The Drop (22 page)

We had to resist the temptation to run, knowing we needed to be silent. Instead we followed Palmer’s lead, walking slowly and fanning out, so we didn’t make one big, easy target.

The last thirty yards or so were the worst, out in the open with no cover to dive behind, knowing all it would take was some pissed-up Ivan stumbling out of the farmhouse for a piss or a cig and it would all be over. As soon as his mates heard him screaming blue murder, we wouldn’t have a chance in the open.

I could hear my own breathing, which sounded incredibly loud to me in my overwrought state, my breath coming out in plumes of white in front of me against the cold air. My heart was thumping in my chest again. What if I had messed this up? What if Palmer wasn’t half as good as we both thought he was and the Russians were better? We’d be dead that’s what - and if we were really lucky it would be quick. But if we weren’t… Christ I was scared.

We made it to the relative cover of the hedge and stopped, hunching down low. Palmer held up his hand and we all froze, quiet as we could be, while he had a listen. The farmhouse was silent. Maybe they were asleep already. Was it too much to hope that they’d all passed out drunk in there? Probably.

Palmer patted Danny quietly on the shoulder and pointed to a gap in the bushes a few yards along from where we were. Danny nodded and moved silently away towards his firing point. I’d never seen him so alert before.

Kinane and his boys knew what to do. Palmer had given them their instructions and, thankfully, the big man had deferred to the former soldier’s experience in these matters. Kinane and his sons got to their feet and walked round the hedge into the open farmyard. I watched them make their way with exaggerated care across the wide open space. Christ, this was worse than crossing the field. A little sliver of light coming out of the farmhouse illuminated a section of the land they were forced to cross. They were moving like children playing a game of Simon Says, pulling their feet up higher than normal, then placing their boots down on the gravel with a gentleness I’d have thought impossible of such big men. Even so, their footsteps were clearly audible in the silence of the night. Surely they’d be heard before they made it to the other side?

Then I heard a noise, a loud grating, piercing sound from within the house that made me start. Someone was shouting. They’d been spotted.

I shot a glance at the house, expecting the door to fly open and armed men to rush out at any second. I made a move for my gun and Palmer placed his hand firmly on mine to prevent me from doing something stupid. I looked back to the farm yard and saw Kinane standing there, poised somewhere between standing firm, ready to fire his gun, and getting ready to leg it. His hand was in the air in warning, keeping his sons from shooting at shadows or panicking into a sprint.

I still couldn’t place the sound. It was a shout, but was it really one of alarm? I could feel the sweat dripping from my armpits down my torso, cold and wet. I didn’t dare to even blink, in case I missed something that would have cost me my life.

Then there was another shout and another. It sounded like a quarrel. There was a slight pause which felt like an eternity, and then a final shout that was halfway between mocking and challenging. A second later, voices were raised again but this time in raucous, mirth-filled laughter. The Russkies had been having a laugh, a bit of banter from one man to the other, then someone had cracked a joke and they all fell about. They were winding each other up. I couldn’t fucking believe it. I thought I was going to drop down dead from the tension of it all. Even Palmer raised an eyebrow and exhaled in relief.

I glanced back at Kinane. He was still rooted to the spot. He looked round at his sons, nodded slowly and lowered his hand. He then walked the rest of the way across the farmyard with his boys following dutifully behind him, still clutching their shotguns. It had to be said they were disciplined; as good as any bunch of trained squaddies. Eventually, and not before time, they reached their position and disappeared from view.

Palmer nodded at me and I knew what that meant. It was our turn. I was glad Danny was in place to cover us and I was mightily relieved Kinane and his sons had made it, but now there was no dodging it. We had to cross that farm yard too; a big, open expanse of gravel that looked about the size of a football pitch to me now and we had to do it without making a sound. Worse than that, we had to get right up to the farmhouse itself, leaving just the width of a wall between us and men who liked to cut people into pieces for fun.

I took a deep breath, tried to forget that I wanted to be sick again and stood up. I followed Palmer as he made his way round the hedge. He paused to make sure the front door wasn’t about to be opened at any moment and we stepped out into the farmyard. We walked with excruciating slowness across the gravel drive way, closer to the building than Kinane and his sons, but only because we had no choice. The wind was blowing in the trees above us, I could feel the gravel under my feet and hear the slight scrunch-scrunch as my shoes settled on them with every step. My eyes were glued to the door of that farmhouse, though I knew that wouldn’t do me any good. If it opened, I was a dead man.

