by Andy McNab
There was still a little bit of moaning, especially when I got hold of his ankles and brought them up towards his tied hands. I put the ends of the belt around the tie-back that secured his wrists, did up the buckle, and that was him trussed up like an oven-ready chicken.
He was coming round again. I held the Tazer on his thigh and gave him the good news for another five seconds. He tried to scream, but the sock did its stuff. As I lifted the Tazer away from him I still had the button depressed; the bolt of electricity crackled brightly as it arced between the two terminals. The glow that it cast added to the torchlight, and I could see the suit carrier, now open, hanging on the wardrobe. Inside was a grey business suit, white shirt and patterned tie, already knotted and hanging round the hanger.
I got to the door, checked the corridor and turned left towards the stairs. This flight was different, the stairs turning back on themselves to reach the top floor. As I climbed and turned left, up the next flight, the distant TV mush disappeared, its place gradually taken by the constant bass-drum rhythm of rain bouncing off the roof. It was almost soothing.
I got to the top and lay down on the stairs. I looked left along the corridor, but this time there was no light to help me and I couldn’t see any coming from under the doors.
I twisted the Maglite and headed directly to the second door on the left. There was no rug up here. I moved slowly. Between the first and second door, against the wall, there was a semi-circular table with a lamp on it.
I got to the door. It was exactly the same as the one downstairs, with the latch on the right. I crossed over and got against the right-hand wall. I just had to get in there, be hard and aggressive, grab her and get out before my new mate downstairs started trying to become Houdini.
I listened for a few seconds, just in case she was in there expecting me and loading up her 53. Then, with the Maglite in my mouth, I put my hand on the latch and pressed.
There was a small bundle in the bed, and I knew at once that it was Sarah. I could smell the familiar fragrance of her deodorant. It was the only one that didn’t leave white powder marks on her clothes.
I started moving towards her. Her jeans were on the floor, crumpled, as if they’d just been pulled down and stepped out of. There was a bedside cabinet with some water and headache pills by the lamp.
I was going to have to grip her so hard that she thought there were twenty people piling in on her. I had to confuse her, scare her, faze her, because I knew that, if I didn’t, she was more than capable of killing me.
17
I moved towards her, Tazer in my left hand, pistol in my right, torch in my mouth, adjusting my head to keep the beam pointing into her face. The sound of the rain hitting the window was louder than my footsteps.
She started to turn, and her eyes reacted to the light as I moved the final pace, dropped the pistol on the bed, then smacked my open hand over her mouth. She gave a muffled scream and fought against me and her mouthful of bloodstained glove. The torch got knocked sideways, scraping against my teeth, as she thrashed about. I heard the pistol fall off the bed and onto the floor. I hit the Tazer’s ‘on’ button and her eyes widened as she saw the current crackling between the metal prongs, inches from her nose. Then she hit her own ‘on’ button and began struggling so violently I thought she was having a fit.
She got the good news in her armpit. The 100,000 volts shot through her body and fucked her up big time. With her body jolting up and down, I was finding it hard to keep my hand on her mouth to dampen the scream. The bed springs sounded as if she was having sex. Five seconds later she was a rag doll, just a little groan as she fell back onto the bed. It wouldn’t last for long.
I needed the pistol. I got the torch out of my mouth and retrieved it from under the bed, shoving it into the waistband of my jeans. Next, as weak coughing told me she was starting to regain her senses, I got out the two sleeves I’d cut from my shirt. She coughed again and I looked at her. The bedclothes had been kicked off during the struggle, and she lay spread out on the mattress like a starfish, in just a white T-shirt and white knickers. Outside, the wind had come back. I could hear it thrashing the rain against the windows even more now.
With the torch back in my mouth I was soon dribbling and breathing like the Bossman downstairs. I prised open her jaw and started ramming the first sleeve into her mouth. She was just conscious enough to realize what was happening, and tried her best to resist. I had to give her another two or three seconds with the Tazer, getting my hands out of her mouth just in time as it snapped shut in the first of another series of convulsions.
