Blood and Ashes

by Matt Hilton

  Bang, bang, bang on the partition. ‘The fuck you doing in there, asshole?’

  ‘Just gettin’ comfortable, Dillman. That OK with you?’

  ‘Lie still, or I swear to God I’m gonna come in there and put a round through each of your knees. I gotta keep you alive for Gant, but he said nothin’ about you having to be in one piece.’

  Vince smiled at Dillman’s bravado. The bullshitter’s words helped cover the faint squeak as he pushed open one of the doors. He slipped out of the van, then gently closed the door. Dillman wouldn’t even know that he’d escaped until he finally came out of the warm cab to check why Vince was so quiet. He guessed that could be a while.

  Ensuring he stayed in a direct line with the van and out of Dillman’s view in the mirrors, he hurried away. He kept going until he was a good hundred yards distant and hidden by the drizzle before he ducked to his right and sped off at a tangent. The lack of a corresponding shout or bullet whizzing after him confirmed that Dillman was blissfully unaware of his escape.

  Vince found that they hadn’t moved far from where Sonya had been killed. He followed the verge at the side of the road to where it widened out, then ran for the demolished cabin. His Ford had been shifted, sent down the embankment on the far side, and it was lying in a stream bed, on its side. Gant’s men had made it look like the Ford had been in a tragic accident, and had gone to the trouble of placing Sonya and Gant’s driver inside before they set the vehicle on fire.

  Vince eyed the smouldering corpses inside and for the first time felt a genuine twinge of regret for Sonya. She was a crazy bitch, but he had to admit that there was a lot he liked about her. In a different world, maybe they could have been . . . No. That could never happen. He turned away, retraced his steps back to the demolished cabin.

  Then he began sifting through the wreckage. When he couldn’t find what he was looking for, he followed the trail to where Sonya had ended up on the floor, and began kicking over splinters of wood. That failed to turn up what he was after, so he stood in the spot where he’d rolled the woman’s body over to retrieve her gun. Then he walked in a spiral away from her. Not as good as conducting a grid-pattern search, but it was faster. Ten yards out he saw it, and he stooped down and picked up Sonya’s cell phone. Debris on top of it had kept it dry. At first he feared that the phone was broken, but the cover and battery had merely slipped when the collision had knocked the phone out of her pocket. He clicked them back in place and was rewarded with a glowing screen as the phone rebooted. The screen saver was a picture of Vince. He was giving her the Elvis lip when she’d snapped the image, his quiff flopping over one eye.

  ‘You jerk,’ he said.

  Then he made the call.

  Chapter 21

  Nostalgia made me smile, but it would be a death’s-head image at best. I had on my game face and knew that even my closest friends found the sight perturbing. Rink, who’d shared many search-destroy missions with me, had found it scary, and he was a man who was normally frightened of nothing. When wearing this face I went way beyond even the red zone extolled by my combat instructor, straddling that plane lorded over by the Grim Reaper. It was my killing face.

  I welcomed the rictus smile.

  As well as the challenge ahead.

  The fight with the two men back in Bedford Well had been driven by insecurity, and I realised now that I’d been allowing feelings of fallibility to control me for too long. The injured hand, the wounds in my leg, they’d all been excuses, and those negative concerns had made me feel – maybe even fear – for my mortality. Now there was no room for worrying about my well-being. Killing these men to save the children gave me purpose again.

  The months spent recuperating had been a waste of time; all that was really needed was to jump right back on the bucking horse.

  It felt good.

  I moved smoothly through the woods, a mud-smeared wraith closing in on those who would harm Millie, Beth and Ryan.

  Don Griffiths fired a second volley.

  One engine died and the sound of doors flying open was followed by shouts of panic. Their return fire filled the woods with a staccato rap.

  I hurdled over a fallen tree, kept running.

  The second engine revved wildly, tyres spinning on mud, and then there was a loud screech and the impact of metal on metal.

  Don’s H&K rattled again.

  More shouts, and another assault rifle responding in kind.

