THE FIX: SAS hero turns Manchester hitman (A Rick Fuller Thriller Book 1) (37 page)

Finally I felt a pang of reminiscence as I loaded three Browning Hi Power SLP’s. The old faithful had been named the P35 by some. To me the gun was the BAP, the Browning Automatic Pistol. The Irish knew it well.

It had a thirteen round capacity. Compared to any other SLP it almost doubled your ammunition, in fact you had fourteen shots without a reload if you counted the one in the spout.

I felt ripped off with the price, but I was very comfortable with our armoury. Nothing too long range, but I had the feeling this little job would be bayonets before snipers.

I became aware that we were passing through throngs of tourists. They were having a great time and were totally unaware of what murderous thoughts were going on in our Jeep. Neon and music were on the periphery of my senses. I was concerned we were driving just a little too fast and I asked Des to take his foot off. We were no good to Lauren being hounded by the local constabulary.

He snorted his displeasure.

“Why the fuck did she go out on her own without checking in?”

Jimmy stared straight ahead, his tone almost absent. “The girl has done good, boss. Whatever happens now, you won’t have to go looking for Charlie and his mob.”

When you took the emotion out of it, Jimmy was of course, right. He instantly changed the atmosphere in the car from one of worry and anger to one of a focused team once again.

By my reckoning we had Stephan and Susan Goldsmith holed up in the same building and it was not an opportunity to be wasted. I wanted to have a little chat with them both, for very different reasons.

Lauren was in shit state, I presumed because of one or both of the Goldsmith gang. ‘Shit state.’ Her words. When I heard them, Des and I exchanged glances that any ignorant bastard could have read in an instant. That had been our problem the last hour. We had let it become personal and let down our guard.

Jimmy had no connection with Lauren. He was at the opposite end of that spectrum. When he heard the news he chipped in with. “She’s a tough little fucker, that one, guys, mark my words.”

He was right. I got on with my job and pushed rounds into magazines and together with them, Lauren’s injuries from my mind.

Eventually Jimmy motioned Des to slow down and we parked alongside what looked like a town square filled with orange trees. There was plenty of litter around and the last of what appeared to be market stalls were being packed away by tired-looking traders in the street opposite.

I phoned Lauren.

“Jimmy reckons we are ten minutes by foot from you.”

She sounded drowsy and as if she had the flu.

“It’s all quiet. No movement as yet. How long before you get here? I’m fucked.”

“We’re coming for you,” I said. “The second you see Des, start walking away from the plot toward him. Stay calm, Lauren. This is all good.”

Jimmy had a basic map of the area and I had formulated a plan. First job was for Des to extract Lauren. Jimmy would cover the back of the building whilst I took the front. We could get the car to within a street of the plot, after that it was on foot. The good thing was, so were our quarry.

Des and Jimmy checked their Brownings over, knowing I had just done it. “I want this smooth and very relaxed, guys. Don’t attract a soul. Des, you get directly to her, I’ll be ten yards behind. Take her straight back to the car and give her what treatment you can. If she can drive, that’s going to be her job for the next few hours.”

He nodded and felt his shirt pocket for his pipe and tobacco.

“She’d better be fuckin’ fine and dandy, boss, or I’m gonna have a wee disagreement with this Stephan fella myself.”

Jimmy pushed his gun into his waistband. “I think you’ve a soft spot for this Lauren bird, Des. What do you suppose there, boss?”

Des pulled his pipe from his pocket and slowly filled the small bowl with his favourite tobacco. He then lifted his face to Jimmy’s.

Des’s eyes were pure blue glass, almost fish-like.

“What I think is my business, okay, big man? And if you think you’re all clever now you can talk and all that, remember this. You don’t know me well enough to take the fuckin’ piss…okay?”

Jimmy would have murdered Des hand to hand. Jimmy knew it, Des knew it, but the wee man from Glasgow was never gonna back down.

