Recovering Commando Box Set

by Finn Óg

  Through the condensation he could make out movement – people walking towards a building. It looked like an ice cream shop but it was probably serving food too. Anthony was starving but he had no money. Grim hadn’t even given him a tenner. He was foundered, angry and he felt like crying, which shamed him. He was supposed to be doing a big job and instead he was sitting in a freezing car with no cash, watching families go for breakfast. He wanted breakfast in a café. He wanted to hurt Grim so much. He hated that bastard.

  He thought about shooting him, but he didn’t know where the guns were hidden. He thought about setting his house on fire. Then he thought about the car he was in. This car was important. It had been delivered, at night, by country boggers. It was to be taken to a very specific place. It could have weapons in it for all he knew, so Grim wouldn’t want it anywhere near him. Anthony reckoned that might be a good plan – drive the car to Grim’s house and leave it right outside. That would tighten the fucker. Then Anthony might ring the cops and tell them – he might even post the key through Grim’s letter box.

  Anthony brightened at the notion, unsure as to whether he actually had the balls to see it through, but then he remembered that cars have heaters.

  “Ambulance!” Sam shouted to the old man as he skidded through the lobby. “Room 212, get an ambulance!”

  The old man looked astonished but nodded and made for the reception desk as Sam threw himself out the door. He caught sight of Delaney’s white shirt rounding a corner close to the restaurant he’d eaten in the night before. Sam took off after him, but when he reached the corner he could see Delaney running towards a group of police, huddled and probably very pissed off after a night of fruitless hunting for a night-swimming tourist. Sam cut immediately right. He crossed the bridge he’d walked over less than ten minutes previously and had an idea. If Delaney was headed east, Sam could avoid the cops and still track him in parallel, by boat. And sitting, eager as a puppy for a walk, was the very tender he had stolen from the superyacht.

  Once outside the canal network Sam motored quietly in the open lagoon, the morning light still not entirely exposing him. As each block of housing passed by he could make out Delaney in the pool of the street lamps, walking east while regularly checking his rear oblivious that Sam was watching him.

  Block after block came between Sam and his view of Delaney. Wherever he was going it felt like only a matter of time before Sam would have to get out of the boat and chase him again.

  And then as the red rim of the new day cracked over Italy, Sam got his first break of the week: Delaney turned towards him. His attention was over his shoulder, looking for Sam at his rear, not expecting him to be afloat, right in front of him.

  Libby couldn’t stand at rest. She felt the full weight of the opso’s stare.

  “I’m waiting for direction from Belfast,” she said.

  The opso didn’t respond, which was almost more irritating than it would have been if he had.

  Libby couldn’t say any more – she knew her superior could hear them and see the feeds, but it was a one-way arrangement.

  What is he going to do? she thought. What would I do in his shoes?

  “If he’d been left a phone in the car, he’d probably have used it by now,” she reasoned aloud. “We have a working assumption that he has had no communication with anyone else. We don’t believe he is working to any original plan. He appears to have been thrown out of the safe house and, therefore, he’s unpredictable. If the car moves, we follow.”

  The opso turned to her now and spoke for the first time in over an hour. “We follow a laden vehicle in traffic?”

  “We do. We see where it’s going.”

  “Your call,” was all the opso said, but it sounded like, “Your fault.”

  Delaney made a track like a sailmaker’s stitch – his weave dictated by his aft-turned head – paranoid, afraid, desperate. Sam watched him intently, content to drift on the tideless lagoon, happy to see where Delaney would land.

  He stuttered around some trees, oblivious to Sam’s presence, and then began to pat his hip pockets, his chest and his arse. Sam assumed he was searching for his phone and when he raised his head to the sky it seemed reasonable to assume that he had left it at the heiress’s hotel. Delaney paused momentarily, debating what to do next. Then he noticed a small pontoon with a walkway from the road. Sam immediately knew what he was thinking – he’d get a river taxi off the island of Lido. Easy-peasy.

  Sam gently opened the throttle on his stolen dinghy and made sure he got there first. He came alongside the pontoon, his back turned to the walkway, holding a cleat to keep the boat stationary.

