by Leigh Barker
“Yeah, course. You fink I’m bloody fick or somethink?”
Mostly somethink, Shaun thought. “Go on, then, impress me.” No, he’s not getting it. “Then why are you here?”
“Got nicked, didn’t I.”
There, proves he isn’t fick. “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,” Shaun said helpfully.
Tweetie turned in the seat and stared at Danny. “Is he nuts?”
Danny nodded. Of course he’s nuts. He said nothing, letting him sweat. Yeah, like that was working.
Shaun pointed at the sling. “Get that in the shootout?”
“Yeah.” Tweetie raised his arm, flinched extravagantly, and lowered it again. “But I weren’t there.”
Shaun glanced at Danny, who’d discovered some interesting writing on the wall that required his complete attention.
Shaun closed his eyes, but that didn’t help, it was still looney tunes. He decided it was better to let it go, for the sake of his sanity. “So, this OK Corral you weren’t at—”
Tweetie turned to Danny again, but there was no help there. “I don’t know no OK Corral, is it a diving club?
“It was a wild west shoot-out, like the one you were in,” Danny prompted.
Tweetie started to deny it, but Shaun leaned forward and patted his sling, raising a very satisfying scream from the boy.
“Yeah, I know,” Shaun said, sympathy dripping from his voice. “Bullet wounds hurt like buggery, don’t they?” Not a great simile, on this occasion.
Tweetie was rocking back and forth, clutching his arm and moaning.
Shaun leaned back to give the boy room to sob, displaying enough consideration and compassion to fill a good-sized bucket.
“I got shot,” Tweetie whimpered.
“He got shot.” Shaun pointed out to Danny, who raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“That’ll be what caused the bullet wound,” Danny explained helpfully. Hey, detective detecting.
“Some other guys at the scene weren’t so lucky,” Shaun said. “If you’re the only one not face down on the concrete, then you shot them. That’s murder for sure. Probably hang you.”
Tweetie gasped and put his good hand to his mouth. “I didn’t murder nobody!” He was rocking back and forth in the chair. “They was shooting at me!” He raised his bandaged arm to emphasise the point. “And they shot little Talcum.” He fought back tears. “A dear little thing she was, too.”
Shaun frowned. “Talcum?” Then he got it. “Calf-length white trousers, red high heels?”
Tweetie nodded slowly and looked as though he might start blubbering.
“How many bodies did they pull out of there?” Shaun said with a frown, as if he’d lost count.
Danny screwed up his face and counted slowly on his fingers. “Six,” he said at last and glanced at Tweetie. “Including the… Talcum.” He nodded sagely. “Drug deal gone bad, I believe.”
Shaun was having much too much fun to quit. “Maybe you’ll just get twenty years.” He leaned forward, looked around to make sure nobody in the empty room could overhear, and whispered, “Pretty boy like you with all those lonely cons, all pumped up muscles and… swollen.” He waited for Tweetie to get the picture.
Tweetie got the picture, his jaw doing an impression of a cartoon character in shock, and he almost became a deceased birdie right there. “Twenty years! But I didn’t murder nobody!” He stood up. Danny put his hands on his shoulders and helped him to sit down again. He whimpered and put his good hand over his eyes. That made everything better. “I was there, yeah, but I was only along as the muscle.”
Danny snorted a laugh that was unstoppable, and Shaun’s shoulders shook visibly.
“What?” Tweetie looked hurt. “Don’t you fink I could be scary?”
“You scare the shit outa me,” Shaun said in a voice that still shook from suppressed laughter.
“Anyway, I only had a little gun, and it weren’t even mine!”
That was it; Danny lost it and almost made it out through the door before he erupted with laughter.
Shaun shook his head in mock reproach. “Excuse my colleague, Mr Tweetie, he doesn’t know how to behave.”
Tweetie nodded deep understanding. “It’s the black blood. You know?” He leaned forward a little. “And do you know what they say?”
Shaun thought he must have finally been transported completely into Daffy Duck land. “This gun… the little one that weren’t… wasn’t yours…” Shaun caught himself before his brain grew gossamer wings and fluttered away. “Whose was it?”
