by steve higgs
I thought about that for a second. ‘How long ago did you go out for rum?’
‘About three hours.’ He giggled. Actually giggled. He was going to catch hell when he got home. I wasn’t going anywhere near their house for the next few weeks because Mum would most definitely find a way to blame me.
‘Can we do the family reunion thing later?’ Big Ben asked as he crouched down next to me. ‘I can’t stand up straight in these stupid tunnels made for puny humans.’
‘What are you then?’ Asked Alan.
‘Man plus.’ His instant reply. ‘Also, I think it likely they have gone for reinforcements or better weapons, so we need to scarper before they come back.’
‘Righto.’ Said Alan taking charge again. ‘Bob, Charlie, Whizzer, get Boy George here back to the river and out. He’ll need to get that scratch properly attended to.’ He turned to me. ‘What do we do with the enemy wounded?’
‘We leave them here. I don’t think they are getting better weapons and I don’t think they are coming back.’ I stopped talking to create a moment of silence. ‘See? Nothing to hear. This was always part of the plan. The police are on the surface…’
‘Are they?’ Big Ben interrupted me, his voice full of surprise.
‘They should be. I gave Quinn an easy way to be the hero and make the big bust. I told him I was going in and would be driving them out. All he had to do was bring officers in wearing plain clothes and have uniformed back up waiting around the corner. Since none of us know where the stairs come out, I couldn’t direct him to a specific point, so he is up there now looking for a flood of people exiting a building and blinking in the sunlight because their eyes are accustomed to the dark.’
‘That’s a bit thin, son.’ Dad observed.
‘This whole plan has been a bit thin. It’s working though, and we are nearly there.’ I scanned around the tunnel. Two ex-army guys and a good handful of well-trained but ultimately almost geriatric former Royal Navy against an unknown force. I really wanted to send my father away, but I knew he would never leave unless I was going with him and I wasn’t convinced the Ukrainians would be caught unless we forced them into the open now and let the police do what was necessary. On top of that, I still believed that the two Daves and Joseph were also captive down here somewhere. Remembering them made the decision easy.
‘I’m off to clear some vermin out of this sewer. Anyone who wants to come along is welcome.’ Then I set off, a handgun in my right hand and Italian leather shoes on my feet. My feet were long since soaked through from splashing in puddles on the damp floor. The shoes would be going in the bin and were the least of my concerns.
My greatest concern was that I was wrong about the Ukrainians getting reinforcements and weapons.
Henchman are Hard to Beat. Thursday, November 24th (still no idea what time it is)
I filled the rest of them in on the likelihood of hostages as we advanced. I wanted to find the two Daves and Joseph as a greater priority than anything else, certainly it was more important than catching anyone. I had all the evidence I would ever need for the police to raid the place, plus it was my investigations that had placed the three missing men in danger. Sneaking along the tunnel, fanned out as best we could so any shots fired in our direction wouldn’t get us all, we were trying to balance caution with a sense of urgency. There was no desire to give them time to regroup but also no wish to run headfirst into an ambush. It took less than a minute to get back to the room I had been held in and pass it. Ahead the tunnel formed a tee junction.
‘Which way.’ Asked Alan.
I shook my head. ‘I was blindfolded.’
‘Best we split up then.’ He turned and issued a fast order, splitting the group. ‘We’ll take right. You go left?’ He asked me.
I simply nodded and wished him luck. Half a dozen of his men, including my dad came with me.
The tunnel to the left quickly curved away to the right and as it did, we began to hear noises. Voices echoing along the corridor and then the faint sound of machinery in the distance. I picked up the pace, the others keeping up with me easily enough despite Big Ben having to move in a permanent crouch.
There was a shout ahead of us. A word in Ukrainian that was followed by a volley of bullets. The shooter wasn’t hanging around though. We saw three men duck into view and quickly vanish again before anyone could get a shot off. They were running away, which was good news, I wanted to drive them to the surface, but there was bad news as well. Everyone else had already left and these three had been left behind to torch the evidence. The stink of petrol hung heavy in the air as we skidded to a halt in the room they had just fled.
