by Andy Maslen
“OK, come on. Let’s load this sucker up and get back there. Meeks and the others, they ain’t smelling so good. You see those buzzards?” He pointed to three big birds of prey circling slowly on a thermal way above them. “They’re thinking breakfast and I’m thinking we need to be gone. A-sap. You get enough plastique?”
“Six M112s. That should be enough, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t look much does it? I don’t want to leave bits of those boys scattered all over the neighbourhood. I’m thinkin’ we want BOOM! – pink mist. Not POP! – bones and shit rainin’ down on the Missus next door when she’s feedin’ the chickens.”
“OK, let’s get some more. A little more.”
“Deal.”
They returned to the interior of the barn, grabbed another M112 charge each. They piled them into the load bed with the rest and drove back along the track, the big car jostling over the rutted ground as its four independently sprung wheels dropped into potholes then bounced against the edges.
The sun was higher in the sky now, the scene looking like something from a horror film. The corpses were swelling in the heat of the day. The wounds were blackening and thick clouds of flies were shrouding the bodies as they competed to lay their eggs in the most nutritious spots. They were starting to stink as well. A rotting, cheesy smell that had Gabriel pulling the neck of his T-shirt up like a mask as he got out of the Land Cruiser. He walked round to the driver’s window.
“The best result is going to be if the charge is directly over the bodies. You’re going to have to drive right into the middle of them.”
“Jesus! OK. You live by the sword, right?”
“Something like that.”
Gabriel beckoned Shaun forward and the big ex-Delta man eased the Toyota forward, its huge tyres inching up and over the bodies, moving and crushing them still further, until it settled in the middle of the group, like some grotesque sculpture set up by an art world darling with no experience of life, let alone death.
Gabriel got out and Shaun followed. They were walking away when Gabriel stopped.
“What about the Brownings? And the money?” he said.
“Shit! I almost forgot. We could’ve sent the whole lot into the stratosphere.”
They climbed up into the back of the car and between them lifted the heavy machine guns off their mounts, carrying them one by one off the Land Cruiser.
“I’ll fetch the Navigator,” Gabriel said, throwing the holdall full of cash down to Shaun. “We’ll load them in and park it on the other side of the house. Just to be safe.”
Once he’d returned with the SUV, they fed the Brownings between the seats. It was an awkward job, like getting a sofa up a narrow flight of stairs, but in the end they had both weapons stowed. Shaun stuffed the holdall onto the rear seats. They climbed in and Shaun drove back the way they’d come in the Land Cruiser, parking on the far side of the farmhouse. All the while Maitland slept on, unaware of the alarm call he was about to get, whether he’d ordered it or not.
“So, you ready to do a little tankbusting?” Gabriel said, winking at Shaun.
“You better believe it.”
They walked shoulder to shoulder across the concrete farmyard, their boot heels scrunching on the grit overlaying the concrete. Gabriel flipped the metal light switch, and as the fluorescent tubes flickered erratically to life, the two men walked into the gloomy interior to find and extract one of the anti-tank weapons.
They carried the crate out by the rope handles and deposited it respectfully on the concrete floor outside. Using the same pry bar he’d opened the C-4 case with earlier, Gabriel levered off the lid of the crate. Inside, nestling in its protective wrapping was a matt, olive green tube, about four inches in diameter and four feet long. A Carl Gustaf M3 recoilless rifle, known affectionately by the troops who used it as the “Goose”. Gabriel lifted it out of the crate. It had no decoration or superfluous parts of any kind: a moulded plastic grip near the muzzle, a similar pistol grip mounted amidships and a shoulder rest behind that. A webbing strap held on with two robust swivel-clips. A side-mounted telescopic sight.
“What about a round?” Shaun said. “He does have some back there, right?”
“You name it, he’s got it. HEAT, HESH, HE. What do you think we need?”
“The Land Cruiser ain’t no tank. No armour. I reckon if we put a high explosive anti-tank round into it there’s a chance it’ll go straight through before detonating. No idea what a squash-head’ll do to a civilian vehicle. It’s already full of C-4 so putting a splat of it on the outside could be unpredictable. I’m thinkin’ we just go with the high explosive round. We only need to ignite it after all.”
