No sooner had he finished the transmission, he observed the surreal vision of the rear bodyguard jerking and the back of his head exploding to a distorted crack.
Connor felt the kick of the recoil against his shoulder.
He maintained a follow-through pressure on the trigger. The rear bodyguard’s face vacuumed inwards before distorting into a pink explosion.
The cross hairs adjusted onto the bodyguard to Hardcastle’s front. Two pops of blood burst from the minder’s back, billowing him backwards as if hooked by a giant invisible angler. The bodyguard had managed to draw his pistol to retaliate before the pair of .338 rounds tore through him. Connor shook his head—you should have been moving into cover, you fucking ‘tard.
Hardcastle had only just freed himself from resembling a monument of a frightened cat.
He attempted to run.
He made it three paces before collapsing forward as his left kneecap exploded. His scream pierced the night while his right leg kicked out as another round marmalized his ankle.
That’s weird—the first one should have taken his leg off.
The politician’s shock masked his pain. His hands hovered above the volcanic pulp that had previously been his knee. His fear amplified as he saw a masked figure jogging down in his direction, silhouetted ominously by a blaze.
3
Indecision momentarily rooted Nick as he saw Hardcastle collapse. He watched Hardcastle begin to drag his fat carcass to his car, the inert leg dragging behind like a slug’s oily trail.
His focus swiftly switched to another monitor—a sinister figure in a black puffer style jacket and balaclava had come into view, making its way towards Hardcastle.
He fought the intense urge to flap. This was completely unexpected and not covered in the actions on. He could order his team to the scene, but he was oblivious to how many other gunmen were out there, or their capabilities.
His decision was made—he would simply wait with baited breath to see what would happen next.
Connor suppressed a smirk as he approached, slowly and deliberately. He listened to the politician hyperventilate and watched his eyes dance wildly.
Hardcastle’s suit jacket was torn with the effort of heaving himself towards his car.
The sniper thought it best to go ‘Clint Eastwood’ and show no emotion. He’d let Hardcastle’s terrified imagination build him into a monster; such was an average person’s undisciplined psychology. Connor had set the hide on fire with the petrol to get rid of any DNA evidence. He knew being silhouetted against the backdrop of the blaze would add to the effect.
The discipline of not showing any emotion was natural to him now.
When he had first joined the Royal Marines, it wasn’t uncommon for a soldier to take a ‘reefing’ as an ‘in-house’ punishment for various infractions. Reefing involved being struck across the bare arse with a flip-flop for a pre-determined number of times. The aim was to take the reefing without showing emotion—to be ‘non-emotional’. If the recipient showed his distress, another reefing would be administered.
He smiled to himself as he withdrew the hypodermic needle. He stepped on Hardcastle’s shattered knee cap, being a little surprised at the politician passing out—you’re lucky I don’t have my flip flops.
He returned the needle back to its case. It was no longer necessary due to the politician’s unconsciousness. He fished the car keys out of Hardcastle’s jacket pocket and began to drag his dead weight towards the Jaguar. His arms hooked under his legs so that his head dragged along the gravel floor. This reminded him how much more of an effort heaving a dead weight was compared to a live body; particularly given the MP’s obesity.
He scanned his surroundings once more and was satisfied to see the fire dying out.
Once at the car, he removed the plastic handcuffs— plasticuffs—from his day sack. He opened the boot and lifted Hardcastle inside, keeping his back straight as per deadlifting form. Connor hog-tied him with the plasticuffs. He stowed the sniper rifle in with Hardcastle after he’d removed the magazine and thoroughly checked inside the chamber to make sure there wasn’t a round still in there.
He had concerns about Hardcastle waking and screaming on the way, so he’d purchased a heavy-duty stapler—more exciting than adhesive tape. Connor grinned at the pinched duck-like face Hardcastle made as the clicks stapled his lips together—like an Instagram chick, you fat cunt.
He closed the boot, got into the cloud-feeling front seat and gunned the engine. It was a relief to take off the balaclava, and he nodded as the sound of a BBC Radio Two debate filled the interior— Hardcastle wasn’t all bad.
