Breakout

by A P Bateman

  “And in turn, watching us,” said Caroline. “Jesus; we could have been hit. We were so wrapped up in him, his being there confirming Alex was alive and well…” she paused, wiped a tear from her eye, hoping nobody had noticed. “That we missed his team.” She shuddered, the thought of being watched and vulnerable making her feel uneasy.

  Rashid nodded. “From now on, I’ll get two of the SAS guys shadowing us, watching our backs. It was stupid, really. We’re operating on foreign soil. We’re on the back foot. It was sloppy and we’re lucky to be alive. We could certainly be under surveillance now, so we need to put in counter measures.”

  “What’s worse,” said Caroline. “Is that whole set-up was all so we knew that Alex was sending a message. The fact that someone showed up meant that they were listening to what Alex had to say. It was telling us he was still alive…” she trailed off, wiped her eye with the end of her sleeve again. Marnie offered her a clean handkerchief and she smiled at her in appreciation. She had flushed red, embarrassed she hadn’t been able to hold it together. There had been a question mark hanging over whether she could do this, and now she was proving them right. Ramsay had pushed for her to be on the team, and she wouldn’t let him down now. “Now we’ve lost the guy.”

  Ramsay shook his head. “Let’s not get bogged down reading too much into this. That guy was a bonus, but he wasn’t necessarily an asset to us. We know the intel on this, the premise of the operation. We’re here in New Jersey, King was arrested, or detained, in Washington DC. We suspect where they’ll take him, ball-park, at least. Forget this guy. It’s up to King to send the next message.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of the most,” said Caroline.

  Nobody said anything. They all had their reservations, it was all down to King, and not one of them would have even considered taking the risk he was about to take.

  Chapter Nineteen

  King had been expecting an airport, but the runway they landed on was short and the pilot used a tremendous amount of reverse thrust and brakes to bring the aircraft back to a manageable speed. It was taxiing less than thirty seconds after it had thumped down hard on the tarmac.

  The flight was in the ballpark of four hours. He had not been hooded until they started the descent, and by then he had taken in enough through the windows to see that he was in a place of expansive grasslands with rising rocky and wooded mountains. The intel was spot on. He was in the Great Plains, almost certainly somewhere around South Dakota and Wyoming.

  He had been allowed a toilet break and given a sandwich and more water. There had been no questioning, but King knew there would be more to come. He tried to use the time to rest, but sleep eluded him. Knowing it could, and probably would be shattered, left him in a state of semi-alertness. Instead, he tried to pick up snippets of information. The two men up front, the muscle, were called Carl and Tony, although he had not been able to ascertain who was who. They were Redskins fans and had their own ideas on a player’s worth and how aligned advertising was with the league. One of them did three tours of Afghanistan. No mean feat, considering a US serviceman’s tour was around a year to fifteen months, depending on the branch of service, compared to the UK’s six to eight months. The other man didn’t mention service, but King could tell he knew his way around the block. The younger man spent his time alone, working through a file and occasionally jotting down notes. He had mentioned to one of the men that he was flying straight back to Washington DC. Tommy-Lee had kept himself to himself. He had eaten a sandwich and slept for most of the journey. This told King he was ex-military with a good deal of time behind him in his current job. The type of man who knows that there was work to be done and he had better be well-rested and well-fed when it starts.

  King could see a Blackhawk helicopter taxiing, its rotors turning. There were no markings, so he assumed it was a military aircraft. It looked like it was heading in rather than getting into position for take-off. The hood went back on and finally King knew which man Carl was. A quietly spoken instruction. Which by default told him which man Tony was. It was a simple task as he pulled King forwards and they firmly applied the cuffs behind his back and slipped the hood over him. King had snuck a look at Carl’s watch. A decent Tag with the date at the three o’clock position. He’d lost a day, but he now knew the time and the date and could recalibrate his senses. And he could confirm the time of day with the light sneaking in through the gap of one of the window shutters. The knowledge lifted him. Because they had not broken him, not managed to wreak havoc with his senses.

