Silent kill, p.6
Silent Kill, page 6
part #1 of Extreme Series
Chance gasped. Something like relief washing over her. Then, with the fetid stench of shit searing her nostrils, she glanced down at her feet. A stinking brown pool spattered the floor between her toes. On the chair, a little puddle of piss stung the insides of her thighs.
‘Now, where were we?’ Costello asked. He grinned and clicked his fingers. ‘That’s right. You was about to tell me the list of every treacherous boyo you flipped.’
He folded his arms. Waited.
Chance pressed her lips shut.
‘Bollocks to you, then,’ he spat, and twisted away from her.
He marched up to the meat mincer, a stainless-steel device roughly the size of a large dishwasher, with a funnel at the top for feeding in the meat. The funnel looked big enough to take a cow. At the other end of the machine there was a hole-plate about ten centimetres wide.
Costello pressed a green button on the control panel. The engine whirred into action. Chance felt her emptied bowels seize up at the grinding sounds it produced.
‘Please don’t do it,’ she pleaded. She realized then: Costello had broken her. Tears flooded down her cheeks, mingled with the snot seeping from her nose. ‘I swear to God I don’t know anything about the list. I’m just a junior officer. I don’t have that kind of access, you have to believe me.’
Costello chuckled as he turned back to her. ‘You Brits really are something else. I’ve never met a people who can lie through their teeth like you. Now, you’d best fucking talk, or the lads will shove your arm in there.’
Chance said nothing. Her shoulders collapsed with despair.
‘That’s what I thought,’ Costello said, sighing theatrically. He nodded to Stilts and said, ‘Do it.’ Then he glanced at Skinny. ‘And you can take the barrow and tip the leftovers into the slurry once we’re done, like.’
Skinny nodded enthusiastically. He had a feel for it now, rubbing his hands like a kid at Christmas as Stilts approached Chance. Digging a switchblade out of his pocket, he started to slice through the plasticuffs securing Chance’s wrists, to release her from the chair.
Stilts had just severed the plasticuffs when both barn doors crashed open.
The sound made him jump out of his bones. He dropped the switchblade. Chance saw the smile rockslide off his face. Then she looked at Skinny, slightly nearer the doors,.
‘What the f—?’ he began, frozen to the spot.
A cylindrical object – it looked like a black deodorant can – flew through the opening and bounced to a halt near Skinny’s feet. There was a moment of compressed silence broken only by the incessant drone of the meat-mincer. Just enough time for a look of dumb surprise to register on the gunman’s face.
Then the flashbang exploded.
Eight
2259 hours.
Blinding light filled the barn and smoke engulfed the three Provos. They were stunned by the flash and the noise, but it was Skinny who first saw the shadow storming into the barn.
He clocked the rifle in the guy’s hands. The HK53 was tucked tight into his right shoulder. His right hand was wrapped around the rear grip, his left under the barrel in front of the mag feed to support his firing stance. Elbows extended, shoulders hunched.
The barrel was pointing directly at Skinny. He turned to leg it. Jock let him have it on the half-turn. Squeezed the trigger and a three-round burst flashed out of the snout. Three quick squirts of smoke and a spark of flame. A metallic roar boomed around the barn. Skinny jerked, then let out a grunt as the three nuggets of hot lead socked him in the chest, ripped through his vitals and spat out of his back. Blood all over the place.
He was still dropping as Jock glided past him and kicked aside the spent flashbang. His movements were controlled and precise as he pushed deeper into the barn, removing himself from the fatal funnel of fire – the point of entry, where an operator faces the greatest likelihood of taking a round. The Blade swept his weapon left to right across the barn, just as he had been trained to do on live-fire exercises during Selection. Identify your threat. Isolate them. Eliminate them. His right index finger remained tense on the trigger. He was four metres from the barn doors now, and six short of Stilts and Costello.
Jock trained his sights on Stilts. The gunman was bent over beside Chance, coughing and sputtering. The distance between Jock and his target was five metres. In bullet terms, absolute zero. The HK53’s effective range was twenty times greater. Jock gave Stilts the good news. Stilts jerked violently as the first round impacted his ankle joint, shredding bone, muscle and connective tissue. The kickback from the discharge raised the weapon half an inch, and the second and third rounds struck marginally higher, slamming into the exposed chest region. Blood fountained from the two bullet holes. Stilts crumpled.
