The Boathouse

by R. J. Harries

  He heard the faint sound of people talking. He got back up and walked towards a large air vent in the wall with slats angled away from him at forty-five degrees.

  Somewhere on the other side of the wall a door slammed. The muffled voices grew louder. He looked through the slats into the space below. A droplet of sweat ran down his forehead and stung his left eye. He wiped it and took a deep breath.

  There was a much larger room on the other side of the wall. It was like a warehouse with a ramp up to ground level inside what appeared to be one of the hangars. A dozen people were talking in one area and moving equipment on pallet trucks in another. There were cameras on tripods and huge portable lighting rigs on hydraulic arms and wheels.

  A stocky bald man in a dark suit dished out orders like a sergeant major on parade.

  “Five minutes, everybody out except the medics,” he shouted.

  Objects were wheeled around frantically. Lights flashed on and off and the area was chaotic until all but three of the men in sight went up the ramp and a noisy roller shutter door at the top descended slowly, shutting them all out.

  As the area was being prepared Archer found he had a mobile phone signal and managed an exchange of texts with Forsyth. She was now inside the perimeter and more determined than ever to help him. He wasn’t sure if she could manage it. But she had climbed and abseiled; he remembered the photo behind her desk of her climbing a glacier. The area suddenly went quiet. The lights were dimmed down to darkness. A large fan whirred somewhere on the other side of the air vent. There was a high-voltage hum and a pulsating vibration through the structure.

  Archer felt hot and agitated. His mouth was dry and he sucked a lungful of air down fast as he’d subconsciously been holding his breath. It was the familiar onset of a panic attack. But what had triggered it? He thought about sitting in his steam room, meditating, controlling his breathing. It was helping. He closed his eyes and focused, taking long deep breaths and then breathing out slowly. It was working.

  “Ready,” the sergeant major shouted. “Three, two, one.”

  Spotlights lit up more glass-fronted cells. Each appeared to have different types of equipment inside. An old grey-haired man in a white coat walked into one of the cells. Inside was a large cylindrical metal tank painted grey. Archer watched him press a large red button on the side of the tank. The top lifted slowly to one side on hydraulic pistons. Two men in white coats appeared next to him. He whispered something and they leaned over the tank and reached down into it.

  Becky Sinclair was pulled from inside the main body of the tank. Archer realised that it was a Sensory Deprivation Chamber. She wore an orange tracksuit without shoes and she was soaking wet. Her body was limp and she was beginning to regain consciousness. The men placed her in a wheelchair and walked out. The older man in the white coat wheeled her out of the cell. Her hair and tracksuit dripped a trail of water as he wheeled her to a large ugly-looking wooden chair beneath a bright spotlight, and then walked away. Two men in white coats lifted her from the wheelchair to the wooden chair and strapped her waist, ankles and wrists to the chair.

  “I’ll take it from here,” a man out of view said. “You’re sitting on an exact replica of Old Sparky.”

  Archer’s hackles rose. He recognised the sinister tones before the speaker wandered into view. Peter Sinclair was inside the Boathouse.

  One of the medics in white coats fastened a metal dome to Becky’s head and another wheeled over a trolley with some sort of transformer unit on it. Another medic attached cables to the unit and then to the chair. He pulled a lever and the unit buzzed and lit up, revealing a large round dial and an analogue meter.

  “So, my dear, you’ve experienced some of our facilities first-hand. A relaxing spell in the isolation chamber. Plenty of time to think, as it were. But before I ask you if you’ve made your decision, I want to show you something.” He turned around and yelled. “Where’s the bloody hangman?”

  Muffled shouts. Then a man dressed in black with a sub-zero balaclava over his head appeared holding a wired-up winch control unit. Another spotlight went up left of the cells and the others slowly dimmed. A large mechanical rig appeared with two orange figures standing beneath it.

  Louise and Amanda Palmer stood six feet apart with their heads bowed. Both wore orange tracksuits and white trainers. Their hands were tied behind their backs with rope. Dazed looks on their pale faces showed that they were not fully registering the situation.

