Chris Ryan Extreme: Hard Target: Mission One: Redeemer

by Chris Ryan

  Four of them, he was certain, were Messengers, because they wielded guns: state-of-the-art PP-2000 sub-machine-guns. Where the hell did they acquire those weapons? he briefly wondered. The thought was cut in half by Falcon discharging a three-round burst from the AK-47. Two rounds smacked into a Messenger. His grey tracksuit bottoms reddened and his mates retreated, leaving him to try and plug the hole in his mangled cock.

  The third struck a man several metres to the right of the Messenger. He was middle-aged and sported a tuft of hair white as the linen shirt he wore. The bullet entered the small of his back, and the guy flopped on to his belly, spilling the contents of a plastic bag he was carrying: pack of cigarettes, loaf of bread, lemons and parsley.

  ‘Holy shit, Rafa. You fucking whacked a civvie.’

  ‘Shit,’ Falcon said, the AK-47 limp in his hand. ‘I thought he was – it looked like he had a gun. I just thought—’ His voice suddenly hardened. ‘Fuck this cunt. It’s his stupid fault. What the fuck is he doing out in the street anyway? Doesn’t he know there’s a war on? Fuck him.’

  Bottle rockets screeched overhead.

  ‘Fireworks. My unit’s nearly here.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Five minutes.’

  Gardner made a beeline for the school, Falcon tailing. Shake this wave of Messengers, he told himself, and you’ll be free to reach Bald. He was more certain than ever that John had been able to escape the gang, and the last thing he wanted to do was lead a horde of the fuckers to his location. Once BOPE showed, he’d peel away and continue his mission.

  A bullet struck to his left, and a voice squealed.

  Falcon.

  There was shit all over the concrete. His left ankle was doused in blood. The Messengers were trying their luck, braving the street. Gardner turned around, gave them four rounds from the Colt and, throwing an arm around Falcon’s shoulder, helped him to hop on his good foot the final fifty metres to the school. Gardner was running on fumes, drawing on every grain of energy.

  They were upon the school. The building cast a soot-coloured shadow over them. The temperature sagged from flame-grilled to plain hot. Gardner butted the padlock with the Colt stock. The lock was crude and the chain came apart with one clean blow. They went on through, Falcon yelping with every step.

  ‘Hang on little longer.’

  Gardner gave a boot to the middle section of the door. An internal locking mechanism held the door in place, but the frame shuddered.

  ‘Hurry, Jesus,’ Falcon moaned.

  A second kick. This time the door swung open. Gardner withdrew his support arm from Falcon, the BOPE rupert flaking out two metres inside the school on the lino floor. Spinning around to put a final burst down on the Messengers, Gardner counted ten kids, five of them armed with PP-2000s, the others with older pistols and revolvers.

  He flicked the selector anti-clockwise to fully automatic, arcing the Colt horizontally across the thin line of Messengers. Bullets grazed walls, shredded a band of telephone wires. The gangsters ducked behind metre-high piles of bricks at the edges of the street. Gardner discharged eleven rounds, and got a hollow click-click. Shit. Out of ammo. He slammed the door shut, just as the Messengers returned fire.

  ‘Elevate your leg,’ he told Falcon, ‘it’ll stem some of the blood loss.’

  Bullets bored into the door. Gardner fished two spare Colt mags from Falcon’s utility belt, slapped one into the mag feed and stuffed the second in the leg pouch on his combats.

  Forty rounds of ammo. Gardner shattered a window pane to the right of the door, raking the glass out with the Colt’s barrel and unleashing a burst into the street. Shielded by the bricks, the Messengers were popping off rounds without aiming.

  ‘Five minutes is up, Rafa. Where the fuck’s BOPE?’

  ‘Perhaps the smoke and the gunfire are too much.’

  ‘Sod it. We’ve got to hope they’re on their way.’

  But all that stood between the two of them and getting walloped were thirty-six bullets.

  10

  1225 hours.

  Weiss guessed they’d go easy on him at first and he was right. The guy with the knuckledusters fucked him up a bit with a right uppercut that sent him flying. Cold steel cracked his jawbone so bad it felt like someone had sewn razor blades into his face. Then it was the turn of the tyre-iron guy, who served up a whupping on both his legs, turning them red raw and swollen. All things considered, not so bad. He’d suffered worse. The big pain was saved for later. He expected nothing less.

