Name Maker (Sam Pope Series Book 9), page 16
Buck, in an underground bunker in Italy.
Farukh, atop the dilapidated High Rise, as he clung for his life on a rickety scaffolding.
Edinson.
Bowker.
For a man who had built his entire legacy off his prolificity through the scope of a rifle, Sam was surprised at how many people he had beaten to death with his bare hands. And now, a few steps away from another murderous enemy, he knew that the only way he was walking away was if he added another to the list.
Mendoza wasted little time in unloading a few rapid jabs with his bare-knuckled fist, which Sam managed to avoid, before throwing his own. Mendoza was fast, quicker than Sam could ever wish to be, and the man’s slighter frame meant that the agility was in his favour. As he weaved under Sam’s thundering right hook, he swung out a swift sidekick that planted Sam clean on the thigh, causing a slight wobble. Sam adjusted his foot against the gravel, only to be rocked by a swift left hook.
Sam stumbled a few steps to the side, wiped his jaw with his hand and then raised his fists again. The two men circled each other slowly, and then Mendoza burst forward with another flurry of jabs. One of them caught Sam on the cheek, but the next one he evaded, before retaliating with a swift strike to the man’s solid stomach.
Mendoza stepped back, smirking.
‘You got some fight in you, esse.’ Mendoza raised his eyebrows in approval. ‘I like that.’
Sam lunged forward with a hard right cross, but Mendoza ducked, drilled a knee into Sam’s hip and then finally rocked him with a clubbing blow with the metal knuckles. The sharpened point sliced across Sam’s cheek, pulling open the skin and sending a small splatter of blood against one of the trains.
The rain washed it away instantly.
Mendoza wasted little time, racing forward and ducking the wild swing by Sam and burying his shoulder into Sam’s mid-section and driving both of them into the train behind. Sam’s already sore spine slammed against the metal, but he locked his arms around his Cuban attacker and began to swing his knees up as hard as he could. A few of them connected firmly with the man’s body, but on the third one, Mendoza latched onto Sam’s leg, and then swept the other from under him.
Sam hit the gravel hard and then roared with agony as Mendoza drilled a brutal, metal-clad fist into his thigh. Unrelenting, he fell on top of Sam, and began raining down brutal right hands, all of which Sam absorbed with his forearms, the sharp blades ripping his leather jacket to shreds. Eventually, one of the fists got through, and the fist struck Sam flush on the jaw, ripping the skin open and sending his head snapping back against the gravel.
Blood gushed from his jaw.
His brain rattled in his skull.
He was losing.
‘This is too easy, vato.’ Mendoza chuckled, and then drilled Sam with another one, this time imprinting a few more cuts on Sam’s cheek. The pain was instant, and with every brutal strike, Sam felt the fight getting away from him. The man was too quick, and unlike Sam, hadn’t just been blasted through a first-storey window.
Sam could fight back against most things.
But there was only so much his body could take.
A few more blows, and it would be over, and Sam could only hope that his attacker would rather kill him than drag his beaten body to London. Dana Kovalenko had made it clear that Sam would experience more pain than he ever thought possible, and that involved going after the people he cared about.
The people he trusted.
The people he was willing to fight for.
Mendoza slammed his fist down towards Sam once more, looking for that killing strike, but Sam’s moment of clarity caused him to shimmy to the side, and Mendoza’s balled fist hit the jagged stones. He howled in pain, and Sam locked his arm around the man’s wrist and then, with all the power he could muster, he rolled his entire body weight over it, bending it back over itself and hearing the satisfying snap of bone. Mendoza roared with agony and fell backwards, the metal sliding from his limp fingers, and he scurried back to his feet and fell against the train, trying to manage the pain.
Sam pushed himself up, the rain crashing against his beaten body and bloodied face, and he locked his eyes on Mendoza.
Valiantly, Mendoza tried to throw up a hand to block the incoming blow, but Sam made it through, rocking the man with a thunderous right that disconnected his jaw bone, before he grabbed him by the collar of his blazer, drove his forehead into the man’s nose, and then slammed him face first into the train.
The front of Mendoza’s face was flattened, his nose obliterated as blood gushed over his slack jaw. He slid down the train, his legs sprawling out beneath him.
There was no begging for mercy.
Even if the man’s jaw was working, Sam knew the words would never come.
They had made a silent promise that it was to the death, and as he raised his boot, Sam knew he was keeping his word.
He thrust forward as hard as he could, the bottom of his boot connecting with such velocity with the side of Mendoza’s head that it compressed viciously against the unforgiving metal of the train. His skull cracked, but it was the unmistakable drooping of his head that told Sam that the neck was broken.
Mendoza flopped forward onto the gravel, blood pumping from his face, his eyes wide and lifeless.
The death had been quick, but brutal.
Sam felt nothing. There was none of the enjoyment he had been worried about. There was also no remorse. The corpse before him had been hell bent on killing him, a man he had never met, for cold, hard cash.
The dead man was a hired gun.
And in that line of work, there was always the possibility that your next target would be your last.