Quickly adjusting his stance, Jock turned towards his ten o’clock. Costello was darting towards the two AK-47s propped against the wooden wall. He had almost grabbed one of them when Jock unleashed a three-round burst, punching holes in the guy. Two of them tore into his upper left leg, the third gashed his stomach. He toppled into the wall.
Jock raced over and in one movement side-footed the weapons away and raised the stock-end of his own. There was a satisfying crack as three kilograms of stamped steel slammed down against skull. Costello reeled backwards and dropped to the ground. Boiling with rage, Jock kicked the prone terrorist in the face, landing blow after blow. Then punched him as hard as he could in the midriff. Doubled up in pain, Costello tried to wriggle away. But the SAS man was too quick for him. In a flash he clamped his left hand around Costello’s neck and drove his knee into his face. Groaning, the guy went flat on the floor. Jock centred the HK53’s sights on him and was about to double-tap him when spotted Chance out of the corner of his eye.
What he saw made him sick to his guts. He lowered the rifle and walked over to the agent. She was in rag order. Her lips were split open, her cheeks smeared with blood, her chin encrusted with vomit. Her eyes were almost closed and resembled a pair of cracked walnut shells. Then he lowered his gaze to her crotch. For a moment he stood very still, barely able to believe the extent of her wound. His face blazed up again with hatred. The veins on his neck twisted in anger. Several seconds passed before he could tear his gaze away from Chance. Then he spun around and pounded back over to Costello.
He was still on the floor. Pawing at his gut wound, blood glistening between his fingers, he was making a keening noise in his throat. Stilts and Skinny were both doing a fucking fine impression of a pair of stiffs.
Jock drew the HK53 level with Costello, dead centre between the eyes.
‘You fucking wouldn’t.’ The Nutting Squad chief spat blood as he spoke. His gold teeth were stained red. ‘I’m Victor Costello, you stupid cunt. You can’t kill me.’
‘Yeah. I can.’
Jock depressed the trigger. Costello jerked. The ground around his body went red. Jock slung his rifle over his shoulder. The engine thrummed aggressively. Jock could see tiny bits of old meat clinging to the hole-plate, sloppy remnants in the wheelbarrow. He picked up Costello’s body as easily as if lifting a cardboard box. The man was in the shape of his life – eighty kilograms of honed muscle not yet weathered by all the years spent on the piss and multiple injuries sustained on ops. Jock fed him feet first into the funnel.
The engine rumbled.
The machine vibrated.
Lights on the control panel blinked as if in alarm.
Then the machine began to carve up Costello’s legs.
At first there was a mechanical wail. Like a brick cutter slicing through concrete. The engine sputtered. It wasn’t designed to pulverize human bones. But it did the job easily enough. Slowly, inch by inch, Jock pushed Costello down into the mincer. Blood gargled in the guy’s slack mouth, oozed from his nostrils, streamed out of his ears. His head and shoulders vibrated to the rhythm of the machine.
Then the body jammed at the waist. Jock planted both hands firmly on the top of Costello’s head and forced it down. The machine squawked as it chewed up flesh, gristle and bone. Jock walked around it and saw strands of meat spewing out of the hole-plate and dropping into the wheelbarrow. Among the flesh were shards of bone and shredded clothing. The machine trembled as it reduced the skull and brain to a mush.
Soon it had coughed up the last of Costello, and Jock remained where he was, taking a moment to congratulate himself on a job well done.
‘Fuck you, you cunt,’ he said to the pile in the wheelbarrow.
He stepped back round the machine and flipped the off switch.
Now all was quiet again, he could hear a faint moaning from his three o’clock. He turned to face Chance, who was stirring now. She raised her head and screwed up her eyes at as he picked up his HK53 and hurried towards her. He stopped beside her and knelt down.
‘It’s all right now, love,’ he said. ‘Everything’s gonna be OK.’
Chance winced.
‘Who are you?’ she croaked.
‘I’m from the Regiment,’ Jock replied. ‘My name’s John Bald.’