  They slipped a Hessian sack over his head and tore the duster off his back. Then they escorted him through a weave of streets. The sack was dense and Weiss couldn’t see where he was going. They carted him into another house and up a creaking flight of stairs. He listened out for noises, anything that placed him somewhere specific. A TV in the background played the theme tune to 24. He thought he heard boys shouting.

  They dumped him on a chair and bound his hands behind his back with plastic cord. Someone lifted the sack off. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light, like opening his eyes underwater in a murky swamp. He found himself looking at a broad-shouldered, shredded figure sitting opposite in big round shades, Incredible Hulk T-shirt and sandals. He was sitting backwards on a metal chair and examining one of the syringes from Weiss’s coat.

  ‘So, you are the one they call the Needle Man.’

  ‘And since there’s no Xavier,’ Weiss said, ‘that makes you, let me see… Roulette. But fuck it. The name doesn’t matter. You’re still a dead man.’

  Roulette laughed in his chest. ‘That’s fucking funny. You know, your name makes a lot of tough guys shit themselves. Me, I don’t give a fuck. When Luis said you were coming here, I could hardly believe my good fortune. Tell me, what’s in this one?’

  Weiss screwed up his eyes.

  ‘Thallium.’

  ‘And what the fuck is that?’

  ‘A poison.’

  Roulette held out the syringe in his palm. Then Weiss realized they were not alone in the room. He could see two other men, dull-eyed, lean as poles at a strip club and dressed in slack jeans and T-shirts that reached their knees. They were like twins, except one wore a fake gold Rolex and the other had a Los Angeles Lakers basketball shirt. Rolex grabbed the syringe and tossed it to the ground. He crushed it underfoot.

  ‘Tell me, is it true? What’s it up to now, six hundred victims?’

  ‘That depends,’ Weiss replied.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Whether you’re counting yourself and your two fucking friends.’

  Roulette shot to his feet.

  ‘Vai toma no cu!’ he barked, grabbing his crotch. ‘There’s only one more death the Needle Man takes part in – and that’s his own.’

  ‘You’re making a big mistake, my friend. I’m worth more alive than dead.’

  Roulette stepped to Weiss, so close he could see the pockmarks on the gangster’s skin.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Roulette whispered. ‘See, our leader, Luis, he’s been in touch with some people who would love to see you dead. The Sinaola and Los Negros cartels in Mexico are especially keen to have your head on a plate. They’ve already made a, how do you say, down payment to Luis. It’s over, big guy.’

  Lakers removed Weiss’s shoes. He fetched something from a shelf: a cordless orange power drill with a 10mm tungsten bit in the chuck. Weiss gritted his teeth and tried to concentrate on his breathing pattern. It was the only way he was going to get through this. If he passed out from the pain, he might never wake up again. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the drill.

  ‘If you do this,’ Weiss told Lakers, ‘I’ll find you and kill you and your whole family.’

  A snakish smile broke out all over his face as he revved up the drill. As it whirred into life it reminded Weiss of trips to the dentist as a child.

  ‘You won’t get the chance,’ Roulette backing off, ‘my friend.’

  With Rolex pressing down on Weiss’s foot,
the third goon lowered the drill until the tungsten bit was touching the tip of his big toenail.

  ‘Wait,’ Roulette said. He dug out a clam-style mobile from his jeans pocket. Flicking it open, he pointed its camera directly at Weiss’s toe. ‘Big Teeth said he wants to see this.’

  Lakers pressed the trigger. The chuck, rotating at 1100 rpm, began to pierce Weiss’s toe.

  The pain was excruciating, like someone ripping off his toenail a million times over. He did everything to shake his foot free, but the other guy was holding it firmly in place and he couldn’t force any leeway. The toenail cracked down the middle as the drill pushed down into his flesh. His foot was covered in nail dust.

  As the bit ate into his big toe, Weiss couldn’t fight it any more.

  They kept on drilling.

  The drill shuddered as it tunnelled into his flexor bone. Lakers revved again and forced the bit deeper into his toe. Weiss fought hard to ride the pain, absorbing each wave of nausea and taking big gulps of air. It was crucial not to vomit.

