“When we die for the holy cause, it is because there is no other way to defeat the enemy. How can there be shame in defeating the enemy without dying? Our prophet Mohammed fought many battles and was victorious. He lived to bring us the word of God. With him as our mentor, who can claim there is any shame in victory without martyrdom? None of us will cower if the ultimate sacrifice is required, but if we can succeed and still carry on the fight it is our duty to do so.”
It was not the way he would have argued it in other circles, but he knew that they would not argue if he lined up the actions of Mohammed against them. They were indoctrinated not to question when his name was evoked. None of them knew the first thing about the history of Islam. He didn’t know much himself, but he knew more than most and it was enough to serve his purpose. He was relieved when the next question was about practical matters rather than moral or religious ones. It showed that he had judged them right. Questions of doctrine were beyond them.
“We’ve got vests that are set to explode when we pull the cord. If we’re not wearing them how are they going to explode and destroy our enemies? I don’t want to live as a failure when I can die a hero.”
“I want you to live as a hero. There will be no failure. If we need to die to succeed we are all ready to die and will be martyrs to the cause. I can make the vests explode while we are not wearing them. If we do this right the target will be destroyed, and we will be alive to destroy more targets. What could be more heroic than continuing to fight the infidel in constant battles?”
There was a murmur of assent. They still had their doubts, but were beginning to see the wisdom of his words. Even with them on board he knew that it was highly unlikely that he would be alive and free in three days’ time, but possible was far better than nothing. He spent the next couple of hours outlining his plan, and reassuring them about their doubts. If other people had heard his words he would have been in serious trouble. He would have been argued down and put to shame. That didn’t change his conviction that suicide was not a necessary tenant of Islam, and that he could do his part without sacrificing his life. He hoped that he was right. Being wrong was untenable.
The next day they made their way towards their target. The security was pathetically lax. There were plenty of them, but no one was doing their job well. He wondered if it was a trap, and wondered if the target was not really as important as their instructors had made out. Despite his doubts he continued moving forward, and the other four followed him. They were all wearing the vests that they had been supplied with. It did not feel safe crawling along the ground with the vest dragging in the mud, but they had to trust that the design was robust enough to deal with this. They were not the first people to wear these vests, and he was sure that they would not be the last.
After a long crawl they reached the outside of the building. It shouldn’t have been so simple, but no obstacle presented itself. It was either a trap, or their enemy was relying far too heavily on their isolation for security. He was sure that at any second they would be captured and have to either surrender or detonate themselves. It didn’t happen as they reached the exit of a ventilation shaft, or when they removed the cover and climbed inside. After a couple of minutes crawling they assumed that they were near the middle of the building, so they deposited a bomb there. Three other buildings in the facility enjoyed a similar penetration. It was laughably easy. They still did not know what the facility did, but they were ready to destroy a massive chunk of it for the glory of God. He hoped that it was a military facility, but it looked unlikely given how easy they had found it to breach security.
He would have liked to be a few miles away when the bombs started going off, but the triggers that he had rigged wouldn’t allow that. They had to stay dangerously close, and he had to show a willingness to detonate the bombs the way that their superiors had planned if he hadn’t got it right. If it came to that he would do it. He was ready to die for the cause, just not if the same result could be achieved with him walking away.
The five of them gathered together against the wall of a building that may or may not collapse in the explosions. They were out of sight of the security patrols, and close enough to detonate the bombs. With those criteria fulfilled this was the best they could do in terms of personal safety. They said a quiet prayer together, then he pushed the button. There was a second of doubt, then the first of the five suicide vests exploded without its inhabitant. The other four followed too closely to distinguish the individual blasts.
They were all knocked to the ground, but quickly established that they were uninjured. There was little time to survey the result of their attack. Clouds of foul smelling smoke was bellowing out over them making it hard to breathe. They were all coughing and spluttering and inhaling god knows what foul chemicals. He tried to tell them all to follow him, but his throat was too choked up, and they were too deafened by the blasts to hear. His eyes were streaming and he could barely keep them open, making everything he saw a blur. He tried to give his instructions via sign language, but couldn’t tell if it was understood. It didn’t matter as when he started to jog away all of his team followed.
The billowing smoke kept them hidden as they put a bit of distance between themselves and the scene of destruction, but it soon cleared. As the air became clearer they had to move more cautiously. The laxity of the security forces was again apparent. They had not got the basics right to prevent the attack, and now that it had happened they were not securing the area effectively. All attention was drawn to the centre of the blasts, not towards preventing the perpetrators from escaping. He had expected this part to be difficult, and had assumed that he would have had to sacrifice a couple of the slower moving guys to the greater good. Somehow they managed to put three miles between themselves and the epicentre without being noticed. Each step from there made the chance of escape higher.
