by Ted Tayler
The team of three at the opposite end near the gateway tried to cope with their emotions rather than injuries. Silently, they laid the bodies of Des Finch and their colleague on stretchers and took them to the rear. Nothing more could be done. Phoenix told them to stand down and prepare for the clean-up stage.
Four dead; one wounded; four left inside the first building with limited weaponry and no access to more ammunition. The Olympus losses were tragic but expected. The gang members were experienced fighters, prepared to fight to the bitter end.
That end was minutes away.
Phoenix and Rusty moved into more advanced positions. Jack and Vincent scrambled forward from a tractor to a cart, to stacks of wooden pallets, getting cover wherever available. The agents soon found cover twenty metres from the doorway and ten metres ahead of the Larcombe lads.
Phoenix called the remaining London agent forward from his position to the right of the doorway.
“We’ve got you covered; it’s time to shake these buggers up.”
“Check,” replied the agent. He removed a flash-bang stun grenade from his pack and inched forwards, training his gun on the doorway ahead. Then he arrived alongside the door and began running swiftly past the entrance. He lobbed the grenade inside and kept sprinting to safety at the end of the building.
Jack and Hayden rose and moved forward as soon as the agent started running. They reached the doorway together and started firing.
Anton Dobrev and Iliya Todorov had been closest to the spot where the grenade landed. The pair of them were out of action at least temporarily. Dimitar Marinov was still alert enough to fire back but his aim was poor due to his injuries.
Boris Tsankov had been loading the weapons that Dimitar had managed to deliver. He had seen the grenade as it arced through the air. He had hit the ground and yelled a warning. Boris returned fire towards the doorway and the two men disappeared from view.
“What do we do boss?” asked Tsankov, “they have us pinned down, we need to break out of here. Outside in the open, we have a chance of taking a few of the bastards with us. In here we’re sitting ducks.”
Anton and Iliya were injured and dazed but recovering gradually. Dimitar looked around the garage, He dragged himself to his feet.
“Open the door when I say,” he ordered.
Boris Tsankov wondered if the boss was losing it. The other two thugs were up on their feet and moving forward. They stood ready to drag the big doors open. Their guns and ammunition were still on the floor where they had been scattered after the stun grenade had exploded.
Outside in the yard, Jack Mould was helping Hayden Vincent back to a safe zone. Hayden had been hit in the calf when Tsankov had let fly. Kelly Dexter was concerned about her partner, but she retained her position. Her rifle with its thirty round magazine was centred on the doorway. Phoenix and Rusty were closer to the action and covering Jack and Hayden’s withdrawal.
Suddenly the doors were dragged open and the throaty sound of a vehicle was heard chugging away in the dark interior. The JCB mini digger with Dimitar Marinov at the wheel barrelled out of the darkness and rammed into the car that blocked the doorway. The scoop had been lowered, and the car was lifted to one side. Marinov raised the scoop so that it gave a measure of protection to him and the other three men directly behind it.
It was a comical sight. As his boss brought the JCB to a halt Boris Tsankov and Anton Dobrev jumped up onto the vehicle’s tracks on either side. All three men opened fire with sub-machine guns. Hayden was on the ground being tended to by Jack Mould. Jack promptly picked up his weapon and ran forward to return to the fray.
Phoenix and Rusty had been momentarily fazed at the means by which the gang leader had imagined they could make a successful escape. In seconds, they were locked in on the two gang members in exposed positions on the side of the tracked vehicle.
Tsankov was almost instantly hit in the stomach, chest and head by a volley of shots from Phoenix. He fell backwards onto the ground. Dobrev and Marinov were firing wildly; raising the scoop may have given protection, but it limited their vision and when Jack Mould was hit, it was more luck than judgement.
Kelly Dexter took aim and fired. Anton Dobrev disappeared from where he had been stood on the track. Three shots to the chest drove him backwards; he was dead before he hit the floor.
