by Conrad Jones
Tank stayed hidden behind the out buildings and looked to the left. There was a central building made up of animal pens, stables and storage lofts, and behind that was a newer, modern brick-built block. Tank was about to double back and make his way to the new building by skirting behind the animal sheds, when a different type of scream rang out across the farm. Tank knew that it was human, probably female although it could have been a child. He looked at his wristwatch, and guessed that the internet show was about to begin. He drew his Glock and bolted straight across the farmyard. There was no time left for stealth.
Tank was fifty yards across the yard when the bulldozer driver spotted him. He began shouting in a foreign language that Tank couldn’t decipher, and as he ran, from the corner of his eye Tank saw the vehicle change direction. He turned to face the advancing machine, dropping to one knee. He had no wish to repeat the episode with the JCB digger, and he wanted to make his first shot count. He closed one eye as he aimed, squeezed the trigger twice, and the Glock kicked in his hand. The retort was barely audible over the sound of the screaming pigs, and the bird-scaring machine fired again, adding to the racket. The bulldozer veered wildly to the right and it trundled across the yard towards the cesspit. The driver was slouched over the steering wheel, mortally wounded, but not quite dead. Bubbles of blood and phlegm seeped from a deep hole in his throat, and he tried in vain to steer the bulldozer onto a different course, but it smashed through a low breezeblock wall before dropping over the edge and plummeting nose first into a million gallons of pig excrement. The heavy machine disappeared in a matter of seconds, swallowed up by the septic sludge.
Tank bent low and ran towards the new building. He was out in the open, and as such, he was a sitting duck for an accomplished sniper. He tensed his body as he ran, and visually scanned the area around him, looking for the most likely position for a shot to come from, but none came. As he reached the corner of the new building, and another scream rang out. This time there was no doubt that it had come from inside the newer block, and despite the deafening noise of the pigs, he knew it was a young girl that had screamed.
The building was two storeys high, square with a flat roof. It was built from grey prefabricated concrete slabs, and although there were several windows they had all been blanked out from the inside. Tank let his breathing calm down and wiped perspiration from his brow with his sleeve. His heart was racing and he knew that he had to rescue the young girl from her torture, but he couldn’t throw caution to the wind or he would wind up dead and so would she. He checked the surrounding area, and it was clear. Tank bolted for the door with his weapon pointed skyward at the ready. He reached for the handle and twisted it, but it wouldn’t budge, locked from the inside. Another scream from inside rocked him, and he ran to a ground floor window to his left. There was a large rusty oil drum beneath the windowsill, which he rocked it to test if it was full or not. The oil drum was about a quarter full of diesel engine oil. Tank holstered his Glock, tipped the oil drum, and slipped his fingers beneath it. He breathed deeply, as a weight lifter would in the Olympics, and then he heaved the metal barrel up above his head, pausing for only a second before he launched it at the glass. The window imploded completely, shattered glass was catapulted into the air, and the wooden panel that had blanked out the window splintered into pieces with a load crack.
Tank ran and used both hands to vault the window ledge; he cleared a narrow table before landing on a hard bare concrete floor. The brick walls were painted white, and were completely bare. Three long laboratory workbenches, cluttered with chemistry equipment, separated the room. There was a sudden movement to his left, Tank pulled out the Glock from its holster, and spun around to face it. A man dressed in a white laboratory technician’s coat, wearing a protective facemask, stood frozen to the spot. He instinctively raised his hands above his head as Tank levelled the weapon at him. The crashing sound of breaking glass had alerted everyone in the building, and raised voices were coming from the first floor. Tank waved the Glock at the technician and he moved to the left, away from the door. A quick look around told him that he had smashed his way into a crystal meth lab, and he realised that a stray bullet in this room could cause an explosion big enough to blow the roof off the building.
