Private Princess (Private 14)

He felt a rush of relief as he saw a police officer only steps away.

“Help! Officer! Help!” Hooligan gestured frantically. “My mate’s collapsed!”

Only then did he see the taser in the officer’s hand.

Chapter 68

HOOLIGAN’S EYES WENT wide in horror as he saw the mouth of the taser flicker to life. Crouched to help Perkins, he knew there was no way he could spring clear before the man disguised as a police officer struck. The crowd had allowed the “policeman” to close on them unseen, and now it hemmed Hooligan in like a trapped fish.

Killed by my fellow fans, he thought as the taser jabbed toward his throat and he closed his eyes.

But the expected pain of the electric shock did not come. Hooligan realized he was somehow untouched and opened his eyes. In front of him he saw a beautiful sight.

A ruptured pie slipped lazily from the side of the man’s head, gravy spilling down his neck as all about him laughed and cheered.

“On your head, pig!” a voice in the crowd shouted.

The hard-core football fans had no love for the pol

ice, and seeing a fan tasered, they had lashed out. The thrown food and shoves into the man’s back had bought Hooligan seconds, and now he used them, scrambling to his feet and pushing his way through the scrum of bodies. A flash of guilt struck him for abandoning Perkins, but a quick look behind was enough to tell him what his gut already knew—that the “officer” was there for Hooligan. Sure enough, the big man was now pushing his way through the crowd like a barracuda through a shoal of fish.

Hooligan knew damn well that the man was no police officer. It wasn’t so much that he had attacked without reason, but because Hooligan had seen into his eyes—that was not the face you sent to reassure a grieving family, or to talk to local shopkeepers after a theft. It was the face of a killer, plain and simple.

Hooligan ran and shoved as if his life depended on it, because he knew that it probably did.

Chapter 69

NATHAN RIDER WAS not a happy man. In fact, he was furious. When the pie had hit his head, his first instinct had been to find the man who threw it and to shove his thumbs into that man’s eyes. It was with some internal struggle that he had fought off the urge, and in those few seconds the ginger bastard had escaped.

Not escaped, Rider corrected himself, but made life difficult. The ginger was pushing through the crowd, but Rider could see how the man was already breathing like a beached whale. He was unfit, and he was panicked—his lack of fitness would drop him into Rider’s hands as easily as the taser would have done, and then it was simply a case of dragging him away into the “police car.” From there it would be a short drive to a garage full of power tools, and the beginning of the ginger’s real nightmare. Flex planned a show—“something that would make even the Mexican cartels look like pussies,” he had said—and Rider was the kind of man who enjoyed such work.

Rider was not what anybody could consider a nice person. Those who had known him in his childhood would politely describe him as “difficult,” while those who knew him as an adult would describe him as a “total bastard.” Those who truly knew him would use the words “dangerous” and “killer.”

He had been twenty years old when he left Britain to join the French Foreign Legion. For a man with Rider’s violent disposition, fighting had always seemed like a good way to earn a living, and so, when the British Army couldn’t take him due to his long criminal record, he had set sail across the English Channel. To him, one army was as good as the next.

Tough men join the French Foreign Legion, and the Legion makes them tougher still. By the time Rider had completed twenty years’ service, he was fluent not only in several languages but in killing. He left the service with a reputation, and was headhunted by Flex Gibbon, who had once worked with Rider on a shady operation in West Africa. Flex knew from those bloody days that Rider was a man who would carry out a mission first and ask questions later, so he had been the perfect candidate to run Flex’s operations in Africa. Over the past ten years the two men had built a firm friendship, and so when Flex told Rider that he had a score to settle, Rider had not needed reasons—only instructions. That was how he had come to be hunting down the Private tech guru.

He knew now there was nothing that would come between him and the ginger. He simply walked on, confident that his size and face would clear a path for him like the parting of the Red Sea. For those too slow to move, there was always a shunt in the back, or a shove to the shoulder.

Rider was blocked by one of those oblivious idiots now. “Out of my way, you cock,” he growled, taking hold of the West Ham supporter’s shirt and shoving him aside. He hadn’t spent weeks tracking Hooligan’s habits to lose him now.

Chapter 70

HOOLIGAN COULD HEAR shouting behind him and turned to see the “policeman” only meters away, the huge man violently shoving a West Ham supporter out of the way. Then he saw a knife pulled free of its hiding place. He saw it drive forward and plunge into flesh.

His pursuer’s flesh.

“Arghhh!” the man screamed as the blade pierced his stomach. “You bastard!” he growled at the football fan who had stabbed him.

No—Private’s tech guru corrected himself. Not a football fan. A football hooligan. A real one. And here came his friends, scarves pulled up over their faces as they hurried to form a barrier between him and who they assumed was an officer of the law.

“Run, you wanker!” they shouted at their friend and Hooligan’s unwitting savior, who took off quickly. “Run!” they urged.

Hooligan also decided to take their advice, as the stabbed man was getting to his feet. Hooligan cursed that he appeared mostly undamaged—his stab vest had taken most of the blow, and only a small amount of blood was leaking into his hand.

“Out of my way!” the man raged. “Out of my way or I’ll arrest you all!”

And as Hooligan pressed through the crowd, he saw the football fans slowly obey. In the near distance there was now the sound of shouts and whistles: above the heads of the West Ham supporters, Hooligan could see two mounted officers entering the horde on horseback. A quick calculation told him they would never get to him before the fake officer. Hooligan’s only chance was to keep running and to find his own safety. So he shoved, swore and sprinted his way between his fellow fans, ignoring the constant insults and occasional fists that came his way.