by Robert White
Mitch made for the door. “We need to search the pub, to be certain of that, Sir.”
Rick knelt down and picked up a small pipe from amongst the pebbles of glass. Then he took two paces and collected a brass Zippo lighter, another two paces found a small bag of tobacco.
We all took in his silence.
“They’ve taken him,” he said.
Somewhere close by an engine fired and was revved hard. Seconds later, from the narrow alleyway at the rear of the Prince, a dark blue Transit van powered out onto the road and slewed left, back the way we had come.
“Go,” shouted Rick.
I threw myself across the back seats, Mitch drove with Rick as his front passenger. The big Audi wouldn’t turn so easily in the narrow streets full of parked cars and Mitch was forced to complete a box manoeuvre and follow the exact course that the van had taken.
By the time we’d exited the alley, it was out of sight.
Mitch steadied the car, and we all peered left and right down each sideroad and crossroads in the hope of catching a glimpse of the van.
Less than a minute later, we saw them. Off to our left, three vehicles in front.
“Not too close,” warned Rick, as Mitch pushed the Audi along at a pace.
The American eased off and we followed at a discreet distance. Minutes later, the van took the slip road and joined the M67.
Des Cogan’s Story:
“Yusef, I want to know if this Audi is a tail.”
Al-Mufti was looking out of the rear windows of the van and shouting to his driver. A car had obviously been with us a while.
I was sitting on the floor of the loading area, knees up against my chest, facing the doors, too low down to see what the Arab was looking at. All I hoped was that the offending Audi was Lauren’s RS6, and help was at hand.
My wrists were still bound, but I’d worked at my restraints constantly. There was the merest movement in the bindings and I could now feel my hands, but I’d caused myself a great deal of pain in the process.
Al-Mufti sat atop the internal wheel arch and peered out at the suspect car.
The moment we had been thrown into the van, Maggie had regained her mettle, and began giving the Arab trouble. She had tried to kick out at him. He had dealt with her disobedience with frightening viciousness, punching her repeatedly in the face. Maggie now lay on her side just feet from me, her nose broken and bleeding. She gave me the occasional frightened glance, but stayed quiet.
I stuck to the training I had been given; playing the beaten man, head down, silent, waiting for any opportunity to escape.
“Faster!” shouted Al-Mufti to his driver. “I said I wanted to know if this fool was following. Go…go now.”
I heard the engine note change and the van begin to accelerate We were rocked around in the back as the vehicle reached the limit of its power.
Al-Mufti looked out again, then turned to me, that feverish smile back on his face. “I think we have your friends behind us. I knew they would follow you. I knew they would not stop until they found you.”
I wanted to smash him to a pulp.
He picked up his MP5. “Maybe I will shoot them from here. What do you think, Desmond?”
I looked at the floor and did my best to play the downtrodden prisoner. If Rick had any sense, he’d stay back, over a hundred metres away at least. If that was the case, then the Mp5 wouldn’t be much use, especially firing from a van that seemed intent on drifting from lane to lane at a terrifying rate of knots.
Al-Mufti seemed to lose interest in the car for a moment. “Look at me, Desmond.”
I slowly raised my head.
He examined me quizzically. Head cocked, those black eyes of his like shimmering empty sockets. “You hate me, don’t you, Cogan?”
“I don’t hate anyone.” I said quietly. “I’m just doing my job.”
He pointed the MP5. “The job of an infidel mercenary. A hired gun.”
I tried to play down any hint of my military past that could enrage him further.
“More like a private detective. It’s been a long time since the army.”
“Ah, a detective, looking for Todd Blackman’s killer?”
“That’s right.”
Al-Mufti grasped what looked like two charms that dangled around his neck. He touched them like a nun would a crucifix. I couldn’t make out exactly what they were.
Then, proudly, he held them out for me to see. They were two nails, hanging from a chain.
“So now you have found him. Your job is over.”
“You crucified him?”
“Yes, isn’t religion a wonderful thing?”
“And you kept the nails from his feet?”
“Not that ghoulish, if you know your history.”
I just shook my head.
“You think I’m some kind of animal, a heathen, don’t you?”
“I think you are a hypocrite. You kill a young man because you want to show the world his sexuality, and yet you are gay yourself.”
It was a stupid thing to say. I should’ve just stayed quiet as I’d been trained to do, played dumb.
Al-Mufti flew into a rage. He leaned forward and smashed the butt of his MP5 into my skull. My vision blurred and I felt instantly sick. Blood poured down the side of my face.
I lolled forward, only my knees keeping me from falling face down on the floor of the van.
Al-Mufti lifted my head by my hair and spat in my face.
“Liar!” he bawled. “Infidel! Liar!”
“Sorry, “I mumbled, falling back into the character I should have never strayed from.
We were off the motorway, yet scarily didn’t appear to have slowed down. We seemed to be climbing too, and there was a definite lack of streetlights. From what I’d seen and from my internal sense of direction, we were crossing the Pennines, heading over the Woodhead Pass.
The last thing we needed was a quiet moorland road for Al-Mufti to dispose of us on.
He wasn’t finished with the rhetoric.
