Nightmare by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online Page A

since the last time Nightingale had seen her. Proserpine. Her smile widened.
    ‘They’re coming for you, Nightingale,’ she said.
    Nightingale looked over at the two men who’d climbed out of the Range Rover and realised that they were both wearing ski masks and had their right hands concealed beneath dark Puffa jackets. He stepped back from the road. He heard raised voices behind him and turned to see an Indian shopkeeper shouting at two teenagers, accusing them of stealing. He heard a horn pound and flinched as a black cab drove by. The two men were walking purposefully towards him, their right hands still under their jackets, their hoods up over their masks. They moved apart, one stepping onto the pavement.
    Behind him the two teenagers were shouting racist abuse at the shopkeeper. Two pensioners in long coats and pulling shopping trolleys stopped to listen to the argument but Nightingale’s attention was focused on the two men in ski masks. They were both on the pavement now, moving towards him, carving through the pedestrians like sharks cutting through a shoal of fish. No one seemed to notice that under their hoods they were wearing ski masks.
    Nightingale took a quick look, left and right. One of the men pulled out a gun. A MAC-10. Nightingale’s heart pounded. He moved until his back was against a shop window. The second man pulled out his weapon. Another MAC-10. He pulled the trigger and the gun kicked in his hands. The window behind Nightingale shattered. Pedestrians screamed and ran for cover as glass crashed down onto the pavement.
    One of the black teenagers fell to the ground, yelling in pain. The shopkeeper stood with his mouth wide open, too shocked to move.
    The first gunman seemed to be having trouble getting his gun to work. He was cursing and banging the magazine. The gunman who’d fired looked over at him. ‘What’s your fucking problem?’ he shouted.
    ‘It’s jammed. It’s fucking jammed.’
    Nightingale started to run. The second gunman turned and fired but Nightingale was a moving target now and the shots went high, slamming into the brickwork above his head. Nightingale crouched low and ran down the road, zig-zagging. The first gunman finally let rip with his gun and bullets whizzed around, smashing the windows of a Chinese restaurant. Pedestrians were screaming and running away from the gunmen, towards Hyde Park. A car veered to the right and collided with a taxi and a white van slammed into the back of them both.
    The first gunman fired again and bullets screeched off the road, this time missing Nightingale’s feet by inches. A Muslim woman completely covered in a black hijab threw herself to the ground, wailing. A young father clutched his baby son to his chest and ran into a coffee shop, barging past a middle-aged couple laden down with carrier bags who were staring wide-eyed at the mayhem.
    Nightingale ducked behind the taxi as bullets thudded against the side of the vehicle. He was breathing hard and fast, trying to work out how many rounds they still had in their weapons. Nightingale knew that the MAC-10 came with two types of box magazine: a regular version holding twenty rounds and an extended version that held thirty-two. The fact that the guns were hidden under the shooters’ jackets suggested that they’d used the smaller magazine, which meant that they could be emptied in two seconds. And the fact that they’d both fired three short bursts meant that they’d be running low. So either it would all be over soon or they’d stop to slot in fresh magazines.
    He risked a look over the wing of the taxi. The two men were walking towards him, their guns held out at arm’s length. They were both firing one-handed, which accounted for the terrible marksmanship. They must have fired more than twenty rounds between them and so far they’d not managed to hit him. But the closer they got the more likely they were to hit home so he had to move and he had to move fast. One of the men