by Conrad Jones
“What you need to do Christopher, is pay myself and my men for what we have done, I’m not going to ask you again,” Uri aimed the Uzi machine pistol at his bleeding employer.
Christopher had tears streaming from his eyes and he gritted his teeth against the pain in his ruined hand. Uri waved the machinegun over his face and Christopher squeezed his eyes closed tightly, trying to make the nightmare situation disappear. It didn’t work. When he opened his eyes Uri was still standing over him. He looked completely inhuman in the NBC suit.
“There is a safe box beneath the bunk in the captain’s quarters,” Christopher cried as he spoke. “There are fifty thousand Euros in there, and two platinum credit cards. Take them and leave me alone.”
Uri grabbed an oily rag from the window ledge and threw it to his wounded boss.
“Fifty thousand will do as a down payment. Wrap your hand with that rag before you bleed to death. You still owe me a lot of money Mr Walsh, so I don’t want you dying on me before you settle your debt in full,” Uri looked over the bow of the L2. He could see two sets of headlights parked on the opposite side of the harbour close to the quayside. There were torch beams flashing in the darkness. It wouldn’t take them long to realise that they were on the wrong lightship. Uri removed his remote detonator and smiled in the darkness as he pressed the button. A huge explosion ripped through the night and he watched a tower of flame climbing skyward. Christopher Walsh was wide eyed and open mouthed. He curled up in a ball, shocked by the explosion, and frightened for his life.
“What have you done?” he whispered under his breath. Uri wasn’t sure if he was talking to him, or to himself.
“Where is the key for the safe box?” Uri asked. He dropped the remote onto the bridge console. It had served its purpose and now it was just a useless pile of transistor parts attached to a nine volt battery.
“There is no key to it, it’s just hidden under the captain’s bunk,” Christopher stared at his injured hand, and then he picked up the cloth and wrapped it tightly around his hand. His body was shaking with pain as he tightened the makeshift bandage. Uri waved the Uzi toward the stairs and Christopher tried to stand up. His knees were weak and he staggered across the bridge, before descending to the lower deck. Uri followed closely behind him with the weapon aimed at the back of his head. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t already killed him. He was tempted to take the fifty thousand, and the credit cards, and then cut his losses. Maybe it was greed that kept him here, and maybe he liked the adrenalin rush.
“You know where the money is Uri, now let me get a protective suit at least,” Christopher said as they reached the first deck. “They are stored in the room next to the captain’s quarters.”
“Shut up and keep moving,” Uri shouted. He knew that blowing up the lightship had bought them some time to escape. He was estimating that they had an hour at least. Any emergency services that were functioning in the city would be focused on the site of the explosion, and the surrounding area. No one would search a derelict boatyard on a whim. There was too much chaos to deal with elsewhere.
“Don’t ruin everything Uri, we could still be rich beyond your wildest dreams. We have the shells and the Olympics are an international incident just waiting to happen,” he turned to face his employee. “Just think how much money the newspapers would pay for a sample shell. It would be worth millions. Every government in the world would buy my counter measures. We would be rich Uri.”
Uri stopped for a moment and then punched him in the mouth for his troubles. Christopher bent double and began to moan. He spat blood onto the floor.
“I told you to keep moving, I suggest that you do as you are told if you want to live,” Uri snarled and grabbed his injured hand. Christopher screamed and recoiled from his attacker. He broke free and staggered down the corridor toward the captain’s quarters.
“You’ll be sorry Uri. You’ll be so sorry. Just you wait and see if you’re not,” Christopher shouted at the top of his voice. He ran past the captain’s quarters and rattled the handle of the cabin next to it. The door opened and he stumbled inside. A burst of machinegun fire hammered harmlessly into the walls behind him. He locked the door latch and leaned against it. His breath was coming in short gasps. Blood loss and fear were taking their toll. He waited for Uri to begin barging down the door but he didn’t. The door was constructed from the same reinforced steel as the rest of the superstructure. They were built to be watertight in the event of the hull being breached. He had time to treat himself and to put on an NBC suit, if he was quick. There was a thumping noise from the captain’s cabin next door, and Christopher knew that Uri had tossed the mattress aside to gain access to the safe box. He smiled and held his breath as he waited.
Uri stepped over the bedding, and the mattress that he had strewn across the cabin. Built into the base of the bunk was a compartment which was used as safe storage for charts and important documents, as well as the captain’s valuables. The lid was a simple metal square with two finger holes drilled into it. Uri had to wiggle his fingertips into the narrow holes because of his protective gloves. He lifted the lid and noticed a fine filament of twine. Before he had understood what it was attached to, it was too late. Christopher had fitted a sawn off shotgun beneath the captain’s desk, and then strung fishing twine to the trigger, before attaching it to the safe box. He had been involved in criminal operations all over the planet, and thus he had developed a good understanding of how untrustworthy human beings could be.
