by Robert White
There was no way of knowing up from down, left from right.
Time stopped, and my world went silent as the van completed another full slow motion rotation.
I was weightless. Then it was over.
* * *
The air was acrid with the smell of diesel and hot oil. I tried to move, but rivers of pain shot through my body.
I’d been in an accident. I knew that.
But why?
I moved again. All my physical damage appeared to be on my left side. My collarbone was broken. Gingerly, I prodded around my shoulder socket and quickly confirmed that it too, was dislocated.
Then, I felt the pain in my foot. There is nothing like a gunshot wound to bring you to your senses. A second later my grey matter went into overdrive.
I remembered everything.
I was instantly overwhelmed by sorrow. Blood had continued to seep from my headwound whilst I’d been out cold. It had run into my eyes and as I recalled Maggie’s shocking demise, it mixed with tears of great sadness. I blinked away as much of the combination I could and tried to focus.
I rolled on my right side.
The back doors of the van had burst open in the crash and I was alone.
Where was the evil bastard?
The transit was on its roof.
Pushing myself backwards with my good leg, blowing out short breaths as I moved to try and manage my pain, I finally rested my back against the inside of the van.
I turned to look in the passenger compartment.
Through the mesh bulkhead, I could see that the driver had caught a round in the middle of his back, causing the crash.
The passenger had been crushed when the van’s engine had been forced into the passenger compartment.
I looked around the load area. I needed to free myself from my bonds. Finally, I saw the purple bag. Al-Mufti’s crucifixion kit.
Moving steadily, shuffling along on my backside I reached the bag and felt blindly for the contents.
A hammer, nails and just what I’d hoped for, a knife.
A very painful minute later, my hands were free. I checked my pockets for my mobile, found it and opened the screen.
Busted.
More shuffling around in near total darkness found the MP5.
I grabbed it with my good arm, gripped the weapon between my knees and checked it over.
Empty.
Beggars couldn’t be choosers. I returned to the velvet bag, pushed the knife in my back pocket and shuffled towards the doors.
Sitting on the edge of the van’s upturned roof, I looked out, and tried to get my bearings. I was in a field. The road was about a hundred yards away at twelve o’clock. A section of flattened fence indicated the Transit’s entry point and a telegraph pole standing at a forty-five degree angle ten metres further inward explained the second massive impact that had pushed the engine inside the cab and sent the van tumbling.
Now the big question.
Could I walk?
I raised myself onto my good leg and tested my damaged left. It was like sticking a knitting needle in the wound.
Maybe it would be best just to sit and wait for daylight and rescue? Maybe Rick would be looking for me by now?
The night was warm enough, despite the altitude. The cloud cover moved swiftly above me, ensuring that the moor was black as pitch one minute, then bathed in moonlight the next.
It was in one of those rare moments of monochrome visibility that I saw him.
Siddique Al-Mufti lay on his back not twenty yards from me.
I pushed myself from the van and shuffled on my backside towards him. It took me a while, and I was bathed in sweat and racked with pain, but I reached him.
He had obviously been thrown clear of the accident. But he certainly hadn’t walked.
His shattered femur stuck out of his right thigh, wet, shining white, framed by the jet black of the blood pooled around it.
He was mumbling what I guessed was a prayer. He shivered. He was dying. The mixture of the shock and the blood loss slowly taking his life.
As I drew close, he turned his head and looked at me with the eyes of coal.
“Cogan… Cogan… Help… help me,” he whispered.
I looked at him. His broken body slowly closing down. “Ye want me to help you ye say?”
He nodded.
I tapped the side of his face with my good hand. “Oh, aye lad. I’ll help ye alright. O’course I will.” I pointed towards the van. “I’ll no be a minute son. I’ll be back in a wee while.”
I shuffled along on my arse, all the way back to the Transit. I didn’t think it was possible to sweat so much in such a short time. As I collected what I wanted, I was soaked to the skin.
Five minutes later, I was back, sitting beside him.
“How are ye feeling, pal?” I asked, breathing hard, doing my best to ignore my pain.
“I’m cold,” he said.
“Aye, that’s normal when ye are on yer last legs, eh? When you’re dying.”
“I don’t want to die.”
I rummaged in the velvet bag. “Who does, son?”
He gave me a curious look. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to help ye on yer way.”
Gone was the boy’s bravado, his swagger, his cold confidence. “No… no, please don’t. You can’t do this. I have money, much money. My father will pay. He will forgive you, Cogan. And your friends. If you help me now. I will tell him how you saved me. He will forgive. I give my word.”
I selected a nail from the bag and examined it. “Forgive ye say?”
“Yes, he is a merciful man, my father. A fine man.”
I lifted myself up with my good arm and sat myself on the boy’s chest. He began to struggle, but it was pointless.
With my weight on top of him, he fought for breath.
My voice was a mere whisper.
“Back in Tiji, pal. Back when you were a wee nipper. Frankie Green, the one you nailed to that post. He refused to blow up your house because you and your wee sister were tucked up inside. Funny that, eh?”
I tested the tip of the nail for sharpness with my thumb.
“We came to kill your father, you see. Not you, or your sister. Butch, well he was a different matter. He wanted to slot all of you. But not Frankie, or me, or Rick. See, Frankie had kids like you said. Now… he knew what forgiveness meant.”
I just about managed to hold the nail steady. My hands were shaking as my own pain began to take its toll on my nervous system.
“Keep still son,” I said as I rested the point of the nail on the centre of his forehead.
He didn’t or couldn’t move.
Tears ran down the sides of his face. “Please,” he said. “I beg you…I beg…”
I lifted the hammer above my head.
“Frankie might forgive,” I said. “But I won’t.”
I brought the hammer down.
END