Suddenly the lab door opened and a small dark-skinned man ran into the lab. He waved a Mach 10 machine pistol in front of him. It was obvious from the expression on his face that he was not expecting to see Tank in the room. He had run downstairs expecting to find that there had been an explosion in the meth lab. Accidents were common during the manufacture of crystal methamphetamine. Tank used the element of surprise and before the man had realised his mistake a nine-millimetre bullet blew the back of his head off. The technician reached under his bench and pulled out a twelve-gauge Mossberg pump action shotgun, but before he had chambered a cartridge and lifted it clear, Tank fired two shots from his Glock. The nine-millimetre bullets slammed into the man’s chest and the impact knocked him off his feet. Dark red patches began to bloom across his lab coat as he landed on the cold concrete.
The lab became silent but Tank heard multiple sets of footsteps stomping down the stairs from the first floor, and he jumped over the workbench and snatched the shotgun off the floor. He aimed the Mossberg at the doorway and waited. Two men charged into the lab and they walked into a deadly spray of twelve-gauge buckshot. One of the men collapsed in a heap instantly but the second man was blasted backwards into the hallway. Tank chambered a second cartridge and pulled the weapon tight into his shoulder before he fired the shotgun again. The lead shot hit the man square in the face, ripping his lower jaw from his head and severing the jugular vein in his neck. Arterial spray splattered the walls as a crimson plume jetted from the ragged wound.
The hallway was silent as Tank crossed the lab and stepped over the dead bodies. He peered around the doorframe and looked up the stairs as the young girl screamed again – but this time it was a blood-curdling wail. Tank rushed through the door towards the stairs – and a strong hand grabbed at his ankle. He tripped and fell heavily on his elbow, and the shotgun clattered down the hallway out of his reach. The man that had grabbed him was bleeding from his nose and mouth, and there was blood pooling beneath him from a wound in his chest, but he was still alive and dangerous. Tank couldn’t reach his holstered weapon, and so he grabbed the second Glock from his waistband. The man’s eyes widened in shock as Tank fired one well aimed shot, which hit him in the centre of the forehead, leaving a jagged hole the size of a walnut. His grip was released instantaneously, and Tank scrambled to his feet. He grabbed the shotgun and checked that it had ammunition left in it. There were two cartridges remaining. Slipping the Glock back into his belt, he began to climb the staircase as quickly as he dared. The building was bare concrete, and the walls and floors had been left uncovered. The light was provided by rows of strip-lights. When he reached the top of the stairs, he checked that the room nearest to him was clear; another scream gave away the location of the studio. Tank couldn’t understand why the filming was still going on; hadn’t they heard the shotgun being fired? The bird-scaring machine retorted again and it became clear that the men involved in the filming hadn’t distinguished the gunshots as anything to worry about.
Tank moved down the empty corridor to the studio, took a breath and opened the door. The scene that confronted him was like the vision from a nightmare. One man was raping the young girl while the other cut her skin with a hunting knife. She was bleeding from several wounds already. They had removed the blindfold so that the victim could see what was going to happen to her, and who was doing it. Her eyes were like those of a wild animal, trapped by a predator and going through its death throes. There were four cameras, one in each corner of the room, and two more on tripods either side of the filthy bloodstained mattress. The man with the knife had been smiling when Tank walked into the room, but his smile disappeared when Tank levelled the shotgun at him and pulled the trigger. He was standing over the girl, a
nd the buckshot hit him square in the stomach. The force of the impact lifted him backwards and he fell doubled up onto the floor, clutching at a wide rent in his torso. The second man pulled out of the girl and turned to face the intruder. He was of a muscular build, and under normal circumstances he fancied his chances against any man, but the sight of Tank carrying a Mossberg cooled his ardour. The young girl curled into a foetal position against the wall, and Tank could see blood running down her thighs. He looked into her eyes, and he could see the desperate pleading in them, ‘for God’s sake, please help me’.
“Don’t shoot.” The rapist held his hands up in surrender, but he glanced at his colleague’s discarded hunting knife, which was on the floor nearby. “I can explain everything.”