  Their raven hair still in tight ponytails. Slumped lifeless shoulders and weak legs bent at the knees. The pinstriped sergeant major stood next to them, unarmed, but there were now two men with guns standing four feet behind him.

  Louise and Amanda each had a thick hangman’s noose tied around their necks. The other end of the thick rope was tied to a yellow steel hook attached to a mechanical winch on a large yellow steel beam above. Archer couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He felt sick.

  “Pull the ropes tighter. One at a time,” Sinclair barked.

  The hangman operated the winch control. He pressed a button and the electric motor whirred as the noose slowly tightened around Louise’s neck until she was on her tiptoes. Then the second winch did the same until Amanda was straining to stop from swinging.

  “Shall we rape them first or simply hang them?” Sinclair said.

  He laughed mockingly at Becky. His laughter echoed around the huge room.

  “Let’s hang them and be done with it,” he said, with a harder edge.

  Both winches tightened simultaneously. Both bodies left the ground until they started swinging from their necks, wriggling human pendulums. After several seconds he signalled to the hangman. The winches were reversed and the bodies dropped to the ground where they slumped into lifeless heaps.

  Archer didn’t like Louise, but she didn’t deserve to be tortured, and her innocent daughter was only seventeen. The thought that people were being tortured on UK soil was hard to imagine, let alone believe, but here was the proof. It was disgusting.

  Another yellow gantry rig moved into place above Becky and the hangman stood next to the wooden electric chair, taunting her with his noose. She spat in his face.

  “Now, now,” he said.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Calm down, you old slag.”

  “Fuck off. You fucking twat.”

  Sinclair nodded and a medic slowly turned the electric dial. Becky started to shake and then convulse uncontrollably with a low guttural scream. When it stopped she slumped to one side. The medic unfastened the dome and straps and threw a bucket of water over her.

  The hangman dropped the noose on the end of the winch. He carefully tightened the noose around her neck and pressed the winch controls until it took up all the slack in the rope. Sinclair nodded at him and he continued to raise the rope. Becky stood up as the rope slowly tightened until she was on tiptoes and it stopped abruptly with a loud clunk.

  “Now then, my dear, what’s your final answer? Yes or no?”

  He looked at her like she was a piece of rotten meat.

  “All right, you impotent prick. Yes.”

  Sinclair beamed.

  “Let her down and bring her with me.”

  Sinclair casually strolled up the ramp like he was perusing around a museum on a Saturday afternoon, with Becky being dragged after him by two medics, a few paces behind.

  “Put them back in the cell. You know what to do with them,” Sergeant major said.

  Louise and Amanda were untied, picked up and carried away, coughing and spluttering over the shoulders of two guards. Archer let out his breath. The steel door beneath him opened and he saw them being carried fireman-style towards the empty cells. They were both dumped in one and the glass door was locked. The guards smoked cigarettes and stared at them like morons at a zoo. They sounded like they were from Atlanta.

  “What’s happening with these two folks?” one said.

  “We keep them down here for a couple days, do some psycholog
ical experiments on them, and then dump them at sea,” the other replied, unfazed, as if completely bored by it all.

  “How do you know all that?”

  “Seen it all hundreds of times. You’ll get used to it.”

  A deafening buzzer sounded around the public address system.

  “Code red alert. Repeat, code red alert. All guards report to the command centre immediately. We have an intruder between the primary and the secondary fence. Two guards are down. The intruder may be armed. All guards report to the command centre.”

  “This intruder must be a real space cadet. There’s over forty armed guards in here.”

  “What an idiot.”

  The guards ran through the steel door and up the ramp to the hangar compound, leaving the cell locked but the area unguarded. Archer knew the odds of escaping were against him. And decreasing as rapidly as the seconds ticking away on his Luminox watch.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Archer swiftly climbed down the vertical steel ladder and ran over to the cell holding Louise and Amanda. For a moment he simply stood still and stared through the thick glass wall. Two lifeless prisoners waiting to die on death row. Their bewildered look of hopelessness stared back at him, red raw rope burns visible around their necks. Their pale expressionless faces failed to acknowledge him. The life and soul had been completely drained out of them.

