Hunters: A Trilogy (2 page)

But, there was, apparently, a major difference between favours and loyalty.

Yes, well, McGuire knew that now, didn’t he? Now he did – now he knew. But now it was too late. He knew
that
one for sure, and the knowledge burned him.

Wished he’d listened, wished he’d taken the advice, wished…

He slept again, but not for long.

They awoke him.

Rattling steel, squeaking hinges, footsteps. More pain, the shocking agony of a hard-soled boot stamping down on his unsuspecting fingers. Something hard, viciously wooden, clacked off his skull with a hollow, thunking sound, its impact ushered his mind to the front row of a fantastical firework show, a rather agonizing display of lights and sparkles. The ticket was VIP.

A voice spoke in the dark, its words thick, guttural.

‘Food...you...eat...food!’

The fireworks subsided, if only slightly. He groaned.

Iron fingers, steel claws digging into his armpits, dragged him into a sitting position. Head forced towards the steel bench – it was steel, he knew that much, his legs were chained to it and he’d explored every inch of the bench. Escape was impossible, chained like a dog, a mad dog, and twice as rabid – face shoved at the food, the same plate of barely warm, sweaty food as before.

‘The stew again, no doubt spicy and twinned with naan bread, a single flop, surely not the same piece of floury, flaccid naan bread again, surely not?’ He preferred to think of it as faeces bread: eminently palatable. The stench of his cell overwhelmed any feeble aromas the food may once have possessed.

‘Oh, how wonderful, faeces bread and sweaty stew again…’

The rusty voice, its words thick, spoke once more.

‘Close eyes – very quiet, shsshh...you eat!’

His own voice croaking, words wheedling through broken teeth.

‘Water...please?’ Not his voice, the sound of a stranger, hollow, detached.

A curse and then a blow, more of a chiding cuff than a blow, a little slap for the insolent, a reminder of who exactly was in charge around here. Then a pause...followed by some rustling and a shout, dialect unknown. Screaming hinges and more footsteps, pause...whispered words, a soft laugh. The clank of tin, a hollow sound, empty like his soul. A moment of silence, soft breathing and the smell of sweat, was followed by a rolling drumbeat of pouring water. The final clank of tin preceded one more slap to the back of his head, just for good measure. The blow was unexpected and made his head jerk forward to greet the bench’s cold caress; its steel greeting was merciless, mocking. Yet more pain.

‘Eat!’

Heavy footsteps, hinges wailing, door crashing, tomb sealed.

Hear the silence, a deep and thick silence, a sleep-like, black silence.

But not total. He cocked his head, straining to catch the noises.

Banging and shouting.

‘A rescue, have they come for me?’

No. Faint laughter, mirthful sounds, floating through the prison’s thick walls. They would have been of more use were he at the bottom of a well. At least he would have been able to shout in the well. No shouting here. Maybe a scream, just one, final scream. The sound of their laughter was bitter-sweet, a sound of happiness being enjoyed in some other world by some other people. People who would never come, not to come and help they wouldn’t. No, all they were going to do, when at last they came, was...

‘Yes, all they would do was cut my head…’

‘No!’

Shuddering panic, a tide of fear raced towards the matchstick boat of his sanity, he drifted helplessly in the face of its black wave, a tsunami of unstoppable horror. The darkness swelled, he felt himself wrapped within her terrible arms, bound by his fear.

He was a fear-prisoner, a prisoner-prisoner.

‘Breathe!’

He turned to the bench and lifted the hood, that wretched dominatrix, over his mouth and rested its chafing edges upon the bridge of his nose. Wincing, fingertips cautious, gently stroking the unfamiliar, misshapen lump of his broken, nasal slope. He prised a kernel of snotty blood from his nostrils, holding it in his fingers, half-contemplating whether to eat it or not.

At least he knew where it had been.

With a groan, he flicked the morsel away and stared down through the bottom of the hood, vision blurred by a curtain of loose-hanging, cotton strands. He left the hood covering his eyes. Something inside of him knew the heavy price that would be paid if ever he tried to remove it. Fear taxes, pain invoice. No twenty-eight days’ period of grace around here; he would pay and pay immediately. Of that he had no doubt because...because they watched him. They watched him, he knew they did, and he knew that it was better to play safe, better to stay in the darkness. McGuire felt their eyes upon him, rapists, scouring his mind and body. They watched him, all the time they watched him. He felt those eyes – they were just like Ken Rob-
in
-son’s eyes, relentlessly boring into his soul.