Nine
2311 hours.
Chance watched the SAS operator sling his HK53 over his right shoulder and wrap his arms around her waist. She let him lift her up from the chair. Clung on to him tightly, like she was teetering on the edge of a cliff. Which probably wouldn’t have been as difficult as standing up with a vicious pain flaring up between her legs. She stood still for a moment, unable to move, everything hurting all at once. The pain crashed down over her like a wave. Jaws clenched, moaning in her throat, she prayed that the pain would fade out. It did. Then she looked around and a thought pricked at her. She swallowed the acidic dryness in her throat.
‘I need to speak to someone from the security services,’ she said. ‘Immediately. Something big is going down.’ A pain flared behind her eyeballs and she shut her eyes for a beat. ‘What did you say your name was again?’
‘Bald.’
She nodded absently. ‘Where’s everyone else?’
‘Try six kilometres north-east of here. They wouldn’t come across the border. Something about sovereign territory and politics. Sounded to me like a bunch of people washing their hands of you.’
‘But if the rescue team stayed put, how come you’re here?’
Bald ignored the question. He looked Chance hard in the eye.
He said, ‘I need you to focus. Apart from the three fuckers who had you in here, are there any other guys in the Nutting Squad? Did you see anyone else hanging around the farm on the way in?’
Chance thought for a few seconds. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You sure?’
‘It was dark, I couldn’t see much.’ Chance grimaced, the fog clouding her mind began to clear, numbness replaced by hot pain, confusion by rising panic. ‘How are we going to get out of here? We’re in the middle of a Provo stronghold.’
‘The farm’s miles from civilization,’ said Bald. ‘We’ll bug out of here and head to the border. By the time their mates realize something is wrong, we’ll have been picked up by one of the green army checkpoint crews.’
‘Unless the Garda find this mess and put out an alert.’
‘I’m going to take care of that.’
Before Chance could ask what he meant, Bald slipped his left arm under her right shoulder and ushered her towards the barn doors. She shuffled awkwardly on the balls of her feet. Like she was treading on broken glass. Her back was slightly bowed and her knees were bent. She hissed with every painful step to the doors. She held on to Bald tightly as he guided her outside and set her down on the ground. She noticed Bald was cradling a bundle of clothes in his arms. He chucked it at her.
‘Here. Get dressed.’
It was the threads Kicker had been wearing before the Nutting Squad crew had bashed a hole in his head. Chance smiled weakly at Bald. He slipped her feet into the trousers and pulled them up. The pain came back at her. She puked a little in her mouth.
Bald pulled the sweater, then the anorak, over her head. The arms of both were too long. Bald slipped the trainers onto her feet. They were way too big. But at least the clothes and shoes insulated her from the spiking cold. Almost immediately Chance felt a hot flush of fever work its way through her veins.
‘Can you stand on your own?’ Bald asked.
Chance hesitated, then nodded. ‘I think so.’
‘Keep a watch. You spot anyone, you sound the alarm.’
‘What’s the alarm?’ she asked, fighting the burning sensation between her legs.
‘Scream.’
‘What about you? Where are you going?’
Bald stopped. Half-turned to Chance. There was a silvery glint in his eyes. ‘I’m going to take care of the evidence.’
He hurried back into the barn. Chance fluctuated between hot and cold flushes, listening to the clank and grind of industrial machinery coming from inside the building. The noise seemed to go on for ever, an endless cycle of clunks and piercing shrieks. Then there was a brief silence, followed by a sound like something heavy being dragged along. Seconds later Bald crashed out through the doors, shoving a wheelbarrow filled to the brim with a pinkish mess. He nosed it past a mortified Chance and steered towards the slurry pit to the side of the barn. Reaching the edge of the pit, he tipped up the wheelbarrow. He watched as the load was sucked in and disappeared into the stinking pool of animal shit. A broad grin was plastered across his face as he disposed of Victor Costello and his muckers. Congratulating himself on a job well done, he dumped the wheelbarrow and hurried back to Chance.
The agent looked at Bald in horror, speechless. Then she shook her head and for a moment she forgot about the hellish pain between her legs. ‘What the hell did you just do?’ she said, lingering on each word.
