Going Dark

by Neil Lancaster

  Tom reached under his arm and unclipped the MP7 sling, the weapon falling to the floor with a clatter.

  ‘Kick it away towards me,’ the big man said.

  Tom propelled the MP7 across the tiled floor with his boot.

  ‘Arken, we can all walk away from this, but I’m not alone. Your men are dead, and I have backup coming soon.’

  ‘You’re lying, you fucking pig.’

  ‘I’m not lying, Arken, how do you think I got up here so quickly?’ Tom’s voice had settled, and he felt a strange calm envelop him. ‘Cameron, Shona, are you okay?’

  Both his foster parents’ hands were bound, and both had duct tape across their mouths, but both nodded. Cameron fixed Tom with a direct stare and Tom was sure that he could read something in his eyes, which sparkled in the dancing light from the fire. Almost a trace of fatalistic humour. Cameron was short and wiry, but he was teak-tough after all those years in the Commandos. Shona looked utterly terrified, the shock and horror of events clearly etched across her face.

  Cameron dropped his knees slightly and then drove upwards and backwards, smashing the back of his skull into Arken’s nose and mouth with a sickening crunch. Blood spurted as Arken’s head flew backwards with the force of the impact and instinctively his hands came up, releasing Cameron who dived away from the big gangster.

  Tom flew forwards and crashed into Arken’s midriff with his shoulder in a head-on rugby tackle. It was like running into a brick wall, but he felt the breath explode from the Serbian with a whoosh. He fell backwards with Tom landing square on top of him, and Tom grabbed for the arm that still held the pistol, trying to pin it to the floor. Arken, though, was too strong and, regaining some of his composure, began to fight back, clubbing Tom across the back of his head with his free fist. The pain was ferocious, but Tom grimly held on, realising that if Arken got his gun hand free it was all over.

  Out of nowhere Cameron appeared and stamped down on Arken’s hand. He was still wearing his work boots and the Serb cried out as the bones crunched against the metal of the pistol. He released the weapon, which Cameron kicked away to slide across the shiny floor. Arken, now alive to the new threat, kicked out blindly from his prone position towards Cameron, catching him square in the side and sending him flying across the room, where he crashed into the coffee table.

  Arken let out a roar of fury and unleashed a volley of punches with his good hand at Tom, who had tucked his head into the man’s side to try to avoid the blows. Arken tried to roll over onto his side, trying to stand. That was a big mistake, despite the enormous size disparity between him and Tom. Tom immediately released Arken and slid across his body, locking onto his now-exposed back and encircling the man’s massive bull-neck with his left arm. He locked that in place by gripping onto his own right arm, inflicting a rear naked choke on the big Serb. Tom’s right hand snaked to the back of Arken’s head, driving it forwards, and he squeezed with all his strength, compressing the man’s carotid arteries and driving his wrist bones into his throat.

  It was like holding onto an angry bear as the man bucked and struggled and fought for his life, but Tom’s technique and strength were too good and he soon began to flag. No one can survive long once the blood supply to the brain is interrupted. After forty seconds he had stopped struggling. Tom held on for a further minute until he could feel nothing and then released his arms to fall back onto the tiles, exhausted and gasping for breath.

  After another minute he stood and returned to the back door, flicking the circuit breaker switch to switch all the lights back on.

  He returned to the kitchen which was now bathed in soft light from the side lamps.

  ‘You guys okay?’

  Cameron nodded from his prone position on top of the destroyed table, looking at him with relief in his eyes.

  Taking his knife from his boot top, he released their hands from the zip-tie bindings. Shona’s hand was tightly wrapped in a bandage, a red stain evident where the blood from her severed finger had seeped through.

  As he got closer, he saw the relief in Cameron’s eyes turn once more to fear, the man bucking and attempting to shout, his voice muffled by the tape as he looked behind Tom. Tom began to straighten up, a sinking feeling of dread in his stomach, while reaching for his MP7. He turned and was stunned to see Aleks and Luka Branko walking into the room.

