“Are you absolutely sure you saw them?” I checked. It could have just been nerves and an overactive imagination on his part.
He nodded.
“How can we help?” I asked again.
“Be quiet!” He snapped.
For a few minutes we remained quiet. But it was making me wound up. If they were getting into position out there, then they might all come suddenly rushing in, not realising that if they shot one of them, they’d be automatically killing us all. On the other hand, they must realise that this sort of group would have explosives and be potential suicide bomber risks, so they probably wouldn’t just gallop in all guns blazing. Probably this was all part of the psychological plan to undermine the men. They would have deliberately let themselves be seen to make the men nervous and on edge and force their hand. And now the silent waiting game would designed to shred their nerves even further. It was certainly shredding mine.
“So you’re determined to take us two with you?” Nish said quietly.
Shafif glanced briefly at him.
“Do you want to meet with Allah with the blood of two innocent people on your hands?” Nish put to him in a respectful tone.
“You not innocent!” Shafif asserted. “You bad blood! You blood of your Uncle!”
“Well what about her?” Nish immediately put back to him. “She’s not done anything to you…”
Shafif glanced at me and sniffed, then glanced away.
“Let her go,” Nish suggested.
Outside seemed completely empty, silent and still. But the birds weren’t fooled. Every now and again they sent out an alarm call. One cock pheasant was sounding repeatedly outraged. It was putting me on edge.
Shafif hunched his shoulders. “She know too much about us,” he muttered.
“You’re determined to blow yourself up, whatever happens it seems,” Nish pointed out. “So it doesn’t matter what she knows about you…”
Shafif looked unhappy and said nothing.
“You could just lower her out of the window right now and let her run into the woods…” Nish said persuasively.
“Probably his brother would see me and shoot me,” I dismissed.
Shafif shook his head. “We all take different sides. Me watch back…”
“Well do it then,” Nish said in a firm authoritative tone, “and Allah will reward you for your good deed towards an innocent woman.”
Shafif hesitated.
“Do it,” Nish urged. “Before it’s too late and you have her death on your conscience.”
Shafif backed away from the window. “You do it,” he said. He lifted his gun and pointed it at Nish’s head. It was hard to tell if it was a kind of ‘I dare you to do it, and if you do I’ll shoot you,’ or more of a pragmatic thing about him not being willing to expose himself at the window to enemy fire, or turn his back on Nish. Nish looked him in the eye a moment, as though assessing his veracity, then he jerked his head at me.
Although I didn’t want to leave Nish here, I knew it was vital to get as much information about the situation out to the soldiers as possible, as soon as possible. Especially the info about the linked suicide belts.
“Thing is Nish,” I pointed out, “they won’t know you’re not one of them, because of your colour, so I need to be the one to stand up and open the window, because I’m the only one that’s quite obviously not Pakistani…”
Nish nodded briefly. “Do it quickly.”
Cautiously, I approached the window. I stood full square in it so they could see I was white, blonde and female. Nothing moved. I shoved open the window to its full extent, which being an annoying modern addition to the cottage, didn’t open quite fully, but would be wide enough for me to squeeze out. I looked worriedly down. It was quite a height. Shit.
“Shall I just jump?” I suggested, feeling a bit sick. I couldn’t see how Nish could hold me with those swollen hands.
Nish shook his head and got hold of my waist. “Put your legs out the window and sit on the sill,” he instructed. I did that. He took hold of my wrists in an amazingly strong grip. “Now slip down and dangle,” he ordered. I had to trust him. He leant out and lowered me to the full reach of his arms and then he just let me drop. I crashed down, crumpling to one side then froze for a moment to see if either of the other two captors had heard, and to see if there was any reaction from the woods. Nothing from anywhere, except a sudden explosion of bird alarms that would surely have alerted evil bro to something happening. I assessed the distance and line to the woods. The shortest way was to my left. There was an expanse of long grass in the cottage grounds, a desultory waist-high wooden fence, and directly behind that were woods full of thick undergrowth.
I got up, and ran as fast as I could towards the fence, keeping my head and body low, then hopped over the fence and plunged into the undergrowth. Two seconds later I was caught around the waist by some strong arms and thrown down to the ground on my stomach with a hand placed firmly over my mouth. I gasped and my heart nearly thumped out of my chest, but then the guy rolled me over, revealing himself to be a soldier in khaki camouflage gear, and he put his face close to mine with a finger over his lips. I lay motionless and so did he. Finally my heart rate evened out. I guess that’s what he was waiting for, because it was then that he whispered, “What can you tell us?”
“Three men, two who know what they’re doing, and the one upstairs who is young and scared. They have an AK47 each and shed loads of explosives. They have suicide vests on which are linked to each other so if you, or they, set one off, they will all blow together and take everyone in the vicinity with them. Gilbraith is upstairs in the room you saw me drop from. He’s wearing a blue shirt. The other men are in black. Nish is the one who leant out to help me escape. He’s in a poor way. He’s been beaten and tied up and drugged for days with no food or water. He’s being guarded by the young one who allowed me go but is determined to make sure Gilbraith dies with him. They know you are here and they are watching from three sides of the house.”