When she relaxed, I stuffed in the material until it must have gone halfway down her throat. I then got the second sleeve, placed it over her mouth like a conventional gag and tied the ends tightly at the back of her neck with a double knot. There was going to be no noise from her now.
I pulled the belt from her jeans and used it to tie her hands together, front loading her. She was now ready to go and so was I – nearly. All that was left was to gather up as much of her ID as I could find. A T104 meant leaving no trace, which wasn’t going to be easy. I didn’t know where all her stuff was. I hoped it wouldn’t be too much of a drama if anything was left behind; with any luck she’d be using cover docs that she’d got by chatting up some gay woman in an Australian bar.
I found her bag on the floor near the bottom of the bed. It was a small black nylon affair with a shoulder strap; inside was a nylon sports-type purse, passport and a few loose dollar bills. I quickly scanned the rest of the room with my torch. A green sports bag lay open on the floor, and clothes were strewn all around it. A glint of metal caught my eye. I shone the torch beyond the bag and saw the barrel of an HK53. Its black Parkerization had been worn off over the years. I also saw four mags, taped together to form two sets of ammo.
She started moaning and retching, trying to expel the material from her mouth. She still didn’t know who was doing this to her; it was too dark, and even if she could see straight at the moment, all she was getting was a powerful torch beam in her eyes as I moved towards her, putting her bag strap over my head.
It was time to grip her and get the fuck out of there before the authorities screamed in – or whatever was going to happen after 5 a.m. I got back to her, switched off the torch and put it in my jeans. With my left hand I got hold of her at the point where the back of her head met the neck, and banged the web of my right hand hard up under her nose. I felt her jolt as it slammed into her face. Bending my legs, I pushed up with both hands, making sure that all the pressure of the lift was against her nostrils. Her hands raised, then fell again. She couldn’t resist, she had to go with it, her moans of pain getting louder.
I got her sitting bolt upright, and put the crook of my left arm around the front of her neck, jamming her tight against me. Her face was still tilted upwards. With the pistol in my right hand, I moved my right forearm behind her neck to complete the head lock, and stood up. She was fighting for oxygen. No way was she not coming with me.
I started to move and she didn’t like it at all. Her back arched more as her legs hit the floor and she tried to take more weight off her neck. She was recovering quicker now that she was in pain, but I had total control. If she fought back too strongly I’d just give her another bulletin with the Tazer, but that would be a last resort. I wanted to move quickly, not be dragging a dead weight.
I made my way across the room and, checking the pistol’s safety with my right thumb, opened the door. The corridor was still dark and silent. I reinforced my hold on her by jerking my knees and gripping her neck more tightly. She seemed to be concentrating on holding onto my left arm so that she could relieve some of the pressure on her neck, probably too worried about being asphyxiated to resist.
I stepped out into the corridor, her head still jammed against my chest, the rest of her body following behind me. She gave no resistance at all, and once we got past the table I understood why. She started to buck and spark up, her legs kicking
out as she held onto my arm for even more support. She kicked the table sideways, knocking the lamp onto the floor. Its stained-glass lampshade shattered across the floorboards.
It had gone noisy; no need to tiptoe around any more. I started to motor towards the stairs, dragging her with me. At first she continued to buck and kick, her feet banging on the wooden flooring, then she must have realized that if she didn’t help herself by trying to keep her back arched and her legs on the floor, she could break her own neck.
We got to the staircase, and I was just about to turn right and go down when I heard the sound of a latch lifting to my left.
I swung round as the door opened and light burst from the room. Sarah swung with me, a muffled scream coming from her throat as the movement wrenched her neck.
It was the American. His reactions were quick. I fired into the door as he shoved it closed. I gripped her and started moving aggressively down the stairs.
The American was thumping on the floor, screaming, ‘Wake up! Attack, attack! Wake up!’
