The Killer II (20 page)

20

Oh, Nobody Likes Them You Know

Liam was in the Land Rover with
Vassi
and the others at dawn the following morning and they bumped, jarred and shook their way to the training ground.
Liam gazed out over a large, flat, grassy area surrounded by thick pine trees and a ring of high mountain peaks.
A single wooden building stood to one side, a neat row of tents at the other.
As they parked up a string of men began emerging from the long hut and quickly formed two rows.
Liam smiled at some familiar faces from the old camp back in
Santoña
.

One of them took a pace forward. ‘Good morning
Mr.
Butch, it is very nice to see you again.
Welcome to
Catalunya
,’ he saluted with a friendly grin.
‘I have your old job now.’

‘And a good morning to you too, Pablo, my brother.
Still got that cutthroat razor of yours have you?’

Pablo nodded and produced the blade.
‘Yes sir, but it is only to be used for shaving, no?’ he laughed.

There were a few more pleasantries with old friends and then
Vassi
indicated the tents at the other side of the field as a group of around a dozen young men appeared and also stood to attention.
‘Those are our
Arabs,’ he announced and spat on the floor.
Several of the other men began spitting too.

‘
Mm, not popular are they?’ Liam noted.

‘
Oh nobody likes them you know.
They are really quite unpleasant.’

‘
How close can we get to them?’

‘
Not very.
Not if you want to see what they are doing.
They will stop and we cannot talk to them,’
Vassi
explained.
‘They do not speak Spanish but the old man can say a few words in English, and I can say a few words in English.
Unfortunately they are not the same few words so conversation is difficult.’

‘
Yes, I guess it must be,’ Liam laughed.
‘How on earth did you get them to move camp if you can’t speak to them?’

‘
Rosa is very persuasive with a big stick.’

‘
Really?’
Liam chuckled as the mental image of a little old lady shepherding Arabs with a stick formed in his mind.

‘
There were some radio messages too,’
Vassi
informed him.
‘I think Rosa told somebody and they told somebody and somebody told the Arabs.’

‘
Right.
Anyway, the old man will speak then?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Mm.
I need to try to see what they’re up to first.
I wonder if I could get up one of those trees and have a look.
Do you think you could cause a distraction?’

‘
Possibly, but if you wait for this afternoon they will disappear for a while.
Just before 2pm.
They do it every day.’

‘
Really?
OK, then, that’s what I’ll do.’

Liam spent the morning training with the E.T.A. men to keep himself occupied.
He enjoyed the physical exertion and it made him feel mentally alert.
At 1.50
Vassi
caught his attention and pointed to the Arabs.
The two men watched as they went back into their tents.
Liam sprinted across to a group of trees and quickly climbed one with thick, evergreen leaves.
He should have a good view from here and, confident that he couldn’t be seen, he waited for the Arabs to return.

By 6pm Liam was stiff and uncomfortable and he hadn’t even been able to have a fag.
A smoking pine tree might have caused unwanted attention.
Eventually the Arabs went back to their tents and Liam was able to climb down and rush back to
Vassi
who was waiting for him with the vehicle.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Could you see anything?’

‘
Oh I saw plenty and I don’t like it at all.
I’ll tell you when we’re back with the others.’

Everyone was there for dinner again and Liam explained what he had seen.
‘They do lots of push-ups and squats, just like you said, but that seems to be their only physical activity.
Mostly they just sit and the old man talks.
I haven’t a clue what he said, but the young men were hanging on his every word.
The worrying
thing
is
those boxes
.
You’re right,
Vassi
, they are full of explosives.
Semtex
I think, but here is what’s really odd.
They have a lot of coats, well more like jackets really, with strange loops in them
and they were putting the explosives in the loops.
Then the old guy would mime pulling a string and then he’d yell something that sounded like
Allawoo-abar
.’

‘
Yes, yes, we’ve heard that too,’ said
Sixtro
.
‘What do you think it means?’

‘
I have no idea, but I am really worried by those jackets.
They have either decided on a very dangerous way to transport explosives or, well…’

‘
They are making themselves into human bombs?’ suggested Rosa.

‘
Honestly, yes, that’s all I can think of.’

‘
De
puta
madre
!’ exclaimed
Vassi
.

‘
Yes,’ Liam agreed.
‘This is
fuckin
’ serious shit.
So they leave the day after tomorrow Rosa, is that right?’

‘
Yes my son,’ the old lady confirmed.
We are to take them down the mountain in the Land Rovers and then they will be collected by bus.
I do not know where they are going.’

