The Leah Chronicles_Andorra

by Devon C. Ford

  “Three in the vest,” Mitch said, “he’s alright but banged up. Ribs broken probably.”

  I looked around to see Chloe kneeling by him, his back propped against another vehicle and his vest on the ground in a heap as he grimaced and screwed his eyes shut. I knew he would be in a world of pain. ‘Bulletproof’ vests gave the inexperienced wearer a sense of invincibility until they knew the sensation of actually being hit; like being punched by the smallest, hardest fist they had ever encountered and while the bullets hadn’t penetrated they had dispersed all of their kinetic energy right into his torso. He was alive, but he was out of the fight.

  Scuffs of boots on gravel and dusty road surface turned my head back to the other direction, and I dug back into Mitch’s bag and the trauma kit he carried on top where it was most accessible to find a thick gauze pad and retrieve the roll of tape. Lucien had forced the man back under threat of his gun, but he also had the added bonus of Nem quite literally dogging his steps and snapping and snarling as he limped back in tears of pain and fear. I walked over to them, aware that a few sets of eyes were on me, and reached out to grab her collar and haul her forwards almost off her feet.

  “Leave him,” I growled, more authority in my voice than even I expected to hear and threw the man to the ground where he stumbled on his injured left leg and bleeding right forearm. I drew my knife, the smaller one from my shoulder, and slapped his hands away and he panicked. I cut the material away in a long line to expose the mess of torn flesh caused by my dog and slapped the gauze on it before wrapping the tape tightly over the dressing. I wasn’t careful about it and didn’t even wash the wound first, which would make it a miracle if it didn’t get infected. Dog bites had a nasty habit of doing that.

  I drew the knife again, cutting away the dirty blue denim jeans with a grunt of effort as he sat still and watched me with fearful eyes. I repeated the process on his leg, which wasn’t injured so badly and was confined to the meat of his calf muscle. I stood, glaring down at him, and saw the hostility mirrored in his eyes despite his attempt to appear non-threatening.

  “Someone go back and get the others? Dan asked, patting his pockets for the keys as his mind caught up and reminded him that he had left it running.

  “I will go,” Chloe said, knowing that neither Dan nor I would want to go, and the other options were her or Mitch as Jean was barely able to breathe, and Lucien had never learned how to drive. Dan nodded his thanks at her and stood resolute, his eyes switching between me checking out the freed prisoners and shooting daggers at our own captive. He said nothing, and the look on his face despite the obvious pain said that he had every intention of fighting back given the slightest opportunity. I had picked that up from his eyes in a heartbeat and I was sure that Dan would have seen it. He was probably thinking of retuning the guy just to put those ideas out of his head if I knew him at all. He satisfied himself with letting Nemesis terrorise him.

  The sound of an engine pulled our eyes back to the road and the approaching van, where Neil now sat behind the wheel with Chloe riding shotgun. Alita and Mateo would be in the back, uncomfortable and probably already too hot as the sun gathered in intensity with each minute it rose higher over the mountains.

  Neil stepped down after killing the engine, shotgun in hand and a worried expression on his face as he walked forwards via Jean to place a hand on his shoulder and offer a word of comfort. The others climbed out of the van, Ash bounding out to run low to Dan’s side and sniff the air to try and figure out what his master had been up to without him. He froze, his eyes fixed on the bleeding prisoner, and a low growl rumbled from his throat.

  Neil glanced at the man and the woman we had rescued, noting the bags of fluids snaking down from the panel van to their arms, then shot a look at the bloody prisoner who stared at him with undisguised hatred. Neil had taken in the results, figuring out most of the facts and needing only to ask a few questions.

  “Where were they?” he asked, pointing at the obviously innocent people receiving treatment.

  “Tied to the border signpost,” I told him.

  “Been there a while by the look of it too,” he said darkly. “What has fucknut said about it?” he asked, meaning the chew toy Nemesis had made friends with. That reminded me, and I called her back and sent her off with Ash to search, just to keep them busy and away from the man who would fetch a torn-out throat if he made the wrong move.