Sarah’s heels and calves were taking a good hammering; she was squealing like a stuck pig inside the gag, and trying to tense up her muscles to help with the pain. We were sounding like a herd stampeding, with my heavy footsteps and her feet bouncing off the wood.
I didn’t look behind me, I just ran for it. I wasn’t going to head for the fire exit on the next floor as I’d thought I might. There were too many rooms on either side of that corridor, and I had no idea if there was anyone else in the building that I hadn’t accounted for. The way my luck was going, there was bound to be. My new plan was to get down to the garage, a route I knew, then just make a run for it.
I turned right to go down the next flight of stairs. As I took the first few steps I could see that the second floor corridor below me was now lit up like a football stadium.
Above me the American screamed, ‘Sarah! One of them has Sarah! They have Sarah!’
From below me a voice shouted above the babble of the TV, ‘Where? Where are they? Help me here.’
I froze no more than six feet from the bottom of the stairs. It wouldn’t be long before these two got their act together and I’d be dead. I just wanted five seconds in which to calm down and think.
A shadow approached from the left on the corridor below. It turned into Bossman, now in jeans and carrying an HK53. Fuck, how did he get free so quickly? I kept looking down on him, weapon in the aim, gripping Sarah even tighter to stop her disrupting my sight picture.
He turned and looked up. I blatted three quiet rounds until he went down, not dead, just screaming and writhing on the ground. The 53 clattered down the stairs to the floor below.
Above me the American half groaned, half yelled, ‘What’s happening? Talk to me. Someone talk to me here.’
I went down more stairs, stopped short of the corridor and, still holding Sarah with my left arm, put my pistol round to the left and loosed off the rest of the rounds blindly. Being suppressed, it wouldn’t have quite the same effect as rounds going off with a loud report, but people would hear them splintering the woodwork and get the general idea. I willed Bossman to carry on screaming and scare the shit out of anyone listening. Maybe it worked, because there was still no firing back at me. Either that, or there were no more people.
I ran out of rounds and started to change mags. Pressing the mag release catch I jerked my hand downwards to help the mag fall out. It hit the stair and bounced down, onto Bossman’s back. I looked at him, face down on the floor, his blood spilling across the polished wood. Then, turning to look up the stairs, waiting for the American, I placed a new mag into the weapon right next to Sarah’s face. As I turned back to check chamber, we had eye contact for the first time. The shock of recognition was plain to see; her eyes were wide with amazement and disbelief. I looked away, more concerned about the job in hand.
I moved straight across the gap without looking, just making sure I didn’t trip over Bossman, whose screams were fading. I rammed down the last flight of stairs, feeling and hearing Sarah bumping down behind me, sometimes lifting up her feet to take the strain, sometimes stumbling.
I carried on straight across the room towards the garage stairs, passing Too Thin To Win and his friends. Shouts and screams came from the TV as we passed the kitchen door.
Just as I neared the bottom of the flight and was about to enter the garage, I heard shouting upstairs, and then four or five rounds went off.
I wondered what the American was firing at, then I realized: he’d probably run downstairs, seen figures by the TV in semi-darkness and fired off at them straight away without looking. The flickering light from the screen, and the scariness of the situation, had probably got him jumping. It certainly had me.
I closed the door behind me to add a bit more to the confusion. He wouldn’t dare barge straight through; he couldn’t guarantee what was on the other side. We moved alongside the Explorer, and I could hear the American’s voice above me. I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying, but he didn’t sound too happy about the way his day was shaping up.
The rain stung as it lashed my face. It was then that I remembered the bergen, but it was too late now. Fuck it. I turned left, towards the other house, and had taken no more than three steps when the proximity lights came on. With my head down I started pumping, but was restricted by the weight I was dragging.