Gabriel returned to the barn, emerging moments later with a ten-inch-long cylinder in his arms. Black and olive green with a bright silver rounded tip, the high-explosive round would be loaded into the breech of the weapon before being fired at the target by the operator.
They fell into step beside each other, Shaun carrying the M3 over his shoulder, Gabriel cradling the HE round like a father with a new baby.
“Let’s fire down from the furthest ridge,” Gabriel said. “I reckon it’s a good 200 yards. We’ll have a clear line of sight and protection from the blast. How’s your shooting at that distance?”
“Hell, I was more of a sniper kinda guy, you know? I could shoot the balls off a fly at a thousand yards, but with one of these? To be honest with you? I don’t know. You?”
“I’m OK. We used these in the Infantry before I transferred into The Regiment. I have steady hands.”
“Yeah, and I bet the girls just love you for it, don’t they?”
“The stories I could tell you. Come on, let’s set her up and get this done.”
Climbing up the grassy ridge on the northern edge of the firing range, Shaun handed the M3 to Gabriel, who settled his shoulder against the rest and held the grips firmly.
“OK. Load the round, please.”
“Please? Wow! I forgot how polite you Brits are.”
Shaun flipped the conical venturi on the rear of the firing tube aside and pushed home the HE round before clipping the barrel shut again. Tapped Gabriel on the left shoulder.
Gabriel began his preparation. The Land Cruiser was a much smaller target than the Soviet-made tanks he’d fired at in his military service. And he was out of practice. He let his breaths slow down to four a minute. Cleared his mind of all outside thoughts and focused his attention on the vehicle, sighting through the scope and noticing as he did so that a hawk had landed near the corpses and was pulling a strip of flesh from one of them.
Gabriel could feel the cool of the breeze on his left cheek. He noticed the silver birches beyond the target swaying by about a yard at their feathery tips. Made a mental calculation for windage and adjusted his aim to compensate. Moved the Land Cruiser along the vertical crosshair by a couple of gradations to allow for distance. Then he willed himself into stillness. He could feel his pulse slowing to well below its normal sixty bpm resting rate. Down to fifty. Tightened his right index finger on the trigger until he felt the internal spring start to shift the firing mechanism.
He drew a deep, even breath. Let it out in a quiet sigh. Waited for a heartbeat. Let it pass. Squeezed the trigger.
The Carl Gustaf roared as the propellant ignited, hurling the high-explosive round in a shallow parabola towards the Land Cruiser and shooting a ball of incandescent gas backwards from the rear venturi. The M3 and its kind are called recoilless for a reason. Newton’s first law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The exploding gas matches the energy of the round as they move in opposite directions: the rifle is held steady by the perfectly balanced forces, leaving the operator – Gabriel – steady, and not knocked twenty feet backwards by the recoil.
The distance to the target was large enough for the two men to drop to their bellies behind the crest of the ridge and watch for the impact, just the tops of their heads pr
otruding above the edge.
The first bang was a deep, bass-heavy crump as the high-explosive round hit the side of the Land Cruiser. A split-second later, the M112 charges packed into the passenger compartment exploded with a boom that blew outwards in a fireball taller than the birches. As the fireball rolled in on itself, gaining height above a column of fire and welling smoke, the sound of the detonation bounced off the farm buildings and added a second thumping pressure wave to the boom that had left Gabriel and Shaun with ringing ears, even as they wrapped their arms over their heads. They kept down, flattened into the side of the grassy ridge as a rain of metal and glass fragments pattered down in a wide circle around the Land Cruiser, though they were out of range of even the smallest pieces.
With the noise of the explosion fading, they peered over the ridge, looking down towards the place where the Land Cruiser had stood. There was nothing visible. Despite the magnitude of the blast – some of the birches had lost branches, others were scorched on their sides facing the range – birds had already resumed their cheerful singing. Perhaps they were used to explosions. After all, they’d chosen to live on a farm owned by an arms dealer.