  The gloom had all but lifted to reveal a small island, about one hundred metres away. It looked abandoned – no lights burned on it – only the dawn had revealed its presence.

  “Señor?” he heard at his back.

  Sam sat still and waited.

  “S’cusé?” Delaney evidently had no Italian.

  Sam kept his back turned and used his free hand to beckon Delaney aboard. Easy-peasy.

  Espadrilles was all he could think as he caught Delaney’s step from the corner of his eye. Sam despised espadrilles and the people who wore them. His quarry wobbled to sit on one of the inflated tanks behind him and only when settled did he lift his head to look at his driver.

  “Hello, Delaney,” Sam said with a genuine smile, delighted to take the fare.

  “You want pancakes?” Sal asked the girls.

  “Can I have Nutella on them?” Molly asked.

  “Chocolate, for breakfast?”

  “Please, Mummy.”

  “Ok. Isla, what would you like?”

  “Sausies and toast. Please.”

  “You’ve very good manners, Isla.”

  “Thank you,” Isla said, in the voice of Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

  Sal laughed. She was enjoying Isla’s company, as was Molly. They played contentedly – often just drawing or cutting things out. And they were hardy too; plunging in the waves for longer than Sal really thought sensible, but they never seemed to feel the chill.

  Sal ordered and then wondered about Isla’s dad. He hadn’t called back as he’d promised. She didn’t know the man, but that somehow didn’t strike her as being like him. She couldn’t help bundling a little nosiness into concern.

  “Isla, what’s your daddy doing? Do you think he would mind if we rang him so you could speak to him?”

  “No,” was all she replied, which wasn’t entirely what Sal wanted.

  She couldn’t help being curious. “What does he work at?”

  “He works on boats,” Isla said.

  “Oh? Abroad?”

  “What’s abroad?”

  “Overseas – in a different country.”

  “Sometimes we sail to other countries,” Isla said.

  “Do you?” Sal said, surprised. “Where?”

  “Everywhere. Round the world. Once we rescued people from the sea and brought them to Ireland.”

  Sal dismissed the comment as fanciful seven-year-old witter. “So when your daddy goes away, does he work on boats?”

  “Yes,” said Isla, but it was clear to Sal that Isla didn’t know and probably hadn’t thought about it before.

  “I thought he was in the army or something,” said Sal, knowing she was probing too far.

  Isla said nothing.

  “Maybe not,” Sal drifted, cross at herself for having listened to gossip and for her conceited intrusion. “He just, sort of, looks like that. Anyway, would you like to ring him?”

  “Can I?” Isla’s little face brightened.

  “Here.” Sal fumbled in her bag for her phone, her thumb slipping around the screen to release it, and then hit recent calls and dialled.

  Isla placed the handset to her ear and waited and waited. Eventually she began to speak, watched by Sal and Molly. “Hi, Daddy, it’s Isla. Hope you’re ok. Love you.” She was about to return the phone to Sal’s outstretched hand when a thought h
it her and she whipped it back, turning to try and grab some privacy. “Oh, Daddy, were you in the army? Love you.” She hung up.

  Sal scrunched her eyes in shame as the sausages arrived.

  Some people get so scared that they actually can’t move. It doesn’t happen often but when it does life for an assailant becomes incredibly simple. Such was the reaction of Delaney as he stared at Sam, mouth slightly open, his mind hopping hurdles, ears pinned back like a hare caught in lamplight.

  Sam had let go of the cleat as soon as the espadrilles had landed in the dinghy, and by the time everything had registered with Delaney they’d drifted more than six feet from the jetty. Sam gently opened the throttle as Delaney stared, agape, unmoving. Sam stared back, alert to sudden movements – a dive for the tide or an attack, but Delaney plainly didn’t have the wherewithal. Sam felt no need to talk but he did think as abductions went it was remarkably straightforward. Easy-peasy.

  Within two minutes he had rounded the nearby island and found an old landing point on the lagoon side, shielded from the shore of Lido.

