DELIVERANCE: a gripping action thriller full of suspense (3 page)

Chapter Four

Charlie has reached Winton.

He no longer feels tired, but he rents a room in a motel anyway and pays in cash. Once inside, he picks up the phone next to the bed and dials a local number from memory. He allows it to ring twice before hanging up – a prearranged signal for his contact.

Ten minutes later Charlie stands in a back alley whilst his contact – Tom – hands him a fishing rod carry case. But there is no fishing rod inside. Charlie takes the case and places it in his car alongside a fishing box and a net.

Clever Charlie.

Now the L96A1 rifle hidden in the fishing rod case looks right at home amongst the rest of the fishing gear that Charlie stole from the back of the truck on the way out of St. George. Next, Tom hands Charlie a box marked
hooks
, which contains the rifle’s ammunition. A single 7.62x51 millimetre 10 round magazine. Once the box is stowed alongside the rifle, Charlie returns to Tom.

‘I wasn’t here,’ he states simply.

‘Yes, Charlie.’

‘How’s your daughter, Claire? How is she settling into St. George?’

Tom’s face drains of colour.

‘How is her little girl too?’ Charlie adds. ‘Rosie, I think her name is.’

‘I don’t know, Charlie,’ Tom replies shakily. ‘I haven’t spoken to Claire in a while.’

‘You called her yesterday at 16:43 hours,’ Charlie snaps. ‘The call lasted seven minutes. You shouldn’t lie to me Tom. You know I hate that.’

‘Sorry, Charlie.’

‘Seeing as you can’t remember though, I’ll tell you. She is doing just fine. She looks good in fact, and Rosie is almost walking now.’

Tom’s eyes brim with tears.

‘I was never here, Tom.’

With that, Charlie hands Tom a photograph. Then he gets back into the car, and drives away.

Tom shivers as he looks down at the picture. It is a photograph of Claire and Rosie, clearly taken recently.

Charlie heads back to the hotel where he will sleep for four hours before continuing on his way.

Now he is nearer to Sarah, and armed.

Fifteen hours to go.

In Davenport, Sarah lies in the backyard following Bruce’s attack. She is naked from the waist down and covered in dirt.

Once Bruce finished indulging his depravity, he kicked her once in the ribs and then headed back into the house. Sarah can hear him snoring loudly on the sofa. She sits up and drags herself to her feet. Then, whilst glaring directly through the open back door at Bruce’s sleeping form, she strides towards the house on shaking legs. She pauses at the rusty barbecue nearby for a second and looks down. Then, with a slight nod, she picks up the skewer from the filthy grill, and then heads for the house once more. She stops momentarily as she reaches the door, frightened of the snoring figure twelve feet in front of her. But then the anger returns, and she continues onwards. She raises the skewer high above her head and tenses her muscles.

‘Think about it,’ Bruce says, without opening his eyes. ‘It’s not me that owns you. So if I die, there will be someone else to replace me.’

Crestfallen, Sarah allows the skewer to fall from her fingers a second before Bruce’s right hand snakes outwards, smashing into her thigh. The unexpected blow deadens her leg and sends her crashing towards the floor where her head connects with the fireplace.

She is immobile, but still breathing.

Alive.

For now at least.

***

High above Australia now, Marshall feels the plane begin to descend once more, and realizes that his thinking time has brought him all of the way to Alice Springs. This is the final leg of the journey; just under 500 km to go.

Once the landing is complete, Marshall is ushered into a small outbuilding. He is told to wait until the helicopter is ready for take-off, but he doesn’t mind. The inevitable memories of the Anderson torture are already looming in his mind. He dispels them by deciding to get changed. He removes his clothes, stripping completely naked. There is nobody else in the outbuilding, but even if there was, the army removes any timidity very quickly. Once naked, he opens the mini kit package to find the night patrol outfit is packed on top as it should be. He puts the trousers straight on without anything underneath them; it was always an old ritual of his not to wear underwear. Then he dons the long sleeved top. It is made from a special synthetic fibre for minimum thickness, but maximum heat retention. Next, he pulls on the tight windbreaker, and then places the utility belt around his waist. It consists of three holding units: a knife sheath, a pistol holster and night vision scope holder. They are spaced equally around the belt. He then removes the knife from the package, sheathes it, and clips it into place. He stows the night vision scope in its holster and reaches in for the pistol. He is hoping for a Browning or a Sig Sauer P226, or P230, but any reliable handgun will suffice.

But there is no gun.

He looks again thoroughly.

Still no gun.

It’s a standard SAS mini pack; even the boots are present. But there is definitely no gun in it. That would mean that Mason has removed the gun from the package… but why? Marshall runs a few scenarios through his mind, but can’t come up with any plausible explanation. He briefly considers calling the captain back to get Mason on the radio, but there is no point. If Mason has removed the gun, there must be a good reason. Perhaps he field tested it and it wasn’t accurate? Or maybe a condition of the exemplary favour the army is granting with the transportation is
no armed civilians
. He doesn’t know, but he has to keep going. It certainly won’t be the first time he’s headed into the unknown with just a knife.

