by Andy Maslen
“Shaun, Gabriel. This is very much why you’re here. Let’s check Bart’s merchandise, shall we?” Maitland donned the ear-defenders the South African proffered; the other two also accepted the red-shelled headgear.
Taking the right-hand Browning, Gabriel pulled the cocking lever back, its wooden handle smooth in his palm. He heard an answering creak-thunk as Shaun cocked his own weapon and let the lever spring back against the metal stop in the breech. Bart stood between them, ear-defenders clamped tight to his head, clinking belts of the .50 calibre ammunition running through his hands, which were now protected by thick leather gloves.
He shouted, “OK. Listen. You got the APIT rounds here. You know what they are? Armour-piercing incendiary tracer. Great for a little duck-hunting, eh, man?” His mouth slid into a thin, determined line.
“Fire when ready!”
Gabriel sighted down the thick steel barrel.
Aligned the iron sights on the driver’s door of the right-hand car.
Took a breath in.
Let it out.
Pressed the trigger.
The noise of a Browning M2 .50 cal heavy machine gun in cyclic firing mode is not loud. It is incredibly loud. The firing rate isn’t as fast as some other automatic weapons, a fraction of the blistering speed of the mini-guns Venter’s paying guests had been using earlier that day. But the amount of propellant being burnt, the pressure inside the barrel and the sheer brute force of the weapon makes for a relentless assault on the eardrums. As Shaun and Gabriel fired short, controlled bursts into the sides of the sedans, the air around them vibrated. At the very first burst, a flock of pigeons clattered out from the trees behind them, but the noise of their wings was masked by the M2s. The out-of-phase firing created weird beats in the air that pulsed through their skulls, even though the ear defenders did a reasonable job of protecting their eardrums. With each shattering burst of fire, the APIT rounds tore pieces of metal, rubber and glass from the car bodies and threw them for thirty or forty yards in every direction.
Gabriel felt rather than saw the empty brass cartridges, mixed with the black steel clips from the feeder belt, tumbling from the ejector on the right side of the breech. Occasionally one would hit him in the face, its hot metal inflicting tiny burns on his skin. The vibrations from the Browning travelled through his hands, wrists and forearms into his shoulders. As a Support Weapons Platoon Commander back during his time in 3 Para, he’d fired .50 cals. But the assault rifles he was more used to – the M16s, AR-80s and even AK-47s – were like children’s toys in comparison to the big weapon’s sheer size and power.
Next to him, Shaun moved his sighting down towards the rear of his target. Squeezed off another short burst of ten or twenty rounds and hit the fuel tank. With a muted roar, the gasoline inside exploded, tearing the rear end of the car into flying shreds of pressed steel, glass and aluminium. Venter whooped beside them as the tyres exploded and the whole car dropped, sagging, to its knees. Not to be outdone, Gabriel sent a couple of dozen rounds into his vehicle, searching for the tank. Bingo! With a louder roar – a better mix of gas and air he guessed – the second car exploded into a ball of tangerine and yellow fire. Both men let their guns fall silent and dropped the grips. The barrels swung skywards, smoke drifting from their muzzles.
They removed their ear-defenders and handed them back to Venter. He turned to Maitland, who had also taken his off.
“Well, Toby? What do you think? They what you’re looking for my, friend?”
Maitland spoke over the noise of the two ruined sedans popping and roaring downwind.
“I think they’ll do just fine, Bart. Just fine.”
As the two men were shaking hands on the deal, the pigeons, who had resettled into the row of fir trees, took off again, their wings rattling as they scrambled to find free airspace among their fellows.
Visitors were coming.
Chapter 23
The sound was distinctive. Gabriel had heard it a day earlier. The slow, heavy thump of motorcycle engines. Big ones. Not the rasp of highly tuned Japanese sports bikes. Nor the sexier, deeper growl of an Italian model. This was American iron on the move. Five, maybe six 1340 cc twin-pot motors, tuned for maximum sonic effect.
Then, over the noise of the bikes, they heard deep-chested barking, followed by a single loud gunshot.
“Well, man, I think we have some company,” Venter said, scowling. “And somehow I think I need to find me a new guard dog.”
