by Ted Denton
The audience, slowly comprehending the gravity of the facts presented, grew steadily as one in audible discontent. Camera blubs flashed, smartphones were held aloft to capture the action. Within moments those journalists who were live Tweeting at the launch had alerted the world to the sensational turn of events and the debacle was already trending.
The President of the United States of America had just weighed in himself with a Tweet regarding the importance of commercial transparency, the need for probity in politics and high moral standards across public life. A frenzy of responses had begun. Journalists and MPs jostled for position, crowding the stage in a menacing cluster, intent on exacting answers. It was nothing short of an unedifying scrum which soon overwhelmed the event security.
Sensing the moment was at hand, the Minister signalled over to the side of the stage, summoning a portly middle-aged man accompanied by a ruddy-faced police constable tightly buttoned inside his smartly pressed uniform.
‘Prime Minister, you’ll need to accompany these fine gentlemen of the establishment to answer a few questions.’ He looked towards the Special Branch officers at the side of the stage who were detailed to protect the Prime Minister in public. He shook his head and raised his voice issuing a directive. ‘Stand down please. There is a warrant in place.’
‘Prime Minister, in the next few days I shall be tabling a vote of No Confidence in the House of Commons surrounding your leadership of both the Party and of the country. We will submit our letters demanding your resignation to the 1922 committee. You are in no position to carry on given your apparent errors of judgement and clear lapses in moral fibre. I’m challenging for the leadership at once.’
Chaos ensued. Chairs were knocked backwards as reporters and staff alike rushed forward jostling for position, shouting questions, reaching over one another for photographs and for answers.
At the back of the room a flustered Andy Bartholomew hurried out through the emergency exit. Head down, coat tails flapping behind all aflutter.
Chapter 39
SPAIN. SESEÑA. OUTSKIRTS OF FRANCISCO HERNANDO VILLAGE.
A deafening explosion shattered the surrounding peace of the rural Spanish countryside. A gaping wound now torn into the side of the hacienda building like a screaming mouth with jagged broken teeth. Rubble lay everywhere. Thick clouds of brick dust swirled in the baking sun. Shattered concrete lay strewn indiscriminately over the grass. Shouting swiftly followed.
Mickey followed up his first strike with the bazooka by firing a well-placed and equally damaging second just above it into the first floor, nearly taking off the entire corner of the building. Within a matter of seconds, the beautifully constructed architecture of this fine old building had been decimated. The noise of warfare perforated the air. Even though we were in a sparsely populated region of the countryside, away from the main conurbations, there was no way that these huge explosions weren’t going to draw someone’s attention to the hacienda at some point. I don’t think Mickey had factored in an engagement with the Spanish military when he sourced our gear for the mission. That was something we could do without if we were to get Daniel free quickly.
Using the cover created by the explosions, I smashed open the glass of the kitchen door using my forearm, in perfect synchronicity. Leaning in and fiddling with the handle on the inside, I discovered to my dismay that the door was already unlocked. ‘Congratulations Einstein,’ I muttered to myself and kicked open the door frame, scanning left and right behind the pugnacious snout of the Kalashnikov.
The kitchen was clear. Footsteps clattered on a stone floor somewhere outside. Reaching the door I dropped to one knee. In my experience, an enemy running towards you at speed will be expecting to shoot at a height of about two metres, or at the level of the head of an average man standing. Adjusting your gun muzzle at speed to just one meter, or the height of a man kneeling, takes that extra, vital second, leaving ample time for me to get my rounds off and bring them down.
I waited, kneeling inside the door frame of the kitchen. Eye fixed to the target-scope. Shooter cocked and primed. Forefinger resting a light tension on the trigger. Two burly men, revolvers waving in front of them as they ran, cantered around the corner of the staircase. The clatter of my magazine emptying itself echoed round the vast bare hallway as the bullets spat out in a spiteful rage of fire. They didn’t even see me crouching as they sped towards the sound of the assault on the building. I dropped the men inside seconds, ripping scorched bloody holes through chests and necks and thighs, sending the pair of useless carcasses tumbling to the cold floor in an unseemly tangle of limbs before casually reloading. I tracked the empty corridor round to an opulent marble atrium. Stepped over the useless, lifeless bodies. Sticky footprints left inside the dark pooling of glossy crimson.
