Dirk Ramm: Suited and Booted

by Matt Hilton

  DIRK RAMM

  SUITED AND BOOTED

  Three Action-packed Short Stories

  By MATT HILTON

  DIRK RAMM

  SUITED AND BOOTED

  Three Action-packed Short Stories

  By MATT HILTON

  Published by Sempre Vigile Press

  Copyright © 2013 Matt Hilton

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this authors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover image©licensed from Getty Images

  Cover design© Matt Hilton

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  1. SATISFACTION GUARANTEED

  2. DIRK RAMM: UNSHEATHED

  3. SUITED AND BOOTED

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MORE BOOKS BY MATT HILTON

  INTRODUCTION

  If you’re familiar with my Joe Hunter thriller novels then you know I’m a huge fan of the action adventure genre. Even if you’ve never heard of Joe Hunter, or me then you probably guessed simply from the perusal of this book. Indeed, I’m a huge fan and say that without shame. I love a good old action-packed yarn, and have been reading – and writing – them for the best part of forty years. My influences range from Mack Bolan, Remo Williams, Edge, Conan the Cimmerian, and many other men of action. These days I still seek out modern men of action like Joe Pike, Jack Reacher, Spider Shepherd and others to satisfy my action jones. My only lament is that some of the more modern incarnations have been (rightly so for some readers) toned down to reflect the times, but I have to admit that I sometimes miss the gloriously unashamed styles of their forebears. I thoroughly enjoy a good old romp where the action is over the top, brutal and bloody, where the double entendrés fly almost as thick as the bullets. It was because of this yearning to read something new and fresh but in that old style that Dirk Ramm was given life. At the time I was thinking of putting out a collection of similar stories, which later came to life in the collection Action: Pulse Pounding Tales Volume 1, where I asked contributors to send me their most over the top creations. I had to come up with a tale or two for inclusion that met or exceeded the characters invented by these other authors, and Dirk Ramm sprang fully from my imagination in all his unadulterated glory.

  In this collection I present three tales of the man himself. They’re big, brash and bolshy. They entertain. If readers enjoy them, then Dirk Ramm will definitely be back in future tales. If I’d to describe Dirk I’d say he’s an amalgamation of Doc Savage, Mack Bolan, and yes, my own Joe Hunter. But I think to best sum Dirk Ramm up, I will quote this from an enthusiastic reader: “Dirk Ramm Kicks Ass!”

  I couldn’t say it better myself.

  Matt Hilton

  Dec 2013

  SATISFACTION GUARANTEED

  By Matt Hilton

  Dirk Ramm guided the speedboat across a sea as flat and grey as a steel sheet. He’d cut the outboard motor beyond the twin horns of the bay, using a paddle to bring the boat to shore silently. A broad swathe of sand stretched before him, barely marked by the footprints of those that patrolled the grounds further up the incline. The armed guards concentrated their time searching the forest either side of the big house, doubting anyone would be stupid enough to be as open in their approach as Ramm.

  Ramm wasn’t stupid, though he was all for straightforward action. Still, he’d been thoughtful enough to cut the engine so that he wouldn’t raise the alarm too soon. Fishermen plied their trade out beyond the rocky promontories that sheltered the bay from the storms that frequently tore through the islands off Long Island Sound. His engine noise would have been assumed to be that of a fishing boat returning home with full nets.

  He brought the boat to a halt, jamming his paddle into the sand. The boat listed to one side. He jumped from the prow, landing cat-footed. He immediately went to a crouch, using all his senses to check for observers. In one hand he held his trusty firearm – a Makarov he’d taken from a Spetsnaz killer in the Balkans. The gun had proven to be a faithful companion for years and he preferred the gun to the newer more fashionable models sported by his contemporaries. The gun’s holster was nestled on his hip, alongside a sheath that carried his second weapon of choice – a razor sharp Tanto knife. Those were his only visible items of equipment, and the only ones to break the matte black of the sweatshirt and combat trousers he wore tucked into military issue boots.

