by Angus McLean
The leader and his sidekick laughed that one up, loving it, and Archer shut his eyes, trying to breathe through the pain. He reflected that it would be nice if bad guys could leave his bollocks alone for once. Maybe he needed to invest in a cricket box for his next mission – if he lived through this one.
Fuck them – they’re not going to win.
‘Craig!’ Eva’s voice cut through his self-examination. ‘Are you okay?’
He sucked in a breath and opened his eyes. He nodded carefully, not sure if he could speak yet.
‘Never better,’ he croaked.
‘What he say?’ The leader turned to his sidekick for assistance. The skinny Afghani shrugged, unsure.
‘So you are Al-Shabaab then,’ Archer managed, ‘I think we can agree on that.’ He tossed his chin towards the Afghani against the wall. ‘What about Abdul there? What’s his gang?’
‘His name not Abdul,’ the leader snapped angrily, ‘you show no respect!’ He stepped forward. ‘I show you a lesson!’
He drew the pistol from his belt and whipped it across Archer’s face, cracking him a solid hit to the left temple then a matching backhander to the right side. Archer rolled with it, completely defenceless, and gritted his teeth against the pain. His head pounded with the dual blows and he tried to shake it out.
He raised his head just in time to see the next swing coming and pulled back, the pistol glancing off his chin instead of cracking his cheekbone. The leader punched it forward into his gut next, the hard steel barrel itself burying itself deep enough to take the wind from his sails.
Archer hung there, desperate to bend double but unable to, gasping for breath. He became aware of the leader laughing it up, his mate chipping in as well, as he coughed and tried to get his lungs working again. The leader obviously had other ideas, giving him another crack across the side of the skull. This time Archer felt blood begin to leak into his hair.
He sucked in air and tried to compose himself, focussing on a spot on the wall instead of his pain. His eyes drifted to the Afghani, who had a smirk on his face as he enjoyed the show. In that moment, Archer determined that he would kill the man before the day was out.
He shifted his gaze back to the leader, who was chuckling to himself as he surveyed his handiwork. With his ridiculous haircut and the bloodlust in his yellowed eyes, he looked even crazier than before.
‘Laugh it up, fucker,’ Archer croaked.
‘Say what?’
‘You won’t be laughing,’ Archer wheezed, ‘when I get my hands on you.’
The leader threw his head back and roared with laughter, waving the pistol in his hand like a baby’s rattle.
‘You no get your hands on me, Mr Archer,’ he chortled. ‘You just a dead man hanging out with his friend.’
Both of them roared at that one, and Archer used the seconds to get his breath back.
‘So what’s the plan then?’ he said. ‘You’re going to kill us anyway, so you may as well tell us why we’re going to die.’
The leader abruptly stopped laughing and his face went stony. ‘Dead man don’t need to know our plans,’ he retorted. ‘It bigger than you can ever imagine.’
‘Thought so.’ Archer nodded as if his suspicions had been confirmed. ‘So big they didn’t even tell you, right? Why would they trust a two-bit pirate hustler like you?’
‘Two-bit?’ The leader may have been confused, but he knew he was being insulted. ‘You talk too much.’
He grabbed Archer by the front of his shirt to hold him steady and raised the knife to his face. The blade was cold against Archer’s upper lip. The leader’s breath was rancid in his face, even though the guy’s head only came up to his mid-chest.
The tip of the blade slid up, into his left nostril and with a quick flick it sliced through the outside of his nose.
Warm blood immediately began to leak down Archer’s face, over his lips to his chin, dripping down to his shirt as he braced himself against the searing pain. The leader stepped back, grinning. Archer let out a guttural snarl and spat blood, his nostril feeling as if it was on fire.
The leader lifted the blade and watched a drop of blood edging its way down the tip. He licked the drop carefully off the blade and grinned. Archer sucked in air through his mouth, tasting blood on his teeth. He rolled his tongue and spat a string of blood. It clung to his lip and hung there like a spider’s web.
