Dreams to Die For (47 page)

Fadyar Masri left the protection of the forest and furtively crossed the lawn to the house. She walked slowly around the perimeter and very carefully tried to look inside any window that she could easily peer into. She saw nothing. As she retraced her steps she heard voices coming from what she presumed to be the kitchen, but the windows were just above her head which made it impossible for her to see inside. She waited and listened. Minutes passed. Every now and then she heard the man's voice shout out and she thought she heard crying from at least one of the women. She knew what was going on inside and she was filled with revulsion. She wanted to stop it now, immediately, and save the two women from being forced to perform the man's degrading perversions, but she also had to protect her mission. That, too, demanded she enter the house to cut the phone and alarms, but the presence of the two women now faced her with a very difficult dilemma. What was she to do with them, even assuming she could ensure the man was no longer a threat?

She heard another scream and impulsively pulled at the large lounge patio doors. One moved open and she slipped inside. Staying low she crept across the lounge floor and out into the hall. She could hear the voices more clearly now, and it was obvious that her worst suspicions of what was befalling the two women were confirmed. The kitchen door to the hallway was closed. Fadyar knew that it would be impossible to break into the kitchen without the man having sufficient time to kill or maim one of the women, possibly both. Or he would take one of them hostage. She could not allow events to spiral out of control. Stay calm. Reluctantly, she withdrew to the lounge and crept back into the fresh air. She had to find an alternative means of bringing the situation in the house to an early conclusion. An idea struck her. She ran across the grass into the forest and using the trees as cover, she made her way to the smaller A-frame buildings. She went to the rear of the first chalet which was almost opposite the kitchen of the main house. Removing most of her bulky gear, she slung her rifle across her shoulder and shinned up the drain pipe until she was able to climb onto the roof. Slowly making her way to its apex, she stopped and looked over the ridge tiles. She had a perfect view of part of the kitchen. She could see one naked woman seated in a chair and just the right arm of the second woman. Facing them was the red head. She gasped as she saw him.

The school! The soldier!

As Fadyar sheltered behind the wall from the bombs and guns on the day her parents were killed, she saw an infantryman come out of the school building. Several days later she had learned of the atrocities he had carried out on the schoolgirls. That soldier was the same person as the man now in the kitchen of Mealag Lodge and still committing similar abuses. Her anger rose. She was also confused.
Why should he be here, at this particular time? Was he still a soldier? Was he supposed to be protecting Assiter?
No, she ruled that out.
But neither would he be at Mealag simply by chance. It was too remote a location. He was there because, like her, he had a mission. He was a hired killer, she was sure – but who was he to kill?
It had to be Assiter or Truscott and he had probably simply taken advantage of the women being alone, much as he had of the schoolgirls in Iraq. It was another case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever, he was a killer and a psychotic abuser of women and he was a threat to her meticulously laid plans. He had to be stopped.

She carefully slipped the safety catch off her rifle and looked through the Schmidt and Bender scope. She loaded two 0.50 bullets into her AWSM rifle and removed the safety catch. This was going to be a most difficult shot and had many attendant risks. She was perched on top of a roof, not particularly comfortably. Donaldson was not a still target and she would be firing the bullet through a double-glazed window. There was no doubt the bullet would penetrate the window, but the impact would almost certainly cause it to deviate slightly, ever so slightly, and that might be enough to only injure the redhead or, worse, miss him entirely. In her favour was the distance, which she estimated at only about fifty metres. A movement in the kitchen caught her attention. Donaldson had hold of one of the naked women who seemed to be being forced to bend over near the table. She raised her rifle and slowly aimed the crosshairs just above the centre of Donaldson's back. A head shot would be too risky, too much chance of a movement of the head or a deviation causing the bullet to miss entirely. His back presented a broader target but she had to wait. She heard the woman scream but dared not risk a shot whilst he was bent over and almost on top of her. Fadyar kept her aim steady waiting for Donaldson to stand more upright so there was no risk of the bullet passing through him and into his hapless victim. Suddenly he jerked upwards and instinctively Fadyar pulled the trigger. The large bullet smashed through the window, instantly resembling a web of cracks emanating from the punctured hole to the outer edge of the frame. Donaldson fell forward onto Cindy, a large blood stain rapidly appearing below his right shoulder.

