by Ted Denton
He now held that hand aloft to command silence. The group responded by halting their frenzied activity exactly where they stood. Black Leather Jacket Man grinned.
‘I know you in there, little bitch,’ he called, mimicking a child in song. ‘Come out and say hello, Daniel, or you going to eat my gun right now.’
The group waited for a reaction. Nothing stirred. The man wiped the corner of his mouth slowly, spat onto the floor and suddenly jerked the barrel of the Uzi upward spraying a rapid burst scorching into the haystack. He unleashed the entire clip, finger tense and white on the trigger long after the magazine had extinguished itself. He ran forward, a maniacal grin over his face and using the butt of the gun started to smash into the dishevelled hay pile, frantically searching beneath. Two others joined him and, within a minute, the entire stack had been torn apart. Loose hay was strewn everywhere across the concrete floor with errant scraps floating all around them. There was no sign of the escaped prisoner.
Ten feet away, Daniel Ratchet had witnessed the uncontrolled drama through a crack in the wooden barrel within which he crouched, submerged to his nose in stagnant rain water and pungent alginated slime. He’d initially considered the haystack as the perfect hiding spot. Heart pounding inside his chest, he’d been transported back to frenetic childhood games of hide and seek as packs of eager energetic cousins sought him out. Realising an obvious hiding place to him would be also one to his pursuers, he’d changed his mind and chosen to squeeze into the water-butt, soaking himself to the skin in the process. Now, petrified with fear and holding his breath to the limit of consciousness, Daniel didn’t dare move a sinew.
From his hiding place he watched transfixed as the little girl in oversized T-shirt and flip flops that he’d seen playing innocently with stick and hoop on the dirt track outside was frog-marched into the barn. She was shoved to the floor in front of Black Leather Jacket Man, who reached down and hoisted the child to her feet by a fistful of hair. Watched her amused, smirking, as she squirmed and screeched like a scolded cat.
‘You see man in barn? Did you see man go in barn or no, little pig?’ he shouted into the crying girl’s face. Unable to form the words out of shock and probably unable to speak English too, the child kept shaking her head vigorously, tears streaming down her grubby face.
He called out into the space of the barn. ‘Daniel. Now listen good little bitch. You come out and say hello or I gut this pig right here.’ He pulled a long stiletto blade from a sheath on his belt and held it tight against the girl’s throat as she struggled for breath through uneven gasps and sobs. ‘This is your fault, Daniel. You can save her if you come say hello. Don’t cause this problem for little pig. Come out here right now bitch.’
Defeated. Beaten. Exhausted. No move to make and no will to make it. Trapped. This was finally, at last, the very end.
Daniel emerged from the barrel at the side of the farm building, water pouring off him from every angle onto the floor. He was a total mess. The putrid water stung at his eyes. The men rushed towards him as one. His bedraggled frame was hauled up and thrown onto the unforgiving floor. Shaking his head to clear it, he opened his eyes in time to find a meaty fist closing in on his face at prodigious speed. It smashed into the bridge of his nose and Daniel felt cartilage splintering, blood spurting uncontrollably. He reached for his face, attending to the damage. As he did so another blow rained in forcing his palm to bang hard against his mouth, knocking his two front teeth back into his mouth in the process. He grunted with pain. A stiff knee to the groin put him down again. Gasping for breath on the cold stone floor, he watched the legs of the little girl scurrying away as she escaped to freedom through the open barn door.
Chapter 35
SPAIN. CARASCALLE, MIMBRERAS 4, 03201 ELCHE. 21.24 HRS.
I parked the Range Rover alongside a high metal fence lined with conifer trees, dead straight and as far as the eye could see. Lazily scratching my finger down the length of my scar, I popped the soft pack and jammed a Marlboro into my mouth. Scorched it alight. I hadn’t been passed by another car for near on twenty minutes since I pulled off the main road. I was scouting the grounds of the address found in the caddies’ hut, using insights sent through from HQ for discreet access points to the party house. Pussy Palace! I smiled to myself. I’m gonna take these Russian pussies and fuck ‘em over real good.
I waited until dusk started to draw in and then grabbed a canvas bag of assorted goodies that Mick had provided earlier: namely stun grenades, ammo clips, and a couple of spare pieces. I was tooled up, itching to get inside and spring the Target.
