THE FIX: SAS hero turns Manchester hitman (A Rick Fuller Thriller Book 1) (27 page)

Des Cogan's Story:

My train journey had been torturous. It was my own fault. I’d missed my connection at Carlisle and ended up on the Blackpool to Manchester Airport train. Jesus, they never changed. They still had filthy carriages, with not enough seats to go around, noisy engines and a jarring ride. The table in front of me was covered in graffiti and inhabited by a woman and two kids who all smelled of vomit. I’d travelled on trains all over the world. Ours were slightly better than Sri Lanka’s.

I just knew Rick and Lauren would have made their timetable and would be sitting pretty in their respective hotels by the time I’d made Oxford Road. It didn’t help that the train stopped every fuckin’ ten minutes. Chorley, Addlington, Blackrod and God knows what other one horse towns.

Finally, just before midday, my rust-bucket attempt at a train pulled into Manchester and I stepped onto an equally grubby station platform. Oxford Road was a grand sounding place but in comparison to its neighbour, Piccadilly, it was very much the poor relation. Its overgrown railway tracks to the north and a filthy pale green fence to the south set the scene, and three aging platforms awash with disgruntled passengers told the story. Oxford Road was in pretty poor shape.

I’d been dying for a brew since Preston, but ignored the station coffee shop as it looked similar to the station itself. Instead I walked a few yards down the station approach and found Java.

It was a little independent coffee house, not connected to any chain, like Nero or Starbucks. Best of all, it still allowed lepers like me to smoke inside.

I ordered a cappuccino and a cheese toasty, grabbed a gratis copy of the
Daily Mirror
and lit my wee pipe. Two young guys behind the counter insisted on calling me ‘mate’ every other syllable, but the coffee was good and the sandwich did the trick.

I read the paper, drained my pot and walked the couple of hundred yards to the Novotel. I stowed my kit, had a shower and by the time I’d fannied around looking for Phones 4U and bought the obligatory item, I was ready for a pint.

Rick hadn’t said anything about keeping a low profile, but it wasn’t in my nature to stand out. I decided to go straight to a pub I knew.

‘The Monkey’ was as quirky as its name suggested, just a short walk from where Rick was staying.

I had a couple of pints of average Guinness, smoked a little too much and allowed my mind to wander. My conscience spent its time chastising me for my sins in the graveyard in Moston. The little boy with the stomach injury sneaked into my head and wouldn’t leave me alone, and then for some reason I was transported back to the Sudan and a village massacre we came across whilst patrolling with the local recruits.

More young lives snuffed out, horribly mutilated by murderous tribesmen.

I drained my pint and ordered a large whisky. I rubbed my face with my hands and wondered why I tortured myself, best not to think too much eh?

I left The Monkey and made it to the Irish pub, O’Shea’s, and was hoping for better vibes and company.

I should have known Rick would kick off.

Rick Fuller's Story:

“Rick! Rick!”

I could hear Des shouting after me, despite that fucking music. The tourists and the Celtic fans might go for that shit, but to me, Paddy rebel songs weren’t entertainment. Once you’ve seen your wife with the side of her face missing, Irish music in general loses its quaint charm.

Why arrange the meet in an Irish boozer then?

Because, normally, I could take it. I’d lived with it for years. I was better than it. It was convenient.

“Rick! Fer fuck’s sake, hold up.”

I couldn’t stop walking. I passed the doorman and knocked his shoulder with mine. He gave me the evils. If he’d said a word at that point, I’d have blown the whole job and slotted him.

“Rick!”

I was on the street walking fast and the cold hit my face. The area around my new scar tingled as the air played with brand new skin. I strode on across the junction toward Piccadilly bus station and my hotel. Two obviously gay men held hands in front of me.

I turned to the right into Canal Street and the music changed to Kylie and Shirley. Despite the cold, the street was busy with revellers. Straight couples mixed with transsexuals. Shaven-headed lesbians laughed with suited Japanese tourists, it was a smorgasbord of humanity, all bent on having a good time.

I heard Des, he hadn’t given up, “You stubborn bastard, stop.”

