Princess: A Private Novel Read online

  “Let’s talk money,” Morgan said. “You said no to twenty million. Let’s make it thirty.”

  “Thirty million to walk away?” Flex sneered.

  “To walk away from this bridge,” Morgan corrected him. “We both know that this doesn’t end until one of us is dead, Flex. I’ll give you thirty million to give me Knight, and leave this bridge.”

  Flex scoffed, and Morgan looked to Rider. “You may not want the money, but maybe your men do.”

  “They want what I want,” Flex growled, taking a pace forward. “Honor. Respect.”

  But the look on Rider’s face told Morgan different. “Thirty-five million.”

  “Let him speak, Flex,” Rider said from behind his boss. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “He’s trying to confuse you, you soft bastard,” Flex snarled, turning back to Rider.

  “I’m trying to save my friend’s life, and to get us off this bridge.” Morgan now spoke to Rider directly. “Thirty-five million, or a lifetime as a wanted murderer. Your choice.”

  The look on the former Foreign Legion man’s face said it was a simple one. “Let’s get back in the car, Flex. Let’s get out of here, and at least talk about this.”

  “We’re not going anywhere.”

  “It’s a lot of money.”

  As the two men scowled at one another, Morgan chanced to look at the police car’s driver—the man was pale with nerves, his hands gripping the wheel hard.

  “You can’t stay on this bridge forever,” Morgan said to Flex and Rider. “The real police are going to smell something, and when they get here, there’s no getting off this bridge.”

  “The real police?” Flex snorted. “How often do you want to underestimate me, Jack? Insult me? Why dress up as coppers when I can just buy dirty ones? This is a Met Police car, and it works this beat. If I say we have all day, we have all day. All. Fucking. Day.”

  Morgan shook his head, and flicked his eyes to the east—the sun was rising higher in the sky, and with it would come more pedestrians. More scrutiny. They could not stay on this bridge all day.

  “Into the car!” Flex ordered Morgan and Herbert.

  “Thirty-five million,” Morgan replied.

  “Get in!”

  “Flex, think about the money!” Rider pressed from behind him.

  But Flex would not. He could only think about reputation, and how Morgan had stolen his. And so he reached into the car’s back seat and pulled Peter Knight out by his hair. Morgan watched tense as his battered friend was shoved toward the side of the bridge.

  “I’m sick of your shit,” Flex spat at Morgan, confirming the American’s fears. “Either you get in the car, or he goes in the river.”

  Morgan could see the handcuffs on Knight’s wrists, and knew that a fall from this height into the water with hands bound was a death sentence.

  “If he dies,” he said evenly, “there will be no money, Flex. Only death.”

  “Get. In. The. Car.”

  For a moment all was silent. Then Morgan turned his hate-filled eyes from Flex’s face to Knight’s, the man he had been so angry with for putting them in this position, and for coming between Flex and Morgan’s justice. But the true spirit of Morgan’s soul broke through, and he knew that, no matter what, he could never put his own desires before the safety of his agents, and friends.

  “I’ll get in the car,” he told Flex, stepping forward. “But Knight goes free.”

  Flex smiled, moments from victory.

  “Don’t!” Rider called out as Morgan stepped forward. “Stay there. Flex, we’re taking the money!”

  “Enough!” Flex snarled.

  Everything happened instantly, at once, and at speed.

  Morgan watched on horrified as Flex used his massive arms to bundle the handcuffed Knight up and over the bridge’s side. In the same motion, Flex was already dropping to one knee and pulling his pistol.

  But Rider had been faster—No honor amongst thieves, scumbags or killers—and his first 9mm round chipped stone from just above Flex’s head, the second striking Flex in his armored chest plate.

