Who Dares Wins

by Vince Vogel

  It was taller than the surrounding buildings, but had been recently bombed by the Royal Airforce, the front of it scarred black by the flames. Before, it had been two floors higher that its neighbouring buildings. Now only half an extra floor poked up from the rooftops. Most of the rubble had been cleared away and the building was essentially a shell.

  Dorring wondered why the crowd wanted to get inside it so badly.

  Conner unlocked the machine gun and swiveled it around. He aimed it at the broken top floor of the derelict building, so that the fire would go above their heads and there’d be some light shrapnel for effect. Really make them believe this was the end. When he was sure there was no one on the top of the building, Conner grinned widely and pulled the trigger.

  The gun spat the bullets out in a stream, shaking and rattling in Conner’s hands. The fire struck the brickwork and shattered it into pieces that flew into the air. Everyone, including the army boys, ducked down. But Conner kept pulling the trigger and this made the crowd panic as they covered their heads from the falling shrapnel. The first person made a run for it with his head down. This caused the others to follow suit, and, like lemmings, they all got up and started running.

  When it was only the four infantry guys lying on the floor with their hands over their ears, Conner stopped firing and all Dorring could hear was his comrade’s laughter.

  From the derelict building, a very flustered looking woman dressed in uniform came bursting out, dashing her eyes from person to person. Dorring couldn’t help admiring her. Her brown hair was tied in a neat bun, silky and shining in the midday sun. And though her face was stern, he couldn’t help noting that it did nothing to diminish her beauty. Only strengthened it.

  “Who in the hell fired that weapon?” she shrieked, darting her pierced eyes straight at Dorring, who sat watching her through the windscreen.

  “That’d be me,” Conner said from the turret, putting his hand up. “For obvious reasons,” he added, rolling his eyes.

  “What?” she barked at him.

  “Well, for obvious reasons,” he repeated. “Being that I’m stood behind this machine gun here.”

  “Get down from there,” she snapped at him. “I want your name, unit and ID.” Then pointing her eyes at Dorring and following it with a pointed finger, she added, “You too.”

  They got out of the DPV and approached her. Like naughty schoolchildren to their teacher, they told her their names and she had the army boys check their IDs.

  “Look, darlin’,” Conner said, and she turned a malevolent scowl on him, “we just saved you. You wanted crowd control. We controlled it.”

  “Firstly,” she said with her finger pointed straight at Conner’s eye, “I’m not your ‘darling’. And secondly, you may have got them out of here for now, but they’ll be back in larger numbers. Possibly with insurgents amongst them ready to stoke this into an all out battle. I wanted this controlled. Not exacerbated.”

  “Exacerbated!?” Conner scoffed. “Big words.”

  “Too much for you?” she put back. “You need me to stick to monosyllables, caveman?”

  Dorring smiled. Conner looked annoyed. He didn’t like being outwitted. Especially by a woman.

  “Look,” Dorring said, “let’s get off the playground for a second. What is it you’re doing here anyway?”

  She turned her stern, twisted face at Dorring and he couldn’t help blushing. She really was that pretty when angry.

  “We’re trying to secure a crime scene,” she said. “Me and my partner were called out to something found here today.”

  “What?” Conner asked.

  “A body.”

  “One of ours?”

  “No. Civilian.”

  “Then why the hell are you out here? Let the locals sort it out.”

  “It was local police that called us. They think it could have been one of ours who did it.”

  “Huh!” Conner grumbled. “They would say that.”

  “I’m obliged to believe them. But now we won’t have enough time with the crime scene to find out for sure. Not since you two came blustering in with your pistols blazing like a couple of juveniles playing cowboys and Indians.”

  “I take it the body’s still there?” Dorring asked her.

  “Yes. But we’ll have to leave it here.”

  “Can’t we take it with us?”

  She thought about this and shook her head. “No,” she said. “The locals will go crazy. Claim we’ve desecrated it. No. I need both of you to come with me and help take pictures of everything.”

