Crisis Four ns-2

by Andy McNab

  It started to get darker and quieter as the glow and noise of the TV faded, and soon all I could hear was the sound of my own breath. I did my best to suppress it because I imagined three people upstairs listening and following my progress.

  Moving upstairs like this is physically demanding. Every movement has to be so slow and deliberate that all your muscles are tensed; your body needs oxygen, and your lungs, in turn, need to work harder, but you don't want them to because that makes noise, and on top of all that, at any moment, somebody could be trying to kill you.

  I reached the landing of the second floor. I immediately noticed a nice polished smell up here, a different world from the one I'd just left behind me.

  There was a wall to my left, with a door that faced the corridor that ran to my right. It must be the bathroom where I'd heard a toilet being flushed last night.

  As I looked to the right, I could see that the corridor ran the length of the house. Right down the middle was a single strip rug, which would help muffle noise. In the light thrown from a door that was slightly ajar at the far end I could see a table about ten feet away, on the left. The open door showed a sink shining in the light. It didn't sound as if anyone was in there, and I didn't hear water running or a cistern filling up. Maybe they were just scared of the dark and wanted a light on for when they came out for a piss. I looked at the crack under each of the other doors to see if there were any signs of life or light from within the rooms. Nothing.

  Across from me were the stairs to the top floor. I stayed where I was and listened. I could just about hear the low drone of the TV downstairs, but the sound of my heartbeat seemed louder. I could feel my carotid pulses banging in my ears. I couldn't just wait here all night until she needed the toilet.

  With my knees bent, shoulders hunched over, arms out, staring down the thick baffled barrel of the weapon, I started to move along the center of the corridor, using the rug. I reached the first door on the right and edged over, putting my ear to it, but kept the pistol where it was.

  I could still hear the TV and the rain. My antennae were out, trying to take in every possible sound, but it was very distant, very indistinct. From inside the room came the noise of snoring. Sarah never snored, but there was always a chance she could be sleeping with someone who did.

  I carried on along the corridor to the next room. I listened outside it.

  Nothing. As if I were going to hear her singing along to a CD.

  I went on, passing a fire exit on my left, which I hadn't noticed earlier.

  It had bolts top and bottom, which I gently eased back, and a pin-tumbler lock in the middle, which I also undid.

  I moved on to the next two doors past the table, hearing nothing. I stood by the lit-up bathroom. This could go on forever. Fuck it, there was no time to do anything but take my chances with whoever was back down the corridor. I just knew I had to do something, and quickly.

  Holding the pistol in my right hand, I checked with my left that everything was in place. The Tazer was in my right-hand bomber jacket pocket, with the handle outward, ready to grab.

  I got out the flashlight, placed the lens against the wall, and twisted it on to check it still worked. The light hit the wall but wasn't going anywhere else. I turned it off and kept it in my left hand, with my thumb and forefinger at the ready.

  I put my right thumb on the weapon's safety catch and pressed down, checking it was off and ready to go. Then I pushed the mag in the pistol grip to make sure it was engaged.

  With my left hand I lifted the latch. I wasn't going to try to do it gently;

  once you've decided you're going in, you might as well get it over with. I pushed the door open a few inches, and at the same time brought my left hand up and switched the flashlight on, using my body to open the door fully.

  As I came into the room I moved to the right to avoid silhouetting my body in the doorway. I three-quarters closed the door with my shoulder, and the flashlight beam hit a pile of men's clothes on the floor. I also saw a watch and a glass of water on a bedside table. There was a shape in the bed. I knew straightaway by its size that it wasn't Sarah. The body stirred, maybe as a reaction to the change in air pressure as the door opened, or the fact that light was shining in his face.

  As he turned I saw that he was bald and dark-skinned and had a mustache.

  It was Bossman. His eyes opened fully as he settled. He wouldn't be able to see me, just the flashlight.

