THE FIX: SAS hero turns Manchester hitman (A Rick Fuller Thriller Book 1) (13 page)

Seconds later I heard, “Des! Des! Des!” and the Scottish lunatic came flying in on top of me. I have to admit I was pleased to see him. I looked left and right into pitch black.

The gunfire subsided slightly and I risked a look up over the ridge of the stinking ditch. I saw nothing but shadows. Des immediately popped up thigh-deep in water and emptied his clip in the general direction of the Audi.

“How many you think?” he said, panting.

I had it all in my head, I always did. For some reason I could see the battle in my mind’s eye. A recollection only likened to photographic memory, I could place every enemy I’d seen in their last position. The most frightening thing was, I would never forget any or their faces. From Armagh to Amsterdam I would recall every last one.

“Originally four in the Audi, plus the three from the cruiser,” I said, my voice echoing inside my skull. The whistling blocked out most of everything important.

Des was checking his weapon. “Reckon only two men left alive, heading to the Audi. How are you for ammo?”

“Fuck all.”

Des gave me the look that told me he was in the same boat. We had to get the fuck out of there, we both knew it. Where the hell was Susan? The foetid water in the ditch made any movement difficult and slow. We could hear footsteps and shouting maybe twenty metres away. Both of us ducked low into the freezing ditch. Then, even though my ears were shot, I heard Susan’s voice. It was unmistakable even in my poor state.

I popped up to look. The two men left standing had her by the arms and for the first time, I saw that they were not in overalls as I had first thought, but uniform. Specialist shit, not the standard stuff, like some tactical police unit or other. I’d seen the gear before and I was racking my brains when Des got real close and whispered, “They’ve got Israeli Special Forces kit on.”

Both guys looked sorted. Blondie and his best pal carried heavy calibre machine guns. The friend walked backwards as he held Susan and trained his weapon in the direction of the ditch but he couldn’t see us in the dark. The guy looked wired but stayed on his task. He was a pro, no doubt about it. There had just been a small war. Hundreds of rounds had been fired.

Susan looked calm as they helped her toward the Audi. She was limping slightly. The blood I’d seen on her was from a superficial leg wound. She seemed okay. I heard radio transmissions, and then saw what I should have realised from the start. Susan took the handset and started speaking into it, her tone measured and calm. It wasn’t Dutch either, well not exactly, it was Afrikaans, and she was pissed off. I couldn’t understand what she said, but I got the impression she wasn’t happy we weren’t lying dead in the road.

The three walked past Tanya’s body on the way to the Audi and the blond uniform stuck the boot into her midriff.

I knew he’d pay for that one.

We had no way to get to Susan. No ammunition and no cover. It would be suicide and that came extra. We weren’t getting paid by Bin Laden. Des was looking at his hand-held GPS unit. We both carried one, together with the mobile phones.

“I reckon,” he began, “we are twenty clicks from the nearest town. We need to split up and…”

My mind was on Susan and the soldiers. How far away were more of Stern’s guys? What if he could muster air support and track us down? Even more strange, they were leaving their colleagues dead on the ground? Who did that? Not even the worst Mafioso left their dead. There was only one answer. They had a clean-up team on its way and I’d bet next month’s pay Susan had just called it in.

Des shook me by the arm. “You listening?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we gotta move.”

We heard the Audi’s tyres screech as it drove into the night and I looked over the top of our cover. The air had cleared and there was an eerie silence except for the odd metallic clink from the ruined vehicles. Des climbed from the freezing water of the ditch and crawled toward the devastation. I followed his wet trail. My head was in turmoil. Why hadn’t they started a search for us?

I told myself, I didn’t care.

The perfect moon popped out again just for our benefit and Tanya was suddenly surrounded by shimmering black. Her heart had pumped on long after the initial rounds struck her. To the left of where the Audi had been, lay two bodies in uniform.