Iliya Todorov had been cowering behind the JCB. On either side of him, he now saw a dead comrade. He had only had time to snatch up a handgun from the garage floor. He checked to find he had four bullets left. Iliya shouted at the top of his voice and charged off in front of the digger. Rusty put a bullet between his eyes to bring his brief part in the firefight to a close.
Dimitar Marinov was alone.
He thrust the JCB into gear and lowered the scoop. Now standing up in the covered cab, he drove forward at the best speed the little digger could manage. He raised the Uzi to begin firing. The gang leader was an easy target now. Three Olympus agents fired at once. Dimitar Marinov died in a hail of bullets. The battle of Eton Wick had ended. The firefight had lasted just twenty-two minutes.
“Situation report?” asked Phoenix.
Kelly Dexter was tending to her partner.
“I’m fine, Phoenix; Hayden needs a doctor, but he’ll live.”
“All fine here,” said the senior agent from the London squad at the rear of the buildings, “we’ve nearly completed the clean-up back here. Permission to start the clean-up inside?”
“Go ahead; take care of your casualty and well, you know how we feel about losing Des Finch and his colleague.”
“Thanks, sir,” came the reply.
“Are you okay, Jack?” called Phoenix. He hadn’t seen or heard from him for a while.
Rusty was up and running back towards the sniper who had fallen to the ground between Hayden’s position and theirs. A stray shot from one of the gunmen, when they were firing blind, must have hit him in the head. He was beyond help.
“Jack didn’t make it,” Rusty told Phoenix.
“No, not Jack,” said Phoenix, “he was probably the best sniper the army ever had. Of all the places he’s fought for his country he dies in a bloody farmyard, and nobody will ever hear about it.”
Phoenix knew that the clean-up was a vital stage of any Olympus mission. The London team were removing the Olympus bodies. Within a couple of hours, this quiet corner of Berkshire would be cleansed. The presence of any involvement of Olympus in this direct action against the Bulgarian gang gone. He and Rusty watched as Jack ‘Jelly’ Mould’s body was taken away on a stretcher. Dejected, they walked to the far building.
Inside, they soon located the arms cache and an open safe.
“The leader must have emptied it. I’ll check to see if there’s anything next door or on his body,” said Rusty.
“We don’t usually loot the bodies, Rusty?” said Phoenix rather puzzled.
“I thought we could recompense the farmer for the damage and disturbance caused by this lot,” said Rusty.
“Not a bad idea, mate,” said Phoenix. “It might help him to keep his mouth shut about what went on here this morning,”
Rusty returned a couple of minutes later. He had found a bag containing almost sixteen thousand pounds.
“Sounds fair enough,” said Phoenix.
Rusty headed off towards the farmhouse.
As the firefight had raged on the other side of his farm, Christopher Mellish had finished the bottle of scotch long ago. He sat at his kitchen table. He heard the approaching footsteps on the concrete path.
Christopher Mellish was agonising over who had won the battle. Was it the gangsters coming to kill him, or the police to ask him questions about why he had harboured them, allowing them to kill so many innocent people? Either way, it was something he wasn’t prepared to face.
Rusty knocked on the door.
There was a single gunshot from inside the farmhouse. No one answered the door.
CHAPTER 15
The clean-up was com
pleted at a quarter to ten. It took just over one hundred minutes. All the vehicles were back inside the garage; together with the dead bodies of the gang members. Everything outside had been cleaned efficiently.
Kelly Dexter found her stricken drone and packed it away with its colleague. She helped Hayden Vincent limp to the van they parked earlier in the lay-by further along the lane. The flesh wound in his calf was now dressed and would keep until they got back to Larcombe. The medical centre could tidy his wound properly, and they could get home to Shrivenham.
Rusty and Phoenix checked the outbuildings and the yard one final time.
“Better lock up,” said Rusty.
“What do we do about the farmer?”
“He’s not going anywhere,” said Rusty. “We could do one of those anonymous phone calls when we get back, what do you reckon?”
