Scarred Horizon (Scarred Series Book 4)

by Jackie Williams

  Scarred Horizon

  By

  Jackie Williams

  Front Cover Photography

  by

  Natalie Williams

  &

  Cloverleaf Design

  Copyright © 2013 Jackie Williams

  All rights reserved.

  All rights are reserved. This book may not be copied, used or loaned in whole or in part by any means whatsoever without the prior written consent of the author.

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are the products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  The man was incredibly handsome. His features were hard but there was no denying it. His clear blue eyes stared out over the court room and his stubble-shaded chin jutted proudly. His broad shoulders were held back stiffly inside his wrinkled jacket and his huge chest filled out his tatty shirt even though his cheeks looked slightly sunken.

  His military bearing was unmistakable even though his clothes told a tale of better times.

  The silence in the room deepened and for a moment he wondered if he was meant to say something but then he turned his head as the judge suddenly cleared his throat. The authoritative voice sounded even louder in the echoing chamber.

  “You attacked an innocent bystander, a man who had come to this country in fear of his life. Your behaviour was appalling! For a man of your previous position and supposed intelligence, I can scarce believe it. It’s not his fault you are homeless and the accusation you have laid as your defence is utterly contemptible. You have been offered sheltered accommodation on three separate occasions. Sleeping in people’s sheds and summer houses is not an acceptable alternative. And attacking innocent members of the public just because you think they had something to do with your current position is completely outrageous. For goodness’ sake man, you can’t even see him to identify him.” The judge breathed in and out heavily in obvious exasperation. “In view of how you have served your country and because you confessed your guilt to the charges I am prepared to give you one last chance but before I consider alternatives to imprisonment, are you going to give me a reasonable explanation or am I going to have to take action that I really don’t want to?”

  Paul’s expression hardened. He turned his head back to the court room. Explanation? What was there to explain? He wasn’t even going to try to tell this judge again. His defence lawyer had done it already. Not that he had been of any help in the case. He clearly hadn’t believed that Paul’s hatred of the man could possibly have stemmed from what had occurred over six years previously.

  He was blind. His sight ripped away from him while on active service in Afghanistan. A mission of mercy that had gone to shit within minutes and had affected his every waking and a good few of his sleeping moments ever since.

  The experimental bionic eyes that had given him minimal sight for the last five years no longer worked with his weakened optic nerves. His ten years of service were up and due to his rapidly deteriorating sight he had failed his last physical. Even though he had passed every single other test they had thrown at him he had been chucked out of the army.

  He had thought that finding work would be a simple task. He had a brilliant and decorated career. His record sheet was spotless until he had been dumped on civvy street. He knew he was going to be in for a hard time the moment he stepped through the door of the job centre. For weeks he had turned up every day looking for work but most of the time the jobs were not advertised in braille and he had to stand in a long queue of people waiting for someone who could help him.

  The people helping him were as difficult to get past as the original advertisements. They flicked through their books of vacant positions sighing and pondering while they decided for him what sort of jobs he should consider. They didn’t even bother to let him know about most of them as they selected positions for him, treating him as if he was fragile, as though he would shatter if he did more than lift a finger. Of the one or two interviews he attended it was clear that those companies were only filling their quotas of disabled people. None of them were serious jobs and all were low paid with no hope of promotion. He couldn’t even pay for his flat with the money he would make. It was very frustrating but worse was to come.

  His landlord threw him out when he was just a month late on his rent. With nothing coming in he had been reduced to living on benefits but the social services didn’t agree that his flat was a suitable place for someone in his position to be living in and they stopped making any payments. He had come home one evening to find his scant belongings thrown into the stair well and the locks on his door changed. He had managed to find a cheap hostel for that night and everything still might have worked out okay if he hadn’t gone back to the job centre the very next day.

  Daily, for nearly eight years Paul had cursed the warlord who had captured him and killed his two teammates while they were handing out aid in a small Afghan village. As part of the army’s peacekeeping work it was his job to rebuild towns and help the people, and these people had certainly needed help. Paul and his two friends had been shocked at the depth of poverty. The people were starving but as there were so few of them they had only raced back to their operations base, filled the small armoured car and had set off again immediately to get the job done quickly.

  The trap had closed in on them fast. Steve had been shot in the head and died instantly but Adrian hadn’t been quite so lucky. He had lingered in agony for a few minutes as his blood pumped out of the deep wound to his throat. In his mind Paul could still see the dark stain of blood soaking into the barren sandy soil beneath his teammate’s body. Paul had only survived because one of the bandits had an appallingly bad aim. The fool hadn’t missed his target completely but had shot straight through Paul’s gun leaving him practically defenceless.

  He had still thought he might be able to make a getaway until he felt the hot air behind him move unnaturally. The heavy whack on the back of his neck had come as a complete surprise. He had thought himself in a group of only bent old men, wrinkled elderly ladies, shy young women and a few curious children but it seemed that two of the shy young women were in reality fresh-faced young men.

