Lessons In Blood

by Quentin Black

  She wondered what Connor might say or do if the South African continued with his blatant fixation on her.

  Connor came up beside her, clicked with his right fingers in front of her face. He did something with his left hand so fast that her brain did not register it before she lost consciousness.

  Connor resisted the instinct to catch Ciara as she fell in a heap. He had smashed the butt of his pistol into her temple after distracting her with the finger clicking.

  Then he took a risk—he angled his pistol towards her.

  “No!” shouted Dixon. “Deal with her off the premises. The police cadaver dogs will go wild in here, and that’ll be enough to drag me through court.”

  “But it’s not up to you, is it,” said Connor flatly, looking at the South African.

  Steyn chuckled. “You’re quite right Mr Reed. It’s not. However, I share Mr Dixon’s concerns. No deaths in this place if we can help it. Especially as we do not yet know if she is bugged.”

  With that, Steyn jutted his chin at the minders. One of the henchmen thoroughly frisked her, removing her Glock and burner phone, while the other ran what looked like a handheld scanner, over her and then the phone.

  The man with the scanner looked up at Steyn. “Its clean.”

  Steyn lifted his wrist to his mouth and pressed his ear, “Is the van clean?”

  Connor, not being able to hear the response, calmed himself with the knowledge that there weren’t any trackers on the vehicle.

  Steyn and Connor stared at one another, and the colossus said, “It seems like she and the van are clean. You wish to make amends, ya?”

  “I wish to make money, and deal with this bitch. If she’s clean, why can’t I kill her here?”

  “Because there will be zero risk of her DNA being left here if she’s dealt with off premises. No sense in making potential problems for ourselves.”

  “Alright,” shrugged Connor.

  Steyn grinned. “Which do you believe in for shall we say, ‘behavioural reform,’ the carrot or the stick?”

  “A blend of both.”

  “As do I Mr Ryder—excuse me—Mr Reed. Now, your reward for cleaning your own mess is the continued work with my organisation and the riches it will bring you and your family.”

  “That sounds great. Now, I can see you’re dying to tell me what the stick is.”

  Steyn grinned wolfishly. “The simple way—I introduce you to a little physical pain. After all, some lessons have to be learnt—

  “In blood.”

  “Well, I was going to say ‘the hard way’. But that’s just as good.”

  Connor fought to hide his nerves. He breathed deeply and slowly but tried not to expand his diaphragm. He swilled saliva around his gums to trick his nervous system into thinking he wasn’t in danger of being severely beaten up by this Saffa ‘Ivan Drago’.

  Connor controlled his voice. “So this is the part when you remind me that I am outnumbered four to one, and I’ll be shot if I don’t take my punishment like a man? Because the day I let another man touch me without retaliation, is the day I stop living.”

  Steyn briefly looked bemused. “I have given these men no such order. It is not necessary.”

  Connor smiled. “So this is a fight?”

  “It won’t be for me.”

  “Well, I am presuming we are still on a schedule, so let us get to it.”

  55

  Connor had a flashback to a match fight he had the previous year. One in which he was on course to being beaten and killed, had Bruce McQuillan not shown up.

  He dismissed the negativity—that Russian was an anomaly in being big, strong and also a superb technical fighter—a Sambo master—this guy won’t be anything like that. Besides, you’re better now than back then.

  Both had removed their weapons and placed them on opposite ends of the cavernous barn. Connor had removed his watch also. Then he said, “Let’s let the detainees watch. It’ll be the last bit of entertainment they’ll see.”

  Steyn looked at him quizzically before nodding to the henchmen. They pulled the hoodies off the four, who took in draughts of breath while they were unrestricted to do so. They watched on.

  Steyn rolled his bowling ball-like shoulders as he walked to the centre. Connors adrenaline bolted to his nerve endings. This was the worst part.

  Angles, feints and don’t overreach.