  She turned on her heels and walked into the derelict building. Dorring and Conner followed, while the four infantry soldiers stood watch. Inside, the place was bare concrete floors and bare brick with patches of plaster still hanging in parts. Most of the internal walls had been blown out and cleared away. Halfway through, a supporting wall was out and the concrete ceiling above bowed downwards on its steel enforcement rods, cracking and coming away.

  “Watch your head,” the MP said as they went underneath it.

  “Look,” Dorring said, catching up to her as she marched through the place, “we got off on the wrong footing.”

  He stopped and thrust his hand out. She stopped too and turned to him. Conner stopped behind them and frowned at his partner.

  “Alex,” Dorring said to her.

  She glared down at the hand, then back to his gray, steel eyes. The edge of her left eye twitched and Dorring was sure she was repressing a simper. She took his hand and they shook.

  “Captain Jane Saunders,” she said. “Everyone just calls me Jane.”

  “Okay, Jane. Nice to meet you.”

  When they’d finished with the handshake, Conner pushed between them and stuck out his own hand. She glanced down at it, frowned and continued walking through the building. Conner turned to Dorring and rolled his eyes.

  “Like always, partner,” he said in a hushed voice, “the ladies flock to you.”

  At the back of the building, it got pitch black where the blown out windows were covered over with boards and there were no holes in the outer building for the sunlight to shine through. It meant they had to turn their flashlights on.

  Stairs led down into a basement. Jane went down first and the two SAS men followed. The air was colder down there. A faint glow existed at the bottom and soon Dorring was walking into it. They’d hung battery-operated halogen lamps on the walls of the cramped space so that everything glowed purple. In the center of the room, a man kneeled beside something in the shadows. He looked up at them when they entered, the white skin of his face glowing in the light.

  “What’ve you found?” Jane asked him.

  The man stood up and Dorring saw what he’d been kneeling over. It was a female Afghani. She was naked and covered in blood. Her hands and feet were bound in duct tape and a piece was fixed over her mouth. Her horrified eyes stared out into the void of death. And there was more. Much more.

  Into the flesh of her belly, something had been carved. Something hard to see in all the blood.

  “There's something inside her,” the partner said. Then, looking at Dorring and Conner for the first time, he added, “Who’re they?”

  “SAS grunts,” Jane said. “It was them firing the cannon.”

  The partner rolled his eyes and Jane turned to the two SAS men.

  “This is Lieutenant Kevin Yates,” she said.

  “Hey,” Kevin said with a nod.

  Jane turned back to her colleague and asked, “What’s inside her?”

  “I can’t tell until the autopsy. It’s been wedged inside the vaginal cavity.”

  “Right,” Jane said. “Can you hand these guys some cameras?”

  “Sure.”

  Kevin went to grab them from a pile of equipment in a corner, but was stopped when they heard a cry from upstairs. Jane turned sharply on the exit and went up the stone steps. Emerging at the top, she spotted one of the infantry soldiers jogging over.

  “H
ey,” he said. “They’re coming back.”

  “Shit!” Jane exclaimed softly. “Okay. Get your men ready. We’re leaving. But we’re about to cause a huge load of shit, so I need you to keep them back for as long as possible.”

  She turned and went back down into the basement.

  “We need to leave,” she said to the others when she reached the bottom.

  “But I need to look further,” Kevin said. “If this is what I think it could be, we need to know for sure what we’re dealing with. I need to have a better look at her.”

  “Fuck!” Jane snapped. “Okay. Then we’re taking the body.”

  “Why’s she so important anyway?” Conner asked, sure that it would be him and Dorring carrying the body and annoyed at her earlier assertion of them being grunts.

  “Don’t you recognize the words on her stomach?” Kevin said, turning to him.

  Dorring had. He’d been staring at the bloody carving the whole time he’d been down there and had only just realized what the crude lettering said. Who Dares Wins. It was the SAS motto. The killer was trying to claim the body for them.

  “It’s our motto,” Dorring said.