  Rider didn’t get the chance to fire another. His eye was drawn to the figure of Morgan, who was pulling his own pistol free, and that split second of indecision cost Rider his life. Flex fired a double tap from his kneeling position, one round hitting the man in the neck, and the second clipping the side of his head. Rider went down, but his finger remained depressed on the semi-automatic trigger, 9mm rounds blasting and smashing into the police car’s windows and metalwork. Morgan saw in his peripheral vision a spray of blood on the windshield as the driver took one in the back of his head.

  Two deaths had occurred before the large splash below announced that Knight had hit the chopping river, where now, handcuffed, he would have only moments to live.

  And it looked as though Morgan had those moments—Flex was still twisted away from him, facing Rider, and now Morgan had a half second to sight in on the man and fire.

  It was all he’d need. He would have justice and revenge.

  His finger touched the trigger.

  Chapter 102

  AS MORGAN TOOK aim at Flex, Herbert launched himself into Morgan’s back and landed on top of him. The pistol fired but the shot was spoiled, the bullet smashing into one of the ammunition pouches on Flex’s hip.

  “Run, Flex!” Herbert shouted at his leader. The man then bit down onto Morgan’s neck like a feral dog.

  Herbert felt Morgan writhe in agony beneath him, and he used his legs as he had been taught in jiu-jitsu classes, hooking them over and under Morgan’s. With his hands still tied behind him, and his arm wounded, Herbert wormed and snapped like a lamprey, blood running into his mouth as he sought to save Flex, who he knew would never truly abandon him. They had been through too much together. They were mates. They were comrades, with an unspoken bond. Herbert had known Flex’s words about killing him for what they were—a ruse to get Herbert back by his side, no man left behind.

  Herbert had never liked Rider. He had never understood why Flex employed him in the first place—so he hadn’t been surprised to see the man put money before honor and draw on Flex. Now, like a dog trained for blood sport, Herbert was eager to serve his master. His friend. He was eager to serve the man who had told him that he would never abandon him, and that he would be there for him always.

  Chapter 103

  TIME, LOCATION AND reality had melted for Flex. He was oblivious to the fact that he was in the center of a gunfight on London Bridge, pedestrians running screaming and cars crashing into one another as they sought to escape the carnage. Flex had been overtaken by the red mist, his anger and rage all-consuming. His endgame was a distant memory now. All he wanted to do was kill. Kill. Kill.

  Throwing Knight over the bridge had been a good start. He hoped that the weasel suffered a long death. It was a shame he couldn’t have given the same end to Rider, that greedy shitheaded bastard, but blowing out his throat would have to be enough. Turning through his arc to draw aim against Morgan, Flex briefly noticed the slumped body of his dirty cop behind the steering wheel, what little there had been inside the man’s head now gray jelly against the windshield.

  Completing his arc, Flex was surprised to see that Morgan was not up and standing in the aim position, ready to pull his own trigger, but struggling on the ground, with someone biting and writhing on top of him as the American howled in agony.

  Herbert, Flex realized. You were actually loyal to the end.

  Flex pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 104

  JACK MORGAN FELT the thud of rounds chew into the body on top of him. He heard the screams of pedestrians as they ran, joined by the drivers of vehicles desperate to flee the death on the bridge.

  Morgan fought his urge to black out from the pain. He had never known anything like it. He had suffered several unpleasant injuries, but never before had a man tried to bite into his arteries like a zombie.

  The pressure of the bite gav
e up suddenly as the bullets began to hit like sledgehammer strikes against flesh. Morgan guessed that the man who had assailed him, and who now acted as his unwitting human shield, was Herbert, the idiot loyal to the end and believing Flex cared about anyone but himself.

  There was little need to guess the identity of the shooter, and Morgan braced himself for the round that would find its way through Herbert’s flesh, missing bones, and instead coming straight and true to lodge in his own body.

  It didn’t come.

  The firing stopped.