A bullet whizzed past my head and thudded into the thick wooden frame of a large painting hanging on the wall. I ducked hard, bobbing and weaving away from the direction of fire. Spinning furiously, I returned shots in short random bursts, pinning back the shooter so I could hold a new position. Bullets hailed down on me from the top of the sweeping staircase, leaving me trapped in the crosshairs between two deadly angles. To my left, the gunman resumed and intensified his firing. Sharp fragmented chips of wall plaster cut into my skin as I worked my big frame into the tiny space presented under a table displaying a large ornamental vase. I was getting some serious heat and, if it carried on like this, it wouldn’t be long before one of these stingers had my number on it. Cold sweat soaked the back of my shirt. Angling my barrel upwards, I took aim at the ceiling over the shooter who was viciously peppering me with shrapnel from his nest at the top of the staircase. Squeezed the trigger and let the beast rip into the plaster above him. It was like a hammer being taken to a wedding cake. Vast chunks of plaster cascaded down onto the top tier of the staircase, crushing the sniper under a deluge of heavy debris, blunt trauma administered with instant and direct effect.
The other shooter stopped as well, distracted temporarily by the recent architectural adjustments. I commando-crawled from under the table, moving steadily towards the direction of attack. The gunman had withdrawn now behind a door and I managed to hold him back with a consistent popping of my piece into the wood and surrounding walls. With no return fire coming back my way, I scampered a retreat into the corridor from whence I had just emerged.
Another crash into the roof of the building. Mickey was doing his bit to cause chaos all right, but if he kept on like this, there wouldn’t be much of the property left standing by the time I located the Target. This was a big house and I needed to find Daniel quickly. I wasn’t going door to door searching him out this time if I could help it. In and out as fast as possible was the plan.
Then, from out of nowhere, the butt of a revolver smashed into the side of my head, splitting it open and knocking me sideways into the wall through the force of the blow. A bull of a man in a black leather jacket, sporting a face not even a mother could love, grabbed me roughly by the shoulders before throwing me head first back into the wall.
Where were they breeding these gigantic beasts? He should have just fucking shot me in the head when he had the chance. Done us all a favour.
He grabbed my hair, pulling my head back, and thrust a revolver into my face, smirking. I winced up at him through blood-encrusted eyelids. Thinking fast and hedging that the gun could be out of bullets, I feigned collapse. Slumped deliberately and unexpectedly leaving him to take the full weight of my body in his fist supported only by my hair. It stung like hell as thick clumps ripped out of my scalp by the root. But the surprise action, submission as opposed to expected aggression, delayed my would-be execution for just long enough to grab the handle of my Beretta and, with it still securely fastened to my belt, I managed to pull it away from my thigh and squeeze off a couple of rounds direct into the foot of the thug looming above me. He bellowed and let go of my hair, hopping in agony. Falling to the floor in a heap, I scrambled quickly to my feet and kicked of
f from the corridor wall to slam powerfully into the wounded Russian beast. I hit him in the midriff. Hard. Uncompromising. Cut him in two with my shoulder, forcing him to double over and wretch. A solitary memory skipped through my mind of the days when I would relish spear tackling some chunky high stepping Number Eight peeling off the back of a scrum on a desolate mud-covered rugby pitch. He may be big but he didn’t have much fight in him. As he straightened up to face me, I jabbed him with a swift left in the throat. Clean. Clinical. Not hard enough to smash his windpipe but enough of a precise blow to cause instant swelling, making breathing hard. He choked and spluttered, eyes watering uncontrollably. I pulled the Beretta loose and forced it inside his mouth, pulling up the picture of Daniel stored on my phone and holding it in front of his face.
‘Where is he?’ I demanded. The goon shook his head, still gasping for breath. ‘Where is this man?’ I shouted and pushed the barrel of my gun deeper into the recesses of his throat, making him gag. He nodded resignedly and I pulled the gun free, keeping it trained on his head.
‘Take me to him, motherfucker,’ I ordered, shaking him by the collar of his leather jacket like a badly behaved dog. Even if this lump ‘didn’t-speak-the-English’, he’d got the message sure enough. I pushed him down the corridor, gun jammed into the middle of his back. Blood was smearing on the exquisitely-patterned stone floor as he dragged the injured foot after him. Every so often, in order to keep the hustle going and drive him on at a faster pace, I delivered a well-placed kick with my steel toe cap into his calf muscle, bouncing the trailing leg ahead of him. We passed a number of side rooms and intriguing passages that flowed out like the unexplored tributaries of a coursing river until gradually the corridor grew colder, gloomier, undeserving of the need for decorative attention or the warm yellow sodium lighting. Forced my hostage forward until he came to a natural halt in front of an outer gate of iron bars against a heavy studded wooden door.
