THE FIX: SAS hero turns Manchester hitman (A Rick Fuller Thriller Book 1) (20 page)

Des Cogan's Story
:

Moston Cemetery Manchester.

It had taken me a couple of hours to get all my kit into the Audi and find another hotel. I had moved away from the centre of town and found a small family-run place in Didsbury. The whole thing had passed without drama and I was glad of it.

By three a.m. I was on plot in the cemetery and in a good covered position to watch the whole of the funeral without being spotted. It was a cold night but dry and I had managed a brew and a few pulls on the old pipe. I’d brought a video camera and all my usual toys. All that was left to do was to wait until the mourners started to arrive. By observing the funeral, I would get as much information as I could. I had my stills camera too and would make full use of it. There were bound to be some interesting faces around. Then, after the service, I planned to follow the family back to the wake, introduce myself to Georgie and hope for the best.

Other than the odd owl and distant passing traffic, the place was quiet as a graveyard should be. I’d never been spooked by graves or dead bodies. My family were fiercely religious and although I gave my mother nightmares by failing to practice my Catholicism, my faith held me in good stead when it came to death and its associated superstitions. In all my experiences, in action over three continents, the only people that did me any harm were very much alive.

So when, just before five a.m. I heard the sound of a vehicle behind me, my ears pricked up and I slid deeper into cover and pulled the SIG from my holster. I had definitely not banked on company. Two men got out of what appeared to be another Lexus and my pulse rate increased. They climbed the fence behind me and started to walk steadily toward my position.

I flicked the safety from the SIG. They were about a hundred meters away and through my night vision binoculars I could see they were carrying a holdall. They walked in silence, closer and closer to me. I could feel the first pricks of sweat on my back. One was taller than the other. Both looked fit and organised. From the angle they were taking I figured that they would pass within feet of me. I lay, silent and ready.

The footsteps grew louder and louder. Then they stopped. One spoke, the accent was American.

“Over there.”

The taller of the two pointed in the direction of the newly dug grave. He stayed put, whilst the smaller man continued his task.

He walked so close to me that I could have touched him.

I knew he was heading for the hole in the ground but I couldn’t risk any movement with his taller mate so close. I was flat to the floor. I could hear his movements but not see them. After a couple of minutes he started toward me again.

This time he was on course for a direct hit.

I had one guy in front of me and one to the rear. I was in shit. I couldn’t believe that out of all the places in the cemetery they could have chosen to enter they had to pick where my obs point was.

I pointed the SLP toward the walker. He was silhouetted by some distant streetlights. He would be first and I would spin to take the second guy if need be. He was ten paces from me. Nine, eight, seven…

The Yank behind spoke, “I’m here, Stephan.”

I could see the goon clearly now. He couldn’t see me. He was a bullish-looking guy with blond hair swept over his face. He wore glasses and I could have sworn I’d seen him before. He also had a bandage or dressing over his right cheek.

The taller man’s voice had moved to my left and it took Stephan away from my position. I held my breath and finally they started away. Within a couple of minutes both men were back in their car and the drama was over.

I removed a plastic bag from my kit. I needed a crap.

The morning was spectacular. The beautifully tendered lawns were resplendent in the early sunshine. The sky was the brightest blue, sliced into provinces by the white spirals of aircraft trails. I could feel the cold morning air burning my nostrils, but I revelled in it and took deep lungfuls of crisp Manchester daybreak mixed with newly cut grass. The owl that had kept me company through the night had gone.

I needed to check exactly what Stephan had been up to at the graveside but by the time I was sure the two heavies had left for the night it was light, and I was going nowhere. I lifted myself into position and took a look. Through my binoculars I saw a wreath had been placed at the graveside.

By six a.m. the ground staff arrived for work, followed by early visitors to their dead. Gaunt grief-stricken men and women interspersed with resigned regulars. They came and went. Some stayed just long enough to leave flowers, some stayed to talk to the gravestone. Maybe it was a birthday or anniversary. Maybe it was a weekly occurrence. Whatever their purpose, they were as close as they could get to the people that had once been blood or lover.

For an hour I watched the start of Tanya’s ‘mourners’ arriving. The boys that were first to arrive weren’t grief-stricken. They were on BMX bikes. They wore colours too. This was a public show. The Richards’ reconnaissance team. One rode straight to the graveside and checked the newly dropped wreath; he picked it up with a single gloved hand, read the message and dismissed it. He rode on. I felt better, good enough to have a sip of coffee and a nip on the pipe. At least the wreath was inert, maybe there was recording equipment inside. One thing for sure, Stephan and his chum weren’t visiting the cemetery at three in the morning for the good of their souls.

The BMX crew were all between thirteen and sixteen years old. These boys were some of the most dangerous people to walk the streets of Moss Side. The colours and the single golf glove signalled to their peers that they were armed. Street shootings were at epidemic proportions and these boys were a big part of the problem. 

By the time the cortège had pulled into the cemetery, the BMX boys had dispersed out of sight and had been replaced with serious muscle. I counted fifteen guys. All wore black greatcoats and wore sunglasses. If I hadn’t known better I would have said they were CIA. 

The procession itself was led by a large black woman in her late fifties who I presumed to be Tanya’s mother. She was in obvious distress. Two solemn young men held her by the elbows and coaxed her the last few meters to the graveside. Just behind them was a beautiful young girl in her teens. She was the spit of Tanya. I decided this was the immediate family and one of the two boys must be Georgie. I took several pictures of both guys. I would have to convince them that Tanya wasn’t dead just because of a daft Jock.