  Chapter 105

  FLEX LOOKED AT the pistol in his hand. The top-slide was held halfway back by an ejected round that had failed to properly clear the weapon, the empty bullet case now stopping the slide from coming forward to chamber the next round. To clear it would take the experienced Flex only two seconds, but as the wails of sirens and cries of “armed police” sounded behind him, the man realized that it was two seconds he didn’t have. Flex’s mission had been to kill Jack Morgan and those close to him—not to die himself. Looking at the leaking tandem of bodies on the pavement, Morgan silent and unmoving, Flex was content that the first part was done.

  Now he had to escape.

  Chapter 106

  THE TIME FOR playing dead was over.

  Morgan pressed himself up and rolled Herbert’s limp body off him. As he looked at the body he saw that Herbert had been killed by a round in the skull. The bullets that had ploughed into his torso had been stopped by the bulletproof vest Morgan had pulled onto Herbert in Battersea. The man’s assurances that he be protected against Flex had ended up saving Morgan’s life instead. Without the barrier of Kevlar and flesh on top of him, Morgan would have been bleeding to death on London Bridge. For now he was alive, but time was running out for others.

  Having lost his pistol in the struggle with Herbert, Morgan now stood empty-handed, his mind struggling to take in the chaos of the scene around him: Rider lay dead in a pool of his own blood. The dirty police officer was dead and slumped behind the car’s wheel. Herbert was no more than a bag of chewed flesh and bone. Flex was gone.

  And Knight…

  Morgan ran to the bridge-side and peered down. There was no sign of his friend in the swirling gray-brown waters.

  Morgan swore, then looked left and right along the bridge. He saw panic. The bridge itself was a rout of abandoned vehicles. The center of the span was empty of civilians, the press of their running bodies cleared to the bridge’s ends. There sirens announced the arrival of the inevitable, London’s security services rushing to the point of attack like blood clots to a freshly opened wound. Morgan saw a flash of movement between the cars and vans that stood abandoned on the bridge—he saw Flex, using cover from view and fire as he fled to the south bank.

  As he fled from justice.

  On instinct, Morgan turned to follow, but his friendship with Peter Knight stopped him as suddenly as if they’d been attached by a chain. He looked down at the wind-churned waters once more. There was no sign of Private London’s leader. Morgan looked to his blood-smeared watch, and saw that the time was 5:33. Less than three minutes since Flex and his crew had arrived in the police car. In those short moments, at least three men had died. Morgan prayed that it was not four.

  Knight could be alive, he knew. He could be alive, and if he was, there was no way Morgan could abandon him. Not when there was hope, no matter how slim.

  Morgan took one last look at the fleeing shape of Flex. Knowing that his chance of bringing vengeance down on Jane Cook’s killer may be lost forever, he turned back to the river, and prepared to jump.

  Chapter 107

  “STOP!” MORGAN HEARD coming from a car’s loudspeaker as he climbed onto the stone. “Don’t jump! Don’t jump, Jack!”

  It was hearing his name that stopped Morgan, his toes teasing the edge of the ledge as he turned in the direction of the police van that slewed to a halt beside the scene of carnage. Armed officers spilled from its back like pepper from a shaker, their weapons up, ready and searching for targets—Morgan could not be a more inviting one. He felt the press of the revolver in the small of his back, and wondered if it was visible.

  “Don’t move!” one of the masked officers shouted at him.

  But Morgan did move. His eyes moved. They moved to the shape of an unmarked police car that skidded to a crunching halt between the officers and Morgan.

  The doors flew open. The first man that Morgan recognized was the armed man who had stood guard for Princess Caroline inside the Tower. The second was Colonel De Villiers, clad head to foot in tactical gear, a pistol on his hip.

  “Go!” he shouted at Morgan, waving in the direction of the south bank. “Get Flex!”

  “Knight…” Morgan began, looking to the waters.

  “I’ve got him!” De Villiers promised. “Go! Run! Get Flex!”

  Morgan took one more look at the empty water beneath him, before turning his predatory eyes to the south.

  Flex’s figure was almost clear of the bridge. Once he hit the mass of streets, Morgan knew, the chances of finding him would be almost zero.

  And so he ran.

