THE FIX: SAS hero turns Manchester hitman (A Rick Fuller Thriller Book 1)

by Robert White

  On the nod from me she would burst out, spray the offending boat and Bob was your auntie’s husband.

  I handed her the weapon. “You need to practice loading and unloading the mags for the next few minutes.”

  She nodded, “How many in each? Twenty-two?”

  “Thirty, and they’ll last you about a second and a half on full auto, okay?”

  Another nod.

  I held the weapon against my hip and gripped the suppressor with my left hand. Then I swung my body in an arc with my feet planted. “This is how I’d use it. The more stable you are the better and you need to be close. This fuckin’ thing is about as accurate as a drunk pissing in the wind. Understand, babe?”

  Lauren took the Mac10 and assessed it for weight and feel. Then she pushed in a magazine but removed it without sending the action forward and chambering a round. Then she removed the mag, reinserted it, dropped the action and applied the safety. With one last inspection she made sure the weapon was in fully auto mode and rested it on a nearby table.

  “Feels okay to me.”

  I was about to complain she hadn’t practiced enough when I saw the first signs of an approaching boat.

  “Positions.”

  Rick Fuller's Story:

  The door of the cell was pushed open by one of the smoking guards. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the light. I studied the guard and he looked overweight to me; a pub bouncer type. His MP5 was held in his left hand, the mechanism cocked back. That meant no round in the chamber and a second or so grace. He didn’t inspire confidence. It was the only good thing I saw.

  Behind him was the old Nazi doctor. He had surgical gloves on his hands, and a young equally Teutonic type pushed a tray of surgical instruments in behind him.

  The accent was not a surprise, but I would have bet my left bollock that they were both Jewish and real good friends of Mr. Goldsmith.

  “Now, Mr. Fuller, we need to complete some medical examinations. First is the rectal probe to ensure you have not secreted any objects in that passage. Then I need to examine your teeth. Many spies have tracking devices hidden in molars these days and they must be removed.”

  I’d seen the film with Dustin Hoffman where the German guy tortures him with a dentist kit and this guy looked just like the fucker.

  A second guard entered pushing a chair, and the bouncer type pointed his MP5 at my head.

  “Do as the doc says, buddy.”

  The bouncer had a definite New York twang. I could just see him twenty pounds heavier, riding his ‘hog’ around town with a cut off denim jacket and tight black T-shirt showing of his tattoos and fat belly.

  The doc motioned towards the cot. “Lie on your side facing the wall please, and lift your knees toward your chest.”

  I knew what was coming, I’d had several rectal exams both for medical checks and drug searches. They are mildly unpleasant and demeaning but I didn’t have any choice. Better to let the guy do his job than to struggle like fuck and end up with torn tissue and a bleeding arse for your trouble.

  I complied and the guy was professional about it. More than I could say for the two guards who sniggered away in the background like a pair of schoolboys.

  “Sit in the chair, please.”

  I felt my jaws clench. I’d never liked the dentist and the thought of losing eight back teeth in this cell didn’t appeal in the slightest.

  The doc was removing his gloves, washing his hands in some kind of solution and preparing another pair.

  Then he selected a mirror and hook from the surgical tray. He obviously sensed my displeasure.

  Before I could complain the two guards pinned me to the chair and the doc’s blond assistant was prising my mouth open. Any further defiance was pointless and I shouted “Okay, okay!” as best I could.

  I was released and I complied as the doc scraped and tapped away at my back teeth for a few minutes.

  To my surprise he straightened up and announced. “He’s clean, no cavities.”

  As the two medical guys were cleaning up, I sat rubbing my jaw and saying a silent thank you to the British Army for regular dental checks.

  I figured it was a good time to ask for food and water. I hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours and if I had any chance of escape I needed energy.

  “Any chance of some grub and some water? I feel very weak.”

  Guard number two, who was less overweight and around my age, was opening a clear package containing a paper suit, the kind the cops use for prisoners when they’ve taken their clothes for forensic examination.