“I want a brief,” Tweetie said, with sudden truculent confidence, a totally unconvincing aggressive pose and a squeaky voice.
“You’ll get my fist in your pearly white teeth if you don’t tell me exactly what was going on in that warehouse!”
He meant it; Tweetie knew he meant it. He was going to damage his New Smile. Four hundred bleedin’ quid, and he was going to—
“Any time today will be fine with me,” Shaun prompted.
“I told you, I was along as—”
“The muscle. Yeah, you said.”
That wasn’t going to save his teeth; he could see that from the nutter’s expression. “Why the hell should I take the fall for them?” No reason. “I was there with Big Betty and Curly Sue.” Clearly still not enough. “For the delivery.”
Danny, apparently recovered, came back into the room. “Big Betty and Curly Sue?” he said, walking behind Tweetie and resuming his position against the wall.
“Yeah, you know?” Tweetie’s voice had lost its bravado and was now thin with a hint of a lisp. They didn’t know, he could see that, so he would tell them. He was already in it up to his neck, so why the hell should he get himself banged up for those two? Pumped up cons… swollen. Jesus! But you know, it painted a bit of a picture. Then the sudden thought of twenty years banged up smudged the paint. “All right, say I tell you? What’s in it for me?”
Danny shrugged. “Well, Mad Max O’Conner here won’t beat you to a pulp for a start.”
Tweetie’s jaw dropped again, and he stared at Shaun. Why’d they call him Mad Max? But look at him, he really did look like a right nutter. What the hell? “I tell you, you let me walk, right?”
Shaun and Danny exchanged glances. “Okay,” Danny said, “deal.”
Tweetie nodded, swallowed, nodded. “It was Curly Sue’s idea. She said that we could make a load of easy money supplying a shit-load of H for one of those rich blokes over in Mayfair.”
“Easy money?” Danny said.
“Yeah,” Tweetie said, twisting in his chair. This black guy was all right, not a nutter like the other one. He warmed to his story. “Curly Sue reckoned we could make one big score and be on the up. Maybe move upmarket or somethink, and be in the money.”
Shaun leaned forward across the table. “So what happened?”
Tweetie wiped his mouth on the palm of his hand. “It was just a con.”
“How come?” Danny prompted.
“Turns out Curly Sue owed somebody big time and was going to get her nuts chopped off unless she did this gig.” He stared at them with a pleading look that went floating past. “So we thought we was going to this easy drug buy… ’cept nothink’s easy with these black guys.” He turned quickly in the chair. “No offence.”
Danny shrugged.
“Couldn’t have been that easy,” Shaun pointed out. “You had a gun.” He frowned. “A machine gun, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yeah, but it was only a little machine gun.”
Oh, that’s all right, then.
“A mini Uzi,” Danny added for completeness.
“So what went wrong?” Shaun prompted.
“The Jamaicans had the drugs all fair and square, and Big Betty handed over the bag of cash. One of those sports bag things full of money. I’ve never seen so much foldings in me life, there must—”
“So Big Betty handed over the money?” Shaun prompted.
Tweetie shook his head. “No…
well, yes.” He let his brain spin up to working speed. “She was going to, when Curly shot them all. Bam-bam, bam-bam.” He pointed at his chest. “I never seen nothing like it. She put two shots in their chests before they even got time to think about it. Big Betty dropped the money, and she got a gun and popped the others.” Tweetie swallowed hard. “You got any water?”
Shaun nodded. There was water somewhere. “So how many did you shoot… with your little machine gun?”
Tweetie shook his head. “No, no way.” He swallowed again. “I pulled the trigger thing, but nothing happened. And by the time I worked out where the little safety thing was, it was all over.” He raised his arm. “I didn’t even know I’d been shot, not until it started to hurt.” He flinched. “And it really hurt. You ever been shot?”
“Few times,” Shaun said. “So, Big Sue?”
“Curly Sue,” Tweetie corrected. “It’s Big Betty.”