  He had dropped to his knees as the blow caught him off guard, his head spinning with a numb pain while stars sprinkled his vision and it was suddenly all over. He knew his commanding officer would eventually send someone to discover the fate of his team but his final thought before darkness closed in on him was that any help was going to arrive way too late.

  He had woken as the setting sun glinted through gaps in weathered shutters and found himself strapped to a wooden board inside what obviously passed as one of the rough-hewn village houses. He had tried to move but quickly discovered that along with standard handcuffs, tightly bound razor wire held his wrists and ankles firmly to the board and the more he fought the bonds the more deeply the wire sliced into his flesh.

  For the best part of two days a heavily bearded man had leaned over him and grinned insanely, displaying condemned housing teeth and blowing out noxious, tobacco breath as he slowly dripped battery acid into Paul’s eyes in his quest for information about the arms on the base. He could remember acutely the agonizing pain as the odious man had laughed in his face while he questioned Paul about their plans to derail the drugs routes but the terrible realization that his vile captor would be the last thing he would ever see was an even bitterer pill to swallow. He still hadn’t talked. There was no way he could set up his team mates as potential future targets.

  The daring rescue had come only a few hours after his world
had turned permanently black. His commanding officer had carried him out of the blown up house still strapped to the wooden board and had immediately taken him to the field hospital where doctors dosed him with sedatives while they cut him from his bonds, bandaged his eyes and sent him home for emergency treatment.

  Three weeks later, with some brilliant plastic surgery repairing his tattered eyelids and the deep, acid-burned furrows at the corners of his eyes with hardly a scar remaining, his only real problem was his lack of sight.

  The bionic eyes were all part of an army experiment, one which he had been glad to be part of and for five years he had been able to see to a certain, if grainy, degree. A minute camera sent an image directly from his false eyes via his still functioning optic nerves into his brain, giving him a two dimensional, monochrome version of the world around him.

  Deployment on the front line was impossible but there were plenty of other jobs on offer. He had worked with the canine teams for a start, a job he had loved but his brilliant brain was wasted and he had swiftly moved on to intelligence and interrogation. Being fluent in several languages was a huge advantage and his lack of clear vision made him use his other four senses to the maximum. He could practically smell when someone was lying.

  That his bionic eyes were not functioning perfectly began as a small inconvenience that he had noticed almost two years previously but the images soon became even more blurred and it wasn’t long before he was struggling to recognize faces. He knew all of his team mates by their size and shape as much as their appearance but those he saw less often were soon impossible to discern. In desperation he learned the layout of his office and barracks like the back of his hand, pacing every nook and cranny out in an attempt to hold off the inevitable, but he couldn’t fool the medical officer at his last annual check-up.

  Standing in the queue at the job centre, his hated white cane folded into the inside pocket of his coat, the sound of Samadi, the vile Afghan drug baron and torturer was the last person he had ever thought he would hear ever again. His team had informed him that they had blown the bastard up when they had eventually arrived to rescue him. After controlling his initial shock at hearing the man apparently alive and well a black rage had suddenly swept over his whole being as he heard him demand benefits, demand a house, demand that his family be allowed into the country.

  The cold sweat of loathing beaded on his brow and the hatred seeping from every pore in his being had become too much to ignore. He couldn’t hold himself back. With a cry of utter fury he had leapt on the warlord, smashed his face into the desk in front of him then pulled him back with his forearm locked around the surprised terrorist’s neck. The man had taken in a last deep breath as Paul tightened his hold and he knew that he would have strangled the fiend if several other men in the job centre hadn’t tackled him to the ground.

  He sighed deeply and turned his head back to the judge.

  Yes, technically he was handicapped but the housing places offered to him were more like institutions for some very unfortunate people. He was highly intelligent as well as being a trained killer. There was no way he could be classed in the same manner but the system didn’t seem to have facilities for any middle ground.

  His compensation for his injuries had run out when he was first blinded, years previously and the wages he had managed to save when he realized that his luck was running out had dwindled quickly as the never ending stream of bills had begun piling up.

  The assault charges were something else entirely. That the court didn’t believe his assertion that the man was a terrorist was irrelevant to him. He knew that he had made the correct identification. After all, the man’s loathsome voice had been literally burned into his brain. Paul was absolutely guilty of assault and he’d been lucky to avoid an attempted murder charge but he thought the circumstances were more than just. He didn’t want to think what the judge was going to do though. Probably lock him up in maximum security knowing his luck. He took a deep breath and spoke bitterly.