A guy, my size with a number one crew cut, dressed in nothing but leather chaps and a waistcoat, took one look at Des chasing me and called out,

“If I were you, darling’, I’d slow down a bit. He’s just gorgeous!”

I stopped. REM blasted from the bar on my left. Two pretty young girls staggered from the doorway and snogged passionately yards from me. I was in another world.

My anger subsided; the Irish music no longer haunted me.

I turned to see Des walking through the crowd. He’d left his coat in the pub. He sported Levis, a white, cotton Lacoste T-shirt and a whiter smile. He thumbed over his shoulder in the direction of O’Shea’s.

“Get back in the bar, yer bollocks.”

He stopped inches from my face. I lowered my voice as much as I could in the din of Canal Street.

“Look, it’s got nothing to do with you and Lauren. I’m going to my hotel, Des. That’s all. There’s no hidden agenda.”

Des gripped my forearm. There was no revulsion at his touch. I welcomed it.

“Come on, just one more beer.”

I stalled. I knew what I’d become. I knew Lauren was right. What was the true worth of my recent loss? How could it compare? It was cash, dirty money too. Des would give his life for me. He had, once again, saved my arse. I put my arm around him.

My brother in arms.

“Come on then, let’s fuck off.”

We walked down the remainder of Canal Street to cheers and wolf whistles from the balcony bar. We knew how it looked but I kept my arm around Des all the way to O’Shea’s.

Lauren North's Story:

It was good to see the boys relaxed.

We had denied ourselves all alcohol during our three-month stay in Scotland. The punishing fitness regime we had all completed had been at the expense of any form of R and R. I knew my body had changed shape. The jeans I wore were slack around my waist but tight on my thighs. I had biceps and triceps for the first time in my life.

I looked at myself in the grubby mirror of the pub toilets. I was still Lauren, but a fitter, stronger Lauren. It was my first real comprehension of what I was about to become.

A crowd of teenage girls bounced into the room behind me, full of attitude. One pushed me roughly to get a look in the mirror. Without warning, adrenaline hammered its way around my body and I felt the rush. Better than sex, they say.

I turned toward them, instantly on my guard. All four fell silent and looked at me. Then I saw it. I saw the fear in their eyes. They were actually frightened of me.

“Excuse me, ladies,” I said as they parted like a sea. I pushed open the toilet door and walked back to our table, smiling.    

Despite all Rick’s posturing we had a ball in O’Shea’s. We drank and we danced. We laughed, yes actually laughed. 

We became close that night; something unsaid; something immeasurable; something exceptional.

If you were to ask Des or Rick about the defining moment in our relationship, I reckon it would be the night in O’Shea’s.

Sometimes, it is the smallest thing that makes you realise you have made the right choice. It can be something as simple as a look, or a shared joke. I felt at home. I suddenly realised just how lonely I’d become before meeting these two men. There is a song. I can’t remember who sang it or anything else about it other than one line. It went, ‘I’m tired of being alone and calling it freedom.’

There’s nothing free about planning your life around a shift rota and the television pages; nothing liberating about cruising singles bars with people as sad and alone as you in the hope of some fleeting excitement; and nothing healing about taking a beating for expressing an opinion in your own home. No, walking into the canteen and sitting opposite Des had been liberating, healing and exciting. All the very things I had sought, the very things I had promised myself as a young woman were now in my hands and the beauty of it all was the men in my life wanted nothing more from me than trust.

Before we all knew it, the lights in the bar were raised and the band was packing away their instruments. I checked my watch and saw it was one a.m.

Rick raised his glass.

“To the three of us.”

“To the three of us,” we mimicked.

Des had a glint in his eye. He was the happiest I’d seen him.

“Here’s tae us,” he proposed. “Them that’s like us. Damned few, and they’re all deed.”

We all drained our glasses. I felt like part of the Three Musketeers. Little did I know what being part of the team would mean, and what difficulties were to come.

The RP remained the same. Four a.m. at Hulme Street car park. No allowance from Rick or Des for the late hour. I lay in my bed and stared at the anonymous ceiling. I couldn’t sleep; part fear, part excitement.