The soldier quietly relayed this via his mouthpiece. He was in full combat gear. This clearly wasn’t just a surveillance op, they weren’t going to be messing.
“The young one can speak English,” I added. “I don’t get the impression that the older two can.”
The soldier nodded and passed this on as well. Then he leant his head close towards me and looked seriously into my eyes. “I want you to wriggle on your stomach as far away as possible, as deep into the woods as you can go, making as little disturbance as you can. Someone will field you at some point. Ok? Understand?”
I nodded. As I set off, he spoke quietly into his headpiece again.
Wriggling on your stomach through this bramble undergrowth was easier said than done, but I knew that I had to do exactly what he said and not risk spoiling their operation. The undergrowth grew mercifully thinner and then I spotted a clearing ahead, full of army trucks and milling men. One uniformed man was standing there waiting for me. I stood up and brushed myself down and licked some scarlet beads of blood off my wrists and the backs of my hands. He didn’t smile, not even momentarily in order to welcome me. Instead he immediately grilled me with gimlet eyes, to retrieve every scrap of information that he could out of me, including the layout of the house. Then he made me climb up into the cab of one of the trucks, instructed me to stay there whatever happened, and then left. Shit, I thought, how can they possibly sort this out without Nish getting blown up with Shafif? I felt frozen.
I sat tensely and waited. I felt so helpless now. It seemed like forever. Then I heard the unmistakeable sound of gunfire and a moment later, a huge explosion. And then another. And another. I felt my stomach clench. That was poor Shafif gone for sure. Had Nish been killed alongside him? The wait to find out was agonising.
I watched in the wing mirrors of the truck to keep an eye on what was happening. Suddenly I saw Nish walking slowly and awkwardly through the undergrowth, a soldier on either side of him. I pushed open the doo
r, jumped out and ran towards him and threw my arms around him. He reciprocated and rested his cheek on the top of my head. The two soldiers wandered discreetly off, and I led Nish to the tailgate of one of the trucks and sat him down on it. He sat with his head down, and his swollen hands between his knees. He looked terrible.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It wasn’t very nice actually,” he answered. “I’m glad you weren’t there.”
I waited.
“I lied to the poor kid. I told him my mother had run away from her family because she disagreed so much with their politics, and now my father had just died and there was only me to make a living for my mother and sister.” He glanced at me and smiled wryly. “Which I’m sure Rod would have something pithy to say about! But I was taking a punt on the guy coming from a rural village in the wilds of Pakistan and not having a handle on modern British family dynamics…”
He sighed. “So I persuaded him to let me drop out of the window too. But I couldn’t fit my shoulders through, so he had to kick it really hard off the hinges, which must have alerted his brother who ran up across the landing shouting something and burst into the room just as I jumped. He came to the window and let off a round of bullets at me as I dropped to the ground and then the soldiers shot him and Boom, he immediately blew up and Shafif was right. I hadn’t been sure if he was just spinning us a line, or if his brother had spun him a line to keep him in order, but they all went off in quick succession and I was still so near the house there was debris raining down on me and,” he stopped short for a moment and pulled a grimace, “a few body parts.” He brushed clumsily at his face, his eyes averted.
My natural way would have been to stay silent. But I knew he needed some sort of response to acknowledge what he’d just been through. “Shit,” I said mechanically. Then added, “that’s awful.”
I watched a man approaching us. He put a case down in a business like way beside Nish on the tailgate of the truck. “Doctor Davis,” he introduced himself abruptly. “I need to examine you both.” He looked at me first.
I glared at him. “No, you fucking won’t! You can piss off with that!”
He looked coolly, assessingly, at me, then turned to Nish. “Take your shirt off,” He ordered.
Nish clumsily managed to get the buttons undone and shrug it off. Underneath, his ribs and stomach were still black and blue, and there were some superficial trickles of fresh blood in various places, presumably from the explosions. He kept sticking his fingers in his ears and shaking his head as though his ears were still ringing.
“They had him trussed up with the cord tied really tight for four days. And they had him drugged up lying on his back for five,” I informed the doctor. “And no fluids for five days. He’s pissing blood now.”
The Doctor pulled up Nish’s eyelids and examined the whites of his eyes that were a pale yellow.
“Do you know what drug they were using?”
I shook my head. “They injected him. And then at the end, they made him drink something.”
Nish stared at me. “You mean when he brought that coke in to me?”
“That’s why I wouldn’t drink it,” I explained.
Nish frowned. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
“I decided it might be better for you if you didn’t know what was going on.” I admitted. “I’m sorry, but you’d only have ended up resisting and fighting and scoring yourself some more broken ribs. But one of us needed to stay alert to keep us alive…”
The doctor glanced at me, then looked past my shoulder. I turned round to find a senior officer standing there. “Well?” He demanded of the doctor.
“He’s in pretty good shape considering,” the doctor reported. “If he hadn’t been so fit to start out with, he’d have come off worse. But I think his liver is suffering and maybe his kidneys so he needs at least an overnight in hospital to monitor him, and some systematic re-hydration.”
“I don’t even know what day it is,” Nish said. “How long have they had me?”
“It’s Sunday,” the officer said.