He ate the food and drank the water – the food was tasteless, he may as well have been eating air. The water was aluminium, cold and metallic, sandy. It smelled of urine. He pushed the plate away and lowered the hood. With his stomach already starting to grumble, sphincter complaining like an old woman with the shakes, McGuire eased himself back down onto the floor, pushing his legs nearer the gaoler – the closer to the bench his legs were the better. It seemed to ease the pain of the iron clasps fixed to his ankles.

He lay back and listened to the obscure grumblings of his bowels.

His sleep was fitful and far from empty.

Noises, harsh noises, filled his dreaming mind: steel dragons, cackling laughter and screams...

‘Screams, who’s screaming...screaming?’

Jerking awake, listening to the silence.

What silence? The noise was overwhelming. A steel jackhammer, wielded by a giant maniac, was beating a staccato rhythm against the side of his cell. No, it was down the corridor from his cell – outside. The noise was horrific, pulsating waves of shrieking sound entered his ears, their intrusion buffeting what few senses remained in the mush of his half-awake mind.

Screams, shouts, curses and jackhammers.

McGuire shuffled into the sitting position, pulling himself upright in front of the bench, heart beating louder than the giant’s blows. His head was ringing and old mother sphincter was just about to break into a terminal fit. He clenched his muscles against the horrible loose feeling in his guts and tried to get his pureed brain working.

‘A rescue, they
are
coming for me!’

Yes.

Reaching up, he grasped the hood and began to ease the hateful thing over his face. Then the noise stopped, stopped with the abruptness of an unwound Grandfather clock, stopping when the old man died. ‘Tick-tock-t…’

All noise ceased, time froze. So did his breath.

He waited in frozen, breath-holding fear.

He heard the sound of running feet, the noise filtering into the room, boots running. They were running up the corridor towards his cell, towards him! Then the old woman in his guts stopped, just like the clock. Dropped dead and unleashed her torrent. The flush of escaping fluids only serving to make his fear more palpable – he jerked the hood back down and cowered against the bench, his steel saviour, his protector, with tears running down his face and shit running down his legs.

Murmured voices came from outside the door, keys rattled, hinges complained. A moment of silence before heavy footsteps came thumping across that cold and dirty floor.

He cowered against the bench, crying out: ‘No, please no!’

Iron fingers lifted him to his feet. The chains clanked alarmingly.

A curse, in English...‘Fuck!’

More keys rattling.

‘Get those damn clamps off his legs, Mike. Hurry up!’

Then he was free, stumbling backwards to be saved by those iron hands. They pushed his head down, grabbing his wrist, jerking him forwards.

‘Follow me!’ It was a different voice, Australian, gruff and uncaring. ‘Come on, McGuire. Don’t just stand there, hold my hand and follow me – run or die, you prick!’

Jerking forwards, gripping the man’s large hand, McGuire did as he was ordered, he ran on frozen legs, pins-and-needles firing in waves of static down his thighs as his guide pushed ahead without seeming to care. The rest was nothing but a blur, daylight searing under the lip of the hood. Running whilst bent over – stumbling. Panting like the rabid dog, and twice as thirsty – being inexorably dragged forwards by his iron-fisted rescuer.

Fear and a sudden wave of terrible doubt washed over him.

‘He
is
a rescuer, they have come to help,
right
?’

No choice but to follow, dragged by the wrists, stumbling and moaning, blood, snot and tears slicking across his face and dripping down his chin. The hood was now nothing more than a cloth oven. It boiled his head.

He heard people shouting. ‘Move it, come on you guys! That’s it, watch out – fuck, they’re here!’ The sound of gunfire filled his being. Deliberate shots, loud, single explosions. Then the other type, a ripping steel cacophony, an awful clattering melee of automatic fire, such horrendous noise, such madness!

The last coherent sensation he had was one of being lifted clean off the ground and thrown, his equilibrium went haywire in the strobe-like surroundings of the hood, darkness and light flashed in crazy patterns. He felt himself flying through the air. His tensing muscles were unnecessary. The leathery springiness of a car seat saved him from the pain of the anticipated, concrete landing.

Car doors slammed around him, an engine roared and he was thrown against the rear of the seat. Tyres squealed – he felt the vehicle tilting over to the left, then accelerating hard, diesel engine bouncing against the rev-limiter. The first voice from the cell spoke again, the English one, its tone familiar, but...

