Gibbs scanned the horizon, but his vision was blurred and hazy. Nearby, he could make out the two bodyguards lying on the floor, also dead. Disorientated but driven by instinct, he crawled over to one of the bodies and rolled the downed man onto his back. A warm trickle of blood ran down over his eyebrow and into his eye. Wiping it away, he removed one of the Sig 226 pistols from the dead bodyguard’s holster.
The gunmen would probably want to make sure that all their targets had been eliminated. He had to be ready but still felt drowsy and shook his head in an attempt to stay conscious. ‘Come on, you bastards, let’s see your bloody faces,’ he whispered, lying on the floor of the hide he used the body as a shield.
A few minutes later, the shape of the first sniper emerged from the oak tree line to the east of the hide, followed shortly afterwards by another one a hundred meters further south. A third appeared less than fifty metres away. They were cautious and methodical as they zig-zagged their way towards the hides, silenced rifles lifted in front of them to cover their advance. Gibbs grabbed another magazine from the dead bodyguard. He squinted towards the west and recognised the small wooded area just off the path, which he had walked through earlier.
Lifting the pistol, he held his breath as he aimed at the closest sniper. He paused for a second, allowing his groggy senses to focus, and then squeezed the trigger. The sound of the discharge and recoil moved Gibbs into action as the first sniper stumbled, a bullet catching him in the hip.
‘Move, legs,’ Gibbs urged himself on as he stumbled out of the hide and ran towards the path. His heart was soon bursting from the effort as he made it to an old dry stone wall at the top of the field. Bullets ricocheted off the wall around him, flicking shards in all directions as he made his best effort to clamber over. A sharp pain surged up his leg, and he knew that he had been hit again. Gibbs fell over the wall and started to crawl, trying to block the pain out as he focused on the woods ahead.
Turning back, he fired a quick burst over the wall in the rough direction of the second sniper who turned then ran back towards the woods. Gibbs finished off the magazine and ejected it in a single movement.
‘Arrrgh!’ Gibbs screamed, realising that one of them had gotten away. ‘Come on, you bastard, show yourself.’
He slammed the last magazine into the Sig 226. He had ten shots left. Taking a deep breath, he started off for the trees, the pain from his leg nearly crippling him as he jinked to change direction. His senses began to fail with each step, and he fell forward onto a pile of sharp sticks, groaning as with pain. Energy sapped away from him as he struggled to his feet again. A crack from a bullet hitting a tree ahead of him galvanised him. Move your arse, Gibbs. Finally, he reached the safety of the trees. Taking deep breaths, it felt like he had acid in his lungs. Slumping down behind a fallen tree, he waited, all his focus channelled into staying conscious. Drowsiness drew a veil across his unsteady gaze, and he blinked a few times to clear his vision. Blood trickled into his eye, and he rubbed it away with the back of his hand. Movement near the wall to his left, and he fired a few shots at the moving shape of one of the snipers.
‘Gibbs!’ a voice shouted.
A voice he recognised. Somewhere in the dark recesses of his mind, he recalled a voice he despised. He slowly turned to see the butt of a machine gun hurtling down towards his face.
Chapter 28
Aldershot, Hampshire, England UK - 2019
Gibbs gasped as he opened his eyes. Blurred and swirling patches of light confused him as he stared up at the ceiling. An incessant beeping from somewhere behind him added to his bewilderment. Blinking a few times, he recognised Mason, who was standing at the foot of his bed, surrounded by people wearing surgical masks and speaking in hushed voices. He started to speak to Mason, but a wave of drowsiness swept over him again. A young woman walked over to him said something to him, but her voice was distorted and muffled. He tried to raise his hands, but they seemed stuck. Was he awake? She leaned over to him, but his eyes fluttered closed again.
***
Gibbs’s nostrils were filled with an overpowering aroma of chemical cleanliness as he slowly opened his eyes, the lights above him shimmering with a fusion of blues and yellows.
