Nick Stone 1 - Remote Control.

by Andy McNab

  Looking over Kelly's shoulder, I asked, "How's it going?"

  "One's nearly ready, look!"

  "Great. What Daddy does also is collect the other pictures."

  I pointed to the ones next door on the carpet.

  "But one at a time, and put them in a nice long line just here." I showed her that I wanted them against the wall.

  "Can you manage that?"

  "Yeah, sure." She walked off.

  I went back next door and had a quick look at the PC. It was on but asleep. Kelly was walking in and out, carrying one picture at a time as if it were a bomb.

  I pressed the Return key on the keyboard; I didn't want to touch the mouse because maybe it was positioned as a telltale. The screen came alive with Windows 95 and the Microsoft sound which pleased me, because I'd have been struggling with any other system.

  I went back to Kelly, who was still staring at the pictures in the other office.

  "Look," she said, "some more are ready!"

  I nodded as I delved into the bag for the disk with the sniffer program. I was not as good with computers as the sixteen-year-olds who hack into the USAF computer defense system, but I knew how to use one of these. All you have to do is insert a floppy and off it goes, rooting into passwords, infiltrating programs. There is nothing that they can't get into.

  I got up and turned toward the back office.

  "Won't be long," I said.

  "Come and tell me when they're ready to look at."

  Eyes glued to the pictures, she just nodded. As I walked back in, I looked at the tracks our feet had brushed in the carpet. I'd have to smooth it out again once we had finished.

  I put the disk in and started it. The wonderful thing about this particular program was that you had to answer just two questions. There was a wup! sound and the first one came up.

  Do you want to proceed with XI 222? (Y)es or (N)o.

  I pressed the Y key. Off it went again, whirring and clicking.

  A progress bar came up as the machine clicked away. The next stage would take a few minutes.

  I looked at the filing cabinet; it was going to be a piece of cake to get into. I went to the bag and retrieved what Pat would have called the "surreptitious entry kit" but which to me was just the pick and rakes wallet. It was a small, black leather case that contained a general assortment of tools designed for the efficient opening of most pin-tumbler, wafer, lever, and double-sided locks. Among the sixty pieces were full, half, and three-quarter rakes; diamond-tip picks and single, double, and half-double ball picks; light, medium, and heavyweight tension wrenches of various lengths and styles;

  hook-and saw-type broken-key extractors, probes, feeler pick, needle pick, and double-ball rake. Don't leave home without it.

  The progress bar was showing it was just halfway through a process, so I started on the filing cabinets with a feeler pick.

  It was a standard lock and opened easily. The contents meant nothing to me. They seemed to be spreadsheets and documents with itemized bills and invoices.

  I looked at the screen. It was nearly at the end of the progress bar.

  The guy who'd produced the sniffer program was a wild-partying, Ecstasy-taking eighteen-year-old whiz kid who was so into body piercing he had half of British Steel hanging out of his face. He had a shaved head--but that was only after we'd been taking the piss out of his close-cropped effort with a star dyed onto the top. The government had been spending hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to develop ways to get into computer programs only to discover, after he had got arrested on some unrelated charge, that this eighteen-year-old had come up with the greatest sniffer program ever written. His weekly unemployment suddenly started looking like a check from the National Lottery.

  Wup! The progress bar was complete. Up came a little box that said: Password: SoOSshltime! Full marks to them for originality; normally it was something like a spouse's nickname, a family member's date of birth, or a license plate.

  Then up came Do you wish to proceed? (Y)es or (N)o.

  Fucking right I did. I hit the Y key and was into the machine.

  I went to the bag and I got out the portable backup drive and cables and a handful of high-capacity backup disks.

  I went around to the back of the machine and had a good look. I connected the drive cable and plugged it into the socket. I was going to copy everything: operating system, applications, data files, the lot.

  I now had to move the mouse. I took a Polaroid but still studied it before moving it.

  I selected Full System Backup, and the computer whirred into action, loading information onto the backup disks. I went back to the filing cabinets and had another mooch around, not really knowing what I was looking at, just trying to see if there was anything I recognized.

  Wup! The prompt came up, telling me the sniffer software needed another instruction. It had had to work out another password and wanted to know whether to proceed.

  I hit they key.

  The machines whirred again. I looked at Kelly. She was sitting by the photos but playing a game with an imaginary companion. Just like her dad; give her a job to do and she'd forget it.

  "Kelly, I want you to come with me. If that machine asks me a question again, I might not see it--will you look out for it?"

  "OK." It wasn't as exciting a job as she'd been hoping for.

  As she sat on the floor with her back against the wall, she looked up at me and said, "I have to go to the bathroom."

  "Yeah, in a minute, we'll be finished soon." It was exactly as I remembered, as a kid, sitting in the car, adults not taking me seriously: "We'll be there soon. Nick, just around the corner."

