Nemesis - John Kane's revenge

by Bill Carson

  “Thank you, Mr Costa, and I will now bid you all good day,” Harold said as he made for the door.

  “Hey, I’ll tell you what, fellas? Bill can drive you to wherever you want to go, Harold, and you too, Johnnie? And you can also dump that Range Rover somewhere for me once you’ve dropped Harold off. The fucking thing must be red hot by now after your shenanigans earlier. That will round off the day nicely, and be the last little job you’ll do for me for a while, lads, and that’s a promise,” Costa said with a grin, as he topped up the small oil reservoir on the side of the huge chainsaw.

  Bill Brooks and Johnnie Carter glanced at each other and didn’t hesitate to take up the offer. They wanted out of this madhouse – soon to become a slaughterhouse – as quickly as possible. They suspected that there was a better than average chance that if they hung around he’d be lumbering them with two more stiffs to get rid of. So they quickly turned, opened the door for Harold, and followed him outside into the courtyard. Harold was happy, and they were happy, and Jimmy was happy, and so it was a good result all round.

  “Bill, get us the fuck out of here, pronto,” Johnnie Carter said.

  “Just a moment, gentlemen, I’ll need to get a fresh change of clothing before we set off. I can’t get on the train looking like this, the ticket inspector would be most displeased,” Harold said.

  He could have been wrong, but Johnnie was sure that he detected a flicker of a smile on Harold’s lips as he said it.

  “OK, Harold,” Billy said, as he pressed the button which released the boot catch on Nick’s car. Harold removed some items, disappeared into the gloom and was back a few minutes later wearing a fresh, clean identical outfit.

  “Where to, H?” Billy asked as Harold climbed into the back.

  “H, indeed! I think we had better head north. I’m not sure that I would be very welcome in London at the moment. I need to find the nearest railway station as the first trains will be running soon,” Harold said as he checked his watch.

  “The station it is then, and I’ll be glad to see me bed, I’m cream-crackered. How about a bit of music?” Bill said.

  The radio had been pre-set to BBC Radio 3 and as he pushed the button the serene sound of the old 1950s hit, ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ by Mantovani, flowed from the crisp, crystal clear, high-quality surround sound system. Billy immediately reached down to select another station, but as the gentle, high-pitched tranquil whine of the opening violin section of the piece reached his ears, he stopped and changed his mind. He sat back as the almost humbling and strangely convivial arrangement floated around the interior.

  All remained silent and they simply allowed the magical music to wash over them. The sounds inexplicably seemed to mesmerize each man, and for a few fleeting moments each of them was transported to another place – a peaceful place, a place seldom visited by such violent and brutal creatures – but that is the power of music as it has the ability to sooth even the most savage of beings.

  As they neared the gates of the exit to the park, Anna and George drove in at the same time, and only just narrowly missed the large vehicle. She caught a glimpse of the three men inside as it passed, and a snapshot of them driving away from the front of the office with Nick immediately flashed into her mind.

  “George, that was them. They were the ones who took Nick,” Anna said, quickly glancing out of the back of the truck.

  “What? Are you sure? He wasn’t with them, was he?” George said as he looked over his shoulder.

  “No, he wasn’t, but I’m sure it was them. Stop the car,” Anna said as she checked the bullets in the huge Webley Mk 6 revolver.

  As the last chords from the Mantovani melody faded into infinity, there was a terrific crack. It was as if a gigantic thunderbolt had struck from the heavens, and the Range Rover suddenly exploded into a huge fireball of blue and white flames. The explosion flipped the heavy vehicle onto its roof. Its front wheels were blown clean off and pieces of the vehicle were flung for hundreds of yards into the air. Within seconds the whole vehicle was engulfed in an inferno and the air was suddenly filled with thick, pungent black smoke. It looked like hell in there. Billy Brooks and Johnnie Carter had been killed instantly by the bomb, their bodies literally torn asunder, and small chunks of them were strewn all over the road.

  “Fucking hell!” George and Anna cried in unison, as the sudden hot blast wave stripped the old canvas roof from their vehicle.

  “Jesus!” Ryan said, as he clung onto the branch.

  The huge explosion was seen and heard from the hotel, and lit up the horizon for an instant. Costa and McConnell were waiting by the window and watched in triumph as the large mushroom-shaped cloud defiled the orange dawn-cracked sky.

  McConnell had learned his craft years ago in Northern Ireland and was an expert car bomber. When they had arrived earlier, he’d quickly slipped out and rigged the vehicle with one of his ready-made timer-activated Semtex devices.

  “Ah well, at least they wouldn’t have felt a t’ing at all now, I can tell ya that, not like these two fellas over here, boss,” McConnell said as he viewed the aftermath of his handiwork.

  “Yeah, that’s right, Frankie, and now we get to the fun part.” He turned around. “You two have caused me a lot of grief but, as I am a reasonable man I’m gonna tell you a little story. Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then we will begin,” Costa said, as he pulled up a chair and sat directly in front of his two battered prisoners.

