by Ted Denton
The gunfire turned onto the body of the van and I launched myself at the back doors flinging them wide open. With M16 grasped tight in my left hand, I squeezed out a wide arching volley of indiscriminate fire to pin down our assailants and try to free up our position. Had to clear us a way out. Grabbed the Target by the scruff of his neck, pulling his languid body out of the van after me and down onto the road. Seconds later, bullets screamed through the sides of the van, stabbing raggedly through the metal. Head down, I grabbed Daniel again and, pumping my legs hard, pulled him across the road at pace. I laid him on his back behind a low white stone wall that framed the neatly kept front garden of a small house on the roadside. Sweating. Puffing hard. Bullets spitting spitefully past my head. The Guardia Civil were agitated, firing their pistols at us in random bursts from behind the bonnets of their parked vehicles. I returned shots with interest, keeping them busy, but something didn’t add up.
Where did that machine gun come from? Police don’t shoot first and ask questions later. They knew we were coming. This was a planned ambush.
They murdered Mickey. And there had been nothing I could do.
The intensity of the gun fight slackened and, seizing the opportunity, I scoped around me for a safer place to decamp. The low wall provided cover for Daniel lying stretched out prone behind it, but even when I crouched low it did little to protect my muscular bulk. Same as airline seats, I thought to myself wryly, big guys always get the raw end of the deal. It’s why Ella booked me business class whenever I flew on a job. She was always thinking of me.
I clocked a tall, narrow, white building some twenty yards back past the roadblock. I fired at intervals, enough to keep the Spanish Police pinned back. Indolence or incompetence, I wasn’t sure which, but they certainly appeared to be in desperate need of a firearms refresher course. Two men left the building and walked briskly up the road to join the officers behind their cars. One was considerably taller than the other and walked with a limp. He wore a black leather jacket, his companion smartly dressed in tailored suit. They stepped closer into focus. Sergei Krostanov and the lumbering goon I had met earlier that afternoon. I pumped out a volley of slugs towards them with renewed venom. Everything slotted into place at once. The Guardia Civil were on the payroll of the Russians. They’d been tracking us. This had indeed been a trap all along. They were still after the Target.
I held my fire and waited a long minute. Thinking hard. Mickey was dead. We were outnumbered and outgunned. Squatting behind an impossibly tiny wall for cover.
I needed to get the Target, who I had just met and had barely yet managed to speak, a man who was half dead and couldn’t walk, into a hospital in Barcelona as quickly as possible.
And our only transport had been shot up into little pieces.
If that wasn’t enough, they had now had serious reinforcements in the shape of two crazy Russians, who hated my guts, wielding a shit-packing machine gun - probably a mounted Browning M2 or similar judging by the shudder of its rounds.
The odds against us were stacked heavier than a weighted coconut shy at a travelling fair.
The pause in the action and arrival of their paymasters seemed to change up the energy. Two of the uniformed policemen lost patience and, presumably riding on the confidence of their superior numbers, crept slowly forward towards the van. A rudimentary attempt at battle strategy, a basic plan designed to outflank me. But the machine gun started up, covering their slow progress and giving me no option but to return shots at it as the Browning swept all before it, tearing up plants and thumping slugs into the stone wall, scorching the reddish earth in a rabid snarl of shrapnel.
The policemen reached the van and crept around the other side, keeping tight, hidden from our view and the position from whence Ratchet and I festered in perilous predicament. Head down and as out of sight as I could make myself behind our inadequate defences I considered the options. I might have sussed their weakly executed plan but that didn’t mean I was really in any position to do much about it. The hail of bullets kept coming at us. I recalled that Mickey had said that we were almost out of petrol. That might be a blessing in disguise. I stuck the nose of my gun over the top of the wall and trained it on the gas tank of the van. Squeezed hard. Trigger finger white. Straining. A ferocious stream of bullets pumped into the side of the van and up across to the engine.
