Free Last Light by Andy McNab Page B

tucked up in bed, her hair spread in a mess over the pillow as she dreamt of being a pop star. The Yes Man was right, they did look both wonderful and vulnerable like that. My blood ran cold as I realized that the end of this job wouldn't put an end to the threats. She would be used against me time and again.
    We stopped at another station and the crowd ebbed and flowed once more. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I was starting to get pins and needles in my legs. No matter which way I looked at it, my only option was to kill the boy.
    No, not a boy, let's get this right, just as the Yes Man said, he was a young man some of those weapons being cocked in the aircraft hangar all those years ago had been held by people younger than him.
    I had fucked up big-time. I should have killed him yesterday when I had the chance. If I didn't do this job Kelly would die, simple as that and I couldn't let that happen. I wouldn't fuck up again. I'd do what the Yes Man wanted, and I'd do it by last light Friday.
    The train stopped again and most of the passengers left for their jobs in the City. I was knackered and fell into a seat before my legs gave out. As I wiped the beads of sweat off my brow, my mind kept going back to Kelly, and the thought that I was going to Panama to kill someone just so that Josh could have her to look after. It was madness, but what was new about that?
    Josh might not exactly be my mate, these days, but he was still the closest thing I had to one. He'd talk through gritted teeth, but at least he'd talk to me about Kelly. She'd been living with Josh and his kids since mid-August, just a couple of weeks after her therapy sessions had ended prematurely in London when the Yes Man handed me the sniper job.
    She hadn't fully recovered from her PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and I didn't know whether she ever would. Seeing your whole family head-jobbed took some recovering from. She was a fighter, just like her dad had been, and had made dramatic strides this summer. She'd moved from being a curled-up bundle of nothing to being able to function outside the private care home in Hampstead where she'd spent the best part of the last ten months. She wasn't in mainstream schooling yet with Josh's kids, but that would happen soon. Or at least I hoped it would: she needed private tuition and that didn't come cheap -and now the Yes Man had cancelled the second half of the money... Since March I'd had to commit myself to being with her during the therapy sessions three times a week in Chelsea, and on all the other days had visited her at the place in Hampstead where she was being looked after. Kelly and I would tube it down to the plush clinic, the Moorings. Sometimes we'd talk on the journey, mostly about kids' TV; sometimes we'd sit in silence. On occasion, she'd just cuddle into me and sleep.
    Dr. Hughes was in her mid-fifties and looked more like an American news reader than a shrink in her leather armchair. I didn't particularly like it when Kelly said something that Hughes considered meaningful. She would tilt her elegant head and look at me over the top of her gold half-moons.
    "How do you feel about that, Nick?"
    My answer was always the same: "We're here for Kelly, not me." That was because I was an emotional dwarf. I must be Josh told me so.
    The train shuddered and squeaked to a halt at Camden Town. I joined a green haired punk, a bunch of suits and some early-start tourists as we all rode the up escalator. Camden High Street was teeming with traffic and pedestrians. We were greeted by a white Rastafarian guy juggling three bean-bags for spare change and an old drunk with his can of Tennants waiting for Pizza Express to open so that he could go and shout at its windows. The din of pneumatic drills on the building site opposite echoed all around us, making even people passing in their cars wince.
    I diced with death as I crossed the road to get into Superdrug and pick up some washing and shaving kit, then