Another half an hour and they reached a caravan that was stationed just outside a local village. In it they had stashed less conspicuous clothing which they quickly changed into. They didn’t have long, his throat hurt and he felt nauseous, so he kept his explanation brief. They all needed to go their separate ways so that if one of them was caught they could not jeopardise the others. He did not tell them his plans, but he already had a flight to Mexico booked, where he could lay low for a while. For the others he handed out train and coach tickets to rural Norfolk, the highlands of Scotland, central London and the West Midlands. There was a car stashed with the caravan, and he took two of the others with him. They were going to start out from different points, as well as having different destinations. Of the two he left behind, one was told to take a local bus into the nearest city, the other was to go to the local train station. The two he took were dropped off at different transport hubs. Covering their tracks helped cover his own, so he had put quite a bit of thought into this. He had them covering most of the country, while he left it entirely.
Soon he was on his own and feeling jubilant. He had survived a career as a suicide bomber. He had caused all of the destruction that had been asked of him, now he was leaving with his whole life ahead of him. The secret funds that were supposed to find their way to his wife in the long run were going to be at his disposal very soon, and he was going where living was very cheap. Physically he felt really shitty with all the smoke he had inhaled, but as soon as that cleared life would be looking pretty perfect. Worst came to the worst he could even take a trip across to Cuba and take advantage of their peerless medical system.
He boarded the plane still coughing and spluttering, and if anything getting worse. It drew some dirty looks from his fellow passengers who did not want to catch whatever he had, but he didn’t really give a damn. He was happy, and was not going to let his mood be spoiled easily. Before the plane landed he was dead, and had sown the seeds for an infection spreading across the Americas.
London.
There really was fuck all to do. They were hanging around on their own estate, posturing and trying to
look important. They scared the locals and indulged in some petty crimes. They had snorted some Ket that evening, and got riled up to do absolutely fucking nothing. There were a couple of girls with them, who they flirted with, but as the male majority was ten to one there was bugger all chance of getting laid. Jed probably would. He was the leader as much as this gang had a leader. He carried the best of the three guns they collectively owned, and he acted like the dogs bollocks, which was all that was really needed to take charge in a group like this.
Jose wondered, as he had on many nights, why he was pissing away his life like this. In these circles it wasn’t cool to be intelligent, so he had held himself back in school. Even so, he could have got into university, and his parents would have given everything for him to go and give himself some proper opportunities in life. Instead he fucked it off to spend his nights like this, doing nothing, surrounded by idiots. Despite his efforts to lower himself, the people around him still thought he was a bit of a nerd. His parents were still busting a gut to support him and he was going nowhere. Twenty one years with nothing to show for it. They had a good laugh every now and then, but most days were like this. Cold and tedious.
Jed was making a joke, and he laughed along with everyone else. The guy did have a strong personality, and it was easy to see why people were drawn to him. If he had any real goals and the drive to achieve them the rest would immediately follow. In war time, if he had got through the basic training in the army he could have made a good leader. Personally fearless, captivating, impossible to ignore. In peace time there was no place for him except as a petty thug. A fully professional army would weed out people like him as unreliable. They carried out minor crimes, intimidated the locals, and generally tried to look tough. They got into fights with other gangs occasionally, but couldn’t match up to some of the tougher outfits, and made sure to stay out of their way. They did a lot of drugs, and drank a lot of booze.
Most of the group seemed happy with this way of life. They didn’t dream of much else, or didn’t talk about it if they did. Where they had grown up, and the families they had, meant the majority had grown up without much of a chance at anything else. They grew up in poverty, with no encouragement to better themselves. They fell into a culture where intelligence was mocked. Caring about anything made you vulnerable and right and wrong was decided by whoever had the muscle to decide it. At home it was usually whoever was playing father at the time. At school it was the older kids, or the biggest of their peers. In revenge they learned to pick on those below them.
Not for the first time, Jose decided that night that it was time to get out of there and find a better life for himself.
He sat on a wall a swallowed a mouthful of Jack Daniels from a bottle that had been passed to him. It was not far from empty, and, as no one was showing much interest in taking it from him, he kept hold of it to see it through to the end. Looking down the street he saw a guy lurching towards them. The bloke was moving quite fast, but staggered in a manner that made him look completely pissed. Jose was not the only one to spot him. Walking around in an area like this, at this time of night, meant that he probably had nothing worth stealing, but Jose assumed that they would want to find out for sure. If he had so much as a tenner on him he would have taken a taxi home.
It was strange the way the drunk approached. Most people would swerve away from a large gang and try to avoid being noticed, even after a few too many drinks. This one was making his way straight for them, right towards the middle of the pack. There was a steely determination in his advance, like he expected to gain something important from this encounter, rather than the beating and the loss of possessions that was coming to him. Jose finished off the Jack he was holding, but continued to grip the bottle by the neck. He did not move from the wall he was sitting on. He had a good vantage point to be a spectator in this nonsense.
The ground was soon covered, and the drunk guy entered their midst. Polite greetings were directed, with only a slight undertone of malice. He still didn’t appear to have any fear of the situation he had walked, or at least staggered, boldly into. Jose decided that it was time to upgrade his status from drunk to druggie. Sometimes he felt bad for the victims of their crimes or petty abuse, but anyone who got themselves into this kind of state was asking for it. The druggie should have found himself surrounded, but he did not seem to notice. He just kept advancing on whoever was closest to him and in his line of sight. The behaviour was strange, and it soon became a game.
