sixty metres away. Three classrooms flanked either side of the corridor, with lino floors, chicken wire over the classroom windows. The strong smell of disinfectant stung his nostrils.
    They were thirty metres from the rear exit.
    Twenty.
    ‘Shit! I forgot my rifle,’ Falcon shouted above the racket.
    ‘Can’t go back now, mate. You got a secondary?’
    ‘A what?’
    ‘A backup weapon – handgun, anything like that?’
    Falcon nodded, opening his leg holster and removing a stainless-steel Taurus PT92 semi-automatic. Not bad for a secondary, Gardner reckoned.
    A loud bang to his rear. He glanced over his shoulder. The front doors swung open. Gardner clocked the Isuzu in the street. And a guy’s torso, the body charred black as burned toast. He recognized the footwear on a pair of legs to the right. Same fucker who’d reached for the M67.
    Three shadows sprinted into the corridor.
    Ten metres from the rear exit and in the cool of the corridor, Gardner’s mag was empty. Hurrying, he ejected the mag and manually pulled the bolt lever, loading the final clip of Remington brass into the receiver. Twenty rounds – all you’ve fucking got, he thought. He tugged the bolt a second time, chambering the first .223 round.
    He focused on the nearest target. Forty metres distant. Broad and with a distinctive Mohican. Gardner adjusted his aim, dead centre on the target’s chest area.
    Crack!
    Smoke fluted out of the Colt’s barrel. It was as if the target had swallowed a packet of C4. His chest cavity ruptured, a hole the size of an apple punched in his breastbone. Grey and black shit slopped out, like an uncoiling snake. The guy flopped forward. Blood spewed on to the lino floor.
    ‘What have you got?’ Falcon shouted, discharging his Taurus at the middle target. ‘Show me what you fucking got!’
    His aim was wild, the rounds sparking off the brick walls, like a dozen firecrackers going off. Glass on the classroom windows cascaded. The air thickened with mortar dust.
    The target was twenty metres away, fifteen now, and Gardner fought to maintain his composure. Some guys went batshit in the middle of a firefight. Others, like him, seemed to reach a new plane of calm.
    Deep intake of breath, exhale, loosen your shoulder, he told himself.
    The target’s face disappeared behind a carmine mist as the bullet erased his eyes, nose and mouth.
    Falcon pumped four rounds in quick succession at the third target. The 9x19mm Parabellum chopped the guy in half, unzipping his guts. He stopped, dropped his PP-2000 and dumbly tried to shove his intestines back inside his stomach. Too late: Falcon dropped him with a neck shot, blood spraying across the kids’ drawings adorning the walls.
    ‘That’s what happens, bitches. That’s what fucking happens!’
    ‘Cool it, Rafa. Two more at the twelve.’
    Gardner felt a pain sear the point between his neck and jaw. He raised a hand to the wound. Blood seeped from his ear; a bullet had grazed him, slicing off the lower tip of his ear, and dear God, it fucking stung.
    In a frenzy now, Falcon pummelled bullets at the two Messengers. Five shots in each. He shot the second guy long after he’d dropped, rounds shredding his arms and legs, swearing at him in Portuguese.
    ‘Through the exit,’ Gardner shouted. ‘While we’ve got the chance.’
    ‘You see that asshole die?’ Falcon asked as they ventured out the back, into a playground of bleached grass, swings and roundabouts. ‘He took it real good, you know?’
    ‘Button it. I’m not interested. Just tell me the quickest way to the jungle.’
    Falcon nodded left, like he was in a silent movie. To a small row of shacks to the left and up from the school. A low cattle fence separated the shacks from the flourishing undergrowth.
    Almost there, Gardner thought.
    Voices. Danger close. He peered around the corner. Four Messengers, forty metres away. Led by a guy with