  He was English and I detected a Mancunian accent.

  “You’ll be eatin’ soon mate.”

  He handed me the suit, together with some paper slippers, and before I could say anything else he was gone and I was in total darkness again.

  I started to make final preparations. I made sure Jimmy was stable in his ‘captain’s’ chair, I couldn’t risk the fucker falling over at the wrong moment. Then I found the fridge, selected a two-litre plastic bottle of Coke, emptied it over the side and cut the nozzle off with my knife making a three-inch hole in the top. I propped the bottle up on the seat to my left making sure it didn’t blow away in the wind, then sat and tucked my Beretta in the back of my jeans, both hands behind my back as if tied. For good measure, there was a fully loaded M4 Carbine at my feet if the shit really hit the fan.

  The night was clear as a bell and the outline of our enemy’s boat was unmistakable. It looked about the same size as our boat but less powerful. As it drew closer, I could make out three dark figures on board; one was sitting, legs dangling off the forward deck, obviously ready to board, the other two stood in the open-top cabin, one piloting.

  Without warning our engines dropped to an idle and then kicked into reverse stopping The Irish Eyes directly on the spot the autopilot had plotted. We sat, the boat rocking gently in the Straits, the engines quietly idling in neutral. I prayed for some cloud cover to mask the sapphire moonlight but we weren’t in luck.

  I spoke in a flat calm voice, as if chatting to the un-hearing Jimmy.

  “Two hundred yards to your right now, babe, no lights. I can see three targets so far. One on deck two in cabin.”

  “Got that.”

  I heard Lauren shuffle closer to the edge of the tarp and knock the safety off the Mac10. She sounded calm. I felt like a sitting duck.

  I looked over at my Coke bottle to check it hadn’t shifted and gripped my Beretta with my right hand. I felt sweat trickle between my shoulders and head down my spine. The wind had dropped and I could just make out the raised voices on the approaching craft.

  “One hundred, Lauren, still three targets, no, wait, four, one more now on deck with what looks like an M16. You need him first, got that?”

  “Got that.”

  It was a major gamble. How long did I wait before making the move? The Mac10 was no good over ten metres or so and Lauren had never fired one. If the guy on the deck started shouting to Jimmy twenty meters out I would have to use the M4 and that noise would alert whoever was on shore. Get any of it wrong and we were both as dead as Jimmy.

  I lowered my voice.

  “Fifty meters.”

  Lauren didn’t reply.

  The other craft killed its engines and the nose dipped into the water, sending spray into the air. They were twenty away. The guy with the dangling legs had stood and was holding a rope to secure the boats together.

  M16 guy started to look uneasy.

  “Ten meters.”

  The pilot turned the boat hard to starboard and hit reverse.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  Lauren was up in a second and I heard the Mac10 splutter its first full magazine before I even got into the kneel. The guys on the deck had been almost cut in two. Swathes of blood and intestines splattered the deck area and were already running down the side of the craft. I pushed my Beretta into the nozzle of the Coke bottle and started to fire double taps in the direction of the two gu
ys in the cabin. The bottle made aiming difficult but was a surprisingly good noise suppressor. Lauren had the second mag loaded, and thirty more devastating rounds tore into the cabin and the men inside.

  Then silence. I hadn’t even counted to ten.

  I looked to my left and saw Lauren standing on the deck, the Mac10 smoking in her hand.

  “Okay?”

  She gave me a ‘thumbs up’ and then the sign for ‘look’. She pointed at the cabin area. From her vantage point, she could see more than I could.

  I heard some movement and a groan and gave Lauren the sign to wait and cover me. There was no time for finesse. I jumped from our boat to theirs and swung my Beretta in an arc towards the pilot station.

  One guy was propped against the bulkhead, He had a gun in his hand but he was in shit state and bleeding from his throat and guts. The plastic bottle did the trick again as I double-tapped him to the head.

  You’d do it for a dog, wouldn’t you?