  There was no shout of challenge.

  Coming to his full height of six feet and two inches of wiry muscle, Ramm went up the beach as fleetingly as the shadows cast by the clouds scudding past the doleful eye of the moon. He moved with the grace of a dancer, but never had the choreograph of dance carried such menace. The forest was a ragged barrier, but through the foliage he could make out the lights in the big house. Behind one of the windows he hoped to find Missy Dolan, and the bastard who’d snatched her. God help anyone who stood between them and Ramm.

  He thought about how he’d promised Missy that he’d protect her, that she need fear no man while under his protection. At the time she’d been lying with her head on his naked chest, the two of them slick from the exertion of lovemaking. His thoughts turned sour when he thought of Brandon Gitchsler, and how the punk mobster had snatched Missy from Ramm’s bed. The place where Missy should have felt at her safest had proven both of them wrong. Damn it, if he hadn’t stolen out early to fetch carryout breakfast and coffee from Jimmy’s Diner, then Missy wouldn’t be in this predicament now. Ramm was a man who didn’t keep his cupboards or fridge stocked: he was never home long enough to build up supplies the way ordinary people did. On his return to his apartment, he’d expected to find Missy in the shower, had entertained thoughts of joining her there for another energetic bout of sex, but his ardor and hopes had deflated when seeing that the door lock had been kicked loose from the frame. He’d immediately set aside their breakfast, and under cover of a fold of his leather coat had drawn his Makarov, the unique action of the downward holster draw meaning the slide racked and placed a round in the breach: ready for action. Anticipating trouble, he’d entered the apartment the way he always faced danger, head-on and with a killing haze buzzing in his skull. He’d found only damp sheets where his lover had lain so recently before. Missy, for all she was a headstrong dame, and never one to commit exclusively to any man, wasn’t the type to run out on him like this. She certainly wasn’t the type to leave a size ten footprint on his front door as a parting kiss. It didn’t take much figuring who was responsible for snatching Missy: she’d told Ramm all about Gitschler’s claim that no woman had ever walked away from him and lived.

  Now, Ramm moved for the trees swearing that if he was too late to save her, then Gitchsler would be sorry he’d ever laid eyes on Missy Dolan, because Ramm’s Makarov would tattoo her name on his forehead. The Tanto he’d use to spay the motherfucker.

  The foliage closed in around him, and Ramm stooped so that he didn’t disturb the low-hanging leaves. Insect sounds went on unabated as he padded through the woods, undisturbed by the alien presence of the silent killer in their midst: perhaps the chitinous things were used to armed men prowling through their domain.

  A radio crackled nearby.
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br />   His first instinct was to hold his breath but Ramm didn’t. Training overtook instinct, and instead he continued breathing shallowly, his mouth making a hollow oval allowing the keenness of his hearing to be untroubled by the internal thrum of his organs.

  A guttural voice whispered a response. Ramm recognised the language if not the words spoken. Russian. It made sense that Gitchsler should surround himself by thugs from his homeland, because Brandon Gitchsler was an assumed identity for Leonid Dzerzhinsky, once a feared officer of the KGB, and later an even more fearsome name among the post-Glasnost Russian Mafia. Tales concerning Dzerzhinsky’s legendary cruelty held no fear for Ramm: he carried a few legendary tales of his own, and more than ninety per cent of them were true.

  Creeping forward, to hide in the lea of a large tree trunk, Ramm surveyed the area before him. The Russian who’d responded to the radio message stood ten feet away. He was the clichéd Russian bear, a huge man, whose shoulders and chest stretched the leather of his long black coat. His head was square, with a severe buzz cut topping heavy brows in which cold grey eyes twinkled. Ramm checked out the man’s hands. They were calloused, and massive: the favoured weapons of a killer who preferred to stare into the face of those he throttled to death. Slung over the man’s left shoulder was an AK47 assault rifle, but it was as if the gun was simply an adornment the guard was forced to wear.

