THE FIX: SAS hero turns Manchester hitman (A Rick Fuller Thriller Book 1) (16 page)

I was about to go into the blubbering fool act and give him the phoney address when he poured the contents of the kettle over my right leg.

I think I was screaming. The pain was horrendous. My ears popped as my blood pressure hit the roof and my heart went into crisis mode and pumped like a freight train. I felt the searing heat of the water but shivered uncontrollably as my body went into shock. Within seconds my trousers were welding themselves to my skin.

The Dutchman leaned forward and put his face so close to me that I could feel his breath.

“Now, Rick. I promise you that you will tell us the truth. The next kettle will be for your left leg. Then I’ll fry your bollocks. If I need to keep you alive after that, I have an IV and adrenaline in the car. This is a one chance opportunity, Rick.”

For the first time in my life I knew I was beaten. I couldn’t take another kettle. Des had promised himself a fishing trip and he could be away. He had a place just off Loch Lomond. It was off the beaten track, very remote.

In the end of course, my only hope was Des. I figured that if he could slot this Max guy before he suffered a similar fate to me, then we had a chance. He would definitely come straight here. If the roles were reversed I would understand. In fact I would want Des to send them to me. I felt the need to cry but I couldn’t.

I gave Blondie the address.

I didn’t know how long Max had been gone but the first signs of morning were in the sky outside. My torturer was called Stefan. He’d introduced himself as he had stuck some morphine into me a few hours back. It had helped the pain but it had returned with a vengeance and I shivered uncontrollably. I could hear him dialling numbers into his mobile but he spoke only Dutch. I could hardly feel my hands or feet at all. The only thing that was keeping me conscious was the pain in my leg. Stephan’s mobile gave me an idea. My own unit was in my back pocket and I could just feel it with my right hand. From memory I felt for the buttons as best I could. The centre button 5 always has two ridges and from there I could work out what was going on. Slowly and deliberately I pressed the control button to unlock the keypad. I sent a numbered text to Des and hoped it made sense. If I didn’t survive and he did, he would know what to do. 

Stephan walked into the kitchen again and I heard the kettle being filled. I felt sick, my legs twitched and I thought of Cathy, of how we had planned a baby, of the way she laughed at my stupid antics; the smell of her hair. I tried to picture her face but each time I only saw her lying in her own blood in the hallway, a simple hallway with ordinary furniture. I had never really cared for anyone or anything since that very day. And now I knew it was my turn to join her. I suddenly didn’t give a shit about Stephan, Max, Stern, Susan, anyone. If he was going to slot me I just wanted him to get on with it. The goon walked in carrying the kettle. He looked pale and pissed off.

“I am disappointed in you, Rick. Your friend Des is not in residence at the address you gave me.”

My body was shaking so much, my voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. I wanted him to pull out the Uzi and shoot me. Instead I saw the kettle and I knew what was coming. “He’s fishing,” I blubbered, “he’ll be out on the water. You need to give it time.”

“Time is something you don’t have my friend.”

I think I begged before he poured.

After Stephan had scalded me for the second time, the pain was so bad that it obliterated everything else. He hadn’t even bothered to ask me any more questions; I think he just wanted to hear me scream. I realised that I was in a vehicle and we were moving. I had been hooded and my hands were tied. Even if I had been free I didn’t think I could find the strength to stand never mind run. Each time the vehicle hit a bump or turned a corner my legs felt like the flesh was being torn from them. I presumed it was some kind of van from the noise inside but to be honest I was close to not caring. There was a faint smell of engine oil and some other chemical I couldn’t identify. My only hope was that somehow Des was on his way or that Stephan got stopped by the law. I never thought I would be glad to see a copper.

The road started to get more uneven and the pain shot through my body in vile spikes. Suddenly the vehicle lurched to a halt and I heard the driver stop the engine. The back doors were opened and someone grabbed my feet. I screamed in agony and almost passed out again.

My hood was removed and I saw Stephan staring at me. He was a little wild looking but managed his sick little smile. Now I know you might say that he was only doing the same job I had done for the last few years. It’s true I had disposed of many people. The one thing I couldn’t understand was the enjoyment in his eyes. He revelled in my agony and I felt the surge of adrenaline that total anger brings. If he untied me, despite all the pain in the world, I would rip off those glasses and gouge out those eyes as my last act.

He obviously noticed my feelings.

“Don’t even think about it, Richard.”

He produced a large bore handgun, probably a .45  

“We’re going for a short walk.”

Walk! The guy had to be out of his fucking mind. He grabbed me by the shoulder and sat me up on the edge of the van floor. There was a sticky fluid covering both my shoes which I presumed was a mixture of weeping burns and urine. I felt ashamed that at some point I had wet myself.