  “Can you two walk?”

  They stood up wearily and nodded. They looked cold and numb. He could tell they were still in shock. They could barely stand up. Amanda nearly passed out, but caught herself in time. At least they weren’t hysterical, but they would be slower than normal.

  “Stand back.”

  Louise and Amanda shifted awkwardly to the back of the cell and Archer shot the lock off with his Beretta. The thick glass door slowly swung open.

  “Follow me. We have to move fast, we haven’t got much time left.” He spoke calmly, but fully aware that Sinclair’s men could come back any second.

  He led them back through the corridor. Back down the dimly lit tunnel towards the Boathouse and the waiting lifeboat. Their weak legs caused them to stumble and fall, but Archer kept picking them up and dragging them forward as they sobbed and choked. He fumbled in his bag and took out a small remote control device with four red buttons. He pressed the first button. No explosion would be heard from inside the tunnel. He just hoped it had worked. The diesel tank exploding would throw the guards off his tail for a short while, but he sensed it was only a fragile advantage. He needed to keep moving.

  He pulled the lever, opened the heavy steel door and saw Forsyth waiting for him on the other side. She must have got down to the beach and climbed the abseil rope as planned.

  “You got here then. Any problems?”

  “My hair’s a bit messy.”

  “Look after these two. I’ll get the boat ready.”

  The two women were too weak to climb into the lifeboat. Archer and Forsyth had to lift them up into it one at a time. It wasted valuable seconds. Archer’s injuries made him jolt with sharp bolts of pain. He rested on the stern for a second. His tired muscles burned. Forsyth took them down below deck and strapped them into their seats.

  “You sure this tub still works? It looks completely knackered to me,” Forsyth shouted from down below.

  “We’re about to find out. If it doesn’t we’ll call the coastguard.”

  Archer looked down below. Louise and Amanda held onto each other. They looked terrified. Forsyth climbed into the navigator’s chair and strapped herself to it. Archer jumped down off the stern and opened the Boathouse doors wide enough for the boat to get through. He stumbled around the portable tool chests as he prepared to launch. He closed the grey steel door that led back into the tunnel and wedged the door lever shut with a rusty but sturdy-looking steel bar and yanked the handle to check – it felt secure.

  He climbed up the wooden ladder into the boat and strapped himself into the helm. He took aim and shot the red launch button on the wall with his Beretta to save time, but nothing happened. He shot it again. Still nothing. He cursed to himself under his breath. The automatic release mechanism didn’t work.

  “You’re a shit shot, Archer.”

  “I’ll have to do it manually.”

  The grey steel door to the tunnel started shaking. He could hear muffled clanking and shouting on the other side. Automatic weapons started firing at the door. The noise was deafening, but the bullets didn’t penetrate the thick steel plate.

  Archer pressed two more red buttons on the remote. The first sounded like a firework exploding in the distance. The second much louder, causing the tunnel door to shake. Then the main lights went out, leaving only a dim glow from the battery-powered emergency lights.

  Archer unstrapped himself and jumped out of the boat. He looked around for something heavy to release the catch holding the lifeboat in place. A shadow appeared from the doorway leading back outside to the Land Rover.

  “Hands up, Archer. You’re meat.” It had a Yorkshire accent.

  Archer was partially behind the boat. He ducked behind it and out of the line of fire, pulling out his Beretta.

  “Don’t be stupid, Archer. You’re outnumbered, we’re way out of your league. Don’t you realise where you are? You should have listened. We told you to back off on Tuesday. We killed your pretty girlfriend, Alex. I got to know her and fucked her a few times before I killed her. She was always gagging for it.” The man’s thin lips twitched before curling into an arrogant smile.

  Archer quickly climbed onto the front of the boat. He saw a reflection on a shiny yellow oil drum. Someone was moving around the back of the boat. He stood up slowly, pointing his gun where he thought Yorkshire would be. As he gained height he could just see the top of somebody’s head. If he didn’t get the first shot right he was a dead man. He aimed instinctively, his body raised just enough to clear the cabin.

