by Vince Vogel
The two men gazed down at it but didn’t take up the offer of a handshake.
“I’m Frank Jordon,” the old man said. “How may I help you?”
“A man by the name of Brian Conway works for you,” Barker said.
“Does he?” Jordon replied with a frown. “I have several thousand employees working at various facilities all over Europe. To be able to know all their names would be impossible. Especially for such an old man as me.”
As he spoke, Barker turned sideways and observed his old partner. John’s gaunt face was almost bone white. It was dripping with sweat. But it looked alert. He appeared to be sniffing the air.
“Charlie,” he said.
“What?” Barker asked.
“It’s Charlie. Just like at that empty building.”
Even Frank Jordon was gazing at him now.
John turned to both of them and said, “Ever since I’ve had this cancer, my sense of smell has been real acute. Maybe it’s just because I don’t smoke so many fags. But ever since, I’ve been able to smell a sparrow’s fart from a mile away. Like I knew a gun had been fired at Carlton James’ place, I know that a girl wearin’ Charlie has been here.”
“I’m sorry,” Jordon said, glancing up at Barker. “But does he have some point?”
John flashed his eyes on the old man.
“The point is,” he said, “that I can smell things better. Earlier on, me and him were standing in the middle of a building. It stank of young girl’s perfume. I can smell it now. It’s like young girls have been here.”
“Where’s Conway?” Barker said harshly down at the old man. “Where’s Jess Rawly?”
Jordon went red. He glanced about. None of his men were around. He’d told them to stay out of the way. He was vulnerable. Naked as an old man without the use of his legs.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said indignantly.
“Fuck this!” John said, stepping towards a vase that sat on a small table with curved legs. He picked it up and came over to Jordon.
“What’re you doing?” Barker asked him.
“He ain’t ever gonna tell us nothing,” John said.
And with that, he lifted the vase into the air above his head and brought it crashing down on the old man. The blow instantly knocked Jordon unconscious and he slumped forward in the chair.
Both men began looking about the hallway. They didn’t sense anybody around. There was a sliding metal shutter at the end of the room that caught both men’s attention at the same time.
“We’ll put him in there while we have a look around,” John said.
“Sure.”
Barker got behind the wheelchair and pushed it to the shutter. John tried to slide the door open, but could get it no further than a few inches. So Barker took over and slid it to the side.
“It’s a lift,” John said the moment it was open.
Barker stepped inside and saw two buttons. Hall and Basement.
“If you were keeping a little girl captive in your house,” Barker said. “Wouldn’t you keep her in the basement?”
64
The men at the gatehouse mooched around as they waited for the possibility of action. They were set up at the windows, ready to shoot at anyone that approached the gate. Along the tunnel, there were two windows on either side of the arched red bricks. A man stood at either of these, ready to fire on any car that arrived. Other men were set up at windows at the front of the building.
The gatehouse was the only way in. It was an agreed fact. The flooded quarry was at the back of the manor and cradled it. There, men stood upon the rocks, watching the back edge of the lake. A man would have to climb the other side and swim across. Easily shot at as he bobbed along the surface. That was no way in. At the sides of the estate, steep banks led up to high walls. Frank Jordon had had the trees stripped from them long ago so that the cameras could see for fifty yards who was coming up them. Men monitoring the cameras would be able to call others to take up positions along that side of the wall long before anyone reached it. In the open air of the bank, they would be sitting ducks.
Essentially, the place was a redoubt and the only way in was through the front, via the gatehouse. A fact not missed by Dorring when he and Otis had hunted the surrounding woods one Sunday afternoon a month ago. They’d spent the time it took to eat their lunch sitting upon the crest of a hill that overlooked the place. Dorring had idly gazed at the shimmering waters of the flooded quarry and at the high walls atop the banks, and been unable to stop himself from evaluating it in a military sense. Little did he know back then that he would one day need to put that knowledge into practice.
Yes, Dorring had thought that day. The only way in is through the gate.
The men in the gatehouse became alert. The phone by the door was rattling in its holding. It was their colleagues in the monitoring station. One of the men got up off a chair and answered it.
“Uh huh,” he said, nodding his head like a good dog. “Okay.”
He snapped the phone back down and turned to the man in the room with him. The other sat by the window, holding a rifle. He’d been in there, hidden when the detectives had arrived only moments ago.
“Stay out of sight,” the man at the phone said.
“What’s up?”
“Vehicle approaching. Get the others on the radio.”
“Okay.”
The man by the window stepped away from it and placed a receiver to his mouth.
“We got company,” he said into it.
“Got ya. Over,” came back over the radio.
A black Ford Transit van was coming towards them along the road. The man walked out the doorway and stood at the corner of the tunnel, watching it. The road ran perpendicular to the beginning of the driveway, so the van approached from the left. Only the driver sat in the front. The sun visor was down and shielded the face. As the Transit got within ten yards of the turning, the man at the wall felt relieved that it wasn’t indicating and appeared to be going past along the road.