  Aleks was already pointing a Glock at Tom; it was too late for him to raise the MP7. The Glock roared in Aleks’s hand and Tom felt a fantastic impact in his chest, like being hit with a sledgehammer. All the breath left his body with a whoosh and he was flung back, violently landing on top of Cameron. His vision went black.

  29

  A lot of nonsense is often spouted about the effectiveness of body armour. Kevlar is great at preventing certain bullets from entering the body, but they don’t stop the trauma caused by a projectile hitting you at three-hundred-and-seventy-five metres-per-second.

  All that force has to go somewhere, and it all went straight into Tom.

  The bullet had struck him dead-centre of his chest: on the sternum which, fortunately, had absorbed most of the impact. Some of that force had also fortunately been absorbed in his being knocked backwards.

  Tom was gasping for breath, aware through the fog in his brain of shouting and rough hands dragging him across the floor, his hands being secured behind his back. He managed to breathe a couple of rasping breaths, replacing the wind that had been knocked out of his lungs by the impact of the 9mm round.

  Words filtered through the fog. ‘Jesus, he’s killed Danilo. Where are the others?’ He couldn’t identify who had spoken.

  He looked up, wincing at the pain in his chest, and looked up at the three men. Aleks still had the Glock pointed at him, Luka was stood to his side, while the third man he didn’t recognise. He was much older than the Brankos—in his fifties, Tom estimated—and was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. He had short, cropped grey hair and his face was lined and weather beaten; he looked uncompromising and tough, with the latent aggression he’d seen in far too many others on many occasions.

  ‘How the fuck did you get up here so fast, Novak?’ Aleks said.

  Tom sank his head back into the carpeted floor but did not reply, already entering resistance-to-interrogation mode following the shock of capture. He had completed a very unpleasant course in this when with the SRR; all the instructors had been SAS members who had taken their job very seriously. The main lesson of the course had been how to turn into the ‘grey man’: not being aggressive, playing up the seriousness of your injuries, and biding your time.

  Despite the communications device that was being monitored, Tom said nothing.

  ‘Answer me, pig!’ one of them yelled, fury in his voice, and a kick was delivered to the side of his torso. Pain exploded in his already-shocked ribcage.

  Tom coughed and spat out blood on the carpet; he’d bitten his tongue when he was shot. He feigned confusion greater than he was feeling. More than anything, he needed his captors to underestimate him.

  ‘Search him,’ said a voice he didn’t recognise: presumably grey-hair.

  Tom felt one of the men begin to go through his pockets, retrieving the weapons, ammunition, and communications device. The lifesaving body armour was torn from him.

  ‘Jesus, he’s got a radio,’ said Luka. ‘Who is listening?’

  ‘No one. You’re holding the transmit button and you’ve ripped off the microphone,’ Tom replied. He had to get them to believe that no one was coming to the farmhouse or they would cut their losses and kill all of them.

  ‘How did you get up here? Who is helping you?’ he was asked again.

  ‘I hitched a lift on a private jet from Northolt that was coming up here. A buddy works there, and he sorted it out.’

  ‘What about the guns? Where did you get those?’ asked Luka.

  ‘Police armoury: a mate of mine is in charge and I persuaded him to give them to me.’ He didn’t know if that was believable, but he
had no choice.

  ‘We’d better call Papa,’ said Aleks.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said the grey-haired man, and he walked out of the room.

  Aleks and Luka were very nervous, panic seeming close to the surface. Their lack of experience was evident, and that concerned Tom; he could imagine them starting to shoot just out of fright.

  Tom turned slightly onto his side, giving him a better view of the room. Aleks still had the Glock pointed at him, but he was looking at the corpse of Danilo rather than him.

  Grey-hair walked back into the room clutching a mobile phone in his hand.

  ‘The boss wants to speak to you,’ he growled, holding the phone to Tom’s ear.

  ‘What have you fucking done, pig? You’ve killed my friend, and that’s going to get your parents killed too.’

