The Russian’s head thudded off his cheek bone with a resounding crack. His cheek was hot with the pain that would later come. Damian briefly wondered why his adversary hadn’t gone for the finish as the ram-like butt had dazed him.
He stuffed down the sliver of panic and began to feint his quicker opponent for openings. He wasn’t doing himself any favours by going first with the attacks all the time—better to ‘draw the lead’ and counter.
The suit took the hint and led off with combinations of punches, thrown in a deliberate sequence rather than mere haphazard flurries. These crunched Damian from all angles before he found a perfectly placed thudding left uppercut. It landed on the point of the shorter man’s jaw, sending him skittering back a few paces. Damian went for the finish with a cannonball right hand. He found himself flying as the man employed a shoulder throw—an ‘Ippon Seognagi’.
He almost lost consciousness upon his head hitting the ground.
He had felt a pain in his right ankle as the man trapped it under his armpit. He’d felt his leg lifted by his opponent’s hooked arms.
“Surrender Damian, and you’ll still retain the ability to walk,” had said the man.
“Fuck you. Break it,” spat Damian.
The man raised his eye brows with what looked like approval.
In a swift motion, his trousers were gripped and Damian had been spun onto his front. His head was lifted by his hair and his ankle released. The forearm had punched it’s way around his throat and Damian knew it was over.
As his fingers had clawed for the man’s fingers, he had found himself unable to wrench them from the man’s clasped bicep or the back of his own head. All he had left was defiance. Despite his desperate efforts the world around him had faded to black.
He had awoken to a text message, “When you have decided to be part of a brotherhood again, call me.”
The Hublot watch had been wrapped around his wrist.
Bruce and Nick walked along the street, carefully observing their arcs without moving their heads. They kept a light conversation going between themselves. Talking about something benign was a psychological trick which would reflect in their body language.
Jamie had sent a text message to Bruce directing him to the general area of the meeting. He always did this upon Bruce’s arrival. Then he would give the directions to the specific location.
Bruce glanced at Nick. He still couldn’t shake his feeling of unease. His instincts had been developed in over three decades of being in this business. This didn’t include an adolescence spent in one of the rougher areas of Glasgow.
In British military doctrine, soldiers were taught to observe the ‘atmospherics’ of the surroundings. A typical example of this would be entering an area that seems unusually sparse of locals, indicating their knowledge of an incoming attack.
For Bruce, the feeling of danger felt like a breeze of vulnerability down his neck and behind his ears. He had it now, and it centred on Nick somehow. But what was he going to do? He couldn’t stop now and confront him. He’d to get this done. Besides, confront him with what? Asking too many questions?
Bruce scanned backwards and saw a figure trailing about a hundred metres behind in a green bomber jacket.
He guessed who it was and felt a little more secure.
Carl set the snooker case down. He stood at the entrance of the block of flats he was about to enter. There was a light rain coming down in London. This was to his advantage, making the few pedestrians around the area rush and not pay any attention to him. Thus shadows—or pavement artists as they were known—were easier to spot in the rain.
The snooker case, with a couple of snooker ball pictures emblazoned on the surface, contained a DAX-13 tranquilizer rifle that the Bratva had given him. Carl had test fired and zeroed it in a secluded wooded area east of Greater London. He had been amazed to find himself hitting a man-sized Figure 11 target at 200 metres away with a less than two-inch grouping in ten shots.
He’d never heard of a DAX-13 rifle and concluded that it was either exceedingly rare or worse—custom made, meaning the weapon could potentially be traced. Still, the priority was the accuracy of the rifle, and that could not be faulted.
Masking his use of a lock-pick gun with a bunch of keys, he made entry within seconds. Carl grabbed the case and made his way up the stairs to the appropriate apartment room. There was nobody on the landing. He masked the lock pick with the keys anyway and unlocked the door.
“Hello?” he sounded out in an English accent opening the door.
Satisfied there was no answer, Carl entered the small flat and closed the door quietly. He made a quick but thorough check that the rooms were empty.
If anyone were inside, Carl would’ve explained that their door was ajar, and he feared a burglary. He’d have cracked a joke regarding using his trusty snooker cue as a weapon. His brief stated that the apartment was absent of people, though fully furnished. He relocked the main door.
He had applied a silicone-caulk to his fingertips to disrupt any prints but still careful not to touch anything. He used his knuckles to push open the doors.
The flat contents were cheap, but it was clean and tidy. The comfortable-looking green couch formed the centrepiece of the room facing the small flat-screened TV. Ornaments of cats and scenic pictures adorned the room, although thankfully no religious paintings—he didn’t want Jesus’s eyes on him for this.
Peering out the window, he saw he’d a clear view of the target street. Providence was on his side as he went into the bathroom. The window had the option of opening a small gap feature that slid from bottom to top. It wasn’t as noticeable as a full opening of the window.
After confirming that straddling the toilet made a workable firing position, he broke out the rifle from its case, he quickly assembled it before he dialled the number in the call log, and as the phone was picked up, he clicked off. A missed call denoted that he was in position. A blank text would have indicated that it was unsuitable, and he was coming back down.