“Aaaaagh… Fuckin' bitch… I'm hit.” His piercing curse mixed with the simultaneous screams of Cindy and Paulette but it still carried across the kitchen and beyond. Donaldson was not dead but wounded, and probably now even more dangerous.

Fadyar instantly slid down the roof, jumped to the ground and ran to the lodge. She saw Donaldson, now freed from his union with Cindy, staggering around in the kitchen. Fadyar flung open the door and rushed straight through the lobby. The startled and enraged Donaldson turned, and with his left hand swept the kettle from the hot plate towards Fadyar before she had time to aim her hand gun. She stepped out of the way of the spilling boiling water as the kettle crashed to the floor, but his action had delayed her and in those few vital seconds Donaldson had grabbed his rifle and dashed out of the kitchen into the hall. Fadyar drew her automatic and rushed after him, but he was gone, running down towards the loch, the back of his shirt completely covered by a large red stain as more blood pumped out of the wound. Donaldson was raging from both the pain inflicted by the high calibre bullet and at being denied his ultimate prize just at the point of climax. His sexual frustration and dented pride angered him almost as much as the hole in his back. He strained to focus on where he was and what had happened.

Instinctively he knew he needed to escape quickly. His senses, heightened by the searing pain, told him not to go back past the house, so he half ran, half stumbled towards the loch. As he turned the corner at the edge of the lawn, the dam came into sight and spurred him to run faster. He ran across the pebbled shore, heading directly towards the small gate, and stepped straight onto the crusted peat. Initially the ground bore his weight, but as he progressed his footprints began leaving deeper indentations into the dried, flaky surface until without warning his right front leg suddenly sank up to his knee, closely followed by his left leg. He came to such an abrupt halt he almost pitched over but regained his balance, held tight and virtually static. He tried to lever himself up, using his rifle, but his hands and arms simply sank into the thick, sticky soup. Slowly, panic came over him. He knew he was trapped and as his head cleared, and the bog reached his thighs, he realised he was sinking ever so slowly into his grave.

Fadyar did not want to waste time pursuing the mortally wounded Donaldson and she returned to the kitchen. Cindy was shaking and sobbing, still naked, holding onto the chair. Paulette was ashen, shivering with fear, open-mouthed.

“You should sit down” said Fadyar to Cindy. “Please, sit down.”

Cindy moved slowly and silently to the chair.

“Thank you, thank you. He was a monster. Is he dead. Where is he? Who, who are you?” Her rambling questions revealed the extent of Cindy's shock and confusion.

“He's gone. A terrible man. He will not come back. The wound was serious and he will be too weak to move very soon. You can consider yourself very lucky for he would have killed you after you had served his purpose. He abused, raped and then killed three schoolgirls in Iraq when he was a soldier with the occupying forces. He cut their throats when he had finished with them.”

The colour that had just started to return to Paulette's face disappeared again. Cindy made to stand up but Fadyar pulled her gun.

“I am very sorry, but I cannot allow you to go. Sit down please, I will not hurt you if you do as I ask. Please.”

“My God, what is going on here! Who are you? Were you with him – Donaldson? What is going on?” Cindy demanded answers from Fadyar, but there was also something about the olive skinned woman and her words that was slightly reassuring to Cindy who sat back on the chair.

“I will tell you, if you are patient Mrs Crossland. First, though, put the robe on and I will help your friend, but I cannot untie her.”

Cindy was too weary to argue and loosely wrapped herself in her own robe. The ordeal had left her devoid of energy and she needed time to recover her strength and mind. Fadyar turned to Paulette, “Are you hurt?”

Paulette shook her head. Fadyar carefully picked up Paulette's robe and placed it on her before she picked up several of Donaldson's discarded ties.

“I am sorry, really sorry after what you have just gone through, but I must do this.”