Explosions require three elements to occur spontaneously: fuel mixed with oxygen in the right proportions, and a source of heat. The boat-tailed, streamlined, and tapered projectile known ubiquitously as a bullet, propelled through the air at a velocity of around one hundred and eighty-six miles per hour out of the barrel of my shooter and into the near empty gas tank. I was gambling that the paucity of flammable liquid within, which had been the cause of my friend’s consternation, might mean that the ratio of oxygen to inflammable fuel could be close at least to the desired ratio of one to fifteen. The epic explosions seen in the movies where the hero shoots up a car, creating huge noise and a monstrous ball of flame, are something of a fallacy.
I got lucky. The van was old and inefficient, its fuel tank perhaps not totally vacuum sealed. The bullets sparked a reaction, just as I hoped. The tank blew, not Hollywood production style, but enough to fling the two policemen, pressed against the van, into the road unconscious. What was left of the limited petrol not burnt up in the muted explosion seeped onto the tarmac. Flames engulfed the bodies rapidly. I watched as Krostanov signalled to the men behind the roadblock to stand down from assisting their police colleagues whilst he stood back impassively observing the charred bodies in the fire. His card was well and truly marked.
The flames provided all the distraction we needed. Grabbing the Target by his lapels I backtracked, dragging him up to the front door of the house in whose garden we had taken refuge. I fired a single shot into the lock and hoofed it open with a kick which any overworked mule would have been proud, shuffling us inside. A solid looking wood sideboard stood in the entrance hall. I heaved it forward, tipping it over right up against the front door, jamming it shut. They would be up on us pretty sharpish now there was no gun fire to keep them at bay. I dragged the moaning body into the kitchen and left him stretched out under the kitchen table, a bloody smear from the gunshot wound in his buttock leaving an unseemly trail across the tiled floor. That he was making any noise at all by this stage was only a positive sign. I made it to the front window in time to clock the remaining three officers approaching at speed. Two stopped in stunned rapture over the smouldering bodies of their fallen comrades. I smashed the glass in the window with the muzzle of the M16 and slotted them where they stood, allowing purposeless compassion to become the agent that sealed their fate.
Did that make me the same as Krostanov? I brushed the irritating thought away. I had no duty of care to these men. This was not my troop and I was engaging an enemy in battle.
The third member of their band, witnessing the fate of the others, hesitated on his advance towards the house, uncertain whether to now opt for the sanctuary of retreat. Trapped in a virtual no man’s land, out in the open and vulnerable. Too far to turn back, not close enough to attack with any real impact. Surprised by the uninvited visitor of long mislaid memory, my mind’s eye jumped to the pleasant greenery of an English village cricket pitch on a competitive Saturday afternoon. His eyes redolent of the batsman caught between wickets, about to have his stumps smashed by an eager keeper as his playing partner pulls late out of a tight run scoring opportunity. Sheer desperation turning to discontented resignation. A bitter taste of injustice as the ineffectual confronts the inevitable. But nostalgia was brushed easily aside when I spared him no quarter for his indecision, coldly slotting a hole between his eyes. Watching as he slumped to his knees and toppled forward face first. Life taken. An inauspicious innings brought to a premature end.
The Browning took out the remainder of the lower ground floor windows as the Russians advanced on us. The policemen had served their purpose in slowing us down an
d these criminals were ruthlessly pursuing us themselves. By now the clip for the M16 was running low on ammo. Returning fire and wasting indiscriminate bullets was not an option. I needed to regroup and find us a way out. Fragments of broken glass crunching under foot, I backpedalled out of the front room, fast. This unstoppable wave of shit just kept on coming at us.
As I made it into the hallway, the noise of a crying child pierced the silence of the house. I hadn’t even considered that the occupants of the place might actually be inside. This was a seriously unwelcome complication. Enemy contact any second now. No time to check on Ratchet in the kitchen. Had to work on the assumption he was still alive. The stairs creaked and groaned under my weight as I took them two at a time, bounding up to the first floor.
