The Hit List (25 page)

It occurred to Slater as the vehicle plunged into yet aother furrow - another red-hot knife in the neck nd the balls -- that he was about to die for his country, id for the first time since recovering consciousness |ie ghost of a smile touched his lips. Hooking the ljumbs of his plasticuffed hands into the back of his elt, he attempted to brace himself against the jotong

" the car, which was getting worse. They had been riving for over an hour, he guessed, and had moved am main roads to local lanes. They were probably in ie countryside now - the going certainly felt uneven sugh.

His thumbs found the knife Chris had given hnn.

ley had searched him, but they hadn't found it. He'd gotten about it himself.

i No, he begged the trained part of himself - the part

at had been, and always would be, an SAS soldier. |ease no. Don't order me to go on fighting. [You're not dead, a quiet voice whispered, until bu're dead. This is what it's about. This is what

parates the wolves from the sheep. This is the

oment that your entire life has led up to. Fight. \ Please. Let me close my eyes. Let me die. tOpen your eyes. Whatever the odds, whatever the i. Fight.

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Another horrendous jolt, banging Slater's cheekbone hard into his own blood, tears and vomit.

Agonisedly, inch by inch, he fingered the sliver of compound plastic from his belt, pushed it down his left sleeve, fitted it under his watchstrap.

It was laughable, no defence against anything or any one, let alone a team of heavily armed and quite possibly sadistic RDB enforcers - but when all was said and done it was a weapon.

When daylight suddenly and violently flooded the car boot, Slater guessed that they had covered about 100 miles. He had been unconscious, he guessed, for about twenty minutes. The bag was pulled from his face and he blinked* painfully - his eyes and sinuses were still acutely tender &om being blasted with Mace.

As his vision cleared he saw one of FanonKhayat's bodyguards - Potato-Head -- reaching for him. Noted the gold-plated identity bracelet on the hairy wrist.

Distaste showed on the Serb's face at the vomit and blood-smeared features before him. Gripping Slater by the lapels of his jacket, he wrenched him from the car and pushed him to the ground.

They were in a farmyard, Slater saw blearily, and he was lying on a grass verge that had been churned up by cattle and had then dried hard and uneven. The land surrounding them was hilly and sparsely wooded, and there was no sign that they were overlooked from any direction. Certainly there was no other dwelling-place of any kind in sight. The car he had travelled in was a

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olive Audi Quattro, new-looking. The day : and cloudless.

l farm itself was in a poor state of repair. Thistles grass grew through the cracks in the yard's etc floor, and the brick outbuildings were badly ted. Beyond the yard several dozen young pigs attently squealed and jostled in a makeshift pen. rutted track beyond them a tractor and trailer | parked. Two cabbage white butterflies tumbled I each other in a looping aerial ballet. There was

of bees. It was a drowsy and peaceful scene. 6>t for long. From the front seat of the Audi 1 Suet-Face, a bloody dressing round the stump thumb, and a third man, as pasty-faced and set as the first two. This, Slater guessed, was the rfio had bumped him in the apartment. The two s together, Suet-Face spat on the ground and took -bottle of spirits from his pocket, and they stared i, amused.

8ter was not encouraged. None of the trio had the man who intended to be merciful. With his i hands he felt for the knife. It was still there, iusic?' Suet-Face asked Slater, swigging from the

and reaching inside the car. 'You like?' 7ithout warning the quiet of the farmyard was ered by the ear-splitting thump of a techno beat, ap of which a woman's voice began to screech a ely amplified ethnic folk-song. It was, thought : as he turned his head away, a truly hideous sound, Audi's top-of-the-range hi-fi did it full justice.

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'You like?' shouted Suet-Face, tipping back the bottle again. 'Is Ceca Raznatovich.'

'Is shit,' Slater shouted back. 'Ceca fucks pigs. So does your mother.'

Best, he thought, to keep it simple.

But Suet-Face, despite being in what must have been considerable pain from his missing thumb, refused to be wound up. Instead, to Slater's staring disbelief, he started to dance - or at least to move his body in rough time to the music.

'You like pigs?' he said, still grinning. 'Is good you like pigs.'