Sam lifted his face to the sky, the chilled rain soothing the searing pain that emanated from the lacerations across his skin. He felt like hell warmed up, and as he slowly trudged across the gravel and away from the man he’d just killed, he wondered how many more were coming for him.
And what Dana Kovalenko would do when she found out another one of her potential assets had been eliminated.
Beyond the cover of the train depot, Sam could still hear the emergency services battling the fire, while the streets were now alive with activity, with nosey residents being ushered further back by irritated police.
There was too much noise.
Too many people.
Too many phones.
Sam’s car was somewhere on the street, his dwindling arsenal in the boot of the vehicle. There was no way he was getting to it, with the ever growing crowd meaning someone was sure to spot him, especially with the battle scars of his fight with Mendoza on display.
There was also no chance of sticking around and waiting it out. Eventually, they would sweep the area and he needed to be gone.
It meant he needed to head to London without a gun in his hand, or any plans on how to get one.
It was becoming a long few days, and as he limped through the narrow gaps between the trains, he didn’t expect it to get any easier any time soon.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dana Kovalenko slammed down her laptop in anger, shutting off the news broadcast she’d been watching. It was all over every news channel, with the Sam Pope narrative dominating the headlines as another confrontation had seemingly taken place, once again in Derbyshire, with another dead body and another seriously injured man, taken into hospital.
No matter the calibre of the hitman she’d sent after the man, the fact annoyingly remained the same.
Sam Pope simply wouldn’t die.
When she had learnt of his return from the dead, Dana had fantasised about the revenge she would enact on behalf of her beloved brother. Pope had tried to justify Andrei’s death by the empire he’d created, but Pope had no idea where Andrei had come from.
The life he had endured.
The things he had to suffer to keep her and Oleg safe.
Yes, the lives of many people were ruined by their trafficking business, but it had been a necessary step in providing the Kovalenko children with a life that they had deserved due to the awful hand they’d been dealt. They had never asked to be raised by an inadequate and abusive father, and had Andrei not intervened or loved her, then Dana would have been raped multiple times over by the person who was supposed to protect her.
Would Sam Pope have murdered people to protect her from such a fate?
It was what turned her stomach. The man preached about right and wrong, yet he ruined as many families as her brother had. He had certainly killed more people, yet he believed he was justified in his actions.
It was why she craved her revenge, and it was why, with her hitmen falling one by one, she could feel her anxiety heightening.
The multi-million bounty was supposed to draw the best of the best to her door, with Uri diligently vetting each one to verify that they were up to the task. When she had sat in that crummy warehouse two days before and given them the terms of the deal, she had regarded them all as killers.
Men capable of getting the job done.
She didn’t care which one of them would end up knocking on her door, either with a corpse or a man on death’s door, looking to get paid.
She had just expected it to happen.
But now, another piece had been taken off the chessboard. The news report had described the dead man as of Latin-American descent but had yet to be identified. She knew it was the man who had sat in the warehouse, with a revered history working for one of the most dangerous governments in the world.
Yet he’d found himself beaten to death in a train yard.
Because Sam Pope simply wouldn’t die.
The identity of the man taken to hospital still eluded her, but with Brandt and his team eliminated, it meant that one of the Americans was still in play. She hoped it was the strong, silent one, as the arrogance of the younger hitman had turned her stomach.
But either way, they needed to change things.
They needed to bring Sam to them, as out on the streets, they were in his domain, and he was once again reminding them all that he was built for the war they were bringing to his doorstep.
‘Uri,’ Dana called from the plush dining room of the penthouse.
‘Yes, dear.’ Uri entered, offering a modicum of affection as he did. It wasn’t reciprocated.
‘Get Leon and his crew in here. Now.’
Uri scurried out of the room, leaving Dana to stand and fix her hair in the mirror. Despite the fury and the increasing panic, she was a Kovalenko, and she knew she needed to represent the power that had been bestowed upon that name. She straightened the front of her fitted black dress and then sat back down at the head of the table, sipping the coffee she had been enjoying while watching the news. Eventually, Uri re-emerged, followed by the one-armed thug and a few of his crew.
‘Sit,’ Dana commanded, and all the men obliged, with Uri making a point of sitting beside her. An empty display of authority.
‘Whaddya need?’ Leon asked, slouching in his chair.
‘I need you all to be ready,’ Dana began. She splayed her immaculately manicured fingers out on the table. ‘As you know, Sam Pope is not going down without a fight. We are losing the people we sent after him, and once the final one goes, then there is a strong chance he will disappear for good.’
‘Run like a lil’ bitch?’ Leon chuckled.
‘That cannot happen. For nearly three years, I have mourned my brother. When they announced that the fucker who killed him was dead, I lost my way. But now, I have been given a chance to put right what he did. To make him suffer for the things he has done for my family.’ She turned to Leon. ‘The things he has done to people who work for me.’
Leon shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. The sleeve of his hooded jacket had been pinned at the elbow, emphasising the missing limb.
Uri sat forward, his eyes on Dana and his hands clasped in his lap.
‘What do you want to do?’
‘I want to bring him here.’
‘Excuse me?’ Uri sat back, startled.
