by Tom Benson
“What’s it like in the spirit world, Rob Roy McGregor?” He would soon be able to discuss the issue with the celebrated Scottish folk hero.
Armstrong turned to go back to his sniping position, but before he’d taken a full step, he collapsed and landed in his own steaming puddle. A trickle of blood oozed from the hole in his skull and mixed with the piss. This wasn’t a good time for criminals to take a leak.
Nobody heard the shot, because it came from the suppressed barrel of a Sako TRG 22. The bullet was a .308 Winchester round, fired from four hundred metres away. Wind strength and direction were of no concern. The sniper’s decisions were timing, and point of aim.
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04:30 - Phil used a minor track to make up time, and jogged two miles to reach the black van which he and Dave had hidden. Before he continued, Phil called Mike Longhurst and told him the job was on. The boat to follow was the Margharita, and it would depart from Helensburgh by noon. Mike had a phone number to call, but he had to remember to keep a safe distance. He understood the reason.
Phil put away his phone and prepared what he could in the van. When he stopped, he wanted everything necessary at hand. To fulfil his plan, Phil drove the van along the Hartley Manor driveway in second gear, keeping the vehicle engine at tick-over.
As he expected, a man in a white shirt and black trousers stepped out from the back of the house to greet the vehicle. As the sentry approached, he looked along the side of the van, which had no business name or logo.
He stepped near the driver’s window. “What the fuck—” When the sentry registered the driver was wearing camouflage cream, a combat smock and holding an automatic, it was too late.
Having a suppressor fitted, the firing of the Sig Sauer was hardly noticeable. Phil opened the van door quietly and dragged the dead man to the bushes. He made an incision with his knife to prepare the bait for later.
Phil parked the van and removed the equipment he would need, placing his weapons in the undergrowth nearby. He opened the garage doors, and all the smart cars could be seen, as if ready for inspection. When he opened the sliding side door of the van, it was facing the garage. He connected the command wire to the contents in the back of the van and led the end of the cable to the door of the stables. It was an old-fashioned method, but it was efficient.
When he was satisfied, he sprinted across to pick up his other weapons. He placed them behind a bush and ran through the trees to come out at the stables beside Dave. He held a hand over Dave’s mouth and nudged him.
Dave’s eyes flew open, and for an instant, alarm flashed there. Being unconscious had been of benefit. He was now wide-awake, but Phil’s camouflaged face eased the pain of his injuries.
Phil cut the bindings on Dave’s wrists and showed his hands in a lifting movement. Dave nodded and gritted his teeth in anticipation. His eyes closed tight, and his head shook from side to side as he dealt with the agony of being dragged into the forest.
To avoid leaving a straightforward trail, Dave lifted his feet alternately as best he could. He was dragged ten metres, but it felt like one hundred. Once in position, Phil gave him his Browning 9mm, pointed to it, and gave a ‘thumbs-up’.
Dave nodded, but his twisted lips couldn’t form a smile. Phil pulled out a small canvas container. He thrust four painkillers into Dave’s mouth and gave him a long mouthful from a black plastic water bottle. Dave was invigorated.
Phil poured water on the earth, dug his fingers into it, and spread mud on Dave’s face and the back of his hands. Phil lifted handfuls of forest debris and threw it over his injured comrade before nodding with satisfaction. The water bottle was left beside Dave.
“Go,” Dave whispered.
Phil went to the position from where he’d dragged Dave. He brushed the ground from there to where Dave was holed up. He nodded to the camouflaged casualty, and silently disappeared into the forest.
Back in Glasgow, Amy went for her morning run early, because she was tackling a longer distance, but was required at the station by the usual time. She came along the pathway onto the quiet road. A silver car was parked at her start point. Why did it look familiar?
The Land Rover Discovery appeared to be unoccupied, but the engine was running, and the rear passenger door was slightly open. A man was sitting in the back seat, bent over with his hand inside his jacket.
“Are you okay?” Amy pulled the door open further.