He sat and waited.
Despite the difficulty, Connor had managed to follow Nick to the café. It had surprised him to see Bruce sat at one of the outside tables. He made a quick pass down a side street; a risk as he gave up a visual on them, but Nick had sat with a cup in front of him.
He turned out his reversible jacket, stuffed the baseball cap into one of the pockets and put on sunglasses. Then he decided against the glasses. They would draw attention to him—no one would wear sunglasses with a green bomber jacket unless they were ‘Jack Bauer’. He walked back, entering a charity shop overlooking the cafe from a hundred metres away. Bruce and Nick were still drinking coffee and conversing.
He perused the books.
Connor was the only person in there, and the elderly lady behind the counter gave him a glance before getting her nose back into her Danielle book. On one of the shelves was a book he wanted to buy written by Sven Hassel. Seeing Bruce and Nick standing up to leave, he cursed not being able to buy it.
As they made their way down the road, Connor slipped out of the door and followed from the opposite side.
‘Mr Negative’ began to chatter again. It was going to be doubly difficult to escape the attentions of the two men now.
Bruce felt his phone vibrate with a text.
“150 yards to your right on South Side Street. Industrial warehouse. Take the entrance facing north. I am in a white BT Van inside. Come alone. Leave your man outside.”
Bruce tucked the phone away.
“He wants you to wait outside,” he said to Nick.
“Why?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Did he tell you where it is?”
“It’s here.”
Bruce entered the warehouse. There was a van with the side door open, and he stepped in.
“Ah Bruce, take a seat,” said the light caramel skinned South American.
Jamie wore jeans, a white shirt and a grey cardigan with his black hair fash
ionably dishevelled.
Bruce recalled that when he first met Jamie he’d a patchy beard, ill-fitting clothes and some strange ideas with regards to colour scheme.
The Scot took the swivel seat amid the computer and surveillance screens. He felt anticipation. It was the first-time Jamie had asked him to sit without any pleasantries exchanged first. Jamie sat by a small desk holding an expensive coffee maker. He’d converted the former BT van so he could get to and back from of the driver’s seat.
Jamie exhaled. “You have a major problem, a’ma afraid,” in his machine gun like prose.
“Enlighten me.”
“There are members of the security services in collusion with the Russian Bratva.”
A few icy moments of silence.
“OK, give me their names and the evidence.”
It was bad, but Bruce had dealt with traitors before.
“You don’t understand Bruce,” Jamie stated, pausing in hesitation. “They are very high up in the food chain. And I think they might have penetrated The Project”
Bruce felt a chill in the air.
“Do you have names?”
“Not yet.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Through intercepting these Russian criminals’ communication traffic. They speak in code naturalamente. I have highlighted some of the transcripts and cross-referenced them—‘a friend in the seat of power’—is Russian Bratva code for a friend in the Government. ‘The Scotsman’, I presume that is your monkey?”
“Moniker,” corrected Bruce.
“This one here,” said Jamie stabbing his finger on one of the pages, “‘Birds high above the Scotsman have given us a gift within his inner circle’. This is not good, not good at all.”
“Calm yourself, Jamie,” said Bruce. “Could any of this be disinformation?”
“Why would they feed disinformation when we were not onto them in the first instance?”
Good point thought Bruce. “These high above birds…are they MI6 or MI5?”
“I do not know at this point,” replied Jamie.
“What’s the end state?”
“For the Russian Bratva with the aid of friends here to eradicate the other elements of organised crime.”
“If they get entrenched, they will be near-impossible to get out.”
“Well that is another thing, my friend, they may already be entrenched. This a recording I ‘fished’ from an e-mail sent to Ravil Yelchin. I could not trace the sender, but it must be one of his informers. The voices are distorted,” said Jamie.
As he clicked the mouse on his desk, a robotic voice came out of the speakers.
“He’s the majority share owner in Juntech through a dummy company. No one knew for approximately three years after all the products were implemented.”
“What are the implications of that, in detail?”
“Firstly, imagine the fallout politically if certain people within our Government discovered that the very systems we use are owned by arguably the most powerful, and certainly the smartest, Russian Mafia boss in the Russian Bratva’s history? Secretly replacing them would cost the sort of money that would be missed. We don’t know how much he knows, how far the system has been penetrated, nothing. The tech guys say it’s highly unlikely that it could be but it’s got certain people rattled to the point of negotiation. And to be honest, what this Ravil character is offering doesn’t seem to be the end of the world unless you’re an idealist.”
“What is he wanting and offering in return?”
“Immunity, or at least for any investigation into his activities not to be as vigorously pursued as much as they would be.”
“That doesn’t sound outlandish.”
“There’s more. Ravil wants to take over organised crime in London and Greater London with the view of expanding an empire. His selling point is that there’s always going to be organised crime, why not let him control it and bring order? Better the Devil you know so to speak. He says that within six months he could clean out the Turks, Yardies, Chinese, Triads, and bring any domestic gangs under his control.”
