DELIVERANCE: a gripping action thriller full of suspense (2 page)

Chapter Two

Back in south-eastern Australia, Charlie glances down briefly at his newly acquired information. He is excellent at finding people; he has made a living out of it. And when Charlie finds people, they disappear.

Charlie acquired Sarah’s general location from a gossip who works in immigration, just before it all kicked off at the bar. He will begin to head in the right direction until his contact calls with Sarah’s full address. It’s going to be a 2,800 km trip to Davenport, but Charlie is prepared as always. He has a well-stocked bag filled with bottled water, energy bars, and a small bottle of bleach. He briefly considers heading for Darwin Airport first, to intercept Marshall. But that would be an extra fourteen hours travelling time.

No.

Sarah is the target. Marshall will just have to wait.

Charlie is already making steady progress on Route-95 in a stolen car with switched plates. He plans to drive continuously until he reaches Winton, a small quiet town with a population of 1,980, a thousand of them being sheep. He will meet his contact and collect his package, then take a brief rest before continuing onwards. He would have preferred to not involve anyone else, but it was a necessity. Airport security is tighter than ever since 9/11, so bringing a firearm into any country is almost impossible. But Charlie needs a gun, and Winton is where he will get one.

Charlie is – and always was – an excellent marksman. He was described by the armed forces as a
natural
sniper. But that was before his discharge. For Charlie though, it has never been about recognition. It’s about the mechanical nature of shooting. The calculations needed to perform the perfect shot, and the variables that need to be taken into consideration. In Charlie’s opinion, the fact that somebody dies is just a meaningless bi-product of a beautiful act.

He depresses the accelerator a little harder and smiles.

There is something cold about the smile though. When Charlie smiles this way, somebody is almost certainly going to die.

In his office at Heathrow airport in England, Mason listens to Marshall recount his story without interruption. Once he has finished, Mason recaps in short bullet-point style for confirmation. Another
Mason-mantra
from their SAS days.

‘You received the card from Sarah three days ago… and threw it in the bin?’

‘Yes.’

‘You received a telephone call today?’

‘Yes.’

‘You were told it was time to pay for your crimes, and that Sarah will die because of you?’

‘Yes,’ confirms Marshall.

Mason thinks for a second.

‘What day is your refuse collected?’ he asks.

‘Shit! Yesterday.’

‘So, they went through your bins,’ continues Mason. ‘Did this invitation have an address on it?’

‘Yes. She’s in Davenport, Australia.’

Mason thinks for a moment more, and then stands up.

‘Go and freshen up, or whatever it is you civilians do. Be at terminal thirteen in twenty minutes.’

‘The plane to Darwin doesn’t leave in twenty minutes,’ Marshall points out. ‘And there isn’t a terminal thirteen.’

‘You’re not going on the BA flight, and there is a gate thirteen. So open your fucking eyes.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘You can call me the puppet master.’

‘What?’

‘I’m going to pull some strings.’

***

Charlie is three hours into the extensive journey from southern to northern Australia. He has slowed to a suitable speed for driving when tired; increasing reaction time by decreasing velocity.

Charlie always thinks of everything.

Although tired, he is still concentrating hard on the dark road ahead. There is no music blasting from the radio. He is not humming, whistling or tapping his fingers. He is not burning any excess energy at all. He is simply moving his toes every thirty seconds or so to keep the blood flowing through his legs. As a plain and standard mobile phone vibrates once on the passenger seat, Charlie pulls over to the side of the road and kills the engine. Driving whilst tired is bad enough, but to throw another variable into the mix, like talking on the phone, would be a bad idea.

He places the phone to his ear and listens for a few seconds.

‘Yes,’ he confirms, and listens carefully.

‘En route now. E.T.A thirty seven hours.’

More listening.

‘Understood. Shoot to kill.’

He presses the end call button and activates the right indicator, even though the road is devoid of traffic. He then pulls from the curb and continues towards Winton, where his rifle waits.

At Heathrow airport, Marshall has killed a little time window shopping and taking a piss whilst waiting for Mason’s twenty minute deadline. He walks away from the toilets and payphones, and reaches the terminal corridors.

There is no gate thirteen.

Not even close.

He checks the signs again, but they still read:
Terminals 1-4
. Then he thinks about it properly.

‘Fucking idiot,’ he tells himself, as he heads towards the rear of the building.

Within five minutes, he finds what he is looking for: the medical & services loading bay. Each airport has a military designated runway that is only ever used for public transport in serious emergencies. The rest of the time its sole purpose is as a military standby. Soldiers gave it the nickname
runway thirteen
because if you are leaving on that runway, you’re heading for a war zone.

Unlucky.

‘About fucking time you showed up,’ Mason calls from up ahead. ‘You’re late.’

‘So I’m travelling military style then?’ Marshall calls back.

