by Rob Sinclair
Focused on the two men, he was surprised by a young woman emerging from the shadows of the wooden hut he was standing by. She jumped in shock and cupped her mouth with her hand when she saw Aydin standing right there, outside her makeshift home. He lifted a finger to his lips and together with his pleading look managed to avert a shout or scream from her, but the look of panic in her eyes remained.
‘What are you doing?’ she whispered in Arabic, perhaps sensing the need to not raise the alarm. Her accent suggested she was from Syria, as many of the refugees undoubtedly were.
Aydin indicated the two men with his head. The woman understood. He quickly figured she wasn’t a new arrival at the Jungle; her home was too sturdy – comparatively speaking – and the look she gave told him she not only knew the two men, but disliked them just as much as he already did.
‘If they catch you spying––’
He cut her off by holding his hand up.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘You just carry on. I’ll be gone by the time you get back and you’ll never see me again.’
She looked uncertain about that, though he wasn’t sure about which part exactly. After a couple of seconds she moved away, edgily. He turned his head and watched her walking over to one of the groups of people by a fire that was on its last legs, with more smoke than flames. She didn’t look over at him at all – either she was doing her bit to not alert the brutes, or she’d simply already put him out of her mind now that she was back in the safety of her group.
When Aydin turned back he saw the two gangsters were walking away. After waiting a few seconds he followed, hugging the shadows like he was simply part of the darkness. They were soon out of the main Jungle, past the living spaces, just grass and mud as they headed across undulating fields, moving closer to the main road once again.
As Aydin came over the top of a small hill, he peered down into the darkness below. Further away the area was clearly lit up by the lights of the road, but for now the men had disappeared into a crevice between the tarmac and where Aydin was standing and he couldn’t see them at all. He kept moving forward, heading into the blackness behind them, moving cautiously as if he might stumble upon them at any second. Then the clouds above parted, spitting out faint moonlight. Enough for him to understand what he was staring at.
He stopped. He counted twenty-one heads, mostly men, sat or hunched in a group on the soggy ground in front of him. He saw the two gangsters, on their feet, going around the group, one by one, taking the bundles of cash, flitting through the notes and stuffing them into their jackets. He wondered what the price was tonight. A few hundred euros perhaps. Maybe as much as a couple of thousand. He had nearly ten thousand in his backpack. Not that he was planning on paying these two.
Instead, he crouched down and continued spying the group, looking for a suitable candidate. He spotted two. Young men, sitting at either end of the group, far enough away from the others to show they had no one. They weren’t talking, weren’t looking at anyone else at all. They were loners. Nobody gave a shit about them.
Now all he needed was the opportunity.
He waited for several minutes. The shorter of the gangsters headed off towards the road, probably to wait for the lorry that would take these people to the cherished lands of England. After another ten minutes passed, one of the refugees got to his feet, spoke a few words to the tall gangster, and headed in Aydin’s direction.
Aydin remained absolutely still as the man came to within five yards of where he was crouching. The man was peering into the darkness all around but there was no indication at all that he knew Aydin was there. He unzipped his trousers and urinated on the ground. He was so perfectly positioned, but Aydin couldn’t take his place. He was certain the woman the man had been sitting next to was his friend, possibly his wife.
Nonetheless Aydin felt his tension rising. He wanted to be out of France by morning. No, he had to be. He needed to be part of that group, and as the man walked away Aydin realised he may have just lost his only opportunity.
Just then, though, as the man reached the group, one of the candidates Aydin had his eye on got to his feet. The tall gangster shouted angrily, but didn’t try to stop him moving away to relieve himself. The man headed off to the left and Aydin snaked round, following his movement until they were just a few yards apart. Aydin glanced around while the man did his business. They were out of sight from the group. He uttered a small prayer of thanks for his good fortune, and another to ask Allah to take care of the man. He wasn’t Aydin’s enemy. The man finished and went to zip up his fly. He didn’t sense Aydin at all as he sprang forward.