  ‘Branko, no. There’s a way out of this. No one else has to die. You still want the SD card, right?’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘The card is in a security box, but I can get it to you. I can phone the bank in the morning: it’s a numbered box and I can authorise the contents to be released to you once the office opens. After you have it, let my family go and you can do what you like with me.’ Tom knew he had to buy time if he was to get an opportunity to escape.

  ‘You have a communications device. Who knows of this? I know it’s not police as my contact knows nothing and he is well-placed.’

  ‘The flight was organised by an American who owes me a big favour. He gave me the communications device, but no one knows I’ve been captured. He just thought I was watching the farmhouse. He works for the US government and they cannot get involved. I’m on my own here, you have to believe me,’ he said with exaggerated desperation.

  ‘How did you keep your phone signal in London?’

  ‘It is in London, I just set up a divert to another phone.’

  ‘Where is the card?’

  ‘At my bank in Camden. It opens in the morning and I can call them and arrange for emergency access. It can be done.’

  There was a pause, which seemed to stretch out forever. ‘Okay, you can stay alive a little while longer. If you come up with the card, I will spare your parents and you will be quickly despatched.’

  Tom knew that was nonsense; Branko had no intention of letting any of them live. Of that, he was absolutely sure.

  ‘Ten o’clock tomorrow morning you call the deposit company and arrange access. If you fail to do so you will witness my men shoot both of your parents. You will then die, but not quickly or easily. You haven’t met Boris before, have you? He has peculiar talents for inflicting pain that I witnessed many times during the war.’

  Tom shuddered at the prospect and wondered if Pet or Mike were listening.

  Boris snatched the phone away from Tom’s ear and walked out of the room once more, speaking quietly into the handset.

  *

  Tom lay quietly on the floor, slightly on his side, the Branko boys scowling on the sofa and Boris in the armchair, his eyes half-closed. The grey-haired man seemed the picture of calm, and Tom could tell that he was someone who had been in many violent situations in the past.

  Once the decision to wait had been made, the three captors had established a routine: one of them resting while the others watched them, pistols always to hand.

  Tom’s bindings were secure but did not restrict blood-flow, so he was able to get comfortable and rest, to some degree. He had even managed to doze for a few snatched moments.

  They’d managed to organise bathroom breaks for the three of them with a great deal of care, one at a time and covered by two of the captors, one from a little more distance using the captured MP7. Other than that, it had all been peaceable.

  They’d been in that position for a few hours and, by looking just to his left, Tom could see that the old carriage clock on the fireplace showed 5am. It would soon be light.

  Tom looked over at Cameron and Shona, who were sat back to back, resting against the wall. He gave them an almost imperceptible wink which was returned by Cameron. He didn’t frighten easily but Shona looked terrified and weary and Tom wondered about the long-term effects of their ordeal on her. He felt an enormous pull of affection for them; they’d opened their homes to a twelve-year-old Bosnian boy and treated him as if he were their own child. They were his rock, his touchstone, and he would do anything at all to protect them.

  The situation remained unchanged for another hour until the grey tendrils of a Highland morning began to filter through the windows. Tom felt utter exhaustion in every fibre of his body; his sternum ached horribly, and his ribs were sore from being kicked, any hope of escape fading fast as time passed by.

  30

  Zjelko Branko sat in the armchair in the living room of his apartment, having returned earlier that evening. Mira was asleep in bed and had been for some time, traipsing off without a word in her stained housecoat. He shook his head at the thought of her: it was only business and family honour that kept him from walking away from her forever. When the whole sorry situation was over, they could go their separate ways. He wanted out of the prostitution and trafficking game: it was just too risky.

  He picked up his phone and selected a number from his call history.

  It was answered after about ten rings with a sleepy, ‘Yes?’

  ‘We have Novak,’ Branko said.

  ‘Thank God for that. Where is he?’ said Simon Taylor.

  ‘In Scotland. He killed three of my associates but fortunately my boys managed to arrive and disable him.’

  ‘What? How did he get to Scotland? It’s at least ten hours away.’

