Evolution of Fear Read Online Free

grip now. He found the trigger guard, prised away a finger, crushed it against the curved metal of the guard. The man screamed in pain. Then the shallow-grave rip of the MP5, its detonations muffled and drummed up through two chest cavities. Bullets shredded the kitchen cabinetry. Cordite stung his nostrils. For a fraction of a second they stared at each other, realising that somehow neither had been hit. Clay had his thumb wedged into the pull space behind the trigger now and jerked back hard on the pistol grip, hammering his knee into the man’s body. The Boer grunted, clamped down hard on the MP5. The guy was strong. Clay was winning the battle for the trigger but losing the fight for the gun. He tried to roll out, but the Boer outweighed him. He could feel the bastard’s breath on his face, smell the cigarettes and crap coffee. The gun’s barrel was coming down onto Clay’s throat, touching now, as the Boer levered his weight, still trying to pry Clay’s fingers from the trigger. Clay gasped for breath, pushed back with all his strength. He could feel the barrel crushing his windpipe. Pain seared through his brain, began its too-quick metamorphosis into panic. The Glock was there in his belt, he could reach it with his stump. If he still had two hands this would be over. But he didn’t, and it wasn’t. The Boer shifted his balance forward, putting all his weight into the MP5, trying to choke Clay to death, going for the kill.
    There are moments in any struggle, any battle, when outcomes hinge on the thinnest line, a fraction of a degree. Now , Crowbar used to call it back then, during the war. The moment when winning or losing, living or dying, depended on what you did right now . Whatever Crowbar was, he was no fatalist. Nou, seuns , he’d yell, charging forward, R4 dispensing single-shot judgement on any who chose to stand and die. Now.
    Clay raised his knees and pushed up hard against the floor, a powerful hip thrust that over-balanced his attacker, momentarily releasing the pressure on his neck. Clay arched his back, lined up the man’s head, and with every joule of energy he could summon, whipped his neck forward.
    Clay’s forehead made contact with the man’s nose. The cartilage collapsed as if it were raw cauliflower. He could hear the crunch. Clay rolled away, twisting the MP5 on its strap and sending his attacker crashing to the floor. Clay gasped for air, fumbled for the MP5’s grip. By now the Boer was up, blood streaming black over his lips and chin. He stood a moment, frozen. A stab of moonlight flicked across the room. The man was fair-haired, with big, pale eyes set in anxious sockets and a heavy, farm jaw, a goddamned voortrekker if he’d ever seen one. Clay raised the MP5. The Boer’s eyes widened.
    ‘ Wat julle gestuur het? ’ said Clay. Who sent you?
    The Boer blinked twice. ‘ Fok jou .’
    ‘Who sent you, damn it?’
    The Boer glanced towards the open door, the gale howling outside. Then he looked back at Clay and smiled through the blood. ‘ Mandela het my gestuur ,’ he slurred. Mandela sent me.
    Clay pulled the trigger. Nothing. A jam. Or out of ammunition. He dropped the MP5, reached for the Glock in his waistband. And then the light was gone, and so was the Boer.
    Clay scrambled to his feet, Glock out, the MP5 flapping about his neck, and staggered to the door. The man was already across the courtyard. Clay raised the G21, took aim through the slanting rain. The Boer hurdled the low wall and stumbled into the gorse just as Clay fired. Clay ran across the courtyard to the wall. A dark shape was lurching towards the cliff edge, about thirty metres away now, barely silhouetted against the sea. Clay steadied himself, raised his weapon. The Boer stopped, turned. He was right there, the abyss before him. Clay fired. The Boer pitched back and was gone.

3
A Talisman of Sorts
    Clay walked back across the courtyard, the pain in his arm rising now as the endorphins and adrenaline burned