Nick composed himself. As far as he could tell, the sniper was acting alone. He’d deduced that as the man in the balaclava was carrying the sniper rifle, if there had been more men, another would have kept the weapon to provide over watch.
He was impressed by the rapidity of the shots that dispatched the two bodyguards and took down the MP.
“All call signs, prepare to initiate a polar bear. I say again, prepare to initiate a polar bear.”
“Roger.”
“Roger.”
“Roger that.”
The original plan called for a revolving tail of three vehicles keeping a visual on the target Jaguar—a ‘grizzly bear’ being its code term. However, Nick did not want to risk the unknown killer, whose skill set wasn’t known to him, spotting the tail.
The team who had previously planted the surveillance devices in the manor, had also fixed the Jaguar with a GPS tracker so it could be followed at a distance—a ‘polar bear’. Having that distance gave up an eyes-on reading of the situation, but Nick decided it was the lesser of the two evils.
Connor forced himself to focus through the elation of catching Hardcastle. He recognised his body experiencing an adrenal come-down and reminded himself of the old Samurai adage, ‘When the battle is over, tighten your helmet straps’.
He fought the urge to drive at speed, and the fleeting thought came that a cigarette would be a delight. Ironically, he always craved a cigarette when breathing in cold, crisp air. It reminded him how unpolluted his lungs now were and how one cigarette, mixed with the adrenaline coursing through his veins, would be a triumphant pleasure. A smoker on and off since fifteen years old, he was envious of the ‘odd-one brigade’ knowing he couldn’t be part of it—that he’d just get hooked again. After watching the ultra-clean-living forty-six-year-old Bernard Hopkins rip away the WBC Light Heavyweight boxing title from a twenty-eight-year-old, he had begun to think about his health more.
He wanted to age well. He wanted to be a guy that could handle himself in violent confrontations into his forties and fifties—an ‘old lion’ as he’d heard it described. Attracting younger women as an older man would be a bonus too, although he was still firmly entrenched in his more mature woman phase now.
He realised any pleasure from smoking was illusionary. It just fed a nicotine addiction while he convinced himself he smoked for other reasons.
He smiled. Hardcastle’s decision to drink, smoke and eat avariciously had been the right one—living into old age wouldn’t be an option for the fucking endomorph now.
Connor lamented on how and why he had now become a murderer and kidnapper.
His best friend had been Liam Scott. It had been the local boxing club where they’d met, and Liam had come to his club after training for a year at a rival gym. He remembered the first sparring session he’d had as a twelve-year-old with the same aged, dark haired, tall and skinny Liam. They went at it hammer and tongs despite the coach’s exertions to ‘Calm the fuck down!’ Eventually, they were told to go ‘work the bags until you both learn to behave,’ and they’d become friends. After their boxing sessions, they would watch mixed martial arts and big-time boxing matches before practicing the skills they watched in Liam’s garage. They were inseparable: joining a Muay Thai gym, a Judo dojo, playing snooker and chasing girls.
Liam’s dad had been in the Royal Gr
een Jackets—an infantry regiment—back in the eighties. After they’d found the old man’s photo albums depicting sun, sea, boxing, girls and war games, Connor and Liam had decided they wanted to be soldiers too.
Connor joined the Royal Marines just before his nineteenth birthday with Liam joining six months later. They reunited at 45 (pronounced ‘four-five’) Commando, a Unit based in the small sea fishing town of Arbroath, Scotland.
‘Four-Five is the most notorious Unit in the Corps. There are those Bootnecks who have and those Bootnecks who haven’t served there.’ Connor had been stood with forty-one other recruits in the induction block at the Commando Training Centre as the Drill Leader Sergeant announced this. He had been nineteen-years-old, at the beginning of the eight-month basic training course designed to forge him into a Royal Marine Commando. He discovered that the Sergeant had spent almost all his career up at ‘the mighty forty-fifth’ as he called it. Perhaps he was a little bias? —Connor had thought. Yet he heard the claim repeated by others when joining the unit himself.
