Fight or Die

by James Hilton

  More bullets and curses were exchanged by Clay and the shooter behind him. Danny’s hand closed on the item he sought and he pulled the narrow tube free. Similar to the smokers he had used in the Hot Pink Club, the tube contained an incendiary mix. The body of the item was an empty energy drink can with the top removed. Packed inside was more sugar, ground down to a fine powder, baking soda and a little potassium. Rolled in paper like a cigar at the centre was a sausage-shaped amount of tissue soaked in oven cleaner.

  Moving as quickly as possible, Danny placed the improvised firebomb on the ground, retrieved his Zippo lighter and held the flame to the gasoline-soaked shoelace that served as a fuse. A blue flame snaked hungrily along the length of the lace. He knew from experience that he had five or six seconds before the heat ignited the powder inside.

  Snap… Another sound over towards his left flank. An overhand throw sent the tube sailing through the air into one of the denser clumps of dried foliage.

  A flash of orange-and-white flame exploded out over a four-foot-wide radius, instantly setting the surrounding plants ablaze. The grey smoke that blossomed would soon inform every other gangster in the vicinity of their location but Danny had no intention of sticking around.

  The flames sprang up to head height in mere seconds, devouring the dry bushes to either side. Danny ran forward at a crouch, heading straight for the flames. Only when he was close enough to feel the heat on his face did he alter his trajectory. He knew the gunman had three options: he would move to his left, his right or backwards. Almost no one would choose to stay close to the flames for fear of being hemmed in by the fire.

  Danny was sure the gunman would not retreat. They weren’t wired that way. That gave two options: move left or move right. He had a fifty-fifty chance. Danny moved to his left, fast and low, skirting the very edge of the rapidly expanding wall of fire.

  He saw a flash of white through the smoke, immediately followed by the unmistakeable rattle of a Kalashnikov. Danny pitched himself to the ground as rounds tore up the tree he had just passed. Something sharp raked against his ribs as he landed in the dirt. Aiming through the flames, Danny squeezed the trigger. Another burst from the gunman came in way of reply. Ignoring the pain in his chest, Danny scrambled to his feet.

  Like a deadly chess match, both men fired, moved, reloaded, fired, moved and reloaded again. Then the shooting stopped. There was the sound of a magazine being flung to the ground, and a curse.

  The gunman threw down the empty assault rifle as Danny stepped out into view. The man’s right hand snaked to his belt and came back clutching a long triangular blade.

  “Serbian?” asked Danny, his voice flat.

  “Fuck Serbia.” The man tapped his knife to his chest. “Bosnian.”

  Danny nodded.

  The Bosnian managed two rapid steps towards Danny before the bullets ripped through his heart. The man landed face down, silent.

  Danny rolled his shoulders. “You say potato, I say potah-toe.”

  He went through the man’s pockets in case he could find any ammo the Bosnian had forgotten about in the heat of battle, but came up empty. He did find a cell phone, and pocketed it. Always useful to have a line of communication with the people trying to kill you…

  68

  Clay pressed his back tight against one of the three standing stones that served as a temporary refuge. Keeping his weapon high he risked a quick glance at the gunman who had also sought cover. The man atop the cavern still had the advantage of height and a wider field of fire and Clay knew he couldn’t remain squeezed between the rocks for much longer. If another shooter succeeded in flanking from the direction they had come he would be dead. It was also just a matter of time before one of the ricochets scored a serious hit and left him bleeding out.

  As if on cue, a bullet rebounded from the angled standing stone directly behind him and buzzed through the air perilously close to his face. Dark grey smoke had begun to billow from the bushes and trees on the other side of the pathway. Danny… Ribbons of hungry orange flame sprang to life, devouring the foliage in every direction.

  “Barbecue time.”

  Clay gritted his teeth and sprang from concealment. The pathway stretched away from the cavern, curving gently to the right. He knew that he would never make that run. Instead he sprinted towards the cavern entrance. He squeezed the trigger of his weapon, not expecting to score a hit on the elevated gunman but hoping to make him duck for cover. The AK74 thrummed in his hands as the final few bullets in the magazine were spent. “Crap. It was good while it lasted.”

