Hunting the Wrecking Crew: An Eric Stone Novel

by Nick Albert

  “Right, you two come here.”

  Halpin and White moved a little closer, and as they did, Bunny turned and shot them both in the head. The gun coughed twice in under two seconds, making a sound no louder than a dropped telephone directory. The two men barely had enough time to register what was about to happen, before the bullets struck and they slumped to the concrete floor. Bunny came forward and nudged them experimentally to check they were dead. There was no doubt. The hydra-shok is a devastating bullet, and the spreading pools of blood and brain matter told its own story about the ruthless efficiency of Bunny’s work. Taking care not to dirty his shoes, he walked around the bodies and up the stairs to the conference room. Becka was still waiting.

  As soon as the big bodyguard opened the door, Becka realised that she was in a world of trouble. The silenced pistol was still in his hand and his face spoke clearly of his intentions. He walked purposely forward. As he drew near, Becka snatched the coffee pot and threw it as hard as she could. It was a poor throw, with more hatred than accuracy, and Bunny easily sidestepped the attack. Desperate to escape, Becka ran, jinking to the left to try to slip by, but Bunny was too fast. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her close, jamming the gun under her chin so hard that she almost fainted from the pain.

  “If you struggle or scream I will kill you,” he hissed in her ear.

  “You can’t do this — he’ll punish you when he finds out.”

  “You’re wrong you little bitch,” Bunny said with sickening finality, “he…said I could have you.”

  Realising that she really was facing a fate worse than death, Becka started to struggle and kick as hard as she could. Laughing at her ineffectual efforts to fight him off, Bunny lifted her up by her hair until her feet were clear of the ground. He reached back with his other hand and slapped Becka across the face with his pistol, as hard as he could. Then he did it again, and again.

  ***

  Stone was about fifty metres from the rear of the house when he heard two dull thumps in short succession. To him it sounded like someone slamming a door or bursting a balloon under a blanket. He stopped moving and cautiously raised his head. A moment later, he saw the silhouette of a skinny looking man walk from the front of the house. Stone watched carefully as the man put a handgun into his pocket, before lighting a cigarette and then casually strolling along the road to the east. Confident that the man was of no immediate threat, Stone continued to crawl towards the house.

  Five minutes later a second, much larger man, came out of the building and turned towards the rear of the property. From a distance of thirty metres, he could quite clearly see that the man had the inert body of a small female slung over his shoulder. The man walked quickly around the back of the property and into the outbuilding. As he passed, he didn’t look towards the field were Stone was lying, or take any notice of the bush where he was hiding.

  Although the gun was chafing his back and his knees were sore, Stone quietly continued the bush/arm/crawl manoeuvre along the track. When he was twenty metres away from the house, he saw two shadows passing fleetingly in front of the French doors. One was a man of medium build and the other was a petite female. Although the image was fleeting and distorted by the curtain, Stone was positive that he had just seen Linda. He pressed the transmit button and whispered into his radio.

  “I have eyes on Linda. Begin in five.”

  There was a double click of static in his ear as Carter acknowledged.

  He continued his forward belly crawl until he was just ten metres from the back of the house. Then he draped the bush across his back and slowly brought the crossbow to his shoulder.

  A minute later Eric heard a car approaching fast, its engine revving enthusiastically. Bright headlights swept across the front of the house and there was a screech as Carter brought his car to a sudden stop on the loose gravel. He gave the horn a long blast and then performed a wild turn. The tyres could be heard scrabbling for grip as he sped away.

  Stone rolled his neck to relax his muscles, took a deep breath, and brought the sniper scope to his eye. He flicked the safety switch to ‘fire’ and checked that the laser-sighting device was disabled. Ten second later the large man came out of the outbuilding, gun in hand. He jogged to the corner of the house to investigate the source of the noise.

  “Fuck’n kids!” he whispered.