  The aircraft stopped, and the engines shut down. There was a whirling of electrical noises and movement from around the cabin. Hand-luggage carry-ons pulled out of stowage and belts being tightened. Knee joints clicking, muscles stretching. King was gripped firmly under both arms and pulled out of his seat. The door clunked open and the steps were unfolded electronically. King was greeted with a cool, dry air, the cleanest he’d ever breathed. It was like nectar in his lungs. As he was led down the steps, he could feel the warmth of the sun on his back. He imagined a big, blue, cloudless sky. He did not have to walk far and was bundled into an open-topped vehicle that was low on comfort and refinement. As it started up and sped across the tarmac, he could tell it was a military vehicle. He had no seatbelt and felt as if he was about to fall out of the open side at every turn.

  The vehicle drove for several minutes, then King was aware of shadow through the hood, of a chill and echo as they entered a hangar or building of some description. The vehicle pulled up to a sudden halt, sending King into the dashboard. He recovered, but several pairs of hands pulled him clear of the vehicle and he was bundled onto the ground. He was aware of scissors cutting into his clothes and he was pulled and pushed about until every piece of fabric was ripped from him. He was searched quickly and expertly, felt the rubber gloves and the hands of a seasoned medical practitioner. He barely had time to take in what was happening as the hood was torn off, making him choke as it tugged against his windpipe. He looked up at the men. A slightly built man with dark features and wearing a white medical coat was snapping his leather case shut. He walked away towards a partition wall where medical equipment was stacked on shelving. King ignored him, looked around at the other men. Carl and Tony were there front and centre, but so were two more and they were built like the NFL poster boys. The backrow ones. Six-foot-five and eighteen-stone-plus. They wore combats, but no insignia of rank or unit. They looked at each other and smiled. King knew what was coming before they did it, and as they launched upon him with kicks and blows, he kicked one of the bigger men in the balls with a solid strike that was more reflex than anything else. He followed up with another kick to Carl’s kneecap. Not through reflex, but because he was going to get beaten anyway and he was damned if he was going to lay down and take it. Both men went down, and as the other two looked on for a moment out of sheer surprise, King dropped his heel down with all the force he could muster into the side of Carl’s temple. He felt something give under his foot and Carl went still.

  He looked up defiantly at the other two and scowled. “Come on then, you pair of fucking pussies, let’s see what you’ve got!” It was done now, so he would go out fighting.

  Both men hesitated. The big man in the battle fatigues was getting unsteadily to his knees. Carl was going nowhere. They all checked each other, eyeballing that they were all in agreement, then paced around King until they had him inside their triangle. Satisfied the shackled, naked man on the ground was covered, they cautiously closed the gap.

  “Stop this shit at once!” a voice hollered. It was a seasoned voice accustomed to giving orders. The men hesitated just long enough to make their impending attack a disregard for the order. Maybe so they could save face. King didn’t care. He strained his neck to see Tommy-Lee striding across the hangar floor. Beside him a black, compact man carrying a kit-bag looked on with amusement. When they stopped walking, the black man was smiling, or at least trying to suppress a smile.

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nbsp; “He put Carl down, Sir,” Tony said rather feebly, as if he could suddenly hear his own words and how absurd they sounded given King’s position.

  “Has he been searched?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Well, get him cleaned up and into the chamber,” Tommy-Lee snapped. He looked down at King and said, “Pull that shit again and it’s a nine-millimetre bullet in the back of your skull and an unmarked grave.” He glanced at the man beside him and said, “My man here will not lose a minute’s sleep over it.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Appalachian Mountains, Virginia

  They worked as a team. Fluid and in conjunction with one another’s actions and reactions. If one of them moved too far to the left, the man behind would close the gap. They breeched the door, moved inside fanning out left and right, the last man walking in backwards to keep the arcs of fire to three-hundred and sixty-degrees. They were both an intimidating and undeniably aggressive unit. With their Kevlar body armour and steel trauma plates, Kevlar helmets and knee and elbow pads, they made for an impressive show of force. The BR99 shotguns did the rest.