  A burning pain cut a furrow across the slab of muscle that framed his left shoulder blade. Countless small eruptions of dirt around his feet told of the other bullets that had missed their mark. The gunman raised up to full height on the rocky ledge.

  Biting down against the pain, Clay tucked his chin to his chest and threw himself into the darkness of the cavern. He tucked and rolled to dissipate the worst of the landing but managed to crack his head, elbow and hip as he bounced down three concrete steps that he had not anticipated. He landed flat on his back, the wind knocked from his lungs. Groaning, he forced himself to his feet. His elbow throbbed with a strange numbness but it was still preferable to a bullet in the face.

  Plumes of the thick grey smoke began to fill the arch of the cavern mouth, obscuring the view of the rest of the park. Clay discarded the spent AK74 and withdrew his pistol from his waistband. The Beretta had definitely seen better days but with nearly a full magazine, it was still functional and deadly. Staying low to avoid the worst of the rapidly spreading smoke, Clay looked at his new surroundings. The main walkway led deeper into a wide circular chamber. The majority of this space was formed by a large hollow in the floor. When filled with water, the hollow would form an oval-shaped entrance to the rest of the water ride. A large rectangular cage stood off to one side, presumably destined to store inflatable rings. The cage stood empty, the bars now resembling a prison cell. At the far end of the chamber, some hundred feet or so away, an archway glowed amber in the dawn light.

  Staying to the moulded walkway, Clay began to jog towards the exit. But before he had taken a dozen steps a sharp impact echoed around the empty cavern. Dodging behind the meagre cover provided by one of the false stalagmites, Clay snapped off a shot at the gunman who had dropped from the overhanging roof into the smoke-filled entrance. The man landed flat-footed in a wide simian crouch, rifle in hand.

  Clay leaned out from the conical formation and sent a tight volley of four shots at the silhouetted target. A loud curse told him that at least one of the shots had found its mark. Then the Kalashnikov spoke back. A brief ribbon of flame illuminated the gunman as he strafed the cavern with his AK74.

  Clay pressed himself low to the ground as chips and splinters from the fibreglass and concrete rocks fell all around him. Brushing the grey dust from his eyes he barely had time to react to the gunman who was in mid-sprint towards his position.

  The average human male can cover twenty feet in less than one and a half seconds and Clay could tell that the gunman was in better shape than the average human male.

  Clay rolled to his knees and raised the Beretta. He squeezed the trigger and used the four remaining shots left in his pistol.

  69

  Gregor Mosht had been part of Golok’s close team for many years. After the war Golok had offered him a new life—with choices. A life where they took what they needed from the world; no more being told what they could or could not do.

  He had killed more men since the conflict had ended than during the civil war. He heard the big man shout, his accent unmistakable: American. He knew that Golok hated Americans with a passion; his disfigured face served as a daily reminder of their conduct. After he had killed the lumbering cowboy he would present his head to the boss as a goodwill trophy.

  He glanced to his right. Smoke and flames billowed from the trees. His brow furrowed momentarily. He squeezed off another couple of shots at the rocks.


  Then the hulking American was up and running, making a break for the cavern entrance below him. For a big guy, he was faster on his feet than you’d think. As the man disappeared into temporary safety, Gregor smiled as he watched a crimson streak cut a neat line across his back.

  Grey smoke begin to sting his eyes and in one fluid motion he vaulted over the edge of the moulded parapet. The impact jolted through his lower legs into his knees but he shrugged off the momentary pain.

  He stalked forward into the cavern and a large blur of darkness moved rapidly at the peripheral edge of his vision. A single shot bit into the cavern wall three feet to his left. “Can’t shoot for shit,” he said to himself.

  Striding boldly forward, Gregor followed the blur with a hail of bullets. Chips and sparks flew into the air as the AK74 destroyed the man-made stalactite, which the cowboy was using for cover.

  A strobe-like sequence of flashes erupted from the base of the rock. Gregor felt a harsh burning impact bite at the base of his ribs. Roaring in both pain and fury Gregor clamped his trigger finger tight. The magazine spent its load in seconds. Without a moment’s hesitation, he raced towards the cowboy. If he couldn’t shoot him dead, he would smash his head into the ground.

