One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night (31 page)

Connor closed his eyes, took a long, deep breath and counted to ten before reaching for his radio.

‘Jardine, is that light still on?’

‘Yes sir. Fourth on the left from the centre. Hasn’t changed.’

‘And would that be your left looking in, or our left looking out?’

‘Ooh. Sorry. I assumed that—’

‘Shut up.’

Swiftly, silently,
again
, they made their way back along the corridor and took up position outside the corresponding door. Room 322. Again, Quinn and McIntosh took position either side. Again, Gaghen looked for the nod. Again, Connor gave it. Again, Gaghen gripped the handle. The next bit was different this time.

Gaghen began shuddering and trembling, like there was an earthquake and he was the only one feeling it. Connor was about to tell him it was no time for taking the piss, when he noticed the buzzing sound and the smell of burning. Gaghen’s face was contorted into a soundless scream, his eyeballs vibrating in his head.

‘Jesus!’

Connor shouldered him, but Gaghen’s hand remained immovably clasped to the metal handle. Quinn then tried to grab him, but leaped back as the current ripped through him too. In the end, it took two of them rushing Gaghen at once to dislodge him, all three tumbling untidily to the floor in the tight corridor. Connor rolled away from the tangle and looked down. Gaghen was still jerking a little, but there was little doubt that he was dead. Connor climbed to his feet and took firm hold of his Ingram’s.

‘FUCKING BASTARD!’ he bellowed, peppering the handle with rounds until the clip was empty. Then he kicked the door with all his anger and strength, but to his further frustration, it refused to budge.

‘He’s fucking barricaded himself in,’ he spat.

Connor kicked open the next door along and stomped inside, heading straight for the balcony. Once out there, he slapped a new clip into the breech and slid the bolt, before diving across the gap to the adjacent terrace. He landed with an expert roll that took him back up to his knees, from where he opened fire on the sliding doors, aiming upwards into the ceiling inside. The glass shattered and rained down in thousands of tiny fragments, tinkling on the concrete along with his ejected shells.

He marched through the empty frame. Room 322 looked like it had been tipped on its side, with most of its contents ending up piled against the front door: mattresses, the dressing table, even the television, its flex ripped away. He could see the missing cable also, plugged into the mains at a socket two feet outside the bathroom. The wire disappeared behind the furniture blockade, where presumably it was connected to the door handle.

It certainly beat the shit out of a Do Not Disturb sign.

Connor picked the television off the pile and threw it against the wall with an accompanying scream. He had to spend his rage, had to restore focus. He’d lost one of his best men, a friend too, but the time for emotion was not now. Nonetheless, harsher tactics were definitely called for. This bastard Hutchison was smart. He knew what was going down, and he’d made it plain by killing one of Connor’s men. Well,
he
could play dirty too. Enough of this stealth‐
and‐
restraint shit.

He tore the offending flex from the wall and began furiously dismantling the barricade, casting its components behind him with further growls of strain and anger until the doorway was cleared.

‘Resume your search,’ he ordered Quinn and McIntosh. ‘We need Hutchison alive, but remember, the cunt doesn’t need kneecaps to be able to talk.’

‘Yes sir.’

Connor bounded down the stairs several at a time, heading back to the ballroom. A resort like this would have an extensive PA system, he reasoned. Well, it was time for an announcement. ‘Hi de fucking hi, campers. Here’s the rules of tonight’s party game. The redcoats are going to execute one hostage every five minutes until Mr Gavin Hutchison does the right thing and crawls out of the woodwork.’

In fact, the chief redcoat was going to execute the first one right away, partly to let Hutchison know this wasn’t a bluff, and partly to teach him the dangers of messing about with electricity.

He rounded the foot of the last flight and crossed the floor of the lobby. This was what he should have done the minute they realised Hutchison was missing. For a job like this, he had to think less like a soldier and more like a criminal. Never mind all this running around, the best thing was to keep it simple. You put a gun to a hostage’s head and you get what you want. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Connor unholstered his pistol, threw open the double doors dramatically and strode into the ballroom.

Unfortunately, there were no longer any hostages in it.