It was the room they made the cigarettes in. There were boxes of cigarettes stacked next to several machines and boxes of paper and tobacco and other raw materials. Some of the boxes were exact duplicates of the one I had found on the beach. How it had arrived on the shore of Upnor would forever remain a mystery, but my best guess was that it fell off whatever they used to bring it in.
‘We saw loads of these in the tunnel we came in through.’ Said Big Ben by my ear. ‘They have a pair of small ribs that tow what looks like a pod in and out. It was all rigged up next to the pontoon where we came in.
I wanted to hear more about it, but the smell of tobacco one might expect was overwhelmed by the smell of the accelerant. Before anyone could say anything else, I heard the petrol catch ahead of us and out of sight. Around the next bend in the tunnel, they had lit the petrol, the light from it scaring the dimness away. I screamed for everyone to get back. If they made it out of the room, they would have to fight against the fire drawing oxygen from the tunnel to feed itself, but they would escape the heat and flame and be out of danger.
I had travelled too far into the room though. To go back was further than to go forward and my brain was trying to remember how fast a flame travels in petrol. As time slowed down, an old science teacher drawled out numbers for equations. Fifty metres per second sounded right. It was a terrible last thought to have.
The force of Big Ben slamming into my back drove my breath from me as he lifted me and ran toward the line of flame now whipping down the centre of the tunnel floor toward us. It became a wall of intense heat for a heartbeat as he dived over it, bearing me to the floor where the cold, wet stone had mercifully already forgotten the passing flame.
Then Big Ben was hitting me. Slapping out a fire on my shirt. Smoke was rising from both of us as the light overhead twitched once, twice and went out.
‘Bugger.’ Said Big Ben.
Fortunately perhaps, the cigarette room was an inferno. Standing once more, I could just about see the faces of those on the other side. My dad was with them but all I could do was wave that we were alright. The fire created too much noise and it was beginning to deliver some serious heat. I didn’t know all that much about thermodynamics, but I worried the tunnels were about to be a very inhospitable place.
Big Ben thumped my arm to get moving even as we were being forced to back away from the oppressive heat. We turned and ran.
Straight into Pasha, Andriy and Danylo. They were emptying cash into bags from a large locker.
Both Big Ben and I had lost our weapons escaping the flames. Now unarmed, the three hugely muscular opponents presented a difficult obstacle.
Pasha glanced over her shoulder to see who was there and was turning her eyes back to the money when she did a double take. I guess they hadn’t told her it was me causing all the fuss.
Andriy and Danylo caught her reaction and turned to face us as well. Three against two. I was half beaten to pulp and they were each bigger and probably stronger than my unstoppable friend. I was really hoping they would see the danger in the fire behind us and run away.
They didn’t though. Smoke was beginning to fill the top of the tunnel. I saw Andriy notice it, looking above his head to examine then dismiss it. His attention came back to Big Ben and me.
It was Pasha that spoke first. ‘Do you remember when I t
old you I had a huge boyfriend that would beat you up? Well here he is.’ She said indicating Danylo to her left.
Danylo looked confused. ‘I am not your boyfriend.’ He argued.
‘Yes, you are, Dany.’ Then her brow wrinkled. ‘Hold on, what do you mean you are not my boyfriend?’
‘Why would you think I am your boyfriend?’ He asked, mystified.
Pasha’s attention was no longer on us as she turned to face the larger man. ‘You had better be thinking hard about the sleeping arrangements, Dany.’ She hissed. ‘You have been tapping this ass for months and you think it is just a bit of fun? Or are you getting it somewhere else as well?’
Andriy sputtered with a laugh he was trying to hold in. ‘Busted.’ He managed between sniggers.
Pasha raised one eyebrow, then, barely taking her eyes off Danylo, she rotated on one foot and kicked out hard with her right heel. It caught Andriy in his groin forcing an involuntary intake of breath from both Big Ben and me. He folded inward slightly, fought it, tried to recover, then accepted his fate and sank to his knees whereupon she kicked him in the head with the same heel.
