Zero Hour (2010) ns-13

by Andy McNab

I slid my left hand round the back of his head. I kept the palm of my right under his jaw and pushed up and round. His neck went with not too much of a crack. He slumped down without making a sound. His body didn’t even twitch. He just went very still. I rolled over and kicked him off.

  My vision was blurred. Pain seared the top of my head. Blood ran down behind my ear. But scalp wounds always look worse than they are. They’re seldom serious. All there is on top is skin and bone.

  My lungs were bursting. I sucked in oxygen as I rolled over onto my front. I forced myself up, ready for the next wave. But the drama wasn’t what I was expecting.

  Angeles was kneeling over the other body. He was lying on his back. Her arm moved up and down, up and down, into his body. Blood covered her hands and face as she stabbed and stabbed into his chest.

  ‘It’s OK - stop!’

  I staggered over to her and caught her arm in mid-air as it headed down for another strike. I eased the Leatherman from her fingers and threw it on the floor. My right hand had a bright pink oval shape where the acid had etched into the top layers of skin, exposing the sensitive stuff beneath.

  The area round the other guy’s right eye had swollen so much it swamped the eyeball. The left one was open and dull.

  Angeles convulsed with sobs, maybe from relief, maybe from fear. Maybe it was just happiness at getting back at these fuckers. I didn’t know, and right now I didn’t care. All I had to do was make sure we were secure.

  ‘Wait here.’

  I staggered through the fire door and down to the entrance. I locked up. When I returned to the loading bay she’d hardly moved from her kneeling position next to the body.

  I stood over her and lifted gently under her armpits. ‘It’s OK. Let’s go.’

  I’d sort all this shit out later. For now, I needed her to get out of here before it all sank in and she started howling at the moon.

  I helped her to her feet. She turned and put her arms around me and sobbed quietly into my chest.

  In theory, the immediate priority was to get her cleaned up, and after that, to do the same to the loading bay. But she needed comforting. I put my arms around her and rocked her from side to side. ‘It’s OK, you’re safe. It’s all over. I’ll look after you. Everything’s going to be OK.’

  11

  I took her straight over to the shower and turned it on. There was a hum of electrics as it kicked off. Five minutes later she was still standing there, arms down at her sides, shoulders dropped.

  ‘Get in there. Clean yourself up. Get some clean clothes on. You’ll feel better.’

  She didn’t move. She just stared down at the blood on her hands.

  She had to wash it off her quickly if she was to have any chance of putting this behind her. The longer you smell it, the longer you see and feel it, the deeper it digs into you. Every time she smelt blood in a butcher’s shop, she’d think about today. Every time she had red ink or paint on her fingers, it would take her straight back. It didn’t matter that the fuckers deserved it, or that she’d exacted some kind of revenge. If she kept being reminded of what had just happened, she’d be haunted for the rest of her life.

  Steam billowed out of the shower and into the room. I dabbed at a pearl of blood that ran down my forehead. It would stop soon. I coaxed her towards the door. ‘In you go. I’ll take care of everything. Just get cleaned up, yeah?’

  I wasn’t getting any reply.

  ‘Angeles, do that now? Please?’

  I took her face gently in both my hands and bent down to try and get some eye-to-eye. There wasn’t just blood on her hands now, but blood on her cheeks as well.

  Finally she looked at me. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was no point denying it. ‘But you did nothing wrong. You did a good thing. They would have killed us. You have saved your own life - and you have saved mine. Do you understand?’

  Her eyes dropped.

  ‘You understand that what you’ve done is good, don’t you?’

  Her head nodded slowly.

  I kept my voice low and soft. ‘Angeles, take your time. Clean up. But first, give me your clothes. I’m going to go downstairs, and I’m going to sort everything out. Do you understand?’

  She gave a nod and I let go of her face. She started to undress and I went to the sink. The cold water on my hand felt almost as bad as the acid had, but I knew it was the only way. In a perfect world I’d have kept it up for at least half an hour, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  She came out with her bloodstained clothes in a bundle. Her shoulders were hunched. Her skin was goose-bumped all over. She looked like she belonged in a horror movie. Her skin was so white it was almost translucent, but her hands and face were crimson.