He grunted, inducing me to shove him forward so that his nose was touching the metal. With the gun still pressed menacingly into his back I pulled each arm up onto his head interlocking a set of inordinately thick fingers. Patted him down causing the reassuring jangle of key chain inside trouser pocket. Handed Daniel’s jailor the keys and forced him to unlock and then open the gate and door as I stood harrying him from behind.
It swung open slowly, heavy on its frame before finally unveiling the pathetic scene before me. There was no mistaking the Target. Daniel Ratchet sat slumped, bound with rope to a wooden chair, listless and unmoving. Blood caked his face, his sallow skin, his shirt. His trousers were damp and beneath the chair his feet wallowed in a puddle of dark and odorous urine. On his neck, an obscene inflamed burn, weeping pus, broke the smoothness of pale white skin. I pushed my captive hard, forcing him to limp inside the cell as I called out to Daniel checking he was still alive. The boy stirred and slowly opened his eyes to look up at me in weak desperation.
‘It’s all right, mate. I’m here to get you out of this place,’ I said, stepping towards him as I spoke. As I reached the chair, the leather jacket took a step towards us. I half-turned and, without warning, fired point blank into his face splattering blood and brain matter particles in a disgusting spray over the cell wall behind. He had expended his use and with an exhausted Target to now get out of the building alive we couldn’t afford to be slowed down any further. Drew my hunting knife and cut Ratchet loose.
Daniel slipped off his chair and onto the floor. I slapped his face, then shook him and with no given response repeated the action over and over. His eyes flickered and after a short time they opened drowsily.
‘Wake up man! Pull yourself together, Daniel. We’re getting the fuck out of here. NOW!’ Slowly he kicked into gear, visibly starting to function one piece at a time, first waking to salient consciousness, then motor skills starting to fire, now gaining spatial awareness. He looked up at me helplessly. Throat so dry, desperately trying to speak. His mouth formed the words before any noise escaped. Finally he managed to croak at me, annunciating a single audible word.
‘Matilda,’ was all he said.
I lifted him off the floor and hauled him over my shoulder, head draped over my back, legs dangling at the front of my chest. I hadn’t any water to give him and even if I had been carrying a full on emergency first aid kit there was no time to administer treatment. I was in the fucking field. We needed to fall out and now. I pressed forward, supporting Daniel with my left arm wrapped over his lower back, gun firmly gripped in my right. He was a tall, rangy kid which made him difficult to keep hold of, but he didn’t weigh as much as some of the army bergens we had carried back in the mob on twenty mile yomps across the moors. Checking left and right, I exited the cell and set off at a steady pace down the corridor, precious cargo in place. I guessed the remainder of those still inside the building were being kept busy by the barrage of explosions assailing the property from Mickey’s bazooka frenzy. The dingy corridor remained empty and we covered the distance fast.
Dripping with sweat and panting hard, I heaved the dead weight of Daniel’s body onto a hardwood mahogany counter in the kitchen and stretched out my injured shoulder. I was numb from the bullet wound taken back at the golf course and my deltoid was now almost entirely locked into one place. I had grown used to the dull throb of pain threading down my side, strangely savouring the familiarity of the cruel sensation as it wracked my body. The electric impulses between the damaged nerve endings and pain receptors in my brain told me that I was living, not merely some fragment of a disturbed dream sequence. I was able to feel something for real, the receptors signalling to my brain that I still inhabited this body and had not yet thrown off this mortal coil. Was not yet in Hell.
The kitchen was empty. A large copper pot bubbled on the range. A set of ancient cow bells hanging above, a rustic trophy of yesteryear. The table in the centre of the room was typical of the archetypal Spanish country kitchen and I could picture a family spanning three generations gathered round over a hearty breakfast engrossed with one of the patriarch’s rambling stories. My ruminations were quickly shattered by a long-haired olive-skinned man in a white T-shirt banging through the kitchen swing doors to our left holding a hunting rifle. He wore jeans with cowboy boots. A hand rolled cigarillo hung from lips that presented themselves in a perpetual sneer. The scene could have been lifted straight out of some dodgy Western.