Tank chambered the last shell into the breach and squeezed the trigger. The lead shot hit the man low in the abdomen, ripping the top of his dangling penis off, and shredding his right upper thigh. He dropped like a stone and screamed like a banshee, clutching at his ruined genitals. Tank tossed the shotgun to the side and stepped over the writhing man. The young girl backed away from him as he approached her. Tank realised that she was terrified, traumatised by her experiences, and he backed away from her. He reached down to the screaming man and grabbed him by the left foot.
“Where are the keys for the handcuffs?” Tank growled. He grabbed a large bloodstained towel from a wooden chair close by and tossed it to the girl. The chair had handcuffs attached to it too, and was obviously used as another part of the film set to restrain whichever poor soul was the star of the show. Tank repeated the question, but the man didn’t answer so Tank twisted his little toe three hundred and sixty degrees, dislocating the small bones and snapping the tendons and ligaments in one movement.
The man howled and pointed a bloody hand towards a pile of clothes in the corner of the room. Tank tossed him to the side and recovered the silver key from a pair of Wrangler jeans. The girl had pulled the towel around her tightly, and she tucked her hands under her chin, leaving nothing of her body exposed expect her face.
“What’s your name?” Tank asked as gently as he could. He leant over her and inserted the key into the handcuffs. The girl didn’t answer the question. She began crying. “It’s okay now; no one will hurt you while I’m here. Do you understand me?”
The girl nodded, but Tank couldn’t be sure that she spoke English. There were deep grazes where the metal bracelet had cut her as she struggled, and she rubbed at her bloody wrist as the handcuffs came free. The cuts on her body were shallow, made to cause pain rather than to kill her.
“What is your name?” He asked again, reaching down and lifting her gently by the arm. “Are you okay to walk?”
Tank kept an eye on the door. He figured that the cameras were still running, and therefore the Moroccans would be aware that their broadcast had been interrupted. If he had to carry the girl it would impede their escape, and he needed his hands free in case he encountered any resistance. He was desperate for the girl to talk so that he could find out if there were any more children on the farm, and especially if the twins were here.
“Were you kept on your own?” Tank asked her. She looked at him blankly. “I need to know if there were any other children with you.”
The girl looked confused and then she opened her mouth and began to speak words he could not understand. Tank wasn’t sure what language it was, but he thought she was probably Albanian and that she wasn’t going to be able to answer his questions. He reached back down to the wailing man. His cries had subsided a little, but the volume began to rise as Tank grabbed his injured foot. He twisted the big toe violently to the right, dislocating it at the first knuckle. The rapist howled in agony.
“Are there any more kids on this farm?” Tank asked, ripping the second toe from its socket. The man nodded his head rapidly, his eyes bulging as if they were about to explode. There was saliva drooling from the corner of his mouth, and tears streamed down his face.
“Where are they?” Tank twisted the third toe and it cracked as it popped out of place.
“Down the stairs in the cellar!” The man cried in a thick guttural accent. He may have been a Moroccan, but then again he may not have been, Tank couldn’t tell and he didn’t care. He pulled out the Glock and fired it twice into the man’s face. His skull exploded into three big bloody lumps, and brain matter oozed across the concrete. The first man had stopped moaning minutes before, probably already dead, but Tank fired two nine millimetres into his back just to be sure. The young girl looked shocked as she watched the body twitch twice before becoming still for the final time, but she clung to his arm like a limpet as he led her from the studio into the corridor. He waited a second and the sound of his own breathing was all that he could hear. The building was still.
