THE FIX: SAS hero turns Manchester hitman (A Rick Fuller Thriller Book 1) (28 page)

A minute went by. As I tuned my ears into my surroundings, concentrating all my efforts into my audible range, I felt a chill.

Somewhere to my right, probably close enough to touch, was a dog.

Not just a dog, but a fuckin’ big dog, and it was just getting ready to rip my head off.

Animals, of any sort, are your worst fucking nightmare. At best they make enough noise to wake the dead. This bastard had done the opposite. It had tracked us silently and was ready to go for the kill.

An adult German Shepherd dog’s bite has the same pounds per square inch power as a gristly bear. You do not want to be bitten by one. He will take out skin, muscle, tendons and even break bones if he has a mind to.

If this guy attacked, before Lauren or I had stopped screaming, our target would be awake and laying down rounds on us.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Killing a dog is not good. It isn’t, I’ve always liked dogs. It’s just this one had to go.

Lauren was physically sick on the ground as the animal twitched and bled to death on Joel’s gravel drive.

In a previous life, I was taught how to kill a dog silently.

“Get it together!” I hissed.

She glared at me with some degree of disgust through the holes in her balaclava. Then with as much dignity as she could muster, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and resumed her position. I was beginning to believe Des’s remarks about her bottle.

I approached the keypad to get us into the main house. I entered the digits.

There was the smallest click and then a mechanical whirring as the locking mechanisms drew back.

The door clicked open and a crack of light escaped into the porch. We wanted to get in and out without a trace. We had the element of surprise and we were armed to the teeth. We were on top.

I’ll tell you this, and listen carefully.

Walking through that door was like walking into hell.

Des Cogan's Story:

The second I heard gunfire from the front of the house I loaded a c4 charge, pushed it onto the back door frame, took cover and pressed the fire button. The rear exterior door of the house was blown twenty-five feet into the back kitchen. On its way it destroyed most of everything in its path. At the back wall various pots, pans, spices and the rest were clattering to the floor. Through the dust and shite, I charged forward, cleared the kitchen and covered the first interior door.

This was not a job you should do alone, but I had no choice.

I pushed out my right leg and opened the interior door to reveal a sitting room in darkness.

I rolled to a large armchair and scanned the area, I arced the Glock across the full width of the room, confident it was empty.

Then I heard AK47’s and I knew we were in the shit big time.

Lauren North's Story:

My heart felt like it was about to leave my chest. I was sweating in places a girl never sweats, and I still felt acid burn my throat from vomiting. When the charge Des had used went off, despite the ear protection Rick had given me, my world went silent for a few moments.

We had stepped through the front door into a hail of bullets. Something, maybe the dog, had disturbed them.

Rick was through in a split second.

I followed him using pure instinct.

It was a war.

The hallway was open plan. The black and cream floor tiles glistened in the half-light and made me feel like a pawn in a chess game. A central marble staircase rose up majestically to a balcony which, in turn, ran in a semi-circle around the back of the house. Every upstairs room was accessed from those stairs. I counted eleven doors.

I could see two men running down the steps. Two of the eleven doors above them were opening and I could hear shouting.

One man on the stairs was blond.

He had a fine muscular body and wore only black boxer shorts. He had a bad scar on his cheek. He also had a machine gun.

Rick Fuller's Story:

I saw him straight away, Stephan, the fucker who tortured me, the guy who poured kettle, after kettle of boiling water over me, and then laughed as I screamed my bollocks off.

Happy fuckin’ days.

A heavyset guy was just behind him. He had a pistol of some kind. He looked out of it, as if he had been sound asleep. Even so he was working on killing us all and emptied a full clip in our direction.

The Dutch was much cooler and hadn’t fired a shot.

Not laughing boy.

He ran straight toward me, armed with a Kalashnikov.

Des Cogan's Story:

From the rear sitting room the gunfire was horrendous.

The unmistakable sound of 7.62 short high velocity rounds still made my blood run cold, even after all those years.

There was so much being fired that plaster dropped on my head as I made my way toward the battle. Fine ceiling roses dusted me so much, that by the time I opened the door to the hallway I looked like a Scottish ghost.

Rick and Lauren were pinned down by the front entrance. They both had some cover from two large stone plant stands, but they were in the shit. I entered from under a massive stairway which seemed to lead to a balcony I couldn’t see. How many targets were laying down fire was difficult to say.

I banked on five.

I legged it under the stairs and slid in as far as I could.

I was completely hidden under step two.

I could see Lauren but not Rick.

The gunfire was constant but my heart was raised as I heard the return from my comrades. It wasn’t over. Not just yet.

Lauren North's Story:

I caught sight of Des. He looked like someone who worked in a bakery.

He’d hid himself under the fabulous stairs out of sight.

The noise was unbearable. I felt a trickle of sweat in the small of my back, as the marble tiles around me were shattered by gunfire. I was now totally deaf.

Two other men had emerged from the upstairs rooms but stayed on the landing above. They had automatic weapons and were firing bursts at Rick and me in turn.

They were determined and I was terrified.

All I had to protect me was a big plant pot, and it was getting smaller by the second.

Rick was firing at the two guys on the stairs. He hit the dark one immediately. The guy spun around, firing a pistol at nothing in particular. A fountain of blood burst from his thick neck and doused the black and cream tiles red before he fell.