  Rick Fuller's Story:

  I lay on the cot beating myself up over falling asleep on the job. If one of my guys had ever done that I would have potted him there and then. Nevertheless I had done so and I couldn’t change that. Although my sense of time was somewhat off kilter I had guessed that Lauren and Des would be joining the party quite soon. As much as I didn’t want them captured, I figured that three heads would always be better than one. Especially if that one fell asleep every five minutes.

  My ponderings were disturbed by the opening of my cell door and the sight I least wanted to see.

  Stephan Goldsmith.

  “Rick. You have no idea how surprised I am to see you again. You have led us a terrible dance as they say in England?”

  I sat on the cot letting my eyes get used to the light again. Listening to the sound of his voice made my flesh crawl. Worse still, he looked okay. No doubt he’d had some attention to his wound and some pretty hefty painkillers. He leant against the cell wall. He wore casual trousers, jacket and an open neck shirt. They all looked Italian. His shoes let the whole thing down, though. Horrible beige slip-on square toe jobs. Spanish, probably from a market. Despite the crap shoes Stephan positively oozed confidence. He opened a pack of chewing gum and offered me one. I took it and asked.

  “How did you find us?”

  Stephan was his usual patronising self. That weird mix of accents that he and his sister possessed made for unusual nuances and sayings. He had the shhh of the Dutch, a definite African lilt; all mixed with Harvard All American boy.

  “We never really lost your little crew, Rick, maybe for a while when you went off to Scotland to lick your wounds, but not for long. I have to hand it to you, I mean, the raid on Joel’s house was a peach. Only you would have had the crazy idea to try that one. I knew it was you in that hallway, just knew.”

  He knelt down and rested on his haunches against the wall. He looked at me quizzically.

  “Why didn’t you shoot me, Rick?”

  I wanted to tear him limb from limb but stayed silent.

  He shrugged as if my answer would have been unimportant.

  “Then your little friend Lauren went and threw her hairbrush in a skip nearby, that ID’d her at the scene and we were totally convinced you were operational again.”

  He picked his nails absently.

  “The visit to one of our estate agent properties was a mistake too. Your friend Desmond got tagged by one of Father’s oldest friends. Edward Madden, he’s MI5 you know? Father is building him a house in the Caymans. From then on we knew you would surface in Manchester again and you did.”

  He stood and I detected a wince of pain.

  “Trouble was, ‘old bean’, it was the Moston boys who found you not us. They, of course, blame you totally for that awful carnage in the cemetery over there. Now, rather than come to our organisation for help, they sent their own little ‘soljas’ innit?”

  He made a ridiculous rap movement with his right hand, but it came out more like a heavy metal salute. Then dismissively he added, “I believe you had a little luck and shot them.”

  Stephan broke into a smile and pushed his blond fringe to the side. There was an excitement to his voice, like a child on Christmas morning. “Then we found your little friend the Greek.”

  I felt a pang of sorrow.

  Stephan chewed his gum and looked me in the eye. Beaming.

  “Spiro Makris, the olive oil guy. You remember him, don’t you, Rick? The fat untidy guy with the big family? He was a loyal friend to you, Rick. I can tell you that. For a man his age he could take a lot of pain. But then you know how I enjoy inflicting pain, don’t you, Rick? He was so… difficult. Stubborn. You know? I had to kill one of his grandchildren before he gave you up.”

  He let his last comment hang as if waiting for the applause, then, brushed imaginary fluff from his lapels. His curt patronising tone excelled as he said, “My father and Colonel Williamson will see you for dinner in one hour. I hope you are well behaved in my father’s company, Rick. The consequences could be terrible for your friends if you aren’t. By the way, Susan is picking them up now.”

  He closed the door and darkness came. I was grateful for it.

  I had to have a plan. All this bullshit was sticking in my throat. Des and Lauren would be here in the hour. Stephan had said so much. Susan had told me that Williamson wanted to talk to us all.

  I wondered if they would be cuffed or hooded. I hadn’t been, such was the arrogance of this private army. They were so self-important and sure of themselves that they might allow the three of us in this ridiculous bunker and not even bother to tie our hands.