The location to launch the assault had been specifically identified. A mesh metal fence at the side of the property obscured from view of the main house by fronds. It swayed and folded awkwardly under my weight as I scaled it, making it hard to control. I flipped over the top, landing on my feet in a crouching position. An automatic video camera was rotating through an arching sweep of the perimeter along either side of the grounds. Ella had provided intelligence that each sweep took twelve seconds before it returned to cover the area of assault. I commando-crawled forward quickly into a clump of bushes a couple of metres out of the range of visibility. I mentally regrouped, then cocked the Beretta. If the guys inside were anything as mean as the ugly giant bastard I’d tangled with back at the caddy shack, then this was going to get messy. I scanned the grounds again for signs of guards or dogs but saw none. Darkness was descending hard and remaining stationary was not an option unless I wanted to take a bullet in the back of my skull.
Comrades often told me that they were bewildered by my ability to recall seemingly innocuous details from theatre and the heat of battle that they had long since shed. Otherwise important facts in a real life grown up world passed me by. But when I was in a heighted state of arousal, deep in the thick of the fight, I seemed to notice everything. To drink in the detail, to feel the energy, to notice enhanced colours and smells. Everything slowed down. My music.
Edging closer, I took in more of the property. Built on several tiers, it sprawled out in ungainly design, appearing uncomfortable with its own vulgarity. Rather than retaining the beautiful traditions of classic Spanish architecture, the house and outbuildings were a mix of extravagant modern opulence and overbaked kitsch. Together it simply didn’t work, resulting in an overblown statement of tasteless nouveau riche misjudgement. The marbled drive was dominated by a water feature that would have been out of place at a palace three times the size of the main house. Sculptures of five life-sized stone stallions reared up out of foaming jet streams which shot twenty feet into the air. The front of the house boasted pillars fit for a Roman emperor’s mausoleum, framing a door of such stature that it looked as if it might hold an army at bay for weeks. The unmistakeable pulse of bad eurotrash dance beats emanated from within. I kept moving fast. Crouched low. Head down. Finger comforted by the torque of trigger pressure. Those old pals, flesh on metal.
The back of the property was a similar grotesque coupling of bad taste aligned to ostentation. A massive swimming pool, which I could just about tell from the ground was designed to resemble a water-filled palm tree, took up the majority of the space. It came complete with hot tub, a deserted bar in the centre of the main pool with stone columns rising to serve as seats. Brightly coloured inflatable lilos, rubber rings, and what looked like an inflatable sex doll floating face down, occupied the gently rippling water. The music was louder from the back, the patio doors were wide open. From my vantage point in the shrubbery, I watched a tableau of figures on the deck and through the glass doors just inside the house. A woman dancing with her hands in the air and sporting an obscenely skimpy hot pink bikini was writhing between two men, one slugging from a large square shouldered bottle of spirits. Three serious looking guys, each competing for the award for heaviest stubble, played cards round a small table, piles of notes and coins stacked proprietarily in front of them. Fat cigars glowed in an ash tray, surrounded by bottles of beer perspiring in th
e heat. A Magnum revolver had been tossed casually aside on the glass top.
I turned my piece over in a meaty palm, considering the options. If I was going to get the Target out quickly, then I would need surprise on my side, and that simply wasn’t going to be achieved by kicking things off with a blazing gun fight. I revisited the access points on the building that Ella had identified and sent to my phone.
At that moment, a fat man in long shorts and socks, stomach proudly protruding and hanging low over his belt, staggered out of the double doors. Wrapped within the grasp of one thick arm was the squirming skinny body of a teenaged girl dressed in heels and a yellow bikini. His other hand clasped a bottle of tequila by the neck. Clearly in a party mood, he was trying to encourage the others to join in the revelry. Swearing loudly in what sounded like a joke Liverpudlian accent, he gesticulated grandly. I recognised the face from Ella’s ‘cast of characters’ and had clocked him outside the caddy shack. It was Billy Boy, the caddy. An unpleasant character and proud recipient of a long arrest record, mainly for bar fights and vandalism. One charge was for indecent assault on a German tourist who had rebuked his incessant flirtations only to be lifted off her chair, laid on top of the bar and held down with one arm whilst he buried his face under her skirt literally eating her out in front of a baying crowd. She’d fled in tears to the police station whilst afterwards Billy would claim to all and sundry that she had loved every second. The vicious bite marks and bleeding across her vagina and inner thighs, coupled with months of counselling thereafter, told of a very different story. His identification at least verified I was in the right place.