There was a circle around him, and he kept advancing towards one of the men surrounding him. Someone would come up behind him and give him a shove, or try to trip him up. There was a lot of laughing and taunting, but the druggie did not seem to notice or care. All he seemed to care about was getting close to someone. There was an occasional groan, but he did not speak. Jose figured that soon the game would grow dull and it would turn nasty. He had a look round to see if there was any more booze on offer, but all he saw was that there was another person approaching them. It wasn’t a cop, so he didn’t bother alerting anyone else. Eventually a half full bottle of vodka caught his eye, so he fetched that and returned to his wall.
As he looked back at the main source of fun for the evening he saw that one of the guys had got down on his hands and knees behind the druggie, while Jed advanced on him. One good shove, and their victim was toppling backwards. He had managed to get a grip on Jed’s collar, and came close to pulling both of them to the ground, but Jed just kept his balance. The guy on his knees to allow this trip, was laughing, and did not move fast in getting back to his feet. Jose watched as his arm was grabbed, and his hand bitten into. It was an unexpected turn on events, and the druggie got a solid kick from Jed as a reward. The bitten guy, who Jose could now recognize as Neil, was able to shake himself clear as a result of this, and put in a couple of kicks of his own. The only reaction from the druggie seemed to be an attempt to grab the feet as they approached him. No pain seemed to register.
All attention had been on this scene, but a scream soon distracted everyone from it. The person that Jose had seen approaching had grabbed Brittany from behind, and was sinking his teeth into her shoulder. She was struggling, but she was seriously out matched for strength and weight. Jose saw a chunk of flesh torn from her and swallowed, and a second bite taken as he ran to help. Blood was pouring from her wound and soaking the thin top she was wearing. She was between Jose and her attacker, but as the attacker was nearly a foot taller than her, when he raised his head to swallow a second chunk of the young woman she did not get in the way of Jose’s swing.
The Whiskey bottle that he had still been holding smashed into the side of the guy’s head and shattered. Brittany was showered in broken glass, but it seemed a small price to pay for the removal of the man chewing on her. The left side of the man’s face was torn open, and the impact knocked him to the floor. She scrambled clear of him, and moved behind Jose, holding her shoulder with one hand, but seeming unable to register the pain yet. Jose had hit the guy hard, and expected him to stay down, but was disappointed. He looked unsteady, but showed no sign of pain as he got himself back on his feet.
A momentary distraction proved to be enough for the original druggie to sink his teeth into another gang member. Jose saw this out of the corner of his eye, but did not let his attention get drawn from the man who was now lurching towards him as he backed off. All of the fun had been drawn from this confrontation. No one seemed to be stepping forward to help him. In his left hand he still held the nearly empty bottle of vodka, so he switched this to his right and smashed it over the attackers head. Again the bottle smashed, and knocked its target to the ground. Again it had no lasting impression except to make the guy even uglier. He was soon on his feet and advancing again.
At last someone else stepped in as Jose started to despair about how to slow the fucker down without another bottle to break on his head. A gun was pulled and pressed against his bloody temple, and he was told not to take another fucking ste
p. Momentarily he complied, but only for long enough to turn his attention on the gun holder. The one holding the gun was more hesitant as his target turned, a reluctance to put a bullet into someone’s head allowed enough time for a set of teeth to sink into his hand. The gun was dropped, and its prior holder tripped over his own feet trying to step backwards. Instantly the biter was on top of him, trying to do all he could to take another bite. Jose reacted quickly picking up the gun, but hesitated to pull the trigger, as he feared the bullet going through its target and hitting his friend. As a pair jaws closed in on a throat he found an angle, and put a bullet into the attacker’s skull.
From that close range the destruction was extensive. The entry hole was quite small, but as the bullet flattened out on its way through the bone and brain matter it tore a massive hole on its way out. The debris splattered out over the man underneath, soaking his face in gore. What was now a corpse collapsed onto its intended victim, and scrambled brain matter continued to dribble out of the new holes that had been formed. There was a panicked cry of “Get this fucker off me,” from underneath him. Jose, having never shot anyone before, could do little but stop and stare.
A few meters away there was a second gun shot, as Jed followed Jose’s example and put a bullet through someone’s head. That caught Jose’s attention and he looked towards the source of the shot. The second fatality was sporting a couple of knives which had been inserted in places that should have stopped movement very quickly. The gunshot suggested that they hadn’t. While everyone else stood in stunned silence, Jed took control of the situation.
They were in an area where if a gun was fired the locals would make every effort not to hear it. No one would be a witness to a crime if they could avoid it. It just wasn’t safe to see that sort of thing. Even so, the bodies needed to be disposed of, and it needed to be done while it was still dark. There was only so much the public could be relied on to not see, and the police were far more observant. Jed’s first instruction was to liberate the guy who was still pinned underneath the man that Jose had shot. On Jed’s orders three of the gang reacted instantly and threw the corpse to the side. Two others were sent to get a car.
The Farm Page 4
