The Garden of Evil by David Hewson Read Free Book Online

instinctively stumbled clear, down towards where he expected the exit corridor to be, eyes tight shut, a handkerchief clutched across his mouth and nose.
    Gasping for clean air, aware of the curses and screeches of the men behind him, trapped in the noxious fumes, Costa was sure of one thing: Falcone would haul him over the coals for the way he had handled this particular encounter. Perhaps with good cause.
    Then, as he half knelt, half fell against the grubby courtyard wall, something brushed his shoulder.
    He looked up. The khaki figure was standing there, still in his mask, which hid, Costa guessed, a broad, self-satisfied smile.
    The shotgun was pointed directly into Costa’s face, the barrel no more than a hand’s length away.
    Costa coughed, tried to look the man in the eye, and said, “You’re under arrest.”
    Then he watched, feeling a little baffled and not, for a single moment, frightened.
    Nothing happened. Costa looked again. Somehow the fabric of his would-be killer’s military gloves had gotten tangled in the gap between the trigger and the metal guard, preventing the firing of the weapon through nothing more than a shred of fabric and luck. It was a small and temporary thing to keep a man alive, but Costa wasn’t much minded to think on it. Instead, he kicked out hard with his right leg and hit the gunman painfully on the shin. The shotgun tilted up towards the sky and fired, with an explosive screech that re-bounded round the black brick and sprayed hot pellets through the air. A soft lead rain dappled the ground around Costa.
    Then the gas returned, and this time it was in his eyes, stinging like wounds from a million crazed bees, sending tears streaming down his cheeks, bile surging in his throat.
    Costa swore. Behind him men were screaming. He rolled out of the drifting smoke haze and saw the brown-clad figure disappearing down the corridor, into the dark pool of shadow, towards the grey patch of light at the end.
    With an aching reluctance, he lurched down the slippery cobblestones, coughing, choking, realising there was no one from the team behind in much of a state to help him.
    The memory of the shotgun barrel poking in his face burned as badly as the tear gas. He took one more look down the alley. Whoever it was had got a good head start on them all.
    Costa watched as the military form emerged from the shadows and fell into the bright light at the distant wall, then stopped, turned, ripped off the gas mask, hitched the shotgun up to his shoulder, and stared back at him.
    He wore a black military hood beneath, the kind the antiterrorist people wore, tight black cotton with two tiny slits for eyeholes. It was too far to take a worthwhile shot from this distance. The man was, surely, making some kind of point.
    Costa watched as the hood contorted around the mouth, the lips closed, then formed a perfect O, and those distant hands closed round the trigger.
    Somehow he could hear the single word the figure was mouthing, even though that was impossible.
    Boom,
the man said, and then laughed.
    What happened next came so naturally Costa didn’t even have to think about it. He ripped the service pistol out of his shoulder holster, took some vague aim down the brick corridor ahead, and let loose four rounds in rapid succession.
    The figure in khaki had fallen back against the wall, twitching and shrieking in a way that Costa, against his own instincts, found satisfying.
    But it wasn’t a wound. It was shock and fear and some kind of outrage that he should be a target in the first place. The man hauled himself to his feet and dashed a vicious glance back down the alley before he stumbled to the right and out of sight. But at least the brief moment of fear Costa had instilled in him redressed the balance a little.
    Without waiting to see what condition the others were in, he dashed towards the brick tunnel ahead, lurching like a sick man, holding the weapon loose and impotent by his side, dimly aware he had