‘
Then I need to be on that bus.’

Liam was waiting outside the tents with
Vassi
at dawn the following morning.
The group of young men, who could have been Palestinian but, then again, maybe they were Syrian, emerged and glanced at them briefly before immediately averting their gaze.
The older man appeared last and stared at them.
He did not look away.

‘
You speak English?’ Liam asked, neutralising his accent as much as he could to make his words simple and clear.

The man looked surprised, but nodded.
‘A little.’

‘
Tomorrow you go, yes?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Tomorrow I go also.
I need a lift.’

‘
Lift?’ said the man as he rose up on his toes in confusion.

‘
Ah, sorry.
A lift, mm, a ride?’ Liam suggested, but the man still didn’t understand.
He tried again.
‘Tomorrow you go on bus, yes?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Tomorrow I go on bus.’

‘
Tomorrow you go on my bus?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
No.’

Fuck.
Still, he hadn’t expected this to be easy and he tried a different tack.
‘E.T.A. is friend, yes?’

‘
Yes, E.T.A. is good friend.’

‘
I am E.T.A.
I am friend.
Friend go on your bus.’

‘
I think no.’

‘
Listen,’ said Liam keeping his voice controlled.
‘What is the problem?’

‘
No problem.’

‘
You have secret from E.T.A.?’

‘
No secret,’ said the man and the rapid blink of his eyes suggested he might not want E.T.A. thinking he had a problem or a secret. ‘How far you go?’

‘
To the ferry,’ Liam risked.

‘
Ferry?’

‘
Boat.
You go boat, yes?’

‘
How you know boat?’

Aha, got
ya
, Liam thought.
‘I am E.T.A.
E.T.A. know boat.
I go boat.’

‘
You go only boat?’

‘
Yes.
Bus, boat, bye
bye
.’

‘
Bye bye on boat?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
OK.’

‘
OK, great,’ said Liam offering his hand, but withdrawing it quickly when the man made no effort to take it.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow then.’

‘
Tomorrow,’ the man agreed then turned away abruptly to his young men who looked on in confusion.

‘
He is not very pleased,’ said
Vassi
as they walked away.’

‘
No he isn’t,’ Liam agreed, ‘and where the fuck is he taking a ferry to?’

***

A small convoy of Land Rovers took the men and their boxes to the main road where a bus was waiting.
Liam had been able to say goodbye to Rosa and her boys this time and had promised that he would return as soon as he could.
Vassi
had driven down to the bus and the two men shared a bear hug before parting.

‘
Vaya
con Dios a mi
hermano
,’ said
Vassi
.

‘
Go with God my brother,’ Liam repeated.

The young Arabs climbed aboard the bus and the older man counted them on one at a time.
‘
Allahu
Akbar,’ said each as they entered the vehicle and took seats towards the front of the bus.

‘
Alla
–who…?’ asked Liam when it was his turn to board.

‘
Allahu
Akbar,’ said the man.
‘God is great.’

Well that sounds OK, thought Liam as he made his way to the rear of the bus and took a seat.

2
1

The Hunters,

the
Rabbit and the Sister

‘And don’t you even think of coming back here without any meat for dinner, you lazy good for nothing bone idle pair of time wasters,’ shouted
Montse
angrily as she stood in the doorway.
Her brothers walked away muttering and she slammed the door behind them.
She planted her hands on her hips and stamped her foot as she continued angrily talking to the kitchen walls.
‘Who do they think they are?
They expect to drink all night, sleep all day and then have the cheek to moan at me when we have no fresh meat.
What do they expect me to do - all the cleaning, all the cooking and their hunting too?
As God is my witness, if they don’t bring anything back today, they’re out, the pair of them.
This is my house and I won’t take it any longer - I’ve had it.’

‘Women.
My God can’t they ever stop giving orders?’
tutted
Alejandro as they trudged away, making sure they were out of earshot.

‘Alex, how many times do I have to tell you?
Women love ordering us about simply because they are jealous of us men.
Montse
is only mad because she is the one who has to do all of the lowly housework chores
whilst we get to do the exciting things like hunting,’ his brother Esteban explained.

‘I know, I know, but she never, ever seems to be happy.
What the hell does she have to complain about?
That little bit of housework she does is easy.’

‘Maybe she needs a husband, no?’

‘Hmm, you could be right, maybe she does,’ Alex agreed as the pair strolled off through the field and headed towards the thick woodlands.