The blond muscled guy jumped over the banister to my left and was running to a door. As he did he looked me in the eye. He appeared to be enjoying the whole thing. He made my blood chill.

Des, hidden by the stairs, saw him run and fired in a prone position toward him. I saw each bullet dig into the tiled surface around the blond man’s feet. Somehow, he was protected. Somehow, he reached the door. Somehow he was gone.

Rick left his cover to give chase. It was foolish. He moved too soon. Des had not yet got into position to cover him.

Two armed men remained on the balcony. One leapt down the steps toward Rick, arms outstretched, police style. A semi-automatic pistol pointed to kill.

Rick only had eyes for the blond man.

The man on the stairs had a clear shot.

Not as clear as mine.

I fired.

The gun kicked in my hand. The first time I had ever fired in anger, I instantly knew I had killed a human being.

The round hit him in the centre of his chest, just how Des had taught me. Somehow I saw it. He looked surprised. Then fell. Despite my impaired hearing I heard a hard slapping sound, as his bare flesh hit the cold steps.

His body slid downward one step at a time until he was ten feet from me. Over the gunfire, I heard his breath escaping and saw his lifeblood seep from under him.

Rick ran in front of me without a second glance. His body crouched against the fire from the single remaining man on the balcony.

Like the blond man, he was gone from my sight.

Des was there before I knew it. He pushed me backward and fired two bursts toward the balcony.

The final man fell and suddenly there was silence.

A door to my left opened and Des twisted violently to cover the threat.

He dropped his weapon as he heard Rick’s pissed off voice say,

“He’s fuckin got away.”

Rick staggered back into the hall, his chest heaving for breath. Looking at me, he saw death at my feet.

Something inside me gave way. Rick strode forward but stopped short of holding me, and I fell to my knees and wept. Great hacking sobs filled my head and covered the high pitched ringing in my ears.

Within seconds I was lifted back onto my feet by two strong arms. Des pulled off his hood and looked me firmly in the eye. His spectacular blue gaze dragged me back to reality.

“You okay?” He gave me a ‘thumbs up’.

I think I gave it back.

“You injured in any way?”

I shook my head. At least I didn’t think I was injured.

He shot a glance at the man I had just murdered.

“Good job,” he chirped. “Just like I showed you, hen, eh?”

I cried even harder.

Des grabbed my chin with a gloved hand. It hurt, he was deadly serious and his eyes were like ice.

“Lauren! You did well! You hear me? You did exactly what we asked of you. You covered us just as we planned! You saved Rick’s life, for fuck’s sake!”

He was covered in white plaster dust, his hair was stuck to his head with sweat, but he gave me the biggest smile, tapped me neatly on the cheek and said, blasé as you like, “Part of the team now, babe.”

Somehow, and don’t ask how, but I felt his strength flow into me. I felt steel that I had never felt before. I dried my tears with my sleeve and holstered my pistol.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said.

Des shook his head, then, gestured toward the open doorway.

“No, sweetheart, I’m going help Rick and you’re going to lose all that vomit outside so you don’t leave a pile of DNA for the cops.”

He tapped the side of his nose knowingly.

“Then we are going to get on our toes.”

At that he strode off.

I stepped over my victim and went to find a bucket and mop.

Those were the last tears I ever shed for a dead man.

Rick Fuller's Story:

I was seriously fucked off that I’d lost the Dutchman, but I had to get over it and get on with the job. It was already pear-shaped of course. Laughing boy would soon have all our cards marked. Even though he was wearing nothing but his skids, he would soon have Mr. Stern out of his bed and in a very nasty mood indeed. I’d left Lauren and Des having a heart to heart on the rights and wrongs of shooting someone. I figured that she would get used to it, knocking about with the likes of us. I’d never been good with crying women. How my wife ever put up with me, I’ll never know. She brought me out of myself somehow. She taught me how to express my feelings, how to deal with emotions. But she was never able to help me deal with tears. When she cried, I just stood there helplessly, frozen to the spot. If her tears needed comfort, she was the one forced to seek me out and hold me close. That was in that previous life I told you about.

Time was of the essence. We needed to look for anything interesting, and preferably, Joel’s old computer. Joel and the two old geezers that were his staff were obviously no longer of this earth.

The yearning to meet the Flying Dutchman was as great as anything I’d felt since Cathy. I needed to meet him again and settle that old score. First though we had to get to Joel’s office and hope his computer was still there; anything to give us a Scooby where to find Stern and Susan.

I went straight to Joel’s office and it appeared untouched. I found his safe, opened it with the combination I had acquired in my previous role as his collector and dropped the contents into a plastic bin liner.

There was a lump of cash and documents, together with a semi-automatic pistol. There would be time later to find out exactly what.

I was quickly joined by Des, who started to remove the hard drives from Joel’s computer which mercifully remained.

Des took the cover from the tower and Lauren burst into the room holding a mop.

“I think you need to see this,” she said.

We followed her in silence to a room on the west face of the house. When I had visited Davies previously, it had been a games room, with a snooker table and tacky trophy cabinets.

It had been transformed into a communications centre.

I don’t mean a couple of phones and a computer. I mean ‘Houston, we have a problem’.

Des let out a low whistle.

“This is fuckin’ CIA, pal.”