And so I found them cowering in a back bedroom. A family of five. Three children under eight years old, two skinny little gap-toothed brothers and their pretty bronze-skinned older sister, with neat fringe and saucer wide brown eyes, huddled around the skirts of their leather-skinned mother. The terrified father stood frozen as I entered the room. He displayed a look of unmitigated panic. I held my free hand aloft in a calming motion and put my index finger to my lips gesturing for silence. The father slunk back deeper into the room to stand protectively in front of his brood. I wouldn’t allow these innocent people to fall into the cross fire of my bloody war with these ruthless Russian gangsters.
The sound of the front door being repeatedly kicked hard until its blockade crashed to the floor told me that our guests had arrived downstairs. The rhythm of bullets snapping around the hallway to clear the way and the unmelodic tones of their twin deflection and destruction gracelessly announced their intentions. These visitors were not here for tea and sympathy. I glanced around the bedroom, looking for inspiration. There was a single bed, neatly made up and adorned with white lace. A simple wooden chest of drawers. A solid looking wooden wardrobe. A tasselled blue rag rug partially covered the sanded wooden floor boards. A painting of the sea, and small fishing boat hung on the pristine white plastered walls. The window was slightly ajar so I prowled across to it and peered out onto a small rectangle of thick yellowing Bermuda grass littered carelessly with a small red tricycle, bats, balls and water pistols some fifteen feet below us. Beneath the window, roughly five foot down, was a small tile ledge probably one foot wide and running the length of the house through which the main rain gutter was supported. I pushed the window open and ushered the agitated mother towards it, picking her up under her arms and lowering her until wavering tiptoes found the tiles and she was able to steady herself below the window. The situation was pandemonium and the family didn’t have a great choice in deciding what they should do. In the end, they had chosen to co-operate with the big guy with the scar holding an M16 rather than chance their luck with the guys downstairs making all the commotion and shooting up their home. I couldn’t explain the situation in Spanish even if I wanted to, but frankly there was no time and I was just glad they moved fast without me having to get heavy in order to make them see sense. I lowered the children one at a time out of the window by a succession of gangly, wriggling arms and legs down to their waiting mother. They edged along the tiled ledge holding hands, flat against the wall. Their crumpled father turned to follow them but I caught his arm, spinning him to look me in the eye. The furrowed brow melted as I handed over the gun and nodded down the stairs, a look of understanding and resignation forming in its place. Next I moved sharply over to the wardrobe and tore out the contents of hanging shirts, trousers, skirts and blouses littering them over the floor. Rocked the empty wooden carcass back and forth until I found its pivot. Rested it on my shoulder. Shooting pain and gritted teeth. Heaved it upward, head inside, a sickly marzipan stench of mothballs filling my nostrils and choking deep into my lungs. I staggered blindly towards the doorway and now, guided by my willing friend, edged out onto the landing. Measured footsteps menacingly trod the staircase below us just as I leveraged it off my back, tipping it downward over the banisters and into the stairwell beneath. Crashing. Skidding. Sliding. Finally crunching to a definitive halt as it wedged itself firmly between wall and stairs blocking the way up. An angry shout below told us that the intervention had been just in time.
I pointed to the gun and gestured with a pretend shooting motion to my petrified accomplice. Gun fire rattled into the wardrobe. He looked up at me through nervous bushy eyebrows and I nodded. He squeezed the trigger in return, knocked backwards somewhat by the unexpected kick of the gun, the bullets stamping a messy uncontrolled pattern into the neatly plastered walls of his staircase. No way near accurate but the noise alone was enough to tell the Russians that the route upstairs was well covered.
Leaving the man of the house to protect the staircase for now, I moved quickly back into the bedroom. Looked out of the open window. Staring straight ahead onto the garden you couldn’t make out the petrified family frozen on the ledge below. I hoisted myself onto the window frame and jumped the fifteen feet to the grass below landing on my toes and automatically rolling the way we had been drilled at parachute school. The training always kicked in, muscle memory was still good. It was the slug I had taken that again caught me hard as I made contact with the lawn. Pain searing, eyes watering, I remained lying face down with the thick grass rubbing coarsely against my face waiting for the screaming set off inside my brain to subside. My body throbbed. The energy drained from my limbs. Seconds passed. I can’t take it. Fuck. I am a corpse waiting to happen. Stretched out stationary on the lawn. Easy pickings. Move out soldier. Fucking move out. NOW. I hauled myself weakly to my knees and, clutching my sticky weeping shoulder, staggered up off the grass and back against the outside wall of the house. Rocking with pain. No gun. A house full of injured and vulnerable people, relying on me to protect them from the enemy inside.
