Free Assassin by Tom Cain Page A

bedded firmly in the ground. Tyzack was counting on that perfectionism to kill his target.
    Krebs, he calculated, was going to approach the lefthander with the confidence and speed of a man who knew the route so well his driving was virtually automatic. His concentration would be impaired by fatigue and the after-effects of the alcohol, cocaine and ecstasy he’d been consuming through most of his waking hours since Friday evening.
    Now a car was coming down the road towards Tyzack. Its Xenon headlights were on, but there was still enough ambient light for him to be able to see beyond them and make out the domineering bulk of the Escalade, the Diamond White paint-job and 22-inch chrome wheels identifying it as Krebs’s.
    Tyzack took his time. He waited until Krebs was just fractionally short of the point where he would have to brake, the car’s speed up around 70 mph, before he depressed the control that sent a radio signal to the explosive valves. Then he just let events play out of their own accord.
    Just two of the charges detonated. The driver’s side tyres remained intact. But that only added to the catastrophic effect of the other explosions, as the functioning wheels kept driving, pushing the car away from the centre of the road, towards the hazards beyond.
    Krebs’s reactions were as sluggish as predicted. He’d been driving along a dry road on a warm, clear evening with very little traffic about, so there’d been no reason to anticipate any problems. The simultaneous disintegration of two tyres and the immediate, total loss of steering and brakes took him entirely by surprise.
    His eyes widened, his mouth dropped open and the Escalade swerved across the tarmac, its high body lurching from side to side. It rocketed off the road and hit the cattle wire at full tilt. The fiery rasping of wheel rims on the road was replaced by the screech of the wire on the car’s bodywork as it rode up the radiator grille then over the high, bulbous bonnet, stretching like a bowstring as the nearest fence-posts were torn from their footings.
    Then, as the massive white machine approached the edge of the ravine, an invisible hand seemed to let the bowstring loose and it cut through the first six feet of the Escalade’s cabin as easily as a wire through cheese, slicing Norton Krebs clean in two below the shoulder. Only then did the barbed wire snap. The release of tension catapulted the Escalade towards the oak tree and then sent it pinballing off its trunk into the ravine, where it finally came to rest, as ripped and lifeless as its owner.
    Tyzack let out his breath and gave a slight shake of the head. Then he turned away from the scene of the crime. The unexploded tyre-valves were still down there in the wreckage, but Damon Tyzack did not make any move to retrieve them. He walked away down the road, towards the truck he’d parked half a mile away, without a backward glance.

17

    Carver was not a horseman. He’d always left that kind of thing to the fancy-dressed toy soldiers in the Household Cavalry, keeping the tourists happy at Buckingham Palace with their shiny breastplates and plumed helmets. But since arriving at the ranch he’d grasped that if he wanted to know Madeleine Cross and understand who she really was, he’d have to change his ways.
    One morning, lying in bed with her head nestled on his shoulder and her legs wrapped around his, the heat of her on his thigh, she started telling him about her childhood.
    ‘We were absolutely blue-collar,’ she murmured. He could feel her breath on his skin, and her own skin was smooth and warm against the arm he’d draped around her. ‘My father took jobs wherever he could find them, working the fields as a farmhand, or on construction sites. I wore hand-me-downs from the families Mom cleaned for.’
    ‘If you were so poor, how come you learned to ride?’ Carver asked.
    ‘I had a horse called Blaze. Well, he belonged to our neighbour, but to me he was mine. I used to