  ‘He says he got a plane, but he was well armed with sophisticated weapons and had communications equipment. Do you know how he got them?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with law enforcement; we couldn’t organise that, and I’ve heard nothing at all. I would know. I don’t like this, Branko.’

  ‘He says a friend did him a favour, and he managed to get him on the plane, and he got the weapons from the police armoury.’

  ‘That’s nonsense, there’s no way could he do that. He’s bullshitting you. He needs taking out, now. We can manage this, but he needs to disappear forever.’ Taylor was almost babbling.

  ‘What about his parents?’

  Taylor paused, stunned at what he’d become a part of. He was going to be an accessory to a multiple murder, but it was too late to back out now.

  ‘Just make sure they’re never found, and you’d better get out of the country as well.’

  ‘I just have to get the SD card from his safe deposit box. I need Adebayo’s money,’ Branko said, all matter-of-fact.

  ‘Are you crazy? That’s mad. Just how are you going to get the SD card?’

  ‘He’s going to arrange it with the bank,’ Branko said.

  ‘Then you’re being really fucking stupid, Branko. They’ll never allow you access. And as Adebayo has fled to Nigeria, how are you going to get the money? You’ll never get paid. Get rid of them, and get out of the country,’ Taylor said, all of a sudden assertive.

  ‘If you call me stupid again, I will see to it that you never enjoy your pension, Mr Police Inspector. When did Adebayo go?’

  ‘I’m sorry. He went earlier today, and he’s apparently shifted all his money and gone, forever. He has assets and a home in Lagos. You’ll never see that money.’

  Branko sighed: a deep, rage-filled sigh. So, no money and no way of extracting it from Adebayo now he’d fled.

  ‘Okay, so it’s a tidy-up operation. The three that Novak killed won’t be missed. There won’t be any evidence of my people going to Scotland: there were false plates on the car and they didn’t take their phones. We can dispose of the bodies and we will all go back to Serbia until this blows over. You need to come up with a way to distance us.’ Branko was all efficient planning now.

  ‘Just get it done and I can make sure no suspicion falls on you. I can claim that Novak was depressed and suicidal or something. J
ust make sure the bodies aren’t found.’

  ‘They won’t be found, my friend: it’s the middle of nowhere up there.’ And Branko hung up.

  He paused for a second before dialling another number.

  ‘Boris, change of plan. Get rid of them all.’

  31

  Boris stood in the hallway of the cottage with his mobile phone clamped to his ear and a grim, determined look on his face. ‘No problem. It will be done, my friend,’ he said quietly. He returned to the kitchen and fixed a serious eye on Aleks. ‘Aleks, with me,’ he said.

  Aleks stood and walked out into the hall where Boris waited; there was a quick whispered exchange before Aleks returned to the kitchen, nodding for his brother to go and join the older Serb.

  There was a further exchange and then all three men came back into the room once more. Boris hefted the MP7 and pointed it directly at Tom.

  ‘Stand up!’ he commanded. ‘Now listen and listen well; we’re all going to take a little drive. We’re going in your Land Rover. If you resist, I will shoot the lady first: do you understand?’

  Tom nodded. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘That doesn’t concern you. If you cooperate, then no one will be harmed. If not, it will be bad for you. We will shoot your mother in the stomach and torture your father and make you watch.’

  Boris was good: Tom had to give him that. He was careful to never get within grabbing distance and he kept the MP7 trained on him throughout. There was simply no opportunity for Tom to try to disarm any of their captors. The Branko brothers kept Cameron and Shona in a similar manner as they all made their way out of the farmhouse.

  Tom was positive they had no intention of going for a drive. It was rather the case that they didn’t want to shoot them in the house, leaving unnecessary evidence of their demise behind. He figured they planned to create just enough breathing space to get out of the country, once he and his foster family were all dead. Try as he might, he couldn’t figure any way in which he could overpower the three of them. Shona and Cameron were shackled, as was he. He began to face up to the fact that this might finally be it. He didn’t fear death, he never had, but he felt desolate for Cameron and Shona. They were good, honest people who didn’t deserve this.