  “Save your fucking breath and get on with it. And I’ll tell you something, your brother was a no–good, slimy, cowardly scumbag, just like you,” Nick said and he spat a large globule of blood onto the floor in front of Costa.

  McConnell stepped forward and slammed the stock of his shotgun into the meat of Nick’s guts.

  “Now that is typical and just what I’d expect from a fucking copper, sorry, ex-copper and soon to be deceased ex-copper. Now, what about you? I know he was the tea leaf and I can understand the temptation. Imagine trying to keep Britain clean on the minimum wage, anyone would be tempted. But you actually murdered my dear little brother, didn’t you, for some old slag of a tart? And now you’re going to pay, as everything has come full circle and I’m going to make you two wish that your bitches of mothers had never had you. You’ll be cursing the day you were fucking born. Because of your big mouths you’re gonna get the full fucking Monty. Right, now where do I start? At the top, I think. Talking of mouths, when did you last visit the dentist, lads?” Costa said as he rose from the chair. He reached for the toolbox, and flicked opened the lid to reveal the instruments that were soon going to be inflicting agony.

  He took out a pair of huge pliers and shoved them into John’s mouth, and while McConnell held his head back against the headrest of the chair Costa began to yank John’s teeth out, one by one.

  “Fucking hell, a tough guy, eh”? Costa said as he wrenched another of John’s teeth out. He was surprised at the fact that John Kane hardly made a sound as he did so, and just more or less growled at him as the pliers went in again.

  “That’s it, John, don’t give the fat twat the satisfaction,” Nick blurted out of his busted mouth.