  It was only when he stepped ashore that Delaney spoke. “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”

  “Looks like a nice place,” remarked Sam, who reckoned if Delaney simply thought he was to be abandoned it might make the next fifteen minutes easier.

  “But, it’s … the plague island.”

  Sam hesitated. “It’s what?”

  “It’s where they sent the lepers and the plague victims to die.”

  “When?”

  “During the plague.” Delaney was regaining his composure.

  “Silly boy,” Sam remarked from the small landing quay.

  “What?” Delaney was sitting in the dinghy, apparently unable or unwilling to move.

  “To google a place you intend to commit murder,” he said. “Leaves a trail for police.”

  “Commit murder?”

  “Let’s not mess about, Delaney. You had that girl tied up and ready to be your next victim. You’re a woo-woo and you’re sick.”

  “I was helping her.”

  “Helping her to die.”

  “That’s what she wants.”

  “Look, Delaney, I’ve been trailing her for days. She’s happy with her mindless mates. There’s nothing wrong with her – apart from being a bit dim.”

  “She’s troubled, in pain.” Delaney was beginning to adopt an air of intellectual superiority.

  “Get out of the dinghy, Delaney.”

  Delaney sat where he was, defiant and attempting to take the lead in the negotiations. “You can’t possibly understand …”

  “You can’t swim, can you?” Sam whispered through Delaney’s pontificating.

  “What a woman like that is going through …”

  Sam reached down and grabbed the rope that ran around the dinghy. He straightened his back, lifted the side of the boat high into the air and deposited Delaney deep into the lagoon. There was a sputtering and a slapping when he bobbed to the surface, his hands patting the water pointlessly as he tried to find a way to stay afloat. Sam whipped the dinghy up onto the bank and took one of the oars from its holder. He turned the blade flat and gave Delaney a hefty slap on the head with it.

  “Please,” was all Delaney could manage.

  Sam rested the blade on his shoulder, but as Delaney made a grab for it he applied his weight to the pole and levered the flailing man under. He held him there for twenty seconds, then let him pop up. As he did so he felt a vibration from his pocket. He ignored it but marvelled for a moment in appreciation of a phone that had survived so many hours submersion.

  Delaney began to plead and Sam dunked him again.

  When he came up he asked, “Is she drugged?”

  “What?” Delaney managed.

  Sam rested the blade on Delaney’s shoulder to stop it slipping off his juddering head and dunked him again. Third time lucky, he thought.

  “No!” Delaney spat when he surfaced.

  “So why didn’t she move?”

  Delaney lashed around. He wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long. “She wanted to die. I was helping them.”

  “How many were there?” asked Sam, never having considered that there may have been more.

  “Just two,” Delaney said, but Sam couldn’t work out whether he was lying or not – there was too much splutter to make sense of it.

  “So how did you get her to lie sedated for you when she could easily have freed herself on the bed?”

  “Because she wanted it – I was helping her, you idiot.”

  That earned Delaney a good long lungful of lagoon water. It took him a few bokes to clear it when Sam eventually raised the oar.

  “She’s hypnotised,” Delaney pleaded, coughing.

  Sam almost laughed at his own stupidity. Of course. “That’s how you got her to change her evidence,” he stated.

  Down Delaney went.

  Sam was deep in thought now as his mark began to drown in front of him. A question occurred. He rose the oar. “Your funny tapping on the bench of the dock, that was your trigger to put her in a trance?”

  But Delaney was a lost cause, now only surfacing momentarily. Sam looked around at the island. It was overgrown, forgotten perhaps. A leper colony – fitting, he thought. He looked at Delaney and debated letting him flounder, but he had more questions and didn’t want a body to be discovered floating – there were too many boats around. Man’s not a donkey, he thought. Why carry him when he can crawl?

  Sam proffered the oar and Delaney used the last of his energy to grab it. Sam pulled him to the bank and rolled him onto land where he heaved and barked, croaking out brown spume.

  Sam talked absently. “So Loopy Loo – she’s hypnotised too. That’s why she’s such a dope.”

  Delaney managed a confused look.

  “Your wife,” Sam explained.

  Delaney said nothing, because he couldn’t. Sam helped him clear the last by kicking him hard in the stomach.

