Crisis Four (58 page)
Authors: Andy McNab
There couldn’t have been much of the stuff left to be pumped around, but adrenalin was getting me up and moving.
She’d be here soon. The Secret Service would bring the principals down to the shelter until everything was clear, and she’d aim to cut them off.
I crashed through the two doors and looked up just as Sarah was taking her last steps down the spiral stairs. She was going shit or bust, head down, pistol in hand.
I couldn’t think of anything else to do but throw myself at her in some sort of rugby tackle. Perhaps it would have helped if I’d ever played a game of rugby.
I collapsed against her, throwing my arms around her waist and linking them together behind her back as her momentum propelled me backwards into the swing doors.
She was still moving, taking me with her, cracking me on the head with her pistol. By now I really couldn’t feel that much. My arms slipped down to her legs and she started to fall with me.
The fire doors flew open again as we burst through. We both hit the ground and the doors swung back, trapping my lower legs.
She was stretched out, her back on the floor, and I was wrapped in a mess around her feet. I could make out the pistol was still in her hand.
My guts wrenched and screamed as I kicked my legs free from the doors and scrambled up her body, slapping my hand down heavily on her forearm to hold the weapon down. She kicked and bucked to try and get me off her. She was like an insect on its back, frantic to get upright.
I became aware of screaming, shouting and heavy footsteps echoing round the area, but it was as if a mute button had been hit, and everything was happening a long way away.
I didn’t care where the noise was coming from. All that mattered was her left hand, which was going for Davy’s pistol now that she couldn’t use hers. I could feel it in her waistband as I moved further up her body. Her resistance got stronger; it was as if she was having some sort of fit, her head and body thrashing from side to side.
I put all my weight on her. It wasn’t that difficult, I was fucked. Her hand struggled to work its way between us towards the weapon. Our heads were so close together that I could feel her breath on my face. I had to head-butt her, there was no other way. She reacted noisily. The three times I made contact, I heard the back of her head bounce off the floor. It was messy, but it slowed her up.
My head now hurt almost as much as my stomach. I was in shit state. Keeping my forehead pushed against hers, blood dripping from my mouth and nose, I prised the gun out of her grip as she tried to clear her nose and mouth.
I rammed the barrel into her windpipe and looked at her, my forehead still putting pressure on hers. She didn’t return my stare as I tried to focus, just closed her eyes and tensed her body as she waited for death. Our bodies rose and fell with her laboured breathing as the doors were kicked open and I began to make sense of the shouting from behind me. The mute button had been deactivated. ‘Release the weapon! Release the weapon now! Do it!’
I thought about it for the two seconds I would have before they pulled or shot me off her.
Her body relaxed and she opened her eyes and looked at me. It was almost an order. ‘Do it… please.’
Fuck it. I tilted the gun upwards and it slid two inches until it jammed under her chin. Pointing it towards her skull, I let my head move aside. Her eyes followed mine as I flicked off the safety and pulled the trigger.
Blood and splintered bone splashed onto the side of my face.
I’d finished the job I’d been ordered to do; that was what I made myself think. A moment later I felt the pain shoot up my arm as someone kicked the pistol out of my hand.
I was manhandled onto my back. I looked up and there was ERT black everywhere, then Josh loomed over me, blocking out everything else, blood dripping onto me from the mess on his face. They tried to pull him off me as he started to give me a good kicking. It wasn’t working.
I turned on my side and curled up to protect myself, and through the haze I could hear orders being shouted and the general confusion around me.
I was losing it. Josh was still screaming above me, and managed a few more kicks. It didn’t matter, I could no longer feel them. What I really wanted to happen, did. I became unconscious.
JUNE 1998
June 1998
I came out of the flat on Cambridge Street, checked I’d put the key on the ring of my Leatherman and closed the door behind me. It was a strange feeling, being a virtual prisoner here in Pimlico. I’d brought plenty of worried-looking people here in the past, but never imagined that some day I’d be one of the victims myself.