The other two joined in, grinding their hips, punching the air and yelling the choruses with formless, incoherent abandon. The bottle passed hands. On Suet-Face's features a look of almost drooling anticipation had taken residence. They're cranking themselves up to kill me, thought Slater. This turbo-folk shit is the last music I'm going to hear.

The three men danced, drank and yelled for the twenty minutes that it took for the tape to play itself out, and then, sweating heavily, Suet-Face made for the barn which made up one side of the farmyard. From its shadowed interior Slater heard the faint grumble of a generator and then, above this, the heavy vibration of another, much larger piece of equipment. For some reason the sound seemed to excite the pigs, which scrabbled and fell over each other frenziedly.

Smiling, Potato-Head strode over to where Slater lay hunched on the verge.

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igs, English,' he grinned. 'Come!'

reen them he and the cosh-man dragged Slater i feet and pulled him roughly into the entrance to am. With a surge of dread that almost caused him jve at the knees Slater saw the machine that had vibrating with such menace -- a heavy-duty strial wood-chipper. It shuddered on its battered i on the hard earth floor as if ravenous for matter ftnsume.

sing Slater's white-faced horror, Suet-face gave thumbs-up with his good hand. He then ated the gesture with his bad hand, shrugged, and . The message was clear: I've lost my thumb, but t about to lose your life.

gave an order, and the cosh-man stepped ;, taking a pitchfork that was leaning against the fWall. From the yard came an agonised screaming, when the cosh-man returned a small pig was and keening on the pitchfork's upturned

ig with the effort, the cosh-man unloaded the i-legs first into the waiting maw of the The animal was still screaming when the started and the first bloody slush began ; into the waiting bin. When the outflow had been reduced to a slow drip of pink fat, the wiped his forehead and winked at Slater, you, fuck your mother, and fuck your said Slater conversationally. Inside, he was t deranged with fear. Do I keep the knife hidden

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and try to stick one of these fuckers, he wondered, or do I saw through my wrist right now and hope that \ bleed to death before they can feed me into that machine?

Suet-Face issued another order and Slater was dragged back out to the yard. Potato-Face followed with the slop-bin, and poured the still-steaming contents over the fence into the pigs' enclosure. Grunting and squealing furiously the animals piled in, devouring every scrap of tissue and bone. After less than a minute there was nothing left except for a few bloody smears on snouts and cheeks.

'Recycle!' explained Suet-Face. 'Very . . . ecology, no?'

Slater, whose legs were threatening to fold beneath him, forced himself to remain standing. Not to vomit.

A rotten-toothed smile split the broad peasant face. 'And now, England, we recycle you!'

Taking his upper arms, the other two began once again to drag the hopelessly writhing Cadre member across the rough concrete of the yard to the barn. Conscious that terror and the anticipation of unspeakable pain was beginning to shut down his thought-processes altogether, Slater forced himself to act.

Twitching his head crazily and screaming the foulest obscenities he could think of in order to attract attention away from his hands, he palmed the knife.

In the dead centre of the yard he yanked his feet forward, braked himself, and swinging his cuffed fists backwards with all the force he could muster, drove

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ade up to the hilt into Suet-Face's crotch.

Y, and in total silence, the Serb fell to his knees,

ater did not see this. What he saw - incompreIgly - was Eve rising into the double-handed \ position at the entrance to the yard.

i sound of her weapon - the multiple reports I almost lazily over the hot air, and it seemed to

that he heard the bone-smashing impact of the

( and felt the hot tissue-spray on his cheek first.

; Serbs at his sides pitched away from him, their I bloodily open-ended, lifeless before they hit the

Msve!' shouted Eve. 'Move left.' swideringly, Slater threw himself to the concrete, [ the double crack and a thrilled screaming as the artion of Suet-Face's skull landed among the

$inesslike now, Eve raced forward, paused for a it with weapon extended over each Mien man. ' Serbs, however, were very dead indeed, and Eve returned the Clock to her shoulder-holster ebuttoned her Levi jacket.

9,' she said, and for a long moment they stared at \ other.

er tried to think of something to say - some 1 of gratitude -- but a paralysing weariness seemed ave overcome him, and he lowered his eyes. For time, he noticed the extreme tightness of the i&. knelt down beside him. Her leopardskin velvet

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trousers, he saw, were shredded at the knees. She was dressed for the sixteenth arrondissement, not for a life or-death stalk across open ground in the countryside.