“Come on,” Gabriel said. “Let’s check it out.”
Chapter 26
Gabriel and Shaun carried the discharged Goose down from the ridge and jogged the few hundred yards to the still-burning Land Cruiser. As they neared the wreckage, the wind changed and brought with it the distinctive stench of burnt metal and rubber that characterises any kind of incident when a car or truck has gone up in flames, from road accidents to military engagements. No burnt flesh, though. The force of the blast had turned the bodies into a miasma of vaporised flesh and bone that had combusted in the fierce heat generated by the high-explosive charge.
As he went to open the gate to the field, Gabriel paused. There was something caught on the other side of the latch under his fingers. Something smooth and hot protruding from the smooth surface of the galvanised steel. He looked over and paused.
“Hey Shaun, look at this.”
The other man dropped the spent rifle on the ground and joined Gabriel at the gate.
“What is that, gold?”
“I think it belonged to Meeks. It’s one of his teeth.”
Shaun pulled a knife from a sheath he wore around his right ankle – a KAR-BAR, much loved by the US Marines and Special Forces – and inserted the tip under the flattened conical lump of yellow metal. With a little prising and twisting, it came loose and dropped into his outstretched palm.
“Lookee here. I got me a piece of gen-you-wine Hells Angel dentistry. Think I’ll have this mounted on a watch chain, maybe leave it to my grandkids.”
“Yeah, you can tell them how you personally blew six of them to the middle of next year with an anti-tank round. Of course,” Gabriel paused, “they’ll never believe you.”
In the centre of the field, where the previous day they’d faced Meeks and his gang’s high-powered weapons, there was now just a shallow crater around thirty yards across, with shallow sloping sides. In the middle lay the twisted remains of the Land Cruiser. The combined effect of the HE anti-tank round and the demolition blocks of C-4 had reduced it to a blackened chassis - just a couple of steel beams and two of the wheel hubs with their disc brake rotors still attached at crazy angles.
The bodywork was gone – doors, wings, bonnet, front and rear bumpers and the cut-down roof had been shredded like paper torn up by a kid in a tantrum. Fragments of steel and aluminium were scattered over a three or four hundred-yard circle around the site of impact and the rust-coloured earth twinkled in millions of points of reflected sunlight where the window glass had been ground into something approaching coarse grit. One of the machine gun mounts had embedded itself in a berm, the metre-long steel pole invisible except for the final few inches. Of the bodies of Venter, Meeks and the other men, there was nothing: no clothes, no bones, no flesh at all. Apart from Shaun’s golden souvenir, it was as if they had never existed. The Harleys were another story, however.
The bikes lay in a tangled heap off to one side of the wreckage of the Land Cruiser. Because they’d been on their sides when the HE round hit, the major force of the blast had flown over them and upwards, tearing through the thin skin of the Land Cruiser and expending its massive chemical energy in the destructive fireball that had vaporised everything softer than steel. They were beyond recognition as individual bikes, but they’d still have their VINs stamped somewhere on the frames.
The men looked at each other. Shaun spoke first.
“Backhoe?”
“Backhoe.”
It took them twenty minutes to locate the big yellow earth mover that Venter had used to shape his ridges and foxholes on the firing range, start it and drive it back. Both men had donned leather work-gloves. Shaun had used backhoes in Iraq, so he took the controls. One by one, he hoisted the ruined Harleys with the rear scoop and carried them a quarter-mile further along the track to the gravel pit, Gabriel riding shotgun on the front deck of the big machine. The bikes went into the flooded pit with no trouble. The sides were steep, so they sank fast, just a couple of yards from the bank, bubbles rising to the surface as frame tubes, shattered cylinder blocks and gas tanks gave up their reservoirs of air. The only spectators were some Canada geese and half a dozen Scoter ducks who watched without interest as the ruined bikes slid off the backhoe’s scoop and splashed into the water. On the last trip to the firing range, Gabriel grabbed the discarded Carl Gustaf and slung it over his shoulder by the nylon webbing. He swung it out and over the water.