‘Is that all you’ve got?’ he panted.
‘Fuck you, assholes!’ Eva suddenly blurted, her eyes wild as she looked from one to the other. ‘You come to my country and behave like savages! Who do you think you are? You are just cheap black market bandits, you filthy animals!’
Archer was as surprised as their captors at her outburst, and although he admired her courage, he had no doubt she was about to pay for it.
The leader turned his attention to her, his dark eyes glittering as he sized her up. ‘You…filthy…German…whore,’ he grated. ‘Your country will suffer for its allegiance to the American infidels.’ His grin was pure evil. ‘But first…you will suffer more.’
He moved towards her and she lashed out, kicking wildly at him. He dodged one foot but the second caught him on the shoulder and he grunted. He grabbed at her and the Afghani came to help him. The Afghani grabbed her round the waist and held her steady, while the leader stepped up closer, raising his knife.
Good girl.
‘Your filthy whore mouth will no longer defile the world of Allah,’ the leader said, ‘when I cut out your tongue.’
She writhed on the hook, doing her best to pull away from him, but both men held her tightly. The Afghani moved with her swinging and ended up with his back to Archer, bracing his feet to hold her still. The leader was to the Afghani’s left, face-on to Eva.
Both men were totally absorbed in their task.
The first they knew of impending danger was a creak of chain link as Archer swung towards them. His right foot smashed into the back of the Afghani’s skull, slamming him forwards against Eva’s hip. Together they swung hard and the leader lashed out at her with the knife as he was thrown off-balance.
The blade sliced across her face and he twisted, turning to confront Archer and ignoring Eva as he did so.
He slashed out at Archer’s legs with the blade, connecting with his left thigh but forgetting about the woman beside him.
Eva’s legs swung up and over his shoulders, locking around his head from behind and pulling him in close as if she were sitting on his shoulders. She clamped her thighs together and locked her ankles, bracing him in a smothering lock.
The Afghani staggered groggily, trying to gather his wits as he turned towards Archer. His hands were fumbling for the Beretta over his shoulder.
Archer smashed him in the throat with his next swing, his heel going straight into the man’s Adam’s apple with full force. The Afghani forgot all about the submachine gun and clutched at his throat, gasping like a fish on a wharf. He stumbled to the side, his eyes bugging, and hit the wall, sliding down to a sitting position.
The leader was going hell for leather, thrashing and heaving against Eva’s grasp. He flailed at her legs with his knife but she held fast, her face screwed up in pain as he connected with the blade. She let out a scream as the blade entered her thigh and he bucked again, both of them twisting in a macabre death dance.
Archer got a good swing on and kicked out, his heel striking the leader above the eye and opening up a gash. The leader jabbed at him with the knife, narrowly missing before Archer kicked him again, going low this time and driving his toe into the leader’s gut. He swung back and came in again, booting the leader between the legs.
Fair’s fair.
The leader squealed and Eva screamed again as the blade sliced across her thigh, the twin peals piercing in the unfurnished room.
Archer brought his right foot up again and connected with the leader’s temple, slamming his head sideways in Eva’s weakening grasp. He pulled back and repeated the action, putti
ng all his weight behind the sideways stomp and driving through the guy’s head like it was a speed bag.
The leader’s head bounced and his eyes rolled up, his body going limp.
‘Hold him,’ Archer panted, swinging back and lining up another shot.
Eva’s eyes were still screwed shut but she was clinging on desperately, both of them knowing they couldn’t afford to let this guy go.
The last blow was a brutal heel to the eye socket, Archer’s boot smashing the orbital bone as the head was snapped sideways.
The leader was completely out now and Eva could no longer hold his dead weight, letting him drop to the floor in a heap.
Eva let loose a burst of anger and pain that contained every German swear word Archer knew and many he didn’t. He took a moment to catch his breath. She was bleeding from a cut below the left eye, and her pants were darkened and torn in at least two places on the right leg.