  He felt as if an invisible hand was choking him to death. That he might pass out at any given moment. And he knew that if he fainted he wouldn’t escape with his life.

  Dizziness overwhelmed him, like he was drowning in a bathtub. This is it, he thought, the moment of no return, and then a shrill, grinding sound stung his ears.

  The bit had struck concrete.

  He opened his eyes and peered down at the floor. Where his big toe once was, lay a splatter of blood and curls of torn flesh. Dirty-white bone fragments covered in gristle, everything hanging together by a few limp muscle strings. He tried twitching it, but nothing happened. Bile burned his throat.

  ‘Let’s give him a rest,’ Roulette said, flipping the mobile shut. ‘We don’t want him to miss the best part of the show.’

  ‘Yeah, fucking see you in a while, man,’ Rolex said. ‘We’re working on your teeth next.’ He made a pliers-wrenching motion.

  The three men left, locking the door behind them. Weiss heard the stairs squeal like dying rabbits as they trampled down them, and a woman shouting, Roulette calling her a fucking ass-licker and a whore with a pussy the size of Argentina. Another door slammed, this one further away. The front one, he guessed.

  Weiss spat on the ground. His mucous membranes were bright red. Somehow the pain and anger failed to register inside him. Ever since he was a child he had lacked basic empathy. A shrink would probably link it to his abusive upbringing, to the times he witnessed his alcoholic father rape his mum, or the day Padre swung his fists at his little sister, Maria, until she died of a brain haemorrhage. But the whys didn’t interest Weiss. He only knew that he felt no emotion towards anyone else – but, most of all, himself.

  So it was that Weiss didn’t pity his situation, or rue his bad luck.

  Instead, he focused on escaping.

  11

  1249 hours.

  Gardner had slotted five Messengers but they’d kept on coming and their number had swelled to twenty. Each one decked out in the gang’s unofficial uniform of Ray-Bans, football shirts and PP-2000s. To conserve ammo, Gardner restricted himself to single shots whenever a Messenger slid his head above one of the four brick parapets strewn about the street.

  Two guys, a few years older than the rest, yelled at each other. They suddenly leapt out from behind separate spots of cover. Mounted red-dot sights lasered the window. Gardner crouched, just as they pulled the triggers in tandem. Cooked air stroked the back of his head as the Luger rounds pelted the frame, slapping into a metre-high china statue of the Virgin Mary. Five seconds of fury, then Gardner detected a lull. Must be reloading, he thought, as the statue disintegrated into a dust cloud.

  The lull was only two seconds, but that was all he needed. He shot to his feet and saw the two guys feeding fresh clips into the housing receivers. One of them was a fraction ahead of his mate, tugging the bolt lever into the closed position at the rear of the barrel. Poised to let Gardner have it. Gardner peered down the Colt’s iron sights and gave the bastard a .223 black eye.

  The bullet entered the Messenger’s right socket, flinging brain matter and skull out the back of his head in a frenzied spurt, like uncorked champagne. His mate ditched his PP-2000 and scarpered.

  With the other Messengers content to put down rounds from their concealed positions, Gardner pulled back from the window and tended to Falcon.

  ‘Wal-ah,’ Falcon said. Gardner could see his lips were dry as bread crust. He retrieved Falcon’s canteen and tipped a precious few drops into his open mouth. Falcon swallowed greedily. Gardner had a sip himself. Wished it contained something a little stronger.

  Falcon was slipping in and out of consciousness now, his eyes glazed over. Gardner gave him a hard slap on both chops.

  ‘Wakey, wakey. We need to get arses into gear.’

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘In Rio, mate.’

  ‘I’m dying.’

  ‘Bollocks. You’ll be fine.’

  Falcon mumbled something that sounded like a prayer.

  ‘Do yourself a favour and look at the ceiling,’ Gardner said, as isolated bullets pinged against the front of the school. He rolled up Falcon’s left trouser leg, unlacing the combat boot to get a close-up view of the trauma wound.

  ‘How is it… bad?’

  Gardner didn’t reply.

  The lower portion of Falcon’s leg was totally fucked.