However, his eyes narrowed when it began slowing down on approach until it stopped at the mouth of the driveway.
The man stood staring at it. The sliding door on the side of the van was right in front of him. He watched as the driver slid across the seats, and frowned when he thought he saw a military helmet on his head. Before he could be sure, the driver had left the van from the passenger side and was walking along its flank, out of sight.
The frown increased when the sliding door opened.
Completely confused as to what he was seeing, the man left the corner and began walking up to the van. Inside the back of it was someone dressed in a kind of giant spacesuit. Another man behind him wearing camouflaged body armor and a military helmet picked something up and handed it to the one in the suit. He then aimed it at the man standing in front of the gatehouse.
“Who the fuckin’ hell are you?” he said.
There was a mechanical sound. Like a drill or a sander rotating. It was the thing that the guy in the giant suit held. The guard’s eyes stretched open when he realized that he was looking down the barrel of a Minigun.
Dorring pulled the trigger and bullets streamed out of the end as the Minigun burst into life, the rapid line of slugs cascading through the man as if he was nothing but paper and burying themselves in the red bricks of the gatehouse. He fell like spilled rags to the floor, innumerable holes in him. The stream of fire leaped across the wall of the gatehouse and moved to the windows, the bullets smashing through the masonry and hitting the insides of the rooms.
Dorring stood at the open door of the van dressed in an Explosive Ordnance Disposal suit. A huge thing with a big helmet designed to withstand bomb blasts. Rattling away in his hand was an M134 Minigun. Inside a large backpack on Dorring’s shoulders was an ammo box that belt fed the six barrels of the gun with thousands of rounds as they spun on the end of a Gatling rotary machine. It hit a sustained rate of fire that ranged between 2,000 and 6,0
00 rounds per minute. It meant that it ripped that gatehouse apart, the bullets flying through the walls and killing everyone inside.
A bullet hit the shoulder of his suit and Dorring glanced up. A man was at a window. He jumped back from it as Dorring raised the Minigun. It was no good trying to run from it. The bullets ripped through the walls, one after the other in a relentless flow. The man from the window dived across the room and they hit him in twenty different places before he’d hit the floor dead.
Dorring heard the faint murmur of someone whistling and realized it was Otis behind him, the sound of the gun shielding everything. He let go of the trigger and the gun ceased, the barrels spinning to a standstill and the thing smoking heavily.
“I think they’re all dead,” Otis shouted so that Dorring could hear him through the helmet.
Otis was standing behind him, dressed in a flak jacket, military helmet and holding a Ruger AR-556. A gas piston-operated semi-automatic rifle. Strapped to his back was another identical AR.
“Okay,” Dorring shouted back. “Stay behind me.”
Dorring stepped out of the van, the heavy boots of the suit thumping down onto the tarmac. He lumbered gradually to the gatehouse without any shots being fired at him. Otis was right behind him, gazing through the sight of the AR and using Dorring as cover. Through the bars of the gate, Dorring spotted a man running across the manicured lawn on the other side. He was about a hundred yards away. Dorring snapped the Minigun into life. It took awhile to warm up and get the barrels spinning. But when it roared to life, the man found himself chased by a line of fire. It caught him across his midriff, several bullets smashing through his hips and throwing him to the ground. Dorring steadied the heavy gun and concentrated it on his prostate body, the bullets whipping into the flesh. Then he let go of the trigger and the mechanism faded once more.
Otis ran inside the gatehouse, the AR aimed at everything he saw. The man in there had been blown back from the window and lay at the foot of the far wall. He was covered in bullet holes. As were the walls and furniture, all of it smashed and spilled everywhere. The phone was ringing. Otis picked it up.
“He’ll call you back,” he said into it before putting it down.
Then he pressed the button for the gate and it began creaking open. Dorring continued onwards down the tunnel, the driveway leading to the mansion in front of him. He was dripping with sweat inside the suit. It was very hot and with the weight of the gun in his hand, the giant backpack of ammo and the suit itself, he was finding it a strenuous workout. Nevertheless, it fatigued him very little and he had no thought in his mind other than getting to the house.
The old man ventured gingerly behind him. He was the eyes in Dorring’s back, being that it was hard to turn your head inside the suit. He spotted a man fifty yards away, hiding around the corner of a small brick building beside the tennis courts.
He aimed the AR, but the man ducked in time as he hit the corner of the building. Dorring heard the shot and stopped.
“What is it?” he called out.
“Guy behind the tennis changin’ room.”
Dorring slowly swiveled around, starting the Minigun when he was halfway, so that by the time he was facing the building, it was spitting hot lead out at a relentless rate. It hit the building and began sawing it off about a meter up. The man ran out the other side and Dorring hauled the gun across so that the bullets quickly caught up with him, firing through the chainlink fence of the tennis courts and smashing the man to pieces.
A bullet shattered the visor of Dorring’s helmet and he stumbled back, letting go of the trigger. Otis spotted the man. He was in front of the manor on the carriageway, hiding behind a car.