He finishes by lacing and tying off his boots. Tight, but not restrictive to ankle movement. He triple knots the laces, which is another ritual of his. He can imagine nothing worse than being killed because he has tripped over his own laces.

Once fully dressed, he sits down to succumb to the memory of Saunders.

He remembers the date clearly, it was the eighteenth of July 2007.

The day before his mother’s seventieth birthday.

Chapter Five

Marshall was twenty-nine when he received the call from the hospital four years previously.

He snatched up the handset, and his life began to change.

‘Mr Marshall?’ the doctor asked gravely.

‘Yes.’

‘Son of Elizabeth Marshall?’

‘Yes.’

‘We need you to get to Hereford County hospital immediately. Your mother is in a very serious condition.’

‘What happened?’ Marshall asked.

‘We are unsure. She was brought in by ambulance following a call from a neighbour. If I didn’t know better, I would say it was the result of some sort of chemical attack.’

‘Anthrax?’ Marshall asked.

‘Those are the precautions we are currently taking.’

‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes,’ Marshall assured the doctor.

‘Sooner if possible,’ the doctor urged.

Without hesitation Marshall grabbed his com link radio and called in an emergency 10-42:
Escort required
. The answer for a point to point escort was returned in seconds. Marshall gave his location as
on-post
, and the address of Hereford County hospital. Two Military Police vehicles arrived outside his door within three minutes, where Marshall was waiting in the car with the engine running.

He arrived at the hospital a blurred and swift fifteen minute drive later. A nurse quickly identified him and escorted him to the contamination department. Marshall could just about make out his mother’s form from the doorway, and it broke his heart. She was in an isolation booth while doctors bustled around her wearing HazMat suits.

She looked petrified.

Marshall immediately asked the doctor for a suit and was denied. He asked again calmly, and was denied a second time. Then he asked to speak to the doctor in the corridor.

Where he pulled out his gun.

He stuck it low down in the doctor’s gut and kept their bodies close so that the gun would not be visible to anybody else.

‘Listen to me very carefully,’ he said softly. ‘You will find me a suit and a face mask. You will then remove everyone else from the isolation booth. You are scaring the shit out of an already terrified old lady. I am with the army, and that is my mother. If you want me to sign something to say I will go in there knowing the risk, then get me a form. If not, find me a fucking suit right now. If you understand, just nod.’

The doctor nodded.

‘Move!’ shouted Marshall.

The doctor jumped, and ran for the door, leaving Marshall to wonder if he would head for security. But he looked to be heading for the changing facility. It would be a smart move. Marshall was in no mood to be fucked around.

The doctor returned two minutes later with a suit, a helmet, and a form.

‘You will need to sign this,’ he stated.

Marshall signed with one hand and started pulling the suit on with the other.

‘I know you asked for a face mask, but you will need to wear a full HazMat helmet,’ the doctor said haughtily.

‘Firstly,’ Marshall calmly replied, ‘If you speak to me in that tone again, I will break your arm. Secondly, I’ve had more Anthrax training than you will ever have. And thirdly, my mother is seventy years old. If there was enough Anthrax present to harm me after this amount of time, she would be dead already. Get me a face mask in the next forty-five seconds or you will be in a cast for a month.’

Rather than move, the doctor stood still with a stunned expression.

‘You now have thirty-nine seconds,’ Marshall advised.

Broken from his trance, the doctor ran for the door, and again, Marshall was left wondering where he would go. For a second time, the doctor made the right choice and was back with seven seconds to spare. He was panting and red in the face, but he was holding a face mask in his slightly shaking hand.

‘Thank you,’ Marshall told him. ‘Now clear everyone out of there.’

‘We are trying to save your mother life, sir,’ the doctor whined.

‘If it’s anthrax that she has been exposed to, she is already dead,’ Marshall told him clearly. ‘She just hasn’t closed her eyes yet. If it isn’t anthrax, then you don’t know what it is. So you can fuck off and run your tests whilst I speak to my mother alone for a moment.’

The doctor nodded slightly and scurried away.

Marshall waited two minutes, placed the face mask across his mouth at the last moment, and unzipped the side of the isolation tent. He stepped inside to find his mother crying, and realised he had never seen her cry before. Not even when his father died. He immediately removed his mask and bent down to hug his mother. At that point, he would gladly have died to give her some comfort.

‘You mustn’t,’ she told him in a hoarse tone. They were obviously keeping her nil by mouth ready to operate.

Idiots.

‘Ma, don’t panic please,’ Marshall told her soothingly. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘I know you do my sweet boy.’

He sat next to her on the bed and took her hands in his, noticing that they looked red raw.

‘What happened to your hands, Ma?’ he asked.

‘They scrubbed and cleaned, and then used some machine or other on them.’

‘What happened, Ma? How did you end up here?’