  She'd be all right. I said, "I'll take you in a minute."

  Wup! I pressed the Fkey.

  Kelly said again, "I really, really have to go."

  I couldn't think of the right words for a seven-year-old. In the end I said, "Do you want to go big toilet or little toilet?"

  She looked at me blankly. What could I do? Using the rest room in a place like this is always a big no-no because of the compromise factor from noise and visible remains. What you enter with must come out with you, which was why I'd brought an orange juice bottle to piss into and Saran Wrap for anything else. I couldn't imagine getting Kelly to piss in the bottle while I held the film under her bum. That was one thing her dad could do that she couldn't.

  She said, "I wanna go, I wanna go," and started crossing and uncrossing her legs. Then she stood up and was bouncing up and down on the balls other feet.

  I said, "OK, we'll go. Come on, come with me."

  I didn't need this, but I had to do it. I couldn't have her shitting all over the carpet.

  I took hold of her hand. I retrieved the door stops from the outer office door, gently opened it, and checked the corridor.

  We moved across the open office, through the glass door, and into the fire-escape corridor. We went into the rest room and turned the light on. Poor girl, she was pulling down her trousers in such a hurry she was fumbling with her buttons. I helped her, but even so, she nearly missed the pot altogether in her rush.

  I was wasting time. I had to return to the machine, and she might be there for five minutes or more. Backing away, I said, "Don't move, and don't flush the toilet afterward; I'll do all that for you. I just have to go back one minute and get the computer working. I'll be right back. Remember shhh, be quiet!"

  At that particular moment she didn't really care where I went or what I did. She was in her own heaven.

  Wup! I left her and quietly ran toward the office. Once I'd got the disk copying again, I'd come back to Kelly, fish the shit out with my hand, and put it in the Saran Wrap. Then I'd keep pushing the toilet brush down the bowl to lower the level of the water by pushing it through the U bend and get some fresh water from the drinking fountain to bring the level back up again.

  I got back to the office and pressed the Vkey. Then I went to the bag to fetch the Saran Wrap.

  And it was the
n that I heard her scream.

  Fuck!

  Instinctively, I pulled out my pistol and stood against the wall. I checked chamber and took the safety catch off with my thumb. I could feel my heart beating faster as the familiar sensation of cold sweat broke out over my body. My body was getting ready for fight or flight. The screaming was from the area of the fire escape, my only way out. It looked as if I would have to fight.

  My heart was pumping so hard it was nearly in my mouth. I'd learned long ago that fear is a good thing. If you aren't scared, you're lying or you're mentally unstable. Everyone has fear, but as a professional you use training, experience, and knowledge to block out the emotion and help you overcome the problem.

  I was still thinking it out when I heard a longer, more pitiful scream of "Nick! Help me!" The sound went through me like a knife. Images flashed through my mind of her curled up in a fetal position in the hidey-hole, of brushing her hair and playing that stupid video-watching game.

  I was by the office door leading out into the corridor.

  I heard a man's voice shout: "I've got her! I'll fucking kill her! Think about it. Don't make me do it!"

  It was not an American voice. Or Hispanic. Or anything else I might have expected. But I knew it right off: West Belfast.

  It sounded as if they were now in the main office. He started to shout more threats at me above Kelly's screams. I couldn't make out every word, and I didn't have to. I got the message.

  "OK, OK! I'm going to come into your view in a minute."

  My voice echoed in the semidarkness.

  "Fuck you! Throw your weapon into the corridor. Do it!"

  Then I could hear him shouting at Kelly, "Shut the fuck up!

  Shut up!"

  I came out of the office and stopped just short of the corridor intersection. I slid my pistol out into the main corridor.

  "Put your hands on your head, walk out to the middle of the corridor. If you do anything else, I'll fucking kill her--do you understand?"

  The voice was controlled; he didn't sound like a madman.

  "Yes, I'm coming out, my hands are on my head," I said.

  "Tell me when to move."

  "Now, you fucker!"

  Kelly's screams were deafening, even through the glass door.

  I started to walk and, in four paces, came to the intersection.

  I knew that if I looked left I'd be able to see them through the door, but that wasn't the game just now. I didn't want eye-to-eye; he might overreact.

  "Stop where you are, you fucker!"

  I stopped. I could still hear the whimpering. I didn't say a word or turn my head.

  In the movies you always hear the good guy give encouragement to the hostage. In real life it doesn't work like that;

  you just shut up and do what you're told.

  He said, "Turn left."

  I could now see them both in the shadows. Kelly had her back to me as he dragged her toward me with a weapon stuck in her shoulder area. He pushed the glass door open with his foot and came out into the light of the corridor.