‘Out there, even with the element of surprise, it’s his turf.’ Dana spoke calmly. ‘Several of the men we sent after him are dead. So, if we want to bring that bastard to his knees, then we need him here. Where we control things.’
‘Makes sense.’ Leon shrugged.
‘And how do you expect we do that?’ Uri asked, shaking his head in disbelief.
‘None of the men know this location. They have not been here. We have not told them. But we know which phone Sam has access to. So, I want you, Uri, to send this location to the other numbers on the list and see which one comes to us. Then, with them here, I will reach out to Sam and invite him here myself.’
‘That is insane.’ Uri threw his hand up.
‘You scared, bruv?’ Leon raised an eyebrow. A member of his crew chuckled.
‘Fuck you.’ Uri spat back. ‘I have seen and done things that make your missing hand look like a fucking scratch.’
‘Yeah, but you ain’t been through this have you?’ Leon lifted the remainder of his arm in fury. He turned back to Dana. ‘Boss, bring that motherfucker here and I’ll put him down myself.’
‘That’s very sweet.’ Dana rolled her eyes. ‘But what I need you and your boys to do is stay alert. When I make the call, I expect him to come here looking for a war.’
‘And then what do you plan to do?’ Uri asked, clearly displeased with the whole plan.
Dana smiled cruelly.
‘Give him one.’
The men around the table all shared a quiet look, knowing full well the gravity of what Dana was planning. She had made a clear threat against Sam Pope and the people he cared about, and now she was inviting him to their front door. The chances were, he wouldn’t knock politely.
Dana stood, gave them all one more authoritative glare, and then strode back across the room, goading them all to look at her as she left. Men were easy to rein in, and she knew that despite Uri’s misgivings, he would obediently send the message to the remaining contract killer.
Once they had a positive response, then she would take the final step towards her revenge.
She would call Sam Pope and tell him exactly where to find her if he wanted her dead.
The beeping of hospital equipment echoed through the hallway, and Defoe felt his fists clench in frustration. With his entire body shaking with pain, every beep felt louder as it pounded against his eardrum. The paramedics had done their best to alleviate the pain, but it wasn’t until he was taken to the hospital that the nurses finally pumped him with painkillers.
It had been enough to dull the agony, but the pain still clung to the edges.
He had only been able to look at his face once.
The brutality of Nash’s actions hadn’t been lost on him, and he realised, upon the only inspection of his wounds, that it had come from somewhere beyond survival. Defoe had walked into the building with the very clear objective of eliminating both men, and Nash, as they had been trained to, had fought for his life. The man had killed countless people in the name of The Foundation, yet instead of putting a bullet through Defoe’s skull, he did something worse.
He obliterated his identity.
Defoe knew he was egotistical. It was a small consequence of being such a talented assassin, coupled with his dashing looks. He took pride in his appearance, and it had never been difficult to sway a woman’s gaze from a table and use his considerable charm to bed her.
But that had been taken away.
Nash had literally peeled back the skin of his face to reveal the monster beneath, and there were no painkillers in the world that could dull that damage.
Defoe had been rendered a monster.
Five, deep, brutal scars had been carved into his face, one of them ripping through a nostril, while the other had come close to blinding him. A cosmetic surgeon had been rushed in for emergency surgery upon Defoe’s arrival at the hospital, and although they had successfully patched him to ensure his survival, it hadn’t been the same man looking back when he finally faced his reflection.
His face looked like an old, discarded jigsaw. Numerous black stitches criss-crossed his face like a tatty old football.
If he wasn’t handcuffed to the side of the hospital bed, he would have already been hunting Nash to the ends of the earth.
But that would have to wait.
A nurse entered to check some of the notes on the clipboard that hung at the end of his bed, and Defoe greeted her with a grunt as he sat up.
He needed to see himself again.
To make peace with what he had become.
Before he could ask her for a mirror, there was a gentle tap on the door to the room, and he turned his mutilated gaze to it. Two young men, both decked out in cheap looking suits and average haircuts entered, trying their best to exude authority.
Defoe was instantly irritated.
‘Fuck off.’ Defoe spat, swinging his legs over the bed and glaring at them through his scars.
‘Rough night?’ DC Anderson asked dryly, before he shifted uncomfortably on the spot. The effects of Mendoza’s torture were still palpable and he was trying his best to contain them. Next to him, DC Saddler tried a different tack.
‘Can we get you anything?’
‘You can take these fucking cuffs off me.’ Defoe raised his arm as far as he could.
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that.’ Saddler shrugged. ‘Not until we get to the bottom of what’s going on.’
Defoe began to chuckle.
‘You have no fucking idea what’s going on.’ He turned his attention to Anderson. ‘And if you did, you’d hobble the fuck back to whatever hole you came out of.’
‘Well, unless you start speaking buddy, I can find a nice, dark hole for you to sleep in tonight.’ Anderson replied in anger.
‘Forgive Detective Anderson, here. He’s not feeling well.’ Saddler elbowed his friend in the rib. ‘I’m Detective Saddler and…’
‘And I’ve already made my phone call. So any minute now, you boys will be told to let me go and then I suggest you get the fuck out of my way.’