  The American rose from behind the bullet-riddled barricade, pistol in hand. Gregor felt bullets cut the air inches from his face as he sprinted forward at full tilt and slammed into his opponent. The big man still had his pistol but Gregor landed on top of him and managed to send it spinning away with a vicious kick to his wrist. The American raised his left arm above his head as Gregor used the assault rifle as a cudgel, smashing the stock at his face.

  Gregor felt a hand clamp onto his neck like a vice as he raised the rifle a fourth time. He tried pulling against the junction between the thumb and forefinger, the weakest point of any grip, but the big man’s limb seemed fused to his own. He drove his knee hard into the man’s solar plexus but he still grabbed Gregor’s throat with the crushing power. The pressure on his neck was immense. Spots of yellow light danced across his vision as the American began to shake him back and forth.

  Gregor pitched himself forward in a desperate attempt to break the brutal stranglehold. Both men tumbled over the side of the pathway and landed in the base of the empty pool. The cowboy’s grip slipped away as he landed heavily on the back of his head and shoulders. The rifle clattered angrily as it was flung in the opposite direction from the two men.

  New and intense pain flashed across the base of Gregor’s ribs. He glanced down and even in the dim light of the cavern could see the bloodstain spreading across the white of his shirt.

  He needed to end this now.

  The American was struggling to his feet, shaking his head as he tried to gain his footing. Gregor surged forward again, knowing not to chance going after the fallen weapon, and drove the heel of his boot sideways into the cowboy’s scarred face. This sent the big man down again. Gregor smiled despite the terrible pain in his side and timed his next kick perfectly, which snapped into the cowboy’s spinal column, striking the nerve cluster between his shoulder blades. And if you can’t breathe, you can’t fight.

  He watched the cowboy jolt on all fours as if he’d been electrocuted. Gregor leapt in and snaked his right arm around the big man’s neck. He felt the cowboy’s throat tighten against his knotted forearm. In a fluid motion he grabbed his own bicep and pressed down on the back of the cowboy’s neck.

  He leaned forward. “Time to die, Yankee!”

  But the big man was reaching back with his own left arm, prising Gregor’s fingers free from the back of his head. In a panic he watched the cowboy twist his whole body to one side, sending him flying headlong in a tight cartwheel.

  Gregor slammed against the curved outer wall of the empty pool, the rough edges pressing into his back. Roaring against the pain, he rose to his feet as swiftly as he could.

  The American was on him instantly.

  A hand that felt like rough leather clamped onto his face and drove his head back into the wall. Gregor bucked and struggled but the cowboy held him at arm’s length as he raised his right fist like a prize fighter.

  “I’m a Texan, not a goddamned Yankee!”

  Gregor screamed into the man’s hand as his fist slammed into the gunshot wound on his ribs. Another five piston punches splintered his ribs. Gregor raised his left knee in a vain attempt to ward off the blows. Another sledgehammer body shot sent a shockwave through his abdomen. He began to choke on the vomit that erupted into his throat and mouth.

  The hand slipped free from Gregor’s face and he struggled to register the final blow as the heel of the cowboy’s bloodstained hand smashed into the bridge of his nose with lethal force. There was a brief sensation like boiling water in his nose and the base of his skull. Then he slumped to the ground.

  70

  Danny checked the number of rounds remaining in the AK’s curved magazine. Shit. There’s never enough bullets.

  “Clay, where the hell are you?” he hissed in frustration. He had lost sight of his brother near the cavern entrance. Ducking low to avoid the worst of the smoke and flames he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and pressed speed dial. He knew Clay’s phone was set to vibrate so it wouldn’t betray his location. He got Clay’s answerphone.

  I guess I’ll just have to follow the explosions.

  Danny moved, putting plenty of distance between his back and the approaching sheet of fire. Returning to the stepped tower he pivoted left and right. The gunman from the top of the cavern was gone. He hoped he was dead.

  Danny retrieved his backpack, slipped his arms through the straps and rolled his shoulders to make the pack comfortable again.