“Yes, well, Gabriel didn’t entirely leave on good terms with Davis Meeks yesterday. Did you Gabriel?” Maitland said.
“I’ll handle it,” Gabriel said.
“No. We’ll handle it.” It was Shaun who’d spoken.
The four men climbed and jumped down from the Land Cruiser and made their way through the mounds of earth to the lane leading from the field. But before they reached it, six Harleys and their riders streamed through, two abreast, drawing up in a shallow semi-circle. The Hells Angels opened the throttles of their bikes wide a couple of times, raising the noise levels even higher than when the Brownings had been firing.
Meeks dismounted first, swinging his long leg over the saddle and planting his heavy boot onto the packed, tawny earth. He reached over the petrol tank of the bike and pulled something from a leather scabbard strapped to the frame. He turned, swinging what looked like a sawn-off shotgun over his shoulder. Gabriel riffled through a mental database of firearms and found it: an Ithaca 37 “Stakeout” pump-action shotgun. The twelve-gauge weapon could cause devastating injuries at ranges of up to fifty yards or so, after which the pellets lacked enough energy to cause more than skin wounds. Meeks and his gang were standing twenty-five yards away. The other five followed suit, turning back to face Gabriel, Shaun, Maitland and Venter with a variety of weapons, including Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns and an M16. Then all six men took a couple of paces forward and realigned themselves, with Meeks centre-right, barrels levelled at Maitland and his associates.
Meeks called out.
“Maitland! Change of plan. We figured we could make better use of our cash than you could. We’ve come to take it back. Plus your boy there put one of mine in the ground yesterday. You know about that? Dude bled out in our clubhouse. Haemophilia. So I’m looking for a little compensation. For his widow.”
Maitland answered. Gabriel turned in astonishment at what he heard – the harsh tone and the choice of words themselves.
“Oh, boo hoo, Davis. You got your coke, we got our money. From what I hear, your ‘boy’ asked for it. It’s not my fault if Gabriel had the drop on him. So why don’t you and your little pedal bike club there saddle up and piss off?”
A pump action shotgun makes a distinctive noise when you lever a cartridge into the breech. A short, mechanical, two-beat ratchet-sound familiar to fans of action films all over the world. The sound of three slides being racked at once is chilling. It promises massive tissue damage, catastrophic blood-loss, shattered bone, and death.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Maitland, you sonofabitch. No, here’s how this’s going to play out. You’re going to get my money and I’m going to consider which of you gets to walk away from here. If you got a God, I’d suggest you start praying to him right about now.”
Under the dead-eyed stares of the Hells Angels facing them, Gabriel and Shaun glanced at each other. Shaun had the Glock Maitland had given Gabriel in a shoulder holster under his jacket. But reaching for it would invite a hail of lead buckshot that, at this range, would separate his head from his shoulders or leave a hole in his torso big enough to climb through. Gabriel wasn’t carrying at all. He had his hands and his feet, useless against the combined firepower of three shotguns, a couple of submachine guns and an assault rifle. Why they’d left the Land Cruiser he didn’t know. Close in, Gabriel would have given himself and Shaun better than evens on surviving. They had unarmed combat skills that turned the enemy’s own bones into jagged weapons; driving a heel of a hand hard and fast under a man’s nose wo
uld drive two spears of bone deep in his brain and drop him dead on the spot. And long-barrelled weapons were unwieldy at close quarters. At this distance, though, they’d be dead before they got even halfway to Meeks and his men.
Maitland raised both hands high in the air and spoke again.
“OK, Davis. You win. Forgive me. Just bravado talking. We were about to conclude our dealings with Mr Venter when you arrived. Your money’s over there.”
He kept his hands raised but angled his right to point at the Land Cruiser.
“That’s better,” said Meeks. “By the way. How’s business, Barty?”
“You know him?” Maitland said, turning to look at Venter.
Venter couldn’t suppress a smirk.
“You idiot, Maitland,” he said, moving away from the group and joining the Hells Angels. “Did you think you could just come over here, yah, acting like the lord of the manor? My grandfather died in a concentration camp built by you British outside Durban in the Boer War. Now it’s your turn.”