  “So you see how important this is,” Jane said. “The local police have already seen her. They fled when the crowd turned up. They’ll be telling everyone that someone from your unit has done this. It’s about to cause a lot of trouble and we need to know two things. If this is actually one of ours. And if it is: who?”

  Kevin quickly grabbed a body bag from their stuff and he and Jane carefully loaded the dead woman into it. Conner had been right. He and Dorring were assigned with carrying the body as carefully as they could while the two MPs carried their equipment.

  As they walked to the front of the building, they began to hear the roar of many voices. When they emerged outside, they saw a large group of men—bearded and clothed in loose khet partug trousers and long shirts, angry faces, bulging eyes, shaking fists, crying voices. They were gathered in a corner about thirty yards from the front of the derelict building. The infantry had their guns aimed on them and were shouting for them to cease and leave. Upon seeing Dorring and Conner carrying the body out, the crowd’s fury turned up several notches. Rocks began to fly through the air. One of the infantry was hit on the top of the helmet. More came their way, bricks and other pieces of shrapnel flying through the air and striking their vehicles. It began to rain with it.

  They reached the DPV. The MPs’ vehicle was too far away down a side street. They loaded the body into the back. Kevin and Jane followed it in. Dorring got behind the wheel.

  “You want me in the turret?” Conner asked.

  Jane glanced out the window at the crowd. It was marching towards the four infantry soldiers. Suddenly the air filled with the crackle of automatic gunfire. Then a firebomb sailed through the air and smashed nearby, sending a rolling ball of flames across the abandoned market stalls and catching fire to them.

  “Fall back!” Jane cried at the infantry.

  But it was too late. As Dorring started the DPV and Conner jumped into the turret, regardless of what Jane said, one of the soldiers keeled sideways, the side of his head blown away from gunfire that came from the crowd. The remaining three army fell back, using the stalls for cover, firing into the crowd as they dispersed. It became frenzied, a sickness of violence passing through the crowd’s members. Like one giant organism made up of multiple parts, it keeled forward and went to crash down on the soldiers like a giant wave. The machine gun exploded with fire and Conner aimed it above their heads. It stopped them momentarily and they dived for cover. But more projectiles and more gunfire came their way. The infantry soldiers used the opportunity. Two of them grabbed their fallen comrade and they ran to the DPV as Conner sent bullets into the areas surrounding the temporarily dispersed crowd. Kevin and Jane jumped out and gave them more covering fire. They loaded the dead soldier into the back with the body of the woman and then the MPs got back in while the infantry soldiers clung onto the sides of the vehicle, standing on the running board.

  Once everyone was onboard, Dorring put the DPV into gear and roared out of there, crashing through several market stalls that hadn’t yet caught fire. A firebomb narrowly missed them and Conner sprayed more bullets in the crowd’s general direction to heed them off.

  The DPV crashed out of the market square and into an alleyway bordered on both sides by stone buildings. Dorring’s eyes scanned forward and he swore out loud.

  “What is it?” Jane said from behind him.

  “They’ve blocked the road. Tell everyone to hang on.”

  Fifty yards ahead, a van had been parked across the mouth of the alley and then set on fire. Jane leaned out the window and told the army guys to hold on. They all looked forward in unison and their eyes immediately widened. Conner spotted several insurgents hanging around the back of the flaming roadblock. He let them have it with the machine gun and they dived for cover. Dorring gripped the steering wheel and everyone tensed up as the DPV smashed into the van and sent it sprawling out of the alley and across the road outside. He pulled the handbrake and dropped the DPV through several gears, spinning the wheel so that the heavy vehicle spun around ninety degrees and faced up the road, Conner almost falling out of the turret. Dorring then accelerated and flicked back up through the gears, the DPV chugging its way out of there. People emerged from alleyways. Stones and other projectiles flew at the escaping vehicle, some coming from children and women who’d gathered on the streets further up. A petrol bomb came flying from an alleyway and struck the side of the DPV. The flames knocked Kevin back from the window. There was a scream. One of the infantry soldiers had been on that side. The flames had knocked him off. Dorring looked in the mirror and saw him rolling along the asphalt, covered in fire. A mass of people were running to him. The last thing Dorring saw before his eyes turned back to the road was the guy consumed by people and flames.