Danylo now looked like a dog caught halfway through taking a poop on the carpet. He wanted to run away or make himself invisible, but he couldn’t move.
‘What did he mean?’ She demanded. ‘Why did he say busted and then laugh?’ She had fixed him with a hard stare, her hands clenching and unclenching by her sides.
‘I don’t know, um… darling?’ He tried unsuccessfully.
‘It’s that skinny blonde bitch that does the books for the protection rackets, isn’t it?’ Pasha was working herself into a frenzy, there was spittle on her lips and she looked angry. Like bite a man’s cock off angry.
Danlyo, the huge man that he was, took a pace back, looked at us, considered his options and ran away. Suddenly, the blocked escape route was open, and we hadn’t needed to do anything. Only Pasha blocked our path. But whatever else was going on in her head, Pasha was planning to leave with the money in the bags at her feet and we had to get by her to get out.
‘I’ll get this one.’ Big Ben said as he advanced toward her. ‘You have a rest, this won’t take long.’ He took two loping paces toward her and swung a hard punch that I have witnessed to great effect on several occasions. It was the sort of punch that a lumberjack would use to fell trees.
Pasha caught it in her right hand, looked Big Ben hard in the face and twisted while simultaneously closing her hand to crush his knuckles.
If I was surprised, then Big Ben was shocked to his core. He was a fighting machine that never lost, and he felt he owed Pasha a lesson for his treatment on Tuesday night. He wasn’t going to be the teacher today though.
She kicked out with a vicious boot to his inner left knee and followed it with a clubbing blow to his right cheekbone from her left hand. He was hampered by the height of the ceiling still, the only man down here that just didn’t fit. He backed away and circled, trying to find an opening, then charged her, but he was outwitted again as she moved to meet him before he could position himself.
Her arms whipped out to deflect his, a high elbow caught his jaw and she converted his stumble from the latest strike so that she was able to grab his left arm and fold it into a lock. He was about to be pinned.
I hit her with the pipe wrench. Somehow, I had forgotten I had it in my pocket.
Pasha let go of Big Ben’s arm, ‘That’s what you get for hitting my dad.’ I sneered in her face. She blinked twice and fell over backward.
‘You couldn’t have done that earlier?’ Big Ben asked.
‘I was too busy filming you getting slapped about by a girl.’
‘Ha ha, dickhead.’
‘Yes. Shall we go?’
‘What about them?’ Big Ben pointed to Andriy and Pasha.
I considered my options. ‘I need to get Pasha to the surface. She’s the one that hurt my dad. I don’t want to run the risk that the police don’t catch her and she escapes justice.’ I thought back to Deadface the Klown. I definitely didn’t want her to slip away. ‘We need to link up with the police and make sure the Navy boys get out before the police catch them. I also want to find the two Daves and Joseph. Let’s get to the surface. We can come back down with armed reinforcements to mop all this up.’
I started to pick Pasha up. She was out cold but picking deadweight unconscious people up and carrying them was a skill the army taught. Even so, I doubted I had ever picked up anyone her size.
Seeing me struggle, Big Ben took over, hoisted her easily onto his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and we got moving. Andriy was trying to get to his feet. ‘I grabbed him around the collar and hauled him to his feet. ‘You’re taking us to the surface.’ I insisted.
Knowing he was beaten, he nodded and still cupping his nuts and walking bent over, he escorted us to a door I might never have otherwise found. Behind the door was a second set of stone stairs, another rectangle just like the set I had already seen. It was the other way in from the surface.
Andriy was moving too slow, whether it was because he couldn’t go any faster or because he believed he could lose us and double back I didn’t know or care. Big Ben and I left him behind on the stairs, right now I wanted to see daylight and reassure myself that the Ukrainians were being rounded up because I was only mostly certain that the police were out there rounding up the Ukrainians. I didn’t actually know.