The shotgun roared as it spat its deadly load of twelve gauge buckshot. The lead spray hit Uri in the back of his left thigh and buttock. It tore through his NBC suit and ripped a two inch chunk of muscle from his leg. He dropped to the floor and cried out loud. It was a cry of pain and anguish, partly because of the agony from his leg, and partly because he’d fallen into his employer’s trap. Uri picked up the discarded blanket and ripped a strip from it. He pressed the material against his wounds and tried to stem the bleeding. There were dozens of individual metal pellets deep inside his muscle tissue, and the pain was excruciating. He leaned over the bunk and reached inside the safe box. It was empty. Uri screamed in frustration and he stood on his feet shakily. Blood was running down his thigh as he stumbled toward the door. He flung the door open and it clattered against the metal hull. The door into the next cabin was flapping open. Christopher Walsh was nowhere to be seen.
Uri heard heavy footsteps coming through the bridge and down the stairs. He pointed the Uzi toward the approaching footsteps but lowered it immediately. It was one of his gorillas called Marco. Marco was an Albanian hoodlum. His reputation for violence was so renowned that even the Russian Mafioso wouldn’t employ him. He had left a trail of death and destruction behind him wherever he had been. Uri had given him the opportunity to work on several occasions over the past few years, and so far he had never let him down. Marco was a squat hairy man with thinning black hair which was always greased tightly to his pale scalp. Uri thought that he looked, and walked, like a shaved ape.
“Are you ok, Boss?” Marco asked in a guttural Albanian accent.
“No, I’ve been shot in the ass,” Uri complained. He stepped into the cabin that Christopher had been in. There was pile of crumpled clothes and a pair of Ralph Lauren sneakers in the corner. “Did Mr Walsh pass by you?”
“No boss, I heard gunshots and came straight in here,” Marco’s hands were beginning to redden. “We’ve finished loading the shells, Boss.”
“Good, check out the lower deck. He can’t have gotten far away,” Uri knew that the lower decks were where Christopher had carried out his experiments. He turned right and headed toward the stern of the boat. Marco stomped down the steps to the bowels of the vessel. Uri could hear his heavy boots clomping in and out of the cabins. The deck below that one was where the engines and fuel tanks were situated. At the stern of the ship Uri entered a wide open space which had once been converted into a tea room. There was no sign of Christopher Walsh. He ran back into
the cabin where he had disappeared and kicked over the pile of clothes. There was a large cardboard box next to the cabin bunk, which contained protective clothing. They had been used during Christopher’s experiments. Uri pulled it to one side and cursed under his breath.
The box was covering a square opening that had been cut into the floor of the cabin. There was a narrow metal ladder tacked to the hull with small neat welds. It seemed that Christopher Walsh had adapted the lightship with a few customised features of his own design while she was being refurbished. Uri banged his fist on the side of the hull in frustration. He was about to step onto the ladder to follow his slippery employer when he realised that the cabin door had been left open. It had not been locked from the inside.
“Why would you unlock the cabin door, Christopher?” Uri said out loud. He looked back at the opening that had been cut into the floor. “Why would you open the door unless, of course you wanted me to follow you, that is.” Uri walked back to the hatch and kneeled down. He peered into the darkness of the lower deck. There was a length of fine fishing twine stretched across the opening, about three feet down the ladder. Uri followed it with his eyes. It was tied to yet another sawn off shotgun, which was welded to the hull of the ship between the rungs of the ladder. If he had descended the ladder, he would have taken twin barrels of shot in the chest.
“Not twice in one day, Mr Walsh. Marco!” Uri shouted through the hatch. His voice echoed around the lower decks. “Marco,” he shouted again.
“Yes Boss,” the Albanian replied from the depths of the ship.
“He escaped down this ladder. Is there any sign of him down there?”
“No Boss, there’s nothing down here,” Marco replied.
It was then that they heard automatic gunfire from outside.
Chapter Thirty Nine
Christopher Walsh
Christopher placed four vials of his counter measure solutions into a canvas bag. Then he took a full magazine which contained thirty nine millimetre bullets, and he slotted it into a brand new Uzi. The weapon had never been used and it was still sleek with gun oil. He stuffed a handful of spare bullet clips into his bag and then slipped the bolt on the hatch in front of him. He was in a compartment on the lower deck. It had been built into the space between two fuel tanks, and unless you were familiar with the ship’s original design then it couldn’t be detected. The hatch was a new addition to the superstructure, which he had built into his lightship to be used in the event of an emergency. He had changed into a protective suit and pulled on a gasmask. His hand was causing him pain and he was losing lots of blood. He couldn’t hold anything with it as it was virtually useless. He opened the hatch silently and then reached out to the ladder which was in front of him. The ladder was attached to the boatyard wall and was used for engineers to access the hull of damaged ships, once the water had been drained from the dock. He stepped out of the lightship onto the ladder and pushed the hatch closed again.