  Connor prepared himself for a bull-like rush. It didn’t come. As Steyn closed the distance, his stance mirrored Connor’s own—hands up, chin down with his shoulders rounded.

  Connor felt the pocket of rushing air as he ducked the left hook. He rolled to his right and rifled in a left hook to the body, and stepped out again.

  He knew then that blocking the big man’s strikes would be a last resort—making him miss with body and foot movement would be preferred.

  Steyn righted himself, still smiling, and fired a jab. Connor slipped to the right and shot his jab to the stomach. Steyn didn’t react.

  Steyn jabbed again, and Connor countered with a right hand that cracked off the giant’s upper jaw and cheek.

  Steyn smiled again, but there was blood between the teeth. Don’t get cavalier, thought Connor, as a warning to himself.

  Steyn feinted a jab and then cannoned a sledgehammer right hook into Connor’s protecting bicep and forearm. Despite being on balance, the blow knocked him two paces to the right. The man-mountain careered after him, but Connor smashed a one-two followed by a left hook into the post-box-like head. He scythed his shin into Steyn’s thigh who again, showed no reaction.

  Connor briefly thought about taking the colossus to the ground as he knew the longer they stayed standing, the more chance he had of catching one of the South African’s huge haymakers clean—he guessed himself to be around twenty kilograms lighter than Steyn. But taking the man down meant making full body contact with him either by a double-leg takedown, a trip or an unlikely throw. If he was unsuccessful then he’d be forced into a vertical grapple, in which the bigger, stronger man would have the advantage; there was a reason they didn’t have open weight tournaments in wrestling. No—he thought—crucify this cunt on his feet. Attack his body, attack his legs.

  Steyn flung himself at Connor, with a stamp which would have caved the former marine’s chest in. Connor pivoted and whipped his shin into the back of the calves.

  Two of Connor’s jabs rammed into Steyn’s face before he sunk a hard right hand into his stomach. The South-African grimaced.

  See, he isn’t a machine.

  Connor went to hurt Steyn more when a mallet of fist collided against his jaw. A metallic clank reverberated through his head with a white flash of electric stars. His legs felt hollow.

  Head moving, head moving, head moving, he screamed to himself. His legs were still unsteady, and he felt bricks impacting his arms, hips and upper back.

  His legs found some strength, and he stepped around the oak with his head clearing. He stepped away.

  The massive Steyn was taking huge inhalations of air.

  They locked eyes and Connor smiled.

  He walked up and began to hammer Steyn with punches—fast, hard and well placed.

  Steyn stumbled, pawing his hands out in a token defence. Punches thudded into his cheek, neck and jaw. Wicked low kicks whipped into his thighs.

  He turned away, and Connor smashed his foot down on the inside of Steyn’s right knee. He collapsed to the floor like a high-rise under a controlled demolition, and Connor stepped around in front of him.

  He whipped the front of his foot into Steyn’s temple like he was taking a penalty kick. The impact spread-eagled the South African as his consciousness short-circuited.

  No one spoke for a moment or two. Connor retrieved his watch, put it on and collected his silenced Glock.

  Then Dixon said, “Bravo. Although, I think you’ve signed your death warrant. Maybe mine too—he’ll ask why I didn’t stop it.”

  Connor smiled. “Well, why don’t you go over an
d shoot him then?”

  Dixon sighed. “They’d send another one. Besides, I don’t have a weapon.”

  With that, Connor raised the silenced Glock and shot the two henchmen in the head.

  “What the fuck are you doing?!” shouted Dixon.

  Connor levelled the pistol at him. “I am getting rid of my competition and your headache.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your boss, whoever he is, is going to need an enforcer because the Saffa there isn’t going to be capable of anything after I have finished with him.”

  “This man. He’s a—”

  “—he’s a businessman.”

  Dixon slowly nodded, “That he is.”

  “What’s the name of the hospitals.”

  Dixon looked at Connor, then at his Glock and back at Connor.

  “There’s only one. Braeson Private Medical Centre.”