  Maligned at first, the soldiers had grown to appreciate them. Not only could they breech door locks or hinges with just one shot of double-oh-buck, but the men had consistently scored bullseyes at one-hundred metres with the solid rifled-slugs. They used the quarter choke – a screw-in adjustment at the end of the barrel which set the shot pattern - to get the best results for spread patterns and slug usage, and to attain the best accuracy from the ballistic gel, or what had been adopted as the ‘Nerf’ rounds. Yates had remained vocal in advocating live or lethal ammunition, but he had still declined to stand on the fifty-metre line and take a shot to the torso with one of the non-lethal rounds when Rashid had suggested he either put up or shut up.

  Rashid had assessed the men and noted their strengths and weaknesses. He couldn’t say he liked them all, but they weren’t here to make friends. Yates and Macintosh had become inseparable. But they had failed to gel with the rest of the group. The other four men were decent blokes and he had started to ask more of them as a result.

  After an arduous training session, the men sat down, leaning against the wooden ranch fencing that separated the parking area from the woods. They were steaming from the gaps in their loosened clothing, their BR99 shotguns resting across their legs. The morning had been filled with multiple assaults on the killing house and target clusters in the woods. Their shoulders were sore from the savage recoil, and the barrels of the shotguns were too hot to touch. But the actions and magazine springs had loosened up and were feeding the heavy .12-gauge cartridges without incident. Each man was equipped with foam earplugs fastened with fine paracord and were hanging loose from their necks. They sipped water from their personal bottles and wiped perspiration from their brows.

  “So, what’s the job?” Macintosh asked.

  “Need to know,” Rashid replied, then drained the rest of his water.

  “Yeah,” said the biggest man among them. “And you don’t need to know. What’s with all the questions, anyway? It’s always been the same; the less you know, the better.” The Scotsman shrugged but didn’t argue. The other man was known as ‘Big Dave’ and rightly so. He stood six-foot-four and weighed somewhere between seventeen and eighteen-stone. He was black and spoke with an accent and nobody ever dared to ask where he was from, but Rashid knew him to be Fijian. He had operated with him years ago and he had been part of a British Army recruitment drive around the Pacific British Commonwealth. He liked the big man but would confess at not truly knowing him. Only that he had been tried and tested in battle and not left wanting. “It’s hostage rescue, innit?” he said and drained the rest of his bottle.

  “It’s a heist,” said Yates, looking at Macintosh as he smiled. “Obvious, really. Non-lethal ammunition, and such a good paycheque for a month’s work…”

  “I’m all for a good heist,” Macintosh agreed. “But I want a fair crack at the loot. Bollocks to fifty-grand if there’s a shed-load more up for grabs.”

  “Too right,” agreed Yates. “What is it, a gold mine? That would make sense. Little security, remote location. That’s why that bloke was here putting his face about, him with the wolf eyes. So’s we know who he is and don’t go blowing him to kingdom come. He’s working on the inside.”

  “It’s hostage rescue, you bozzos,” said Mick. He was small and sinewy, covered with tattoos and had a freshly shaved crew-cut. He was mild mannered and well-spoken, blowing his appearance all to hell. Rashid didn’t know him, but he liked what he saw. The man wasn’t afraid to throw himself on point or cover the rear. Nobody liked to cover the rear. “And that bloke is going to be a deep cover asset. The inside man. Right, Rashid?”

  Rashid said nothing. They would know soon enough. He looked up at Caroline and Marnie, who came out of the cabin and leaned against the rails. They both nursed cups of coffee, Marnie working near-constantly on her smartphone.

  “Oi, tits!” Yates shouted. “How about getting a brew on?”

  Caroline didn’t hide her anger or distaste for the man. She turned her attention back to Marnie, who looked equally taken aback.

  “You heard me, tits!” Yates laughed and grinned at Macintosh. “White and two sugars, luv!”

  Caroline strode down the steps and walked over. Marnie looked unsure, stayed where she was on the porch deck. Caroline walked up to Yates, who was still grinning lecherously.

  “Wrong pair of tits,” he said as she reached the group and stood directly in front of him. “I was talking about your mate. Her with the curves and about ten pounds more in her bra…”

  “Aye, on each side!” Macintosh exclaimed wolfishly.

