Omega Series Box Set 3: Books 8-10

by Blake Banner

  “And? So?”

  “He told her I used to be in the SAS.”

  “Oh. You were in British SAS?”

  “For ten years. That’s why she chose me to help her.”

  He grunted. “So you think, if they are paying five million to stupid, naïve girl, probably it is worth ten. And you will impress me by bringing money back and tell me, is an insult.”

  “That is exactly what I thought.”

  “Who dares wins. This is your motto.”

  “Yes.”

  He grunted again. “We see. In few hours, we are in Mexico. Then I will talk with Emily, and we decide who has box, and how we are going to get the box. You are arrogant, stupid man, Mr. Walker, and Emily is stupid woman. I want kill both of you. I want do it slow and painful. It is best for you to cooperate with me.”

  “I have told you the truth. Think about it. It makes sense. Why would I do anything else?”

  “We see. Now I am eat and have some wine, a nice woman. I have a couple on the board. I cannot decide. Maybe I have both. You have rest from beating. We are in Mexico at one or two in morning. Then we see what happen next. Good night, Mr. Walker. We will see later.”

  He stood and climbed the iron ladder with heavy, clanking feet. Peter followed him, onto the deck, and dropped the hatch with a loud, wooden slam. I sank to the floor and closed my eyes for half an hour while I tried to think of what to do. I had badly miscalculated my position with Gregor. I had also miscalculated his personality. Taking risks was not something he did as a last resort, like most people. Taking risks was something he did as a way of life because he enjoyed it, and he enjoyed winning. I managed a swollen, painful ironic smile at myself. He ran a casino. Maybe that should have been a clue.

  I didn’t manage to sleep. The naked light from the bulb, the feelings of nausea, the awkward, uncomfortable position with my arms cuffed behind the tube, and the all-pervasive pain in my body and in my head made that almost impossible, but I did manage to doze fitfully, slipping feverishly in and out of consciousness. By regulating my breathing and focusing my mind on images of ice and freezing water, I managed to put myself into a mild, hypnotic trance, slow my heart rate and cool my body. It’s an optimal state for the body to repair itself, and it allowed me to get through the next few hours without suffering too much.

  Eventually, I became aware of a change in the sound of the engines. The boat seemed to shudder suddenly and the pitch dropped to a deeper, grinding sound. That continued for maybe five minutes and then the engine cut out altogether. It dawned on my fogged, bruised mind that this was a bad thing. It meant more torture, and possibly death. And that meant that I had to do whatever it was I had to do to free myself from my cuffs.

  I had, when Peter had handcuffed me, tensed my thumbs, but even so, the diameter of my hand was half an inch more than the diameter of the cuffs. There is a technique, which I had not mastered, by which you bring your fingers and your thumb together into a point and it narrows the circumference over which the cuff needs to slip. With enough practice, you can increase the elasticity of your hand so that it all but collapses in on itself. It does take a lot of practice, practice which I had not done.

  I tried. I pushed my fingers and my thumb into a point, took hold of my left cuff in my right hand and began to maneuver it down toward the widest point of my hand, twisting it back and forth. By the time it got to the base of my thumb and my little finger, it was biting hard, and the bridge formed by my knuckles was a barrier I was just not going to get past.

  I took hold of my left hand in my right and crushed the knuckles hard, pulling with my left arm at the same time. It shifted maybe a quarter of an inch, bit deep into my flesh and hurt like hell. Now it was stuck. I couldn’t move it forward or back and the pain was becoming intolerable. I bit hard on my teeth to stop myself from yelling, screwed up my eyes, clambered to my feet and yanked hard, putting all my weight behind it.

  The pain was excruciating. I felt the steel bite deep into my skin and the slick warmth of blood running over my hand. I squeezed harder with my right, crushing my knuckles again, leaned back and rammed my whole body forward. The cuff, made slippery by the blood, slipped over the base knuckle of my thumb.

  Two sets of heavy feet tramped overhead. I slid back to a sitting position, panting from the pain in my hand. Gregor came down with his slow, deliberate steps and turned to face me, with his dull, yellow eyes peering out of his gleaming, shiny head. Behind him, Peter descended, squeezing past his boss, who did not move to make room for him, and sat on a crate to leer at me. Gregor spoke.