Phoenix shrugged. There was nothing inside the farmhouse or any of the buildings to link this carnage to Olympus. When the police finally turned up, they might mark this down as a gang war.
In time, if they literally dug around on the farm long enough they should discover what became of the ram-raid gang. What they made of Christopher Mellish’s death didn’t really concern him.
The vital thing was that there nothing remained to implicate Olympus.
The families of Claire Ricketts and little Kassie Paget had been avenged. The gang would never terrorise any other quiet towns around the country or continue with whatever other criminal pursuits in which they were involved. It had taken three lives from his team to achieve their goal, but they achieved a satisfactory end result.
What he wanted to do more than anything was get back to Larcombe to be with Athena. Rusty must be itching to get home for Zara’s arrival too.
Phoenix walked behind the outbuildings and saw that the London team were set to drive away. He admired the look of their vehicles. He was pleased with his good idea.
“Don’t forget to pick up the notices will you?” he said to the senior agent.
“All in hand, Phoenix,” he said, “we’ll be seeing you.”
Phoenix stood and watched as the vans pulled away and headed off up the lane.
“Ready to go home, boss?” said Rusty as Phoenix emerged from the side of the building.
“Do you want to remove the signage from the vans before we drive off, or do it when we get back to Larcombe?”
“Best to peel them off before we leave I reckon,” said Rusty.
Any cars or horse-riders passing the lay-by at that precise moment might have been confused. They may have wondered about signs advertising Direct Action Films with the slogan, The stories from tomorrow’s headlines you can watch today being stripped away to leave blank surfaces on the sides of the vans.
All around the lanes approaching the isolated farm at Eton Wick the London-based vans carrying similar signage, for now, stop off here and there to collect notice boards with the urgent message: -
Film scenes are being shot near here this morning.
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.
DAF
“Perfect planning prevents piss-poor performance,” said Rusty as they began the two-hour drive back to Larcombe Manor. Kelly’s van was barely in sight ahead of them in the distance.
“Not perfect though, Rusty; Plan A might have seen us clean the lot of them up inside ten minutes, without a scratch with luck. As soon as we lost the element of surprise we were bound to sustain casualties.”
“Will Athena consider three dead and two injured, one seriously as an acceptable price to pay?” asked Rusty.
“Don’t ask Athena or the Olympus Project’s leadership; ask the people of Britain. This gang has robbed and killed at will; they’ve caused panic the length and breadth of the country with people scared to visit shopping centres or even to venture outside their homes. There will be shock and disgust at the violence at the farm today. Whether this gets marked down as gang violence or whatever, basically they’ll be happy and relieved that it’s over. The shops will be busy again tomorrow.”
The pair drove back to Larcombe Manor alone with their thoughts.
Death had been close to both of them today. But this time, just passing them by.
Rusty steered the van through the gateway and headed for the ice-house. He longed to get to the stable block to be ready to welcome Zara. She wasn’t due until late this afternoon. He needed a few hours to get the sounds, the smells and the memories of this morning out of his head, if only temporarily.
Phoenix helped Rusty unload the vehicle, and they began to move the equipment back underground to the armoury. A warm welcome awaited them from Barry Longdon and Pete Thompson.
“Good to see you made it back in one piece, lads,” said Thommo.
“A messy business, boys,” said Rusty, “we lost ‘Jelly’ Mould. Hayden suffered a bullet through the calf. He should be having that sewn up now.”
“Did you know Des Finch?” asked Phoenix, the two armourers shook their heads.
“He and another bloke bought it, and a young lad was badly wounded but should make a full recovery.”
“What was the final score?” asked Bazza.
“Nine three to the good guys,” replied Rusty.
“That’s another bunch of murdering thugs off the streets forever. If the police had caught up with them, they would have got little more than community service,” muttered Thommo.
“Don’t be daft,” said Bazza.