We were to pay a visit to Joel Davies’s house.

Was he still alive? Was his house in the same state as Rick’s flat? Or had Stern gone through the whole of the Manchester drug scene like a plague of locusts, devouring all in his path, taking anything of value and wiping out all living things in his way, carving his own path to fantastic riches and power?

This action could put our heads above the parapet for the first time since Rick and Des’s return from Holland. Once we started this operation our cover was blown and we would be visible. If you were an enemy of Mr. Stern it appeared to be a very unhealthy state of affairs.

It was the only lead we had. Let’s face it. Everyone else connected the Amsterdam job was probably dead.

At three a.m. I gave up any idea of sleep and took a long hot shower. I scraped back my hair and dressed quickly. Finally I removed the Sig from its hiding place, took thirteen rounds from the box of ammunition and carefully filled the magazine as Des had taught me. When the last bullet was loaded, I pushed the magazine into the butt of the gun and slid back the mechanism. This action chambered the first round and made the gun ready to fire. I applied the safety and pushed the weapon into the waistband of my jeans.

Once again I found myself in front of the mirror. Half of me felt like Al Pacino, the other half, like a delirious fool.

With one last deep breath, I pulled on my coat and headed for the lift.

Rick Fuller's Story:

I got just two hours kip before the receptionist called my room at three-thirty a.m.

For the first time in years, I felt really alive and ready to do business again. Somehow, the scene in the pub had cleared my mind.

I’d become a man who owned everything, but had nothing. I used to look at rich guys, driving around in their flash cars, and say,
fuckin’ hell Rick, one day, that’ll be you there, mate
.

Manchester made that little dream come true.

I’d started out with the intention of making a quick buck, and maybe doing one to Asia. Running away from my problems seemed a good idea at the time. But I stayed in Manchester, and made more money than I could have ever imagined.

Now, I had a big hole where a five-hundred-pound gold tooth once lived, and legs that looked like the surface of Mars. Suffice to say, I hadn’t a pot to piss in, but if I was honest, I wasn’t fucking arsed about any of it. None of it really mattered anymore, all I knew was at last I was around people of substance. People who genuinely cared about the same things as me.             

I don’t know if it was the bullet from Stephan’s gun, that selfless care that Lauren brought to me, or Des just being, well, Des, but I felt good.

Really good.

I’d packed everything I could into a small holdall. Entry devices, camouflage, recording equipment and spare ammunition, anything that we might need for a covert entry to the house.

If we could get in and out without drama it would be a Godsend, although from what I’d seen earlier, it would be a miracle.

I kept that little gem to myself.

If we had to fight our way in and out then so be it. It was the worst case scenario, but I was in the mood to do some damage.

To gain entry to a house like Joel Davies’s, you needed a considerable amount of skill, bottle, and inside knowledge. I knew enough about Davies’s security to get us inside. I had codes for the gates, entry doors, garage, even his safe. My biggest hope was Joel’s old computer was still there.

If it was, we’d nick it. Knowledge is king, my mate.

We had enough weaponry to start a small urban war and when I got the chance, I intended to use mine.

For ten years I’d been convinced that the Secret Services had sold me to the enemy and instigated Cathy’s murder. They had worked hand in hand with a terrorist organisation to meet their own ends. I knew that everyone thought I was mad, that I was fucked up in my own world of grief, but I knew that governments didn’t play by the same rules as us mere mortals. They had different agendas; they had targets and budgets that could not be broken. Failure was unacceptable.

The one thing that I never told Des, or any living soul, was what I saw that night in Ireland at the DLB.

Despite my silence, forty-eight hrs later Cathy was torn to pieces by the IRA. There was no question which organisation carried out the killing. But who ordered it, and held the information to enable it to happen was a different matter. Was it a warning or was I supposed to get the good news too?

Either way, the murderous bastards had returned to their hole over the water, leaving me alive on the outside but very much dead within. That morning Des had whisked me away and, not to put too fine a point on it, I’d been running ever since.