“I am now.” Flannigan sat up with a sawn-off shotgun facing Amy. “Get in, or I’ll blow your fucking face away.”
The vehicle screeched away from the kerbside two minutes later with Amy handcuffed in the back seat and a grinning Flannigan at the wheel. He sneered at a young man in running kit who was taking an interest in the speeding vehicle.
As Flannigan drove through the quiet streets of Rutherglen to reach the main road, he occasionally glanced over his shoulder at the terrified girl in the back. He had secured the handcuffs to the armrest, and it was impossible for her to sit. She was forced to lay partly on the seat and the floor. Her mouth was covered with a strip of duct tape.
“You’ll be accustomed to handcuffs, you being a policewoman. I’m hoping to teach you a thing or two about bondage and suchlike, and this will be a good introduction for you.”
Tears rolled down Amy’s face, and she worked her legs around between the front seats. If the car crashed, it would bring help. Each time she got up onto the back seat and brought her legs up, the car swerved as Flannigan flicked the wheel.
“Now, now my girl,” he said over his shoulder. “Don’t be thinking about heroics. We’re travelling at sixty, and if we crash, your pretty body will get mangled in the wreckage.”
Amy brought her legs up to her chest and shot both feet forward at the driver’s face. He fended off the blow with his free hand. The car pulled off the road, and Flannigan got out. He slammed the driver’s door and opened the rear passenger door.
Flannigan gripped Amy’s ankles and turned her over before he pulled down her running shorts. He slapped her buttocks hard, open-handed several times, and watched with delight as her body reacted. She sobbed uncontrollably from the pain.
The pervert got back in and drove off. “Now you’ve spoiled things. I’ve given you a taster, and I’m aroused, but don’t worry, you’ve got a lot more coming. I have so many things for us to enjoy together.”
Amy cried. She’d read of these cases, and now she was going to be in a report. When she left her DNA on the back seat, it wasn’t intentional.
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07:30 - Phil remembered he’d switched his phone to silent, and no vibration. He pulled it from his pocket. A missed call—07:15. He pressed the keys and listened. He recognised his old friend’s voice.
“Phil, it’s Sam, mate. Amy Hughes was abducted from home at 06:50. A fellow jogger said it was a bearded man driving a silver 4 x 4, possibly a Land Rover.”
Phil hit the keys as fast as his fingertips would move. It answered after one ring. “Annabel. It’s Phil. Can’t talk long. Amy abducted by Flannigan at 06:50 this morning.”
Annabel said to leave it with her.
Phil was slipping his phone away when he noticed movement at the house. One of the sentries came around from the front shouting ‘Murphy’.
He pulled an automatic pistol from a shoulder holster and called into his hand-held radio. Another man came out, but he had an Uzi machine pistol. He walked toward the Transit van Phil had abandoned outside the multi-bay garage.
“Who the fuck parked this here?” the Uzi man said, and peered inside from the front. He didn’t go around to the side door. Instead, he walked towards the trees to look for the driver. When he stepped from the dawn into the shade of the foliage, he stopped to focus and lowered his weapon. Phil’s green and brown face came into view, and the final item the sentry saw was the Tallon crossbow.
Phil pulled the Uzi from the dead man’s hands, unclipped the magazine and threw all of it into the forest. He heard dogs barking. Two men came
outside, each carrying an Uzi, apparently the preferred weapon of the house of Hartley. The sentries spoke quietly to each other, and the dogs were brought out on long chains. They were allowed to run into the trees, where they stopped barking.
The dog-handler screamed at them and followed into the forest. A few seconds later, he came out to puke.
“What the fuck is wrong?” a colleague asked.
“The dogs ... are eating ... fucking ... Murphy.” He puked.
The second man ran into the woods and fired two short bursts. The meal was over.
Another sentry ran out of the house with shaving cream on his face, wearing trousers and shoes. “Who owns the fucking van?”
The stable door opened, and a mercenary stepped outside.
Phil dropped his crossbow on the ground and pressed his forefingers into his ears.