The bird-scaring machine retorted twice, making Tank jump a little, as they descended the stairs. The young girl covered her eyes as she stepped over the dead bodies that lay at the bottom of the staircase. The sightless eyes staring accusingly frightened her and her grip on Tank’s arm tightened. Tank looked around the hallway, trying to spot the entrance to the cellar, but he couldn’t locate an obvious doorway. It crossed his mind that the rapist had lied to him about the children’s whereabouts, but it was too late to worry about that for now. He edged backwards down the hallway, away from the crystal meth lab and the front door. A corridor ran behind the staircase, and he followed it, guiding the frightened young girl as he went. The building looked grey and stark, almost unfinished, but considering what it was used for, decor and decoration were hardly a priority. He peered into a doorway on the left, covering the space inside with his weapon. Then he moved over to the right hand side of the corridor and repeated the process, pressing the girl against the cold concrete walls as he progressed. Both rooms were completely empty, and looked as if they had never been used. Tank saw a metal door at the end of the corridor. It was a steel grey colour, and the young girl flinched as he approached it. She pulled at his arm as if to stop him going near to it, and she rambled urgently in an unrecognisable language. Tank placed his index finger onto his lips and shushed her. She understood and calmed down a little, but he had to peel her fingers from his arm before he could move any closer. The door had bolts fitted at the top and bottom of it, and Tank slid them out of their keeps. He pushed the door open and peered into a deep, dark, stone stairwell. There was a light switch fixed to the wall on the right and he flicked the light on, illuminating a cellar area below. A shuffling noise came from somewhere out of sight.
“Hello?” Tank called out.
The silence was deafening. From the top of the stairs, he could only see an area of concrete ten feet square, and he knew that he would have to descend into the cellar to see if the children were there. He checked that the young girl was all right, and he pointed to his watch and held up two fingers.
“I’ll be two minutes, okay?” He said, hoping that she would understand, and he was relieved when she nodded as if she had. She slid down the wall and sat on her haunches, the towel pulled tightly around her. He moved quickly down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and when he reached the basement he had to catch his breath as he looked to the far wall. There were four tear-stained, dirty little faces staring at him from the corner of the room. His heart flipped as he realised what he had saved these poor urchins from at the hands of the monsters in the film studio. He approached them slowly, and held out his hands to reassure them.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he said. As he looked at the fear in their eyes his own eyes filled with stinging tears. He picked them up one at a time and stood them on their feet. “Come on we’re going to take you home.”
The kids shuffled across the cellar, frightened by this big man but trusting him at the same time. As he reached the top of the stairs, the young girl came to them and helped him to take the little ones down the corridor. One of them, a little blond boy, began crying and she comforted him, her own fear and pain forgotten for the moment. Ta
nk unlocked the front door and checked the farmyard outside, but it seemed that apart from the hungry pigs the place was deserted. He reached for his mobile phone and dialled Grace.
“John,” she answered urgently.
“Send in the cavalry,” he replied stroking one of the little girl's blond hair with his big gnarled hand. “This is where they were broadcasting from.”
“I know. The police are already on their way to you: the tech guys saw you entering the studio online, and they thought you might need some help. Is the girl okay?”
“She needs a hospital, she’s bleeding and there are four toddlers here that need to be checked over.” He felt totally drained.
“The twins?” Grace was frightened to ask the question.
“They’re not here, Grace,” Tank sighed. He was about to speak again when the meth lab exploded and blew him off his feet.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Cheshire, two weeks later
Sylvia looked through her car window and sucked deeply on her cigarette, savouring the soothing smoke as it filled her lungs. The rain was hammering down on the roof of her vehicle and it added to the feeling of melancholy that she had felt since this investigation had begun. She had joined the police force because she felt that she could make a difference, but this time around she had felt totally useless. Despite the fact that she had given Major Timms and his team a lead on the paedophile website, it had not helped to recover the twins. Granted, four children and a toddler had been saved from hideous abuse and death, but the twins had vanished into thin air. John Tankersley had tracked the paedophiles to their lair and rescued the children, but the building had been totally destroyed in the process, and any evidence that it contained had been lost beneath tons of concrete, and twisted steel reinforcement bars. Forensics teams were sifting through the debris piece by piece, but it would take months to recover anything useful. The Moroccans had shut down everything they owned in the United Kingdom and gone into hiding. There was simply nothing left to trace which could lead them to the twins. Sylvia doubted very much if they were still alive, although she never told Hayley that.