‘That sounds quite nice.’
‘Aye, quite nice if you like McDonald’s an’ Pizza Hut, ’cause that’s whit you’re gaunny get.’
‘Aw, you’re kiddin’.’
‘That’s whit Gavin says. But if you fancy somethin’ mair traditional, there’s gaunny be eight chippies dotted aboot the resort.’
‘Eight?’
‘Eight. Eight fuckin’ chippies, aff the coast o’ Africa. I think they’re gaunny use wan leg o’ this place for storin’ the tatties, an’ another yin for the lard. So it’s no’ an oil rig noo, it’s a cookin’-oil rig.’
‘Jesus. Eight chippies, man. Whit aboot kebab shops?’
‘Oh aye, four or five o’ them as well. Plus six curry hooses an’ four chinkies, but they’re aw indoors, doonstairs. In fact aw the proper sit-doon, bottle-o’-wine restaurants are doonstairs, below decks, if you like. Gavin says some o’ them are at the ootside walls, so there’ll be windaes lookin’ oot tae the sea. An’ there’ll be another yin at the top o’ wan o’ the hotels that looks oot baith sides, oot tae sea an’ doon tae the Lido.’
‘So apart fae eatin’, drinkin’ an’ sunbathin’, whit else is there tae dae?’
‘Eh, well, there’s cinemas doonstairs, a multiplex. An’ bingo halls – a bloody multiplex o’ them as well. Grand prize is a free week at the resort. Second prize is a fortnight. Oh aye, an’ there’s ten-pin bowlin’. We walked past that, but it’s no’ quite finished, so Gavin never let us get a look inside. There’s an ice rink as well. We got a wee gander at that, but obviously there was nae ice yet. I’d imagine there’d have tae be a casualty department an’ all, but it wasnae on the tour. There was wan o’ thae laser places, though.’
‘Whit, tattoo removal?’
‘Naw, Eddie, lasers, ray-guns. You know, for kid-on gunfights.’
‘Oh, heh, I wouldnae mind a wee go at that. Bit o’ target practice. Is it open?’
‘Naw. Nothin’s open, no’ until they move this thing tae Africa. Just as well, tae. If somebody gied you a ray-gun, you’d end up blindin’ yoursel’ wi’ it. You’d be better aff stickin’ tae the video games.’
‘Oh, is there an arcade?’
‘We passed aboot five, but before you ask, they’re no’ open either.’
‘Where are they, though?’
‘Same as everythin’ else – doon in the sub-levels. I think Gavin said it’s three or four floors deep, across the whole surface area o’ this place. We only saw a fraction of it, which was enough. There’s dozens an’ dozens o’ corridors doon there, linkin’ aw the facilities, an maist o’ them are lined wi’ shops.’
‘Whit kinna shops?’
‘Well, they’re no’ stocked yet, thank Christ. I think if Tina had seen them in aw their glory, she’d have been askin’ Gavin for the brochure for next summer. He was sayin’ there’ll be franchises o’ aw the big high-street chains, plus souvenir stores an’ hairdressers an’ beauticians an’ you name it. There’s gaunny be a special sports area as well, wi’ a big bookie’s an’ a sports pub wi’ giant telly screens. Turns oot Celtic, Rangers, Man-U, Arsenal an’ Chelsea are aw gaunny get shops tae themsels.’
‘God. He’s gaunny make a mint, in’t he?’
‘Gavin? Sounds like it.’
‘Still, big man, I mean tae say: the pictures an’ the bingo an’ the bowlin’ an’ the shops – you might as well be at hame, apart fae the weather.’
‘Aye, but I think that’s the point. Every room’s gaunny have satellite telly showin’ British channels aw day, plus the place is gaunny have its ain press.’
‘Its ain newspaper?’
‘Naw, a mini printer’s. Seriously. Gavin says they’re negotiatin’ deals wi’ the Sun an’ the Mirror tae download their pages affa computer every night, so’s they can print their ain special editions for the punters on the rig.’
‘Well, that’s understandable, Charlie. You might start tae feel a bit oota things if you couldnae keep up wi’ who was shaggin’ who back hame.’
‘Pretty hellish, though, the whole place. It’s like Butlins meets ethnic cleansin’.’