Unnoticed, I doubled back in the direction I had just come from. Try as I might, I realised some time ago that I really wasn’t cut out for stealth. With my build, I was more of a brute force kinda guy, not made for reconnaissance detail. Some of my pals in the mob had been perfect at it. Small wiry guys who could run all day carrying three times their body weight in backpacks and who could fit into tight spaces to become practically invisible when staking out the enemy. Tough as nails, some of those boys. They’d follow you into Hell and back. But this guy, Tom Hunter, was more the proverbial sledgehammer that you’d use to crack a walnut. It was well documented that I loved a nasty tear up, something even the top brass in the army had recognised by decorating me with more pieces of tin than could fit across my chest. That was before I got myself kicked out for being a naughty boy though. But not before the Hand of God had protected me from the powers that be time after time.
I tracked around the side of house, keeping as low as I could. The darkness was falling hard and, from what I’d seen, these guys weren’t making security their number one priority. I was pretty confident that I had remained undetected or I sure as hell would have known about it by now. Moving quickly, I located the ground floor window I was seeking, open on the inside for ventilation but with a metal screen in place for rudimentary protection. Behind the window lay a storage room, a graveyard for some decrepit looking sun loungers, parasols, a washing line contraption and some pretty standard household appliances. I checked around me before extracting the hunting knife from my boot and jacked it firmly between the wooden frame and screen for leverage. To my surprise it pinged out of place instantly and flipped back into the room, rattling angrily on the concrete floor. This was clearly only a token effort at security, one designed more to keep out stray cats than highly trained killers.
I rested my forearms on the window ledge and heaved myself up so that my torso was half-wedged through the open space, legs dangling below against the wall of the house. It was a pretty tight squeeze but I could twist and wriggle my shoulders so that I fitted through the space and, using my hands out in front of me to take my weight on the floor, I was able to flip my legs over to follow me through. I grimaced and ground my teeth together as I sucked up the pain that shot through my shoulder. It was an untidy dismount and wouldn’t have won many points from a panel of discerning gymnastic judges. Regardless, I was inside.
The corridor which led to the storage room was empty. They were probably keeping the Target tied up in a bedroom somewhere on the upper floors but I needed to check each room as I went, both to ensure that I didn’t miss him and also to secure the area so we wouldn’t be met with a nasty surprise that might outflank us on our retreat. Aside from the storage room, which was nothing more than a drab concrete box, the rest of the house, as far as I could make out, was done up with incredible finery in bold reds and golds. The floors were made of a polished black wood, punctuated at intervals with delicate ornamental tables standing in splendid isolation displaying individual artefacts, statues or sculptures. Huge canvases of modern art, splashed with eccentric arrays of colour upon them, adorned the walls at every turn. For a guy like me who had lived out of a bag country to country and from job to job for the last few years, it all seemed a little overcooked to say the least.
I checked the first two rooms and found them empty. The first a spacious gym with hard plastic flooring was filled with exercise bikes, treadmills and littered with freakishly sized free weights and dumbbells. The plasma screens were left blaring out music videos to an invisible audience. The second room was filled with a large mahogany dining table anchored in its centre by four chunky silver candlesticks and surrounded by formal upholstered chairs. An oil painting of Red Square in Moscow dominated from one end of the room. The spectacular bay window looked out across the brown hills to the east and beyond.
The door to the third room along the corridor was left slightly ajar. Without needing to peer through the crack between door and frame a succession of animalistic grunts and moans emanating from inside left no doubt that it was occupied. A voluptuous black woman was kneeling on the couch facing towards the door, sandwiched between two men. She was being hammered from behind at one end by an angry looking man covered in spindly tattoos, inked across his arms and torso like the musings on an errant schoolboy’s desk. All stars and crosses and sickles and scythes. His jeans slumped untidily around his ankles, a black T-shirt rolled half way up a matted hairy stomach. At her front, another equally unpleasant character was fucking her mouth with remorseless aggression. He was pulling at the nipples of her huge chocolate-coloured tits, flopped over the edge of the couch, using them as handles to bring the lips of her plump mouth closer towards him. He had his back to the door. The three of them were totally engrossed in their feverish joint enterprise.