  ‘That’s great. Now go and have a shower. I’m going to bring the shopping up.’ I gave her a smile. I pointed to her hair. ‘You’ll be needing the brush, won’t you?’

  I didn’t get a smile back. There was nothing I could do for her apart from get things sorted and try to make her as physically comfortable as possible.

  She loitered by the shower door.

  ‘It’s OK, Angeles. I’m not going anywhere except downstairs. I have to sort everything out. You’ve got to help me and I’ve got to help you. Everything is OK. Go, go.’

  She nodded slowly and stepped into the steam.

  12

  The bags lay ripped and trampled on by the front door. I shoved whatever I could into the ones that were still intact, and scooped the rest of the gear into my arms. I headed back up and dumped the lot on the brown carpet. The electric shower hummed away on the other side of the stud wall as Angeles went through the horror of watching someone else’s blood drain away by her feet.

  I almost fell down the stairs in the rush to get back to the loading bay and start the clean-up. First into the rear footwell went the jeans with the stab punctures. I bundled up my vomit clothes and shoved them on top.

  Next was my neo. I hauled him by his feet and pushed and heaved him on top of his would-be competitor. I’d never been a great one for poetic justice, but this came close.

  Both neos were fucking idiots as far as I was concerned, but I needed to give myself a good kicking as well. They’d probably pinged us at the market, when I was paying more attention to cheering Angeles up than thinking about who might be looking over our shoulders.

  They should have reported back to Flynn once they’d IDed the safe-house instead of taking things into their own heavily tattooed hands. Whatever, the fact was that in the next couple of hours whoever was back at the silo was going to be flapping and making some calls. But I had no control over that; all I could do was crack on with the plan.

  I had to wedge Angeles’s neo as far down the rear passenger footwell as I could. The boot was already full. I’d cover him with her sleeping bag before leaving.

  The effort left me wet with sweat and gagging for breath. I leant against the vehicle and felt the top of my head. The wound was crescent-shaped where his top set had been able to rip into the skin. It would scab up soon enough. The sweat down my back started to cool and I felt myself shiver. My arse was hurting again, and so was my hand.

  I had to grip the situation and make sure Angeles and I got out of here in one piece, simple as that. She’d only just started her life and I wanted mine to end with Anna. That was pretty simple as well.

  I forced myself off the vehicle and carried on collecting together all the device-making paraphernalia and tucking it around the bodies. There was no easy way to erase my prints from the wagon, let alone the DNA. I could burn it, but even thirty years after an event, blood can still be identified. The only way I could to deal with this was to get all the evidence together and make sure it was never found. Not while I was alive, anyway.

  I didn’t touch the neos’ wallets or ID. If I did my job correctly, the wagon would never be found, and all my problems, and some of Angeles’s, would be packed away inside.

  I lugged the battery back into the P
assat and connected it up. Thank fuck it still worked. I didn’t have jump leads.

  I turned my attention to the devices. First into the Bergen was the water container with about four litres of fuel. Then I carefully curled the gaffer-tape fuse into a couple of loops and laid it on top. I took the roll of gaffer tape over to the alarm clock, gave the bulb a generous protective coating, made sure the batteries were still in the wrong way round, then it went in as well.

  Next was the picric acid. The yellow mush had crystallized on the plastic, and was ready for bagging. I placed it carefully in two new freezer bags, which I tucked into the left-hand pouch of the Bergen. The two bags of cartridge propellant went in the other side.

  I put the Bergen into the front passenger’s footwell of the Passat and climbed behind the wheel. I sat there, working through exactly what I was going to have to do tonight. I visualized my actions as if I were a camera lens, watching my hands assembling the devices, going through everything step by step. I didn’t want to forget any detail that would stop the device detonating once I’d left.