Christopher struggled up the ladder and peered over the top into the boat shed. To his right he could see the flames across the harbour, where the fractured hull of the derelict lightship was still burning. To the left he could see one of his vans stood on the quayside. One of Uri’s gorillas was closing the back doors. He slammed the van doors shut and then jogged along the quayside past Uri’s hiding place, and onto the gangplank. Christopher waited until he had heard the bridge door being closed before climbing onto the dockside. He secured the bag over his shoulder and ran to the van. The back doors were unlocked and he pulled them open and looked inside. The cargo sledge had slotted neatly into the back of the Ford. There were at least fifty brass shells stood erect in neat lines on the sledge. Christopher reached inside and touched one of the shells gently. He picked it up and placed it gently into his bag. Christopher caressed the nose cone with the palm of his hand and he relished the coldness of the metal through his glove. He wished that it was against his skin.
There was movement to his right near the main doors of the boat shed. He looked toward the doors but he couldn’t see anything. There had been just a fleeting glance in the corner of his peripheral vision but it was gone. It was probably a rat, he thought. Christopher closed the doors quietly and then ran around to the driver’s door. He pulled the handle but the door was locked.
“Shit,” he hissed. He looked through the window to see if the passenger side was locked too. It was. One hundred and fifty yards away, at the back of the boat shed near the lock gates, there was a door which led into an annexe. They had used the annexe as a garage for their vehicles while preparing the salvage operation. Christopher ran clumsily across the boat shed toward the annexe door. His footsteps echoed loudly as he ran. He was half way across the dock when he heard the bridge door crashing open. The gorilla that had passed him earlier obviously hadn’t gone down to the lower decks, and he had heard Christopher stomping across the quayside like a baby elephant. A volley of nine millimetre bullets whizzed over his head and blasted fragments of concrete off the dock wall. Christopher froze and raised his hands in surrender.
Chapter Forty
Tank
Barnes was watching proceedings from the annexe as Christopher Walsh raised his hands. The Major had refused him permission to enter the boat shed, but Barnes felt that he had no option now. The Major couldn’t see what he could see, and therefore he wasn’t in any position to be giving orders. Barnes was a member of the elite Terrorist Task Force, and as far as he was concerned the men in front of him were terrorists. They were also responsible for the deaths of an unknown number of his unit. It was just them and him now, and that suited Barnes fine.
“Zulu one, this is Zulu chief, are you receiving me?” Grace said into his earpiece. There was no way that Barnes was going to stop now, it was payback time. He flicked the coms unit volume control to zero, and raised the Brugger and Thomet MP9 sub machinegun to his shoulder. The Brugger is used by Special Forces units all over the world because of its low recoil action, which makes it accurate up to about a hundred metres. The x-ray who had just fired his Uzi was standing one hundred and thirty metres away. At that range even an expert shot would struggle to hit the target with a Brugger, unless they emptied the full magazine, in which case the percentages come right down. Firing a full magazine would compromise his position. Barnes lined up the red dot sight on the x-ray’s chest and tensed his trigger finger. The man with his hands raised stepped into the line of his shot.
Barnes lowered the weapon and scanned the boat shed for another position. He needed to be somewhere he could make an accurate shot, and maintain a covered position. The dockside was too open and there were no hiding places to be had. Barnes turned round and looked toward the vehicles which were in the annexe behind him. There was one white van and a sleek Bentley parked side by side. He kept low and moved toward them. Another man appeared on the bridge of the lightship. Barnes looked inside the van to see if the keys had been left in the ignition. They hadn’t. He moved stealthily around the van to the Bentley, he tried the driver’s door.
“Bingo,” he whispered to himself as he opened the door. A set of keys dangled from the ignition. He slid into the driver’s seat and peered over the steering wheel into the boat shed.
There were now three men on the bridge of the lightship. Two of them were wearing bog standard gasmasks, and the other had a Territorial Army NBC suit on. Barnes knew that it was the same as the one that he was wearing, and that would explain who had shot the part time soldiers at the roadblock. Barnes decided that the man in the suit would die last, and he would die slowly. The man with his hands raised was walking toward the lightship, while the three men on the bridge covered him with their weapons. Suddenly there was a chink of light at the opposite side of the boat shed, behind the lightship. It was barely noticeable, but there was no doubt that it had been there. A strip of light about six feet high, and two feet wide had appeared and then disappeared just as quickly. Barnes deuced that someone had entered the building through a door
way. It was someone swift, and silent.
Barnes opened the door and climbed out of the Bentley Continental. He crouched low as he scoured the floor around him for something that he could use to press the accelerator pedal down. Three yards away to the right was a thick block of wood. It was three feet long, and six inches square, and it was almost black in colour. Barnes reckoned that it had been used to hold engine blocks off the floor while they were worked on by boat mechanics. From the colour of the wood it had been underneath engine sumps for years. He slid across the floor silently and grabbed it. Barnes jammed the oily block between the driver’s seat and the accelerator pedal. It was about three inches too short.
“You have got all the bells and whistles, so we might as well use them,” he whispered to himself as he turned the ignition key one click. The system lights on the dashboard illuminated, and he pressed a lever at the side of the driver’s seat near the floor. The seat slid backwards driven by an electric motor. The block of wood slipped off the pedal and thumped onto the floor pan of the Bentley.
“Oops, that was the wrong way,” he hissed as he pushed the lever the other way. This time the seat slid forward toward the steering wheel and the block became firmly jammed. The accelerator pedal was pressed wide open at full throttle.