I grabbed Daniel. Pulled his limp groaning body from off the countertop and down onto me as we fell to the floor behind the kitchen table. I shunted forward and, grabbing the ankles of its front two wooden legs, heaved sharply backwards, flipping the heavy unit onto its side. Presenting the thick wooden front as a shield for the two of us. Cowboy Boots unleashed a couple of cartridges whizzing into the table top. They stuck fast. The table was solid. Fig wood. Old school and built to last. Lucky it was a low calibre rifle, probably best suited for shooting rabbits and birds in the surrounding countryside. Even so, if whoever furnished this place had chosen to go with some modern self-assembly flat-pack crap instead, the boy and I would be cashing in our chips right about now. I pointed the nose of the Kalashnikov over the top lip of our makeshift barricade and returned fire, lashing bullets around the kitchen before us. The rattle of the gun, accompanied by metallic echo of bullets bouncing into tiles, pans, and the cooking range created a raucous musical cacophony around us. Cowboy Boots retreated back behind the flapping swing gates. I waited, head down, forefinger caressing the trigger of my smouldering weapon. Counted fifteen seconds of silence in my head. Nothing. I jammed the barrel of the shooter over the top of the table and blasted another short burst of fire. No response, so I peered around the side of the table. The kitchen was empty. Then I saw it. The pointed toe of that scuffed cowboy boot just visible an inch or so from under the swing gates. I aimed low, at knee height, to where I projected the man was standing and gritted my teeth. Squeezed the trigger and let the gun do its work. Leapt over the table closing forward to ensure I had the best a
ngle to make a hit. Gun fire blasting ahead of me, keeping him pinned back, I kept shooting until I could practically engage the enemy hand to hand, clip emptied in full. Crashed through the swing gates and found Cowboy Boots just beyond, taken down in a bloody pile clutching at his legs. He looked up at me dolefully, grasping feebly for the rifle by his side as I leapt forward onto his chest. Slit his throat from ear to ear. Butcher work with cold steel in the kitchen somehow felt right.
I turned, then strode back to grab the Target to get the hell out. A slobbering thick-shouldered American pit bull bounded in from the corridor and launched itself at Daniel, who lay curled up at the base of the upended table. By the time I reached him, it had clamped its jaws into his leg and was shaking it furiously. Ratchet’s resistance was limited to a low moan. I pulled out my Beretta and aimed at the devil dog. The mechanism jammed. Fuck. No shot. I flung the gun at its head missing narrowly, bouncing off its thick neck. The dog didn’t even look up. I stepped in and kicked it square in the side as it ripped at the flesh on Daniel’s leg like it was toying with a bone in the back yard. I felt ribs shatter and crumple under my boot. The mutt yelped. Attention turned from the Target towards me. First job done. It snorted and set after its new prey. As the dog came into me I dropped my shoulder and smashed my fist down hard into its nose knocking it sideways and sending it rolling. It righted itself unsteadily and, in a slavering frenzy, came straight back at me, snapping and growling with the myopic purpose of pure animalistic fury. I had succeeded in my objective of deflecting the dog’s attention but, with no time to reload the mag on my Kalashnikov and the Beretta spent, I wasn’t going to stand there and trade blows, so I scooted back quickly onto the counter and flipped my legs onto the tiled kitchen top. As the animal jumped up barking, wildly trying to reach me, I grabbed a round copper saucepan and fended it off, striking it in the mouth and skull, batting at it animatedly. Finally the dog gave up and prowled threateningly, pacing in a tight circle below me, panting hard. I rose to my feet upon the counter, stooping my neck to keep my head from bouncing on the ceiling. There was just no way I could bring myself to finish off man’s best friend down there if I could possibly help it. It wasn’t the mutt’s fault, even if that Hound of Hell was giving me and the Target some serious problems to think about, with no time to waste. I scanned the kitchen. A little further down above the counter was a spice rack hanging off the wall. Next to that hung a long string of onions, garlic and a thick dried Spanish sausage that was curved into a U-bend shape. I bundled across the counter-top and grabbed the cured meat. Whistled down to the slathering frenzied Pitbull to grab its attention and waved the charcuterie above its nose, just out of reach. It followed the swaying of the sausage hypnotised; all malevolent intent on mauling me to death seemingly forgotten in an instant. I hurled the chorizo stick around the kitchen door and out into the corridor, from where we had entered. The dog bolted after it. In a single motion I bounded off the counter and across the tiled floor just in time to reach the door with my boot and slam it shut. The dog flung itself against it in frustration. I breathed out hard. The beast barked and snarled as it scrabbled against the wood, feverishly trying to get inside the kitchen and back at us. I patted the spare pocket of my cargo pants and slotted the final magazine into the machine gun. Reaching over I hauled Daniel up by his shirt and out of the foetal position he had adopted in the shadow of the table; our improvised defence shelter.