Jimmy looked ever so slightly hurt. “Sorry, mate, I were just sayin’ like, that’s all.”

“Well, dinnae.”

Des Cogan's Story:

Jimmy had fuckin’ annoyed me. It wasn’t his fault like. He had no way of knowing how close we’d become, no, I’d become, to Lauren. He just saw a pretty girl and a Jock with a hard-on. He thought he was being funny, who’d he think he was? Fuckin’ Billy Connolly or what? Personally in the circumstances, I wouldn’t have found the Big Yin amusing. I had too much to lose.

I inched along the cobles toward where I knew Lauren would be watching the front of the plot. Our targets may have done one from the rear and be gone, but that was a serious doubt as it sounded like Stephan needed some attention to a bullet wound.

Clear skies and a near full moon had chased the last of the summer warmth from the air and, despite the narrow streets, the buildings were bathed in sapphire as the first dew of the morning glistened on the ancient stones underfoot.

Then I saw her.

Just a glimpse, but it was her. Barefoot and leaning awkwardly against a recessed gateway, her face bloodied, one eye almost closed with swelling. She saw me and tried to straighten herself. I noticed she’d done nothing to hide an SLP tucked into the waist of her miniskirt. One of her knees was damaged and I could see bloody tracks which had gravitated from the wound to her ankle and splashed around her foot as she’d walked, before drying dark on her skin as she’d waited.

I felt my temper rise. The girl was in a fucking mess. She’d had the living shit kicked out of her.

Without a trace of drama she walked steadily in my direction whilst keeping an eye over her left shoulder at the apartment. She walked straight past me and I turned in silence to follow.

Within fifteen yards we passed Rick who sauntered innocently toward the point as her relief. I saw him glance at her. He saw the blood and injuries.

I pushed all thoughts of revenge to the back of my mind. It wasn’t a movie. Job first.

Once I was sure we were in the clear I caught up with her, took her arm and led her the remaining few yards to our car.

As we had been on a collection job I’d packed some field dressings and morphine in a medic bag, together with a few smaller bandages some antiseptic and some codeine.

The second she sat in the back of the Jeep, I started to work on her injuries. From the light available she had suffered a two-inch gash just below her left eye, a seriously broken nose and a few other scrapes around her forehead, elbows and knees. Her feet were bleeding and swollen. By the way she was holding herself she had a ribcage problem too. Hopefully not a break.

I dabbed the wound on her cheek with solution and taped it closed. Neither of us had spoken. Her breathing was raspy, her nose pushed horribly to the left. I did my best to keep the mood light.

“I need to sort out your nose straight away, sweetheart. Or you’ll be as ugly as me before the week is out.”

She coughed and nodded and I saw the tiniest smile. She knew exactly what I meant. As an experienced casualty nurse Lauren would have reset many a broken hooter in her day. It had nothing to do with aesthetics, she needed to breath. She knew how painful it would be too.

I took a syringe from my pack. “I’ll give you a wee shot, babe, you won’t feel a thing.” 

She shook her head violently and grabbed me by the wrist with surprising strength.

“No, Des! Don’t do that.”

I ignored her protests, I knew best.

She gripped even harder. “Please…Des…don’t.”

I was getting a tad fed up arguing the toss, like, when she dragged her SLP from behind her back and she stuck the fucker under my chin.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lauren! Look at the fuckin’ state of ye! I’ll bet you’ve some busted ribs too.”

“I’ve not!”

“You don’t know that.”

“I fuckin’ do.”

“How?”

“I just do, none of your bloody business, now just set my nose and let’s get moving.”

It was getting stupid.

“Look, take the fuckin’ gun from under ma chin. Ye no gonna shoot me. I know that, you know that.”

I grabbed the pistol and put it on the seat next to her.