Now, a decade later I had a familiar feeling in my gut. It wasn’t pleasant.

I recalled that Susan knew about my past in Amsterdam. Then Stephan read my life story to me, before trying me out as Gordon Ramsey’s next big dish.

He could only have received that information from one place.

Once again I'd studied the data that we had at our disposal. A major criminal organisation had access to military records of the highest order. No question.

These guys had the power to asset strip bank accounts from all over the world. The power of the organisation came from the highest sources of business or government.

On leaving the hotel, I walked briskly back toward Oxford Road and onto Hulme Street. I passed by regenerated warehouses which lodged some of Manchester’s student village. I eventually saw the Vectra, bathed in sodium light, surrounded by rusting chain-link fencing. The car park gates were left ajar permanently. National car parks had grown tired of replacing locks. The street was deserted.

I opened the car, stowed my bag and checked my watch. It showed three-fifty a.m. I sat in the driver’s seat with the engine off. The last thing I needed was a nosey copper.

At three fifty-five Des came into view. He sauntered along past the grubby Salvation Army hostel. A single bulb appeared on the second floor and bathed him in light. I heard a raised voice from the building. Some tortured soul barking at the moon.

Des reached the car. I popped the boot using the remote switch and felt a blast of cold as Des sat alongside me.

“Alright,” he said.

“Yep.”

“Lauren is just behind me. I saw her crossing at the Palace Hotel.”

I motioned forward.

“She’s here now.”

Lauren didn’t stride with Des’s confidence, but she looked positive enough.

“You think she’s up to this, Des?”

Des nodded.

“She’s a natural, Rick. Trust me.”

I did, so there was no more to be said.

The rear door of the car was pulled open. Lauren threw her bag on the back seat and flopped down after it. I could smell Tisserand and for a second I thought of Tanya.

“Sober?” I asked.

“As your proverbial judge, mate,” she said. She looked at her watch, smiled at Des and added, “What are we waiting for?”

Des turned to me.

“We off then, boss?”

I started the engine and pulled the car onto the road.

We rode in silence, each member of the team deep in their own private thoughts. I stuck rigidly to the speed limits. The last thing we needed was a pull. We would have all gone to jail for a long stretch with the firepower we were carrying. It took thirty minutes or so to get to our next stop, the LUP or ‘lying up point,’ as it was known in the Regiment. It was a safe place to sit and kit up. I had selected it from memory.

Davies’s house was nothing less than a fortress. It was surrounded by eighteen hundred feet of eight-foot wall, covered by thirty CCTV cameras. Motion sensors covered large parts of the grounds. I knew where, I’d designed his security. That, in itself, meant the security system posed little problem even if someone had decided to change his security codes, I had the override. I was pretty confident.

I’d visited Joel’s old house straight after my devastating visit to my own Salford Keys pad. It had been most enlightening. The house was very much inhabited.

Several vehicles came and went in the short period I was there. The people driving those cars were our enemy. The suits, the cars, the haircuts. Yes deffo, Stern had taken Joel’s home from him, just like he had taken mine. In Joel’s case, though, the team had taken root.

Despite my anger, I knew we had to attempt a covert entry and at least endeavour to stay under the radar for a while longer.

The LUP was situated some five hundred meters from the main house. It was a small car park at the rear of two shops that served the village. Both shops opened at a reasonable hour and both were of the lock-up variety with no one living above. The car park itself was shrouded by mature trees. With a little luck we would be safe there until daylight. We could sit, brief and kit up.

Once we were parked, Des got out a small flask and we all had a brew whilst I went through each team member’s respective tasks.

I had a full floorplan of the house and grounds. Davies had given them to me when I had reviewed his security. I had scanned them into my home computer and they were saved with all the other stuff I’d left in my Bergen. To the rear of the house was a raised section of rough ground that acted as a natural vantage point. Des was to set himself up there and watch the rear. Despite the high wall, the annex that housed the staff and the CCTV monitoring station could be seen from there. Should there be any signs of life in the CCTV room Des could tip us off before we started the entry. The two poor bastards that had been Joel’s staff probably held up the same section of motorway that he himself did.

