Another three targets were in the grain store, with a further number in the tank. Intelligence had it that these were locals. Every time he thought he’d seen it all he went home and it surprised him.
A further two targets could be seen in an adjacent barn but they were losing heat fast and it wasn’t looking promising. Presumably these were the hostages the reports were coming in about after they’d intercepted the pick-up full of witnesses trying to make their escape.
The order went out for the marksmen to advance and Burke could see them now in his mind’s eye, heading in. It would be the first and last time this military base saw any action.
********************
Davie and Al sat in the tank unsure of what to do now. There was nothing like biting off more than you could chew. The cops were involved. The pissed off workers with the guns were pinned in the grain store and all they could do was fire a few rounds at the tank. First of all it had scared the hell out of them, and then it made them laugh but now they were probably up shit creek with the police turning up. This could take some explaining.
So they sat and waited, and then it dawned on them. Maybe no one knew this was a decommissioned tank. Maybe they had no idea that Al’s dad had bought it from a Russian scrap firm for buttons and rented it to stag dos for a small fortune. No. The boys must have been caught by the fuzz on the way out. They must have explained it surely.
He needed a better view of the situation, couldn’t see behind so he rotated the turret to get some kind of look. As the dangerous end of it came round to point at the outside of the barn he caught some movement. A guy dragging something. It looked like a person. It looked like Andy. This guy was dragging his seriously damaged friend with him.
He must have heard the squeal of the turrets motor and turned to see the gun facing him. The man stood for a second wondering what to do, totally oblivious to the fact he was looking down the barrel of a camouflaged painted broom handle. Then, as though unconcerned, he hoisted Andy onto his back and began limping away, confident his human shield was in place. He was headed for the airstrip.
33
The marksmen entered the complex via the broken down front entrance, splitting into two groups and continuing down opposite sides of the main road slowly.
They were directed by intel from above and knew to expect fire from the entrance of the main building on the far right. The tank in the doorway was not considered a threat, but the figure or figures moving away from it were.
The tank reversed at speed from the entrance without warning, leaving the targets inside in an open position. The three officers on the left side covered the entrance, taking turns to advance further round. The three on the opposite side advanced along the wall in the same direction trying to get a line of fire on the moving targets which were currently obscured by the now slow moving tank.
********************
“He’s headed this way again,” Edwards announced to whoever would listen.
They were now spread out more. Some officers provided a line of resistance along the perimeter of the airfield, unseen, while Edwards and his two minions, along with Burke and Jones, had taken shelter in the entrance to on old bomb shelter.
“He’s going to make a run for it with the hostage,” Burke said, almost to himself.
“Do you know where?” Edwards asked, pulling out a hastily downloaded map and aerial photos of the site.”
“I can’t be sure. He might just be brave enough or mental enough to walk right past us.” Burke looked towards the complex, checked his body armour was secure and shook his head. “Fuck it. I’m going in.” He grabbed a radio before anyone could protest and began moving along the edge of the runway bordering the breeze block wall. Edwards pursued him without much consideration. He had expected some kind of resistance. This was his shooting match after all. Not that he had much control right now. It was starting to look like a house party that had been advertised on facebook and exploded.
They reached the corner of the security wall and the bit he thought might be the hardest. As soon as his head went over the top he might be a goner. He was reminded of the final scene in Blackadder Goes Forth, where after months of trying to avoid it they have to go over the top. He hoped this would not be his final scene.
He looked behind. Edwards was there. Egging him on, notably not volunteering to go first.
He gritted his teeth, grabbed the top of the breezeblock wall with both hands and using all the force he had, pulled himself up and over the wall in one clean movement. He landed in a back alleyway formed by the rear of an old building and the new wall. He was wrong about the wall being the hardest bit. This was a dead end. Now they were sitting ducks. They ran along the alleyway looking for the other corner of the building and open space, but drew up short as they got there and shots rang out, making concrete dust of the wall in front of them.
They crouched down, hemmed in by the sudden action. They could still hear shots but the wall stopped exploding. The main sound now seemed to be the diesel engine that must belong to the tank.
********************
Davie watched in disbelief as the fat old guy dragged his friend towards the airstrip. What was he going to do? Walk right out there? Just leave? And then what would stop him? Either they would shoot him and he would shoot Andy or they would miss him and shoot Andy. It was a Mexican standoff. It was OJ getting chased down the interstate at low speed. Who was really going to stop him?
They followed on slowly as the man made his steady advance to freedom.
Then the wall in front of them began exploding and the tank began to rattle as it got in the way of the bullets and everything went wrong.
********************
Victor was leaving. They would not shoot him with this boy. They valued life too highly. He was going to walk out that gate and he was going to take the extra helicopter that stood waiting for him. That was what was going to happen.