“I’m sorry, love, but this job is over for you. Simple as. You look like a fuckin’ war zone.  Once Stephan and Susan start to move, we think they’ll lead us to Gibraltar and Charlie Williamson. You won’t even make it through customs looking like that. You can get the next flight…”

Lauren punched me so hard that I fell backward, out of the open rear door and onto the cobbles. I sat rubbing my jaw in total disbelief.

Lauren’s voice was low and measured.

“I’ll get into Gib the same way you will, with the weapons. I’ll swim the last mile from Jimmy’s boat.”

She took a breath through her open mouth.

“Now fix my fucking nose.”

Rick Fuller's Story:

The sun was about to make its presence felt and the birds were in full swing as Susan made her appearance at the door of the apartment. I felt the hairs on my neck do a little dance. Then I had a full on flashback of the sickening kick Stephan gave to Tanya’s dead body as Susan talked on the phone feet away.

She was tanned, fit and wore a navy crop top, cream linen trousers and gold sandals. I thought I’d seen the trousers in Moschino. The shoes were definitely Jimmy Choo. Her hair was tied back in a casual ponytail and I wondered if she’d had extensions. She had large Gucci sunglasses propped on her head.

Any man could see, she was stunningly beautiful, but still had that look, the one she had the very first time I saw her at Davies’s house. The one that told all around that she was mildly pissed off about something. Well this time she had plenty to be pissed about and I was going to make sure her day got even worse.

Seconds later Stephan hobbled out behind her looking pale but very much alive, and I had to grit my teeth and stop myself from slotting him there and then. That, of course, was not in the arrangement.

The new plan, and we were really on the hoof, was a simple one. Convinced that Stephan would need hospital treatment and equally sure that daddy would have contacts in Gib that could organise that on a ‘no questions asked’ basis, we, well I, planned to tail our two friends to the Rock by road whilst Des, Lauren, Jimmy and our weapons made the trip by boat. In the preceding couple of hours Des had fixed Lauren up and from what he’d said, she was doing okay. She looked like she’d gone ten rounds with Tyson, but she was functioning. She even said she was fit enough to make the mile or so swim to the shore to avoid the prying eyes of the British border guards so I figured she must be okay.

Banus taxis are used to ferrying beautiful women with damaged faces around the town. Old habits die hard for the Burberry tattooed twats society. They had caught a taxi to the hotel, recovered what we needed, swung by the Jeep, collected our armoury, and were at the harbour waiting for Jimmy.

I flipped open my phone and dialled.

“We have movement.”

Within minutes Jimmy had dropped off his point and was on his way to his meet with Des. I was sitting in the Cherokee, thirty yards back, watching Stephan struggle to get into Susan’s Lotus Elise. I had expected some support or muscle to come to their rescue, but there was none. Well, not that I could see.

The pair took the highway and headed for the most protected piece of rock in Europe.

For the first time in ten years I felt close to my goal. So close I could taste it. The one singular thing that had kept me alive was the thought that one day I would come face to face with the man responsible for the treachery that led to the murder of my wife. Now I knew I had the chance to avenge that betrayal. I would make Williamson pay for his crime. As for Goldsmith, well he would know the pain of loss. He would feel the agony of bereavement as I had.

I hit the button to open the electric roof and let in the fragrant Spanish air, pushed Jimmy’s iPod into the docking station and selected shuffle. Then I sat back whilst Floyd played
Comfortably Numb
, and enjoyed the ride.

As you approach Gibraltar the scenery gets less and less picturesque. The Spanish seem to want the whole of the area to look shabby. Compare Puerto Banus with the streets surrounding the entrance to the Rock and you can see the Spanish message to the British.

Go home.

I was five cars behind Susan’s Lotus. I was so confident they were headed to Gib I even allowed them out of sight for some of the journey.

The entrance to the colony is bizarre. You have thirty-five degrees of sun and British coppers in full uniform checking passports, searching vehicles and being generally suspicious of all visitors. They work out of buildings not much better than Nissan huts. On the way out it is worse. Try escaping the Rock with more than two litres of Scotch and be prepared for a very rough ride.