'Who had the cuff-key?' she asked.

'Don't know,' he answered numbly.

Quickly she searched the corpses, pulled the key from the cosh-man's pocket and, kneeling, sprung open the biting cufis at Slater's wrists and ankles.

'Thanks!' he breathed, flexing his puffed and agonised fingers and gasping at the pain of the renewed circulation. Slowly he climbed to his feet, took a few tentative steps and turned to her. 'What can I say? Thank you again. I was . . .'

He nodded at the wood-chipping machine, still thrumming expectantly.

'How badly are you hurt?' asked Eve, walking into the barn and reaching for the generator button.

The machine grumbled to silence.

Slater felt for the back of his skull. There was a large and acutely tender lump there, but he was able to turn his head without the crunching agony that vertebral or skull-damage would have engendered. His sinuses were sore and his eyes were still very inflamed, his ribs were painfully bruised from a kicking that he suspected had been delivered to him when he was lying unconscious in the apartment, and his testicles were i badly swollen.

'I'm . . . I'm pretty much OK. They gave me a good < seeing-to in that flat, but I don't think they did any permanent. . .' Tears, Slater discovered, were

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ig down his face. 'They Maced me, too,' he jgised. 'My eyes are a bit fucked. Sorry.'

handed him a handkerchief, and he scrubbed ars and the congealing blood and brain-matter \ his face. Seeing a tap in the corner of the yard he over and held his head under it for half a

me honestly how you are,' Eve said when he inished.

i still a bit concussed,' he admitted. 'Mentally the ce seems to be on and I'll probably get the at some point, but basically I'm OK.' nodded. 'Right. Well I'll tell you what we're I to do. We'll bring each other up to speed about i in the car, but first we're going to do to our new what they were going to do to you. It'll be ' and unpleasant but it's got to be done.' : what is this place? Who owns it?' idea. But this is quite a common Mafia setup disposal. Very popular in Russia. Some hard -farmer gets paid a whack of cash to leave the es for a few hours - the whole thing arranged ie phone - and when he gets back the place is id tidy and his animals have been fed.' we're not going to have some irate bloke ; up with a shotgun?' subt it. And we'd see him a mile off, anyway. :'d see us, and know to keep his distance.' er nodded. 'Are you going to tell me what led? How you got here?'

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'Let's get shot of this trio first.'

'Where are the others?'

'Andreas followed Fanon-Khayat, who's holed up at a hotel near the airport outside Paris. Terry and Leon stayed at the OP to keep an eye on Branca, who's still in the Rue Molitor flat. I'll hear if there are any developments. Now do you think you can lift these guys?'

Slater was amazed at her composure. The entire operation had gone arse-up, she'd just had to shoot three men dead, and she was carrying on as coolly as if they were out on a shopping trip.

'Do you think the pigs will eat the clothes?'

'Not sure.' Eve frowned. 'Perhaps best to strip the bodies and drive the stuff away. Let's do it.'

They started. By unspoken agreement they worked as fast as they could, and in almost total silence. Soon a pile of clothes and shoes lay beside the three naked corpses. Eve went through the pockets, extracting several thousand francs in cash, the Tokarev and Stechkin handguns, the gold Dupont lighter, and the keys to the Audi Quattro. Slater removed his knife from Suet-Face's perineum, and washed it under the tap before returning it to his belt.

There was no question, he knew, of merely setting the car on fire with the bodies in it. There would be inquests and autopsies and the manner of death would swiftly come to light. Then there would be headlines.

No, there was no easy or pleasant way out. The dead men had to disappear completely.

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we haven't got a bit more time,' observed |*,'In six hours they'd be nice and stiff.' ^tttodded blankly.

: barn, Slater found a square of plastic sheeting, one he rolled the dead men on to this, and : them, bumping, into the barn. Once there he the heads with fertiliser bags, to prevent any j> escaping on to the earth floor. When all three were ready for destruction, he fetched the > bin from the enclosure, where Potato-Face had Bluebottle flies were swarming in and around feasting on the congealed remains of the pig, in a black fury as he lifted it. the bin positioned beneath the funnel, Slater e looked at each other. Eve turned on the ator, and Slater knelt to hoist the first of the in a fireman's lift.