Stephan seemed to get an even bigger kick as he realised my own discomfort. He simply pointed the .45 toward my damp groin and sniggered.

“Maybe I should have made a washroom stop en route, my friend.”

I couldn’t help myself.

“Why don’t you just fucking do what you’re paid to do, sonny, and stop this shit.”

His face boiled up with anger and he hit me a good one with the handgun. It caught me across the cheek and I felt blood trickle down my face. To be honest it was worth it.

“Walk!”

He grabbed me again and pulled me out of the van. My legs gave way immediately which angered him even more. “Get up, you asshole!”

I tried to ignore my pain and looked around to get my bearings. We were in the country. A similar spot to where I took Alfie to be disposed of. It looked like moorland and I couldn’t see a single building. To make matters worse it was pissing down. A minor thing, you might think under the circumstances, but believe me that was how I felt. I checked out the van. It was an old Transit. As the rain splattered my face I looked for a second vehicle but I couldn’t see anything. It raised my spirits slightly as I presumed Max was still looking for Des or better still Des had found Max.

“Get up!” screamed Blondie.

It was starting to look like an episode from a bad drama. I mean if the guy had been such a pro, he would have known I couldn’t walk. All the shouting and screaming was only going to attract attention. Even up on the moors there might have been ramblers. He was a dickhead.

I just lay on the ground in major discomfort but I was not going to help him top me. He grabbed my hair and turned my face toward him.

“Get up or I’ll take off your trousers.”

I knew what that would entail. It would take off my skin with them. It would be as good as flaying me alive. I was not going to let him do that. He would have to kill me there on the road.

Stephan made a grab for my belt and with all the strength I could muster I lifted myself with my stomach muscles and butted him firmly in the face. He fell forward dazed and I rolled until my body was on his. My only weapon was my mouth and I sank my teeth into his cheek. I felt like fucking Hannibal the cannibal but it was all I had. He screamed and hit me again with the .45. I felt the pain but didn’t let go. He couldn’t get enough leverage to knock me out as our faces were locked together. I tasted copper and bit harder. I needed to get to his nose. If I could get locked on just under his nostrils, around his top lip, I could do enough damage to render him unconscious. Then he raked his foot down my right leg and all my plans were dashed. It was all over. White hot pain tore through my body and I released my grip.

It was pointless.

Stephan forced the .45 into my mouth.

“You fucking piece of shit,” he spat.

He put his hand to his face and inspected his own blood. I could feel the sight of the weapon digging into the roof of my mouth. I didn’t want to see his face but I couldn’t look away.

I closed my eyes and thought again of Cathy. This time her smile was perfect. There were no bullets, no blood and no screams.

Stephan pulled the trigger and my world went black.

Des Cogan's Story:

It doesn’t matter if you catch anything. Fishing is about calm and concentration. To relax in the beauty of the situation and to pit your wits against one of God’s wily creatures is one of life’s pleasures.

I bought the house on the Loch with fishing in mind, when I left the Regiment in 1998. I was married back then, but when I was away working my wife Anne found that the isolation was difficult to cope with. As time passed, she secretly got pissed off with me under her feet when I was at home too. She missed her friends in Hereford. It was a difficult and painful time, the thought of divorce was hard. No one in my family would ever consider such a move. Anne had other ideas. To add to my marital difficulties, I was trying desperately to get to grips with not being a professional soldier. I’d never known any other job.

One of seven brothers, I was brought up in a three-bedroom tenement a bus ride from Glasgow city centre. My staunchly Catholic family scraped for every penny, but still had change for the plate at Mass every Sunday. I’d watched all my older brothers scratch around for work, whilst after school I ran errands for anyone with two pennies to rub together.

One night my eldest brother Tom had a friend over for supper. All us boys were ordered to dress in our chapel best and my mother had cooked a joint, unheard of other than on a Sunday. All the boys were excited at the event, but had no idea who our special guest was.

Tom’s friend turned out to be James MacAfee. He’d joined the Scots Guards as an infantryman and sat at our meagre table, resplendent in his uniform, green beret tucked under his left epaulette. My father beamed from ear to ear as he questioned James about his various exploits.

From that moment, I knew what I wanted to do.

His red hair was cropped short and even though he had barely passed his eighteenth birthday he cut a formidable figure in my eyes. He was so smart and clean and brave. Moreover, he had something I wanted.

The respect of my father.

My whole family made a very special effort to welcome him to our home. It was genuine affection.

When James was killed at the battle for Goose Green in the Falkland Islands, he was twenty-three.