One of the men called across at his buddy. ‘Next time we come back, we stop off again at the roadside restaurant and take our sweet time with that hot little piece of shit waitress. I want to tie up her daddy and make him to watch as we tag team it. Remember how we laughed when Sorlov made the slut dance for us?’ It was a Russian accent.
‘Hell, yes. She’ll take some punishment and then serve us beer all night long.’ High fives all round. They were very pleased with themselves.
Russians, golf caddies, party in full swing just like Razor had said. This was all I needed to know.
I reached round the door frame and coldly fired a shot over the left shoulder of the blowjob recipient and into the forehead of the man facing towards me as he took the surprised girl from behind. His eyes remained open for the short journey it took the .22 calibre bullet to bore through his skull, demolish the frontal lobes, penetrate the cortex and then exit directly through the cerebellum at the back of his brain. The devastating high impact damage was delivered in just a fraction of a second. He collapsed backwards, the look of ecstasy from pumping the luscious bottom of his juicy black whore, still frozen across his face. Time now hung in glorious suspension with the next events seeming to occur simultaneously. His partner in crime spun around as I stepped fully into the room to engage him, callously slitting his throat in single motion causing blood to glug and spurt from the artery in his neck like a can of beer shaken before opening. The girl looked up shrieking unintelligibly, her face and naked torso now drenched in her ‘lover’s’ claret. I reached down and bitch s
lapped her with the back of my hand hard onto the floor to shut her up. Kicking the bleeding man out of my way as he scrabbled on the polished wooden tiles creating frantic patterns with his own voluminous bloodletting. I moved around the couch to prevent the whore from crawling away to get help. Heard spluttering and gurgles as the life drained out of him, one hand clamped to his throat.
‘Shut the fuck up unless you want to get smoked too,’ I growled into her terrified face. Tears seeped uncontrollably through thick false eyelashes. Her glossy lips trembled. The message was clear but, in case she didn’t speak English, I held my gun up to her head and put my finger to my lips demonstrating that silence was required or there would be consequences. Grabbing her by the hair, I pulled out the verifiable identification photograph of Daniel that Ella had sent to my phone. Shoved her face into it. ‘Where is this man?’ I said slowly and clearly. The woman was sobbing. She looked at the picture and shook her head. I asked again relaxing my grip, concerned she was about to lose it altogether.
‘Is this man here? Is he in this house?’
Still trembling, she shook her head again. ‘No man. Not here,’ was all she said.
I heard shouts from the garden. I’d been compromised. I hadn’t used a silencer on the gun. Noting the number of occupants to the property, I had figured that we were never really going to be able to simply slip in-and-out unnoticed. May as well make an entrance. And from what I’d seen about the way that these guys operate, if there was a little noise and a little blood as we got to know each other, then so be it. Leaving the room in carnage behind me, I pushed out again into the corridor and then into the main hall. A barrage of sub-machine gun fire poured down on me from the first floor landing atop a broad staircase. I wasn’t hit but the marble flooring around my feet was chewed up badly enough for me not to want to ponder the merits of holding my position whilst he readjusted his aim. I rolled forward and took cover behind a smallish palm tree potted inside a huge terracotta jar. The machine gun rattled, sending relentless swathes of bullets into the walls all around me. I steadied myself and pumped three rounds up and into the general direction that the fire was coming from, buying some time. Sprang a stun grenade from my pack and tossed it onto the first floor balcony. The explosion is designed to elicit sensory deprivation to those within the blast vicinity using the combination of huge sudden noise impact and white light flashes. It’s quick, unexpected, and very effective. I tossed the bomb and moved from my cover point simultaneously. The distraction had its desired affect and I was able to sprint directly under the balcony to escape the sweeping range of the machine gun. After the shock of the stun grenade had faded I heard movement above my head, a regrouping. I listened carefully, adjusted my position slightly and then, holding the Beretta aloft, emptied the remains of my clip up into the plaster ceiling. A heavy thud and cries of pain told me I had hit the unsuspecting shooter standing directly above me.