by Jake Cross
This time, balcony cop turned around when Nate was preparing to make the turn onto the inward stairs. The guy hawked phlegm into the air, watched it land far below, then turned away. Nate moved on, heart thudding.
On the second floor, he didn’t pause this time. He wanted this hell over with.
He got to the first floor without incident and exited onto the balcony. No way the cop above could hear or see him now. The ground cops, though, were much closer. Twenty metres away to Nate’s left, twenty feet below. The wall hid the bottom half of the van and all but the cops’ heads and shoulders, but they would see movement from his position easily.
But he got a break, finally: here the glass balustrade had blue protective film over its entire length, giving it a translucency that would shield Nate from view. Maybe the sheets of glass were new. Maybe the film had been left in place to accord the residents some privacy. Maybe someone had figured there would come a day when a wanted man needed to crawl along the balcony without being seen.
At the end of the building, he risked poking up his head for a glance at the ground cops. At this angle, the wall hid them, and only the front of the van and one guy’s right leg and right arm were visible through the gate.
Nate slapped the concrete and grunted in triumph. Then checked himself. He wasn’t safe yet.
He climbed over the end of the balcony and dropped fifteen feet into the garden, close to the wall. He was over that in five seconds.
A pedestrianised road ran between the wall and the next building, which was a large clothing store with cars parked outside it. To his right, the way out onto Nine Elms Lane, but he didn’t know if other police vehicles had turned up and that put the main road out of the running.
To his left, the road ended at bollards blocking vehicular access to the river walkway, although there was a guy on a bike parked there.
Pedestrians everywhere, headed this way and that, busy being rats. No-one seemed to have cared that he’d just jumped off a wall. They had ignored his arrival and now ignored his presence.
Except a guy in one of the cars parked outside the clothing store. Who stared straight at him and lifted a phone to his mouth, and spoke loud enough for Nate to hear even though the window: ‘Christ, he’s right here.’
Ryback’s kill crew were back in the show, it seemed.
Fifteen feet. Nate got across the distance before the guy could fully exit the car, which was his downfall. Shouldn’t have even tried. He was half out when Nate launched himself at the door like a long jumper. He hit the door right next to the handle, slamming the window into the guy’s head. He was knocked back into the vehicle. Still moving forward, Nate twisted and put his shoulder into the window, cracking it as the door’s movement was checked by the pair of legs caught between it and the sill.
The guy screamed in pain, and a number of pedestrians looked over.
To his left, he heard the bike engine roar. The guy flipped up the front wheel, pivoted, and came racing this way.
He waited until the guy was close, and pulling something from his jacket, and then yanked open the door, using it as a shield. The biker swerved. By then his gun was out of his jacket, but he was past and needed to turn in order to take a shot.
Car guy sat upright and leaned forward, reaching for Nate. Nate slammed the door again. A window right in the face again. Already cracked, the glass burst upon contact with his nose, spraying glass all over him. Without the glass to check its movement, the door once again cut into the guy’s shins, eliciting another scream.
That woke up the rats. Realising that violence had entered their world, they started yelling. Some froze on the spot, but others darted for cover. One woman ran into biker’s path as he was cutting a sharp turn and fell over his front wheel, which caused him to stop suddenly and plant his feet to avoid toppling. Beyond the guy, Nate saw two men running his way. That made four enemies now.
Nate ran. Behind him, the bike roared and the woman screamed – Nate figured the guy had ridden right over her rather than waste time going around. Now he’d be in a good position to make a shot, but Nate wasn’t sure he’d risk it with people flying about like debris in a crosswind.
He ran to the end of the road, between the bollards, onto Riverside Walk. Left, no good – that went back towards the cops. Right, no good – it was some way to the end of the building, and people were scarce, and the biker would get off a shot before Nate could find an exit.
So, instead, he put his hands on the mossy top of the low retaining wall and leaped over.