We were nearly there, so close I started to feel a wave of exultation. I could see the end of the building, the far gable wall we would disappear behind. Only another few steps; then it happened.

I took a step and felt a loosening of the pressure around my waist. Before I could do anything about it, the gun I was carrying there started to slip from my belt. Panicked, I snatched at it, desperate to prevent it from hitting the gravel where it would have made enough noise on impact for everyone in the farmhouse to hear, even if it didn’t go off in the process. How to describe something so terrible, so heart-wrenching, that happens to you in a millisecond? My right palm went instinctively across to snatch at the gun but it didn’t get there in time. Instead it flailed at the metal, caught it a glancing blow and deflected it to the left. Terrified, I grabbed at it desperately with my other hand but only proceeded to do the same thing, half-catching the gun as it fell but unable to prevent it from slipping through my grasp like a wet cricket ball. Palmer spun round in time to see the Glock drop from my hand and head in a downward trajectory towards the gravel, certain to give away our presence as soon as it hit the ground.

I don’t know how I did it and I don’t really want to think about how close we came to disaster but, at the last available second, I stuck my foot out. It was an entirely instinctive gesture but I managed to get the top of my foot under the gun just before it crashed to the ground. The effect was a bit like trapping a football, much of the speed was taken out of the falling gun as it bounced off the top of my foot and with a nerve shredding bump it fell off my toes and onto the gravel.

The sound was audible, but not half as bad as it would have been if I hadn’t interrupted the Glock’s fall with my shoe. I froze, my foot still hanging pointlessly in the air. Palmer raised his SLR and pointed it at the door, ready to drop anyone who burst through it.

We gave it a second then another.

Nothing. No sound from inside. Jesus Christ, we were off the hook.

Palmer nodded for me to pick up the gun. I wasted no time in obeying him and we both edged slowly to the far wall of the building then disappeared around it. We went down on our haunches and kept back in the shadows. I could just about see his face and I gave him a look that I hoped would appear apologetic. He just nodded like he understood but he looked like a ghost. It seemed I had managed to shit him up almost as badly as I had myself.

We weren’t about to go bursting in on them. We didn’t know what Vitaly and his mates were doing right now, how alert they were and how much weaponry they had nearby. To take men like these on we’d have to do it on our own terms.

All we could do now was wait until it got light. That’s when it would happen. I looked at the dark sky around me and wondered how many of us would still be alive when night came around once more.

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W
e’d been waiting for hours, crouched down, in silence, freezing our bollocks off, trying not to think about what would happen if it all went wrong

It was just after eight in the morning when the Russians finally got their act together. We heard the latch on the door snap back and started, immediately going on the alert. Both Palmer and I had our guns ready. We listened intently as the door swung open, squeaking on its hinges, and low muffled voices reached us as they trudged out of the farmhouse. We were out of sight but knew we’d be able to see their backs in a moment as they walked across the farm yard towards their car. I was praying the others were as wide awake and alert as we were.

Seeing nothing amiss, they ambled towards the blacked-out Porsche Cayenne that was parked some way from their front door. It must have made a lot of sense to them to have somewhere isolated to lie low after hitting our organisation, but being this far from the city had its disadvantages, as they were about to find out. We knew they’d all be armed but we didn’t want to give them time to reach for weapons.

We’d worked out the crossfire in advance, thanks to Palmer’s recce the night before. We waited till they had almost reached the car then I shouted. That was the signal. What happened next was a blur. I saw the Russians spin round towards us in surprise, then Kinane and his sons stepped out from behind a skip with their shotguns raised. They didn’t hang about, they just let them have it. At the same time, my brother opened up from behind the hedge. Palmer and me, we were behind their backs, blind-siding them as we stepped out from the side of the farmhouse.

We’d been waiting a long time in the cold but it was worth it to see the looks of comprehension on their dumb faces. They had just enough time to work out what was going to happen to them before we let loose but no time to react to it. The noise was incredible. Where all had been deathly quiet, there was a sudden explosion of gunfire and shouting. They were shouting because they were dying. We were shouting because we were killing them. The bodies twitched and were thrown about as they took the shotgun blasts from Kinane and his sons, the rifle bullets my brother was letting loose at a hell of a rate and all the rounds from the automatic pistol and the SLR Palmer and I were pumping into them. The glass from the nearby car’s windows popped and burst, the metal of the bodywork sang as the bullets bounced through it and the tyres sagged, making the Porsche Cayenne sink into the mud, as if the car itself was dying along with them.