Des reached Tanya first and took the MP5 from her dead hands. He checked the mag, gave me a ‘thumb’, and approached the bodies lying in the darkness.

He rolled the first with his foot and then quickly knelt at the second.

“This one’s still ticking,” he shouted.

I walked by Tanya. Her face was hidden by her helmet and I was strangely grateful. I paused for a moment and looked at her lifeless form, before I joined Des and inspected the living, a man in his prime, lying gasping for breath. He wore the same uniform as the others in the Audi. I would have put him in his mid-thirties and he sported a military style flat-top. On his left side, he had an entry wound just below his collarbone and a second to his ribcage. Red bubbles formed at his nose with each shallow breath. I guessed he could only be using one lung and was finding breathing an interesting concept.

Des pulled out a first-aid pouch and checked his pre-loaded syringes. He selected adrenaline and administered it to the unfortunate bloke. The reaction was instantaneous. The boy almost jumped to his feet but Des was ready and cradled him tightly. Everybody always remembers when John Travolta gave the shot to Uma Thurman in the movie
Pulp Fiction
. Well, this was a close second.

Des spoke in quiet measured tones as I looked nervously about for the cavalry. “Steady, son, settle down now, you’ll be fine.”

The boy’s eyes were wild. He was shitting himself and the excess adrenaline had tripled his heart-rate. He started to shout. Des put his hand on the boy’s mouth and made a hushing sound. After a few seconds the guy obeyed. So would anyone. Believe me.

“Speak English?” whispered Des and released the grip.

“Please....,” blurted the guy in perfect Queen’s. “Leave me here.”

I couldn’t make out the accent exactly, but thought it sounded American, maybe Canadian.

“How long before your friends get here?” said Des, as if asking directions to the park.

The poor bastard summoned some bravery from somewhere deep inside his gut, did a fair impression of a smile, and told Des to go fuck himself.

Des was ruthless. He searched for the guy’s rib entry wound with his thumb, found it, and plunged the stumpy extremity in up to the first knuckle.

There was a wet plop and the boy made a strange gurgling sound. Des’s thumb had plugged the entry wound and there were weird and wonderful things happening to the boy’s body. He wasn’t quite sure if he should scream or breathe.

He chose to do the former.

“How long and how many?” repeated Des.

There was another gagging effort and a cough that threw blood and snot over Des. The boy was really struggling for air.

“Minutes…” was all he could manage before chucking more of his lungs over Des’s jacket.

The boy fell unconscious. Des looked at me, between brushing bits of lung off his soaking coveralls. “Well? I say we fuck off.”

Guess what?

We did.

I started to unhook the Landmark from the Toyota as it was the only serviceable vehicle. Joel’s prize boat was a real mess. Dozens of 7.62 rounds had devastated the luxury vessel. Des did a sweep and collected as many weapons and as much ammunition he could, together with everything he and I had brought to the hard stop. Also, at my request, he checked Tanya for any ID. There was none. As a professional she shouldn’t have carried any, but Des checked anyway. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

The Toyota still reeked of CS. Contrary to popular belief it isn’t a gas but an irritant and clings to everything it touches. The seats in the cruiser were rife with it and my nose and throat started to itch immediately.

I fired up the car and Des trotted toward me. As he reached the wounded man he stopped and knelt. Des whispered something to him I couldn’t hear and I saw the briefest movement and flash of steel.

Seconds later, Des jumped in the car.

“He’s gone,” he said.

Now you may consider Des’s actions harsh, but it was just part of the war. We were in deepest shit, and until we knew what the fuck was going on, all we had was each other. We couldn’t risk the boy giving any information to his buddies.

My mind made a brief trip back to Manchester.

Joel was going to be really pissed when heard this one. He really was out of his depth with Susan and Stern’s crew. He’d completely underestimated her and how powerful and professional this group were. She was part of the plan, no doubt. Joel had to know and quickly.