When the van exploded, most of the impact was focused on the garage. Due to Phil opening all the garage doors, it was a perfect foundation to redirect the explosion. The old building withstood the shockwave and reflected the impact.
All the cars within the garage were wrecked beyond use. Sergei, who had opened the stable door, was killed by the flying back door of the Transit. The dog-handler and the radio operator were both killed by large pieces of shrapnel from the van’s disintegrated engine.
Two sentries remained outside and had been rendered temporarily helpless by the blast. The windows to the rear of the house shattered, and the ground in the area was sparkling with broken fragments of glass.
Phil was back in an alert position as soon as the shockwave had passed over. He noticed a movement to his right and saw the last surviving mercenary had slipped from the stables and was heading into the trees. It was Anton, the leader.
Phil ran through the trees on a collision course with the big man. It was no longer the middle of the night, and the forest was as natural to Phil as the pavement is for most men. He saw the fleeing man bent forward and making hard work of the gradient. Anton turned and sprayed bullets in Phil’s direction.
“Dave! X-ray ... incoming!”
The mercenary paused, turned from Phil, saw no enemy, and continued uphill.
Phil listened for an agonising few seconds. A sharp double-tap sounded.
“X-ray down!” Dave croaked and coughed several times.
“Roger!” Phil smiled and headed down the hill.
29. Kidnaps and Killings
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07:45 - Flannigan was driving along a dual-carriageway, and would usually have travelled faster, but on this trip, he observed the speed limit. Each time he glanced over his shoulder at the blonde trussed up behind him, he touched himself. Not far to go.
A tractor pulled out from a field near Cardross. Flannigan was about to overtake the much slower vehicle, but a headlight appeared in his rear-view. A big yellow bike with rider and passenger dressed in black went past at high speed, leaning to the right and left, before roaring into the distance.
“I’ve got my problems,” Flannigan said, “but those people are bloody scary.” He looked back at his victim and grinned. “Talking of scary things—you’ll love my pleasure room.” He laughed.
Amy was lying on her back on the rear seat, staring at him. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I’ve got this special frame, and when you’re—” he stopped and shook his head. “No, I won’t tell you. I want it to be a surprise. I like surprises.” He drove on in silence for a few minutes. “It isn’t far now.”
It was fifteen minutes before he pulled up at the side of his house in Cove. Flannigan unlocked the side door of the house, before he opened the rear passenger door, and unlocked the handcuffs from the armrest.
“Come on my lovely girl,” he said as he gripped and pulled on Amy’s wrists. “Let’s get you downstairs.” Amy struggled and kicked at the pervert, but although sixty years of age, he was strong and held her. Gravel crunched underfoot behind him, and he turned.
Jake was standing with a garden rake. He swung it at Flannigan’s legs.
The older man turned and took the blow on one leg. Flannigan winced, but his eyes were blazing. “You’ve made a big mistake son.”
Jake stepped back and aimed the rake at Flannigan’s face. The blow was fended off, but the metal caught the man’s head, which angered him more. While Jake tackled Flannigan, Rachel sneaked up to the car to remove Amy’s cuffs. Jake walked backwards to distract Flannigan, and jabbed at his face with the rake.
The man ducked to one side and grabbed the long handle of the rake. He lashed out and punched Jake in the ribs, ignorant of how injured the lad already was. Jake collapsed to his knees.
Flannigan turned the rake and raised it to bring the metal teeth down onto Jake’s unprotected head.
“You fucking pussy,” Rachel said, and aimed a kick at Flannigan’s groin as he turned.
Flannigan dropped to his knees and held onto the open door of the vehicle. He saw Rachel’s left boot coming at his face and reached out with one hand to grab her ankle. She was slowed in the biker leathers and lost her balance. While he held her ankle with his left hand, he reached in behind the driver’s seat and brought out the shotgun.
“While we’re talking of pussy, where is my little blonde you fucking bitch?” He aimed the weapon at Rachel’s face from a few inches.
“She’s gone you sick bastard.”