Shaun watched him steadily, wondering if slapping him a few times would help. It would certainly help him. “Okay, Curly Sue, then, she ripped off the drugs and kept the money?”
“Yeah, that was the plan all along. Only way she could pay off the Man.”
“Man’s going to be pleased,” Danny said quietly. “Doubt the Yardies are going to be too chuffed, though.”
18
Harry climbed out of the Land Rover onto the dusty village square very slowly and tried to minimise the pain, but only managed to get it down to feeling like a broken leg. He looked around slowly, and his neck hairs rose as he pictured the gunmen on the rooftops of the narrow alley leading off the square where Tom had parked the Land Rover. He reached into the vehicle and pulled out the L115, leaned on his crutch more than usual and limped down the alley to the burned-out building that had come so close to being his last place on Earth.
“Okay,” Tom said, retrieving his sub-machine gun and the assault rifle, which he tossed to BJ. He strode past Harry to the door where the old man had dragged Harry’s body. “So you got us here, AWOL I might add.” He blew out his breath in an exaggerated sigh of resignation. “How do you figure to find the old chap?”
Harry tried to look relaxed about it, like he’d worked it out. He hadn’t, and the others knew it. “We could ask,” he suggested lamely.
“Oh, yeah right, that’ll work,” BJ mocked. “’Scuse me, Afghan person, but have you seen an old bloke with a little kid who isn’t dead?”
Harry had to admit he had a point and wished he’d thought a bit more about it, on the plane perhaps, but he’d been too busy hurting and cursing. “Dunno,” he said, seizing control of the moment. “We could split up and look around.”
Tom and BJ stared at him like he’d had too much sun.
“No, wait!” Tom said enthusiastically. “We could go house to house!”
“You’re a hoot, you know that?” Harry was hot and getting fed up again.
“Or you could ask me.”
They turned quickly to find the old Afghan standing at the entrance to the street with the girl whose life Harry had saved.
“Well, there you go,” Harry said, hobbling back down the alley. “Just as I planned.”
“Bollocks!” Tom and BJ said together.
And it truly was.
The happy reunion of saviours lasted five seconds. Harry had just reached the old man when the Land Rover’s windows blew out, followed an instant later by the doors and roof as the RPG exploded in the cab.
Tom pushed the old man into the same doorway he had pulled Harry into, while BJ scooped up the kid and followed them.
Harry watched them push the civilians to the back and take up defensive positions, and then turned to look back up the alley at the blazing Land Rover. “Looks like they’re still mad at us,” he said and walked surprisingly easily to the doorway and his crouching friends, but adrenalin will do that. “Are you planning to have a sleepover down here, then?”
They looked up at him and then at the Land Rover.
“If they could have shot us, would they have blown up the vehicle?” he asked, with a questioning tilt of his head. “But that situation isn’t going to last long.” Nobody moved. “Oh, unless you want to hang around and ask for their insurance details?”
They stood up, looking a little guilty, and now that Harry could see the old man, he put out his hand and helped him up.
“We need to get out of the village,” he said with a smile of reassurance that didn’t work. “Do you know where there is any transport?”
The old man looked confused for a moment, then got it together. “No transport.”
Bugger.
“Only a truck,” he said and started off down the alley with the little girl holding onto his robe as if her life depended on it.
The three marines looked at each other, and then Tom shrugged and set off after the departing raggedy pair. BJ scooped Harry up with one arm and half carried, half dragged him after the others. Harry formed the swear words, but then saw the little dust mushrooms sprouting along the alley and decided to hell with dignity.
The truck was an ancient 80’s Toyota 4Runner, but right then, with bullets zipping past their ears, a horse and buggy would have been welcome.
“Does it run?” Tom said, seriously doubting it.
The old man opened the driver’s door and waved him in. Tom obeyed, got in and, saying a quick prayer in case there was a god, turned the key. The engine should have turned over very tiredly, spluttered, or not turned at all, but it didn’t, it just fired right up, and he made a note to thank whichever wizard mechanic had delayed their moment of death.
“Get in!” he shouted at the other two.
BJ jumped in and slid over to the edge of the passenger seat, but not so close to the gear stick that Tom would have to touch his arse.