  “You have thought?”

  “However much I think, Gregor, it doesn’t change anything. I can lie to you if you want, but the box will still be in New York.”

  I was breathing hard and my voice sounded weak. Peter grinned.

  Gregor nodded his big, hairless head. “Pain sometimes make things change.”

  I sighed. “Sure, but pain won’t change the fact that the box is in New York with my attorneys. The only thing that will change that is my presence and my signature.”

  “Good. That is good. If that is true, it is good news for you and good news for me. Now I am go talk to Emily. We see what she is say. If she is confirm your story, then we are make progress and we go to New York. See? Everything moving in right way.”

  “And you’ll kill her because you won’t need her anymore.”

  “Maybe is possible.”

  “And if she doesn’t confirm my story?”

  He lifted his big shoulders. “We improvise. Probably bad news for you, good news for sharks. We see. One step at the time. For now, is good for me that you are in much pain. Pain make people cooperative. I tell Peter: not remove the fingers, not damage the eyes, and not kill.” Something that might have been a smile touched his mouth. “This at least is comfort for you.”

  “Yeah, that’s a big comfort. Thanks.”

  “Now I leave you with Peter. He will make lot of pain. I will be maybe two hours. This will seem like long, long time to you. I hope, when I am return, you are cooperative, Mr. Walker. Good bye.”

  He climbed up the ladder, back onto the deck. He left the hatch open and I could smell the cool, night air. I could hear the lapping of the water against the hull and the creak of the rigging. A few voices shouted. After a moment or two, there was the sound of the launch, rising, then fading into the night. Peter sat looking at me with no expression on his bearded face, taking his time over his cigarette. He was thinking that the anticipation of pain is almost worse than the pain itself. He was wrong. Nothing is worse than pain.

  Finally, he dropped the butt on the floor and trod on it. I pushed myself to my feet. Peter stood, and as he stepped closer to me, I held his eye and carefully and deliberately spat in his face. The astonishment in his eyes was total and, as I watched it turn to rage, it made me smile.

  “Surprised? Let me tell you something, Peter. Whatever you do to me, the fact will always remain that when I was un-cuffed, and there were two of you, I bitch-slapped your girlfriend, busted her eardrums and pistol-whipped you. The only way you have the balls to take me is if I’m cuffed. You’re nothing but a chicken shit, candy-ass piece of pussy. I know that, and so do you.”

  Gregor might have been deep and hard to read. Peter wasn’t. I saw the rage build beyond endurance in his neck and then flood his cheeks under his scraggy beard. His eyes were bright and he telegraphed every move he was going to make. Why shouldn’t he? I was cuffed to that big old pipe. I was his prisoner.

  He balled his fist, clenched his teeth, pulled back and hurled a punch at my head that would probably have cracked my skull. As it was, I bellowed, lunged to my right and wrenched the cuff the last couple of inches off my hand, as his fist smashed into the steel pipe.

  His jaw dropped open, his eyes bulged and he made a nasty wheezing sound in his throat as he pulled his shattered hand back toward him. The pain in my own hand was intense and debilitating, but I had no time to think about i
t. I grabbed his ponytail in both hands and smashed his nose into the tube, just about where his fist had hit it. Then I went down on one knee, dragging him after me, so that he sprawled, lying with his head thrown back over my right thigh. I let all the pain and the rage do the rest of the work, and smashed the cuffs into his windpipe.

  He rolled and dropped to the floor, trying to gasp but unable to pull in air, clawing at his throat with his fingernails, tearing the skin. He flopped onto his back, thrashing and kicking convulsively. His face turned purple, his eyes bulged out of their sockets and his tongue, like a swollen plum, protruded from his mouth.

  I reached under his arm and pulled out his Glock. Then I searched him for my Fairbairn & Sykes and slid the blade deep into his carotid artery. He bled out quickly. It was more compassion than he had planned to show me.