  Ramm was his equal in height, if not in girth. But where the Russian held the upper hand in raw power Ramm held it in nerve and in righteous fury. Ramm moved on the guard. The big man was not the ox he first appeared. He pivoted at the sound of Ramm’s boots scuffing earth, and unsurprised at the man charging towards him, he opened his arms in greeting. He didn’t strike a wrestler’s pose, but made knives of both huge hands, grinning at the prospect of violence.

  The guard’s left hand scythed the air.

  Ramm ducked the solid edge of the hand, felt the wind that was displaced by the massive forearm behind it, and he swung with the barrel of his gun to check the follow up blow that came at his throat. The big man continued to move forward behind his blows, and he came chest to chest with Ramm. Taking a lead from his bestial namesake, Ramm butted his forehead into the man’s face and felt the squish of breaking nose cartilage. Such a blow would slow – if not totally disable - most men, but the big Russian seemed unfazed. He merely spat the blood out that streamed into his mouth, half-blinding Ramm. Then the killer’s knife hands jammed at Ramm’s torso. Ramm managed to knock an arm aside, but one stiffened set of fingers stabbed him in the gut, and it was almost as if he’d been speared by a lance. He exhaled harshly, but only in anger. Then, using the Makarov as a bludgeon he cut an arc through the air that ended on the Russian’s skull. The raised sight on the barrel tore a furrow through the buzz cut, while the barrel itself landed with blunt force. The Russian’s knees lost some of their bounce. Ramm disengaged, took a step to one side and delivered a roundhouse kick to the man’s testicles. As the man folded further over, Ramm holstered his Makarov, then plucked the AK47 off the brute’s shoulder, reversed the butt and slammed it repeatedly against the nape of his bull neck. The man fell prone in the dirt: he wouldn’t be getting up again.

  Ramm cast away the AK, plucked the radio and earpiece from the corpse and then moved on. The Russian was the first to die tonight, he told himself, more would follow. He fed the earpiece into his left ear, listening for clues of where he might find Missy or Gitchsler. The radio at that time was silent.

  Ahead, a trail wound through woodland, and he could see some sort of hut straddling the path about fifty yards in front. He padded along the trail. A word was spoken in his earpiece. It came too quickly to translate, but its tone told him enough to throw himself aside. Tracer rounds burned the air where he’d been a second before, and screaming projectiles tore the foliage to shreds around him. Ramm tucked and rolled, came to one knee, and in the same motion his hand found the Makarov and brought it up. He fired twice, the two rounds coming in such close succession that it sounded like a single crack. The shooter in the hut let out a cry, and his shots went skyward as he fell back into the darkness. Ramm thought the man dead – or severely wounded at least – but made sure. He rushed for the hut, vaulted through the open window and fired two more bullets into the prone figure on the floor, all before the man’s cry had stopped echoing between the trees.

  Gitchsler had many enemies. His normal routine would be to surround himself with armed guards. But it was apparent that the security levels had been raised. When Gitchsler’s people had come for Missy, it was with prior knowledge of whom she’d sought protection from. If the Russian mobster had checked him out, then he’d have learned that Ramm wasn’t the kind who’d let things lie. He’d mounted a defence in full expectation of violent retaliation. Proof of that was the way in which his men were primed for assault, and by the heavy artillery they’d brought to the fight. Unlike he had with the first guard’s AK47, Ramm picked up this one’s gun, a Heckler and Koch MP5, a weapon he was more familiar with. He grabbed spare clips of ammunition from the dead man’s coat pocket, then was out of the hut and running through the woods before anyone could corner him.