I mulled over what we knew. The guy Des had just put out of his breathing difficulties looked ex-army to me, maybe even ex-Special Forces. Joel had now lost his wife, boat, coke, and a big pile of money.

As for Susan and Mr Stern, they had just upset a psychotic multi-millionaire who would undoubtedly pay vast sums to anyone who would avenge this little lot.

Probably more scary was one of the most ruthless Yardie gangs in the UK would be buying EasyJet tickets to Amsterdam the instant they found out about Tanya. I knew her brothers would never forgive her killers.

Stern’s biggest problem though, was neither Joel, nor the Richards brothers.

He had really upset me.

As I drove the cruiser, Des was rooting through the cabin for anything of use or interest. The rear nearside window had gone and the draught blew bits of paper about the interior.

We had enough petrol and, due to Des’s expert scavenging, we had a serviceable weapon each with a few rounds. Not enough, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Finally Des sat beside me and pulled out his dreadful pipe. It was a habit he had never been able to break. I gave him the sternest look but he didn’t give a shit and lit it anyway. A plume filled the cabin before being sucked out of the broken window. Neither of us had mentioned the cock-up on the road, or Tanya, and we travelled in silence for a while, deep in our own thoughts.

“They knew we were gonna hit the boat, didn’t they?” said Des eventually.

“Hmm, yes, I reckon so.”

“Susan was in on this from the beginning, then?”

“Certainly once she found out Joel wanted her to ID Stern, maybe much earlier, who knows? Maybe she opted for the safest route and jumped ship. Either way, Joel will want her back alive.”

I spun the cruiser left and onto the motorway and I felt my voice falter for a second.

My friend saw it.

“I want to finish this job, Des, for lots of reasons. It was shit about Tanya, she was a good mate. We need to have a beer for her when this is all over.”

Des nodded in silent agreement.

I rubbed the back of my neck and considered I was getting too old for the mountain of shit we were going to climb. Then my brain came to life.

“I can’t see Joel getting anyone else, I guarantee it. He might be an arse, but he knows we’re the best he’s got. With Tanya dead, the Richards brothers will be sending death squads to Holland the second they get the telegram and I’m more pissed off than I’d care to mention.”

I looked at Des as he took a pull on his pipe. I asked the obvious. I just needed confirmation I wasn’t in a James Bond picture.

“Did you see Susan grab that radio handset back there?”

Des checked the magazine in what was Tanya’s Glock, and pushed it into his waistband.

“Aye, I saw.”

“Did you hear what she said?”

He exhaled plumes of smoke out of the window, wiped his teeth with his tongue, and savoured the taste of his favourite shag.

“Nope, but I gathered that someone had fucked up, and got to the party late.”

“Yeah, I reckon Stern’s plan was to take us all out, leave Joel without protection, and then attack his business. I tell you, Des, he doesn’t just want to rob Davies of his money,” I pulled my mobile from my pocket. “He wants him wiped off the face of the earth.”

I punched Joel’s private line into my handset. There was a long silence, then, a metallic message. I hardly heard Des’s voice.

“Do you think that Susan could have been in on this from day one?”

I let the message repeat in my ear.

“Dunno mate, it’s possible.” I said absently.

The robotic voice was clear. Joel Davies private telephone line was disconnected.

We needed to be out of the country, soon as. The moment I hit the red button Des knew. He bagged his bloodstained jacket and chucked it out the window. We had to dump the cruiser ASAP as it did a fair impression of a mobile cheese grater. We were wet, filthy, had no money or passports and no transport.

We managed about thirty kilometres before we decided our luck was at a premium and turned off the motorway. We found a nice looking suburban area and parked the cruiser in a large car park that serviced four blocks of private flats. The perfect moon made one last effort to frame our sorry-looking souls and we could see our breath in the chill. Des had found a length of plastic parcel binding and a screwdriver in the cruiser. All we needed was an old-ish model car to boost.