There was only one chance now and that was to come up on these bastards where they didn’t expect it. I steeled myself and with jaw clenched, re-entered the house. I half expected my phone to flash through a text from Ella back at base with some quote or other from Henry V about the rounding on the opposition and seizing the upper hand. All very well for him, but this wasn’t five thousand men on horseback entrenched together on a muddy field in an unmoveable position. This was one freakishly big Russian homicidal maniac and his psychotic boss. Tooled-up and really pissed off.
I made it through the kitchen undisturbed. Daniel was lying very still under the kitchen table. Blinking occasionally, he looked like he was lapsing in and out of a coma. There was no time to check on him. From inside the downstairs hallway the sounds of swift exchanges of bullets told me that the owner of the house was getting into his newly appointed role of sentry and gun emplacement.
Then the shooting from upstairs suddenly halted, indicating to me that the seriously depleted magazine clip may have finally expired. Two minutes lapsed. Still no exchanges were given. I peered round the kitchen door and could just make out the thick legs of the Russian as he reached above him and pounded the butt of his gun into the wardrobe smashing splinters of wood apart as he endeavoured to clear a route up the staircase. He’d be through there in no time. I drew my knife and stealthily crept into the hallway on my hands and knees, tracking the cedar wood banisters and trying to keep out of sight as best I could. The Russian was preoccupied with his violent assault on what was once a sturdily made old fashioned piece of furniture. The element of surprise was in my favour. The blood lust was up, my senses heightened. My mind emptied itself completely as pure instinct took over. With his attention absorbed fully above his head I reached a chunky forearm through the wooden railings behind him. A deft flick of the wrist twisted the blade, slicing across his Achilles tendon to rip it away from his ankle bone. The tendon flipped and rolled up into a tight little ball just below his calf. Howling, he crashed down the remaining stairs in a tangle of legs and arms clutching at his foot, gun sliding and spinning down after him. It was all I needed. A second later I was on him. Knees pinning his
arms and chest to the floor held under my entire weight. Blade plunging wildly at his face, neck, heart in an inhuman adrenaline fuelled frenzy. Not halting, even after he had stopped writhing below me, until totally exhausted. I collapsed forward on top of the body, panting hard. Sweating, shaking, unable to move. This had been my last throw of the dice. I wasn’t carrying heat and he was heavily armed. In my current physical state with my shoulder the way it was I would be no match for a man like that in a fist fight. I had nothing more to give. Gambled seven lives on one last play.
Rolling away, I could feel my arms and face bathed in a coating of warm gooey blood. The carcass to my side was a mess. It looked like he had been caught in the gears of a combine harvester, chewed up and spat out. Detached from the process, I mechanically patted him down for weapons and removed a revolver, concealed in an inside pocket. Stared numbly at my handiwork, butchered and mangled, on the floor. I felt no remorse. Nothing but pure animal exhilaration from the kill. I licked the salty blood from my dry lips and right there and then vowed I could never speak of this to another human being.
I turned my back on the kill-room and returned to the kitchen, finding the Target unmoved. There was still no time to be wasted. This village would be overrun any minute now.
I pulled Ratchet out unceremoniously by his feet from under the kitchen table and checked his pulse. I slapped him crisply round the face until his eyes flickered awake.
‘Come on man. Keep the fuck with it, Daniel. Stay awake, mate, we’re getting the hell out of here,’ I urged, dragging him upward first against my knee and then hoisting his limp body onto my back as we part-staggered, part-trotted out into the garden. The woman and children remained stationary on the ledge, clinging to the side of the house in terror, peering down on us as we made our escape. I kept moving forward, head down.