"Where’s the place you took us to?” Dave asked, gently.
“Fuck off!”
“Tell me, and I’ll let you out at the next emergency phone. If you don’t, you’ll probably be dead before we get there.”
The man was silent for a few minutes, then he started slumping back again.
“Tell me,” Dave said again. He made a grab for the map on the dashboard, it fell onto the floor, into a pile of vomit. He picked it up and placed it on the man's lap. The man moved his hand around unsteadily and pointed at a spot.
They drove on for another eight kilometres and pulled up - a hundred metres from the next emergency phone. Dave opened his door and looked up and down the motorway, there were a couple of cars on the road, but nothing too busy. He waited a few moments for them to pass, then pulled the driver out of his seat and across the passenger seat. He had another quick look up and down the road, saw it was still clear and pulled him out of the car. He dragged him across the grass verge and into the bushes, which ran along the edge of the fields. When they were hidden, he looked around to see if anyone had stopped, they hadn’t. He looked across the farmland to see if there were any walkers out in the fields, there was no one in sight. He looked down at the man, he was quietly groaning, his leg had stopped bleeding but he was as white as a sheet. “He’s probably got no blood left in him,” he mused. He took another look around, stepped back and shot him.
A small black hole, about the size of a five pence piece, appeared in his forehead, turning red as he watched. The back of his head exploded over the grass as the bullet buried itself into the ground. The man slumped back, hidden in the long grass.
“That’ll teach the bastard,” he sneered. Looking around he walked back to the car pretending to do up his trousers, making it look like I’d just had a pee in the trees.
Lucy looked away and cried.
Dave jumped back into the car, he could feel his heart racing as he put his belt on and pulled back out onto the motorway and sped off.
Once he was away from the area, he glanced at Lucy in the rear view mirror, “He pointed to a spot here, just outside Farnborough. It’s on the B-four-four-nine-four, going towards Wantage, nearly fifty kilometres away.”
She was looking out the side window, crying. “Why did you have to kill him?” she whispered.
“He would have called them and told them we were coming, they would have shot Harry and waited for us to turn up. Anyway, the bastard deserved it. They all do!”
As Dave drove on, Lucy sat staring, as he told her what was going to happen when they got there.
Dave turned onto the B4494, “We’ve got about ten kilometres.” He looked at Lucy, “Lucy, are you listening to me?”
“Yes," she mumbled.
“Okay. Listen, we’ll be alright. We’ll get Harry out and find Bob.” He didn’t know if he believed it himself, for all he knew he could be dead in thirty minutes.
28
According to the map, the house was about a kilometre ahead of them and looked as if it was set back from the road, bordering on a small wood.
Dave pulled the SUV over and let it climb up onto the grass verge, pulling it into the bushes until the back end was just inside the brush line, invisible from the road. He turned the ignition off and sat for a few minutes, thinking about what he was letting himself in for!
He looked at Lucy, “Lucy?” She didn’t respond at first, so he raised his voice and said it again. She turned and looked at him, her face was blank and she looked exhausted. “Listen to me!” He grabbed her wrist and pointed to her watch to make sure what he was about to say meant something. “Wait here for one hour. If I’m not back by then, drive to a police station and tell them what’s happening, okay?”
"Okay," she nodded.
Dave looked at her for a few moments, checking to make sure she was still with him. He checked how many rounds he had left, then made it ready. He thought, “I’m not taking any chances with this lot.”
He put the Taser he'd found on the guy he'd shot, in his jacket pocket and put the other handgun on the front passenger seat, just in case Lucy needed it. “Lucy! Remember, one hour. Don’t wait any longer than that. I’ll either be back, or something has gone seriously wrong!”
“Hopefully the first one,” he thought.
He got out and sat Lucy in the driver’s seat.
“Here’s the key, look, I’ve put it in the ignition for you. All you have to do is turn it and back out and drive.” He held her head in his hands and made her look at him. “Remember, if I’m not back in one hour,” he pointed to her watch again, “find a police station and tell them everything.”