  More fool them.

  Lauren North's Story:

  “Can you steer a boat, hen?

  As Des spoke we were clearing the enemy’s craft of bodies and obvious signs of carnage. The four guys who had come to collect us on the boat called ‘Susie Q’ had been dumped into the sea and we used buckets of seawater to wash off most of the blood from the deck and sides.

  “I’ve been to the lake at Southport if that helps,” I replied, swilling more claret back into the ocean.

  “Very fuckin’ funny.”

  I held up my hand to Des.

  “So long as I don’t have to reverse it into a space I reckon I’ll be okay. Why?”

  Des studied the coastline with a pair of powerful binoculars found on Irish Eyes. I was grateful Susie Q hadn’t been carrying the same kit or we’d be floating in the straits as cold as our adversaries.

  “I reckon that’s our welcome party on the jetty, you see?”

  With the naked eye I couldn’t.

  “Nope.”

  I got back to my sloshing.

  “Well I can, and I do.” He put the binos to one side.

  I put my hands on my hips.

  “Anyway I don’t need to drive Irish Eyes; she’s got autopilot.”

  Des turned and gave me a grin. He was buzzing with excitement. I could see it. He loved every minute.

  “You fuckin’ beauty! Of course!”

  He scratched his head and looked around him.

  “How much extra fuel have we got between the two boats?”

  “Dunno, Des, there were four jerry cans on Irish Eyes. What are you thinking?”

  “We need to get all our stuff onto Susie Q and make sure Jimmy boy there still looks pretty good in his captain’s chair. Then I want to move all the spare jerry cans into the cabin of Irish Eyes. Oh, and I’ll need a map of the coastline.”

  The map was easy, both craft held them. Des jumped over to Jimmy’s boat, held a chart up to the light and pushed buttons in the cabin. He cursed modern technology as he found the Sat Nav on Irish Eyes lacking in the common sense he required to make the boat arrive at the Jetty at exactly at the time he wanted it to.

  It took him all of four minutes.

  “Fucking thing!” he cursed as he hit ‘enter’ for the final time. Des was a man who found anything modern annoying.

  It took us twenty minutes to mov
e all the kit to Susie Q and all the juice to Irish Eyes. We were both sweating but I was knackered. My injuries from the fight with Stephan were tiring me faster than I’d hoped and I noticed the odd enquiring glance from Des.

  I ignored them.

  At last we let Jimmy’s boat go on her way, her owner fixed firmly in his seat with fifty gallons of fuel for company.

  Des set Susie Q a course just to the west of her. Close enough to make the guys on the jetty think we were being shadowed but far enough away for what we had in mind. We would hit the beach meters from the jetty, a minute before Jimmy reached home. I handled one of our M4 carbines and went through the drill of loading it and making it safe. Just like the Mac10, I’d never fired one and again it was important I got a feel for the thing. My shoulders ached and my breathing was laboured. To be honest, I felt like shit. I rooted for some more painkillers in my pocket and necked them before Des could see.

  He was so preoccupied with sorting out his own kit, he never noticed. He loaded what looked like some kind of starting pistol, wrapped it in a plastic bag, and gave me a cheeky wink.

  “Ye know, ye’re no a bad kisser for an Englishwoman like.”

  God knows how, but with sweat pouring from every place you wouldn’t want to, a broken nose, and a banging head, he made me feel all girly.

  I countered in the only way I could under the circumstances.

  “Fuck off and get on with it.”

  Des Cogan's Story:

  I dropped over the side and the water felt good on my skin. The humidity of the night and the physical efforts of the last hour or so had me sweating. I felt refreshed, alert and ready for the task ahead.

  I held the plastic bag with the flare gun and my Beretta in my right hand as I swam gently in the direction of the jetty.

  I could see a white four by four parked at the ocean’s edge and two figures standing on the wooden structure looking out to sea.

  To my right I could just about make out Irish Eyes burbling away on her exact heading.

  The trap was set. All I needed was the prey to walk into it.