When we’d finished hitting them they were a mess. There was blood everywhere. A fly couldn’t have escaped the carnage. When the boys stopped firing, I walked up to the Russians, who were lying where they’d stood a moment ago, and put a round into each of their heads, just to make sure. I didn’t really need to do it but I wanted to. It made me feel better after what they’d done to me. The last man to take one of my bullets was Vitaly. He didn’t look so cocky now though. I did it for Cartwright, who’d been executed without mercy on a cold factory floor, I did it for Finney who’d been taken without a shot being fired then tortured to death while the Russian guys laughed at him. I did it for Bobby and, of course, Sarah. Most of all, I did it for me.

‘You’re a long way from home,’ I told Vitaly’s shocked and open, lifeless eyes, before I put a round right between them.

After I shot him, I put my gloved hand into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out his mobile phone, then I walked away from his body. Above me, panicked crows cawed manically as they flew out of the trees all around us.

I checked Vitaly’s sent messages - and there was nothing recent. I then went into his video files and found the footage I was looking for. I made sure nobody else was next to me when I watched it. It was indistinct, the light in the warehouse insufficient to show us up clearly. All I could make out was a grey, grainy image of a man, who may or may not have been me, standing there with a gun in his hand and another pointed at his head. At least, if anybody did see it, they’d realise I was being forced into it. I watched as I raised the gun and fired. The camera angle moved and a large, grey haired man, who may or may not have been Bobby Mahoney, but could just as easily have been Santa Claus, slumped in the chair. The film halted. It all looked fuzzy and confused, like a bad dream. I didn’t feel as sick as I thought I would. I deleted the file.

Palmer came out of the house carrying a holdall. He unzipped it, peered inside and walked up to me, angling the bag so I could see what it contained.

‘This what you’ve been looking for?’ he asked me.

The bag contained a large amount of money. There was no time to stand and count it but I was willing to bet that most of it was still there. Gladwell must have been using this as a down-payment for Vitaly’s services. We’d finally found the Drop.

Strange to think that it didn’t really matter that much now, not in the long run.

We threw the bodies in the car while Kinane’s lads went back to the main road to fetch our vehicles, then we took cans of petrol and poured it all over them. We torched the Porsche and it went up in seconds. I threw Vitaly’s mobile through the window into the heart of the flames, then we got out of there quick. As we were driving through the gate, their car exploded.

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W
hen Tommy Gladwell finally stepped out of his home he looked like a man with a world of trouble on his shoulders, and who could blame him? He’d risked everything on one massive gamble, one big throw of the dice that actually seemed to have paid off. He owned a city. It was all his.

Then he had left his Russian muscle behind to stamp his authority on his new empire and he’d gone home to wait for their call.

And waited. And waited.

I could only guess how he must have felt when Vitaly didn’t make that call. All that agonising must have taken its toll; what could have gone wrong, who was to blame, had he been double-crossed? By now, he would be seeing enemies everywhere. Tommy Gladwell must have been living in a permanent state of fear and anxiety, which would explain the bodyguards.

His missus was already in the car when Tommy came out of their home and one of the bodyguards was holding the car door open for his boss’ arrival while the other scanned the horizon for potential threats, but Our-young-’un and Palmer were too far back behind the bushes to be spotted. I was next to them, keeping low. We’d left Kinane and his boys out of this one. There was no reason to be mob handed for what we had in mind and we knew it would be harder for his bodyguards to spot just the three of us.

That was the drawback of living in a nice, big fuck-off country mansion. If Gladwell had still been a scussy wee shite from the tenements of Glasgow, like his old man, he would have settled for his father’s idea of heaven; three former council houses next to each other, all knocked in together to make one big monument to bad taste. But Gladwell and his missus had grander ideas, which is why he had grounds and a big clump of trees and bushes just inside the gated walls of his huge house. It was ideal for our purpose. That big house was about to cost Tommy a lot more than he ever could have imagined when he was buying it.