  The fire door opened. Angeles appeared in her new jeans. She had the brush in one hand but hadn’t even tried to get through the knots in her hair. She looked about her. All that remained of the drama was a pool of dark red, almost brown, blood that had been smeared along the concrete as I’d dragged the body of her neo towards the Passat.

  I climbed out. ‘I need to clean that up before we leave.’

  She wasn’t listening. ‘We will tell the police?’

  ‘No, we won’t tell the police anything. We just leave, and we never say anything to anyone at any time about anything. Is that OK with you?’

  Her head juddered, maybe out of fear. ‘I wanted to kill him.’ She pointed at the blood on the ground. ‘I wanted to make him pay. Make them all pay.’

  I was expecting her to start crying again as I walked over to her, but she didn’t. The tears had gone. She was pleased with what she had done. Fair one, I would have felt the same.

  ‘Angeles?’

  She kept her eyes on the blood.

  ‘Angeles, look at me.’ I went over to her and bent down so I could get eye-to-eye again. ‘I’ve got to leave for a while tonight, but I’ll be back.’

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘Just for a while. I have to get rid of the car. When I come back, we will leave here and go to my friend who is going to help you - help both of us.’

  She gave a brisk nod. It was as if what had been left of the child in her had gone, which I supposed it did pretty quickly once you’d stabbed a man to death.

  ‘Nick, why are you here? What are you doing for - what do you call it? - your job?’

  ‘Remember what we said before? You ask no questions, because I’m not going to answer, OK?’

  She looked at me for a couple of seconds, and nodded.

  13

  I stopped the Passat, jumped out and went back to hit the shutter button. A few moments later I was heading down the road towards the roundabout and then on to Distelweg, shoving the contents of Bradley’s briefing folder into the glove compartment as I drove.

  I was going to the silo sterile. My passport was still in the mailroom. The heating felt good around my body as the Passat glided towards the canal. It stank of bodies and vomit, but that didn’t matter. I crossed into the world of darkness the other side of the water and was soon approaching the tile warehouse. I pulled into the car bays and killed the lights and engine. I sat, watched and listened. The sky was clear tonight; at least there would be no rain.

  There were no lights, no voices, no traffic.

  I waited another five minutes, then fired up the wagon and carried on down Distelweg. Not too fast; not too slow. I didn’t want to be noticed for doing either. I couldn’t see much, but I checked for anything that might have changed since I was last here.

  The target was in darkness.

  As I passed the two-level warehouse or factory immediately before the wasteground, an external door opened and there was a burst of light. It was closed again quickly. No drama. It was three hundred metres from the target. If somebody was working late, and staying inside, they wouldn’t get hurt. There was nothing happening on the outside, for sure. There were no lights. What was about to happen would be something to tell the kids, but not much more.

  I drove down to the sharp left-hand turn by the ferry point, and the city lights glowed at me from across the water. I followed the road, looking down the steep drop from the reclaimed land of the dock into the bay, for about two hundred metres. On my left, the land side, there was a clutch of small industrial units. A small brick path and a thin strip of grass ran away to the right, stopping at the water about three metres below. I found a gap between the wire-mesh fences of two units and reversed into it. I closed down once more but left the ignition on. This time I sank into the seat, nice and low, letting my arse slide down the leather. I kept my weight on the left cheek. As long as I didn’t move, nobody walking past would see me.

  I powered down the window to listen for vehicles or footfall and checked the luminous hands on my watch. It was nearly 20.40.

  I switched the internal light to off, so that it wasn’t triggered by the opening door, and stepped out of the car. I went round to the passenger side, took out the Bergen and put it down against the fencing. Then I got back behind the wheel.

  I turned the ignition key and leant over and pressed the button to tilt the back of the passenger seat as far as possible to wedge Angeles’s neo in place, then did the same with the driver’s. I opened the door and took a quick final look outside.

  I positioned my right foot on the sill, which made my stab wound throb as I strained to keep myself upright. My left hand gripped the edge of the roof. I changed it to my right, and then pushed myself in against the door hinges for support. I needed my left hand and left foot free.