The debrief was taking for ever. The Firm were trying to strike a deal with the Americans. Both sides wanted this to go away, and they weren’t the only ones. It had been four weeks since I’d come out of hospital, and I’d been confined to the area ever since, under what amounted to house arrest. I was getting paid, and at operational rate, but it still wasn’t a good day out.
None of my injuries hurt much any more, but I still needed bucketloads of antibiotics. The entry wound had sealed up quite well. All that was left was a dent in my stomach, coloured the same vivid pink as the puncture wounds in my arm.
Walking down the last couple of stone steps to the pavement, I looked to my left at the crowd enjoying an end-of-the-week drink at the picnic tables outside the pub. Friday evening’s rush hour had turned the whole street into a carpark. The traffic fumes were cooking up nicely in the early evening sun. The heat was unusual for this time of year. It felt more like Los Angeles than London.
I crossed between the stationary vehicles, heading for the all-in-one shop on the corner. The Asian father and son combo were used to me now; dad started folding a copy of the
Evening Standard
as soon as he saw me come in. I felt like a local. Weaving back over the road, I headed for the pub. There were just as many people inside, and above the din Robbie Williams was giving it full volume on the sound system. The smell of smoke, stale beer and body odour reminded me not to come here again. It did that every night.
Evening Standard
as soon as he saw me come in. I felt like a local. Weaving back over the road, I headed for the pub. There were just as many people inside, and above the din Robbie Williams was giving it full volume on the sound system. The smell of smoke, stale beer and body odour reminded me not to come here again. It did that every night.
I worked my way towards the rear, where I knew it wouldn’t be so packed, and, besides, that was where the food was. I’d started to recognize some of the regulars – sad fucks like me, with nowhere else to go, or office workers big-timing it, or old men smoking their roll-ups and spending an hour nursing a warm pint.
I asked for my usual bottle of Pils and, helping myself to a handful of peanuts from one of the bowls, headed for a booth. The one with the most room was occupied by an old man who looked as if he’d just come from a British Legion outing, all tie and association badges. He couldn’t have been there long; his bottle of light ale hadn’t yet been poured into his half of bitter.
‘Anyone sitting here, mate?’
He looked up and shook his head. I eased myself into the seat slowly, taking care that my jeans didn’t ride up and expose the tag around my right ankle. Taking a swig of Pils, I opened the newspaper.
It was all the usual doom and gloom. Ethiopian and Eritrean forces had stopped bombing the shit out of each other with their MIG 23s to give foreign nationals time to be airlifted from the war zone. That was the sort of work I liked, just plain and simple war. You knew where you stood with that shit.
I scanned the rest of the news sections, but there was still nothing about what had happened in Washington. Still no mention of the injuries to the ERT guy and Josh, and I knew now that there never would be. Lynn had given me the American party line during one of our little evening rides around town. The press release was short: a stressed-out member of the domestic staff had become temporarily deranged in the White House basement. It was a minor incident, dealt with in minutes. The three world leaders hadn’t been made aware until well after the event. The most the story ever got was a column inch in the following day’s
Washington Post
.
Washington Post
.
I was glad the ERT guy hadn’t died. He’d just been wounded in the thigh – something to tell the grandchildren about. Josh had got it big time in the face. Lynn said the round had split the flesh on the right side and made his mouth look as if it ended by his ear. I’d been told the surgery was a success, but I doubted he’d ever be modelling for Calvin Klein.
My one hope was that his Christian thing would work in my favour. Sitting in the flat a few days earlier, waiting for the debriefing team to arrive, I’d been listening to Thought for the Day on the radio. ‘If you can’t forgive the sin,’ the voice had said, ‘at least try to forgive the sinner.’ Sounded good to me. I just hoped Josh could get Radio Four in his truck.
I hadn’t spoken to him yet; I’d wait a while, give him time to calm down, and me time to work out what the fuck I was going to say.