  Rashid stood up and looked down at him. “I can think of fifty-thousand reasons why you should apologise,” he said. “But I’ll give you just one. She’s with me, so take it back.”

  “Whoa! Take it easy, mate,” Yates grinned. “I’ll take it back. Blondie can run and fetch me a coffee instead.”

  Caroline smiled and said, “Milk and two sugars?”

  “Yeah.”

  She tipped her coffee in his crotch and he jumped up to his feet, patting himself down in a panic. “Have mine,” she said. “Want me to fetch you some sugar?”

  Rashid smiled at Caroline. “He doesn’t know how you serve sugar…”

  “I bet.”

  “Fucking bitch!” Yates snapped and took a step forwards, his fists clenched. Caroline didn’t move, but she’d dropped lower into a fighting stance. She wasn’t going anywhere. He stared at her, expecting her to have flinched away, not stand for a fight. He hesitated, then decided he had better soothe his balls and took out his water bottle and doused himself. He glared at her as he did so. “Just a bit of bantz, luv!” He snapped. “Just some banter you fucking psycho bitch! What are you? Pre-menstrual or what?”

  Big Dave stood up, towering over everybody. He gave Yates a gentle shove and the man took off and stumbled ten-feet into the fence. “Shut up, you twat!” He stepped over Macintosh and caught hold of Yates by his shoulder. It appeared friendly, but Yates was going nowhere except for where Big Dave was taking him. “Come on guys,” he said. “Let’s call time for thirty minutes and get some scran.”

  The rest of the men seemed to think it a good idea and got up. Big Dave’s and Yates’ weapons were picked up and the group took off towards the cabins. Macintosh didn’t look Rashid or Caroline in the eyes as he walked past them.

  “What the hell?” Marnie said as she walked up to them.

  Rashid shook his head. “There’s always one,” he said.

  “Or two,” Caroline added. “That guy Macintosh is one and the same. They’ve bonded as a partnership. It might affect the rest of the team.”

  “I thought your old SAS chum hand-picked these men?” Marnie said. “You trusted his judgement.”

  “That’s the thing,” Rashid replied. “I would have trusted his judgement with my life. But I’m not so sure, now.”
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  “Well, it’s too late to change things,” Marnie said. “But I’m not happy with that guy, Yates. And the Scottish guy is just as bad.”

  “And there’s me thinking the SAS were a cut above the average soldier,” Caroline commented. “Peter was an SAS Captain…” she said distantly, trailing off, her eyes glossy. Her fiancé had been an MI5 officer and ex-SAS. He had been killed shielding her and others from a suicide bomber. She looked at Rashid, her eyes glistening in the light. Rashid didn’t say anything, hadn’t seen her like that before.

  Marnie rubbed her shoulder. “I don’t think any of those blokes are former Captains,” she said.

  “Well, they’re just long-time Tommies,” Rashid said. “They have served for years without promotion, not above Sergeant, at least. Always getting into scrapes, but under the parentage of the British Army. They made the SAS because they were tough and sharp. I guess they enjoy the situations that go with the regiment. More chance of action. I suppose a few of the wrong characters get through. More so considering we’ve been at war, in one theatre or another, since the nine-eleven attacks. The SAS has never turned over so many soldiers.”

  “But I’m surprised your contact didn’t know quite what these two were like,” Caroline mused.

  “I think they’ll do the job required of them,” Rashid said, a little defensively. The men knew their way around hostage rescue and were supreme marksmen. He didn’t want to over-think it so near to the objective. So, he wasn’t fond of Yates or Macintosh, but they were still good at their job. He wasn’t happy about his old Sergeant’s decision, though.

  “We don’t want a bloodbath, Rashid,” said Caroline. “Those two aren’t on board with the non-lethal loads.”

  “I’ve given everybody the choice,” he replied. “Personally, I’d feel happier with an assault rifle, too. But whatever our conflicts of interest now, the yanks are our friends and we can’t just go in there and mow them down. But by the same token, the security in this facility is rumoured to be made up from ex-special forces. If the tide turns during the assault, then we need to be able to change the odds in our favour.”