  The bullet-ridden sedan was abandoned in the trail, its front doors wide. Its two occupants had retreated across the road and had taken up hiding places among the trees. They fired blindly at the crest where Don was invisible to them, their rounds churning up leaves and chunks of tree-bark but little else. Don, as instructed, fired and moved, fired and moved, never giving them a location to concentrate upon.

  The SUV was still trying to force its way inside the compound, the front wheels bucking and bouncing on the slick log that I’d jammed in the wire, getting nowhere fast. Those inside were too busy to shoot at Don. They could wait, I decided, and moved for the men in the trees.

  I was ten feet from the first when Don laid down another volley. I dropped and the rounds cut through the foliage above me. Then, with the cessation, the man returned fire, screaming wordlessly at Don. Mind engaged, he had no idea that death was swooping in on him from behind.

  My left hand clasped the man’s jaw, tugged up and back so the bald skull wedged tightly against my shoulder. I didn’t slice the throat. The man could live for too long afterwards. Granted his life would be counted in seconds, but that was enough to fight back. A stray round could kill as easily as a well-aimed one. I jammed the tip of the KA-BAR into the soft flesh under the man’s chin and drove it upwards, brutally sawing the handle back and forth. Making soup of his brain.

  There wasn’t even vestigial movement in the man’s limbs as he fell at my feet.

  Briefly, I thought about picking up the dropped assault rifle, but discarded the idea. Here in the woods, manoeuvrability was king. The rifle would be an encumbrance.

  I dashed away, going almost to my belly as the second skinhead popped up from behind a boulder and fired towards the ridge where Don was hiding. The lack of a response from Don told me that the old man was possibly out of ammunition. Didn’t matter; once this second man was dead, the rules would change. Don would already be moving through the woods to where Millie and the kids were.

  Thinking about the children listening to the distant crack of gunfire, I wondered if they were again picturing the bullet that had torn out their stepfather’s chest. For a second a bubble of my own insecurities threatened to pop in my chest. It tasted like bile in my throat and I swallowed it down. I wasn’t going there again. The way to stop the children experiencing further nightmares was to stop these men.

  I crept in on the second skinhead. The smell of fear wafted off him in waves: sweat and passed wind. I could almost pity the man.

  On the man’s jacket there was a stitched patch, a double lightning-bolt, like those worn by the original Schutzstaffel – Hitler’s Praetorian Guard. He deserved the same lack of mercy as his forebears had shown the thousands murdered in their extermination camps.

  Perhaps it was the man’s supercharged nerves that warned him, because as I stepped close the skinhead jerked round, his rifle swinging with him. He pulled on the trigger as he moved and rounds made an arch of destruction through the woods.

  At that moment, though, I was finer tuned. I lunged sideways even as I barrelled in, staying just beyond the angle of fire. The skinhead tried to track me, but my KA-BAR cut down and to the side, knocking the muzzle of the gun aside. The back stroke cut clean through his windpipe. Then I reversed the blade and jammed it down behind his left clavicle. Not as clean a kill as the first but equally final.

  I kicked the corpse over on to its back, and reached this time for his gun.

  Things had moved on.

  The SUV had forced through the flimsy barricade and hurtled into the c
amp. I tracked it with the assault rifle, loosing a short burst. Rounds pockmarked the rear door in an oblique pattern but failed to stop the vehicle. I pulled the trigger again, but the magazine was empty. A quick glance at the dead body showed no sign of extra ammunition, so I simply dropped the useless weapon and raced after the SUV. As I ran the KA-BAR was exchanged for my SIG.

  I vaulted through the hole in the gate, kept on running. Two hundred yards ahead the SUV came to a screeching halt and the front doors flew open. Men sprinted in opposite directions, seeking cover in the cabins on both sides of the encampment.

  Preserve your bullets, I told myself. No way that I could hit them from here.

  Swerving to the right, I jogged along a wooden walkway in front of a semi-collapsed storage shed, mentally figuring my chances and happy to note that I was still confident of taking out both these amateurs.

  Overconfidence could kill me as quickly as the past feelings of insecurity, I reminded myself when someone lurched up in the back seat of the SUV. The first bullet shattered the rear window, but the follow-ups were aimed at me.