“Well, they wouldn’t have been banged up for life, you can put your mortgage on that,” said Thommo.
“That’s not what I meant,” said Bazza “I meant, don’t be daft, the police are so hopeless they would never catch up with them.”
Rusty and Phoenix had to laugh at these two; despite the jokes they always cracked, these two were passionate about justice being done. Like sticks of Blackpool rock; if you cut these two agents open, they had Olympus running through them from head to toe.
After getting the equipment stowed away below, they returned to the surface and headed for the stable block. The two friends dropped by the medical centre to get the latest on Hayden. They found him sat up in bed, being pampered by Kelly.
“Making the most of your little scratch, I see,” said Phoenix.
Hayden gave a wry smile.
“I couldn’t have made it away from the door of the building if it hadn’t been for Jack. He saved my life and within minutes he had been killed.”
“A sad loss,” said Phoenix. “I’m off to the manor house to report back to Athena on the mission. Take care and we’ll see you both again soon.”
Rusty left his friend and walked on to his quarters. He needed to shower, change and rest up before this evening.
Phoenix walked across the lawn and wondered whether Athena saw the vans arriving back. He needed to report back to her on the mission, but he wanted to deal with the death of Jack Mould first. He wanted to get his family informed as soon as possible. Perhaps he should go to Frome as he had been in charge of the mission. He’d never done one so far; maybe Rusty could help him out, except his day was mapped out already.
When Phoenix reached the apartment, he found that Athena wasn’t there. He rang security and asked her whereabouts. They told him she was in a meeting with Alastor.
“A cosy tete a tete, eh?” he thought. I may as well go for a swim to ease the stresses of the day; then perhaps we can get together for lunch. Phoenix was starving.
Zara Wheeler left her parents’ house later than originally planned. It took longer to say goodbye to her parents than usual, and even longer to part with Napoleon and Josephine her beloved cats. Her Dad waved her off and wondered why she bothered. Cats don’t give a fig about humans; they’re not faithful companions, not like dogs. Cats get up and leave when they feel like it, if they do come back, it’s because they’re doing you a favour.
At a few minutes before six, Zara reached the outskirts of Bath. She drove to her old house first, to take a last
peek. The home she had created after she bought it from Phil and Erica Hounsell would always hold a special place in her heart. It was the first home of her own. Hardly a year since that day and now she was moving in with Rusty.
Zara made the short trip from the house she had sold within days of it going on the market and approached the driveway into Larcombe Manor. Her last visit had been as a police detective; now she was going to be working here as a civilian.
A van drove past, heading for the exit; it was Kelly Dexter taking Hayden Vincent home to Shrivenham to recuperate. As soon as Zara pulled up in front of the imposing front entrance of the main building, a member of staff crossed the courtyard to meet her.
“Good evening. You’re Mr Scott’s partner I believe? I’m Martin, we expected you,”
Zara racked her brains to work out who this Mr Scott could be for a second, but she soon recovered.
“Is Rusty here?” she asked.
“So I understand miss, he returned from duty at lunchtime. He’s in the stable block; can I direct you?”
Martin walked to the end of the main building and pointed out the stable block on the left-hand side of the estate.
“Just turn right here and follow the road past the walled kitchen garden on your left and the orangery on the right. I’ll call ahead and Rusty will be ready to greet you when you arrive.”
“Thanks, Martin,” said Zara and drove down to be reunited with her partner.
Rusty spent the afternoon going over the events of the morning. Losing ‘Jelly’ Mould had been tough. Phoenix called to say he wanted to chat with him before he drove to Frome tomorrow to talk to Jack’s family.
The ex-SAS man had never met any of the London squad on his travels, neither in the army nor as an Olympus agent, but it still hurt to lose fellow soldiers. Hayden had been fortunate as had him and Phoenix; the gang they had been up against were mostly professional killers who handled weapons with ease and no lack of ability. This had been no soft target; nightmares were bound to come to him from this morning’s battle.