He liked to think ‘four-five’s’ notoriety was correlated to the greater proportion of Northerners and Jocks based there. He believed them to have a drier wit, harsher character, but often a warmer disposition. The truth was that the unit was away from the naval hierarchy down in the south-west of England, and sometimes the lads behaviour was a little less reined in as a result. Its continuing commitment to a high professional standard, particularly to mountain and arctic warfare, had diluted its reputation of being the home of reprobate Marines.
After an intense period of pre-deployment training, he and Liam went on the same summer tour of Afghanistan together. They were in different fighting companies and therefore different forward-operating bases. Five and a half months into the tour with only three weeks until the unit returned home for good, Liam was killed by a suicide bomber. The youngster had held a piece of paper and was gesturing for a colouring pencil. He exploded as Liam had been handing one to him.
Connor thought back to his best friend’s military funeral a few years before. Liam’s eight-year-old blonde angelic sister Rayella had walked up and asked, ‘Can I sit with you Connor?’
He’d raised his arm, and she snuggled underneath it. She’d wrapped her arms tightly around him, not letting go throughout the entire service as she wept. His urge to cry had been blanketed by his numbness until he had a sense of her anguish.
He’d had to hold it in.
Ever since then, Connor had always thought of her as his own sister. He visited the Scott family every leave period, and any weekend back in his native Leeds.
Rayella was always such a sweet girl. Always complimenting people or telling jokes, and so attuned to the moods of anyone around her. Her face always lit up when he visited.
The memories steeled his resolve as he pulled the car onto a vacated industrial estate and headed towards the empty warehouse.
The last of the tail vehicles stopped where Nick stood, and he got in. The black Astra sped away to catch the other two as Nick produced a phone from his pocket and dialled.
“Send,” said the Scotsman on the other end.
“We have a situation. His bodyguards were shot and killed while escorting ‘Foxtrot One’ to his vehicle. He appeared to have been shot in his legs to prevent escape, clear so far?” Nick spoke rapidly but succinctly.
“Clear.”
“After a period elapsing of one minute, an unidentified individual, wearing a balaclava and black puffer style jacket, came into view complete with day-sack and a sniper rifle. He appeared to cause Foxtrot One to faint by stepping on his injured knee. Then he dragged him to Foxtrot One’s car before putting the sniper rifle and day-sack into the boot. He lifted Foxtrot One in with them. He had his back to the outside cameras, so all I could make out was him being as follows: Caucasian—he wasn’t wearing gloves—compact build, wearing jeans, black jacket and looked around five-feet-ten. Looked like he was tying Foxtrot One up but I couldn’t be sure. Then he closed the boot of the vehicle and drove away. I’ve initiated a ‘Polar Bear’.”
The response was immediate.
“Recovering Foxtrot One is the priority but do not take any action until the vehicle stops. We need Foxtrot One alive if possible.”
“Roger.”
“Try and keep the kidnapper alive too…unless he poses an immediate danger to you or your team.”
“Got it.”
Hardcastle awoke in his bed as if having barely escaped drowning. Then the dawn of realisation descended.
He wasn’t in his bed.
The first thing that made him aware of this was his inability to breathe through his mouth. He tried, but it only amplified the throbbing pain that bolted around his lips. He ran his tongue over the sharp metallic seal—they’d been stapled together.
He rattled his wrists and ankles against their restraints like a bolt of electricity was shooting through him.
Fear washed over him like a bitter breeze.
He tried focusing his eyes on making out the ceiling but he couldn’t see it. The standing lamp on his left blinded him. He turned his head away and began to hyperventilate. The icy, hard eyes behind the balaclava burned into him. The warm, wet sensation of urine spread over his right thigh and the smell wafted into his nostrils.
“I almost hope that you either refuse to answer my questions or attempt to be untruthful, then I’ll have an excuse to disfigure you, Stephen,” a menacing voice pierced the cold atmosphere.