The pine tree wood was about one kilometre long and seven hundred metres wide, and the scent coming off it was amazing. It reminded Dave of his training days back in the army when they used to go off on exercise in Wales.
According to the map, there was a path running down the middle, leading from the house to a point about one hundred metres from where he'd just left Lucy. The road they'd arrived on ran down the right-hand edge of the wood and passed by the drive up to the house. He reckoned it would take about fifteen minutes to get to the house.
Walking at an angle to the left for about two hundred and fifty metres, he turned parallel to the road - this was so he could come up to the house via the back garden. “Hopefully that would give me the most cover,” he thought.
He tried to put Lucy out of my mind, for now, he had work to do.
As Dave approached the house, he could see the back garden, his guess was slightly out, the house was actually sideways onto the road.
The gardens were huge and laid to grass, they went around three sides of the house with the front being laid to gravel.
“Damn!” he frowned. “This is going to make it difficult to approach the house without being seen.”
It was located fifty metres from the road to prevent anyone looking into the front windows as they drove by. There was a single outbuilding built next to the highway, but it was partially hidden by a small coppice of young pines. There was no garage but the entrance ran through the trees and past the outbuilding, which probably acted as the garage.
Dave thought for a second whether the man he'd just shot had lied about where the house was, but it was too late to think like that now.
He crept up through the wood, to the edge of the tree line bordering the garden - the outbuilding was on the other side of the house so he couldn’t see it from where he'd planned on running across the lawn.
The front door of the house was pointing towards where he'd parked the SUV. That didn’t worry him though, it was too far away to be seen from the door or the front window.
As he crept closer he could see there was another car outside, it was tucked in between the house and the outbuilding on the drive. It was an SUV, the same as the one he'd acquired. He smiled and realised then that it was the right house.
From where he sat he couldn’t see any movement, so he worked his way around the wood till he could see into the front window. He could just make out one person sitting inside - it was the woman who’d shot Harry.
As he knelt, he thought about going up to the front door, ringing the bell, waiting for the lady to open it and shooting her there and then, job done. Then it occurred to him if he did that he might as well just shoot himself now. He shook his head and was thinking about how to approach the house across the grass when a man came out the front door. He got into the SUV and drove off.
Dave sat and thought about the events leading up to this point, “I shot two, the woman makes three and he makes four, That’s all of them, she’s on her own. About bloody time I had some luck,” he smiled, then it hit him, “shit! He went right, towards Lucy.”
He thought about ringing her. “No, don’t panic her, she’s a mess already. Anyway, he won’t see the other SUV!” he hoped. He sat and waited to see if he came back. “They might be hungry and he's just gone out for food.”
Five, ten,
then fifteen minutes went by and the SUV hadn’t come back. "Okay, five more minutes," he said to himself, looking at his watch. "That’ll give him time to get there and get back," he hoped. “This is it. Move, Dave, now!”
He jumped the wall, ran across the grass and headed for the front door, the side of the house covering him. He thought, “Good luck comes in threes, so I just hope this is my second piece!”
He stopped at the side and decided to walk around the back, going the long way to check out the sides he couldn’t see, before knocking, just in case there were more than four of them.
When he got round the front, he took a deep breath and rang the bell. “This is bloody crazy!” he worried.
He heard the woman get up and come to the front door, there was a pause. “Shit! Maybe she’s just realised the other guy had a key and she’s now thinking ‘why’s he ringing the doorbell?’” He gripped his handgun tight, ready to lift and fire if necessary.
When the door opened, the woman looked at the man in front of her, she smiled and then spotted the weapon. She realised he was on his own. She went for her handgun but was too slow. Dave shot her in the leg!
She went down, screaming, dropping her handgun at Dave's feet.