  The big house loomed large in a clearing in the woods. Manicured lawns, topiary, fountains, the business. Beautiful in their way, but all that Ramm recognised the decorations as were barricades he could use as he approached the house. If Gitchsler had any sense he’d have had the woods felled, the grounds laid to gravel and given no cover to an invader. Ramm sprinted for a fountain, and crouched down behind the granite bowl, placing a statue of water-spraying nymphs between him and the gunman that opened up from a parapet on the roofline. Stinging shards of granite spritzed the air around him, buckled and spent bullets whining off into the topiary hedges nearby. Ramm waited a pause, then shouldered the MP5, and came out shooting. He didn’t go sideways, where was the sense in that? He made progress. Ever forward, that was his motto. He fired as he rushed fearlessly for the front of the house, forcing the man on the roofline to seek cover. Another man appeared to his right and Ramm cut him down without remorse. Blood hung in the air like a mist after the man had fallen.

  The huge door of the house felt the impact of Ramm’s size twelve’s, and it swung inward and slammed against the supporting wall. Ramm sprayed the interior with the MP5 on full-auto. Men who’d been kneeling in the hall, in anticipation of launching an ambush were cut to shreds. He snapped in a fresh clip of ammo, slapped the bolt to charge the gun and entered as he fired another volley of rounds. Voices called from the back of the house, and were played in stereo by the earpiece. He pulled the radio loose and threw it away now it was of no use to him. A man appeared, tall, skinny, pale eyed: Ramm put him down with a selected shot to the throat.

  Another two gunmen were partway up a staircase. The stairwell was opulent, looking like something out of Gone With The Wind. Ramm frankly didn’t give a damn. He tore the stairs, the oak bannisters and the two gunmen to pieces with a sustained burst of gunfire. The MP5 ran dry. He threw it aside. Brought out his Makarov. It was apt in his mind that the Russian gun should slay the Russian mobster.

  He’d lost count of the number of Russian mobsters he’d killed. Didn’t really matter. So far as he was concerned he’d keep on killing until there was no more Russian mobsters left in the world. It was the Russian Mafia who’d murdered his parents and younger brother five years earlier, and Ramm had been seeking those responsible ever since. For all he knew any of the men who lay in tatters at his feet could have been among the hitters who’d indiscriminately murdered his loved ones, as well as the other twenty-three tourists on the coach they’d shot to pieces. Reputedly Moscow was safe for tourists, and it had been sheer misfortune that saw the tour bus drive into the middle of a gang war having taken a wrong turn for St Peter’s Square. Ramm thought otherwise, and that the coach had been specifically targeted when it was learned that his folks were on board. Ramm, five years ago, had gone by another name – Codename Battering Ram – and he’d
been the most feared guided weapon in the CIAs arsenal. Following the murder of his family, and the subsequent Burn Notice handed down by his former masters, Ramm had taken war to the Russian Mafia in his own inimitable way. Notwithstanding her current predicament, he wouldn’t have ignored Missy Dolan’s plight even if the Russian Mob hadn’t been involved, but he had to admit that it made this fight all the more personal.

  From above Ramm heard a scream. It wasn’t the shout of another of Gitchsler’s men coming to the fight. It was female, and a voice he recognised. When Missy had shared his bed she’d called out similarly, though at the time her voice had been throaty and less tinged with pain.

  He took the stairs three at a time.

  A burly man appeared from a doorway to his left, holding a large machete. He was as big as the first thug Ramm had killed tonight, but his skin glistened as darkly as the first man’s was pale. He was an unusual man to be in cahoots with the Red Mafia. Perhaps he’s one of those Black Russians he’d heard about, Ramm thought whimsically as he placed a round in the black guy’s forehead. He gave the dead man little notice as he tumbled over the banister and down the stairs.

  At the head of the staircase was a wide landing, and at its centre a huge double set of doors. From beyond the huge portal came the yelp of Missy Dolan once more. Also Ramm could hear the bark of Gitchsler, and the corresponding replies of a gathering of men. He was under no illusion: he’d been drawn to this place, Missy being the bait. But it had always occurred to Ramm that, once his identity had been discovered, this was as much about drawing him into a trap as anything else, rather than it was Gitchsler simpler getting his main squeeze back. He wondered who was waiting for him behind those doors. Not nickel and dime punks like those who’d been sacrificed already, he bet.