Hardcastle’s heart was beating so hard, he thought it was audible to the masked man. He flinched as the figure stepped toward him. He felt a blade rest on his cheek. The sharp point pricked his lower eyelid and the flesh opened like a flower in bloom as the blood tear danced down his face.
Nick stood in front of his team who formed a tight semi-circle. They were less than a hundred metres from the warehouse, on a grass verge, shielded by a small outhouse.
He issued them their QBOs—Quick Battle Orders. Nine minutes had elapsed since the Jaguar had halted. The team had been mindful of stealth as they alighted from their vehicles before silently shuffling into this position.
He and another had carried out a swift reconnaissance of the building. Nick had employed a snake camera through the warehouse’s sole window. The image emerged, of a balaclava-clad figure leaning over the restrained Hardcastle—like a sinister surgeon.
There was a front and rear entrance and the Jaguar was the only vehicle near the warehouse other than the teams’.
“We’ll use the dead ground to the left to stack up on the entrance. There are no windows on that side but there is on the right of the entrance, so we can’t roll on the door. I’ll go point, Mitch you’ll be second, so have the flash bang ready. Toby, have the Enforcer ready if need be.”
Both men nodded.
“Dan and Kev, peel off and cover the rear exit.” Those men nodded.
“Remember, if he points a weapon anywhere near us then drop him. Otherwise, we’re taking him in. Understand?”
All the men nodded.
“Prepare to move,” Nick ordered, and the team checked their weapons and ammunition pouches.
“Move.”
The team followed him as he cut a path to the building. He pushed any doubts regarding his plan to one side. In war, more was lost by indecision than wrong decision.
The left eye seemed to be trying to escape the blood pool of its socket—the eyelid was gone. Hardcastle’s muffled sobs and screams echoed around the cavernous warehouse.
The pliers had bit into the lid, stretching it away from the eyeball. He had realised that he couldn’t move his head or lest cause his eyelid to tear off. Pain had sliced across the fleshy hood switching his vision in that eye to a lens of red. He tried to blink the blood away but there wasn’t a lid to close over the raw socket.
He thrashed wildly against his restraints. A low, sniggering laugh swirled around the monster that had done this to him. Hardcastle’s stifled roars had prized loo
se the staples with an iron tasting wet pain. A cloth had been stuffed into his mouth almost gagging him.
A strong, coarse hand forced his face to the side, and he felt a blunt cutting of his left ear.
He fainted.
Connor crouched over Hardcastle’s prostrate figure with pliers and surgical scalpel in hand.
The doors crashed open.
The metallic clang alerted him to the cylindrical black tube that was bouncing within six feet of him. He tightly closed his eyes, dropped the implements and pressed his fingers into his ears. The percussion of sound fired into his body, and within seconds a pair of rough hands dragged him to the floor. For a split-second, he considered going for the commando dagger sheathed to his wrist. Instead he complied and accepted his fate.
He was disappointed not to have had longer with Stephen Hardcastle. He had planned on making it last hours. Still, Hardcastle’s muted howls reminded him in addition to a shot out kneecap, ankle and sliced off ear, that only one of the MP’s eyelids remained.
Connor smiled—no surgeon was reattaching that fucker now.
4
Bruce McQuillan was tired in a way that could neither be remedied by a good night’s sleep nor an extended holiday. He doubted even a sabbatical could assuage this fatigue. He clasped the back of his neck and exhaled.
Tall and fit, the black hair greyed around the edges framing the hawkish features and alert eyes. His once thick Glaswegian accent had simmered to a lighter brogue and a more ‘correct’ pronunciation—except when his temper flared or when he was back ‘home’. Today he wore a well-fitting light grey suit.
He was the head of the most operationally effective unit within the UK’s security services. ‘The Chameleon Project’ was deniable with only a select few in the upper echelons knowing of its existence. Created in 1999, the unit’s original remit was to deal with domestic threats born from the arrival of international organised crime syndicates. Many of these overseas crime lords settled in the UK to escape the harsher judicial system of their homelands.
The Bootneck Page 2