  Beneath his knee the skin was singed and covered in burn marks, like his leg had been used as an ashtray. The bullet wound was a smooth, inch-wide circle bang in the centre of his shin, blowing out the bone and everything else with it – muscle, skin, a piece of his trousers. The lower half of his leg flopped like a rag doll.

  ‘Want the good news first, or the bad?’

  ‘I’ll take the good.’

  ‘It could have been worse,’ Gardner said. ‘You’ve been shot in a part of your body that’s mostly bone. If the fucker caught you higher up the leg, at the knee or thigh, they’d have burst your popliteal or femoral artery and caused you to bleed out.’

  ‘So I’m not going to—?’ asked Falcon, risking a sideways glance at his leg.

  ‘No, mate. You’ll live.’ Gardner smiled. ‘The bad news is, until we get you to a doctor, it’s gonna feel like you got an arrow stuck through your ankle, and there’s no morphine to numb the pain.’

  The rate of gunfire suddenly increased. Dozens of bullets struck the door, like a hundred sets of hands rapping against the woodwork. Rounds whizzed through the exposed window. The noise lacerated Gardner’s ears.

  I need a distraction, he thought. Something to give us a chance to bug out. He rummaged through the pouches on Falcon’s assault vest and located an M67 frag grenade. A little buzz of excitement rose inside him. Trailing back to the window, he tore the safety pin from the clip, maintaining a firm grasp on the spoon to stop the grenade igniting. He released the spoon, waited two seconds for the cook-off, and then raced past the window, lobbing the grenade thirty metres into the street. The M67 rolled.

  Four metres short of a Messenger’s foot, it came to rest.

  Gardner stepped away from the window as the Messenger moved to pick up the grenade. He was going to chuck it back to its sender, like they did in the movies. But the grenade had less than a second to detonate, and as he disappeared from view Gardner heard a powerful whump, accompanied by the sound of hot steel splintering flesh and concrete, like a million stones spilling. Someone screamed at the top of his voice and suddenly Gardner was back in Sangin, listening to the life bleed out of the delirious kid to his right.

  ‘What about a tourniquet?’ Falcon asked.

  ‘On that? Fat chance, mate. Cutting off the blood supply will do more harm than good. Leave it exposed for now, until we can get it properly seen to.’

  ‘Shit, my lungs. I – I can’t breathe.’ Falcon looked at Gardner’s outstretched hand, seized it. ‘Fuck. Those bastards keep coming. They won’t stop, not until we’re both hanging by
our legs.’

  ‘We’ll pull back to the rear. The school’s not far from the jungle, right?’

  ‘A hundred metres, maybe less. Why?’

  ‘That’s where John Bald is.’

  Gardner shouldered Falcon and led the way down the cool main corridor, joining the entrance to the rear of the building sixty metres away. Three classrooms flanked either side of the corridor, with lino floors, chicken wire over the classroom windows. The strong smell of disinfectant stung his nostrils.

  They were thirty metres from the rear exit.

  Twenty.

  ‘Shit! I forgot my rifle,’ Falcon shouted above the racket.

  ‘Can’t go back now, mate. You got a secondary?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A backup weapon – handgun, anything like that?’

  Falcon nodded, opening his leg holster and removing a stainless-steel Taurus PT92 semi-automatic. Not bad for a secondary, Gardner reckoned.

  A loud bang to his rear. He glanced over his shoulder. The front doors swung open. Gardner clocked the Isuzu in the street. And a guy’s torso, the body charred black as burned toast. He recognized the footwear on a pair of legs to the right. Same fucker who’d reached for the M67.

  Three shadows sprinted into the corridor.

  Ten metres from the rear exit and in the cool of the corridor, Gardner’s mag was empty. Hurrying, he ejected the mag and manually pulled the bolt lever, loading the final clip of Remington brass into the receiver. Twenty rounds – all you’ve fucking got, he thought. He tugged the bolt a second time, chambering the first .223 round.

  He focused on the nearest target. Forty metres distant. Broad and with a distinctive Mohican. Gardner adjusted his aim, dead centre on the target’s chest area.

  Crack!

  Smoke fluted out of the Colt’s barrel. It was as if the target had swallowed a packet of C4. His chest cavity ruptured, a hole the size of an apple punched in his breastbone. Grey and black shit slopped out, like an uncoiling snake. The guy flopped forward. Blood spewed on to the lino floor.