Jackson looked upon his new ‘unit’ with a perverse satisfaction as they readied themselves to move the hostages out: a less likely bunch he’d never seen, but he felt more like a soldier among them than he had among the last shower. McQuade, O’Neill, McKenzie, Potter. Frocks, dress‐
shirts, hairspray and Uzis. They looked awkward, clumsy and scared out of their minds, but as a CO of his once said, ‘Show me a troop who’s not scared and I’ll show you a liability who doesn’t appreciate what he’s up against.’ Jackson knew they were outnumbered, outgunned and untrained, but he also knew that he’d rather fall with these people than stand with Connor’s scum. This was about more than life or death. This was about who he was and who he’d been.

He was a mercenary, a hired gun. Other people’s dirty work a speciality. Fighting fights that weren’t his, often in countries he’d barely heard of a fortnight before he was waist‐
deep in their bloody conflicts.

He’d always told himself he had ethics, always told himself he was on the side of the good guys. He didn’t simply fight for whoever paid the highest: he fought to establish democratic regimes, or to restore them, or to defend them. And he justified the acts he committed with the belief that he was saving the world from men far worse than himself. But in truth the sum of it all had just been a big pile of bodies. Toppling one tinpot dictator to replace him with another; putting down insurgence only for it to rise somewhere else, like air bubbles on wallpaper. He hadn’t saved the world from anybody, least of all himself.

It was long since time to grow up. That was why he’d accepted Connor’s offer in the first place: as a way out. Grab a decent chunk of change so he could find something better to do with his life, and not get sucked back into the next shithole that decided to have itself a civil war. The illegality wouldn’t bother him, he’d reckoned. After the things he’d ‘legally’ done in conflict, it was hard to imagine shedding a tear over a few spoiled businessmen getting ripped off for money that they’d claim back from their insurers anyway. But he knew now: tears would be shed over the kid Connor blew away downstairs, tears would be shed over the poor bastard Booth had taken out, and tears would be shed over however many others these trigger‐
happy psychos deemed expendable.

He’d looked at the two pricks guarding the ballroom with him, two ex‐
paramilitaries for whom punishment beatings and rubbing out rival drug dealers hadn’t proven a satisfactory replacement for the excitement of the glory days. There they were, happy as Larry, once again doing what they did best: pointing guns at unarmed victims and getting off on the power.

Carrion fowl. Men of violence who’d be fucked in a world without war.

At the start of every armed struggle there was a time when, with a heavy heart, men of conscience reasoned that they had fruitlessly exhausted their peaceful and democratic options, and had therefore no option but to take up arms in pursuit of what they saw as justice. Once the battle had been going on for twenty‐
odd years, however, it was difficult to imagine everyone who picked up a gun going through the same tortuous ideological maze as their forebears. Most simply grew up indoctrinated, and their only question was ‘Who do you want me to kill?’

Jackson had encountered their kind around every festering conflict on the planet, Belfast to Bosnia: vicious little bastards who’d be no‐
marks in a normal world, stuck doing a shit job for shit money like the poor sap they grew up next door to. But as ‘paramilitaries’ or ‘freedom fighters’ they got kudos, they got respect, and best of all, they got to run around with a rifle, shooting people, blowing things up and generally kidding on they were James Bond. Whatever those men of conscience had been seeking all those years back was now irrelevant, if it was even remembered. For the carrion fowl, this wasn’t a struggle, it was a way of life.

The so‐
called ‘adventurers’ were made of much the same stuff, they just grew up in a different neighbourhood. Psychopaths with little or no military training, who went travelling in search of war because there wasn’t one at home. They were poorly paid – usually the same as whatever the local grunts were getting – because their employers knew they weren’t in it for the money: they only wanted the opportunity to kill people.

But Jackson detested the carrion fowl far more, because for men who liked to call themselves soldiers, they tended to be extremely shy of a fair fight. From Omagh to Warrington to Lockerbie to the Valley of the Kings, it seemed the principal criterion denoting a ‘legitimate target’ was the target’s inability to retaliate. The cunts wanted to play the game, but they didn’t fancy playing it toe‐
to‐
toe.

And now here he was, standing shoulder‐
to‐
shoulder with them, facing a room full of terrified hostages. He’d come all this way, all these years, to end up pointing a gun at some defenceless fucker’s head and saying ‘Gimme all your money’.