‘Mason?’ he managed to whisper, his throat dry and scratchy.
A blonde nurse with her hair tied up in a ponytail and wearing brown army fatigues walked over from where she had been standing next to a range of lit-up medical machines and placed her hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s okay, Sergeant Gibbs. Everything will be alright.’
‘Where am I?’ he asked.
‘Frimley Park Military Hospital, Sergeant.’
‘What the hell happened? How did I get here?’
‘You’re very lucky to be alive, Sergeant, the bullet grazed your head, severely damaging your skull, so the surgeon placed you into an induced coma for a couple of weeks until the internal bleeding stopped and the swelling on your brain eased up,’ she said, adjusting a bandage on his head.
Gibbs lifted his hand to try and touch the bandages on his head, but his arm was restrained. He looked down in surprise to see both his arms had been handcuffed to the bed’s metal frame.
‘I am afraid you are also under arrest for going AWOL, Sergeant, and our orders are to restrain you. Captain Matthews will be along later to discuss all the other charges against you.’
‘Shredder and Killey?’
‘I don’t know who or what those are, Sergeant. All that is important now is that you relax and get your rest.’
He looked up at the fluorescent strip lights and recalled the shocked look on Mason’s pale face, a few jumbled memories of assassins and a familiar voice calling out his name, a voice that he couldn’t quite place. Closing his eyes, he fell back into a deep sleep.
***
In a posh Richmond-upon-Thames restaurant, located in one of the last four-star hotels remaining left, four men sat finishing another bottle of red wine. John Warren, Mark Cooper, Matt Hagen and Chip Ripley were being their obnoxious selves and had ensured that all of the other diners had wolfed down their meals and retreated to their rooms. The cute, brunette waitress who had drawn the short straw to serve them for their third consecutive meal that weekend, had done her best before a loud slap to her bottom had seen her run out of the restaurant in tears.
‘Hold on, gents.’ John said, taking a phone out of his jacket pocket. ‘Shut up will you, I need to take this.’
‘Hello, sir,’ he answered.
‘No, sir, there weren’t any problems with the job. We made all the changes to the plan as per your request.’
‘Yes. All the weapons and evidence were given to the Judge Advocate General (JAG) who will take it from there. You said that you would pass it on to the Crown Prosecution Service yourself, didn’t you.’
‘Afraid we lost two of our men, but I managed to stage their deaths as part of the new scenario.’
‘Thank you very much, sir. I’m confident that it will all point to him.’
John ended the call with a large smile on his face. Reaching for his glass of wine, he raised it into the air. His dinner companions did the same. 'To the end of fucking Sergeant Gibbs!'
Outside, a black Range Rover slowly drove past the hotel before parking nearby on the darkened Queen’s Street. Two occupants sat and waited for a further ten minutes before getting out.
They walked around the corner and headed towards the hotel’s small gate that allowed access from the pavement. The two-storey white building was lit up against the late evening sky, and the doorman was at his post, preventing a few young beggars intent on accessing the main lobby to beg. The men stopped, scanned the street in both directions then drew their modified Sig P226 pistols with attached silencers from their belts. Slipping amongst the parked cars, they walked towards the main entrance, pulling balaclavas down over their faces as they approached.
The young street kids had seen them approaching through the car park and scurried away amongst the parked luxury c
ars, sensing the danger. The doorman looked up just as they reached the steps and his smile quickly vanished when he noticed their handguns. One of the men walked up to him and punched him in the face, the force laying the doorman out cold against one of the ornate pillars that framed the large glass doors.
Entering via the lobby, they saw their target through the engraved glass door of the otherwise deserted, Stag Restaurant. Peering through the door they saw the restaurant was deserted except for their targets. The first bullet hit Mark Cooper in the chest as he dropped to his right. Chip was faster off the mark and had just managed to pull his weapon before he too collapsed, the force of two closely grouped heart shots knocking him backwards, his pistol hitting the floor with a clunk. John had only just managed to turn around in his seat and look at the men when the second assailant shot him in the head twice. He fell forward into his plate of chicken soup, blood splattering onto the white tablecloth.