  “I have nothing to say about the assault charges. I confessed immediately. I have nothing more to add.” He took a deep breath, tamping down the urge to leap over the barrier in front of him and strangle the man who he knew sat somewhere in court stroking his vile beard while sneering and smirking at him through nicotine stained teeth from less than twenty feet away. “As to the other charges, I don’t want to live on the streets but I can’t stay in the places I have been offered. I’m not disabled and I’m certainly not mentally impaired or incapable. I just want a job and my own home. Everyone else seems to be able to get their own flat, including pigs like Samadi so why not me?” The bitterness in his tone was unmistakable.

  The judge sighed deeply and then spoke slowly as though he was explaining to a very young child.

  “I doubt the relevance of where you may or may not find a bed right at this very moment as in view of your lack of proper explanation, I am seriously considering a custodial sentence. There are several aspects of this case that are disturbing me, most noticeable of all is your refusal to accept your lack of vision. Of course you are disabled and I am beginning to wonder about your state of mind if you can’t accept that simple fact. As to your being independent enough to maintain any kind of lifestyle in your own accommodation, well I’m afraid that you have been assessed as being a possible danger to yourself and clearly to others as well if you go about attacking innocent members of the public at random. Your social services team don’t appear to be nearly as sure of your capabilities as you do and I am afraid that at this point in time I can only agree with them. The places that you have been offered all come with a superintendent and features suitable for a man with your needs. ”

  Paul ground his teeth together furiously and waited patiently. He was as tough as old boots, as strong as an ox and his brain function was perfect. He couldn’t be bothered to even try and explain further. He just wanted to get out of the court room and back on the road. If he could only avoid being banged up he would leave the area and find somewhere else to live and work. As to the terrorist in front of him, well, eight years was a long time. He could wait a little longer to wreak his revenge.

  There was a sudden shuffling sound at the back of the room as people at the rear of the court suddenly set up a small commotion. The judge lifted his head irritably and spoke angrily.

  “What is it? We are in the middle of a session. Get out immediately.”

  Whoever had entered the courtroom ignored the judge’s instructions and Paul suddenly recognized the heavy, familiar footsteps as they marched slightly lopsidedly, nearer to the bench. There were one or two gasps from the people seated in the public gallery and Paul sank lower in his chair. He raised his hands to cover his face in a forlorn hope that he wouldn’t be recognized but it was way too late for that.

  “Shit,” he groaned under his breath as the footsteps suddenly stopped right in front of him. He lifted his chin and waited for the onslaught.

  A deep voice ground out from between clenched teeth.

  “Yes, ‘shit’ is just about what I expected you to say, you stubborn arse. Why the hell didn’t you tell us you were in trouble? David is going mad with worry since we heard. He would have come over himself if Geraldine hadn’t been about to give birth again.” The man’s voice was low and the judge interrupted quickly.

  “Who are you? Get away from the prisoner. He has been found guilty of assault and I am about to pass sentence. If you do not leave immediately I will call security.”

  The heavy footsteps moved away from Paul and towards the judge but he lifted his head quizzically. There was a delicate perfume in the air, something he thought that he recognized. He sniffed appreciatively and then wondered what on earth his friend had been thinking of, wearing a ladies fragrance. He held back a laugh. Maybe Patrick had picked up Ellen’s perfume by mistake though Paul didn’t really think that for one moment. The big man was so besotted with his wife that he had probably sploshed the blasted stuff all over himself deli
berately just to remind himself of her while he was away.

  The air stirred, the delicate fragrance wafting across him again and he turned his head to sniff suspiciously at what should have been an empty space beside him. Someone stood next to him after all, breathing very quietly. Almonds, a hint of jasmine and something that smelled like a summer day hit every one of his senses. He guessed at a woman purely on the scent and the shallowness of her quiet breaths and he wondered why she didn’t make herself known to him. He could feel the tension in her stance and for a moment he reasoned that she was waiting for him to acknowledge her presence but then she stopped breathing altogether. She was clearly very nervous. He could feel it, could sense her quiet study of him and he waited for her to do something, anything to gain his attention. She didn’t. She stood quietly waiting for the man she had arrived with.

  Paul sat back in his chair as he heard Patrick speaking in low tones to the judge. There was a muted conversation, some shuffling of papers and then both Patrick and the judge left the courtroom for a few minutes. On their return the judge cleared his throat before he spoke again.

  “It seems that you have friends in high places young man but mark my words, you are on your one and only chance here and believe me I wouldn’t be offering it if your previous service record hadn’t been exemplary. If you do not accept this opportunity that I am about to give you then I am afraid a custodial sentence will have to be considered. Are you willing to agree to my alternative recommendation?”

  Paul frowned in the general direction of the judge and for just a few seconds seriously thought he might decline the offer but there was a sudden waft of the delicate perfume again and then a deep growl from the man who had arrived with the woman. This wasn’t the time to argue with Patrick and Paul changed his mind quickly. He nodded once and then let out a huge breath of air as he waited to hear his fate.