  As I saw him my heart dropped from beating in quick time to a slow thud. I felt as if a ten-ton weight had just been dropped on my head. It was Morgan McGear.

  He was dressed very smartly in a dark-blue two-piece suit and a crisp, clean white shirt; even his shoes looked expensive. It was a far cry from the Falls Road uniform of jeans, bomber jacket, and running shoes. I couldn't see what sort of weapon he was carrying; it looked like some sort of semiautomatic.

  He was watching me, checking me out. What was I doing here with a small child? He knew he had control, knew there wasn't shit I was going to do. He now had his left hand wrapped around her hair--what a pity I hadn't cut more off in the motel room--and he had the weapon stuck into her neck. This was not a meaningless gesture; he was capable of killing her.

  She looked hysterical, poor kid; she was panicking big-time.

  He called out, "Walk toward me slowly. Walk now.

  C'mon, don't fuck with me, you shite."

  Every noise in the corridor seemed to be amplified ten fold; McGear shouting with spit flying out of his mouth, Kelly screaming. It seemed to reverberate around the whole building.

  I did as he said. As I got nearer I looked at her and tried to get eye-to-eye; I wanted to comfort her, but it didn't work.

  Her eyes were swollen with tears, her face was soaking wet and red. Her jeans weren't even zipped up yet.

  He had me within about ten feet of him, and now I looked into his eyes and I could see that he knew he was in a position of power, but sweating a bit. His voice might have sounded confident, but his eyes gave it away. If his job was to kill us, now was his moment. With my eyes I said to him. Just get it over and done with. There are times when after using plans A, B, and C you must accept you're in deep shit or shite, as this boy would say.

  He snapped, "Stop!" and the echo seemed to reinforce the threat.

  I looked at Kelly, still trying to get that eye-to-eye contact to say: Everything's all right, everything's OK, you asked me to help you and I'm here.

  McGear told me to turn around. Now I knew it was really time to sweat.

  He said, "On your knees, you fucker."

  Facing away from him, I went down so I was sitting back on my heels; if I had the chance to react, at least from here I had some sort of springboard.

  "Up!" he shouted.

  "Get up, get your ass up!" He knew what I was doing; this boy was good.

  "Kneel upright. More, more. Stay there, fuck you, think you're some fucking hard guy.. " He moved behind me, dragging Kelly with him. I could still hear her cries, but there was another noise now. Some thing else was moving; it wasn't just Kelly's moans. I didn't know what it was. I just knew that something unhealthy was going to happen. All I could do was close my eyes, grit my teeth, and wait for it.

  He took a couple of labored steps toward me. I could hear Kelly getting nearer, obviously still in tow.

  "Keep looking straight ahead," he said, "or I will be hurting the wee one. Do what I say or " Either he didn't finish his sentence or I didn't hear it. The bang on the top of my shoulders and head sent me straight down like a bag of shit.

  I went into a semiconscious state. I was awake, but I knew I was

  fucked, like a boxer who goes down and is trying to get up to show the referee that he's all right, but he's not, he's all over the place.

  I felt nailed to the floor; I looked up, but couldn't see what had done the damage. It hadn't been a pistol. It takes a decent weight to knock a person over. Whatever it was, it took me down but good.

  The strange thing about the next bit was that I knew what was happening but couldn't do anything about it. I was aware ofMcGear pulling me over onto my back and jumping astride me, and I felt cold metal being pushed into my face and finally into my mouth. Slowly, slowly, it dawned on me that it was the pistol, and the jumble of words he was screaming be came clearer and clearer: "Don't fuck with me! Don't fuck with me! Don't fuck with me!" He sounded out of control.

  I could smell the nicker. He'd been drinking; there was alcohol on his breath. He reeked of aftershave and cigarettes.

  He was sitting astride me with his knees on my shoulders and the pistol stuck in my mouth. He still had his left hand around Kelly's hair and had pulled her onto the floor; he was tugging her from side to side like a rag doll, either for the sheer hell of it or perhaps just to keep her screaming and make me more compliant.

  All I could hear was scream, scream, scream; "Don't fuck with me!"; scream, scream, scream; "Don't fuck with me!

  Don't fuck with me! Think you're a fucking hard guy, do you, think you're a fucking tough guy, huh?"

  Not good. I knew what they did to "hard guys." McGear once got an informer into a room for questioning; his kneecaps were drilled with a Black & Decker; he was burned by an electric fire and electrocuted in the bath. He managed to jump out a window naked but broke his back. They then dragged him into the elevator and
shot him.

  I felt as if I were drunk. I was aware of what was happening but it was taking too long for the message to reach my brain.

  Then the software started to kick in. I tried to see if the hammer was back on the pistol, but all I could still see were bubbles of red light in front of my eyes, and star bursts of white. All I could make out was all this screaming and ranting from him.