  Bullets whizzed past, blasting holes in the storage shed and tugging at my clothing. Something so hot that it felt like the scorch of a brand laid a line across my left triceps. I knew what it was like to get shot. It was never hot like that; on the contrary it was like the poke of an icy finger. Some primal point in my brain acknowledged how close the round had come to cutting my arm in half, but just shelved it for processing later. My conscious brain screamed at me to move.

  I tumbled ungracefully against the wall of the shed as more bullets churned the planks next to my feet. Splinters flew like a shower of needles. I skipped sideways, then threw myself backwards through a void only vaguely recognisable as a window. Glass tinkled around me as I fell on my back inside the shed. Above me rounds stitched a pattern of holes in the wall, causing laser-like strobes of dim light to cut through the shed.

  The wooden wall, sick with mould and damp, was no barrier to the high-impact rounds of an assault rifle and it would be seconds before my attacker adjusted trajectory and fired where I’d gone through the window. I rolled away just as new shafts of light jabbed the space I’d vacated.

  Coming to my feet, I raced back the way I’d come, doing the opposite to what my attacker expected. The wall behind me was split into flying chunks, and I was relieved that I’d read the man right.

  Hunkering in the far corner, listening, I didn’t attempt to fire back. I was rewarded a moment later by the clunk of the SUV’s door being thrown open. I held my breath, so that my exhalations didn’t compete with the stealthy sounds of approach.

  Playing possum wasn’t my usual way of dealing with armed men, but in the circumstances it served me well. Let the man think his bullets had cut me to pieces, then when he came and peered inside the window to check on his handiwork I would put a well-placed bullet in his skull.

  There was the steady approach of boots in mud and I creased my finger on the trigger of the SIG.

  Shadows shifted beyond the broken window.

  Any second now.

  I slowly exhaled even as I lifted the gun and aimed it at head height.

  Then a strangled yell spoiled everything.

  Don roaring in rage.

  Apparently he wasn’t fully out of bullets after all, because suddenly more strobes flashed through the shed. Boots pounded along the walkway outside as the man I was a second away from killing made for cover further away.

  Son of a bitch, I cursed under my breath, the tattooed man had escaped death a second time.

  Chapter 22

  Vince ran.

  Not away from Samuel Gant as would be expected from anyone with the least bit of sense or a will to protect his own ass, but directly towards him.

  There was no option left to him if he hoped to achieve what he’d been working so hard for.

  Everything depended on him being there.

  If he missed it, then, well, he’d be righteously fucked.

  He wished he’d sneaked back to the black van, surprised Dillman by dragging that piece of shit out and stomping him stupid under his heels. At least then he’d have a van to climb the mountain in, instead of having to run the entire way in a pair of boots designed for shit-kicking rather than a goddamn marathon.

  He stopped to catch his breath.

  Damned if I ain’t gonna have to get back to the gym.

  Of late his lifestyle hadn’t allowed him the opportunity and he was feeling the effects of too many beers, too many smokes, and too much time between the sheets with Sonya. No regrets, he warned, it had to be done. Damned if he hadn’t enjoyed himself, too. But now, leaning with his hands on his knees while he sucked in great gusts of damp air, he knew he was going to have to do something to get his form back.

  He heard the rattle of machine-gun fire.

  ‘Jesus H. Christ, it’s started!’

  He began running again, his burning lungs begging him to stop, but his brain screaming like a drill-instructor to keep on going.

  The mud made the going even more difficult, huge clods of it sticking to and building up under his heels and insteps. His jacket stank of overheated leather and perspiration. His hair, usually elegantly coiffed, whipped his face. Adding to his discomfort was the throbbing lump on the back of his skull, and the cat scratches on his face that stung like a sumbitch.

  Forget it all, he told himself.

  Keep going, Vince, just keep going. You want to come outa this on the right side, you just gotta keep going.

  He exhorted himself all the way up and over the crest of the hill, all the while wincing at the sounds of a raging gun battle.