Harry started to follow, stopped, and called to the old man over the back of the truck. “Come on! Let’s get out of here!”
The old man waved at him and ducked down a tiny alley with the little girl still hanging on.
“For Christ’s sake, Harry, let’s go!” Tom crunched the gears in his hurry to do just that, and Harry slid in as the truck took off.
There was a wooden gate, and then there wasn’t. Then they were out of the village and onto good rolling sand hills, with holes and rocks and wadis and lots of bullets. The truck was taking fire from what could only be a heavy machine gun, probably mounted on a pickup like the one they were in. They heard the stunk-stunk as the rounds ripped through the side of the truck right behind their seats. This could only end one way.
“Stop!” Harry shouted, and Tom stood on the brakes. Harry jumped out of the truck onto one leg, caught his balance, and shouted back at BJ. “Spot for me, now!”
BJ rolled out of the truck, pulled out a sniper spotter scope, and scanned the walls and windows of the mud-brick buildings, while Harry walked calmly round the truck and set up the L115, its bipod resting on the truck’s hood.
“Eleven o’clock, next to the house with the red paint.” BJ ran round the back of the truck out of Harry’s line of fire and stood behind him so that he could see the bullet’s vapour trail and make any corrections.
Harry saw the 50-cal machine gun on the pickup. He snapped back the L115’s bolt, steadied his breathing, and fired. The machine gunner left the truck like he’d been hit by a rocket, but another insurgent jumped up and started to get the thing back into action. Harry killed him before he could do the same to them. And the next guy, and the one after that. The fifth insurgent on the rota ran behind the building, showing the good sense his comrades had been missing.
“Okay,” Harry said, folding the bipod and putting a sock back over the muzzle to keep out the dust.
BJ clapped him on the back and laughed. “Okay indeed!” He took Harry’s arm and steadied him as he made his way back round the truck.
While Harry waited for him to climb into the truck, he put three fingers into one of the holes made by the bullets that had passed behind his seat. Close, but n
o cigar. He took a long breath and let it out slowly. It had been close, real close, and he wondered how many more lives he’d got left. Not many, was his guess.
19
Tweetie Pie was biting his lip and thinking, Shaun and Danny could tell that from the pained expression.
“What is it, Mr Tweetie?” Shaun prompted. “You can tell us. We’re all friends here, aren’t we?”
Tweetie smiled, feeling better now he was among friends. “It was Curly.”
“What about Curly?” Shaun asked. God, it was like talking to a toddler.
“She didn’t seem too bovered by the drugs.” He frowned even harder, cracking his thick makeup. “Only interested in the big boxes.”
Now it was Shaun’s turn to frown, but without the damage to trowel-layered foundation. “Big boxes? What sort of big boxes?”
Tweetie’s makeup cracked even more with the effort of thinking. “Long, thin, err… boxes. Heavy. Two of them.” More thinking. “Foot square maybe, and this long.” He extended his arms as if showing how big the one that got away was. “Or longer,” he added helpfully.
Shaun and Danny exchanged glances.
“Like rifle cases?” Shaun asked, but already knew the answer.
Tweetie cheered up. “Yeah, that’s right. How’d you know what was in them? I only saw the one. Big, you know?” He put out his arms again, but still too short.
Shaun nodded and looked over at Danny. “Yeah, I know. Question is—”
“Who is buying rifles?” Danny finished.
“The real question is,” Shaun said, tapping the table with his fingertips, “why is someone buying two sniper rifles.”
Danny frowned. “Why do you think they’re sniper rifles?”
“Because,” Shaun said, “you can buy regular rifles from bloody Tesco these days, but sniper rifles…” He shook his head. “They’re special order. So question still is, why?”
“Ah!” Tweetie said. “That’s obvious.” He waited for them to ask, or even acknowledge that he’d spoken. Wait on. “Somebody wants somebody dead.” He nodded sagely. “Twice.”
Danny closed his eyes, but it didn’t help. “Looks like we’ve got a turf war coming, and it’s going to be high-tech and bloody.”