  The bullet went in through Yorkshire’s left ear. Blood sprayed instantly from the exit wound and splattered red arcs over the grey wall. Yorkshire’s body slumped to the ground knocking over a small diesel jerry can. The can clanked hard against the concrete floor, spilling diesel towards six yellow oil drums.

  Archer picked up a heavy sledgehammer leaning against a tool box and smashed the rusty steel hook holding the boat in position at the top of the slipway. He jumped back on the boat and held onto the rails as every muscle burned with the effort.

  The lifeboat creaked and groaned loudly as it began to move. Archer searched the stern and found a box of flares. He fumbled around and took one out as the boat hit the slipway. He pulled the pin out and it lit up like a Roman candle.

  He threw the flare back through the doorway at the diesel spill. The fuel vapour caught fire as the boat rapidly built up speed and glided noisily as it descended down the steep slipway and crashed into the raging sea. Louise and Amanda sobbed uncontrollably as the waves engulfed the boat in water. The boat popped back up and then rocked and rolled with the swell as the waves crashed over the deck.

  Archer was drenched, but managed to get back to the helm and strap himself into the captain’s seat. Forsyth was holding her head. She must have banged it when the boat hit the water. She was still holding on tight, but looked pale and worried.

  Archer looked behind and saw the Boathouse engulfed in flames. He heard the familiar sound of automatic gunfire. A stream of bullets ripped into the front of the boat, tearing chunks out of the grey fibreglass nose. It bobbed around without propulsion like a dying duck about to be slaughtered.

  The heavy rain and waves continued to bombard the windscreen, but the lightning had passed. The worst of the storm was over. He pressed the small red button which generated an electric starter motor, followed by a deep rumble as the twin Volvo diesel engines kicked in and spluttered to life first time. Finally some good luck.

  “Thank God for that. I thought we were stuffed.” Her face was white.

  “Hold tight. Let’s see what this rust bu
cket can do.”

  He pushed both throttles fully forward and grabbed the small wheel. The screw propellers generated enough thrust to make the boat stand up at forty degrees as they headed out towards open water, leaving a chevron-shaped wake of churned water behind them.

  Archer looked back at the rocky bay. The guards had fled the growing flames. They stood behind the Land Rover, MP-5 machine guns pointed down at the ground. They had given up shooting. The boat was out of range for their automatic weapons. Archer prayed they didn’t have any rocket launchers. He heard an explosion and hoped it wasn’t a missile. He looked back at the Boathouse. It was a fireball, engulfing the Land Rover. One of the guards was on fire and jumped over the cliff as the Land Rover’s diesel tank exploded and the flaming vehicle crashed down into the sea.

  Archer kept cruising at full speed towards open water for two miles. Mindful that they might come after him with another boat. When the shore looked far enough away he reduced speed and cruised slowly towards the row of lights that he took to be Poole Harbour.

  Forsyth went and explored below deck and found a couple of red blankets to wrap around Louise and Amanda’s shoulders. She then did the same for Archer and herself at the helm. She also found a bottle of Martell brandy and poured some into four enamel mugs.

  “Medicine,” she told the silent recipients.

  Archer left the helm set on autopilot and checked that Louise and Amanda were unharmed. They finished their brandies and he told them to lie down on the bunks until they found a safe place to dock. He returned to the cockpit and checked the sonar and radar. They had clear depth, no sand banks nearby and no other vessels in the area. They headed towards Poole Harbour, but needed to dock somewhere quieter to avoid any unnecessary attention. They checked the local charts and headed for an old, disused jetty.

  *

  In less than an hour they were tied off alongside the derelict jetty, which was even quieter than Archer had hoped. There was no sign of anyone. No boats. No fishermen or late-night dog walkers. The lights of the town began half a mile down the road. They had both worn gloves so there was no need to clean up any fingerprints. They disembarked in the moonlight. It was the ideal place to abandon the damaged boat without being spotted. Without the bilge pumps working the bullet holes would scuttle it before sunrise.