  “Haven’t asked him yet,” Dan said, making us turn in panic as the sounds of scrabbling feet on tarmac sounded loudly. Before I had whipped my head around to face the threat, my hand automatically reaching for the grip of my weapon, my brain registered three meaty smacking sounds.

  I turned in time to see the prisoner crumpling to the dirt, his knees made of jelly and his eyes rolled fully back into his head.

  “Err,” Lucien said, his hands up and balled into fists, “sorry?”

  Welcome to Andorra. Again.

  It turned out that the prisoner, despite having a badly chewed arm and a perforated leg, was a little tougher than he had made out to begin with. The arrival of Neil, coupled with the absence of the two dogs, had sparked him into action. Lucien explained haltingly, clearly nervous at having knocked the man unconscious in a heartbeat, saying how he had snatched out a hand for his assault rifle as soon as our backs were turned and that he had just reacted.

  Neil laughed. Dan smirked. I tried to hide a look of admiration.

  Mitch had seen the man make his move, had even got so far as to open his mouth and breathe in to issue a warning as he raised his rifle, but as his world moved in slow motion Lucien seemed to remain locomoting at regular speed. He didn’t reach for a weapon, didn’t step back or lash out to employ any of the distraction techniques learned through years of practice as Leah and Dan had, he simply adjusted his footing and let fly a blurred flurry of punches. The first was a right-handed jab which popped his nose; not a knock-out blow but one that he pulled back as a shocker. The second was a left hook which connected low on the right side of his jaw and exposed the left temple perfectly for the right hook which was already swinging in an exquisitely timed arc to land on the left side of his face just above where the jawbone articulated. He was out on his feet, unconscious in mid-air, and he landed hard.

  Lucien apologised again, profusely, as he knew that the man would not be able to answer questions with any coherence for many hours if he was any judge of it. He was concussed, that was without doubt, and his cognitive functions and memory would likely take time to reboot properly.

  It didn’t matter much to me, other than the flutter in my chest at seeing Lucien make good on the boast that he had been Olympic team material, and I asked Dan what was next.

  “You tell me,” he said, the smirk now gone from his face.

  “Can’t get a vehicle through there,” I said as I pointed at the barricade, “and we have injured who need to rest. Secure here and I’ll go in on foot.”

  “Not on your own,” he said, “you and me.”

  “Fine,” I said, “Mitch? You got this here?”

  “Aye,” he said, “on you go, missy.”

  From anyone else that would get a death stare, but I let it slide.

  “It’s a good few miles,” I warned him, guestimating from the picture of the area map in my head, “sure your old legs can manage?”

  “Fuck off,” he quipped back without malice.

  We started walking, stepping over the snoring man who was having his hands bound with the same tape, having been tipped on his side so that the blood from his bent nose didn’t drown him.

  “Keep Mateo off him,” I said quietly to Lucien, flushing hot as he flashed me the smile and gave an understanding nod.

  I had a thought as we approached the border post and called out to Dan on the other side of the road where he and Ash mirrored mine and Nemesis’ path.

  “I saw the others using a telephone at the other end in a toll booth,” I told him, “worth a try?” He shrugged to try and ind
icate that making a phone call instead of walking miles uphill made no difference to him, which I knew was bullshit, so I went inside and picked up the phone.

  It had a dial tone. I pressed a number and heard a beep, then a click as it started to ring in a weirdly dull tone.

  “Hola?” a crackly voice said on the other end.

  “Hello,” I answered, “Anglais? Err, Iglesias?” I tried. Dan chuckled from the doorway, making me feel like an idiot as I realised I’d just asked for a singer by surname instead of a translation.

  “I speak some English,” the voice said on the other end, full of darkness and hostility, “what do you want?”

  “We’re not…” I said, realising that they thought I was one of the people keeping them prisoner inside their own country. “I was here a few days ago, with another man? And my dog…?”

  “You are,” the voice asked hesitantly, “you are not… them?”

  “No,” I said, “we are most definitely not them. Listen, we’ve just broken their barricade at your south road a—”

  “You have what? Please,” the voice said, “say slowly.”