  The man stood very still staring towards the road with his back facing the field. He was just eight metres away from where Stone was lying. From such a close range, the back of Bunny’s thick neck entirely filled the view through the telescopic scope. Stone centred the scope’s cross hairs at the very top of the big man’s neck, level with his hairline, and he waited. When Carter sounded the car’s horn again, Stone breathed out and squeezed the trigger.

  With a sound no louder than a single handclap, the string of the Ghost 410 crossbow released. The high tensile reinforced string completed its fifteen-inch power stroke in one millisecond. Propelled by one-hundred-forty-nine foot/pounds of energy, the twenty-two inch bolt left the crossbow at four-hundred-ten feet per second and covered the 26.4 feet to its target in 0.06 seconds.

  For a horrible moment, Stone thought that he had missed, but then he saw that he hadn’t. He stared in amazement as the giant bodyguard remained standing, apparently unaffected by the crossbow bolt embedded at the base of his skull. Then, like some huge tree uprooted by a storm, he slowly tipped forward and fell flat onto his face. Drawing his knife and staying low, Stone cautiously scrambled across to the recumbent form, but his vigilance proved unnecessary. The crossbow bolt had instantly severed the bodyguard’s spine. Bunny was dead.

  Stone considered trying to drag the corpse into the cover of the field, but a quick tug on Bunny’s legs convinced him that the bodyguard was too heavy. The best that he could do was to roll the body out of the moonlight and into the shadow of the house. Panting from the effort of manhandling such a dead weight, he crouched low at the corner of the house and reloaded the crossbow. After carefully scanning the immediate area and deciding that he was still unobserved, Stone silently moved to the outbuilding where Bunny had taken the girl. Keeping his right eye tightly shut to preserve his night vision, with knife in hand, he cautiously stepped through the door.

  It was an ordinary garage and workshop, lit by a single strip light. Inside there were two cars, a white Porsche and a red Ferrari. Between the cars, naked and spread-eagled on the hard concrete floor, the girl lay in a pool of blood. Stone gently placed his fingers to the side of her chin so he could check for a pulse. There was none. He thought that in life, she may have been a pretty girl, but it was hard to be sure, because her death had been caused by a violent and sustained beating. He reached over and gently closed her one remaining eye, silently praying that she had died before the final ignominy that the big bodyguard had inflicted, with the screwdriver that was still embedded between her legs.

  Now fearing for Linda’s safety more than ever, Stone strode across to the exit. As he reached for the door, it was suddenly pulled open. He recoiled in shock and surprise. There before him was the identical twin brother of the man he had just killed with the crossbow. Kitten was equally surprised to find a stranger standing in the garage doorway. Both men involuntarily took half a step backwards, before realising the danger. Stone reacted quickly, but Kitten reacted first.

  The huge Russian’s fist whipped around and landed a mighty punch to the left side of Eric’s head. It was an ill-timed and glancing blow, but it still landed with devastating force. Stone’s legs went stiff and his vision blurred as he staggered away. He would have been easy meat for a follow-on attack, had one come immediately — but it didn’t. Perhaps it was because he was facing what he perceived to be an inferior opponent, or because he was distracted by the body of the naked girl, but Kitten hesitated. Stone knew that he had been badly shaken by the punch, but he also had experience, and a fighter’s survival instinct.

  Shaking his head and blinking to try to clear his vis
ion, he staggered away to his left, placing the Ferrari between himself and his attacker. The bodyguard quickly assessed the situation. With a forbidding sneer, he reached under his jacket and pulled out a gun.

  “Put your hands up.”

  Stone knew that surrender would undoubtedly lead to death — both his and Linda’s. He had no option but to fight. With a shrug of defeat, he began to raise his arms, and as soon as the crossbow cleared the back of the Ferrari, he pulled the trigger. It was a snap shot, driven by desperation and poorly aimed — but he got lucky. The bolt barely missed the low bonnet of the sports car, struck the floor with a puff of concrete, ricocheted upwards, and stuck firmly into Kittens shin. The bodyguard winced in pain and hobbled backwards, slightly lowering his aim. Knowing that he had just this one chance, Stone threw the crossbow with all of his might, and charged.