No ideological hair‐
splitting could colour this conflict: tonight he was on the side of the bad guys. And if he was one of the bad guys tonight, then maybe that was who he’d always been. Not a soldier, not a professional, just a thug who killed for coin.

Well, as Aristotle put it, ‘To do is to be’; and more to the point, as Zappa put it, ‘You are what you is’. It was time to define himself. As soon as the search teams were safely departed, he reattached the suppressor to his Nagan and called his fellow guards towards him.

‘What’s that phrase you boys use? Oh yeah. Nothing personal,’ he said, then shot both of them through the middle of the forehead.

Sorry, guys, but once you’re in the game, you’re in the game.

There were gasps of shock from the floor, and one woman began screaming.

‘Christ’s sake, shut her up or she’s gonna get us all killed,’ he said stiffly, pulling off his ski‐
mask. The man beside her, presumably her husband, stared back helplessly as she filled her lungs for another volley. ‘I’m on your side,’ Jackson explained, by which time the woman next to her had covered her mouth with a hand and was telling her to calm down. Jackson gave her a thumbs‐
up.

He then pointed at the bloke who’d fallen through the ceiling. ‘What’s your name, mate?’

‘Ally. McQuade.’

‘Well, you looked like you had some initiative earlier on, and I’m gonna need a bit of help. Grab that guy’s Uzi. There’ll be a handgun on him, too. Get that and whatever ammo he’s carrying.’

McQuade looked a little startled, but he nodded and moved off towards the indicated corpse.

‘Anyone here got any combat training?’ Jackson asked. It was worth a shot. ‘TA, anything.’ No response. ‘Paintballing? Clay pigeons?’ Still nothing. Jesus. He looked to McQuade. ‘Who can I rely on?’

McQuade swallowed. ‘Charlie,’ he said, pointing towards the bloke who’d helped him after Connor beat him up. He’d have been Jackson’s first choice, anyway: he looked ballsy, alert and fit as a butcher’s dog.

‘You up for this?’ Jackson asked him.

He got to his feet. ‘Aye. And I’ll see
you
later,’ he told McQuade.

‘Good man,’ Jackson said. ‘What’s your surname?’

‘O’Neill.’

He indicated the other body. ‘Get yourself tooled up, O’Neill. We’re gettin’ out of here.’

Jackson surveyed the floor again. The clock was ticking, no time to work out who among them could best handle this. He looked to the woman who’d shut up the screamer – she’d been ahead of the game then, so she was as good a shout as anyone. She nodded back nervously once he’d caught her eye, then stood up and walked forward.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Lisa McKenzie.’

‘I’m Jackson. McQuade, give her your handgun and any spare clips.’

McKenzie walked across to where McQuade still squatted, pulling items from the dead guard’s belt. He handed her the Beretta, gripping it by the barrel, which Jackson took to be an encouraging sign: at least he knew which end the bullets came out. McQuade then passed her the three clips he’d been able to find. Having no pockets in her dress, she slipped them into her evening bag and slung it over her shoulder.

‘There’s one more gun, so might as well have one more volunteer,’ Jackson announced. He walked closer to the huddle of resort staff. ‘Who here knows the layout of this place?’

An unsure hand went up, some teenager who looked barely old enough to be legally in work. Jackson thought of the kid downstairs, with his roaches and his pin‐
ups. At least this one would get the chance to shoot back.

‘I don’t know it well, like,’ he ventured. ‘I’ve just takken a few walks aboot the place.’ Jackson recognised the Makkem accent with a smile.

‘What’s your name, son?’

‘Potter. Jamie Potter.’

‘O’Neill, give Potter that pistol. Maybe there’s someone from Sunderland who can get his shots on target.’

Jackson checked his watch, estimating he could allow himself all of ninety seconds for basic weapons training. Tactical tutorials he’d have to carry out on the move.

‘Are you … an undercover agent or something?’ McQuade asked.

‘No, I’m just a bad guy havin’ a crisis of conscience. Keep your fingers crossed it doesn’t wear off.’

‘So what’s this all about?’

‘Later. Right now we’ve got to get everybody out of this place before the search parties get back. McKenzie, O’Neill, get everybody lined up two‐
by‐
two, we’re goin’ out the side door there. Do you both know how to use those things?’