  “We gotta go back for him,” one of the soldiers called in through the window.

  Dorring said nothing. He concentrated on the road. There weren’t any more people and he knew that the open desert was about half a kilometer away. They would be safe only if he kept driving.

  “Hey!” the two soldiers called out. “We’ve got to go back.”

  Dorring said nothing and Jane tried to placate them through the window. As they hit the open desert, he heard one of them crying. They’d lost two comrades. Today would leave a stain on both their souls and they would never forget it. Never.

  4

  “It’s all yours.”

  It was Mo. She’d gotten off the phone and was now once more sitting opposite Dorring at the table by the window. He hadn’t even noticed her sit down, having been so wrapped up in thoughts of the past.

  Conner was still somewhere behind the bar through the beaded curtain. It was clear that unlike Dorring, he was no stranger to this place. But what was he doing here? Surely if Kevin had come, he’d have seen Conner too. Had the two made contact? Was that why Conner was here? Was he also looking for him? Had Kevin contacted Conner and brought him here? But then why the familiarity with the landlord? Mr. Jones, Mac had called him. And Conner had asked for the bossman.

  “Wake up, dreamy head,” Mo said, waving a dainty hand in front of his eyes. “Did ya not hear me?” she added when she was sure she had his attention.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “I said, it’s all yours.”

  “What is?”

  “Why, the cottage, silly. Mrs. McPherson said we can pick the keys up when I finish my shift.”

  “When you finish your shift?”

  “Yeah,” she said with a coquettish grin. “Ya’ll need me to drive you. She lives on the other side o’ the island an’ the cottage is a little further on. Very quiet an’ oot the way. Right on the beach. Sand. Pebbles. Little clifftops. Rock pools. It’s a true paradise.”

  “Who says I haven’t got a car to drive myself?” he said with a gentle grin.

  “The t
axi you pulled up in, for one,” she replied with a knowing smile.

  “Touché,” Dorring put back and her smile grew across her freckled cheeks.

  Then he thought of Conner again.

  “Hey, Mo?” he said.

  “Yes, darling?”

  “Who was that man that went back behind the bar?”

  “His name is Conner. Or Mr. Jones to most people.”

  “What does he do here?”

  “Works for Lord Appleby. He’s head of security at the lab.”

  “How long for?”

  “I don’t know. A long time. He’s been here since I were a wee lass at school an’ I’m twenty-five now.”

  So he was already here, Dorring said to himself. And Kevin chased the killer to this island one year ago. And Conner was here. But surely not. It couldn’t be him.

  At that moment, Conner Jones emerged from the beaded curtain. With his back to the bar, Dorring watched the reflection of his old comrade in the window. Conner nodded to Mac and Mac nodded back. He lifted the counter top and walked out. Then he seemed to be caught in indecision. Pausing, he glanced at the door, then at the back of Dorring’s head. Coming to a decision, he walked steadily over to him and came to a stop beside the table.

  “Hello, Conner,” Mo said, glancing up at him.

  “Hello, Mo,” Conner said back. “Do you mind if I sit here with your friend?”

  “Of course not. He were just askin’ aboot you.”

  “Was he?” Conner said, turning to Dorring, whose eyes were still trained on the stormy sea.

  “Oh yes,” Mo said.

  “Well, can I take a seat?”

  “Of course,” Mo said, and she grabbed the chair next to her and brought it around the table for him.

  “I was hoping to sit with him alone,” Conner said.

  Mo’s eyes narrowed at him and a peevish look took over her pretty face.

  “You’re not going to warn him off, are you?” she said. “Tell him to watch himself.”

  “No. I just want a friendly chat. I don’t suppose Dorring’s told you, but we’re old friends.”