‘Better,’ Mason replies smiling. ‘You’re not going to Darwin.’

‘I’m not?’

‘No,’ Mason states. ‘You’re heading straight for Davenport, my friend.’

Marshall looks confused for a second.

‘Davenport doesn’t have an airport,’ he says.

‘Correct.’

Marshall thinks for a moment more, and then smiles.

‘I owe you, Mason. Big time.’

‘I told you that already.’

Thirty minutes later, Marshall is sitting amongst a group of soldiers on a military transport plane, and feeling right at home. He recognises the airplane as an A330 MRTT. He knows it has a cruising speed of 860 kph, and a range of 14,500 km on a single tank, which means that he could easily make it to Davenport within seventeen hours. However Mason told him that there will be two stops on the way, to drop off the other soldiers. Also, Mason said that the plane will need to land at Alice Springs, which is 335 km South of Davenport. He also assured him that at Alice Springs there will be a chopper standing by to take him the rest of the way.

So Marshall calculates that he should be at Davenport in twenty five hours, which is good news.

But the question remains: how did Mason pull it off?

Army transport, direct flight path, chopper waiting as a connection. As far as Marshall knew, Mason no longer has any ties to the forces. He shakes his head and uses the time to think.

Firstly he looks at the other guys aboard the plane. They look like any other soldiers Marshall has ever seen. Relaxed, but ready. He doesn’t know what their deployment is, and they sure as hell won’t tell him. Some of them look out of place in their uniforms, but he guesses every soldier does at some point.

Marshall thinks of Sarah.

He may have loved her once. Maybe he still does and always will, it’s difficult to say. The SAS was as much about psychology as it was about field training. You were taught to force emotions to one side, always. No exceptions.

People who feel love
,
feel pain
. Another of Mason’s famous mantras.

By throwing away an invitation, Marshall has dragged Sarah into his problems. However, the more he thinks about it, the less sense it makes. Why would Sarah send him an invitation to her wedding? She hasn’t contacted him since the day she left. Not a postcard, not a letter, nothing. So why then, after three years of no communication whatsoever, would she invite him to her wedding?

He is missing something.

Marshall closes his eyes and pictures in his mind the card Sarah sent. It was a standard wedding invitation, with a simple picture of two linked horse shoes on the front; presumably to signify luck. Then he pictures the inside of the card. Marshall has an eidetic memory and is able to recall it as clearly as if he were holding it in his hands. He feels the plane begin to descend, but ignores it. He visualizes precisely what Sarah wrote. He sees nothing unusual to begin with, so he examines the writing letter by letter. It takes him a moment to see it, but when he does, his breath catches in his throat and his heart quickens in his chest. He runs through it again in his mind to check:

G’day & Hello Marshall
.
I am getting married Early next month
.
It would be Lovely if you could be there to wish me well
.
Don’t worry about r.s.v.p
,
but Please do attend
.

Love Sarah
.

Now he is sure.

Discounting the places where a sentence began or a name was used, there were four additional capital letters. These four letters spell the word
help
. Which means she was in trouble
before
the card came. Whether it was the same trouble or not, he has no idea.

He lays a hand on the standard issue SAS mini-kit-bag beside him, another remarkable gift from Mason. It will contain a night scope and USMC knife. A pistol and a black patrol outfit. There is even a pair of correctly sized black boots tied around the handle.

As the plane descends further towards the ground Marshall can see a crude landing strip out of the window. He estimates that they have been in the air a little under six hours.

‘Where are we?’ he asks the soldier to his left.

‘Africa.’

‘Where in Africa?’

But the guy just smiles inscrutably. He won’t tell, and why should he? Marshall is just a lowly civilian now.

‘Nervous?’ Marshall asks.

‘No,’ the guy replies. ‘This is friendly territory now.’

Chapter Three

As the sun reaches its highest point over eastern Australia, Charlie speeds up a little to make up for his unscheduled stop in a town called St. George. He is about half way to Winton and as he drives, he tries to remember the date of St. George’s day in England.

April, March?

He can’t recall.

Nevertheless he remembers clearly that it was a time when his family would all get together. A time for children to dress as knights and slay cardboard dragons.

He glances back at the newly acquired photograph lying beside him on the passenger seat. He stopped in St. George to acquire some information on a young woman and her child – a little bargaining chip for later. On the road out of St. George, he noticed a truck making an afternoon delivery to a sportsman’s warehouse, and an idea occurred to him. He pulled over, waited for the delivery guy to take another few items in through the rear door, and then jumped into the back of the truck. Within a few minutes, he found what he was looking for, and was back on the road.

Ten hours to Winton. Twenty four hours to Davenport.