  I turned off the light, pulled myself up the ladder and peered out. Two thirds of a moon was rising over the ocean, touching the black water with silver light. The breeze was cool and soothing on my burning face. Deep, quiet voices came to me from the stern. It was hard to distinguish how many voices, but there were more than two.

  The lights had been turned out in the main cabin, but there was a glow coming from the far end, and I figured he had a few guards keeping watch on the deck. Peter had said something about a dozen men. His death made that eleven. If Gregor had taken two with him, that made it nine, though I was willing to bet he had taken more than two. So I was looking at somewhere between nine and seven men. Were they all up and about, or were they taking shifts?

  Shifts was more likely.

  I had the moon on my left, so I slipped down to the right side of the cabin and dragged myself slowly and silently toward the stern. About two thirds of the way along, a chair began to come into view beyond the corner of the cabin. It was one of those collapsible, steel-tubing chairs that have a seat and a back made of stretched plastic cloth. I inched a little farther and saw it was occupied by a guy in a black roll neck sweater, with a black woolen hat on his head. He was holding five cards in his hand and had a cigarette in his mouth.

  I eased myself another couple of inches forward and saw that he was sitting at a table and had a glass in front of him that might have been brandy or whiskey. I looked above me and saw that I was under a window. I pressed against the wall and slid up until my head was just below the glass. Then I peered in.

  It was a saloon. The lights were off, but I could make out a bar, sofas and armchairs and potted palms. I could make them out because the door was open onto the stern, and the light of a lamp was flooding in through the door and the two windows that flanked it. The lamp was an old kerosene lamp that was sitting on a table where four men were smoking, drinking and playing cards. Between them, they had an almost full bottle of Johnny Walker.

  Four. Which left approximately that number again, probably sleeping, and the rest with Gregor. I peered in the direction of the shore. I could see a light twinkling, but it was impossible to tell what it was or how far away it was; a mile at most, but maybe half that distance. In any case, too far to swim, especially in the condition I was in after my beating. I needed a plan, and I needed it fast.

  Suspended over the stern of the yacht, I could see a large, rubber dinghy with an outboard motor. That was my way out. So the plan was, steal the dinghy and go ashore. The million dollar question was, how do I get to the dinghy without getting shot?

  Then I had a thought.

  Eleven

  I took three long, silent strides and came around the corner. Four astonished faces looked at me in the lamplight. I ignored them and, holding Peter’s Glock in both hands, put a 9 mm round through the base of the kerosene lamp. Kerosene is highly flammable and the burning lead from the slug ignited it immediately as it flooded across the table. Suddenly everybody was shouting and jumping, falling backward over chairs and beating at their pants with their hands, where flaming kerosene had spilled. While they were busy doing that, I picked off two of them with clean headshots. The first keeled over backward, the second did a little dance on wobbly legs and then folded to the deck.

  By that time, the other two had backed away, looking for cover. That suited me fine. I backed up too, down the side of the cabin to the nearest window and smashed it with the butt of the Glock. I knew I had only seconds before the rest of the crew arrived. I picked out the glass and pulled myself through. As I did so, I noticed on my left, at the back of the saloon, some steps going down to what I assumed were cabins below decks.

  I logged them in my mind and ran four strides across to the bar. There I found a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of cognac and lobbed them both out the door at the burning table. They shattered and there was a whoosh as the alcohol caught and the flames started to bite into the varnish on the decking. I saw the bottle of Johnny Walker had also shattered in the heat and added to the growing conflagration. The fire was now seriously at risk of getting out of control.

  A door slammed below. I crouched behind the bar and waited. There were shouts and hammering. Another door slammed and suddenly the saloon was full of the sounds of tramping feet and panicking shouts, as five guys in various stages of undress stormed up the stairs and across the room, toward the flames that had engulfed the table and were beginning to spread across the deck. Beyond them, I could see the two who’d been left outside, waving their arms and pointing.

  I didn’t waste the opportunity. I had five backs turned to me. They dithered maybe half a second before one of them turned to run for the fire extinguisher, but it only takes two seconds to shoot four motionless men. And that was what I did.

