Remote Control Read Free Page B

know who had the initiation device.
    Kev arrived to back me. On the net, I could hear the other two players being followed towards the border by the rest of the team as I moved in to take Savage. He turned left down an alleyway.
    I was just about to get on the net when I heard a police siren, followed by gunfire behind me.
    At the same instant Euan came on the net: ‘Contact! Contact!’
    Then more shots.
    Kev and I looked at each other. What the fuck was going on? We ran round the corner. Savage had heard the shots too and turned back towards us. Even at this distance I could see his eyes, big as plates and jerking like he was having a seizure.
    There was a woman pedestrian between us. Kev shouted, ‘Stop, security forces! Stop!’
    With his left hand, he had to push the woman over to the side and bang her against the wall to keep her out of the way. She was going down, blood pouring from her head. At least she wouldn’t get up and become a target.
    She began screaming. We had Kev hollering and screaming at Savage and all the people in the area were starting to scream. It was turning into a gang fuck.
    Kev flicked back the right side of his sports jacket to reach the pancake holster over his kidneys. We always put a bit of weight in a pocket – a full mag is good – to help the jacket flick back out of the way.
    But I wasn’t really looking at Kev, I was looking at Savage. I could see his hand moving to the right side of his jacket. He wasn’t some knuckle-dragging moron from the back streets. The moment he saw us, he knew the score. It was decision time.
    Kev drew his pistol, brought it up and went to fire.
    Nothing.
    ‘Stoppage! Fuck, Nick, fuck, fuck!’
    Trying to clear his weapon, he dropped on one knee to make himself a smaller target.
    Now is when everything seems to go into slow motion.
    Savage and I had eye-to-eye. He knew what I was going to do; he could have stopped, he could have put his hands up.
    My bomber jacket was held together with velcro, so at times like this I could just pull it apart and draw my pistol.
    The only way a weapon can be drawn and used quickly is by breaking the whole movement into stages. Stage one, I kept looking at the target. With my left hand I grabbed a fistful of bomber jacket and pulled it as hard as I could towards my chest. The velcro ripped apart.
    At the same time I was sucking in my stomach and sticking out my chest to make the pistol grip easy to access. You only get one chance.
    We still had eye contact. He started to shout but I didn’t hear. There was too much other shouting going on, from everyone on the street and the earpiece in my head.
    Stage two, I pushed the web of my right hand down onto the pistol grip. If I got this wrong I wouldn’t be able to aim correctly: I would miss and die. As I felt my web push against the pistol grip my lower three fingers gripped hard around it. My index finger was outside the trigger guard, parallel with the barrel. I didn’t want to pull the trigger early and kill myself. Savage was still looking, still shouting.
    Savage’s hand was nearly at his pocket.
    Stage three, I drew my weapon, in the same movement taking the safety catch off with my thumb.
    Our eyes were still locked. I saw that Savage knew he had lost. There was just a curling of the lips. He knew he was going to die.
    As my pistol came out I flicked it parallel with the ground. No time to extend my arms and get into a stable firing position.
    Stage four, my left hand was still pulling my jacket out of the way and the pistol was now just by my belt buckle. There was no need to look at it, I knew where it was and what it was pointing at. I kept my eyes on the target and his never left mine. I pulled the trigger.
    The weapon report seemed to bring everything back into real time. The first round hit him. I didn’t know where, I didn’t need to. His eyes told me all I wanted to know.
    I kept on firing. There is no such thing as overkill. If he could move, he could