He landed hard on the foreshore, rolling to lessen the impact. Good theory, bad application. His back fell on a sharp rock, and his ankle thudded down onto another one. He got up, limping, and ran across the stony mud to his right, parallel to the river. St George’s Wharf Tower was some way ahead, and beyond it the pier with a river bus pulling up, and beyond that Vauxhall Bridge. He thought about taking the river bus, and he thought about climbing up onto the bridge, and then he discarded both ideas because the distance was too much for a bad ankle on stony ground.
So he angled towards the river, past a man whose dog tried to nip him, and a guy at the water’s edge with a metal detector. He waded in, taking big, comical steps as the water reached his knees and then his waist. He threw a look back and saw the biker at the walk wall, aiming his gun. But he didn’t fire, probably because he’d realised the same thing Nate had: handgun, that distance, no way. He soon sped off down the walkway, towards the bridge, maybe hoping to get across, get round to the north bank before Nate did.
Metal detector guy called out to him: ‘Hey, you got Port Authority permission?’
‘Charity swim,’ Nate shouted back.
Then the cold water was up to his neck. His breath came in gasps and he swore. That was the cold shock response, and he made sure his feet could still touch the riverbed. People died from this when they took an involuntary breath with the head submerged, or fainted due to hyperventilation, or the heart gave up because of the increased effort involved in pumping blood through narrowed arteries.
‘People also die when they get shot in the back of the head, dickhead,’ he chided himself, and started swimming.
He put his eyes on one of five white cube-like buildings dead ahead. Getting to those buildings was the only important thing in his life at the minute. Distance: two hundred and fifty, maybe three hundred metres. Three minutes, he figured. Three little minutes of cold and exertion, and it would be all over. In his university days, he’d had drunken outdoor sex in February winds that had been colder and harder – and the same length of time! Easy.
Three minutes in the water, another minute to cross the foreshore and scale the flood wall, and then he’d be able to lose himself in the maze of buildings on the north bank. Buildings, Nate, get to the buildings.
But he began to worry when the buildings started to shift to his left. The current, dragging him east. Now Vauxhall Bridge was getting closer, too. He tried not to imagine his head cracking open against one of its concrete piers.
‘Then swim fucking faster,’ he shouted at himself.
Halfway across now, and the feeling had started to go in his hands and feet. Exactly bloody halfway to the inch, probably. A natural bodily reaction to the cold: blood routed away from his extremities and into his torso to keep the vital organs warm as his temperature dropped. But his brain’s attempt to help him survive the cold would kill him if his arms and legs stopped working.
He risked a look around, but saw no-one in the water behind him, no-one on the foreshore aiming a gun. Made sense. If they were smart, they’d be gunning it for Vauxhall Bridge, left at the Panoramic and then down Grosvenor Road to cut him off. Or, if he was dragged too far east, they could wait atop the bridge and drop bricks onto his nose when he drifted below them. If undertows created by the bridge and the uneven riverbed didn’t drag him under and keep him as a house guest for two days.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ he screamed aloud at his own mind. And pushed o
n.
When he hit the far foreshore, he had drifted so far downriver that his original plan to scale the slimy green flood wall was cast aside for another option. Vauxhall Bridge was only a short distance to his right. It was close enough that he could see the detail in Pomeroy’s Agriculture, one of four large statues on the bridge’s piers. The foreshore was piled high at the bridge’s abutment, making the wall climb appear easy, and once on solid ground there were steps leading onto the bridge. Hopefully the kill crew had already picked their ambush positions way to the west on Grosvenor Road.
His ankle felt strong again and he moved quickly, despite water-laden clothing, but as he reached the archway at the top of the steps, a guy turned into his path, fast, head down, hand in his jacket. They collided. Nate, travelling faster even though uphill, and carrying extra weight in his soaked clothing, stopped dead, while the guy staggered back from the impact and dropped onto his ass. And on the ground between them, a hammer clattered. Both men stared at it for a second, and then both men made a grab for it.