“But your money. They’re taking it,” Maitland said, struggling to comprehend that he was being double-crossed.
“That’s right, man. They are taking it. Then we’re splitting it. Half for Davis, half for me, and nothing for you except some change. In lead.” He guffawed at this and the Hells Angels joined in, never letting the barrels of their weapons move from their targets.
“Who do you think sold us our hardware, Maitland?” Meeks crowed. He turned to Venter. “But you’re wrong about one thing, Barty. It ain’t your money no more. Just ours.”
He drew a small revolver from his jacket pocket, a .22, nothing more than a handbag gun for nervous accountants or suburban housewives. Then he shot Venter through the left eye. The slug’s energy was expended by the time it reached the centre of Venter’s head. No exit wound, not much blood even. The arms dealer dropped to the ground, folding up like a foal unsteady on its new legs.
“Now get my money, Maitland or you’re next. And hurry up. These guns are getting heavy, ain’t that right boys?”
The Hells Angels grinned and nodded their assent, thought the barrels didn’t waver.
In his pale grey three-piece wool suit and matching pink tie and pocket square, Maitland looked every inch the storybook English aristocrat as he walked to the Land Cruiser. The gold snaffle-bits across the insteps of his shoes reflected the sunlight in yellow glints.
“I said hurry it up, pussy!” Meeks called out.
“Yeah, faggot,” yelled the man to his right, one of the two men Gabriel had disabled the previous day. “Put some heat under it, or we might have to.”
He pulled an automatic pistol from his belt, a chunky Colt .45 and fired a shot past Maitland and into the side of the big Toyota. The bang was deafening, even outdoors. Maitland flinched as the bullet ripped into the sheet metal door and tore an inch-wide hole to the car’s interior. He placed his hands onto the back of the Land Cruiser and, over the laughter of the Hells Angels, levered himself over and into the truck bed at the rear.
Maitland stood up and moved towards the holdall. Arms held out wide as if trying to balance along a tightrope, skidding and slipping on the discarded brass cartridges littering the floor. Meeks swivelled his shotgun and aimed at Maitland. Dead centre of his torso. A round from the Ithaca 37 from this distance would clean out his ribcage from front to back. Gabriel tensed, watching Meeks’s forefinger tighten on the trigger, taking up the slack until any further pressure would start to pull the hammer back.
Maitland was just bending for the bag when he appeared to slip and fell backwards. Meeks had had enough. He yelled out, “Fuck you, Maitland! I’ll get it myself.”
He leaned forward, braced the shotgun’s pistol grip against his gut and fired.
The Ithaca was loaded with No. 4 buckshot. Each cartridge held twenty-one lead pellets almost a quarter-inch in diameter. As the superheated, pressurised cloud of gas raced along the Ithaca’s smooth-bore barrel looking for escape, it drove the tiny spheres ahead of it, accelerating to a muzzle velocity as they left the barrel at 1,200 feet per second. Amid the cloud of unburnt black powder particles, combustion products and flame, the pellets left the gun, surfing on a sound wave that bent the air around it. They widened their trajectories into a cone. It took them just 62/1000ths of a second to travel the seventy-five feet between Meeks and Maitland. By this point, the leading edge of the cone had formed a flat circle a yard or so in diameter.
Ten of the pellets blasted into the Toyota’s already perforated bodywork, leaving clean-edged circular pits revealing the underlying steel. The other eleven cleared the edge of the truck bed.
As Maitland fell sideways, he flung his left hand upwards. One of the pellets pierced his palm, leaving a neat hole on its way in and an uglier tear through the back of his hand on its way out. Two others embedded themselves in his left bicep, tearing through the fabrics of his suit and shirt and carrying microscopic fibres into the wounds. The other eight flew overhead and into the trees. What happened next caught Meeks, his accomplices, Gabriel and Shaun by surprise.
Before any of them could move Maitland reappeared, blood streaming down his face from a wound to his scalp. One of the remaining pellets had creased his skull, or else he’d torn it on a piece of metal in his fall. His eyes were bright in the bloody mask, their whites showing all the way around the irises.