  I moved quickly, getting my left knee on one side of him and my right on the other so I was astride him, pushing him down onto the bed. He was pinioned by the sheet across his chest and gave a quick grunt of protest.

  I dropped the Maglite onto the bed. I didn't want him to see my face and, in any case, I didn't need light for what I was about to do.

  With the pistol jammed against his clenched teeth he gave a long drawn-out groan as he tried to resist. I got hold of the back of his head with my left hand and forced the weapon down harder. The metal of the silencer scraped against his teeth and he eventually opened up. I pushed the muzzle in until it was nearly at the back of his throat and the suppressor was filling his mouth good style.

  He struggled on for a while, not trying to escape, just wanting to work out what was going on and to breathe. He was flapping and snorting like a horse. I moved with his chest as it went up and down. At length he lay back. No one will fuck around once they realize they have a pistol in their mouth.

  I leaned toward his left ear. In my bad, fluctuating American accent I whispered, "If you speak English, nod slowly."

  He did. I could feel the pistol moving up and down.

  I heard him slurping and retching as his Adam's apple worked overtime.

  With his jaw wide open he'd lost the ability to swallow.

  "You have two choices," I said.

  "Die if you don't help me, live if you do. Do you understand?"

  It's always better to take your time at moments like this. If you've got somebody who's flapping and you say, "OK, where's Sarah?" he can't talk because he's got this thing stuck in his mouth, so he gets all confused about what you expect of him. It's better to do it as a process of elimination, and then you know you have the right information. That is, if he knows it in the first place.

  There was still a bit of hesitation here. He was still flapping too much and not thinking enough. I said, "Do you understand?" and underlined the point with a jab of the pistol. He finally got the message and I felt the pistol move up and down.

  His body smelled of shampoo and soap. Shame he hadn't cleaned his teeth. His breath smelled like road kill.

  Now that he understood the facts of life, I whispered, "You've got one woman in the house. Yes?"

  I felt his immediate sense of relief. His body relaxed; it wasn't him I wanted. He nodded.

  "One woman?"

  He nodded again.

  "Is she on this floor?"

  The pistol shook from side to side.

  "Is she on the floor above this one?"

  Up and down.

  "Do you know which room she's in?"

  I could hear his breathing and slurping, but there was just a touch too much hesitation: he was thinking about what to say. He shook his head slowly.

  I gave a weary sigh and said, "Then you're no good to me, and I'm going to kill you. I think you're lying."

  No response.

  I said, "Last chance. Do you know what room she's in?"

  I started to rise. He got the idea. He nodded. I came back down to his ear.

  "Good. Now think about this. Is she on the left-hand side of the corridor as you go along it from the stairs?" I was assuming it was the same sort of configuration upstairs as down. I didn't know yet, but it was a good enough place to start.

  He thought about it and nodded.

  "Good. Is it the first door on the left?"

  He shook his head. Saliva was oozing out of his mouth and running down his chin. I could feel his chest rising and falling more and more quickly
; he was fighting to get oxygen in and there were too many obstructions.

  "Is she in the second door on the left?"

  He nodded.

  "Good. If you're lying, I'll be back and I'll kill you."

  He nodded that he understood, semi choking on the suppressor because I pushed it a little more to the back of his throat, just to the point where he was starting to gag. At the same time, I reached down with my left hand, closed it around the Tazer, slid off the safety catch and gave him the good news right on the pectoral muscle. I counted the crackle for about five seconds. If I remembered correctly, that should result in the person being "dazed for some minutes afterward." He jerked about, and then got very dazed indeed.

  I climbed off him, picked up the flashlight and put it in my mouth, then turned around and started to look for his socks amongst the clothes that were on the floor. I found one and shoved the toe end of it into his mouth, pulling down on his jaw to force him to take it all. Noise comes from the throat and below, not the mouth; for an effective gag, you have to ram obstructions down there as far as they can go, so that when the person tries to scream the sound can't amplify in the mouth. A strip of gaffer tape over the face isn't enough to achieve the desired effect. A sock stuffed in the mouth also calms people down, because they become more worried about choking than about raising the alarm.