“She’s quick, but not quick enough,” he thought, kicking it away from her - it slid along the hall into the house. He made a mental note to collect it on the way out.
As she groaned, Dave looked at her and remembered what she did to Harry. He contemplated kicking her in the stomach, but just crouched and whispered into her ear, “Hurts, doesn’t it? Bitch!” then stepped over her.
He worked his way along the hallway, hugging the right-hand wall, just in case he'd miscounted.
The door to the living room, where she’d been sitting, was just in front of him. He counted to three, held his breath and went in.
It was clear, but now his heart was beating so loud he could hardly hear himself think. He had a cold sweat running down his back making his scars itch.
He turned and went back out into the hallway and checked the kitchen, using the same method. He went through into the back utility room, which was also empty. “My counting must have been right, so far she was the only one in the house,” he thought. He went back to where the woman was lying, he stopped and looked up the stairs and listened for any movement.
He bent down and turned her over onto her front, knelt on her thigh, at the same time grabbing her hair and pulling her head back. “Who else is in the house?”
“Fuck you!” she groaned.
Somehow he knew she’d say that. He shoved her face down onto the floor, cracking her nose. He lifted it again, “Where’s Harry?”
He saw her eyes flick to the stairs. She then told him, in no uncertain terms, to go and have a relationship with his mum! Dave smashed her face into the floor and this time she went still. He contemplated putting a bullet in her head, but backed off. “Too many people are dead already,” he thought. As he looked up and down the hall he heard a groan. “Harry!” he called.
“Dave?” Harry replied.
“Harry, where are you?”
“There are two of them!” he shouted.
“I know, a man just left and the woman’s unconscious downstairs.”
He worked his way up and found Harry lying on a bed, his leg had been crudely wrapped in surgical gauze and his nose looked like it’d been broken, but then again it was probably like that before.
“Bastards!”
"I’ll live," he smiled, painfully.
Dave helped him up and the two of them hobbled out to the top of the stairs. As they looked down, they both froze. The woman who Dave had left unconscious was standing at the bottom of the stairs, she was leaning against the rail. She’d retrieved her handgun from the end of the hall and was now pointing it at them.
“Tough bitch!” Dave thought.
There was blood all over her face and down her nice frilly top. Without warning, a shot rang out, Dave and Harry flinched, waiting for the pain as the bullet ripped through them. Nothing happened. They looked at each other and then at the woman. Her face showed disbelief as she fell forward onto the stairs.
Staring, trying to work out what had just happened, they saw Lucy walk in through the front door. She was holding the handgun Dave had left on the seat, pointing it at the woman. She stopped and looked up at them, there was a look of emptiness on her face, her arms started to slowly drop. Suddenly the woman on the stairs moaned, Lucy looked back down at her and screamed, she shot her again and again, until the firing mechanism clicked on an empty chamber. Lucy let the gun drop from her hand, toppled back against the wall, and slid slowly down, wrapping her arms around her legs and started to cry.
They went down, Harry reaching out, pulling Lucy up. He put his arms around her and held her.
They left the house and got in the car. Lucy sat in the back with Harry, and Dave got in the front, ready to drive.
“I saw the other SUV leave,” Lucy said, “it drove past me but didn’t stop. I thought they’d got you, and I wasn’t leaving Harry and Bob, so I drove to the house.”
Harry leant in and kissed her on the forehead. “We’re okay, you did good, Lucy.”
She carried on telling Dave and Harry what had happened. “As I drove, I heard a shot, I thought they’d killed you. I drove into the drive and parked up by the small building on the way in, the one down by the road. I nearly turned round and went straight to the police, but I thought if they had shot you, you might need help, so I got out and walked up the drive to the house.”
She paused for a second, Harry took a tissue out of the door pocket and wiped her eyes.
“The door was open,” she carried on. “I was about to walk in when I saw that woman get up and point her gun up the stairs. I wasn’t going to shoot her, I was just going to tell her to stop and put her gun down. But as I crept in behind her you two appeared at the top, I saw her hands tense, I knew she was going to shoot, so I shot her!”