Flannigan threw Rachel off balance by flicking her foot outwards. She stumbled, and as her head came forward, the sailor cracked her across the back of the head with the butt of the weapon.
While the younger team members were fighting for their lives in Cove, their leader was stepping out of the forest at the back of Hartley’s mansion. A line of dirt was kicked up close to Phil’s feet as a machine gun was fired from an upstairs window. Phil dived to the ground and took cover behind the wreckage of the Transit van.
Phil was kneeling behind the van and peered up at the shattered open window. It wasn’t a problem to tackle the man upstairs, because Phil had his Heckler and Koch MP5, a crossbow, and a Sig Sauer pistol, but he didn’t need a shoot out. By staying, it would give any other X-rays an opportunity to cover the open ground and surround him.
All the windows on the rear of the house had shattered in the explosion. Lobbing a grenade accurately at an open window was okay, but gaining height at the same time would be dangerous to Phil. He had no covering fire.
He pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade into the ground floor. As it landed, he lobbed another. Phil watched for the man in the window above. The grenades exploded in the ground floor room within seconds of each other.
The gunman upstairs lost his hearing and balance because of the proximity of the explosions. He leant out blindly to spray bullets, but before Phil could take aim, the man’s head flicked sideways, and blood splattered the wall beside him. The gunman fell from the window, already dead. A small, neat hole showed above his ear.
Phil recognised the man who’d fallen. To Phil’s reckoning, it left one sentry, and the top men. He wanted Hartley, Metcalfe, Davenport, and MacDonald, but he wasn’t interested in Davenport’s bed partner.
Phil moved forward from the van, and a sentry appeared at the side of the house with an Uzi machine gun. The man raised the weapon, but never fired a shot. Like his friend in the window position, he was hit by a killer a long distance away. He slid down the wall with a hole in the side of his head. Phil dropped to one knee, confident he was safe.
Davenport came to stand within the rear doorway. “I’m a senior police officer.” He walked out slowly. “If you stop now—”
“Come out, and get on the fucking ground,” Phil said. “Face down, arms and legs outstretched.”
Davenport’s right hand came up from behind his back, gripping a pistol. His right ankle exploded in a shower of red, and he screamed as his body was thrown by the power of the shot. Davenport dropped his gun and rolled around on the ground squealing.
Phil glanced to his left. It couldn’t be Dave,
because he was in the woods to the right, severely injured. The sniper was high among the trees to the left. Could it be Annabel? She was meant to be miles away on the west coast. Phil stayed in position and called out to the men in the building.
“If you come out now, you live. If I come in after you—you’re all dead men!”
William Hartley stepped out from the house with his hands behind his head. He walked forward confidently, looking Phil in the eye.
“It’s me you want,” Hartley said, “but you’ve got fuck all on me, plus I’ve got a good solicitor.” He walked to within two metres of Phil and brought down his hands.
“Hold it there,” Phil said and gritted his teeth. The man was older, but the face recognisable. William Hartley was without a doubt, Billy Harrison.
Hartley had come into the open as a distraction, but he wouldn’t have been as cocky if he’d been aware his hit-man was with Rob Roy McGregor—in the spirit world. They were discussing mistakes they’d made in life. Armstrong’s errors were recent.
“How much will it take?” Hartley said, sneering. “Name your price.”
Phil had confidence in his guardian angel with the high-powered weapon, and a good eye. He stood, and slipped the Sig Sauer into the holster with his right hand. He continued two steps forward, and brought up his left fist, to punch Hartley on the nose. A loud crack resulted from the blow, and blood splattered over both men.
Hartley stumbled backwards, shaking his head, but recovered. He dived forward and threw a punch. Phil dodged the blow and sent a right into Hartley’s gut. The gangster doubled over.
Two shots ricocheted from the sidewall of the old building, but Phil ignored them. If they didn’t land near him, they weren’t aimed at him. He gripped Hartley by the hair and smashed a fist into his face. Hartley attempted to fight back, but this opponent wasn’t a punch-bag. The gangster landed a few blows, but was subjected to a beating few men could survive.