Having scrambled onto his knees to lunge forward, the guy was perfectly placed for a knee in the face. Back onto his ass he went, and Nate snatched the hammer and raised it high.
Halfway to his feet again, the guy realised he’d lost this battle and turned his head away, and put his hands up. But Nate didn’t want to spill blood in the middle of London, so instead he stamped hard on the guy’s ankle to hobble him. A convenient car horn from some annoyed driver on the bridge smothered the guy’s scream of pain.
Nate exited onto the bridge and immediately saw a bike parked by the bus stop. The helmeted biker, not the guy from the south bank episode, was at the balustrade, fifteen feet away, staring down at the steps. He must have missed seeing Nate on the steps by a second or two.
The bike’s engine was still running.
Nate ran for the bike, but as he got within feet, a blue van slipped out of traffic and into the red bus lane, drawing in fast behind the bike. The horn blared, making the biker jump. Nate stopped, but the van didn’t. The bike was between them both and the van struck it without slowing, knocking it like a cannonball towards him. With no time for any reaction but fear, he froze and put his hands across his face and heard the crash, then waited for the searing pain of 250lbs. of sharp metal to tear into him. But he felt only the wind as the bike blasted past him. He heard it bouncing along the road behind him and turned to see it smash into the back of a car waiting at the junction.
Nate ran between two lanes of stationary cars, out into the junction. Traffic came at him from left and right, which he dodged easily, not even a horn sounding.
Across the road he saw trees. He knew the place. Crown Estate property called Bessborough Gardens. A van couldn’t get in through the thin gateway.
He turned in, nearly knocking over a young black lady with a double pram. Twin paths created a large X in the garden, but he ran alongside the shrubbery and trees by the fence, and knew immediately it was a bad idea because the van drew alongside him on Vauxhall Bridge Road, slowing down, matching his pace. In the passenger seat, a bearded guy looked at him and held up a gun, and Nate could see him smiling.
On the other side of the garden, tall white stucco houses bordered two sides in an L-shape. His only way out of the garden was another gate at the end of the fence. But the van would be right there as he exited, and this time he didn’t think the presence of pedestrians would prevent the bad guys from shooting at him.
He turned, running across the grass and towards the houses. Rear entrances, by the looks of them. In the corner were three arched gateways, each blocked by a wrought-iron fence. He was over in three seconds and found himself in a covered walkway. More gates ahead at the end, but these were open. Beyond, a square with parking and little seating areas with benches, and a small white hut of glass and more stucco sitting by a road leading out through a swing-arm gate.
Nate ran onto the road. A guy in a security uniform came out of the hut and put a hand up. His other held a radio.
Nate slowed as he approached the guard, and jabbed a thumb back at the building. He opened his mouth and, as planned, the guard looked, expecting to hear a complaint of some ilk, and that was when Nate elbowed him aside and increased speed. He ducked the gate and was out onto a public highway.
Behind him, the guard was shouting, possibly into the radio for backup. ‘Intruders, intruders!’
Ahead, all around, tall residential properties. It looked like a dead end to the left, but there was a gap between two buildings that almost met at right angles. The way right led to Vauxhall Bridge Road, and going back there was not an option.
As he paused, the van came into view, from the right, turning onto the road. He turned left. The gap. Safety. The van couldn’t make the squeeze.
Too late, the significance of the guard’s shout registered. Intruders. Intruders with an S, as in plural. He turned his head, and there was a guy behind him. The biker, minus his helmet but carrying it in his hand. Unable to use his broken bike, he had run in pursuit, and through it all Nate had not realised the guy was pounding concrete just behind him.
He was just metres away. With no time to turn and run, knowing he’d never get up to speed in time, Nate reached into his jacket for the gun. The biker swung his arm and launched the helmet. It missed by such a distance that Nate didn’t even flinch.