Archer could feel blood still running down his face and a stinging across the side of his left thigh where he guessed he’d been cut. No time to worry about that just now; they were still alive and still in danger.
He eyed the ceiling above him. He doubted he’d be able to disengage himself from the pulley’s karabiner from below, which left only one option. Thanking a lifetime of fitness training, Archer worked himself into a swing, throwing his weight back and forth until he was almost hitting the wall behind him. His feet brushed the ceiling on the upswing and he flung himself back again, using his legs for momentum and arcing upwards.
One boot went through the brittle ceiling panel then another and he fell backwards, his shoulders feeling like they were going to tear free. The next swing was weaker and he quickly worked himself into a rhythm of one low swing to build momentum followed by one good swing that allowed him to break away more of the ceiling.
The floor was soon littered with broken pieces of rotten ply and Archer was coated in sweat, his arms, shoulders, core and lungs all screaming at him. But after a minute or so a beam was exposed, close enough for him to be able to hook a foot over with any luck. His first attempt was just an inch too low and he took another couple of swings to get refocussed and go hard at it.
He got his left foot up to the ceiling, through it, and felt his ankle catch over the beam. He pulled, his entire body working at holding on, knowing that he couldn’t keep trying all day. This was it. The clarity he’d gained earlier had never left; if he failed, they died.
He strained at it, clawing his way up the rope towards the bolt at the top. He could see blood on his wrists now where the flexi-cuffs had broken the skin. He grasped the bolt and the karabiner with slippery hands, completely horizontal to the ground now. He thumbed open the gate on the karabiner, worked it around with his fingers until the plastic cuffs slid free, and dropped the karabiner again.
Archer unhooked his foot, let his body weight fall and dropped to the floor with a loud crash. He lay there for a few seconds, his body a mass of pain, before he realised the Afghani was stirring. He forced himself to his knees, shuffled forward to the chair, and pushed himself up.
The Afghani’s eyes were on him now, his face a blotchy red-blue, shallow breaths coming in rasping wheezes, as if he was breathing through a straw. The guy was making no effort to move, seemingly focussed solely on getting oxygen down a badly damaged throat.
Getting to his feet, Archer moved over to the leader, pausing to pick up the guy’s knife. He awkwardly sliced through his flexi cuffs before anything else, then bent over the Somalian terrorist and made to check for vital signs. The head lolled back loosely as soon as he touched it, hanging off a broken neck.
No need to check for a pulse on that one.
Archer moved over to the Afghani, picked up his Beretta M12, and slung it over his own shoulder. He worked the bolt, caught the ejected round and dropped the magazine. The action worked smoothly, so he replaced the top round and reloaded the weapon, chambering a round again and applying the safety.
Satisfied that he could now defend them, he shifted his attention to his partner.
Eva had opened her eyes by the time he got to her, and was breathing through clenched teeth, obviously in great pain. Archer wasted no time in releasing her pulley and lowering her to the ground where he quickly freed her. She collapsed to the floor, pressing her hands to the wounds on her legs.
Archer stripped the Afghani of his belt, checked him for other weapons, and used the belt as a tourniquet on Eva’s right thigh. He slit the pants leg open with the Somalian’s knife and inspected her wounds. The two slashes were both long and shallow, and the puncture wound itself was deeper and messy looking.
He ripped her pants leg and wadded it against the stab wound, pressing down firmly enough to make her cry out. He grabbed her hand and placed it over the makeshift dressing.
‘Keep it there,’ he said, ‘keep the pressure on. The other two are okay, they’ll just bleed a bit.’ He inspected the cut to her face, which was still trickling blood. ‘That’s not too bad, nothing a bit of plaster won’t fix up.’ He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘Just where we want them, eh?’
She grimaced. ‘You have a very strange sense of humour, Craig Archer.’
‘The good guys’ve always got to win,’ he told her, forcing himself to his feet. ‘It’s the rules.’
