Vengeance List

by Gary Gregor

  The scene that greeted her filled her with dread and sent a chill through her entire body. Stringer was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. He was looking up at her, and he was smiling.

  It was no longer his presence in the room, or his evil smile, that terrified her. It was what he was doing. On his knees, he held a sharpening stone, and across its surface, he dragged the blade of a very long, thin knife.

  Swish…swish…swish. It went, back and forth, back and forth.

  Ann groaned in horror. “Oh God…what are you doing?”

  “I’m sharpening this knife,” Stringer smiled without missing a stroke.

  “Why?” Ann half whispered, not wanting to know.

  “Well,” Stringer shrugged. “Since you asked, and since you did such a good job of turning around, I’ll tell you.” He lifted the knife, looked lovingly at the shiny blade, looked back at Ann, and smiled again. “I’m going to peel the skin from your miserable hide, and I’m going to take a very long time to do it.”

  Ann was going to be sick. She swallowed hard and fought against the rising bile in her throat.

  “Oh my God,” she whimpered. Tears began to flow freely down her face. “Oh my God, please don’t. Please don’t hurt me.”

  “Don’t grovel,” he warned. “I hate grovelling women almost as much as I hate whining women.”

  Ann could not take her eyes from the knife as Stringer lowered it to the sharpening stone and resumed sharpening it. She could not rid her mind of the awful image it created. She stared at it. Back and forth it went, back and forth, back and forth. Swish…swish…swish.

  A lightheaded feeling washed over her. She tried to fight it, but it was too powerful. Once more she slipped blissfully into unconsciousness.

  24

  Sam paid the driver and stepped from the cab. He still stood a distance from the old military firing range. He watched the taxi drive away and walked the remaining distance, just as Stringer had instructed. He entered the range from the end opposite the main gate, not an easy task, requiring him to scale a high, cyclone-wire fence. The fence was in a poor state of repair, due to many years of exposure to the harsh Top End climate, and obvious lack of routine maintenance. Albeit leaning outwards in some places and inwards in others, it still stood, and presented a formidable obstacle to overcome.

  As instructed, he scrambled awkwardly over the fence, and crouched momentarily in the long grass on the other side. Eventually, he made his way cautiously through a narrow but dense stand of stunted native scrub, and paused at a manmade, long mound of earth, situated in front of what was once an old rifle range area.

  Breathing heavily with exertion, Sam slipped and clambered his way to the top of the hill and gathered his breath for a few moments. Mildly dismayed at his obvious lack of fitness, he looked out over the expanse of open land that lay between himself and the distant firing line, three hundred metres away. Once, there would have been other lines of varying distances between where he stood, and the three hundred metre line, but over the intervening years, they were overgrown and now undistinguishable.

  Abandoned many years ago as an operational firing range used by the military, the long mound where he stood was designed to absorb the impact of ammunition rounds as they ploughed through targets located at its base. Now, the whole area was overgrown with small trees and thick undergrowth. In front, where the targets once stood, lay bits and pieces of discarded rubbish accumulated over many years.

  He scanned the area beyond the initial firing line three hundred metres to his front, looking for the old ammunition storage bunker Stringer had described. Sam knew it was there; he remembered it from his distant past.

  Years ago, as a uniformed General Duties patrol officer, he was familiar with this place. It was a long time ago, and although the terrain hadn’t changed a great deal, apart from the unchecked vegetation growth, it looked different somehow. Perhaps it was because he never entered the range from this point before, and it was a different perspective.

  Back then, this place was a well-known squatter’s camp. In those days, a number of vagrant, itinerant fringe dwellers used it as a place to gather for the express purpose of drinking, fighting, fornicating, and sleeping; usually in that order.

  As a patrol member, Sam was required to attend here, as were most of his colleagues, on many occasions. Most of the time, it was to break up a drunken dispute between two or more antagonists. Tempers flared with copious quantities of alcohol, prompting many to resolve their differences with violence.

  As he recalled, there never seemed to be any gender bias in such disputes. In fact, it was more often the females who caused the most problems for attending police; not to mention the most severe injuries upon the unfortunate recipient of their wrath. Hell hath no fury, and all that.

  Constant, unrelenting public denouncement of this unacceptable behaviour had the desired effect on the politicians of the day who, with experienced expertise, deftly passed the buck to the police administrators. Subsequently, existing trespass laws were enforced. The drinking, fighting, fornicating, and sleeping, moved from this relatively isolated and private place into the numerous open, very public, parks, gardens, and beachfronts that dotted the near city surrounds. Well, the politicians boasted, at least the trespass problem was negated. As Sam stood on top of the mound overlooking the range, the irony of such political ineptness neither escaped nor surprised him.

  He glanced at his watch. He was a few minutes early of the appointed time ordered by Stringer. He was to stand there, alone on top of the mound, in full view of the entire range, for ten minutes. Then he was to walk slowly across the open ground towards the front firing line and the old bunker beyond.

  He studied the terrain before him. Successive seasons of tropical wet-season rains followed by dry-season grass fires had left their mark. Although flat and open in front of him, the land was now covered in low, waist high savannah grass. Sam was not looking forward to walking through it.