  Chapter 108

  COLONEL DE VILLIERS watched as the bloodied apparition of Jack Morgan leaped down from the bridge-side and raced off toward the southern bank of the Thames.

  “He’s with me!” the Colonel shouted to a pair of officers who began to take off in pursuit. The men pulled up short with a look to each other, but knowing well enough that orders were orders.

  De Villiers ran to the bridge’s edge. He knew police boat units were already rushing to the scene, but Knight had been in the water for almost two minutes now—his time was running out, if it was not already up.

  The Colonel had watched the man get hurled by Flex into the waters. He had seen Rider shot, and the struggle that followed. He had seen all this from a drone feed. Morgan had sent word at 5:28 of where the exchange would take place—Jack Morgan, still a Marine and servant to others, had put his own desire for vengeance after what was best for others. He had put his own head in a noose to draw Flex out so that the police could swoop in at the right moment and arrest Jane Cook’s killer.

  De Villiers should have known better than to put faith in a plan to survive contact with the enemy. They had made the difficult decision to stand back, and allowed traffic and pedestrians to continue on the bridge—to do anything else would have alerted Flex. What they had not counted on was Flex’s temper causing him to throw Knight into the Thames, and to begin a shootout that had turned London Bridge into the Wild West.

  With no other option, Colonel De Villiers shed his gear and jumped from the bridge.

  Chapter 109

  JACK MORGAN, DRENCHED in Herbert’s blood, launched into his run like a sprinter at some ghastly Olympics. Unlike Flex, he made no effort to weave between the stalled traffic for cover, instead running along the bridge’s pedestrianized side.

  As he ran, he passed some of the city’s early risers who had pressed themselves against the bridge’s scant cover, paralyzed by fear, or too old to run. They looked at him with terror-filled stares, but his eyes were locked on a figure a hundred yards ahead, the bulk of Flex pushing conspicuous even from a distance.

  Flex had a head start, but Morgan had seen Rider’s bullet strike the man in his armored chest plate. Even the greatest athlete would be winded after such a hit, and Flex was made of sixty pounds more muscle than his heart and lungs had been built to carry—in effect, he was running with a rucksack. In his SAS days, that was exactly what Flex did as his bread and butter, but he was older now, and Morgan could bet that Flex’s gym time was spent pumping up his muscles in the mirror, rather than on the cardio machines.

  The result of all this was that Morgan was catching up.

  The American was at the end of the wide bridge now, and saw Flex fleeing eastward with the tail end of the bridge’s terrified fugitives.

  “Out of my way!” Morgan heard the man bellow. “Police! Get out
of my way!”

  The wide-eyed pedestrians moved aside for the human bowling ball, who knocked to the ground any who were too slow to clear a path. As Flex reached a set of elevators that carried passengers down to the ground level of London Bridge station, a young woman was sent tumbling forward by the muscleman’s barging shoulder. People screamed, and Morgan used those shouts as beacons whenever he lost sight of the man. The foot of the open bridge was now twisting into steps and staircases that entangled into the concrete jungle of buildings, roads and train track. Morgan had closed the distance, but as the urbanity built up ahead of him, he knew he could lose his quarry from as close as twenty yards away.

  “Flex!” Morgan called, willing to set himself up as a target if that’s what it took to halt his prey. “Flex!”

  The second shout reached the man’s ears. The fugitive turned, scowled, and snapped off a double tap from his pistol. The bullets zipped by Morgan’s head as he continued to run forward in a crouch, ducking behind a low wall. The sound of panicked civilians was everywhere, but no more shots, and so Morgan risked a look around the end of the wall. There was no sign of Flex.

  Morgan rushed onward, preparing for the final showdown. He reached behind his back and pulled free the revolver—he had six shots.

  Six shots to kill, or be killed.

  Chapter 110

  FLEX USED A backhand to clear a fear-stricken young man from his way, the youth falling backward with a whimper as Flex barged through the narrow alleyway.