  I leant in, pressed my foot on the brake pedal, and selected drive. I let go of the brake as the engine started to take the Passat gently forward. I held on, leaning back into the hinges, and once it had travelled about halfway across the road I pushed my left foot down on the gas and we lurched forward. I held it there a bit longer, but no more than two seconds because it was really starting to roll.

  Hanging half out of the car, I pushed off with my feet and the Passat lurched on towards the water. As my feet hit the tarmac I curled up to accept the landing. I was only moving at about twenty m.p.h. but it felt like fifty.

  I rolled a couple of times as the wagon disappeared from view, then heard a loud splash.

  14

  My arse had taken some of the hit on my right hip and I was in agony. I staggered to my feet and headed for the water’s edge. I didn’t bother looking left or right. The deed was done. If I’d been seen, there was fuck-all I could do about it.

  I got to the edge just as the tailgate disappeared under the water. It looked like the last throes of a torpedoed ship. I’d only left one window open. I wanted the vehicle to fill with water to make sure it sank, but I also wanted it to keep the bodies entombed.

  After three days, under normal conditions, the intestinal bacteria in a corpse produce huge amounts of gas that flows into the blood vessels and tissues. Large blisters form on the skin, and then the whole body begins to bloat and swell. The gas turns the skin from green to purple to black, makes the tongue and eyes protrude, and often pushes the intestines out through the nearest orifice. This process is speeded up if the victim is in a hot environment, or in water.

  As a young soldier, I used to be on the beach patrols in Hong Kong, looking out for what was left of Chinese illegal immigrants. The illegals travelled in overloaded boats and many of them drowned. They’d make it to Hong Kong, but after floating there for three or four days they looked like aliens from Star Trek.

  When this happened to Angeles’s neo, I didn’t want him to escape as he bloated and floated. With luck, the seats were going to restrain him, and if not, at least he was unlikely to come out throug
h one window and bob to the surface. I just hoped my door had slammed shut when it hit the water and hadn’t been forced open.

  I looked down. The water was dark and solid. Fuck knew what was down there. Hundreds of years of bodies and secrets. The Passat was already becoming part of history. Or so I hoped.

  I pulled out the BlackBerry and flung it as far as I could into the bay. I didn’t want that thing banging in my ear when Tresillian went ballistic - which he was sure to do when I got those girls out.

  As long as Anna was safe, I wasn’t worried about reprisals. What was he going to do? Kill me? If so, he’d better get his finger out or the monster in my head would get there first and do the job for him. That would really piss him off.

  I hobbled back to the Bergen. The pain subsided in my hip, though not so much in my arse. I remembered the last time I’d tried to dump a car in a reservoir. I was a young soldier, years before I was sent to Hong Kong. My old Renault 5 was a wreck. I’d have had to pay to have it scrapped, so a mate and I came up with a great idea in the pub one night. We’d drive to the Talybont reservoir in Wales and not stop when we got to the water. We’d go down in two cars on a Saturday night, and Sunday I’d report it nicked from the town centre.

  We drove down to Talybont, and things were looking good. I revved the engine, jumped out, and watched the Renault going into what we assumed would be at least sixty feet of water. Instead it settled in what looked like about four feet, visible for all to see. It turned out there were so many cars dumped in that same spot that mine had landed on top of a pile of others. We had to make our way down, climb over the other rust buckets, and rock the thing until it toppled off into deeper water.

  All this reminiscing was probably par for the course when you were running out of road ahead. Or maybe there was a little voice telling me that though I’d thought some of these things were pretty shit at the time, perhaps they hadn’t been.

  I shouldered the Bergen and kept in the shadow of the buildings that lined this side of the road. No more thinking about the old days. I had to concentrate on the job. That was what I was here for - and this was the part I really wanted to do. It wasn’t about the killing, however much that was for the greater good, or however Tresillian would justify it. At the bottom of this pile of shit, I was never going to save the world. But it would be nice to think that getting Angeles and Lilian and the other girls out would make it - for them at least - a better place.