She took a few laboured breaths, and then Elizabeth recounted the story of the day her life turned to hell.

Not far into the story, Marshall realised it was his fault.

Elizabeth’s story began with a normal day. She woke up around 7:00 am, showered and dressed. She went down to the kitchen and ate toast and jam for breakfast, washing it down with a sweet cup of tea. The doorbell chimed five minutes later, just as Elizabeth was placing her teacup in the sink ready to wash it up. It was Colin, the postman, who had a package to sign for. He wished Elizabeth a good morning and they chatted about the weather briefly, and even shared a smile about the English rain. Elizabeth then took the delivery into the kitchen and set it on the medium-sized table. It was a parcel about eight inches tall, nine inches wide and four inches deep. She didn’t recognise the handwriting, but the post mark was Cambridgeshire where her sister lived. She opened the package expecting to find some of her sister’s famous pots of jam or marmalade. She was puzzled to find it actually contained four DVDs in plastic sleeves covered in dust. The dust seemed to spread around the room as soon as she opened the parcel. All that was written on each tape was:
PROFITIRS
.

Following that, her emphysema started to play up. The next thing she knew, she woke up in a tent in the hospital with people from the computer adverts crowding round her.

‘Computer adverts?’ Marshall asked, not unkindly.

‘Inside Intel or something?’ his mother suggested.

But Marshall understood. It was the suits. Like the Intel guys from the adverts.

The name though, was unmistakable.

PROFITIRS
.

It was a package for him, but they had addressed it to his mother. They wanted to hurt him, and they had succeeded. His mother would probably live for less than twelve hours.

She would not celebrate her seventieth birthday.

Marshall stood up.

‘Ma, I‘ll be back in twenty minutes,’ he told her. ‘Don’t die on me.’

‘Okay son.’

‘Promise me?’

‘I’ll try not to.’

Marshall stepped out of the isolation booth and ran into the doctor he threatened previously.

‘Don’t let anyone in there with a fucking space suit on,’ Marshall warned.

‘Are you leaving?’ the doctor asked, taken back.

‘Yes, just for a short while though. I’ve got a birthday party to organise.’

He got as far as the car park before realising he could go no further. He was assuming his mother had twelve hours, but he couldn’t be sure. So he took out his phone and called his desk Sergeant. He told her to organise balloons, party poppers and streamers to be at the hospital inside of thirty minutes. Then he disconnected and called his brother and sister, telling them to be at the hospital as soon as possible. He explained the situation and they both agreed to try and get there as soon as they could.

He got back inside the hospital within twenty-five minutes to find the doctor waiting for him in the corridor.

‘I’m so sorry,’ the doctor said.

Marshall looked blankly at him.

‘I’m afraid your mother passed away five minutes ago.’

Twenty minutes, he had said.

He was five minutes late.

He sat with his mother until the balloons and other party stuff arrived and he sent them away. Then he waited for his brother and sister who arrived after forty minutes. They talked for an hour whilst their mother lay still between them.

Finally they went their separate ways, but Marshall knew he would carry the blame with him forever. He went and located the doctor again, telling him that he would need that helmet after all.

Marshall drove straight to his mother’s house and pulled into the familiar driveway. He was already wearing the hygiene suit and put on the helmet as he killed the engine. He zipped the hood all the way around the neck and stepped from the car with his gun in his hand. He took the path to the rear of the house and kicked the back door open.

Then he stopped and listened.

There was no sound inside the house, but he still swept each room individually as a precaution.

He found the DVDs exactly where his mother said they were left, on the kitchen table. He carried them to the DVD player and inserted the first DVD. There were a few moments of snow screen before a shot appeared. It was Captain Adam Saunders lying on a table, with straps across his chest, biceps and thighs. He looked to be in good health, but Marshall reminded himself there were four disks in total. The shot remained the same for a few minutes before somebody else appeared on the screen. It was a boy, no more than fifteen years old, holding a knife in his hand. Marshall wanted to look away, but knew he could not.

This would not be the worst by a long way.

The boy approached Saunders and told him to poke his tongue out, but he refused. The boy then stabbed Saunders in the wrist, a straight cut pinning his arm to the table. Then he told him to poke his tongue out again, but Saunders shook his head. The boy stabbed him in the other wrist in exactly the same fashion and screamed at him to poke out his tongue. Saunders finally did so and Marshall could see that his tongue was dry and swollen from dehydration, which enabled the boy to catch hold of it easily.

Then he cut it off.

Marshall did not look away, as much as he wanted to. The amount of blood pouring into Saunders’ mouth made him think that Saunders would surely choke to death. But numbers don’t lie, and this was only the first DVD. The boy was handed a pole with a glowing tip a moment later, which he immediately forced into Saunders’ mouth. Marshall realised that the super-heated tip of the pole was being used to seal the wound on the stump that was all that was left of Saunders’ tongue.

The screen turned back to snow a few seconds later which worried Marshall. If this was DVD one, what the hell would be on the next three?