“What’s the decision?”
“It’s looking like a yes, but certain people will never accept it. They will need to be dealt with.”
“Bruce McQuillan?”
“Unfortunately yes, because it’s suspected that he has independent sources, funds and people. He’s too dangerous even to be made aware of this.”
The tape stopped, and Jamie looked at him for a few moments.
Bruce breathed deeply.
Currently, the greatest threat to UK sovereignty was dissident republicans in Northern Ireland, despite the media coverage of extremist Muslims. Still, Bruce knew the day would come where the Russian Bratva would make their move on London. He didn’t think that day had been so close. He’d heard of Ravil Yelchin but had kept him low on his list of priorities.
It dawned on him this was due to the shrewd Russian keeping a low profile while he arranged his pieces on the board. That the highest people within the UK government and the security service were colluding with this upper echelon, high-tech, ruthless criminal constituted the gravest threat he’d ever faced.
He thought of something he had read recently.
A man had had his arm trapped by a rock in a canyon where he’d fallen from his bike. After five days, he had freed himself by applying enough torque to his arm to break it. Using a knife from his multi-tool, he had sliced through the flesh, tendons, and splintered bone. He’d applied a tourniquet to cut off the blood flow with the tubing of his ‘camel back’ re-hydration system. He had hiked for miles, starving and dying of thirst until he reached safety. The story reminded Bruce of one thing: It didn’t matter how bad things got, you could always improve your position if you remained alive.
18
The shadows of a derelict shop doorway encompassed Connor.
He was stood 150m from Nick who hadn’t appeared to spot him. This apparent incompetence gnawed at his instincts. Nick’s body language seemed alert, but his focus was on the door Bruce McQuillan had gone into, mixed with quick glances of the road in front of him—Why would Bruce use this shit bloke to watch his back?
If indeed that’s what he was doing?
Bruce opened the door leading out onto the street and approached Nick. An invisible man punched him hard in the crevice between his shoulder and clavicle. He looked down and saw a tube with a red tail sticking out—a tranquillizer dart. He pulled it out, and it clattered to the floor as he ducked between two parked cars on the street.
“Nick! Contact!” he shouted.
That’s when he knew Nick was part of it—there was no urgency in his meander towards him. He needed to send a signal to whoever was looking on that this bastard was the enemy.
Whatever now raced around his veins had already begun to take effect. He fell to the floor on all fours.
“Nick! I have been shot with a tranquiliser…move to cover!” he rasped.
Bruce braced his hand against the rear bumper and coiled his weight onto the balls of his feet. He couldn’t risk anything requiring fine motor skills now. Nick appeared at the side of him, and Bruce launched himself forwards, forehead hurtling towards Nick’s face.
Nick reeled as his face felt like a concrete filled pan had hit it. When he regained his equilibrium, he could see Bruce on one knee, one hand on the pavement trying to fight the effects of the drug—the hardy fucker should have been unconscious by now.
A black Volvo pulled up, and the powerfully-built driver shot out of the car as soon as it came to a stop. Wrapping his massive arms under the armpits of the unresponsive McQuillan, the driver dragged and lifted him into the back of the car. The Volvo burred away, and Nick watched it disappear. He let out the breath that he didn’t know he’d been holding. They had him now, and it was no longer his responsibility.
His heart plummeted.
He did what he’d had to do. Bruce was one of the genuine good guys of the world, but
he was too stubborn. And too much of an idealist.
Nick felt the blood trickle from his nose and knew he’d to get away from the area. As he began to look around for any potential witnesses, he saw a flash of movement in his peripheral vision. He began to react when his feet whipped from under him.
Connor had intended to sweep Nick, but as his target turned, he switched to a sliding tackle. His jeans tore along the pavement. He got up, winded from the sprint and rammed his boot down towards Nick’s head. The tred dug into a pair of barricading forearms. Connor’s knee landed like a dropped bowling ball onto Nick’s sternum.
They both felt the crack of the ribs.
Fists smashed into Nick’s pain covered face.
The third blow took his consciousness.
Connor looked around while sucking air into his depleted lungs. It had been easier than he thought. The element of surprise was essential in these situations. He thanked whatever guardian angel watched over him when he spotted the bonnet of a mid-nineties Toyota Corolla parked in the alley.
He roughly patted Nick down and found his Glock 17.
Connor scanned the area, particularly the windows. There had been a few people walking along the street in the distance at the small T-junction. There didn’t seem to be anyone paying attention to what had happened, such was the nature of London’s busy and impersonal people.
Surreally, even given the adrenaline coursing through him, he still had a pang of disappointment that he didn’t have time to buy the Sven Hassel book. He took a grip of the comatose Nick, and as he hauled him into a fireman’s carry—he prayed he wouldn’t awaken while on his back. As he ran for the car, he’d a flashback to his Marine training when carrying another soldier a hundred metres, both wearing a rifle and webbing, was a test requirement.
The Bootneck Page 16