“It’s okay, Lucy,” Harry comforted, “you did the right thing.”
Dave got to the end of the drive and waited, wondering which way to go. “Where would they have taken Bob?”
Harry looked at Dave, “Bob, shit! Bob’s in the outbuilding, reverse back Dave, he’s in there,” he winced with the pain from his leg as he pointed at the outbuilding in the trees.
Dave slammed the car into reverse and spun the wheels as he floored the gas. He skidded to a stop outside a couple of large barn doors. They jumped out and started shouting Bob’s name.
“Dave!” Bob answered. “In here!”
They tried the doors, but they were locked. Dave went back to the car, reversed back and drove straight at them. The doors bounced open as the heavy car rammed them. One of them falling off its hinges and crashing to the ground. Lucy ran in as Dave was getting out, she went straight to Bob’s little cell, next to where they had all been kept before.
“I heard the shooting and then Lucy screaming," Bob said. "I thought they’d shot her. I was waiting for them to come and shoot me.”
“No mate. I shot the woman in the leg," Dave smiled. "Lucy finished her off. The guy she was with left about forty minutes ago.”
“Lucy. Lucy shot the woman?” Bob said, looking at Dave and then at Harry.
“Yes, mate, she did well. Now let’s go," Dave prompted.
When they got to the car, Bob looked at his sister, smiled and held out his hand, “Lucy, I’m so sorry.”
She hugged him, “It’s okay, Bobby, and it’s not your fault. I’m just glad you’re safe, we’re all safe.”
29
They headed north, going in the opposite direction that they came to throw off any tails waiting for them, and headed back towards the hotel in Mayfair via the A1. Lucy spent all her time checking out the back window.
“We need to rethink this because it just got crazy," Bob said.
As they headed down the A1, just before South Mimms, Harry suggested ditching the vehicle t
hey were in and getting a new one. "When those bodies are found, it’ll just be a matter of time before this car beeps up on their systems.”
“Harry’s right. We need to ditch this and buy another one,” Bob agreed. “Dave, when you get to South Mimms pull in and park somewhere in the open. We’ll leave the keys in the ignition, hopefully, some scrote will nick it.”
“Even better if they nick it and drive north,” Dave added.
When they reached the services, they left the car over by the exit, then hailed a cab to Potters Bar and jumped on the train into London, getting off at Finsbury Park, then went into the first back-street second-hand car dealer they came to.
“Not a bad little runner,” Dave smiled, as he headed to the hotel.
“Smells a bit,” Lucy said, winding her window down.
“What the fuck is this!” Harry cringed, pulling a condom out from the back of the seat. He flicked it out of Lucy’s window, cursing. She handed him a wet-wipe she’d purchased from the newsagents next door whilst Dave was negotiating the deal.
“Must be one of the safety features,” Dave laughed.
They parked two streets away, near a small green called Hanover Square, Dave managing to squeeze in behind a Mercedes Sprinter van.
The two men in the back of the van had been there all day, monitoring the suites. They were unaware of the four people who had just got out of the car, which was now parked right behind them. It was so close to the back anyone wanting to get out of the van, would have had trouble just opening the doors.
They’d been recording all the activity in the suites. They had watched Dave retrieve his handgun from behind the bed and alerted the rest of the teams but hadn’t got the message out in time. If they had, Dave wouldn’t have got the shot in that killed the agent. He would probably have been the one lying in the gutter instead.
The four of them walked towards the hotel as two pairs, on opposite sides of the road, in view of each other. As they got closer, Bob signalled to Harry and Dave to come over and join them.
"Lucy and I will go and check it out first," Bob said. "Before we all go in. We’ll signal you from my window if it’s all clear. Because of that policeman outside, we’ll go in through the back way, up through the kitchens.”