Aydin used the heel of his hand to smack down onto the base of the man’s neck – a pressure point of nerves that he knew would cause chaos through his central nervous system. His legs went from under him and Aydin caught his falling body and helped him down to the earth, laying him gently on his side. But his assistance was little to do with him caring for the man’s wellbeing; he simply couldn’t afford to make a sound.
He looked down at the man. He was a similar height and build to Aydin, and about his age. A little more facial hair, and a straighter, pointier nose perhaps, but it was the middle of the night and Aydin was sure those two gangsters thought every young man who looked even remotely like he was from the Arabian peninsula was indistinguishable.
The man’s trousers were dark, like Aydin’s, and he was wearing a hooded top. His, though, was much lighter-coloured than Aydin’s black one. He quickly stripped his own hoody off and put on the man’s. It fitted just fine.
The man was unconscious, but Aydin didn’t know for how long. He could easily kill him, to reduce his risks of detection, but he didn’t want to be that person. Yet he had to be certain that the man stayed on the ground. So he lifted his foot and drove his heel into the side of the guy’s head. Enough to punish his brain for a few minutes at least, but hopefully not enough to leave him with any lasting damage.
In the distance Aydin heard the hiss of powerful airbrakes. He quickly moved away and over at the roadside he saw the bright beams of light from an articulated lorry. Moments later the second gangster returned and started corralling the group of escapees into shape. Aydin reached the group just in time, fading into the masses, becoming just another anonymous shape in the eyes of the two men in charge.
They did a quick count of heads, not blinking an eye that Aydin was now standing there among the others, rather than the man he’d just left in the mud. But Aydin did feel eyes on him. He glanced to his right and caught the suspicious gaze of an ageing man with a thick wiry beard that must have been nearly white given the way the thin light reflected off it. Aydin held the old man’s stare and his eyes squinted further. Aydin got ready for a challenge. Would the man confront him? Or just go straight ahead and call him out to the gangsters?
Neither. A few seconds later he just looked away without saying anything at all.
The next moment the goons were marching the group towards the waiting lorry. Without further hitches, in a few hours Aydin would be back in his country of birth. England.
FIVE
Dover, England
Aydin spent most of the journey with his eyes closed, though he wasn’t sleeping. Partly he just didn’t want to interact with the group of immigrants that were with him. He wasn’t one of them, not really. The main reason for his unrest, though, was because he was thinking about Nilay and his mother. Thinking of his father too, in fact. Thinking about everything that had happened in his life, imagining the others and what they’d do to punish him now that he’d killed one of his own and broken away.
However unsettling and gruesome those thoughts were, he didn’t regret slitting Khaled’s throat, only that he’d done it without properly thinking through his next steps.
Regardless, he was certain that London had to be his first destination. Nilay’s death had catapulted him onto this course of destruction and he needed to find out what had happened to her and why.
There was little chatter among the group as they sat in the back of the lorry among boxes and pallets. Most of the men and women either slept or stared aimlessly into space for the journey. The trailer was dark and the air was thick with sweat and fear. The only light they had came from two finger-sized torches that a couple of the men had with them. The few people that Aydin saw with mobile phones back in Calais were ordered to turn them off before the lorry departed and they’d so far kept to that instruction.
Aydin listened to the sounds from outside, trying to decipher where they were on the journey. After the bobbing and swaying of the ferry ride, where one of the women violently vomited into one of the two buckets they’d been provided with for emergency toilet needs, came the most nerve-wracking part. UK Border Force.
With the ferry ride over, car and lorry engines fired up and Aydin could hear other vehicles moving past as they sat waiting, the look of anxiety on the faces of the people around him growing. It took close to half an hour before the lorry engine erupted into life and Aydin was already wondering whether there might be a problem. Finally they began to move, but he could tell from the vibrations and the sounds that the lorry was only crawling, and before long the engine shut down once more.