  Stringer would be watching him, from, a vantage point unseen by Sam. He would be watching, looking for any sign he might have brought the police with him. He would watch as Sam made his way across the range to the pre-arranged meeting place, and any hint of a police presence would result in the instant death of Ann Curtis.

  The very thought of losing her stirred Sam’s emotions, and impatience almost got the better of him. He moved a few feet down the front of the mound before checking himself. He glanced again at his watch. Stringer had been very specific. He should remain on top of the mound for ten minutes. He had three minutes to go. He moved back, and stood erect at the top of the mound, waiting, exposed, and vulnerable. He thought about the inviting target he made standing there, silhouetted against the skyline. He was a long way away, however, and it would take a spectacular shot from the cover of the bunker to hit him from there. Nonetheless, although he knew John Stringer would not use a firearm as his weapon of choice, he felt no comfort as he stood in full view of the distant firing line.

  Finally, the ten minutes were up. He moved purposely from the top of the mound. It was not as steep as it once was, but was blanketed now in a thick carpet of grass and small, stunted shrubs, making progress unstable and awkward. He slipped and almost fell, managing to save himself by grabbing at a small sapling nearby. In one final precarious scramble, he stumbled to the base of the mound. He turned, glanced back up the deceptively difficult slope, and cursed softly.

  Down here, looking across the expanse of savannah, he could just make out the hilly outcrop in the distance, where the old storage bunker was situated.

  It was going to be a long walk through dense, waist high grass. Already he was perspiring freely, and he knew it would be worse by the time he reached the other side of the range. The long grass stretching out in front of him no doubt harboured all manner of snakes and other equally objectionable creatures.

  Sam knew Stringer. From wherever he lay, in hiding, he would be observing his progress. Moving slowly, as
instructed, he guessed it would take him around ten minutes to cover the distance and so, determined albeit apprehensive, he stepped out into the long grass.

  John Stringer lay concealed on top of the earth covered storage bunker. From here, he had an excellent, unrestricted view over the entire length and breadth of the firing range; including the chained and padlocked main entrance gate, and all sections of the high chain-link fence enclosing the range.

  Through binoculars, he watched Rose approach from the opposite end of the range. He watched as he climbed the fence and made his way to the top of the target mound. During the ten minutes Rose waited atop the mound, Stringer swept the area thoroughly with the glasses. It seemed Rose had decided, wisely, to shake the coppers following him, and come alone as he had ordered.

  “You better be alone, mister clever dick, ex-copper bastard,” he murmured softly. “You better be alone. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Now, vengeance will be mine at last.”

  Below where he lay, deep inside the bunker, Ann Curtis remained as he had left her, firmly trussed and waiting. Waiting for what, she did not know, but Stringer knew. She was waiting to die. She was the bait, the lure enticing Rose here. It worked. He smiled, and warmed at the ingeniousness of his plan.

  It had never been his intention to kill the woman, not at first. But things had changed. Now he had come to see how important she was to Rose. The prick was in love with her, and that changed everything. It would enhance his pleasure ten-fold to watch Rose’s face as he slowly killed the woman in front of him.

  He smiled as he watched Rose stumble down the face of the mound. This was going to be good. This was what it was all about. Oh, how he was going to love hearing Rose beg, first for the woman’s life, then for his own. Stringer smiled again as a shiver of anticipation shuddered through him.

  Satisfied Rose was alone, he picked his way cautiously down from the top of the bunker and slipped unseen inside, pulling the heavy steel door shut behind him.

  He began to hum softly. It was the same tune he hummed that night all those years ago. The night he stopped that bitch he married from whining. He thought it appropriate he remembered the same tune again after all this time. He smiled as he hummed. He felt compelled to sing, he was that happy, but he didn’t know the words, only the tune. It went something like; ”Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves…” as best as he could remember. Never mind. It didn’t matter. It sounded nice when he hummed it, especially here inside the bunker. It must be the thick concrete walls. They acted as soundproofing; as acoustics. Yes, that was the word, excellent acoustics.

  Sam walked slowly, tentatively through the long grass. The urge to run was strong, and he fought to suppress it, not wanting to stumble over any long discarded rubbish that may well lay hidden in the undergrowth. If he tripped and sprained an ankle, or worse, he would be of no help to Ann, and he would be that much more vulnerable to the will of Stringer.

  He kept his eyes down most of the time, glancing up occasionally to check his position in relation to the bunker. Like most people, he was not fond of snakes, and this long grass seemed to be an ideal habitat for them. With each footfall he paused, straining to hear the tell-tale rustle of grass that would indicate he was not alone in the middle of this open expanse of land.

  Every few metres he glanced up and looked ahead at the hill in the distance, changing direction slightly when he happened to find himself straying off course. He decided a direct line to the old bunker was the quickest way to reach it, and hence the quickest way to leave the long grass and its hidden threats.