  It should have been the last thing he ever did. Eric should have died there, writhing on the cold concrete floor with a bullet in his head — but he didn’t. For some reason Kitten did not see the attack as a threat from a dangerous and desperate man, rather he treated it as an affront to his ego and manhood. His steroid twisted brain seemed enraged by this outrageous show of disrespectful aggression, and after he had batted Stone away, Kitten made a big show of putting his gun onto the workbench.

  “I’m gonna beat you to a pulp you little shit!” the bodyguard said.

  Even with the crossbow bolt sticking out of his shin, Stone had no doubt that Kitten would deliver on his promise. The man was a mountain of muscle. His biceps’ were thicker than Eric’s thigh, his fists were like bowling balls, and his neck was broader than his shaven head.

  Stone had fought big men before, and he had fought muscular men. He had always won by using space, stamina, and time, to his advantage. Usually he could dance around a bigger, but slower assailant, keeping his distance, and taking his shots whenever he saw a gap in the defences. Over time, his superior fitness and speed would always give him the upper hand, but this confrontation was different. With no room for manoeuvre in the confined space of the garage, and under pressure to rescue Linda quickly, Stone did the only thing he could. He stepped out from behind the car, took up a fighting stance, and waited for the other man to make a move.

  With a smile of delight, the bodyguard began to inch forward threateningly. Stone edged to his right and as he did, Kitten mirrored the move, inching to his left, away from the workbench and his gun. Eric sidestepped again, and Kitten followed with a smile, blocking any possibility of him rushing for the door. As soon as there was a separation of two-metres between Kitten and the weapon on the workbench, Stone reached behind his back, pulled out Anton Stephens’ gun, and without any formalities, shot the huge Russian in the face.

  The sound of the shot echoed with a flat bang in the confines of the garage, but it was probably no more audible outside than if he had slammed a car door. Even so, Eric figured that it would not be long before someone came to look for the missing bodyguards. Kitten was not dead, but he was obviously severely wounded. The bullet had struck the bridge of his nose and embedded in his skull. His face was a mess. He was bleeding heavily from the mouth and writhing on the floor in pain. Stone grabbed a washcloth from a box of automotive cleaning materials, and wrapped it tightly around the gun to act as a sound suppressor. Then he took two quick steps forwards, jammed the gun against Kitten’s sternum, and fired again. The Russian heaved once and then lay still.

  Before dumping the washcloth onto Kitten’s chest, Stone used it to wipe the blood from his hand. Something on his crossbow had broken when he had thrown it, so with a grimace of regret, he left it on the floor and took Kitten’s gun from the workbench instead. After switching off the strip light, Eric waited at the door for thirty seconds with his eyes wide open, trying to recover some of his night vision. He cautiously pushed the door open and stepped into the glare of the moonlight. No one was waiting to kill him, but the French door at the back of the house was now standing open, beckoning him to enter.

  Taking slow, careful steps, Eric moved to his left until he reached the back wall of the house. He waited there, consciously calming his breathing, while he sensed his surroundings. He could hear no voices or suspicious noises, just the distant sound of Carter’s car, randomly accelerating and breaking. Except for the wedge of light from the open French door, nothing attracted his attention. Because the air was sharp and cold, Stone could still detect the residual smell of exhaust fumes from Ed’s wildly revving engine. The faint but acrid smell of fresh tobacco smoke, suggested that the skinny man was still at the front of the house.

  With his back flat against the wall, Stone sidestepped along the building until he was level with the open door. With the guns ready, he leaned forward and cautiously peeked inside. Although the curtain was partially open, all he could see was a wall and part of a desk. It was when he risked moving a little farther to improve his field of view, that he saw Linda. His heart jumped — she was alive. Linda was sitting on a hard wooden chair, staring blankly at the wall to his left. As Stone prepared himself to charge in through the door, a confident voice spoke loudly.

  “Do come in, Mr Stone. You must be getting cold out there.”