Danny dropped Gladwell’s first bodyguard smoothly and, as he hit the floor, Palmer took out the second. Before the bloke could even react he was on the ground too, collapsed in a heap on the gravel driveway. Neither of them was getting up again. Got to hand it to our Our-young-’un, he was still a cracking shot and Palmer looked like he did this kind of thing every day of the week.

Gladwell just froze in shock. He was peering out towards us in disbelief, because the men he’d entrusted his life to were both dead and he’d only just walked out of his own front door. He’d got a good inkling he was going to be next but he couldn’t see us, so he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t even run, because it all happened too fast.

The next thing, Palmer put a bullet right into his leg, just above the knee and Gladwell went down wailing and shouting. His missus was clambering back out of the car and screaming blue murder, shouting, ‘Tommy, Tommy!’ at the top of her voice - but no one was going to hear her out here, miles from anywhere.

My brother paused for a second and looked up just long enough for me to nod at him. ‘Do her,’ I told him. Tommy Gladwell’s missus was still screaming like a fish wife, frantic to save her husband. The next shot took her right in the chest, which finally put an end to her caterwauling.

I watched her body twist and fall back against the front side panel of their big BMW. I didn’t give a fuck for her, because of what she had said to Sarah when she left her alone with that Russian.

Gladwell was trying to make sense of what had happened to him, trying to crawl but he was having a problem because of the bullet in his leg. His arm was stretched out despairingly towards his wife, even though he must have known by now it was hopeless. I patted Our-young-’un on the shoulder, climbed to my feet and walked calmly out of the bushes towards him, carrying the small black bag Hunter had given me. Palmer and Danny followed.

I crossed the land between us before Gladwell could drag his fat bulk to his wife and I called out to him. ‘Time to pay what’s owed Tommy,’ he turned his head to see me then. I swear I will never forget the look of amazement on his stupid face.

‘You?’ he managed to splutter and it was clear he thought he had about as much chance of being attacked by the ghost of Mother Theresa, than of being gunned down outside his own home by me.

‘That’s right,’ I reached into the bag and slowly, deliberately pulled out the long, flat case then I slid the razor sharp machete free and showed it to him. Instinctively he tried to get to his feet and run, so scared that he’d forgotten his legs didn’t work any more. There was a look of plain terror on his chubby face. I made sure I held the machete high so he could see the edge and I marched right up to him. He somehow managed to slide himself round until he was slumped on his back, propped up against the rear door of the car. ‘You killed my wife, you bastard,’ he half screamed, half sobbed at me.

‘Mmm, not yet,’ I said, ‘looks like she is just about to breathe her last though,’ I was no doctor but I reckoned I had that diagnosis just about nailed. Even though Lady Macbeth was technically still alive, the last few breaths were coming out of her now, slow and hoarse.

I got right up to her, knelt down on one knee and was close enough to almost whisper in her ear. ‘I’ve got a message for you from Bobby Mahoney’s daughter,’ there was the slightest glimmer of recognition in her eyes, “get over yourself Hen”.’

Then I watched her die right in front of me.

‘Your wife’s dead Gladwell,’ I told him, ‘so now I guess it’s your turn’

‘Fuck you,’ he said but the defiance was unconvincing. He was sobbing and there was a pool of piss all around him.

‘I want you to know this isn’t going to be quick,’ I told him, ‘not after what you did to Bobby and Finney. I’m going to take my time and it’s going to hurt you like you can’t imagine.’ I shoved the point of the machete’s blade right up under his chin. ‘And when I’m done, I’m going to cut your fucking head off, then I’m going to chuck your bodies in with the pigs and they’re going to eat you. There’ll be no fancy funeral for you two.’

And he started to beg, ‘you can’t do this. You can’t do this to me,’ Who was he to start giving orders, the state he was in? ‘I let you live. I let you live!’

‘Yeah you did, and that was your second mistake,’ I told him, ‘your first was trying to take over our city. I’m not going to let you live, you sick piece of shit. Begging and pleading is just a waste of breath but you can do it if you want to,’ he was shaking his head, ‘now I’m going to get started and I’m not going to stop no matter how hard you scream,’ he was screaming already. I’d never seen a man so shit-scared in all my life and he had good cause, because I meant every word. ‘Bobby Mahoney said he’d see you down in hell - so let’s not keep him waiting too long.’

I got started with the machete then and wee Tommy Gladwell screamed and screamed like you wouldn’t believe.