‘Getting rid of the mess,’ said Bald, nodding over his shoulder to the slurry pit. He still looked pleased with himself. ‘Just like I said. Now, let’s get out of here before Costello’s other mates rock up.’
Chance did a double-take. The colour drained from her face as she looked from the pit to Bald, her lips trying to form words. ‘You idiot,’ she said at last, her voice stripped down to the bare bones.
‘What are you talking about? The bastards had it coming, after what they did to you.’
‘You killed Victor Costello,’ Chance almost whispered. ‘He was the Provisional IRA’s head of intelligence.’
Bald made a face. ‘He was a torturing prick.’
Chance stared at Bald. The look in her eyes went a shade darker than black and her face hardened. ‘He was also the brains behind a major arms-smuggling deal. We could have taken him in for interrogation.’
‘What fucking deal?’ Bald asked impatiently, slow-burning at the agent.
‘Purchasing Stingers from Angola, via some guy called Colonel Jim. This was the intelligence breakthrough we’ve been waiting for, and you’ve just blown it—’
She was cut off by the creak of a door at their six o’clock. Chance turned at the same time as Bald. Both of them looking to the back of the farmhouse ten metres behind them. They saw a figure emerge. An old-timer in a tweed cap, padded wax jacket and wellingtons. He had a shrivelled up face and eyes like a pair of puckered old lips and he was clutching a double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun.
‘Shit,’ Bald said. ‘Company.’
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ the farmer barked. ‘And where the fuck is Victor?’ He snapped the weapon shut. Stopped in his tracks and bared his teeth at Bald. They looked like a row of stubbed-out cigarette butts.
At the same moment Bald unslung his HK53. In response the farmer tucked the stock tight into his right shoulder, peering down the barrel. His bony index finger pulled tight on the trigger. The farmyard lit up with hot, white light as the shotgun jerked up in his grip. A cartridge spat out of the barrel and slammed into one of the open barn doors a metre to the right of Bald and Chance, blowing a hole so big it probably qualified as a local landmark. Splinters showered over them. The farmer swung the shotgun to his left as he zeroed his aim on the pair.
Everything happened in a blur of noise and colour. In that situation, lined up in the sights of a shotgun and with no weapon to hand, a civvie would suffer from sensory overload. But Bald had been trained to process a lot of information lightning fast. He saw the barrel angling towards him, thrust Chance to the ground and rolled forward in the same smooth motion. Bald heard the shotgun boom again. Felt a tunnel of hot air searing above his neck. Heard the twelve-bore round thump into the wall of the barn six inches above his head.
Emerging from his roll into a crouch, Bald raised the HK53 to the farmer as he broke open the shotgun and ejected the spent cases. He was reaching into his jacket pocket for a fresh pair of cartridges when Bald gave him the good news, the semi-automatic flashing, illuminating the gloom. Three spent jackets ejected from the side of the weapon. They dinked to the ground near Bald’s right foot at the exact same moment as the farmer dropped clutching his guts and the Scot’s hopes of making a stealthy escape went up in smoke.
‘Pete – I’m fucking shot!’ the farmer rasped. ‘For Chrissakes, get these wankers!’
A second guy bolted out of the farmhouse. He had the primary-red cheeks and nose of a lifelong boozer, and was carrying a lot of spare timber on his frame. He wore stained jeans and a sweater, and on top of that was a navy-blue body warmer with a sheepskin collar. In his hands he was clutching a double-barrelled shotgun. His breath frosting in the cold air, he stopped in front of the farmer and saw the blood fountaining out of his guts, his eyes bulging and his cheeks crimson with rage.
‘Shoot my fucking brother, will you? Come on, you Brit bastards!’
Bald seized Chance’s wrist.
‘Go! Now!’
He tugged her along the gravel path towards the Audi, parked fifteen metres from the barn, in the shadow of the farmhouse. A quick glance to his three o’clock and he saw the shot man’s brother frantically inserting a pair of cartridges into his weapon. Ten metres from the shooter to Bald. Pete took aim and fired off a loose round. Chance jerked as the round walloped into the mud a couple of paces to her left, flinging mud and stones over her. Bald forged on, pulling her along, his face locked in grim determination.
