Path of the Tiger, стр. 28

he sniffed tentatively at the air. His sense of smell was nowhere near as accurate now as it was when he was in his tiger form, but it was still far more developed than any human’s. There was no hint that an intruder was currently present, but William nonetheless retained his vigilance. With a wordless shout he kicked open the door and swept his revolver in an arc over the space, his eyes taking in every nook and cranny as he processed the visual details at light speed. There was nobody there but Ricky sitting at the chess table, his back to William. Sitting still … ever so still.

Deathly still.

Blood surged with panicked violence through William’s temples, and liquid heat drenched his body as he dropped the revolver and bolted over to the table.

‘Ricky!’ he screamed, his voice cracking. ‘Say something, oh Jesus, say something!’

It was as he reached his friend that he noticed the trickle of dark crimson running from under the unkempt grey curls on Ricky’s head, trickling down the back of his neck. With horror, William’s eyes followed the blood trail up through the hair to a single bullet wound at the base of his friend’s skull. With tears welling up in his eyes, he forced himself to peer over Ricky’s shoulder, and at once saw the unspeakable abomination of gore sprayed across the chessboard from the projectile’s exit wound. Ricky’s hand still clutched a glass of whiskey; he had never even known what had hit him. This thought did little to comfort William, for once more he had seen a beloved friend die, and he had had yet another companion taken from him. This time, though, William’s friend had died because of his actions, and this realisation unleashed a staggering wave of nausea. Unable to hold back, he dropped to his knees and emptied the contents of his stomach onto the floor, heaving and coughing the last of it out as tears streamed down his cheeks.

‘Ricky,’ he sobbed, ‘I’m so sorry my friend, I’m so sorry. Christ, I never even had the chance to say a proper goodbye. I’m so sorry, so very, very sorry…’

There was little time for mourning or remorse, for through his weeping and warring emotions William detected something else amiss; a foreign entity was entering the building. In fact, there were many entities entering the building. Hostile entities.

‘Huntsmen!’ he half-growled, half-gasped.

He sprang to his feet and raced over to his writing desk to turn on his multiple CCTV monitors, and immediately saw that eight heavily armed men dressed in SWAT riot armour had stormed the front door and were charging up the stairs. Two of them split off from the main contingent and crawled out onto the fire escape to cut off any possibility of flight via that exit.

It was a matter of a minute, maybe sooner, before they would reach him. He cursed his own stupidity in bringing Hernández’s phone here instead of hiding it in a distant location and checking it later; this lack of foresight had cost Ricky his life, and may well be about to cost him his own. Regardless, he had to focus on the immediate present; once he had escaped this life-or-death situation he could try to rectify the mistakes he had made, but for the moment staying alive was his first priority.

In a brief flurry of panic, he considered transforming into his tiger form and leaping out of the window. He would be injured by the impact of the six-storey drop, but would most likely survive intact enough to escape with his life, albeit with a broken bone or two. He quickly discarded this idea, for the Huntsmen were ruthlessly efficient; his windows would almost certainly be covered by snipers who would put a bullet through his skull the second he parted the heavy drapes.

No, the only way out of this was up … somehow.

He snatched his revolver from the floor and dashed over to his bedside table, where he ripped out the top drawer and grabbed the small waterproof package that contained his collection of passports and credit cards for his various identities. It was attached to a strong elastic collar, so that if he had to transform into his tiger form these vital documents would remain safely secured around his neck. William knew that he could never return to this apartment, and that he would probably have to flee the country as well – if he survived the next two minutes.

With his pulse racing and adrenalin storming through his veins he slipped the collar on and burst out of the door … and froze immediately, finding himself face-to-face with three Huntsmen troops, who had just got to the top of the stairs, and who now had their M-16 assault rifles aimed squarely at his chest.

‘Don’t fuckin’ move, you piece of shit,’ one of them growled, his voice muffled by his SWAT mask. ‘We’ve got you, Gisborne. Drop the gun, kick it over to me, and get the fuck down on your knees.’

William knew what would happen to him if these men took him alive … and he wasn’t about to let that happen.

‘Okay,’ he said calmly, ‘just relax, just relax, everything’s cool, everything’s—’

Without aiming he fired his revolver from the hip, and the booming clap of the shot – which missed – was enough to make the Huntsmen jump back with fright, giving William just enough of a gap to dive to the floor. In response, the Huntsmen soldiers unleashed a barrage of M-16 fire. The hail of lead tore through the space that William’s head and torso had just occupied, the bullets smashing through walls and doors in billowing plumes of plaster dust and showers of splinters. Lying flat on the ground, William counter-attacked, squeezing off three shots from his eight-shot revolver, with each mighty round resounding like a clap of thunder through the hallway, leaving his ears ringing with a high-pitched whistle. The third shot struck home, and with a stabbing