  I could hear moans and groans from the back of his throat as he began to come around. I couldn't have him alerting the others, so I gave him another three-second burst. That settled him down again, and gave me time to finish filling his mouth. Once that was done, I got his shirt from the floor and wrapped the sleeve around his face to form a seal over the sock.

  I kept his nose free because he had to be able to breathe, but wrapped the sleeve as tightly as I could around his lips.

  I pulled a leather belt from his trousers that was about an inch and a half wide, with a brass buckle, and grabbed the tiebacks from the curtains, lengths of rope with shiny tassels. I tied his knees together with the first tieback; if you can move your knees, you can crawl and maneuver, if not, you haven't got much scope for movement.

  Next I tied his ankles together. He was semiconscious, breathing and moaning in the back of his throat. I turned him over on the bed and got his hands behind him, tying them tightly together with the belt, making sure that I'd left the buckle and some of the other end free. It was going to hurt him, and he was going to have hands like balloons by the morning, but he'd live.

  By now my breathing was almost as labored as his. This was physical stuff, spinning him around, trying to do it quickly, but also trying to keep everything quiet to cut down on noise. I got hold of his shoulders and pulled him down gently, so that his head and his shoulders were on the floor, then I grabbed his legs and dropped them down, too.

  There was still a little bit of moaning, especially when I got hold of his ankles and brought them up toward his tied hands. I put the ends of the belt around the tieback that secured his wrists, did up the buckle, and that was him trussed up like an oven-ready chicken.

  He was coming around again. I held the Tazer on his thigh and gave him the good news for another five seconds. He tried to scream, but the sock did its stuff. As I lifted the Tazer away from him I still had the button depressed; the bolt of electricity crackled brightly as it arced between the two terminals. The glow that it cast added to the flashlight's beam, and I could see the suit carrier, now open, hanging on the wardrobe. Inside was a gray business suit, white shirt and patterned tie, already knotted and hanging around the hanger.

  I got to the door, checked the corridor and turned left toward the stairs.

  This flight was different, the stairs turning back on themselves to reach the top floor. As I climbed and turned left, up the next flight, the distant TV mush disappeared, its place gradually taken by the constant bass drum rhythm of rain bouncing off the roof. It was almost soothing.

  I got to the top and lay down on the stairs. I looked left along the corridor, but this time there was no light to help me and I couldn't see any coming from under the doors.

  I twisted the Maglite on and headed directly to the second door on the left. There was no rug up here. I moved slowly. Between the first and second door, against the wall, there was a semicircular table with a lamp on it.

  I got to the door. It was exactly the same as the one downstairs, with the latch on the right. I crossed over and got against the right-hand wall. I just had to get in there, be hard and aggressive, grab her and get out before my new mate downstairs started trying to become Houdini.

  I listened for a few seconds, just in case she was in there expecting me and loading up her 53. Then, with the Maglite in my mouth, I put my hand on the latch and pressed.

  There was a small bundle in the bed, and I knew at once that it was Sarah. I could smell the familiar fragrance of her deodorant. It was the only one that didn't leave white powder marks on her clothes.

  I started moving toward her. Her jeans were on the floor, crumpled, as if they'd just been pulled down and stepped out of. There was a bedside cabinet with some water and headache pills by the lamp.

  I was going to have to grip her so hard that she thought there were twenty people piling in on her. I had to confuse her, scare her, faze her, because I knew that, if I didn't, she was more than capable of killing me.

  moved toward her, Tazer in my left hand, pistol in my right, flashlight in my mouth, adjusting my head to keep the beam pointing into her face.

  The sound of the rain hitting the window was louder than my footsteps.