The highly polished black coffin was carried by six bearers all identically dressed; they, in turn were followed by mourners carrying large floral tributes, their fabulous colours framed against a backdrop of black. I scanned the crowd for faces. Two very obvious detectives held up the rear. There was no noticeable presence from Davies’s crew, which pleased me.

The crowd circled the grave. A preacher spoke and five gospel singers sang hymns. The coffin was slowly lowered into the grave. The outburst of emotion could be clearly heard from my position.

Then the bomb went off.

At first I couldn’t see or hear anything. My eyes slowly started to focus and as God is my witness I wish I’d stayed blind. I’d seen soldiers with bad injuries. I’d been in battle, but this was different.

The first thing I saw was the remains of a small boy. He’d have been five, maybe six years old, no older. He landed fifteen feet from me. He had been blown a full sixty meters from the graveside. His legs were gone and his body twitched as the life drained from him. I was frozen. Through the smoke I started to hear the screams of the injured and bereaved.

I thought my head would explode. Why hadn’t I checked that wreath myself? Why did I stay in cover?

There was more ghastly screaming and a distant siren. It was that wail that brought me back. The siren. Maybe it reminded me of Ireland, my family’s homeland. The place my grandfather was born and raised. He moved to Scotland to avoid the violence. I, in turn went back to help stop it for good. It was the country where I saw my first action and first killed another human being. The place where I first saw the slaughter a bomb can cause.

Don’t ask me how, but I gathered my kit together and stowed it against a tree, leaving me dressed in jeans and a sweater. Then I ran to the carnage. God forgive me, I had morphine in my pack but dared not use it for fear of being compromised.

The wreath must have contained plastic explosives together with a timer, or it had been set off by remote control. If it had been activated by a tremble switch it would have gone off when the BMX boys touched it. In all the chaos I had forgotten to check the road for any activity. If the bombers had been behind me in a vehicle, waiting for the moment, they would have seen me pack up. I pushed that horror to the back of my mind and concentrated on the one in front of me.

The bomb had created a second gaping grave. The hole itself was empty, it was what surrounded it that tore at my heart. I counted six obvious dead. The injuries were so horrific that identification would be difficult. There were body parts strewn everywhere. Part of someone’s arm and shoulder dangled from a marble cross. Two gospel singers, who had been feet from the centre of the blast, were standing rock still, apparently untouched, at the graveside. Was someone looking out for them? I’d like to think so, but years of the kind of shit I’d witnessed told me different. It was luck, pure and simple, not fate, not God, just luck.

I started to work on the casualties and tried to block out the screams from my head. I could hear a young boy pleading off to my left. A large piece of debris was lodged in his stomach. He would most probably die within minutes.

I turned from him and worked on a kid who had lost a hand. I knew his agony would quickly turn to shock and he might die along with the poor guy behind me, but his chances were much better and I was only one man.

I could hear the sirens getting closer but I couldn’t stand the screams of the gut-injured boy any longer. I ran back for my gear and my morphine.

Fuck it
, I thought,
ID me, you bastards, come for me. I’m ready
.

It took me less than a minute to get my bag. I got to the kid. Big tears fell down his face, his eyes wide with fear and agony. I loaded the syringe and pushed it into the child’s arm.

Before he felt the effect he arrested. I held him until he stopped breathing.

When the first police officers arrived they were sick. Physically and wrenchingly sick. They were useless and the mourners who were fit enough bellowed at them to get their shit together.

In all the distress I was the professional. For years I had seen and done things that most people wouldn’t dream of. It was my theatre and I had to get on with it. I decided that my cover would be that I was a doctor, that had been walking by and hopefully I would be able to steal away in all the trauma.

It took forty minutes for all the serious casualties to be removed. My hands shook and I was covered in blood. A paramedic asked me if I was okay. I told him I was, that it wasn’t my blood. He gave me a thermal wrap and sat me in the back of his ambulance. Then he sat opposite me and burst into tears.

Tanya’s mother, brothers Georgie and Michael, nephews Shelly, Bonny and William were all part of the dead. Bonny, at eighteen months old, was the youngest to die. In all, eleven people had lost their lives in an instant. Many more would be severely disabled for life. All would be affected, forever. Me included.

A casualty with severe head injuries was wheeled into the ambulance with me. The medic was ashen-faced but coping.

“Will you treat him en route, doctor, while I carry on here?”

I nodded, tried my best to pull my shit together and started to work on the guy. The doors were closed and we were on our way.

The guy was in big trouble. I had been given medic training in my Regiment days and I was as good as anyone in the back of an ambulance but this guy was seriously hurt.

I shouted to the driver.

“How long before we get him to a hospital?”

The driver shouted back over the wailing horns.

“Gonna be forty minutes, nearest bed for this type of injury is in Leeds. We’re going to Leeds General.”

We arrived at the hospital in a flurry of activity. I counted nine ambulances with Greater Manchester liveries parked outside. Some of the casualty staff tried to treat me but I waved them away. After briefing the casualty doctor I sat on a chair at a nurses’ station and closed my eyes. I had been awake all night. I was knackered. I needed food, drink and sleep. I also needed some fresh clothes and a shower.

I asked one of the nurses if I could use the hospital facilities to clean myself. After about an hour she showed me to a small bathroom and I was able to shower. I had spare clothes in my pack. I placed the old ones in a bag and took them to the incinerator. Then, with a little difficulty, I found the staff canteen and went to eat. It seemed that all the police effort was being concentrated on Manchester and therefore my cover story had not been tested. No one asked for ID and I offered none. Everyone was shell-shocked. It would take a while for the cops to get to Leeds. As soon as I’d had some food and a hot drink, I intended to do one. I needed to think and get my head down.