The hope was the annex and the monitoring room would be in darkness. Once inside we would steal anything of use and get the fuck out before anyone was wiser. If Joel’s computer was still lurking around it would be a bonus. Information, at this stage, was king.

We had shortwave comms for two but not for Lauren, so she would have to stay with me. When the all clear came from Des, we’d enter the grounds through the front gate. Once we’d made the front door we would have to hold. Des had to get from his observation post, scale the rear wall and make to an entrance on the east side. That would take him seven minutes.

On my call we would enter the building simultaneously, locate a computer that had been useless to the new occupiers for the last three months, and steal its hard drive.

Easy, eh?

As soon as I’d finished my spiel, Des was out of the car and pulling on his camouflage gear. I watched him check and re-check each piece of kit he carried, which included the .222 rifle should he need to drop anyone from a distance. Finally, he gave me a quick ‘thumbs up’ and pressed his comms pretzel twice. I returned the gesture to inform him the shortwave was working in my ear and he disappeared into the night.

Lauren sat motionless in the Vectra. I popped my head into the open window.

“Get your kit together, we’ll move as soon as Des is on plot.”

She didn’t speak, but simply stuck to her instructions, and started to pull on her overalls. She was indeed beautiful. There, at four in the morning, bitter cold, no make-up, with little sleep, she shone.

“You nervous?” I asked.

“A little,” she said, and gave a brief smile.

“Everyone is. I mean, even experienced guys in the Regiment get nervous. It’s a good thing. Use it, Lauren. Use it to your advantage; to stay focused.”

She slid from the back seat, stood, and faced me. She held the silver SIG in one hand and two spare magazines in the other. The black Special Forces overalls she wore hid her figure, but nothing could dull her radiance.

“I’m sure you and Des will look after me. Besides, I never felt like this when I was changing bedpans.”

She pushed the magazines into pouches in her suit, pulled on her balaclava and adjusted her hood.

“I’m ready,” she said.

I pushed the rear door of the car closed and locked it using the remote. Even though I knew all my kit was in the right place and working perfectly, I checked all the pockets on my overalls to ensure nothing was going to fall out or make any noise.

I rolled down my balaclava and pulled up my flameproof hood to match Lauren. I gestured her over and we checked each other, just like divers do before entering the water. Not even the SAS can see behind their backs, and a loose flap can ruin everything on a covert entry.

I heard two short bursts of white noise in my right ear, which told me Des had got himself in position. I motioned to Lauren and, using the shadows of the high walls surrounding all the properties in the area, we walked into the darkness of the street.

There was the slightest hint of daylight in the sky and the solid black of mature branches swayed above us in the breeze.

Over five silent minutes passed until we reached Davies’s electric gates which cast a striped shadow against us.

I motioned Lauren to stay in the darkness whist we waited for Des to report in. Within seconds I heard the shortwave click and Des’s voice.

“All quiet, Rick.”

I punched in the six digit entry code I had personally written for my old boss, and the gates silently opened. We were in. No turning back.

My heart rate increased as we carefully made our way across the pathway. We had to avoid any censors which might set off the security system. I had studied the layout, and knew the location of every one. By the time we had reached the front door I was sweating under my hood. It felt good. For the first time in months, I was back in business, back doing what I did best. This time, though, my motives were totally different.

The house had two large bay windows to each side of a centrally placed main entrance. A pair of very solid looking oak doors, beautifully varnished and sporting large oval brass handles, barred our way. A rectangular keypad glowed green to the right of the doors.

The place was in total darkness, which I found slightly unnerving. Lauren was in a crouch to the left of the doorway, her arms outstretched, pointing her pistol at the firmly locked doors.

I waited and listened. People forget their ears when they get scared. That’s why you hear of people who have run out into the path of a speeding car when being chased by some bruiser or other silly drama.

It’s the first sense we lose when stressed. You can hear your heart and your lungs working fucking overtime, but not the express train that is about to kill you.

So, in this scenario, you wait, let your heart rate fall, let your breathing return to normal and, most of all, listen.