‘So what was everybody else sayin’ tae it?’
‘Fuck, some o’ them were right intae it. Eileen Stewart an’ her man, they were practically bookin’ up on the spot, goin on’ aboot how great it would be for the weans. Paul Duff as well, he thought it was the best thing since flush lavvies, but you know Paul – mair brains in a puddin’ supper. Lisa McKenzie, though – I thought her eyes were gaunny come oot her heid aboot five times.’
‘Was she impressed?’
‘Well, Gavin seemed tae think she was, but the poor bugger was gettin’ the wrang end o’ the stick. By the end the lassie was tryin’ that hard no tae laugh, she was aboot greetin’. It was murder. Every time I caught her eye, I was nearly away masel’. She’s a good laugh, Lisa. Need tae make sure we get a wee word later.’
‘So, same again, big man?’
‘Eh, naw, no thanks, Eddie, keep your haun in your pocket. I’d better get back up the stair an’ get intae the tin flute.’
‘Ach come on, just wan mair. It’ll no’ take you a minute.’
‘Naw, seriously, Eddie, that’s the part I’m worried aboot. I’m watchin’ how much I drink the night.’
‘How?’
‘Well, think aboot it. There’s times you get blootered an’ it doesnae matter whit you dae or whit you come oot wi’, because naebody knows who you are, anyway. Let’s just say this is no’ wan o thae times. This is the last group o’ folk in the world that I want tae make an arse o’ masel’ in front of. I might never see any o’ them again, but just knowin’ would be enough.’
‘Aye, well, big man, it’s times like this you appreciate the benefits o’ havin’ a reputation for makin’ an arse o’ yoursel’. I can get as pished as I like the night, ’cause I’ve got fuck-all tae lose. Same again here, Jim.’
19:30 moran cove three men in a boat
After Dawson shot Kilfoyle, Connor had remarked that if he didn’t knock off the summary executions, it was going to end up being a Rambo-style one-man assault. At the time his intention had been sarcasm, not soothsaying, but then, as a military man, Connor should have known the one about careless talk.
They’d lost four men back at the farm through assorted variants of homicidal mania, and now two more were threatening to desert. Not just any two, either, but specifically two of the team assigned to execute the initial infiltration. With that being a three-man op, the rather unforgiving arithmetic left Connor in the aforementioned Sylvester Stallone role.
He looked back across the water to the spur, behind which the rest of the unit was on standby, waiting for his green light to begin the second stage. It was that smoke-’em-if-you-got-’em moment, except that nobody in their right mind would be lighting up with all those rockets lying around. He thought of how he’d felt, standing there on the sand maybe less than ten minutes ago. The horrors, indignities and stupidities of the morning had seemed forgotten, the smell of sea air even purging the scent of fried Glover, which had enveloped him all day like an everlasting fart. The adrenaline had started coursing through him as he pulled on his gear and checked his weapons. He’d watched Jackson and Gaghen do likewise – slapping mags into breeches, clipping spares to bandoliers, adjusting the shoulder-straps on their automatics – and he felt like a soldier again.
This was what it was all about. The golden idea of running his own outfit had been tarnishing steadily up until that moment, having already proven a tedious burden of administration and busy-work before this morning added worry and embarrassment to the load. His vision was of orchestrating an elite unit’s operations in the field, but so far the only field his unit had seen action in was the one behind those outbuildings, where the military operation he’d orchestrated involved five men chasing the highland cow on whose left horn Glover’s head had impaled itself. (Christ knew where his right arm ever got to.)
But once he felt the cold steel
of an Ingram’s in his hands, smelled the petrol from the outboard, all of that faded. This was the part he did best, and this was the part that mattered.
All of which made Gaghen’s timing pretty fucking choice.
They’d climbed into the dinghy, the three of them, and set off into the firth. Jackson had the tiller, Gaghen sat at the bow. Connor was in the middle, partially unfolding the plan of the installation because he wanted to double-check their secondary route.
‘Look, ehm, Bill,’ Gaghen began, with a sheepishness that would have sounded less uncharacteristic coming from Ian Paisley. Connor looked up from his map, noticing that the boat was slowing down now that it was out of sight of the beach. ‘I’m sorry, mate, but we’re not going.’