Using Dorring for cover as he kneeled down, Otis got the man in his sights. He was ducking down behind the vehicle. There was nowhere to run. The front door wasn’t directly behind him. If he sprinted for the house, they’d get him when he was exposed. He couldn’t go left or right either.
“You want me to take him with the Minigun?” Dorring asked as Otis ducked behind him.
“No,” Otis said, squinting his eye through the lens of the sight. “Let’s go classical for once, rather than rock an’ roll.”
He could see the outline of the top of the man’s head through the tinted windows of the car. He got the crosshairs on the very top of his skull. He squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet running along his crown. The man fell backwards, his gun dropped to the floor, and he lay on the ground, blood pouring from his head and mixing with the stones of the shingle.
“Let’s get to the house,” Dorring said. “There’ll be more of them in the windows. They’ll use it as a redoubt. But by my calculations, we’ve still got enough bullets in this to clear most—if not all—of them away.”
65
The elevator sank through rock caverns and arrived at a long corridor. Barker and John stepped out into it. Strip lighting illuminated the polished floor and gray concrete walls. A large ornamental door stood at the very end.
“I guess we go there,” Barker said.
“I guess we do,” John said as he leaned with his back against the far end of the lift.
He was sweating profusely from his yellow, atrophied skin.
“Come on,” Barker said gently, taking him by the arm and leading him out of the metal box.
They got halfway down when John began to feel his legs buckling. He needed to lean against the wall some more.
“Just a little further, old mate,” Barker said gently. “We just gotta—”
Their attention was taken by the ornamental door opening. A woman with cropped blonde hair and a bitter expression froze on the threshold and gazed down the corridor at them.
“Who’re you?” she called out.
Barker let go of John and faced the woman.
“Stay here,” he said to his old partner.
Barker marched off down the corridor towards her. The woman came out of the room and turned hurriedly to the door. She used a large key to lock it and then turned her poisonous countenance back on the detective.
“I asked you a question,” she went on.
“Open that door,” Barker demanded, his face filled with a look of thunder.
She shook her head while holding her back to the door. He wasn’t willing to mess around. He’d already stepped over the line. He was already done for. His career was over. He felt completely sure he knew what was behind that door, so assured that nothing would stop him. Even this woman.
Before she knew what had happened, Barker had punched Mrs. Crabb in the face with all his weight behind it. She flew backwards and struck the back of her head on the door. The blow knocked her out and she lay in a clump at the base of it.
Barker retrieved the key from her and opened the door.
He was presented with a pink little girl’s room. Jess’ room. Through wide eyes, he scanned the doll houses, the stuffed animals, the pictures, the toys, the open wardrobe with its terrible costumes. Then he saw the girls lying side by side on the bed.
Barker ran into the room.
“What do you see?” John called out behind him.
The detective was at the bed. He froze as he gazed down at a face that had haunted him for the past ten years. The face of Jess Rawly. The digital aging software had been so close.
She was bound to the bed by straps at her wrists and ankles. A leather gag had been tied with a buckle around her mouth and head. Next to her was another girl he didn’t recognize. It was Tina. She too was strapped to the bed. The girls immediately started screaming into the gags when they saw the detective standing over the top of them.
“She’s here,” he shouted over his shoulder at the open doorway as he kneeled down beside the bed and began removing Jess’ straps.
John’s eyes had opened at the words ‘She’s here’. He peeled himself from the cold concrete wall and began stumbling towards the door.
“There’s another girl here too,” Barker added. “They’re both alive.”
He got the restraints off her wrists. She sat up and began unfastening the buckle at the back of her head while he undid the ones on her ankles.
“Bloody hell!”
It was John at the door. He leaned against the frame, glancing at the strange room.
“He had her here all along,” he added to himself.
Barker was already around Tina’s side and undoing one wrist while Jess undid the other.
“Who is she?” Barker asked Jess.
“Tina,” Jess replied in a faint voice.
“He had you all along, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
They got Tina free and left the room, stepping over the unconscious Mrs. Crabb on their way out. The girls moving unsteadily due to the drugs and John not far behind them, Barker led them to the elevator and they climbed inside.
Then he pressed the button for the hallway.
Barker’s eyes gazed indifferently at the rock as they traveled up through it. Behind him, the others leaned heavily on the back wall of the elevator. When they reached the top, Barker tugged the door to the side and then froze.
Several armed men ran past. The four of them stood frozen to the spot inside the elevator as the men rapidly marched across the checkered floor of the hallway with other things on their minds, not noticing them at all. Barker watched as another man came into the hallway and took a position beside the door right in front of them. He appeared so consumed by something outside the front of the building that he never even bothered to think that four people could be standing inside an elevator behind him.
Then, for the first time, they heard the sound of rapid gunfire. They hadn’t been sure exactly what it was at first. It could have been some heavy duty tool or some strange car engine bursting into life. But Barker soon realized it could only be the sound of a weapon.