  Ahead of him was a logging camp that hadn’t known the presence of lumberjacks for the best part of a decade. It reminded him of a ghost town from a horror movie. The drifting rain added to the image, phantom mists crawling out of the forest and floating across the deserted streets. Or maybe it was clouds of cordite.

  A little way ahead was an abandoned sedan car, peppered with bullet holes. As he approached it he scanned left and right, hoping he wasn’t in the crosshairs of any of the skinheads who’d disembarked in a hurry.

  Gunfire sounded again.

  This time it was from inside the camp and he saw a man rush across the street and throw himself backwards through a window. He saw the flash of a rifle from the back of a dark-coloured SUV. Vince ducked down by the door of the sedan, watched as a figure clambered from the SUV and walked towards where the other had disappeared. The figure held his assault rifle low down near his hip, firing through the walls of the shed. When there was no return fire, the figure continued creeping forward. He was almost at the window when a cry rang out.

  Vince swung to the new sound and saw Don Griffiths come out from between the buildings on the opposite side, firing wildly at the figure. As the figure turned to run, Vince recognised the tattoo like a dark stain down his face.

  Gant, the motherfucker, ran off.

  Further along, more rifles cracked and Don Griffiths was forced to retreat back towards the cabins. By the way he dragged his leg he’d taken a hit from one of the rounds.

  Vince had to get inside the camp, but unarmed as he was, he’d be wandering into a shooting gallery where he’d be dropped as easily as a tin duck.

  Maybe he could cut round back and take Don Griffiths’ rifle away from him?

  No way, he decided. The old guy looked like he knew his way round a machine-gun and would probably plug him before he got near. The way to win this was to go directly for Millie and the children; if only he had the faintest idea where they were hiding.

  Back to square one, Vince. You still have to get by Gant and his bootboys. And don’t forget the guy with the killer’s eyes. Unlike Gant, he didn’t think the silence since he went through that window meant that he was dead.

  Need a weapon.

  He looked inside the sedan hoping a gun had been dropped when those inside scarpered. Glass littered the interior, but that w
as it.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he whispered as the gunfire started again.

  There were just too many of them for him to take his chances.

  My gang’s bigger than yours, Gant, but where the hell are they?

  He tried to figure out how much time had passed since he’d made the rushed call. How long until his buddies arrived.

  Not soon enough for his liking.

  He clambered inside the sedan, pulling out Sonya’s phone, stabbing buttons. The phone clicked off and he read the message on the screen. Call disconnected. He checked the strength of service and saw that there was no coverage up here.

  ‘Shit!’

  An engine roared behind him.

  Hopefully he peered around, looking for his friends.

  But it was the black van. Dillman, his nose a red smear on his top lip, summoned here by radio by one of his friends. Vince ducked low as Dillman avoided the sedan and blasted through the remains of a gate and into the compound.

  Damned if his chances weren’t getting slimmer.

  Still, he couldn’t stay here.

  He jumped out the car and followed the van through the gate, heading in an ungainly sprint for the nearest shed on the left. If Millie and the kids were anywhere, he might as well start his search there, at the furthest point away from the shooting. As he ran, he pulled out his garrotte and looped it round his right fist.

  Chapter 23

  The plastic garbage bag sucked at my torso as I rushed towards the back of the shed. As I ran I tugged at the plastic through my shirt, loosening it so that it didn’t impede movement. A trail of moisture dotted the hard dirt of the floor, but at least it wasn’t blood.

  Small consolation.

  Despite my best efforts I’d failed to stop the gang from entering the compound, and, worse than that, the gunfight had forced the skinheads deep into the camp and close to where Millie and the children were hiding.

  Have to lead them away. Use myself as bait.

  At the back of the shed there was a door, swollen with damp and jammed in its frame. Noise would give away my location, and I wasn’t ready to play my hand just yet, but there was nothing for it. Luckily, just as I pulled at the groaning door a vehicle sped into the camp, the engine screeching. The unexpected cover allowed me to pull the door open and exit into an area full of junk, discarded plastic drums and tendrils of undergrowth.