“How long were you in the SAS?” he asked.
“I was in the army.”
He sneered at me. “Don’t make me hurt you again, Desmond. What is the point in suffering for something that we both know to be true?”
I looked at the floor and watched my blood drip onto my jeans.
The Arab looked out of the rear window again and spoke to the glass.
“22 SAS to be precise, Mr Cogan. Part of their counter terrorism unit.”
He turned to me again. “One of the men following us in that white Audi, is another Special Air Service trooper eh?... your best friend. Richard Edward Fuller.” He grinned, “I speak the truth, yes?”
I played the game. “I can’t see from here, sorry.”
Al-Mufti ignored my act.
“He was your Corporal, remember? Back in November 1987? Libya… a small town called Tiji? Am I ringing bells, Mr Cogan? You came to assassinate me and my family. Instead, you killed over thirty of my father’s men, wounded many more and ruined his business.”
He smiled again, and I wanted to knock out every tooth in his mouth.
Instead, I let my head fall.
Al-Mufti was on a fucking roll.
“You lost a man on that day. Do you recall his name?”
I shook my head without looking up.
“No? Well, he remembered yours. He remembered it all too well. He gave you up as my father nailed his wrists to that post outside our house.”
He leaned closer to me. So close I could feel his breath.
“Oh, how he screamed your name, Desmond, before we gutted him like a plump trout. Come on… say your dead friend’s name for me. It begins with the letter ‘F’ if that helps.”
I looked up into the Arab’s face. He was really enjoying h
imself.
“Frankie Green.”
“Yes… at last, you recall… excellent. You see, even though I was only nine at the time, I remember Frankie well. He had a wife and children you know? Three kids, wasn’t it? How he cried for those babies, Desmond. He called their names as I drove the nails into his feet. It took me ages, I was so young and inexperienced you see? Not so good with a hammer.”
He sniggered. “I made a bit of a mess of it.”
He leaned forward again and held the pair of nails that dangled around his neck.
“Oh, silly me, Desmond. I’ve led you up the garden path, haven’t I? I’ve led you to believe that these were Todd’s nails.”
He shook his head theatrically. “No. I’ve saved those, so we can send them to his disgusting excuse for a father. No, these are Freddy’s nails. My father made me pull these from your dead friend’s feet as he rotted on that post. I was nearly sick with the stench, Desmond, but I did it. My father put them on his necklace for me to wear as a constant reminder. ‘Never forget what the infidels have done to us’” he said. “‘And never forgive.’”
Al-Mufti rummaged behind him and pulled out a bag. It was about the size of a supermarket carrier, but was made of a purple material and I remembered that the forensics guys at Todd’s murder scene had recovered some similarly coloured fibres.
“Your nails are in here,” he said. “Yours and Mr Fuller’s… Father was insistent that you suffer the same fate as your friend Freddy.”
He narrowed his gaze.
“And I was only too happy to oblige him.”
I caught Maggie’s eye. She was crying again. I didn’t react. The last thing I needed was to give Al-Mufti more psychological ammunition to fire at me. Somehow, he still picked up the vibe.
“Aww, and we spoiled your nice romantic interlude too, didn’t we? How long have you two been lovers?”
I had been trained to deny relationships, friendships, even knowledge of another person if we could. If your captor, or interrogator, could find a way to get to you through another, it weakened your position.
“We’re not lovers.” I said softly. “I called into the pub for a beer and was helping clear up the mess after the windows were broken.”
Al-Mufti looked out of the back window again. I could see the flash of headlights on his face. The RS6 must have been gaining.
“Speed up,” he shouted to the driver, even though we were bouncing along at a fair lick.
He turned again. “Not lovers you say?”
I shook my head.
The van was on a downhill section and the engine was screaming as it revved over its maximum.
“Faster!” shouted the Arab.
“Inshallah,” the driver replied as he fought to keep the van steady.
“Definitely not lovers you say, Desmond?”
I kept up the pretence. “We’ve just met tonight, I told you, we…”
Al-Mufti suddenly grabbed at a handle and kicked the rear doors open with a bang. The sudden rush of air into the load area buffeted us. It almost knocked the Arab off his feet, his jacket billowing in the wind. Undeterred, he grabbed Maggie and dragged her towards the opening.
We were travelling at over seventy miles an hour. I could see the RS6 on our tail. Whoever was driving must have seen the doors open, thought Al-Mufti was about to open up with his H and K, and hit the brakes. I saw the nose of the car dip and the car back off that precious hundred metres of so.
Al-Mufti grappled with Maggie, dragging her to a sitting position.
“Don’t” I shouted over the rushing wind. “Please… Al-Mufti. There’s no need to hurt her. It’s me you want.”
The Arab looked into my eyes and flashed me that wicked smile. “You hate me now, don’t you Desmond?”
Then he pushed Maggie out.
Rick Fuller’s Story:
The Transit had been struggling as it climbed towards Woodhead, but as we began our decent, it picked up speed, rocking dangerously as it went over and above its handling capabilities.
When the back doors flew open, we all ducked instinctively, waiting for the onslaught of gunfire from the occupants. But it didn’t come.