“Davis, get down!” one of the Hells Angels shouted, swinging his rifle towards Maitland and managing to squeeze off a single round. But he was far too late. Maitland stood behind the left-hand Browning, oblivious to the bullet wound he’d just sustained. Yanked back on the cocking lever. And pressed down on the trigger.
Gabriel pushed Shaun over and dived sideways. Meeks and his men were too slow. Maitland kept his thumb jammed down hard on the small metal lever, letting the M2 gorge itself on the almost six-inch-long rounds. The thunderous roar of the .50 calibre bullets exploding from the muzzle combined with the brassy tinkling of the empty cartridges bouncing off the Toyota’s roof in a symphony of destruction. He swept the long barrel left to right, laughing maniacally, his teeth showing behind his pulled-back lips. Bullets smashed into the Hells Angels, tearing limbs away from torsos, gouging chunks of flesh, exploding heads like ripe fruit hit with a hammer. Arcs of blood crossed in mid air. Sprays and splatters flew in all directions, covering the Harley Davidsons with a fresh layer of colour. Gabriel looked back over his shoulder where’d he’d fallen against the side of a grassy mound.
Maitland had stopped firing because the M2 had jammed. He was muttering to himself about disloyalty and disrespect. The belt had caught on part of the ammunition box and twisted. Now he stepped over to the second gun, cocked it, and resumed firing with a triumphant shout. Short, controlled bursts of between five and ten rounds. The men were all dead, blown apart from the devastating power of rounds designed to bring down light aircraft or disable military vehicles. Now Maitland concentrated on the motorbikes. One by one he searched out the fuel tanks, putting round after round into them until a tracer lit them up. They burst with crisp bangs, unlike the duller thumps from the sedans. No sound insulation, seating or steel panels to deaden the sound.
He stopped shooting.
For another second or two, the last of the spent cartridges plinked and rolled in the Toyota’s truck bed.
Then there was quiet.
Chapter 24
The Brownings smoked on their steel posts, muzzles pointing at the cloudless sky. The fires consuming the bikes sputtered and crackled, and there was the occasional dull pop as a tyre expanded to bursting point.
Maitland climbed down from the Land Cruiser, his face a rictus. His floppy blonde hair was grey with gun smoke and his parting had all but disappeared, replaced by a shallow furrow ploughed across his scalp by one of Meeks’s No. 4 buckshot pellets. His left hand hung by his side, the wound holes plugged with congealed blood. On his suit jacket, a carmine flower bloomed to the right of the buttons, just above his waist.
Gabriel and Shaun got to their feet and were brushing themselves off when Maitland approached them.
“Well,” he said, in a bright, confident voice. “I thought that went rather well, don’t you?”
Shaun just stared at him.
“You mean,” Gabriel said, “apart from the fact that you just shot and killed six men with a heavy machine gun, which, counting Venter, means we have seven bodies on our hands and a pile of bike wrecks? And you’re hurt.”
“Meeks had it coming to him. I never intended to work with him again anyway. And as for Bart.”
Maitland stumbled over to Venter’s corpse. He bent down and picked the Ithaca up by the barrel. Meeks still had his right hand clawed round the pistol-grip of the shotgun so Maitland put his shoe on the corpse’s elbow and pushed down, yanking upwards at the same time until hand and grip separated. Then he turned to where Venter lay in an untidy heap, legs folded beneath him. He racked another shell into the chamber, placed the Ithaca’s muzzle against the dead man’s face and pulled the trigger. The gun roared and Venter’s head vaporised. The blowback of fluid and brain matter as the shell’s energy forced the skull to explode caught Maitland by surprise. He dropped the gun and swiped his right forearm across his face, smearing the blood and tissue into the blackened blood that had run down from his own scalp.
He came back to where the two ex-Special Forces soldiers were staring, open-mouthed at him.
“He shouldn’t have tried to cheat me. It’s …” He appeared to be having trouble finding the right word. “… it’s disrespectful.”
Shaun looked at Gabriel, signalling with a blank look. Disrespectful? He just took revenge on a corpse for being disrespectful? This guy’s coming from another planet to us.
Gabriel returned his stare. He’s insane. But he’s our insane. We’ve both seen it before. In combat.
He turned to face Maitland. Took charge.