‘Left-left-left, that’s it, straight through there! Go, go – Go!’

More shooting from behind, there were some loud, metallic, thumping noises on the door by his head. Someone in his car started firing; the noise was so loud that McGuire screamed in anguish. The last thing he heard was the sound of a metallic clinking noise. Then something hot, red-hot, hit the back of his neck.

The pain seared into him. McGuire shrieked: ‘I’m hit! I’m hit!’

In utter fear, he collapsed into the black pit of unconsciousness.

***

Kenneth Robinson glanced across at the driver. ‘We can slow down now, Mikey,’ he said. ‘We’ve lost ‘em. Anyway, Noman’s boys will sort them out if they try and follow us...Did you see him? He was like a Tasmanian Devil! He must have dropped five of ‘em at least!’

‘Yeah, he was outstanding!’ Mike grunted, sliding a sideways glance towards Ken. ‘What are we gonna tell his family?’ he asked, softly.

Ken sat in silence; the recent memory of his deputy rushing without fear towards the heavily-armed kidnappers was still fresh in his mind. His blood still dripped and Ken still smelled it. Noman had gone down in a blaze of glory, not senseless by any means. They hadn’t been told about the extra guards, Noman had seen them first and simply did what anyone would have done, anyone with balls the size of melons – he’d attacked the group of gun-toting kidnappers without a second thought, allowing Ken and Mike to gain access to the building.

Noman’s actions had saved them, but he’d been killed in the process. His bullet-riddled body, now cold and lifeless, lay on the back seat of the white Toyota shadowing them through the packed streets of Karachi.

Ken had no idea what he was going to do. ‘I dunno,’ he said, blowing out a stream of anger-filled breath. ‘I guess the company will have to fork out some cash for Noman’s family – bollocks, what a waste of a good man!’ He looked at the unconscious form of John McGuire.

The man lay across the back seat of the Land Cruiser, a pool of blood and snot soaking through his hood. Ken decided to leave it there as the sight of the man’s face would most likely drive him over the edge.

Noman’s last words were still ringing in his ears.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Ken. I...oh, my son, my boy, oh...’

He died soon after, no more words, no more Noman.

Ken shook the image from his mind. ‘We should make this prick pay Noman’s family – look at him, the waste of space,’ he said, nodding at McGuire’s quivering form, ‘one empty shell-case to the head and he passes out! And he’s crapped himself, too, the dickhead!’ He stared out of the side window to watch the madness of Karachi’s traffic.

Mike nodded. ‘We should get out of here for good, Tommy says he can get us flights anytime we want,’ he said, manoeuvring expertly around a stuttering motorcycle, which carried a family of seven.

Ken reached for his smokes. ‘Yeah, that sounds like a plan to me, I’m up to the gills with these retards,’ he said, nodding at the back seat. He and Mike had known each other for several years now and they’d been through a lot of situations together, both good and bad. Today was definitely leaning toward the latter. Ken knew there were better jobs out there, and better people to work for. ‘Yeah, get me outta here,’ he said, sarcastically. ‘I’m a fucking mercenary!’

Mike laughed, floored the accelerator and burst through the junction, just as a red traffic light illuminated. An array of screeching tyres and blaring horns erupted behind their racing vehicle.

‘Mikey, you’re a twat!’ Ken murmured, grabbing hold of the handle above his side window.

‘And you, Kenny, sound just like my old Mum…’ the Australian retorted, grinning as he swung the vehicle into yet another tyre-smoking manoeuvre.

More horns.

Ken held on tight. He knew that the ride ahead was likely to be a bumpy one, and not just in the next five minutes, either. He had his mind set on going back to Afghanistan. If Tommy was able get them out of here this week, well...who knows what the future would bring? Ken knew that whatever the outcome, it was likely to be a wild ride. He was right about that, he just didn’t know how right.

Four years later.

Ken left the office and walked out into the early morning sunlight, standing on the steps for a moment to watch the dust blowing across the airfield. It was the leading edge of a much bigger storm, one that had been brewing for a couple of days now. In the distance he saw the redness of the sand as it flirted with the sky above. Ken had been caught in the open on more than one occasion and it was never good. He stared across the base and watched as the dawn began to unfold into the day, yet another day in this godforsaken, shit-hole of a place – Kandahar airfield, or KAF, as it was known to all who lived there.