  Eric raised both guns and stepped through the curtain.

  EIGHTEEN

  There were two people in the room, Simon Cartwright and Linda. She was sitting on a high backed wooden chair, with her feet flat on the floor. Her hands were placed demurely on her lap, palms upwards. She was staring blankly at the wall opposite. Cartwright was standing behind the chair. He was holding Linda’s hair, and firmly pressing a gun against her head.

  “Stay very still and do exactly as I say, or I will kill her.”

  Stone quickly assessed the situation and decided that he had no option but to comply. He felt sickened that he had come this far, simply to fail. However, there was nothing he could do while there was a gun against Linda’s head. His only hope was to wait for an opportunity to rush the man. Stone slowly lowered his guns.

  “Put the guns on the floor,” Cartwright said.

  Stone complied.

  “And now the radio.”

  Stone complied.

  “Now walk to the centre of the room and kneel down.”

  Stone complied.

  Cartwright smiled and changed his aim. Stone looked at Linda one last time and then slowly closed his eyes.

  “Relax, Eric…may I call you Eric? Well, I suppose I can, as I seem to be holding all of the cards just now.”

  Stone opened his eyes. Cartwright smiled without displaying any real warmth.

  “Anyway…You can relax. I’m not going to shoot you — unless I have to.”

  Stone looked at Linda. She was still staring at the wall opposite. She seemed unaware that Eric had entered the room, or perhaps she was just too afraid to acknowledge his presence. He called her name, but got the same blank face in response.

  “What have you done to her?” he asked.

  “You do me an injustice, Eric. I haven’t done anything to her…yet.”

  “If you hurt her…”

  Cartwright ignored the threat.

  “I wanted to thank you for disposing of my two Neanderthal bodyguards. It was going to be such problem for me to kill them. You’ve really been most helpful to me”

  He waved vaguely towards his computer.

  “I’ve been watching you on my security system. You really were most impressive, sneaking through the grass, and firing your little crossbow. In other circumstances I would have made you work for me.”

  “Over my dead body!”

  Cartwright shrugged.

  “That would have been my alternative offer.”

  He said it as a statement of fact.

  “What do you want?” Stone asked.

  “I’m going to be leaving soon, but I have a little time, so I thought we could have a little chat.”

  Stone didn’t want to talk; he wanted to kill Simon Cartwright. For all of the things that this
dreadful excuse of a man had done, and for all of the things he was planning to do, Stone wanted him dead. He wanted to poke his eyes out with his thumbs, beat him to a pulp, and feed him to wild dogs. Stone wanted to put Cartwright into a headlock, and squeeze his throat until his eyes bulged and his face turned blue. He wanted to feel The Fixer die.

  Carter had warned Eric about the dangers of crossing over to the dark side, and about how hard it could be to come back. Right now Stone realised that he wanted that darkness. He welcomed it. That darkness would give him the strength he needed to kill Simon Cartwright, and then save Linda. To do those things, he had to stay alive, and at that moment, talking seemed a better alternative than being shot — so he nodded his acceptance.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  Cartwright checked his watch.

  “I have a little time to fill, until my plane will be ready. Let’s begin with a question. Why are you so intent on bringing down my Wrecking Crew?”

  “You killed Charles Rathbone.”

  Cartwright shook his head.

  “No, you are mistaken…Rathbone killed himself. We were hired to discredit him. His death was an unforeseen consequence. Actually, it was rather an embarrassing inconvenience.”

  Cartwright made Charles’ death sound as trivial as missing a train, or being late to a party. Stone had to work hard to control his emotions.

  “All that effort, just because he was getting close to the Wrecking Crew?” he asked.

  Cartwright looked puzzled.

  “I don’t understand. How was he getting close?”

  “Charles had files about your organisation. He gave them to me. I thought that was why you went after him.”

  Cartwright laughed, enjoying the game.

  “That wasn’t the reason at all.”

  “Then what could you possibly have had against him? Charles was a good man, he was a war hero.”