A semblance of a thin smile spread across Paulette's burst lips, “We have just heard something like that,” the note of sarcasm ignored by Fadyar.

Cindy studied Fadyar closely as the straps were applied around her wrists and ankles and secured to the chair in much the same manner as Donaldson had done to Paulette.

“You look familiar, and you said my name. Who are you?”

“I was born Yasmin Hasan, though that is not the name I am known by now. I am here to pursue our Jihad against the imperialist occupying forces that are seeking to destroy Islam.”

“We have nothing to do with that!” remarked Cindy, wearily.

“Oh, but you do. Or at least Mrs Assiter's husband does. He is responsible for sending in the soldiers who kill us, take our land and make our children orphans.”

Paulette instantly reacted, “My husband is a good and honest man. He works for his country's government, but he would never allow soldiers to do the things you say. He is not an enemy of Islam.”

Fadyar then told her of how a soldier with a name label of Briggs sewn onto his tunic came into her family home and killed her parents in September 2004.

“We were peace loving. We did not support Saddam in any way. We did not help any insurgents. My parents ran a store, that is all. They were shopkeepers. When the bombs and the firing started we stayed in our small room. We had to. Your bombs destroyed our shop but my parents never once criticised your country for that. Then, later, the soldier Briggs came in and machine-gunned them both whilst they sat on the sofa.”

Fadyar's eyes began to well with tears, but composing herself, she continued. “I was in the bathroom and had to climb over their bodies, ripped and torn by American bullets, when the soldier had left. I am here to avenge their deaths and the hundreds of thousands of others your husband's government has killed. Saddam was bad, yes. But his killings were never on the scale the coalition forces have inflicted. We continue to be killed in our hundreds every week, sometimes every day, and you say that you are peace-loving and that we are the forces of evil?” The bitterness and force of her words made Paulette wince.

“I will tell my husband. He will investigate, I know he will. This soldier you speak of, Briggs, he will be punished.”

“He will not. His parents will not be murdered. I doubt if he will even be arrested. Your armies lie over what they do and both your governments support those lies. Briggs is one of many. That man whom you said was called Donaldson. He also was a soldier in Iraq, for the British Army, and it was their imperialist government that sent him to my country to murder and rape our schoolchildren.”

Cindy and Paulette looked blankly at each other. The woman had just saved their life. They did not want to argue with her, but Paulette was fearful.

“So why are you here? It's to do with my husband isn't it? Please don't kill him, he really is a good man.”

“I cannot tell you exactly, but I hope he is not killed. He is a brave man. I know that much as he has not surrounded himself with many security people. For what it is worth, I could have killed him by now had that been my wish”.

Fadyar paused then said. “I have to go. I have my work to do.”

“What have you done with the police guards?” Cindy casually remarked.

“I have done nothing, on that you have my word, but they are dead. The man Donaldson killed them.”

“Oh my God,” uttered Paulette.

“Did Donaldson tell you why he was here? Was he too after Mr Assiter?” Fadyar asked.

“No!” said Cindy. “He wanted me, though why he should follow me all the way up here and take these risks I really don't know. It doesn't make sense. He worked for my husband. Alan and I amicably divorced some while ago, and he is not the violent type or the sort to seek revenge on Gordon… er, Mr Truscott. Donaldson was always making suggestions to me… horrible man. ”

“I see” said Fadyar, slowly.

Fadyar then left the women in the kitchen whilst she went around the house searching for alarms and telephone lines. She studied the main alarm system and the panic circuitry which, whilst unfamiliar to her, she found relatively easy to disarm with her electronics knowledge gained from the training camp. She then went outside the house, aimed her rifle at the pylon that distributed the phone wires to the complex and fired. The shot broke the insulator and plastic connector into a thousand pieces, leaving the end of the wire fluttering helplessly down onto a tree. She checked the line was dead from the house and returned to the kitchen.

“I must go now. Please do not try to escape as I would not want to hurt you. You have both been through enough. But be in no doubt, I have a mission to carry out and I will not be stopped.”