Revenge had been served.
Shredder and Killey lifted up the balaclavas and walked over to the table to make sure all the targets were dead.
‘We were told there would be four men here tonight,’ Killey said.
‘There should have been. Look, someone has been eating at that place setting. Maybe they went off to bed or are in the toilet,’ Shredder replied.
‘Let’s check.’
‘Lose the balaclavas as we walk through the hotel,’ Shredder said.
They turned back towards the doors, tucked the balaclavas into their jackets and hid their weapons. Matt Hagen walked through the double glass doors of the restaurant. He was still wringing his hands of excess water from the washroom when his eyes flicked to the bodies of the three men then back to Killey and Shredder, who were walking towards him.
The panic in the man’s eyes as he reached for the phantom pistol that wasn’t on his belt sparked Shredder into action. ‘It’s him, Killey,’ he said, and reached inside his jacket for the Sig.
Matt spun around and pushed his way through the glass doors as Killey and Shredder fired after him. The glass doors shattered into thousands of pieces. By the time they reached the restaurant door frame and looked out, Matt Hagen had disappeared out through the main hotel doors.
Killey reached the front stairs outside the hotel first and fired three suppressed shots after the vanishing man. ‘Jesus, he is quick.’
Both of them set off through the parked cars and quickly reached the small perimeter wall that they jumped over before crossing the tarred road.
‘You sure he came this way?’ Shredder shouted.
‘Yes. He was like bloody lightning. He jumped this wall,’ Killey said, jumping up onto the brick wall that surrounded a large redbrick house. ‘You coming or what?’
‘I’ll head around the wall to the left and meet you out front. Take care, I don’t think he is armed, but he might still be hiding somewhere.’
A minute later they met in the front yard of the house looking in either direction of the wealthy suburban road. ‘Damn it. He could be anywhere,’ Killey said.
‘Shit, we don’t have time to look around either. Let’s get out of here,’ Shredder said.
***
‘I am afraid those are only the military charges, Gibbs,’ Captain Matthews said, sitting next to the hospital bed, a worried look on her face. Although she was being very professional about the whole affair, Gibbs could see she had recently been crying, and he longed to reach up and wipe her cheek, but the handcuffs restrained him.
‘Accompanied with your previous indiscretions, I am afraid you will be given a dishonourable discharge.’
‘That’s okay, Sharon. I am done with the military.’
‘Like I said earlier, Gibbs, that’s not your main problem.’
‘Have you missed me?’ he asked, taking her hand.
‘Of course I have, Gibbs, but I need you to focus for a bit,’ she said.
‘I am focused. You said they were going to throw the book at me, so I am expecting to be discharged, and then I’ll spend all my time focusing on that great body of yours.’
Sharon blushed a bright red, glancing across at the military nurse who was standing at the side of the room staring at them. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
‘Gibbs, I’m trying to tell you something, but you aren’t bloody listening. Once you are discharged, you will be handed over to the civilian police for the murder of Mason Waterfield and four others.’
‘What!’ Gibbs spluttered. ‘You’re joking, right? That is a load of crap. Mason was assassinated by two or three snipers right after I went down. I managed to kill one of the snipers who were shooting at us.’
‘That is not what the JAG or civilian prosecutors are saying, Gibbs, They have built up quite a case against you and have a lot of evidence, the worst news being that they claim to have an eye witness who saw you do it.
‘It seems that somebody high up in the government wants you to stand trial for this and the military seems intent on helping them out by handing you over. Usually, we would be ordered to keep this an in-house affair, but I am afraid that your enemies want to see you in court.’