“Fuck it! You’re kidding me?” I exclaimed. “What time is it?”
He glanced at his watch. “Eleven.”
“Oh shit, fuck and bugger!” I exploded, slamming the flat of my hand against the truck.
“What?” Nish queried with raised eyebrows.
“I’m supposed to be at the Wheels Raceway by one,” I explained, “defending my title.”
“World?” He established.
“Not that there’s much point, I guess,” I sighed. “I have to start at the back so it’s more just a matter of turning up out of politeness.”
Nish frowned. “But you always win from the back…”
“Not in the World Championship you don’t,” I corrected snappishly. “It’s just like your own format for this one. It’s all the top drivers and they’ve been competing in qualifiers and Semi-Finals for their places on the grid. Because I couldn’t attend, I’m like the poor bugger in your races that ends up starting from the pits. No chance!”
I made some calculations. “I guess it might only take about two hours from here, so if they got held up with the start time…”
“You could take my car,” Nish suggested.
“It’s in bloody Wantage, you noodle!” I reminded him. I eyed up the truck. “How fast does this dinosaur go?” I inquired.
“You two are going nowhere,” the officer said sharply. “We’ve orders to bring you into headquarters for a debriefing.”
“They’re bloody dead! What else do you need to know?” I snapped. “And that better not be code for ‘counselling’ because I don’t do counselling – understood?” I marched towards the cab of the truck. I knew they’d left the key in the ignition because I’d been sitting there staring at it for twenty minutes. I clambered up into it, slammed the door, and turned the key. The engine rumbled into life and I got my foot on the clutch and wrestled it into gear.
Suddenly the officer realised I was serious and leapt into action. He wrenched open the door and dragged me roughly down by the waist.
Nish was grinning. “I bet you can’t even reach the pedals in that thing!”
I issued a low growl in my throat and folded my arms aggressively.
“What’s so important?” The officer asked, hands on hips.
“She’s the Formula Two Stocks World Champion driver, and she’s supposed to be defending her title in a couple of hours’ time in Birmingham,” Nish explained with a smile.
The officer blinked. Then he scratched his head. “Well, we were supposed to be ‘coptering you two to headquarters, so I guess we could divert to get you to this racetrack first. As long as you promise to come in for a de-briefing immediately afterwards,” he said, eyeing me severely.
I stared at him. “Helicopter?” I laughed delightedly. “Would you be able to come down in the middle of the oval? There’s a big round space there…” I added hopefully.
The officer smiled slightly and shook his head. “Great though it would be as a grand entrance, I’m afraid we’d be going to the nearest official ‘copter pad and driving you the rest of the way…”
“Damn!” I said. But I was still smiling.
Jo came round the corner of the Beast and put her hands on her hips.
I put my hands up warningly. “Don’t try and hug me Jo, I stink!”
“I had no intention of trying to hug you!” She snapped. “You really are the limit! Do you realise that? I was ringing and ringing Quinn and despite him claiming to be at your place he seemed to have no idea at all whether you were going to make it, just kept saying to come here anyway just in case!”
“You’ve got my driving clothes?” I established, ignoring her.
She glanced down in a reflex way at my shoes.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got my own trainers this time!” I grinned at her.
Her eyes raked me up and down. “What the hell’s happened to your face?”
“
What do you mean?” I frowned.
“You’re covered in scratches and blood,” she said with a wrinkled brow. “Like you’ve been dragged through a barbed wire fence…”
“Hmm, I have sort of…” I said. “I got caught up in some brambles. Have you got a wet wipe in the Beast?”
“Dad!” She yelled.
I was startled. “Is Paul here?”
“Hell, yes,” Jo said. “I wasn’t going to go through what I had to last time! I brought him along to help me out.”
Brilliant. That would mean that the car would be perfectly set up.
Paul appeared.
“The miscreant has finally deigned to turn up,” Jo flicked at him.
His eyes narrowed on my face. “Ok to drive?” He double checked.
“Course,” I dismissed. “Anything I need to know about the car or the conditions? And who’s where in the grid?”
Paul calmly and efficiently filled me in as I pulled on my driving gear. The other cars were beginning to line up. “Oh God, now I need a piss,” I groaned. I looked around. “I’ll just nip into the Beast and pee in a jug or something,” I said.
Jo rolled her eyes. “You’re so delightful, you know that? A pleasure to have around…”
When I came back out, Quinn was standing there. He looked pale and wrung out.
“Ginty, thank God for that!” he uttered devoutly. “Heskett texted me the moment they let him know that you were safely out – but that was less than an hour ago – how on earth did you…?”
“Helicopter,” I interrupted succinctly.
Paul and Jo stared at us both.
Quinn managed to conjure up a smile. “Only you could get accidentally trafficked to Glasgow by a sex gang the night before a Championship and then get kidnapped by Islamic extremists just before the next one!”
I glanced at Paul and Jo’s identical expressions, hauled on my gloves and crammed on my helmet.
“Haven’t got time for this right now,” I dismissed quickly, grabbing the top of the window and inserting myself through it into the driver’s seat. “Got a race to drive.”
The Way Back (Not Quite Eden Book 6) Page 17