He made his way over to the leader’s dead body and frisked it. He came up with a burn phone, a set of keys and a Heckler and Koch USP 9mm semi auto. He checked the load – a full 15 rounds.
Archer pocketed the phone and keys and slid the pistol into his waistband. He crossed to the Afghani, slumped against the wall, wheezing like an old man with emphysema. His eyes followed Archer as he crouched down.
‘You speak English?’
The man gave the slightest shrug, so Archer switched to Farsi.
‘Name.’
The Afghani wheezed, his lips moving weakly but nothing coming out.
‘Where have they gone?’
Another tiny shrug. The guy’s eyes were losing focus and Archer knew he was on the way out.
‘Where have they gone?’ Archer demanded, giving the guy a shake. ‘What’s their target?’
The Afghani’s eyes rolled and his head slumped to the side. The wheezing stopped. Archer checked his pockets, finding another burn phone and a crumpled packet of cheap Turkish cigarettes. A vicious-looking flick knife was tucked into the guy’s sock.
‘Fuck it,’ Archer muttered, straightening up. He moved back over to Eva and rechecked her wounds. The bleeding was easing back but she definitely needed stitches and proper medical attention. If she carried on bleeding she would end up in shock and could die.
He crab-walked over to the dead leader and used the knife to cut his shirt to pieces. He wadded some into makeshift dressings and tied them over Eva’s cuts.
‘We need to move.’ He helped her to her feet and they made their way past Jessika’s discarded corpse to the front door they had originally been dragged through.
Archer was about to open it when they heard the sound of a car approaching. He quickly checked the window to the side of the door. A white panel van was pulling up outside the house.
‘Shit!’ he growled. He grabbed Eva by the arm and hustled her into a side room off the entranceway. There was a dirty-looking sleeping bag on the floor and an open bag of clothes. Obviously somebody had been staying there; presumably whoever had just arrived back.
‘Stay down and out of sight.’
He moved quietly back to the door and waited, the Beretta in his hands. He heard at least two voices as the door began to open.
Chapter 32
The first man through the door had his head down and was chuckling at something the guy behind him had said. He walked into the hallway oblivious to the impending threat, and Archer let him keep coming.
The second guy was mid-sentence when Archer appeared in the doorway, the Beretta submachine gun braced against his hip, and the guy’s jaw dropped open.
> Both men were Middle Eastern of some sort, with tidy short beards and curly hair. They were in casual jackets and jeans and looked like students, aside from the pistol in each of their waistbands.
Archer wasted no time with niceties.
The stubby chopper snarled out a short burst, rounds ripping into the torso of the closest man. He let out a grunt and crashed into the wall, clutching at his shredded gut.
The second guy reacted quickly, scrambling backwards while he ripped his pistol free and unleashed a fast shot in Archer’s general direction.
Archer’s second burst was wide as the guy reached the door, throwing another wild shot behind him as he shouted a warning to someone unseen to Archer. Archer unleashed a third burst and nailed him in the back and side as the guy turned to run. The rounds threw him sideways to the ground and he triggered another wild shot as he fell.
Archer went after him, realising there was a third guy there when the van started up. The guy on the ground was trying to crawl away, his pistol still in his hand, dragging himself with his other arm. The van was starting to back up and he saw a glint of sunlight as the driver’s window was lowered.
He hunched over and sent a short burst towards the van then swivelled and put another into the lower body of the guy on the ground, raking his legs and lower back with several rounds. The guy screamed and bucked, and Archer booted his weapon away as he moved past, eyes on the van.
The driver had his arm out the window with a pistol, throwing shots all over the place as he tried to reverse at speed.
Archer put a burst into the front grille of the van as he moved fast across the gravel turning area, careful to maintain his footing. There were overgrown empty paddocks on both sides and a road about a hundred metres distant. The driveway was gravel and dirt and bordered by spindly trees and scrub.