  “Were there others, Delaney?” Sam crouched to his ear. “Last chance before you go back in the drink.”

  “One more,” Delaney admitted with a heavy breath.

  “What was her name?”

  “Audrey,” said Delaney.

  “Audrey what?” said Sam, frustrated.

  “Kavanagh.”

  “Ok, Delaney, on your hands and knees, then. Let’s see where the lepers lived.”

  Sam looked at the crawling mass and took a little pleasure that his espadrilles had floated off.

  “Snapper’s back,” came a rasp over the radio net.

  “What’s he doing?” Libby’s exhaustion had set her on edge.

  “Dawn shot of the harbour, looks like.”

  “Brilliant,” said Libby flatly. “What about the kid. What’s he doing?”

  “You can see what he’s doing,” clipped the opso in similar humour.

  “He’s getting out – look. Why’s he getting out of the car?”

  “Piss, maybe?”

  “He’s going round the front.”

  “Uh-huh,” said the opso drily.

  “Shit, he’s going to get in the driver’s side. He’s going to drive off.”

  The opso shook himself and began barking. “Standby, everyone, ready for a follow.” He took his hand off the transmitter and turned to the woman directing the helicopter. “Get the Gazelle in the air.”

  The whole team heard the signal. The aircraft would be up in fewer than eight minutes.

  “Where’s he going?” Libby muttered.

  Sam wedged open the old barn door to an enormous red-brick building. He put his foot to Delaney’s arse and propelled him through it. It was pitch-black inside. He pulled out the phone, now down to thirteen per cent battery, and swiped the light on. The walls tunnelled ahead into darkness in perfect symmetry, like a railway track at dusk. What an incredibly dark place to end your days, he thought; lepers and the dying lining the edges, moaning and pleading for mercy, flashed through
his mind. It would have been like a field hospital after a major attack, but merciless to the agony.

  “You can’t leave me here,” Delaney said, almost as incredulous as Sam was at the notion that he shouldn’t.

  He beat Delaney into the dry building, sweeping ahead with the torch to get his bearings before switching off the light to preserve power.

  Delaney began to moan, suddenly very afraid.

  Sam just hit him with the oar and kept him moving.

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “Keep crawling,” was all he said, but Sam still didn’t really know.

  Anthony sat in the driver’s seat and with his new sense of purpose set about playing with the heater to get himself warm enough to drive. He twisted the dial to red, flicked the selector to chest level and put the key in the ignition.

  Then he stopped. What had the culchie said? Turn the key a weird way. Yeah. Free the steering lock – had he said that? Was it backwards? Turn the key backwards. Yeah.

  Anthony turned the key backwards.

  He jiggled the wheel.

  Free.

  Then he turned the key forward to start the engine and the heater fan.

  And he ended up in the café after all.

  Libby stared at the monitors unable to speak.

  Every op in the room sat motionless.

  The screen flickered. Then the image came back, utterly altered in a split second.

  The opso kicked in – calm, professional, thinking fast. “Extract, extract, extract. Slowly. Return to base.”

  “We should help,” Libby whispered.

  “Over to civilian staff now,” the opso said quietly in her ear. “We need to get the fuck out. You know that.”

  “Ambulances,” she said.

  “Not from us,” the opso said. “We were not there,” he said firmly.

  “No,” she said, still in shock.

  “Get the heli back before it gets anywhere near that town,” he barked to his team.

  Sam snapped the light back on and was surprised at how far into the building they had come. The phone shone in Delaney’s utterly bewildered face. He was almost choking with the fear, staring up but unable to see Sam beyond the glare. Sam turned a little to see what was around them: a solid dirt and dust floor, brick walls, timber rafters, pitched roof. No furniture, nothing left behind. An appalling cavernous museum to the dead. He ran the beam along the base of the walls, but aside from an odd loose brick and pigeon shit, there wasn’t even anything to fasten Delaney to. He had expected rings in the walls to manacle the writhing in their agony, but there was no frames, there was no infrastructure. He flicked off the light to preserve battery, shrouding them again in darkness.