But behind the helmet was a gun, hidden in the helmet while the guy ran through the streets. By the time he’d registered it, he’d already been hit. Pain that was sharp but light, a pain he knew well by now.
He aimed his revolver. The dart was sticking straight up from his elbow. The biker stopped and put his hands up. Behind Nate, the van screeched to a halt a few metres away.
He felt the world wobbling. Nobody got out of the van. He looked and saw two Turkish-looking guys in the front, staring at him. Waiting, because they knew it wouldn’t take long. He stepped closer to the biker, angry. The guy dropped to his knees.
‘We got you and if you shoot me it’ll just mean you wake up with no balls,’ he said.
Nate looked around. The alleyway was too far. There were a few people about, and he could shout for help, but already they were making themselves scarce. Even the guard was staying clear now that guns had entered this picture.
His legs started to weaken, vision starting to blur. They had him indeed, no doubt about that. He remembered the panic in Buzzcut’s face when he realised that the drug was going to take him down and there was nothing he could do about it. So, did Nate want to keep his balls or not?
Everyone seemed to be waiting for the inevitable. Nate sat down on the pavement, then lay on his back, knowing he’d end up there eventually. Less painful this way. He heard the van’s doors open and feet hit the ground. He put the gun in his pocket, hoping these bozos were half-witted enough to miss it.
The biker’s tall frame appeared next to him, blocking the meagre sunlight.
‘Shit. Don’t fuck me up, mate. I’m only here to…’ Nate said, quoting Buzzcut, as if it were some magical formula.
‘How about I decide on those balls after I see what damage you did to my bike?’ the biker said, and raised his foot as if to stomp on Nate’s face. He prayed for the tranquilliser to suck him under before the blow landed.
Part III
He dreamed of being crushed, and woke into a nightmare far worse.
The crushing part was real, though. His head felt like a vice was having a real good go at popping it. Surely the reason for the dream.
His blurry eyes could see walls close by. A vehicle. A van. He was in the back of a van. An ambulance, maybe? Some hazy memory of an ambulance was there–
No. Even before the walls of the van lost their blurriness, he knew it all, because this time he was woozy due to being cracked on the head, not drugged. Or both. Whatever: he remembered everything.
Not naked this time, but tied again. Feet tightly together, hands behind his back. He lay between two rows of seats, and ri
ght by him were a pair of feet. He looked up. A guy in jeans and a T-shirt sat there, towering high above him and staring down, watching him like he was some captivating TV show. He had the skin tone of Damar and Toni, and Nate had never seen him before. Were these bastards growing on trees or something?
‘Weird, eh?’ the guy said. He rocked this way and that as the van bounced over uneven ground. ‘My ass is killing me, and I’m starving and can’t wait to get there, but since you don’t know what’s coming, you probably want this trip to last forever. Weird, eh?’
He seemed to actually be awaiting an answer. Nate grinned at him. ‘Yeah, weird.’ He didn’t feel that scared. And he could feel his balls trapped between his legs, so the biker had obviously determined that his bike was salvageable. But what he couldn’t feel was the weight of a gun in his pocket. Not half-witted bozos after all.
The van stopped and the side door rasped open almost immediately. Another Turkish guy got in and they both bent and grabbed Nate. One jammed a canvas bag over his head as they lifted him. He took the presence of the bag as good news, figuring it meant they didn’t want him to see where he was, and that was an unnecessary tactic if you planned to kill your prisoner.
‘Can’t have you describing our faces to the police when we let you go, can we?’ said one guy. But a hint of mirth in his tone set Nate’s fear bubbling. They were just fucking with his head, maybe just getting his hopes up, or trying to make sure he didn’t fight like a rat backed into a corner.
They eased out of the van, carrying him carefully between them, face-down, as if he were a prized possession. Which he was, actually. These people had been hunting high and low for him. They needed him captured for their plan to work. And now they had him.
