A Good Day To Die by Simon Kernick Page A

figured I didn't have a lot of choice. I could hear voices - very faint - in the front. I listened for a moment, and concluded that there were probably two men. Next, I moved my hands and feet. They weren't tied. This meant they almost certainly hadn't managed to get me back into the cafe. They must have simply picked me up and chucked mestraight in the boot. They probably hadn't searched me, either. And it was that which gave me a chance.
    My fingers touched the top of my head. There was a lot of semi-coagulated blood, and the skin felt extremely tender. I probed round and located a large, angry lump. The guy with the piping had certainly given me a couple of decent whacks, but not quite decent enough. I could move every part of my body, including the extremities, and my eyes were now becoming accustomed to the gloom. I was pretty sure I wasn't concussed, which was the good news. The bad news was that I was going to have to improve my survival skills substantially if I was going to get out of this situation intact.
    I moved my hand down to the inside pocket of my jacket. The airline ticket was still there, but I wasn't interested in that. Instead, I reached in further and located a small aerosol can. CS gel. It's freely available in Manila as a legitimate defence against the street robbers who plague the poorer districts, and the gel's better than the gas because it's more accurate and only affects the person being sprayed, not the sprayer or anyone else close by. The cans can easily be smuggled in the cargo holds of planes, where they show up on the X-ray machines as innocuous spray-action toiletries. That's why I'd brought three of them with me, and why I was carrying two now.
    The car went into a very large Puerta Galera-style pothole, jarring my whole body and giving me aneven bigger headache. But we were slowing down rapidly and I got the feeling that we were nearing our destination. Wherever that was. I wondered whether I was going to get a beating - a warning perhaps that my adversaries and erstwhile employers weren't messing around - or whether it was going to be more than this: a loose end being tied up.
    Pope's trap had been a sweet one, I had to give him that. He'd lured me into the open, to a supposedly neutral venue, pretending to make a reasoned approach, so that I would let my guard down, before striking just as I was pondering over what he'd said. Apart from her incompetence at the end, that waitress had been an inspired choice of attacker. There was no way I'd have ever suspected her. Even when plan A had gone wrong, Pope still had a B and a C. I was clearly dealing with someone who was well organized as well as ruthless.
    I pulled the can of CS gel loose from my pocket, and placed my thumb over the release button as the car hit another pothole before slowing to a halt. A couple of seconds later the boot flew open, and daylight came rushing in. A hand grabbed me roughly by the collar and pulled me upwards. My headache intensified and my vision blurred again as I moved properly for the first time since the blow.
    I made out a white hard hat, and vaguely recognized its wearer as the man who'd attacked mewith the piping. I could see through the fuzz that he was grinning and that there was a crooked, glassing scar round his lip. He pulled me closer and started to say something. His breath smelt of eggs and bad coffee, and I wrinkled my nose while simultaneously raising my arm and pushing down on the can's release button, the action automatically breaking the security seal. A line of white gel shot out and got him right in the eyes.
    The effect was immediate and incredibly satisfying. He staggered backwards, screaming and slapping at his eyes, and while he was otherwise occupied I hauled myself out of the boot, looking round for any further assailants.
    Unfortunately, I'd been wrong about the numbers. There were three men altogether, and the other two were coming towards me from either side of the car. The one to