I hadn’t seen Kelly since the Americans released me into the Firm’s custody. We’d spoken on the phone, and she thought I was still away working. She said that Josh had called. He’d told her nothing about what had happened, just that Sarah and I had visited.
I still had no regrets about killing Sarah. The only thing that pissed me off was that every time in my life I’d let someone get close to me, they fucked me over. Everybody, that is, apart from Kelly. It seemed to be my job to do that to her.
I’d blown it again by making promises I couldn’t keep. She still wanted to go to the Bloody Tower, and she wanted to go with me. Three times now I’d arranged it, only to cancel at the last minute because the debrief dragged on. At least she was going to her grandparents this weekend. Carmen and Jimmy would spoil her rotten.
I took another long swig of Pils – fuck the antibiotics, I usually forgot to take them anyway – and checked Baby-G. They started serving in twenty minutes.
The debrief was going OK, I thought, but you never knew with these people. I wasn’t getting as hard a time of it as I might, mainly because Lynn and Elizabeth were potentially in just as much shit as I was and were taking measures to cover their arses. Even so, every event of those five days was being dissected in great detail. Not documented, of course. How could it be; it hadn’t happened.
Not that any of it meant much. I was lying to the team, using a script supplied by the good colonel. I’d RV with him each evening, and the Serb would give us a few laps of London. As Lynn had said, ‘You need guiding, Nick, on some of the more, shall we say, delicate areas of the operation.’ And, of course, to avoid the slight problem of the T104, since not even the investigation crew would be aware that such things existed. The only ones in the know were lowlife like me, Elizabeth and Lynn. To the investigators, I didn’t even have a name; I was just referred to as the ‘paid asset’. That suited me just fine.
Lynn had already told me that I’d been sent on the job because, if anyone could find her, I could. But I knew there was more to it than that. It had become blindingly obvious that those two fuckers had known all along what she was up to, and thought I’d be so pissed off with her I’d feed her through the grinder without a second thought.
They’d even known where she was hiding, but wanted me to go through the process of finding her. They reckoned that if I thought I’d tracked her down through my own efforts, and if what I saw on the ground confirmed their story, that would put me even more in the mood.
There were still loose ends, of course. I still couldn’t work out if Metal Mickey was part of Lynn’s game or not. After all, Lynn did say he was loyal. But to whom? Fuck it, who cared? It just annoyed me that these people could never just tell it straight. Why bother to tell me all that bullshit? I would still have done the job if I’d known the truth. The fucking games they played pissed me off, and worse, they put me in danger.
Naturally, nothing in the big picture had been changed by Sarah’s death. Bin Laden was still out there doing his stuff. Yousef had closed down, but he’d probably resurface in a year or two. And I still wasn’t going to be getting permanent cadre: they said I’d be a disruptive influence on the team. I’d tried to get a bung instead, claiming that what happened in the White House might have been my fuck-up, but I did stop the president from being shot. Well… you have to elaborate a bit. It didn’t work. Even the deafest old duffer in the pub must have heard their laughter. All I got was the promise that if a single word came from my lips that was ‘off-message’, I was history.
My major concern now was, what did I get up to after this? I needed to get some real money together so I didn’t have to carry on getting fucked over by these people. Maybe I’d take a look at the American rewards programme. Bounty hunting terrorists, white supremacists and South American drug dealers wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I could try and recover those Stingers from the muj. Who knows?
The bottle was empty. People were three deep at the bar and it took ages to get myself another. As I rejoined my mate in the booth, I was again careful not to expose the light-grey band of plastic around my ankle, housing its two inch by two inch box of electronics. I checked my watch again; just over ten minutes till the peanuts disappeared and the menus were put on the bar. Not that I needed one. I knew it off by heart.
I thought about Sarah again. I’d learned more about her in my stints with Lynn than I had in all the time I’d known her. I’d always felt that she was holding something back from me, and in my stupid way I’d decided it was because she was scared of intimacy.
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