  By the time I’d shot the fourth, the guy with the extinguisher was screaming and running at me. He swung the canister and knocked the Glock from my hands. Then he lashed out in a powerful front kick that hurled me against the wall, and I slid to the floor in severe pain. But he made the mistake of not finishing me off. Instead, he ran to the door and threw the fire extinguisher across the flames to his buddies. Then he came back to finish me off.

  By then, I was on my feet again and leaning, sagging on the bar. He could see I was a mess and he sneered and came at me. He had big, powerful shoulders and fists like concrete slabs. When he was within range, he swung his right fist in a wide arc, intending to take off my head. I leaned back, and as I did so I held up the wine glass I had just shattered and rammed it into his wrist.

  He screamed and backed away, gripping at the gushing wound, with a fountain of blood spraying out all over his face, the floor and the ceiling. I went after him, picked up the Glock from the floor and put two rounds through his chest. It wasn’t his day.

  Outside, the two guys were bringing the fire under control, one with an extinguisher, the other with somebody’s jacket. That was good, I needed them to do that. I went and leaned on the doorjamb and let them slowly become aware of me. When they realized who I was, they paused, staring. I waved the gun at them and said, “Finish!”

  They finished dousing and beating the last of the smoldering wood, put the extinguisher and the jacket down and raised their hands. I stepped out and pointed the gun at the nearest guy. I said, “You speak English?”

  He shook his head. “Nyet.”

  I shot him in the forehead and he keeled over backwards. The other guy gaped and his eyes bulged. I pointed the gun at him and asked, “Do you speak English?”

  Obviously he had grasped the lesson, because he nodded and said, “Little.”

  “Good. It’s your lucky day. How many guys did Gregor take with him?”

  “Three man.”

  “Three?”

  He nodded. “One drive boat,” he made a gesture like driving a boat. “Two with gun.” He pointed his fingers like a gun. He was good. “Three and Gregor.”

  “Where have they gone?”

  He pointed toward the small, glimmering light. “House. Maybe two kilometer. Woman there.”

  “OK…” I nodded and waved him toward the door with the gun. He looked scared. I shook my head.
“It’s OK. Go to the bar.”

  He inched around the smoldering table and crossed the saloon, looking down at the scattered bodies, then up at me like I was some kind of freak. Maybe he was right and I was. He went to the bar. I said, “Irish whiskey, big.”

  He pointed uncertainly at the bottles. I nodded. He picked up two glasses and showed them to me. I nodded again and he splashed whiskey into both of them, then handed me one. I took a long pull and felt the warmth ease its way through the pain. He took a slug and smiled uncertainly.

  I asked him, “What’s your name?”

  “Vlad.”

  “OK, Vlad, cooperate with me and you live. Be stupid and you die. We understand each other?”

  He nodded. “Is OK.”

  “How did the woman come here?” He stared blankly and looked frightened. I pointed in the direction of the house. “The woman…”

  “Emily.”

  “Good. How did Emily come to Mexico?”

  “Plane.” He held out his hands like small wings. “Boat plane. Plane go on water. Boat—plane.”

  “I got it. You’re doing good.” A trace of a smile. He took another swig. I could see his hand was shaking. He knew he was walking a tightrope. That was good. “Have another drink.”

  He refilled his glass and I let him give me another drop. I started talking again.

  “So, Vlad, in the house…” I held up my thumb. “Emily.” I put up my index. “Gregor.” My other three fingers. “Three men… How many more?”

  “Pilot and two man looking at, looking for…”

  “Looking after.”

  “Yes, looking after Emily.”

  “Guarding her?”

  “Yes, guarding.”

  I sighed and wanted very much in that moment to sleep for twelve hours. Instead, I said, “Vlad, do you believe in God?”

  Vlad was getting rapidly drunk. The question scared him and his face went pasty white.

  “Yes…” He said it softly.

  “I don’t. I’m an atheist. Maybe I’m a Buddhist, or a pagan. I have no idea. When I die, I want to go to Valhalla, drink ale, sing songs and have wenches sit on my knee. You have no idea what I am talking about, Vlad, do you?”