‘What?’ Connor spluttered, grasping for some other possible interpretation of this remark in which the juxtaposition of the words ‘not’ and ‘going’ had fewer consequences for their imminent assault on the resort complex.
‘I mean, we’ll drop you off first, like, obviously, but we’re legging it after that.’
Connor was about to laugh to show that he’d seen through their wind-up, when he noticed that Gaghen’s machine gun was pointed straight at him, his finger round the trigger-guard. Then he remembered seeing Gaghen and Jackson engaged in rather furtive discussions throughout the day. He’d thought little of it at the time, imagining they were catching up on each other’s news or exchanging off-colour tales they’d heard about various of their comrades, but now it all added up. Neither of them had been acting very pleased since this morning, and Jackson kept giving Connor the stink-eye every time someone asked how his ear was.
‘It’s nothing personal, Bill,’ Gaghen explained. ‘It’s the job. It’s just not right for us.’
Connor decided, particularly in light of the 9mm levelled at his abdomen, to view this as a man-management challenge, and reacted in as conciliatory a manner as he could manage. In practice this merely amounted to him asking ‘why on earth’ rather than ‘why the festering fuck’ they had waited until this excruciatingly inopportune juncture to voice their disquiet.
‘Well,’ Gaghen said, in an absurdly reasonable tone, ‘I suppose partly because we didn’t want to make a big scene and damage the esprit de corps, but mainly because we didn’t want your man Dawson shooting us as deserters. He’s a bit over fond of the theatrical gesture, your mate. Spent a bit too long in the company of dictators, if you ask me. We thought it best – and safest – if we just slipped away quietly. We didn’t want to bail out in front of everybody, because we know this is your gig and we didn’t want you to look bad. Sorry, Bill. No hard feelings, eh?’
Man management, he kept telling himself. Man management. Deep breaths, deep breaths. Count down backwards from, ah fuck it.
‘No hard feelings? You didn’t want me to look bad? Just how much of a fucking elephantine wanker do you think I’m going to look when I radio back and ask them to send out a couple more guys because I seem to have lost the two I set off with? And what in the name of Queen Guinevere’s quim do you mean “the job’s not right”? What, were you scrubbing around looking for Glover’s arm and you found a conscience instead?’
‘It’s not like that, Bill. Look, we don’t want to go into the reasons. Just take it from me, the job isn’t right and let’s leave it at that.’
Searching for a rational explanation for this abhorrence, Connor’s sense of logic finally burned through the obscuring mists of his indignation.
‘You want more money. That’s it, isn’t it? You want a wider wedge. That’s why you’re springing this out here, it’s the ultimate seller’s market. And you’re playing it cool, too, not asking, just waiting for me to offer. Christ, I can’t believe you could be so, well, you know, mercenary.’
‘It’s not the money, Bill. You know both of us better than that. And it’s not a matter of conscience. It’s a matter of not ending up in jail – or worse.’
‘Oh come off it, Dan. I told you right from the start that this would be A, British soil, and B, highly illegal. You could have knocked it back long before today. So at what point did you suddenly decide you’ve a problem with that?’
‘Probably around the time that we found out what a bunch of fucking half-wits we’d be working with,’ Jackson said bitterly.
‘This whole op is from page one of the cluster-fuck recipe book,’ Gaghen added. ‘And that’s the only thing about it that isn’t half-baked. You’re in too much of a hurry, Bill, and that’s because Dawson’s in too much of a hurry. It’s under-planned. His tip came in late, but he figured it was too good to pass.’
‘Bollocks it’s under-planned. We’ve done ops together at much shorter notice than this, Dan. Remember Kanayo? And when have we ever had this level of technical info about—’
‘You can have as many maps and blueprints, as much inside gen as you like,’ Gaghen interrupted, ‘but it’s not going to matter if your personnel literally don’t know one end of a rocket launcher from the other. Sure we’ve gone in at short notice before, but we weren’t carrying any fucking passengers. Most of these guys you’ve got, Bill, they’re not professionals, they’re adventurers. No training, no discipline, just a taste for action. Christ, did you see some of them when the guns came out? It was like fucking Christmas. They all dived for the stuff before they’d even heard the brief, before they’d any fucking clue what kind of hardware they were actually going to need.’