High above the continent of Africa, Marshall looks out of the window as the plane begins to descend once more. As far as he can make out, their bearing was mainly south, south-west for the first part of the journey, which would have meant they landed somewhere on the west coast. Since taking off again they have been heading due east. Just over six hours at 860 kph is approximately 5,000 km, which would put them somewhere in the region of Sudan.

Not the nicest of places, in Marshall’s experience. Some of the memories of which will haunt him forever.

The guy next to Marshall nudges him and points towards the cockpit where the co-pilot is stood in the doorway making a beckoning gesture. Marshall stands up carefully because of the tilt of the aircraft as it heads in to land. He walks forward and bends his head towards the co-pilot.

‘We have reports of a strong tailwind over the ocean, sir,’ the co-pilot announces.

‘Meaning?’

‘It will push us forward, sir. So we should be at Alice Springs an hour or two early.’

‘New E.T.A?’ Marshall asks.

‘Eleven hours if we’re lucky, sir.’

‘Thank you for letting me know.’

Marshall heads back to his seat and straps himself in for the landing.

He watches as the remaining soldiers disembark, but can’t shake the feeling that they look wrong somehow. He puts it down to tiredness and returns to thinking.

Being early is good, although he is unaware of just how crucial it might be.

As his thinking turns into ever hazier images, Marshall allows sleep to claim him. He wants to be prepared once he gets to his destination, so he adjusts his position and rests his head against his arm. It’s not particularly comfortable, but Marshall learned a long time ago that you sleep when you can. He allows the droning engines to lull him quickly into a light sleep as the plane cruises out towards the Indian Ocean.

Back in Davenport, Sarah is not having the time of her life.

She spent the majority of the morning crying and writing letters. Then she showered and dressed, before forcing herself to eat something. She is just about to turn the television on when the back door bursts open.

The man in the doorway immediately grabs Sarah by the hair, drags her out into the garden where he throws her to the ground. He is big, but not all muscle. There is some fat from excessive alcohol consumption and a poor diet. His name is Bruce, and he is Sarah’s fiancé. However, this is not a sweet scene of premarital bliss. Bruce is showing his disgust at Sarah for dressing in red.

‘Whore’s colours!’ he yells as he slaps her hard, sending her sprawling into the dirt.

Sarah does not cry out. This is not the first time he’s hit her and it won’t be the last. In Sarah’s opinion, hitting her is one of the nicer things that he does.

Then she notices a bulge appear in his trousers.

The slap was just the beginning.

He crouches down beside her and lifts her legs high in the air, reaching up beneath her skirt and ripping down her underwear. She doesn’t fight him. She knows there is little point. He fiddles drunkenly with his zipper and finally undoes his trousers after thirty seconds. He pulls them down around his ankles and points to his penis.

‘You know what to do,’ he slurs.

Unfortunately, Sarah does know what to do. She rises to her knees and closes her eyes, trying in vain to distance herself from what is about to take place.

Marshall wakes up with the cramped feeling you always get from sleeping in an airplane and checks his watch. He has slept for approximately six hours, which is just over 5,000 km. By Marshall’s reckoning, that should put them just about half way across the Indian Ocean.

He unbuckles his harness and then clambers towards the cabin door.

‘Corporal,’ Marshall calls to the co-pilot. ‘Is it possible to patch me through to Mason?’

‘I will attempt a communication, sir. Stand by.’

Marshall considers asking the Corporal to stop calling him ‘sir’, but it would be pointless. Whether it is because Marshall is now a civilian, or because he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the services doesn’t matter. The Corporal will continue to call him ‘sir’ regardless.

‘Sir,’ the co-pilot announces. ‘Mason on the line.’

Marshall moves further into the cockpit and takes the proffered headset.

‘Mason?’ he says into the microphone.

What
? Mason asks gruffly.
Surely I’ve done enough for you today
?

‘Yes, but I need to ask you something. Do you remember mission E-473?’

No
, Mason replies quickly.

‘It was Africa. Sudan and Sierra Leone.’

You executed over a hundred missions under my command, Marshall
.
Do you want me to recall each one
?

‘No, Mason. Just this one.’

Sorry, soldier
.
I don’t remember
.
Why is it important
?

‘I’ve been trying to tie-in Sarah with any missions I undertook. That is the only one I could find a link with.’

What link
?

‘I believe we were carrying cargo to Sarah’s father at the beginning of the mission.’

The General
?

‘Yes, then we carried on into deeper territories to retrieve political documentation.’

I don’t recall
.

‘We lost a man.’

We
? Mason exclaims.
For fuck’s sake Marshall
,
you mean you!

‘Yes… I mean
I
lost a man.’

The army lost a lot of men during your service Marshall
.
You can’t carry the death of one man around with you forever
.
He was there by choice
,
just like you were
.

‘I know.’

But Marshall does carry the death around. Not the death itself, but the way it was done.

Captain Adam Saunders was tortured for five days, and Marshall watched it happen.