  “We are at your southern road,” I said slowly, probably sounding a little sarcastic as I did it, “and you probably want to send someone down here.”

  A pause on the other end. A staccato rattle of rapid language with rolling R’s. A voice that reminded me of the woman in charge.

  What was she called? Carla something?

  “We come now. Please, no… no traïcions.”

  I could guess the meaning of that.

  “They’re coming,” I told Dan, “they’re nervous though.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “Probably. Guns down anyway,” I told him. He shot me a look that questioned why I was giving him orders all of a sudden, which I ignored, and we waited.

  “Well would you fucking look at that,” Dan said incredulously less than twenty minutes later, his eyes shielded by his hand as he looked up at the two vehicles weaving their way down the road towards us.

  “What?” I asked, seeing the vehicles at the same time as he did but failing to grasp the importance. It wasn’t like vehicles still worked or anything.

  “What?” he mocked, turning his appalled gaze on me. “Do you hear any engines?” he said slowly, heavy with sarcasm. I thought about that, straining my ears. I could make out a distant hiss of tyres on tarmac, but I couldn’t hear the accompanying engine note to go with it.

  “No,” I said, “wait, are they…?”

  “Teslas!” Dan exclaimed, unable to ever keep something inside and desperate to give over the punchline too soon. “Electric cars.”

  I shrugged. Using an electric vehicle made sense to me, as long as enough power could be generated from the wind turbines further down the coast from Sanctuary, which were already showing signs of needing maintenance. Not being a boy, I didn’t see the attraction with their glee over vehicles and how they always talked about their figures and used acronyms I couldn’t be bothered to learn as they were irrelevant to my life.

  Something about the speed at which they approached set my spine tingling, and I called Nem to send her away to my left where I told her to get down and stay. Dan did the same with Ash, sending him off to the right where he lurked. No doubt the people in the lead car would have seen the dogs, but hopefully that would give them something to worry about if they intended us any hostility.

  The lead car, a deep, shiny midnight blue, stopped twenty paces away as the second car, which was a plain red, pulled to one side of it. It was a very strange sensation to see cars moving and stopping without an engine note. It made me feel like I’d gone partially deaf.

  The doors opened, and armed men got out to point little MP5s and shotguns like Neil’s new Benelli at us.

  “Knees!” one of them shouted in a tone of voice that said he had copied it directly from a movie. “On your knees, now!”

  “Fuck right off, sunshine,” Dan said lazily, “we’ve just helped you out, and this is how you repay us?”

  I swallowed, it had dawned on me as they approached that the other group could have got inside and taken over, but everything about these people screamed fear of the outside and not the organised chaos I had seen from the ones who had attacked me.

  “On your knees, I said!” the man with the small shoulders and the big mouth shouted, stepping forwards as he tried to sound and seem bigger than he was.

  “And I said,” Dan spoke quietly, “to fuck off.” I knew why he had spoken softly, why he wanted the man to come closer and I had to prepare myself to roll with it. Dan would not simply submit to these people who he had never met, especially not to the fake hero who was inside easy pistol shot now.

  “You will go to your knees,” he said again, a hint of doubt creeping into his voice as he wavered slightly, “or I shoot her.”

  He turned the gun on me, keeping his eyes on Dan and not knowing how easily either of us could drop him before he got a shot off.

  “Me?” I said. “What have I done?”

  Movie-man switched his gaze between us, panic rising as he had clearly never thought of what to do if we weren’t scared of his little sub-machine gun. He hesitated, eventually deciding to threaten the poor, defenceless female to force the big man to comply. He stepped towards me, totally failing to recognise the fact that I was pretty much dripping with guns, as his misogyny thought for him. He wrapped an arm around my neck, almost scared to touch me too much, and held the gun vaguely near my head as he turned me to face Dan.

  “On your knees, now!” he shouted again, this time unable to keep the rising panic out of his words.

  “Mistaaaake,” Dan sang with a smile, “you’d be safer laying hands on me, pal. Let her go,” he said, still speaking softly before pouring every ounce of threat and promised violence into the final word. “Now!”