They watched it turn a couple of circles in the air, then hit the surface muzzle-first and slide with a plop into the water. Shaun spoke.
“You know, I’m not sure I would have signed on with Maitland for fifty grand if I’d have known what I was lettin’ myself in for. It’s a tidy sum but once the circus leaves town I’ll be back on my own resources, and that money ain’t going to last for ever, know what I’m saying? I mean, if I had a little more, I reckon I could set up something like Venter’s operation back home. Jonesboro, maybe, or Fayetteville.”
“What? Gun running?”
“Not the dealing thing, the firing range. I could buy some land and set myself up with a nice little business letting rich folks blow shit up with some ex-military weapons. I know a couple of guys who could get me them legally. But that would need some seed money. You know, till the business took off.”
“So ask Maitland. Tell him something like, with what you know and how useful you’ve been, you deserve a little more.”
“Kind of risky, asking Maitland for more money, don’t you think? Won’t he call me on it? Say I’m tryin’ to blackmail him?”
“Just explain it to him. You have your code, you always did. You never ratted out a buddy in the service, never snitched to the MPs. But blowing up those Angels? Dumping the Harleys? You figure you earned a little performance bonus.”
“Hey, you’re good. I might just say what all you just did. Come on, let’s finish this Goddamned clean-up exercise. I need a beer.”
When the final Harley had disappeared beneath the surface, Gabriel hopped up onto the backhoe’s rear wheel arch and held onto the cabin rails while Shaun piloted the big yellow vehicle back along the track to the house. He took one final look at the firing range as they lumbered past. It looked like a truck bomb had gone off, which wasn’t so far from the truth, he supposed.
When they arrived in the yard, Maitland was standing just outside the kitchen door, a mug of coffee steaming in his hand. The smell drifted towards the backhoe, making Gabriel realise he needed caffeine. He and Shaun jumped down and joined Maitland. For a man with multiple gunshot wounds, he looked in good shape, though he moved stiffly and grimaced as he turned to greet them.
“Well? And how goes the yard work?”
“All done,” Gabriel said. “You couldn’t find Meeks or the others with a microscope, and the Harleys are at the bottom of the gravel pit.”
<
br /> “Yes. I did hear a bang. You decided not to feed the pigs?”
“Too risky. This way, there’s no evidence.”
“Apart from a rather large hole in the ground, I imagine?”
“I’ve thought about it. Look, maybe the neighbours did hear it, even though they’re a few miles away. If anyone ever does come sniffing around, yes, they’ll find evidence of a big blast that ripped the Land Cruiser apart. But Venter was an arms dealer. Which even the stupidest local cop will figure out once he gets a peek inside those barns. They’ll just assume it was a demo gone wrong.”
“Well, I hope you’re right, Gabriel. I hope you’re right.”
Shaun spoke up.
“He is right, Sir. Leaving bodies in a pig field was a bigger risk than blowing them up. It would have definitely looked iffy, unless those hogs were going to finish every last finger bone and dog tag.”
“Yes, well, let’s not waste time debating the rights and wrongs of detonating corpses versus feeding them to pigs. We have bigger issues to deal with right now. The main one being, disguising the M2s.”
“So, how are we going to do that, exactly?” Gabriel said.
“Come inside and have some coffee,” said Maitland. “And I’ll explain. Don’t worry, I’ve cleaned up the operating theatre. It’s safe to eat in the kitchen.”
Over several mugs of very good coffee, plus toast and eggs cooked by Shaun, Maitland outlined the next phase of his operation. The potato harvester was due to be delivered late morning by a local farmer. They, meaning Shaun and Gabriel, would weld the M2s into the framework of the harvester, spraying them to match. Then together with the D-Type, currently making its way cross-country in the back of a specialist trailer, it would be shipped to O’Hare airport at Chicago and flown back to England on a commercial cargo plane, chartered by Maitland.
“All of which means,” said Maitland, “that once we’ve taken delivery of the harvester, you two need to go shopping.”