Aydin heard the driver’s door open and moments later muffled voices outside, just a yard or two from where he was sitting, though the sounds felt distant and removed.
He planned in his mind how he would get away if the boxes in front were peeled away and he was left staring into the faces of the UK Border Force. He had the gun in his trousers, his training and his wits, but that still might not be enough.
The look of worry on the faces of the other passengers grew further as they waited. Then the driver’s door opened and closed again, the engine growled to life, and the wheels began to turn. Moments later the lorry was speeding up and the heave of relief from the people around Aydin was almost overwhelming.
It wasn’t long before chatter grew among the group. Smiles broke out. The men and women probably felt like they’d finally made it, as though their trip through hell was finally over. This was it, a new life. Aydin wouldn’t break it to them that the chances were their ordeals had only just begun. Who or what awaited them when the lorry reached its destination and those boxes were pulled away, he really didn’t know, but he was sure it wasn’t paradise.
They drove for nearly an hour before the lorry once again stopped. The driver’s door opened. Aydin heard more voices. Then noises as the fabric sides of the lorry were drawn back. Light rays surged into the interior and Aydin had to shut his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them he saw the other men and women squinting, holding hands up to their faces. There was a wall of white light next to them, so bright Aydin couldn’t make out anything of what lay beyond. It reminded him of alien invasion movies he watched with his family as a boy in London. The moment where the spaceship landed and the doors opened and for a minute all that could be seen was light and smoke, before the alien life forms finally appeared.
There were no alien life forms here, though. What Aydin saw coming through the wall of light was much more sinister. White faces, with heavy, furrowed features. If not the actual brothers of the two gangsters in Calais, then certainly close relatives. There were four of them. They shouted at the group in English, though their accents were thick with rolled consonants. None of them appeared to be armed but they immediately instilled fear in the group, hauling people up, pushing and pulling and shoving.
The travellers cowered and did as they were told, filing out of the lorry one after another. Aydin played along, muttering pleadings to the men in Arabic. One of them shoved him in the back and he fell forward, over the edge of the lorry and to the tarmac below. He tried to roll into the fall, but was unable to stop his hip and elbow smacking onto the surface painfully. Before he could recover, another heavily muscled man lifted him back to his feet. He worried for a second that the man would feel the gun. Or maybe that the weapon had already come loose in the fall. What would the men’s reaction be if they realised Aydin was armed?
He took in the scene around him. The first thing he noticed was the green. Many years had passed since Aydin was last in England and he’d forgotten just how green it was. The grass, the hedgerows, the trees. They were surrounded by dense emerald colour. And the smell. A fragrant yet earthy scent that tickled his nose – a smell achingly familiar but one that he hadn’t ever thought about until then.
Aydin saw the lorry was parked on a pothole-covered lane, among farmers’ fields. Across the road were two battered and rusting white vans. Fords, he thought. He was shoved back into line, towards the vans where other grunts in jeans and leather jackets were hastily stashing the new arrivals. Just as Aydin expected, these poor people hadn’t just paid for their freedom at all. They’d been conned, and their nightmares had only just begun.
Aydin wouldn’t be part of whatever misery and slavery lay ahead for the others, and no matter how sorry he felt for them, he couldn’t and wouldn’t try to save all twenty of the people he’d travelled with. But he had to save himself.
He let the grunts move him towards the first of the vans as he scoped out the threats around him. He saw there was already a man in the driver’s seat of the van he was heading to. The side door was open. Three sorry faces peered out of the dark interior. Several other immigrants were waiting in line in front of him, soon to join them. He took another shove to the back.
Then leapt into action.