  He didn’t, so I winked at Dan and reacted.

  My left hand slammed downwards, hinged at the elbow, and slapped an open palm into his groin as my right hand pushed up and moved the barrel of his gun a few inches to make it totally safe if he pulled the trigger. My left had shot up and gripped the barrel of the gun as my right hand pushed out and balled into a fist before I rammed my elbow upwards into his armpit. The gun clattered to the road surface, and I grabbed his wrist with my left hand before giving him another elbow to the lower part of his ribs. I stepped aside, spinning my body under his extended arm and pushed my weight through the joint and up into his shoulder to flip him onto his back.

  In a blur, I whipped the Glock from my chest and dropped a knee onto his chest as the barrel pointed directly between his eyes, almost in an identical pose as the man I had killed when I had been ambushed the first time.

  I glanced at Dan to see that he hadn’t moved, instead he was just staring at the cars.

  “Organ grinder?” he shouted. “Don’t send monkeys to talk to us. Come out.”

  He loves that saying, my brain complained irrelevantly, I wish he’d get some new material.

  I heard a car door open. It was an expensive sound; very solid and without a hint of metallic cheapness to it. It clunked instead of clicking.

  “Això és suficient per ara,” a strong voice said, the R’s rolling again before she translated it for ease. “That is enough for now.” I winked at the terrified man under my knee and stood, holstering the sidearm and holding out a hand to help him up. He declined the offer, choosing instead to scramble backwards to his feet and shoot me a very wary look. I puckered my lips into a small kiss which I hoped the others didn’t see.

  “I am Carla Sofia Rovira,” she said grandly, transporting me back a few days before I had been through the most recent shit in my life, “and I am the… or-gan grin-der,” she finished with an accented attempt at humour.

  “We’ve met,” I said, seeing her face showed no new signs of recognition which told me that she knew who I was already.

  “Yes,” she said, “and since you left our country we have been
attacked, shot at by snipers and had our people captured. How do you answer these charges?”

  Charges? I thought, unable to believe what I was hearing.

  “Err,” I said, the sass in my voice coming from nowhere, “since I left your country I’ve been ambushed, had people try to kill me, had my friend kidnapped, lost my truck, weapons and bag, had to steal a car and walk half the way home only to come back to try and rescue you,” I said, my voice reaching a pitch where, in Dan’s words, I was close to losing my shit.

  “And now,” I went on, “after we’ve broken the barricade on your southern road, killed or captured the people you’re so afraid of and rescued a couple others who were tied up, now you accuse me of being responsible?”

  Silence hung for a moment.

  “Fuck this,” I snapped, “we’ll be on our way, and screw you very much.”

  I turned to Dan, his look of amusement doing nothing to pierce the veil of anger which had descended on me before she spoke again.

  “Wait, please…”

  I looked at her, eyebrows up expecting an apology which I knew was coming.

  “We had to be sure that you were not on the same side as Tomau and his people.”

  “Tomau?” Dan asked. “Tall? Bit of a fucking arsehole?”

  Carla smiled. “You have met him then?”

  “Yes,” I said, too angry to let someone else speak in case I burst, “he executed his own man just to remove an advantage from us. He still has one of our people, and we’d appreciate,” I growled through gritted teeth, “a little help instead of…” I waved a hand over the terrified man who was still too frightened to retrieve his weapon as he rubbed his wrist. “Instead of that.”

  Carla spoke rapidly, making the man scurry away from me. The six other men stayed still and silent, none of their weapons had been raised and they all seemed fairly neutral about the one with the big mouth getting humiliated by what they probably still saw as a child. I bent down and retrieved the MP5, the safety etchings beside the trigger guard seeming almost identical to the ones on my own weapon, and found it still locked in the ‘safe’ position. I held it up as I hit the magazine release catch and kept my eyes on the former owner as I caught it in mid-air. I racked the slide of the gun, expecting a glittering brass round to spin out into the air but nothing happened. I tossed the two parts back to him.