‘This is another set-up, Sharon. I didn’t kill Mason Waterfield. Has your ex-boyfriend been able to get to the bottom of what role Mountford played in Angola yet? Mason was unaware that Mountford had hired that prick, Warren, to go out to Angola, even though he was the Chairman of this bloody Billionaires Club. He said he was going to look into it just before they took him out.’
‘This is all cloak and dagger stuff, Gibbs,’ she said. ‘Anyway, Mason is dead now.’
Gibbs shook his head a little. ‘Oh yes of course. You have to believe me when I say that I didn’t do this, I mean why would I kill Mason and three of his men, and then shoot myself? I needed him alive to get answers.’
Sharon squeezed his hand again. ‘I believe you, Gibbs.’
‘Where are Shredder and Killey?’
‘Haven’t you heard? They are in custody for the murders of John Warren and two of his men.’
‘Jesus, what has been happening out there while I have been under? Don’t get me wrong, I am glad the idiot is dead but not at the expense of the boys going to prison. Can they get off?’
‘I am not representing them personally, but from what I heard they claim that they had an anonymous tip-off that John Warren and his men were responsible for killing you, so they took the law into their own hands to avenge your death.’
‘But I was lying right here in hospital!’ Gibbs shouted. ‘Why didn’t they just come and see me?’
‘They claim that they didn’t know you were still alive, Gibbs. No one told them. Please try and remain calm.’
Memories in his brain merged and aligned. He had just recognised the shrill voice of the man who had knocked him out in the wooded area.
‘Warren!’ Gibbs said. ‘I recognise his voice now. He was the one who knocked me out cold, so he obviously had something to do with the attack.’
‘Are you sure it was him?’ she asked.
‘Yes. He and his team must have been used as pawns to get rid of Mason and me before we could reveal who was responsible for trying to silence us. We need your ex to dig deeper into Mountford as I am sure that he is at the bottom of this.’
‘I will have a chat with him again and see what he says. If I find anything, I will give it to the prosecutor for the civil case. I am afraid it won’t help Shredder and Killey because they have already pleaded guilty to John Warren’s murder.’
‘So what will happen to them?’
‘The same as you, I am afraid. They are due to stand trial in a civilian court in a week,’ she replied.
‘This is bloody ridiculous, Sharon. We are being set up for crimes we didn’t commit.’
Sharon got up to leave the room. She leant down and kissed him on the lips. ‘Gibbs, I promise we'll get to the bottom of this. I’ll speak to my ex. Give me a few days.’
Chapter 29
Trafalgar Square, London, England
UK - 2019
The tall figure of John Mountford crouched over his small desk, engrossed in the debriefing report that had been prepared by David Kirkwood. He eagerly paged through the thick document, the yellow light from his desk lamp giving his pale completion a jaundiced appearance. A wry smile spread across his face as he scanned the pages of the dossier before him. Things were aligning themselves neatly.
Movement in front of his desk shifted his gaze to the man who had just entered the room.
‘Thank you for bringing me the report, Markus, it seems that the loose ends are being tied up nicely.’
The tall German just nodded his head.
‘Has all the correspondence from this office to Mason’s office been destroyed?’
‘Yes, Mr Mountford.’
‘I take it that the same has been done at the other Billionaire members’ offices? There can be no trace or evidence of his death leading back to any of us.’
‘As I said, it has been taken care of, sir.’
‘Thank you, Markus, I am not questioning your abilities, I just want to make sure nothing comes back to bite us in the arse.’
The tall blond soldier stared at him.
‘Do you know whether your employer had anything to do with framing the mercenaries who assassinated Mason?’
‘No, sir, he did not,’ Markus replied.
‘Are you quite certain?’ John asked, staring deep into the German’s ice blue eyes. ‘Everything seems to have worked out so well, I would have thought that only someone with Lord Butler’s contacts could have pulled it off.’
‘Lord Butler does not order the murder of innocent men. He only passed on the intelligence to you and Captain Warren to do with it as you wished. He had nothing to do with the framing of anybody either. You should speak to Mr Kirkwood about that.’
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