Within an hour the lads were happy.
It had been a good morning and they had two large rabbits to their credit.
That should keep their moaning sister satisfied and they were ready for home until Alex grabbed his brother by the shoulder.
‘Look over there,’ he hissed.

Esteban followed the line of the pointing finger.
‘Where?
I can’t see anything.’

‘
There, at the bottom of the bank.
Look, see those trees at the far side of the road?’

‘
Yes, I’ve got ‘
em
.’

‘
OK, follow that line back across the road and down the bank about twenty meters.
There.
See?’

‘
Jesus Christ,’ whistled Esteban.
‘Is that a rabbit’s head?
It’s got to be huge if we can see it from this distance.
If that doesn’t put a smile on
Montse’s
face, nothing will.
Come on.’
The brothers moved quietly forward and crouched down to take aim.

The large grey rabbit was chewing happily on grass, oblivious of the danger slowly approaching from his rear.
The bus off
in the distance winding its way slowly up the hill gave him no pause.

***

Liam was already bored.
The Arabs in front of him sat chattering as the old diesel engine laboured its way up the winding mountain pass.
He was trying to make a plan, but there was little he could do until he found out which ferry they were headed for and where their destination was beyond that.
Then he would call Turner to see if he could figure out what the target might be, for there obviously was one.
Beyond that he didn’t see what else
he could do.

He glanced out of the window and saw a sign telling him they were 19km from
Organyà
as he fingered
The Killer
in his hand.
The comforting hiss of the blade as it moved in and out of the handle gave him his only distraction from the monotony of the journey.

As they crested the brow of a the hill Liam saw a dense thicket of trees and bushes.
A strange glint caught his attention.
The incessant Arabic chatter increased as the other passengers saw it too.
A few meters further and the glint turned into the window of a truck hidden in the bushes and then several men appeared.
Two of them were in uniform, maybe Guardia Civil, but it was the others who concerned him.
A sixth sense kicked in and he briefly thought of deniable Americans as his hand tightened on
The
Killer
and he smashed its rear bolster at the window.

***

Esteban took final aim on the rabbit and pulled the trigger.
There was a loud report from the gun and then an even louder explosion as a bus careened into the trees at the far side of the road and blew up in a huge fiery ball.

The brothers jumped to their feet in shock as flames and smoke billowed from the bushes. ‘I, I didn’t do that,’ stammered Esteban eventually, his voice a dry, raspy croak.
‘Did I?’

Alex turned to his brother ashen faced.
‘Holy-fucking-Christ, I hope not.’

‘
Sh
…should we get out of here or should we try to help?’

‘
I don’t know…
I think…
Oh my God!’

The brothers looked at each other,
then
began running in the direction of the carnage.
A large grey rabbit came out of its petrified trance and hopped away in the opposite direction.

‘Over here, over here, look,’ yelled Alex as he ran down the road, Esteban at his heels.
Liam struggled through the haze of unconsciousness and thought there
was
smoke and two men banging on his legs before his eyesight failed.
Within seconds everything was black.

‘What have we done?
What have we done?’
Esteban yelled when they were sure
they had extinguished the smouldering legs of the man on the ground.
‘Is anyone else alive?’

‘
No chance,’ said Alex as he looked at the burning bus.
‘Is that a truck?
Where the fuck did that come from?’
He started back towards the wreckage but the heat was too intense to let him get close and then he screamed out as he stood on the remains of an arm.
‘Oh Jesus, I’m
gonna
be sick.
Let’s get out of here.
The police will be here in no time.’

‘
Should we stay and tell them what happened?’

‘
What can we say?
We shot a rabbit and a bus exploded?
No, man, they’ll never believe us.
We’ll be days in the cells.’

‘
So what about him?’ asked Esteban, indicating the prone body at his feet.
‘He saw us.
He could talk.’

‘
I don’t know, I don’t know, but…
Look, we can’t leave him.’

‘
Right.
Let’s go then.’

***

Montse
stared in disbelief as she opened the door in response to her brothers’ ragged cries.
They were staggering towards her, a man’s body between them.
‘What in God’s name?’ she began then ran out to them.
‘Is he alive?’

‘
Yes, yes,’ Alex panted.

‘
What happened to him?
Oh my God,’ she breathed as she took a close look.
‘This
man needs a hospital.
We must call the police.
We must…’

‘
No.
No police,’ Esteban croaked.
‘Just help him,
Montse
, help him.
If he dies I think we’ll go to Hell.’

‘
Oh, Holy Mother save us.
What have you done?’