Connor winced with embarrassment at the memory. He’d been kind of hoping no-one else had noticed.
The engine had calmed to a purr, the dinghy no longer moving forward at all, just bobbing gently with the waves in the warm wind. The light was fading, a late summer’s evening glow gradually dimming around them.
‘Yeah, all right,’ Connor conceded, ‘they’re not pros, but they’ve all seen action. I didn’t get them down the fucking labour exchange. Africa or Ulster, they’ve been in amongst it and they’ve come through. Do you think I’m that fucking stupid or that fucking desperate that I’d throw my lot in with people I didn’t think could handle it? I’m not sitting back somewhere, watching this unfold, remember. I’m leading the fucking assault.’
‘I know you’re not stupid, Bill,’ Gaghen stated. ‘Desperate I’m not sure about. You’re saying you think these guys can handle it, but I notice you didn’t pick any of them to be in this boat alongside you.’
‘No, of course I bloody didn’t. I picked the best men for the most important job. Once this part’s been executed successfully, we could hand the op over to schoolkids and they’d pull it off. For Christ’s sake, come on, it’s unsuspecting, unarmed civilians. It’s fish in a barrel.’
‘Yeah, and that’s the part that’s worrying me,’ he retorted. ‘If it was schoolkids I’d be less concerned, because you could rely on them to do what they’re fucking told. As far as I can see, the success of this job relies on nobody on the outside finding out what’s going on until it’s all over. That means total control. No hysteria. Hysteria leads to mayhem. Mayhem leads to fuck-ups. Fuck-ups lead to jail. It’s a fucking miracle the show’s not over already, after the pantomime we put on for the world this morning. Now you’re talking about a situation where you’ve got unarmed civvies in the same room as a bunch of psychos who’re just dying to shoot somebody.’
‘They’re not psychos. They’re after a purse, same as you. They know the score: they follow orders or they don’t get paid. And Jesus, do you think any of them are going to step out of line and cut loose on the civvies after Dawson’s display earlier? If the two of you are running scared of pissing him off, imagine what the others’ll be like.’
‘We’re not running scared,’ Jackson interjected, inadvertently offering Connor an angle of attack. ‘We’re just being prudent.’
‘Oh, that’s the subtle difference between mercs and adventurers these days, is it? They’re scared but you’re “prudent”. Fucking amazing, guys. From soldiers of fortune to soldiers of caution. I’ll just call you the Mild
Geese from now on, shall I?’
God, it was cheap psychology, but, like squeezing someone’s nuts, when you’re prodding at an ego’s most tender spot, the obviousness of your approach doesn’t make it any easier to withstand.
‘Come off it, Bill,’ Gaghen said defensively. ‘You know us better than that.’
‘I know you used to be better than that. Now I can’t say. I never had you down for shiters before … I don’t know, maybe you’re just not following the logic. You’re concerned the new boys might fuck up and the alarm could be raised, but as the new boys aren’t being brought in until we’ve cut off all communication channels, then I don’t see where the danger lies. Do you?’
There was a long silence, only the slapping of the waves and the idling engine to be heard. Connor stared insistently at Gaghen, who was avoiding eye contact.
‘Ah, fuck it, I’m in,’ Gaghen eventually announced.
Jackson nodded, a little unsurely. ‘Yeah, okay. Me too.’
‘Right,’ Connor sighed. ‘And let’s have no more of this shite, gentlemen, eh?’
‘Sorry, Bill,’ Gaghen said with a shrug. ‘Just not been feeling myself lately. This trypanosomiasis thing knocked me off-kilter a little. A bit of action’s probably just what I need. Look, you won’t tell anyone about this, will you?’
Connor sighed again. ‘No, lads, your secret’s in safe hands.’ God strewth. ‘So now that the matter’s closed, are you ready to do some work for a living?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Then let’s kick some botty.’
meanwhile fipr humility and that
The evening was proving slightly less horrific than Matt had feared. Maybe it was a lot easier to move freely and ‘mingle’ without the encumbrance of lugging a monolithic ego around. He’d checked his in at that beach on the Baja. Tonight he was hand-luggage only: the wee black sports bag of the soul.
One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night Page 13