I’d often wondered if the claustrophobic yet loving home I came from, led me to specialise in such a lonely area of warfare. I’d certainly had enough of sharing a bedroom with three mischievous brothers.

When our family attended the funeral service for James MacAfee in 1981, I was already serving myself and had just completed selection. As we gathered around the doorway of the chapel on that breezy summer morning, my father tapped me on the shoulder.

He looked at me, his rugged face bursting with pride, the very same way he had looked at James at our table five years earlier. He gripped my arm. “You take care of yersel’, son,” he said.

Before I could answer he had stepped off to give his personal condolences to the McAfee family.

He was a man of few words, my father.

Now I had all the space I would ever need.

I think Anne had liked it best when we were back in Hereford, she had her friends and I was away a lot. The marriage finally ended in divorce and the split was acrimonious. I got the wee cottage in Scotland and the clothes I stood up in. She got our holiday cottage and the chance to live back in civilization. Anne married again six weeks after our divorce was final.

My father died a year later, my mother is still convinced it was the shame of the divorce that killed him.

I genuinely still live with the guilt.

The only other person close enough to know all this, and that the cottage on the Loch was my home, was Rick.

Rick or Stephen or whatever bollocks the boy was calling himself. He had remained my only mate through all this time and I loved him to bits, but to be honest, I had become happiest when alone.

Just me, the rain and the fish.

It was a full five miles to the nearest shop and I ran there with an empty Bergen, collected supplies, had a brief chat with old Mrs. McCauley and ran back with it full, three times a week. It kept me fit without the need for a gym and I got to speak to another human being.

It was enough.

In all the years I had lived there I had never seen another motor vehicle on the road other than lost tourists and the monthly gas and diesel trucks that supplied my cottage with heat and light.

So it was a surprise to me when I saw the Range Rover that morning, crawling along the road, not a mile from my place.

One guy was inside. He was very blond and serious looking. He didn’t see me, but I saw him. He certainly wasn’t a tourist. Tourists didn’t have hand-held GPS systems, they had a TomTom.

Maybe it was a sixth sense or just years of distrust but the moment I heard the engine coming toward me I slipped off the road and dropped myself out of sight. The guy was a player. I’d bet my life on it. I felt a shiver of apprehension. I needed to speak to Rick.

I did what I did best. Kept my head down and waited. There was no mobile signal out by the Loch so I was completely alone with the situation. There was no immediate reason to approach the guy. I decided to wait for him to piss off, and sure enough, after about an hour I heard the burble of the Range Rover again and the blond dude passed by without a hitch. I started back home without my shopping. I had a sticky feeling that this was all about Joel Davies, David Stern and a whole lot of cocaine.

My worst fears were confirmed when I reached the cottage and found the door busted in. I didn’t have much of value thanks to Anne and there didn’t appear to be anything missing, but the hairs on my neck were standing to attention. The boy had been through my desk for certain but I kept all the sensitive stuff in a gun cabinet in the loft. I checked the access door and it was untouched. He’d missed it.

The only way the guy knew I was there was to have obtained that information from Rick, and the only way Rick would have told them, and not warned me, was too hard to think about.

I grabbed the house phone and tried Rick’s home number. I got a long continuous tone. I then tried his mobile. It rang and then went onto answer-phone. I started to feel sick. You will have heard or read all the Regiment stories of how, when we lost a guy on an operation, we argued over his boots and had a piss up in his honour and all that. The truth was I never got used to loss.

I sat down to have a smoke on my wee pipe and a think. As it turned out I didn’t have long to muse. I heard the crack of big tyres on gravel. The Range Rover was back.

All my weapons were kept in the loft. It was a throwback from when Anne was there. She hated to see guns in the house. I took the stairs two at a time, lifted the hatch and unlocked the box. I heard the car door slam outside. He wasn’t a very careful boy. He obviously didn’t rate my chances.

The first thing I could lay my hands on was a Remington pump action shotgun. I used it to shoot small game around the cottage. It wasn’t the subtlest weapon in the world but it would have to do.

I’d got myself in a good spot on the top of the landing. The solid brick interior walls of the old cottage were good cover, and I could see the front door which was flapping about in the wind from the boy’s previous visit.

I slipped the safety button just behind the trigger guard to the fire position as the guy stepped into view.

He saw me in an instant and made a grab under his coat. That was enough excuse for me. I let go the Remington and remove most of the boy’s left kneecap. I had to give him credit, he still went for the weapon until I put a second cartridge into his foot.

After a careful walk down my stairs, I bent down next to the powerless guy and removed his weapon from the shoulder holster, a SIG 9mm pistol.

“Now then, matey, what the hell are you doing in ma house with a big fuckin’ gun?”

The boy was shaking and his lips trembled as he tried to speak.