Aydin crouched and swivelled, using his instincts to tell him where the man who'd just shoved him was standing. His sweeping leg took away one of the man’s, sending the guy off balance. Aydin crashed his forearm down onto the man’s chest, aiding his trip to the blacktop below. He landed on the ground with a thump, and Aydin knew in that moment that for all his tough-guy bravado and muscle, he didn’t even have basic hand-to-hand combat training. Prone on the ground, he should have immediately brought his arms up to defend his head, neck. He didn’t. Aydin crashed his foot down onto the man’s windpipe. Unlike in Calais, he had no care of the extent of damage the blow would cause. There was a crunching sound and the man’s eyes bulged, but Aydin didn’t keep his sight on him for even a second longer to inspect the full damage – he needed to keep moving.
He darted for the man at the open side door of the van, who was shepherding travellers into the back. Aydin glanced left and right as he moved. The guy in front was quick to react and peeled from his position, an angry snarl on his face as he headed for Aydin. There were shouts and calls all around. Aydin half expected gunfire to ring out any second. In fact, he found himself reaching behind for his own weapon as he watched the hand of the man in front disappear behind his back. Yet it wasn’t a gun that he pulled, but a hunting knife. A six-inch serrated blade that Aydin knew could cause all sorts of damage to the soft tissue of a human body. As he was about to demonstrate.
Aydin left his gun where it was. There was no need for it yet. He didn’t have endless supplies of ammunition so the weapon was a last resort only.
The man shoved the blade towards Aydin, who shimmied sideways. Still moving forward, he grabbed the man’s forearm and twisted. He came up behind the man, still pulling on his arm, his hand close to the man’s wrist. When the pressure of the twist became too much, the man released the knife. Aydin let go of the wrist, grabbed the knife handle and plunged the blade into the man’s stomach. He let out a gurgling groan as Aydin withdrew the knife. Blood now covered his hand. He kicked the man away and he fell into a heap on the ground.
All around Aydin saw the other men coming forward for him. They were angry, and intent on doing him harm, but despite his inferior size there was already a wariness in their eyes, even after just a few seconds of fighting.
Aydin, panting from the rapid exertion of taking down the two big lumps, turned and slid shut the side door of the van, then stepped forward and flung open the driver’s door. The driver had figured out what was happening. He went for his knife, on t
he passenger seat. Aydin’s eyes locked with his. The driver lifted the knife, but in the confined space he was simply out-positioned. Before the guy could find an angle for a successful attack, Aydin simply grabbed him and roared as he hauled him out of the cab to the ground.
Aydin, his head on fire, was tempted to turn and take on everyone else coming his way. Pull the gun and blast them all down. The release of adrenaline he was experiencing made him feel powerful, almost invincible. Just how they trained him to be under pressure and in the fight.
But he stopped himself. Fighting, beating and punishing those goons wasn’t what he’d come to England for, however much they deserved it, and however good it would make him feel.
He realised it was time to draw his gun, though. As he did so, the sudden sight of the shiny black metal caused everyone honing in on him to reconsider their intentions. He let off a warning shot that cracked into the tarmac just a few inches from the toes of one of the men. He turned and fired off one more shot that caused the front tyre of the second van to explode. He wasn’t in the mood for a car chase.
Not wanting to waste any more bullets than he needed to, he slung his backpack inside then jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut just as one of the men rushed forward. Aydin pushed down the lock and the man charged into the door, shoulder first. He tried the handle then began angrily pounding on the glass as Aydin searched for the keys. They were in the ignition still. He turned the key and the engine grumbled to life. Another man was at the front of the van. He held his arms out and put his hands onto the bonnet as he glared defiantly at Aydin.
Their continued machoism surprised him. They’d seen the gun, they’d seen how Aydin fought, but they weren’t giving up. It didn’t worry him, but it did make him wonder just who they were, who they worked for.
He crunched the gearstick into reverse, released the handbrake and thumped on the accelerator. The van lurched back and crashed into the front of the second vehicle. He quickly shoved the gearstick into first. The man at the front remained, as though standing there might stop the getaway. Aydin pushed on the accelerator, just gently at first, giving the man one last chance to see sense.