  “Your girlfriend‘s all worried about you. How touching, and when I’m finished with him I’ll make sure that you will suffer like no man has ever suffered before, big mouth,” Costa said as he pointed at Nick with the pliers which had John’s huge dripping molar clasped in its jaws.

  ~~~

  “George, pull over just up here, we’re right on top of him!” she said, as the Land Rover skidded to a halt.

  “Bloody hell, Anna, what’s going on here? I mean, this is getting well out of hand.”

  “I don’t know, George, but Nick’s car is over there, so let’s go and get him. Here, take my phone, it’s switched on. I’ll take Nick’s and I’ll call you when I’m in position. When it rings just go for it, OK? I want you to drive the Land Rover right into the front doors and I’ll go in through a back window, but we’ve got to
go at the same time to make it effective, OK?”

  “You’re gonna ring when you’re in position, and then I’ll ram the doors as a distraction?”

  “That’s it, George, it’s called a plan, and I’ve got the feeling we’d better act fast. Here, take this,” Anna said as she handed him a dusty old Webley Mk 6 pistol which was part of the arsenal that she’d found in the old chest in the basement. “Point it at the target and pull the trigger, the gun does the rest, OK? And if you hit anything with that, don’t worry, because they won’t be getting up again,” she said, as she demonstrated how to hold the formidable handgun.

  Anna stripped the rest of the weapons from the black bag, which included two more fully loaded Mk 6 pistols and a Thompson submachine gun with a half dozen stick magazines. She shoved the pistols each side of her waistband, slipped the extra stick mags into her deep pockets and slung the Tommy gun’s strap around her shoulder. Finally she slotted a fresh mag into the deadly old machine gun.

  “OK, George, this is it, mate. Now listen, when I call you that means I’m in position, so drive up slowly and get as close as you can without being seen. Aim the Rover at the doors, wedge the accelerator pedal down, put it into gear and jump clear.”

  “What about those?” George said, as he pointed to the three old Mills bombs and some 45 calibre ammunition that was left in the bag.

  “Take them with you, George. You never know, they might come in handy. OK, I’m going in, it won’t take me long to get there, so be ready.”

  “OK, Anna, I won’t let you down.”

  What a girl, he thought, as he watched her small black shape disappear into the distance.

  Andy Ryan had been observing everything that had been going on, and was a little bewildered as George and Anna showed up on the scene in that beat up old banger. He waited for it all to play out in front of him before getting involved.

  Anna approached the outer edge of the gravel driveway, crouched down and moved slowly around to the rear of the hotel, but she had been spotted by the goons on the roof and they both immediately took aim at her.

  Here we go, Ryan said to himself, as a split second later he watched them both fall as if poleaxed. Like fish in a fucking barrel he thought. Anna was oblivious to her help from above, and continued on her way around to the back of the building.

  She crept to the edge of the large window and took a quick peek inside the banqueting hall. She was sickened and stunned by what her eyes were telling her and almost froze with sheer terror. As Costa held the spinning chainsaw two inches from Nick’s battered face, she dialled her mobile number and George started the Land Rover. Within seconds she could hear the clapped-out old engine blowing a gasket with its high revs. But she couldn’t wait or it would be too late to save him.

  No time, she thought, as she opened up with the Tommy gun and shattered the huge bay window. It exploded into a million fragments. She continued to lay some fire down, and two rounds hit McConnell in the guts. The 45s ripped him open. Another round knocked the chainsaw from Costa’s hands. And as the burst continued in an upward arc, a number of bullets hit the huge chandelier, which spectacularly crashed to the floor and landed between Nick and Costa.

  McConnell was badly wounded and staggered backward toward the doors, holding his guts together with his huge mitt. He still had enough strength left to raise one hand and fire off one round from his shotgun at the small dark figure in the window, before being completely flattened by George’s old Land Rover as it demolished the pair of heavy oak doors. He was crushed to death beneath it.

  It was deathly quiet for a moment and the room was full of cordite. The lull gave Costa the opportunity to make a run for it, and he disappeared around the corner and flew up the staircase to his office like a frightened rat.

  “Nick! Nick! Anna? You in there?” George’s familiar Cockney accent resonated in Nick’s ears, and he simply couldn’t believe what they were telling him. He thought he must be hallucinating as big George Smith materialised out of the dust and debris, his bulky frame illuminated by the single working headlight on the Land Rover. He stood in the middle of the hall with a massive gun in his fist and with three pineapple hand grenades clearly visible clipped to the belt of his trousers.

  “George, over here!” Nick called. George ran over to him and cut him and John Kane free with his Swiss army knife.

  “George? What the…? How the…? I can’t…?”

  “It’s OK, it’s all over now and we’ve got you, mate. We’re all going to go home, OK, relax it’s all over. Who’s he?” George asked, as he nodded toward John Kane.

  “Oh, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time like me, mate,” Nick said as he stood up.

  “ANNA! ANNA! WHERE ARE YA? I’VE GOT HIM!” George desperately shouted, as he was freaked out by Nick’s condition, but there was no reply.

  “She saved our asses,” Kane said, as he climbed out through the tattered wooden window frame. George quickly followed and found Anna lying motionless outside, her body covered in slivers of glass fragments and brick dust. John Kane grabbed the machine gun that was lying beside her and relieved her of a fresh mag from her jacket pocket, while George attended to her. Nick stumbled toward the window and poked his head through.

  “She’s alive, Nick!” George shouted, as he checked her pulse. ”Looks like she’s banged her head and knocked herself out, I think.”

  “Right, let’s get her inside, George, and then go and find a first aid box. And give me that fucking gun,” Nick said as he snatched the revolver out of George’s pocket and examined the old gun. He quickly took control of the situation. As for John Kane he was simply there one moment and then, when Nick looked up, he was gone.

  Chapter 20

  Jimmy Costa had decided not to hang around as the fat slugs from the Thompson started to fly around his earholes. He disappeared upstairs to his top floor office. He immediately put a call through to the small annexed house two miles away, where his army of thugs was holed up. In two minutes they would be here to bail him out. But a lot can happen in two minutes, he thought, as he loaded his Glock automatic pistol. He then switched out all the lights and sat in the corner of the office behind the curtain, pointing the pistol at the middle of the door. The first one through that door will get the whole fucking magazine.

  One moment the place was full of ear-splitting gunfire and a moment later it had fallen into an eerie cold silence.

  John Kane lay flat on his stomach, crawled to the edge of the wall, and poked his head out around the corner of the building to see if it was clear. Ryan saw the sudden movement but missed the opportunity, as John quickly ducked back in. Over to his left and at some distance, Ryan had spotted a strange figure hobbling towards the entrance of the hotel. If neither his eyes nor the thermal binoculars were playing tricks on him, he could swear that the figure was leaving a thin trail of smoke behind it.

  “Now, what have we here?” Ryan whispered as he lined the figure up in the night sight. At that moment, out of his peripheral vision, he noted the bright headlights of a column of vehicles coming in his direction. In less than a minute they would be swarming all over the place. At first he thought they might be the police, but as they’d orders to wait for his call – and he hadn’t made one – it must be something else. While Ryan was checking out the vehicles, the strange smoking figure disappeared. Ryan turned on his side and slapped a fresh mag into the rifle and lay flat against the huge branch.

  John Kane ran back to the blown-out window and climbed inside. He’d also seen the approaching vehicles, and rightly figured that it was Costa’s henchmen coming to his rescue.

  “OK, people, we’ve got a situation.”

  “You what?” asked George.

  “There’s a line of vehicles heading this way and I don’t think they are coming to book a room, so I suggest we gather up all the weapons we can lay our hands on.”

  “Right,” agreed Nick, as he wrenched McConnell’s shotgun from his stiffening, mea
ty fingers. “Nice work, George,” Nick added as he nodded toward McConnell’s crushed skull beneath the chunky tyre of George’s old banger. “We need to get as many of them as we can while they’re still in their vehicles. Once they spread out, they’ll be a lot harder to nail. George, give me them grenades, will you?”

  George unclipped them from his belt.

  Nick took up position on the left flank, and John Kane crept around to the right hand side of the building. Andy Ryan saw what was about to unfold.

  This is going to be interesting. Got them in a bit of a crossfire, he thought as Nick pulled the pin and threw the first hand grenade, which landed six feet short of the first vehicle. It just sat there like a little metallic Easter egg, and about as much use.

  “The bloody things are too old; their primers must be perished,” he said as he lobbed another.