  “What’s the sketch? Who’s your contact? Do you have to call ahead to let them know it’s a change of delivery driver?”

  “Steyn dealt with the hospital’s contacts. They called him from time to time to deal with problems. He killed and buried a nurse for them who got wind of what the hospital was doing,” said Dixon, as if confessing. “They have a storage unit around the back. You key in the code 281164. You leave the packages hooded and with their hands secure in there and leave, keying in the code again. They’ll be sedated here.”

  “You ever had any accidents with sedating them? Pardon me, but none of your men look like anaesthetists to me.”

  “The vials have been premade according to the reports you sent through. If an accident happens with one then it’ll be considered wastage—they are dead anyway. Here,” said Dixon, showing Connor the phone again. “This is a picture of the storage unit and its position in relation to the rest of the hospital. I won’t send it to you on your phone in light that our friend over there may of have had access to it—she may have had it cloned for all I know.”

  Connor’s team just watched on at the exchange.

  “OK. What about the three men around the front. Can you call them in?”

  “They only took orders from Steyn. And it’s not just them—there’s six more in the house checking the cameras for the front of the house—nine all tooled up. Steyn looks fucking dead to me, which means we are too.”

  Connor didn’t turn around. “I doubt it, not yet at least. Any cameras in or on here?—this barn I mean.”

  “Nah. I didn’t trust them to delete all the evidence off in time if something did happen in ‘ere and the rozzers did burst in team-handed.”

  “Alright, we’re going to have to do this the hard way, aren’t we?”

  In the moment Dixon’s brain was engaged with the question, Connor’s punch cracked into his jaw with sickening force.

  The team had broken their plasticuffs and now stood with pistols in hand.

  “There’s nine more according to him,” said Connor, as he knelt over and tended to Ciara. She had a huge bruise already on the temple and appeared disorientated.

  Connor checked her pupils, being thankful to see no dilation.

  “Hey,” he said, “you ok?”

  She focussed her eyes on him. “What, what happened?”

  Again, he was thankful he didn’t have to explain himself just yet. “There’s no time. There are nine others out there. Can you stand?”

  Ciara nodded and began to struggle to her feet with his assistance.

  “Someone grab them and hold a gun on them for leverage, for when they burst in,” he said pointing to Steyn and Dixon. Frank and Ted put their knees into the gangsters back and their pistols into the necks.

  Kate and Frank had their pistols trained on the entrance.

  A crackle from Steyn’s fallen earpiece sounded faintly, followed by the whisper, “Boss, are you bringing her out or are we coming in?”

  Frank said, “What the fuck is that bud?”

  Connor thought for a moment. “Steyn—the one you’ve got a pistol to—or Dixon, found out Ciara’s connection with Bruce. They were always going to kill her, or at least the possibility had been considered. The guys on the perimeter expected to hear a gunshot.”

  Connor put the earpiece in and unfastened the microphone from around the South African’s wrist. He held the receiver to his mouth, and in his best South African accented English said,

  “Send a three-man team in to extract the body in two minutes.”

  His earpiece crackled. “Copy that.”

  Ted looked at him. “What are you doing?”

  “Cutting down our odds,” Connor replied. “Come off them two.”

  Frank and Ted stepped back. Connor walked up and fired a round in Steyn’s and Dixon’s elbows.

  “Frank, take Ciara’s pistol and join me at the door. Ted, Dave, break their ankles. Ciara and Kate, gag them.”

  Connor and Frank positioned themselves to the left of the door, ten feet away from it and six feet away from one another. Frank now had Ciara’s silenced pistol. She seemed lucid enough, but Connor hadn’t wanted to take the risk.

  After a few seconds passed, the door swung open and three of Dixon’s henchmen ambled through. It only took them mere milliseconds to compute the scene. It was enough. Four shots clacked through the air, and three face-smashed corpses fell, leaving the walls behind them splashed in blood.

  Frank looked at Connor. “What now bud?”