  She started to turn, and her eyes reacted to the light as I moved the final pace, dropped the pistol on the bed, then smacked my open hand over her mouth. She gave a muffled scream and fought against me and her mouthful of bloodstained glove. The Maglite got knocked sideways, scraping against my teeth, as she thrashed about. I heard the pistol fall off the bed and onto the floor. I hit the Tazer's "on" button and her eyes widened as she saw the current crackling between the metal prongs, inches from her nose. Then she hit her own "on" button and began struggling so violently I thought she was having a fit.

  She got the good news in her armpit. The 100,000 volts shot through her body and fucked her up big time. With her body jolting up and down, I was finding it hard to keep my hand on her mouth to dampen the scream.

  The bed springs sounded as if she was having sex. Five seconds later she was a rag doll, just a little groan as she fell back onto the bed. It wouldn't last for long.

  I needed the pistol. I got the flashlight out of my mouth and retrieved the pistol from under the bed, shoving it into the waistband of my jeans.

  Next, as weak coughing told me she was starting to regain her senses, I got out the two sleeves I'd cut from my shirt. She coughed again and I looked at her. The bedclothes had been kicked off during the struggle, and she lay spread out on the mattress like a starfish, in just a white T-shirt and

  white panties. Outside, the wind had come back. I could hear it thrashing the rain against the windows even more now.

  With the Maglite back in my mouth I was soon dribbling and breathing like the Bossman downstairs. I prized open her jaw and started ramming the first sleeve into her mouth. She was just conscious enough to realize what was happening, and tried her best to resist. I had to give her another two or three seconds with the Tazer, getting my hands out of her mouth just in time as it snapped shut in the first of another series of convulsions.

  When she relaxed, I stuffed in the material until it must have gone halfway down her throat. I then got the second sleeve, placed it over her mouth like a conventional gag and tied the ends tightly at the back of her neck with a double knot. There was going to be no noise from her now.

  I pulled the belt from her jeans and used it to tie her hands together, front loading her. She was now ready to go and so was I nearly. All that was left was to gather up as much of her ID as I could find. A T104 meant leaving no trace, which wasn't going to be easy. I didn't know whe
re all her stuff was. I hoped it wouldn't be too much of a drama if anything was left behind; with any luck she'd be using cover docs that she'd got by chatting up some gay woman in an Australian bar.

  I found her bag on the floor near the bottom of the bed. It was a small black nylon affair with a shoulder strap; inside was a nylon sports-type purse, passport and a few loose dollar bills. I quickly scanned the rest of the room with my light. A green sports bag lay open on the floor, and clothes were strewn all around it. A glint of metal caught my eye. I shone the light beyond the bag and saw the barrel of an HK53. Its black Parkerization had been worn off over the years. I also saw four mags, taped together to form two sets of ammo.

  She started moaning and retching, trying to expel the material from her mouth. She still didn't know who was doing this to her; it was too dark, and even if she could see straight at the moment, all she was getting was a powerful beam in her eyes as I moved toward her, putting her bag strap over my head.

  It was time to grip her and get the fuck out of there before the authorities screamed in or whatever was going to happen after 5 a.m. I got back to her, switched off the Maglite and put it in my jeans. With my left hand I got hold of her at the point where the back of her head met the neck, and banged the web of my right hand hard up under her nose. I felt her jolt as it slammed into her face. Bending my legs, I pushed up with both hands, making sure that all the pressure of the lift was against her nostrils. Her hands raised, then fell again. She couldn't resist, she had to go with it, her moans of pain getting louder.

  I got her sitting bolt upright, and put the crook of my left arm around the front of her neck, jamming her tight against me. Her face was still tilted upward. With the pistol in my right hand, I moved my right forearm behind her neck to complete the head lock, and stood up. She was fighting for oxygen. No way was she not coming with me.

  I started to move and she didn't like it at all. Her back arched more as her legs hit the floor and she tried to take more weight off her neck. She was recovering quicker now that she was in pain, but I had total control. If she fought back too strongly I'd just give her another bulletin with the Tazer, but that would be a last resort. I wanted to move quickly, not be dragging a dead weight.