They had destroyed everything here but they would not claim him as a scalp.
The tank tailed him slowly so he dragged the boy behind. They would not risk the damage likely to be caused by the exploding bullets from its gun.
Slow and sure. That was the way.
Then the wall exploded. Then the policeman was there on the ground and he dropped his guard and the boy.
********************
They were going to have to beat a retreat, Burke thought. There was no way they were gaining any ground here. “Maybe if he makes it to the wall we could pick him off if we had a marksman here,” he suggested.
The eye in the sky advised that the targets were headed their way but that the marksmen were pinned down at the other side of the complex dealing with the others.
He turned to check for some kind of response from Edwards and was met with a cold gaze.
“You know, don’t you?” Edwards asked.
Burke had never had much of a poker face. On this occasion it failed him again. He did indeed know. “Why?” he asked before he could stop himself.
“You know why,” Edwards said. All trace of expression had left his voice.
“It can’t be for you career. It can’t mean that much to you.”
“Can’t mean that much to me,” Edwards barked back, “try going through what I’ve been through and tell me your career means so little. Try watching people under your command getting gunned down or blown to bits in front of you and coming out the other side the only one lucky enough to make it out and tell me that doesn’t mean something, and that you don’t feel you have to make everything count for the ones that didn’t make it.”
“I have,” Burke said. “But you knew that.”
“Of course. But I don’t think it’s the same thing is it? Losing your team because you weren’t up to handling a firearms incident on a council estate.”
“No.”
Neither man said anything for a few seconds as all hell continued to break loose around them. Burke had been trained to deal with peo
ple on the edge but this was one they didn’t cover in negotiation techniques, getting the homicidal nut job out of the firefight in one piece while at the same time maintaining your own structural integrity.
“Why Leon Williams?” he finally asked, playing for time.
Edwards smiled at this. “Luck of the draw I’m afraid. Collateral damage. Had to look after the operation and ensure targets were met. Had to pull rank. But I think it’s all shaping up nicely.” He cast an arm round at what they could see of the scene.
Another hail of bullets from the fire fight hit the wall and filled the air with concrete dust. Burke’s clumsiness was another great failing. He felt the shove before he actually knew what had happened. The air left his lungs as he hit the floor. He couldn’t breathe and the blood began to spurt everywhere.
He realised he needed time. There was no time. He gasped for air but there was none of that either. He had to move but couldn’t. And then it was all over.
********************
The policeman had burst out from behind the shed in the corner causing the old man to hesitate. He must have thought his number was up. He dropped Andy, and Big Al who was never the steadiest in a combat situation, always dropped the ball if he got it out of the scrum, just a bit too trigger happy really, overreacted. They would later conclude it was like he’d thought he was trying to herd a bull with a quad bike. He’d just jammed both sides of the tank full on forward and didn’t stop, not until they were over the would-be kidnapper, through the breezeblock wall and on the airstrip facing a wall of coppers.
It had been an accident of course. No one really wanted to plough some old git down with a tank, no matter what they said in the pub about pensioners being worth fifty points in the car.
********************
34
The air ambulance was swift in attendance, having been put on standby in preparation. Casualties were low, all things considered; one dead Lithuanian businessman it was doubtful anyone would miss, which was just as well, as an open casket funeral was well and truly out of the question given the very extensive crushing injuries not to mention familiar stripy pattern caused by the hopefully not too protracted death that came as a consequence of being mangled by a tank, one dead mercenary with a hole in his throat and some missing teeth who probably knew the risks, one heavily concussed lawyer who also had fractured ribs and collarbones but seemed alert and willing enough to confess to all sorts, one teenager with a broken arm who was pretty grateful about that and whose parents were unlikely to be worried about him going off to university in the city and the relatively tame dangers that involved, and last but by no means least, one detective inspector whose carotid artery had been shredded upon impact with the hollow point bullet from an AK47 assault rifle and whose resultant blood loss had meant not only Edwards’s death but also the irrevocable staining of Burke’s favourite North Face fleece.
He’d tried to stop the fucker bleeding to death but there wasn’t much to work with. Plugging a hole might be one thing but this was more of a burst pipe. Edwards though, would doubtless consider it a small mercy, avoiding the consequences of his actions as he now had.
It was Burke’s clumsiness that had saved him, that and his dodgy ankle. He’d lost his footing, and Edwards, overdoing it, had overextended and followed suit, turning himself into a human shield in the process, a duty he had performed admirably.
He knew it might be arrogance, knew some would interpret it that way, but it did all fit. It had been Edwards’ own use of language that had given him away.