Instead, a woman’s body was thrown out into the carriageway.
It hit the floor like a grotesque rag doll thrown from a speeding pram by a petulant child.
We were doing just over seventy miles an hour. That’s one hundred and two feet per second. By the time, we had realised we weren’t being fired on and raised our heads, the RS6 had travelled two hundred and fifty feet.
The body was bouncing along the tarmac directly in our path. Mitch did his best, but we were way too close.
The Audi slammed into what, by now, could only have been a corpse, as it was in mid-air. It clipped the top of the bonnet and spun. There was a sickening slap as it struck the windscreen directly in front of me.
It was like hitting a brick wall.
Miraculously, although badly cracked, the screen held, but the force of the impact caused Mitch to lose control and the car to slew to the right.
The American fought with the wheel, but even the tremendous technical prowess of the RS6 and the skill of the drive, couldn’t keep the car on the road.
We hit the opposing kerb and the car was instantly airborne.
I ducked down and waited for the inevitable. We must have ploughed through a fence and bounced along for a while, but somehow, Mitch kept the car upright.
Finally, we came to a halt.
“Everyone okay?” shouted Mitch.
Lauren didn’t answer, she was out of the back doors and sprinting towards the body. Mitch and I followed.
She knelt by the mangled mass of arms and legs. Checked for vitals, looked up and shook her head.
I turned to see the van’s tail lights disappearing down the hill.
Des Cogan’s Story:
Al-Mufti steadied himself, stretched out a long arm and pulled the rear doors closed.
Satisfied that the threat from the RS6 was now long behind us, the window no longer held his interest and he turned his attention solely on yours truly.
“You think you are in pain now, don’t you, Cogan?”
I didn’t imagine I would ever be able to close my eyes again without seeing Maggie’s broken body bouncing along that lonely stretch of road, crashing into the Audi and disappearing into the night. If that was what the bastard meant by my pain. He was on the money.
I was physically hurting.
My stomach lurched, my throat burned.
I raised my head.
“You’re going to shoot me,” I said.
Al-Mufti turned down his mouth and shook his head. He picked up the purple velvet bag and waved it in front of my face.
“No, Desmond. That is not an option. Too quick, too clean, too obvious.”
I struggled against my ties, but there wasn’t enough play to release my hands.
An all consuming smothering sense of loss overwhelmed me. Yet somehow it was physical, and I was beyond emotion. I was already dead inside. The Arab had taken something from me, something precious, something intrinsically good.
I stared into his lifeless eyes.
“Why do they call you the Dragon?” I asked.
He shrugged, smug, arrogant. “Maybe I breathe fire.”
“Maybe you are full of shit.”
The smile left his face. “I will enjoy cutting you open, Cogan.”
I shook my head. “I told you. That isn’t going to happen. You’re going to shoot me.”
Al-Mufti’s eyes widened. “You will pray for a bullet, Desmond. You will beg for the end, just like Freddy, just like Todd.”
Fucking no chance.
I pushed both my heels under my backside and, using all my strength, threw my body forwards towards him. He was off
guard and off balance. I caught him under the chin with the top of my skull. It felt like I’d been hit on the head with a lump hammer. I heard him grunt and he fell backwards against the rear doors with me on top of him, bleeding like a stuck pig.
I rolled to my left. Using my body to pin his right arm to the deck, preventing him from lifting the H and K upward into a firing position.
He twisted under me, screaming in Arabic, face contorted, eyes cruel. I had no way of defending myself for long and he knew it. He brought up his left fist and punched me in the side of my head, once, twice. There was no weight behind the blows as he didn’t have the angle or purchase, but they rattled my teeth and sent stars floating in my vision.
He was desperately trying to lift the MP5.
I raised my head and butted him in the face, my jaws snapping at him like a rabid terrier, hoping to lock on his nose.
He caught me with a bigger punch and I was instantly dizzy and uncoordinated.
A moment later. the H and K was free and I could barely focus on it.
I rolled again in a vain attempt to smother the weapon.
As I dropped onto the gun, he fired.
The machine pistol was set to fully automatic, 900 rounds per minute equates to a thirty round mag every two seconds.
Dozens of red hot bullets clattered along the floor of the van, spitting sparks in all directions as they ricocheted about the load area. I felt the searing agony as I was hit in the arch of my left foot. The pain was shocking. I hadn’t much left, it was nearly all over. I raised my head again and drove it into Al-Mufti, unsure where I would connect. I thought I’d grazed his left eye, but my own kinetic energy meant my head carried on downward and I struck the floor of the van with a sickening thump.
Then all hell broke loose.
The speeding van took a sudden change in direction. The tyres squealed like pigs at slaughter. I heard the front passenger shouting at the driver. A split second later, we hit something hard and I was thrown forwards and upward. The back of my neck slammed into the roof of the van. With my hands still bound, I had no way to protect myself. Before I could think, there was an even bigger collision and we were rolling.
My bouncing body was thrown into the side of the load area and I felt something give in my shoulder. I brought my knees up to my chest and did my best to tuck my chin in.