I’d covered maybe ten or fifteen metres when the first burst from a 53 was fired from one of the upper floors. Its short barrel and the power of the round makes the muzzle emit a fearsome flash; it’s the only weapon I’d ever seen that looks like the ones you see in films. It was great for close-up work as it scared the shit out of people. I kept on running; I’d be out of the light in a few more strides.
As soon as we hit darkness I glanced back. All the lights in the house were blazing. Smoke was drifting from the windows on the second floor. It looked almost like that house in The Amityville Horror, shrouded in rain and mist, except that it wasn’t mist, it was cordite from the rounds.
A couple of lights were on upstairs in the place next door. My new plan was to get in there, point a big fat gun at them, take their pickup and fuck off. The next thing I knew, however, the external light on the family’s 4x4, mounted on the driver’s side wing, burst into life, and a million-candlepower beam sliced through the darkness towards us. A man’s voice shouted a warning: ‘Don’t come near – stay away! I’m armed – I’ve called the police!’
For good measure he whanged down a couple of rounds at us from a rifle. He probably had ‘My land, my country, my gun’ on his bumpers, and a few other stickers that he’d bought at Jim’s, but he was protecting his family, and that was a fair one.
I felt a thump as one of the rounds rammed into the ground far too close to me. Either he was good, and he meant to aim a warning shot, or he was trying to hit us and this time we’d been lucky. I didn’t want to find out which. I jinked left and ran between the two houses, uphill, towards the dirt track. Change of plan again: we were going to make it on foot back to my car, as I’d been aiming to do all along, but without all this drama.
Another rifle shot rang out, but this time I didn’t hear the answering thud. There was the burst of a 53; fuck knows where that went.
I got to the track, crossed it and stopped to try and assess the situation. We were in darkness and on higher ground. I heard shots and saw a couple of foot-long muzzle flashes coming from the direction of the target house, and more from the area around the pickup. Shotgun Ned must be zapping and shouting at anything that moved. His spotlight swept left and right, looking for targets.
It wasn’t the only light I could see. Red and blue flashing lights were glistening in the rain on the other side of the lake and I suddenly realized that I stood more chance of being struck by lightning than I did of getting back to my car. Acting as the situation demanded, I changed plan again. We were going to get out of here on foot. I stood still, knees bent, waiting to regain my breath. It was colde
r than before, and the wind and rain were loud against the leaves.
I started moving through the forest again. Sarah’s bare flesh was getting zapped left and right by branches, and I could hear her suffering. I put my head down and pumped uphill, leaving everybody down there to get on with it. It seemed that my lucky number for house clearing was the same as for shopping trolleys: zero.
18
I gripped Sarah and plunged on, slipping and skidding on the wet mush, stumbling over rocks and fallen branches, flailing to regain my footing. She was screaming as best she could beneath the gag, partly because of the tree branches that whipped at her bare body and the ground cutting her legs, partly just trying to keep her airway clear. At least I knew she was breathing.
I tripped again and went down. The pain as my knees hit rock made them feel as if they were on fire. She moaned loudly under the gag as she took the brunt of my fall, and she had to arch her back to relieve the strain on her neck. I stayed on my knees, screwing my face up as I took the pain, waiting for it to die down. There was nothing I could do but accept it. I just hoped I hadn’t smashed a kneecap. My chest was heaving up and down as I tried to catch my breath. Sarah gave up the struggle to keep her body off the ground. She collapsed in the mud beside and slightly below me, her head, still in the neck hold, resting in my lap and moving up and down in unison with my breathing.
There was plenty of commotion going on behind, the odd rifle round and automatic burst, followed by shouts. Looking down and behind me through the trees and rain, I could make out the lights of both houses some 150 metres away. I wasn’t in dead ground yet, and it was going to be light soon. I needed to get distance.
Shotgun Ned was having a ballistic fit, screaming and hollering, like something out of one of the movies for guys who like guy movies. I couldn’t tell whether he was enjoying it or hating it, but he was vocal, that was for sure. I got myself to my feet, pulling Sarah upright with me, and started moving again.