Billet was not a word used by many these days to describe their bed, generally only those of a military disposition. At first he’d discounted the public school accent and the fact it didn’t generally tally with that of a Glaswegian detective inspector, but then the Sarah Armstrong had turned up, concerned about the death of one of her operatives who had been on an undercover operation to flush out drug dealing networks by attempting to set up a fake one. Leon Williams, was not a real yardie and although posing as one and indeed living as one was unlikely to have gone about killing supposed rivals. The whole thing had started to fall apart under scrutiny and began to look a wee bit stage managed. And when he guessed the military connection, and took a long shot it had all started to make a modicum of sense.
They had served together in Helmand, in the Royal Marines. Leon Williams was a serving Marine and Edwards his commanding officer. Williams probably recognised Edwards, more likely than vice versa. Maybe he’d confronted him, maybe not but his old CO had clearly offed him in time honoured special-forces style.
The Lithuanian, Vlad, had come to a well-orchestrated end, and that was the thing that made Burke feel slightly arrogant and slightly insulted. Edwards knew about the shooting. He’d done his research. He’d staged this on his patch, partly due to circumstance but at least partly knowing he would join the dots, work out the significance of the machete and come to the right conclusion. But the cheeky bastard thought he could fool him, get him to draw the picture he wanted. That was the bit that stuck in his guts.
It had worked to an extent though. Edwards had drawn Andreyevich out of his hideaway, leaving the head of an associate outside his kids’ school. That would make anyone lose their cool.
Then Andreyevich had gone on to kill Karpov. That must have confused the hell out of Edwards. But the fact that it was an AK47 had given it away to an extent. The ultimate mark of respect for a fellow member of the brotherhood.
He supposed they would put it all down to Andreyevich now though, now there was no suggestion of anything to the contrary.
He should have kept his cool really, Edwards. They might never have found the murder weapon anyway. Paranoia - that was his undoing. He’d gone and overthought it and in the process proved himself guilty. Burke had called off the search for murder weapons in his house and car. No one would ever know. What good would it do? The family would receive all honours and cash due for a death in the line of duty. The kids would be proud of their father. All pomp and circumstance would be observed.
Burke knew the truth, which was fine. Because that was the big thing for him, the one thing that made any sense. Now he could see the bigger picture. Now he could see all the angles, how it all fitted together, a clean equation, a balanced calculation in a world that was anything but.
He looked at the horizon as the Campsies came into view and checked his phone.
His stomach tightened when he saw the text. “Is there any way you could get me near the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital?” He asked the pilot.
He hadn’t made it. Not for the actual conscious bit, the bit where she actually needed him.
She was in theatre when he arrived and was ushered through after being draped in scrubs.
And as he saw his son being brought into the outside world, wrenched from the womb and hauled into the bright lights of the sterile theatre, he swore that he would change. They deserved better, his family, and he could be better surely.
As he held the child in his arms he hoped he meant it for all their sakes.
When she woke she was blunt. Not in a way that meant she’d get over it. It wasn’t the anaesthetic or the hormones or any of the million other things he could happily have blamed it on while deep down knowing better. This was real, as real as it got.
There was no softness in her tone, only a cold hard ultimatum. “Them or us.”
He sat now looking at the sunset as the snow began to fall, a Glenfiddich Havana Reserve in one hand, a burning Montecristo in the other. As the smoke climbed, a tear fell.
The familiar jangling clang of a Fender Jagstang echoed along with one man’s voice singing another’s words.
35
He sat in the shrink’s office again, having summarised the week’s events as best he could, to the same unemotional conditioned responses as always. Nothing was ever committal from her side. She would never give anything away about how she personally felt in relation to the events and feelings as they we
re described by the subject in front of her.
He often wondered what she really thought. Was there a level of disgust at it all? Did she even have any personal feelings on the subject, other than a professional enthusiasm for an unusual case?
“You’ve had a busy week,” she said, in conclusion, drawing a line under it in an effort to move things on.
He knew it was coming. He knew the drill, but that didn’t stop the sense of dread, like knowing he had to get out of bed on a cold morning.
“And are we alone today?” she asked, finally.
“Yes,” he answered, like a kid who’d been asked if he’d done his homework. He hated this.
“You’re sure?”
“Quite.”
She waited, letting him calm a little. “And where are Jones and Campbell?”
“Gone,” he replied, before adding “for now at least.”
She nodded, looking at the window to her left. “You know they were gone over a year ago James?” she asked.
“Of course,” he confirmed.
“They were shot and killed. You were there.”
“I’m quite aware of that,” he snapped, taking a deep breath. Did they have to go through this every time? He felt bad enough without it.
“I know you are,” she agreed. “If I didn’t...” she stopped herself.
“If you didn’t you’d have me in a padded cell. I’m quite aware of that too,” he growled.
“My only concern is that you know who is there and who isn’t, and of course who you are and who you aren’t. If you feel you can manage that then you’re not…”
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