Nearing the final flight of stairs though, the door opened above us sending a shaft of daylight down. Voices filled the air and the squawk of a radio told me we were safe.
The police.
It wasn’t the first time I had been glad to see them, but this time it was positively euphoria I felt as I called out to them and heard CI Quinn’s voice in reply.
Mopping Up. Thursday, November 24th 1504hrs
I could see the time by looking at the giant clocktower that loomed over the Dockyard. Five minutes had gone by since Big Ben and I had stumbled out of the dark and into the cold air coming off the river. Big Ben had on his combat gear, which had unnerved the armed police for a moment until we were able to identify ourselves. The Chief Inspector had come back to the surface with us, wanting a full report, but had followed us up the stairs when we should have considered how we looked and insist he lead us out. All around had been armed police in uniform and plainclothes officers wearing bright vests to identify what they were. All weapons had been trained on us for a split second until CI Quinn exited behind us with a hastily bellowed order to not shoot.
On the ground ahead of us had been more than thirty men and women in cuffs, one or two of whom I recognised. They were surrounded by a swarm of officers that were processing them. Now in with them and struggling against the two uniformed police officers holding her was Pasha. She had come around as we handed her off to them, once again proving to be a handful until Quinn shouted and three more officers nearby joined in.
Now, I was sitting on a low wall next to a hastily erected on-site command post for the police that consisted of a large van with sides that opened out. It was purpose built for controlling major incidents which was what this now constituted.
The stairs we had exited from emerged into the Dockyard from an unassuming looking square of stone that had no identifying marks on it. There was a single door with a lock that not only would I not have looked at, but had I known it was the entrance, I would not have been able to get in through it anyway.
When I asked, CI Quinn was good enough to share that they had arrested sixty-seven persons, many of whom were known criminals and all of whom were Ukrainian. He was one of the officers that had come to the scene in plainclothes. His team had entered the Dockyard posing as tourists as I had suggested then fanned out. When panicked-looking people started streaming from the small building that covered the entrance to the stairs, he had been close enough to see it for himself, describing it as like watching a magic trick where one sees an impossible quantity of something come out of a receptacle too small to hol
d it. Then they had seen weapons and had been able to react.
A lot of the officers were below ground now going through the tunnels. They would be down there for days if not weeks, cataloguing everything the fire had not consumed. I had worried that it would spread but in the last few minutes there had been more officers going in and more people in cuffs coming out. I had heard someone report over the radio that fire had burned up the paper but had quickly run out of anything else that was flammable.
I needed to find my father and Alan and the rest of the heroes I had been down there with. Not knowing what had happened to them was keeping me agitated though CI Quinn was insistent that no one other than police officers, fire fighters, or if necessary, paramedics was going below ground. I had only just got my father back after days of watching him lying unconscious in hospital. Now his condition was unknown again and I wasn’t happy about it.
From my position on the low wall, I could see the Admiral’s building where I expected them to all emerge. There were police there too and the staff inside were still filing out as the entire facility was evacuated under police control.
Just then, CI Quinn exited the mobile command centre, looked around, spotted me and crossed the short distance to where I was sitting. He looked annoyed. ‘My men are getting reports from the Ukrainians that they were set upon by what they described as a geriatric special forces team.’ He said. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that would you?’
‘Maybe.’ I tried to make my reply sound innocent.
‘Yes. Well, they have vanished like ghosts back into the dark. That’s a direct quote. Some of my officers saw them and gave chase but were fired upon. No injuries sustained though which makes me think the shots were to deter them from following, not to do them any harm. Doesn’t your father work here?’
‘He does.’ I answered, giving nothing away.
Exasperation etched on his face, he placed his head in his palms and groaned. ‘Mr. Michaels you have an uncanny knack for making my life both easy and impossible. Whoever they are they were nearly shot, you know. All in black and running around in the dark with guns. It would seem they found Detective Sergeant Kushnir though and two security guards and were escorting them to safety. That’s what DS Kushnir is saying anyway. How do you do it? How do you bring down a firefight in my jurisdiction and walk away scot free?’