  Connor thought for a second, walked over to the rest of the group and addressed them. “We can’t do a simple repeat of it—that would be trusting their incompetence too much. Let’s set up outside—Dixon told me there are no cameras trained on this place. I’ll call the rest of them in. They’ll stack up on the entrance door, and we’ll ambush them. I am aware it goes against the three-to-one rule, but we’ll have cover and the element of surprise.”

  After a couple of glances, they nodded in unison.

  “What about yer men here?” said Ted indicating to Dixon and Steyn. “Why we leaving them alive? You need them to question them?”

  “Something like that,” said Connor simply.

  They tactically exited the building—one at a time at irregular intervals, with their pistols mirroring the direction of their scanning eyes. Connor left last and lifted his wrist mike to his mouth. The urgency in his South African accented voice only a few decibels below shouting. “All units, converge on my location. I say again, all units converge on my location.”

  He slipped into the dark trees, and the team waited.

  Out of the darkness, six men congregated to the side of the entrance to the building. Connor paused for a moment in anticipation of some of the men, rolling around to the other side of the door—a standard military tactic to allow a team greater speed of entry. When it became evident that they were about to enter in one line, Connor fired at the first man, milliseconds before the reports of four P380s roared in unison.

  All six slumped against the side of the building, faces smashed and mangled, with their torsos matted with blood.

  Connor walked to them and put a round into the head of one that appeared to be breathing. The rest of the team joined him.

  “What now?” asked Frank.

  “Our priority right now is going to this hospital and taking a grip of whoever is there to offload the ‘donors’ for want of a better word, and to find out just who had a hand in this.”

  “What then?” asked Kate.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, we can’t just go around shooting people in a hospital.”

  Connor tilted his chin up. “We’ll take whoever is there to meet us and gain information from him or her. Load the van and take Ciara with you. The target is Braeson Medical Centre. They have a storage unit around the back. You key in the code 281164. We were meant to leave the packages—you—hooded and with your hands secure in there and go, keying in the code again. You’ll have to improvise.”

  Kate looked at him in confusion. “You not coming?”<
br />
  He shook his head. “Nah, I want a word with these two first.”

  56

  Schwimmer felt self-conscious when he realised his mouth hung open. He shut it and breathed deeply through his nose to control the excitement coursing through him.

  He had taken his private jet out of Berlin to southern Spain the previous day. The CIA team accompanying him told him that for the next twenty-four hours he was to have no communication with the outside world. Schwimmer complied—he knew about operational security. Steyn could update him when Schwimmer had taken care of this significant bit of business.

  He was now on a Sea Ray speedboat cutting through the waves at a rate of thirty-five knots, and Schwimmer had been impressed with its ‘quiet ride’ technology. He had been expecting to board some military boat and had felt foolish when one of the CIA operatives explained to him how conspicuous that would look.

  Still, all three of the men were armed with Heckler and Koch MP5-N submachine guns. Schwimmer knew that the ‘N’ stood for Navy variant, and was the weapon of choice for SEALS when engaging in close-quarter combat; though this team never identified themselves as SEALS or ex-SEALS.

  Schwimmer had been made aware that they were a mere few minutes out from the super yacht in which their prey was aboard. He had asked for a gun, but the leader had given him a firm ‘no’. After smarting for a few moments, Schwimmer could see why it had been ridiculous even to ask. These were trained operators, and he was not even a novice in this world.

  In the aftermath of his murder of Philip Norton, Frank Schwimmer felt a sadness wash over him. It was born of the anti-climax of knowing he wouldn’t feel quite that level of exhilaration for a long time—if ever. He hadn’t imagined the next time would be a mere few days later.

  However, exhilaration was now coursing through his veins. He was about to come face to face with the most dangerous predator he ever had before.

  The CIA team had told him that they would conduct a hostile takeover of the vessel. He couldn’t wait to look into the cockroach’s eyes as it dawned on him that it was now over. Then watching him in agonising physical pain would heighten the pleasure.