  It seemed unlikely that Clay would have entered the cavern with no way of knowing if there was a clear exit at the other end. The prospect of scaling the outer wall of the cavern was a no go. That would have meant giving the gunman perched up there a perfect shot. That left the pathway that curved around the large standing stones. Danny set off at a brisk jog. The smell of acrid smoke receded as he traversed the narrow pathway although a quick backward glance showed a dense grey cloud that framed the horizon like a dark halo.

  A six-foot-high plastic dinosaur greeted him at the next junction. The jovial looking T-Rex held a signpost that spelled out the three options: DINOLAND, PIRATES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN or KAPTAIN KORTEZ’S KIDZONE.

  Danny looked again to the large volcano at the centre of the park. He started down the path to Dinoland, careful to keep his weight on the balls of his feet as he ran, moving fast and silent. Every fifty yards or so he paused, crouching behind any available cover while he listened out for any tell-tale sounds that would betray the location of any attackers.

  How many men were left? No way to know. Where were the men from the roving SUV? No way to know.

  He pressed his back to a wall that had been constructed to look like the ribcage of a fallen dinosaur. The wide path he had followed passed through the inside of the lizard’s fossilized chest cavity, the ribs on both sides of the path curving inward high above his head. Further down the path the oversized saurian skull was half embedded into the base of the volcano. An accusatory eye socket and knife-sized teeth stared back at him.

  He tried Clay’s phone again but received no answer and moved on. Keeping the base of the volcano to his left, he headed for a large outcrop of rocks. They would provide good cover while he caught his breath and figured out his next move.

  After making sure he had not been observed, Danny moved behind the outcrop and allowed himself a long deep breath. No one would be able to see him back here. After leaning the Kalashnikov against one of the rocks he unslung the backpack and looked inside. There wasn’t much left in his bag of tricks. He emptied the contents onto the ground between his feet and slipped the last spare clip for the Beretta pistol into his front left trouser pocket. He looked despondently at his remaining stash. A double coil of electrical wire folded into a figure eight. Red wire, blue wire. Insula
ting tape, a few clothes pegs, a compact Gerber multi-tool. Handy if you had the time and missing ingredients to rig a trip-wire bomb or two but Danny had no grenades or means to cobble an IED together. Scowling at his meagre supplies, he stuffed the wire and tape back in the bag and pocketed the Gerber.

  The smell of smoke reached him. He wondered how far the hungry flames had spread. They would serve to keep both the Locos and the Bosnians off balance. Retrieving his rifle, Danny mumbled to himself, “A little bit of chaos goes a long way.”

  71

  Clay rested one hand on the gunman’s chest. Unfocussed eyes stared up at the cavern ceiling. A large patch of crimson stained the lower half of the dead man’s shirt and a slow trickle of blood ran from the man’s nose. It didn’t take a medical genius to know that he was dead.

  After wiping the blood from his left hand onto the dead man’s jacket, he stood up. He could feel a harsh burn across the back of his shoulder. Reaching around to his back, the tips of his fingers came away covered in blood. Flesh wounds often bled like crazy but rarely proved fatal, as long as they were sanitised and stitched at the earliest possible opportunity.

  Clay fished out his cell phone. The display screen lit up briefly then went black. He angled the handset around in the meagre light and scowled at the large crack that split the screen.

  “Piece of junk.” Clay threw the phone to the far side of the waterless pool. Dropping back to one knee, Clay searched the dead man but there was little of interest: a wallet with a couple of credit cards and a neat fold of banknotes. The driver’s license identified the man as Gregor Mosht.

  He found the man’s phone in an inside jacket pocket. Whereas Clay’s broken phone had been the cheapest burner model they could find, Gregor’s was the latest smartphone on the market. Clay slipped it into his own pocket. He realised he couldn’t use it to call Danny as he didn’t have the number of his brother’s corresponding burner but maybe he could use it to get them out of there, if they didn’t get themselves killed. As an afterthought he realised that he could have perhaps switched SIM cards on the two phones—if he hadn’t have thrown his away in anger. Then again, he knew that his fingers weren’t built for that kind of dexterity; maybe sat at a table with plenty of light and time he would have managed.