“Go..to..to hell.”

His accent was Dutch and my mind shot back to the road in Amsterdam where I had to push my thumb into the player to obtain information. It was like being back in Belfast with wounded Provos. I pushed the barrel of the pump action shotgun under his chin and kept my voice level even though I wanted to slot the bastard there and then.

“In case you’re no aware, sonny, this shotgun here has a six shot magazine and nothing would give me more pleasure right now than to use all the remaining four to kill you.”

I leant onto his bad ankle with my knee and the old trick worked a treat again. The pain kicked in and he spoke through gritted teeth. “You know who I work for and why I’m here, so you’d better,” he took a shallow breath, “let me go now.”

I held his SIG in front of his face. “Yes, you’re here to kill me, son.”

The boy nodded, his face resigned to his lot.

“So just because you work for a drug dealing scumbag, I’m supposed to crap myself, dust you down and let you shoot me, that it?”

I tried hard to control my rage and swallowed hard. “Before we go any further, boy, you start talking about my friend down in Manchester. He isn’t answering his phone and I’m a wee bit concerned like.”

He didn’t look scared. He wore the look of a man already dead, and I knew the answer before he spoke. They were two words that changed my world.

“It’s done,” he said.

As I packed my gear I thought it ironic that the fish I would eat in the coming months would have fed on the young Dutchman. The Loch had claimed another victim and the world turned.

I’d cleaned the area where he’d lain of obvious bloodstains and fixed the lock on the front door. I intended to commandeer the Range Rover and his GPS too. David Stern, a man I had never met or ever wanted to meet, had ordered the murder of my only friend. I had no choice in my course of action. Revenge is an ugly emotion. It often leads people to behave in ways they never thought possible.

For me there was a void in my life that could never be filled. Did I want revenge? Call it what you like, I was going to find Stern, and kill him. But first I had to bury Rick.

I needed money to do what I had to do. I’d been well paid the last few years and I’d been careful before that. I knew I could raise about thirty grand but it would take a week or two to organise. I’d got some walking around money and some weapons. Together with what I’d lifted from the boy, I felt secure enough. I could lose myself in Manchester a damn sight easier than in Belfast. Besides, the Dutch kid had no photograph of me either in his clothes in the car or in his phone. By my reckoning the main players in this scenario didn’t have a likeness of me and that was my biggest asset. Only Susan could ID me and if she got close enough for that I’d slot her too.

My first duty though was to Rick and that in itself would be a problem. Once I started snooping around in his affairs I would be visible. I knew that Rick trusted Tanya and her close family. I would need some help and the best place I could think to start was Tanya’s brother, Georgie Richards.

It was getting dark as I reached the outskirts of Manchester and my mood was blacker than the sky itself. I found myself in Rusholme surrounded by Indian restaurants, and realised I hadn’t eaten in over twelve hours. I needed some grub and some kip before I could start to look for Georgie.

I saw that there was a hotel coming up on my left, The Woodland. It looked like a typical business class hotel and there were plenty of curry houses around for some food. That, and a few drinks to aid my sleep. I might not have been able to fight over Rick’s boots but I was damn well going to have a drink for him.

I pulled into the Woodland’s confusing car park and opted to leave the Range Rover around the back out of sight. I had packed all the weapons and ammunition I possessed into a sturdy suitcase and I was glad it had wheels as it must have weighed sixty pounds.

I dragged it and other light luggage into the small carpeted reception which was fairly busy with visitors. I had to wait in line, but within half an hour I’d sorted out a room. I, unlike Rick, used my own name, but I did use an old safe house address from the Regiment days rather than the cottage in Scotland.

The receptionist was pleasant enough and a decent room cost me sixty-five pounds bed and full English. She explained that the hotel was busier than usual as Manchester United were playing a European tie at Old Trafford.

She even flashed me a smile. Had I been feeling myself, I’d have been flattered.

Once in the room I removed my weapons stash from the case and laid it on the bed. It was an accumulation of all sorts of kit I’d collected over the years.

Two pistols, a 9mm Browning I kept as a souvenir after my last tour in Northern Ireland, and the SIG I commandeered from my Dutch assassin. The Remington shotgun with the extended magazine and shortened barrel; a Heckler & Koch Mp5k 9mm machine pistol and enough plastic explosive and detonators to make a hole you could drive a truck into. I’d packed half a dozen flash bombs, a pair of night vision glasses, a good digital camera and the commandeered GPS.

Add the boxes of 9mm ammunition and 12-gauge cartridges and you can understand why I had to split the lot up and stash it.

I decided that the best thing was to separate the haul into three working sections, then if one was found it wouldn’t be a total disaster.