  In front of the hill, the old storage bunker encased within, the ground was devoid of any form of growth. Long abandoned cooking fires, piles of discarded, empty beer cans and wine flagons, and several ragged, rotting, stinking mattresses lay in scattered, disorderly heaps in front of the bunker, vivid reminders of the people who frequented the place.

  Sam finally reached the end of the Savannah, and looked at the rubbish around him. He skirted a pile of foul-smelling, unidentifiable trash, and approached the closed door of the bunker. The door was the only sign of anything beneath the hill. When it was originally built into the side of the hill, even the front of the bunker was covered in soil. Or, more likely, the bunker was built first, and then the earth dumped over it, forming a manmade hill.

  The steel door looked blatantly incongruous in the façade of the hill. He paused in front of it. Any doubts he was in the right place were instantly dispelled. It was nothing visible; it was intuitive; a strong sense of being in the right place despite there being no indications to the contrary.

  The door was heavy, encased in steel as an added security measure, and it squealed on old rusted hinges as Sam pulled it cautiously toward him.

  It was dark inside, and he stood away from the opening so as not to present an illuminated target for Stringer should he be waiting in ambush. He reached down and removed the thirty-eight from his ankle holster. Slowly, his heart pounding furiously in his chest and perspiration running freely down his face, he stepped around the open door into the darkened room beyond. Thoughts of Paddy O’Reily rushed to his mind, and he brushed them aside, not wanting to imagine the worst.

  He knew from the past there was more than one room in this bunker complex, but he couldn’t remember just how many. He did know this; the main room was the biggest, and a small, narrow corridor to his left led to smaller rooms deeper in the belly of the hill.

  He stood as silent as his shallow, nervous breathing would allow, his back pressed hard against the wall just to the left of the door. A narrow shaft of light snaked in from outside, and he waited until his eyes adjusted to the dim outline of the room. He silently cursed himself for not thinking to bring a torch.

  An odour of damp mildew and decaying rubbish flooded his nostrils, and he wanted to turn, rush outside and take a lung full of fresh, clean air. He resisted the urge and waited until his breathing slowed, straining to look deeper into the room. The little light entering from outside would not penetrate as far as the rooms located deeper in the rear of the complex.

  Finally, confident he was alone, at least in this room; he looked to his left towards the corridor leading to the other rooms. Keeping his back pressed firmly against the damp concrete wall, he felt his way slowly along to where the dark, narrow corridor began. Here he paused, willing his heart to stop its incessant pounding. Cautiously he peeked around the corner into the darkness. The light was bad, but there was enough of it filtering in from outside to enable him to see the shadowy outline of another doorway just inside the corridor. He turned and looked back the way he had come. For a moment, he wondered if he should go back and open the outside door wider to allow more light to filter into the darker depths of the bunker. He decided against it; the harder it was for him to see meant Stringer had to operate under the same poorly lit conditions.

  He remained still and silent for a while longer, and as he fought to steady his breathing, tried to recall from his past any details of the first room along the corridor. It was small, as were the other rooms further along the corridor he remembered, and in the dim light, something, instinct perhaps, told him the room was empty.

  He edged around the corner and entered the corridor. With his back still pressed hard against the wall, he moved ever so slowly and silently forward. When he reached the doorway, he paused, straining his ears for any sounds from within the room.

  Taking a deep breath, he sprang, low and fast into the room, sweeping the darkness with the revolver. He waited, half expecting to feel the thump of a bullet as it exploded into his crouched form. With his free hand, he wiped at the sweat running unchecked into his eyes.

  His instincts were right. The room was empty. He waited, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He couldn’t believe he had not thought to bring a torch. Too damn pre-occupied with thoughts of Ann and Stringer. He stepped back out into the corridor. He looked back along the short way he had come and could see the dim light fro
m the open door back in the main room. It seemed so far away. He turned back and started forward again. The deeper he moved into the bunker, the darker it became.

  Then, he heard a faint noise behind him. He ducked instinctively again into a low crouch, and spun around, his revolver aimed back towards the main room. Nothing but a dark silence existed behind him.

  The thick walls and tons of earth above him created an eerie stillness to the place. He stilled his breathing and listened again, certain he had heard something back there. He pressed himself flat against the corridor wall making a smaller target of himself. Waiting, listening. There! There it was again! Not from the main room behind him as he had first thought, but from inside. From another room further along the corridor, deeper under the hill. There, there it was again! The noise came from his left. What was it? He strained to listen, trying to get a fix on it. Yes! There! Up ahead! Jesus, what was that? It sounded like a muffled cry. No, not a cry, it was a groan, a muffled groan, and then silence. Every fibre of his being screamed at him to charge ahead and rescue Ann. It took will power he never knew he had not to.

  He waited. Perspiration stung his eyes, and he swept it away with his free hand. Still he waited but the sound did not return. He heard only the sound of his heart as it crashed against the wall of his chest.

  Slowly his eyes focused on something deeper along the corridor. What was it? It was down low, at floor level. He stared at it, trying to determine what it was. Then, suddenly, he knew. It was a light; a very faint, flickering light. Down low. Why so low? A door! That was it! There was another door along there. Right down the end. The light was coming from the narrow gap under the door!