Gaz caught him unprepared. He used the weight of the pistol against the officer’s neck, below and a little behind his left earlobe, hit hard and true, and the head flipped sideways. What the instructors said in the personal defence lectures, the unarmed combat sessions, was that the blow that jerked the neck and head sideways was the one that stunned. Gaz saw the desperate gulp of shock, eyes big and staring and the head lolling away to the right. The look that said, ‘What the fuck? What was that? Who are you?…’ and the pistol went up hard and under the officer’s chin. The barrel and the foresight of the Makarov were tearing into the loose skin below his jaw. The officer might have been stunned, but he was a young man trained in combat, and comprehension would come fast… he would know that a pistol was under his jaw and, if fired, a bullet would explode upwards and behind the nasal channels and into the tissues of his brain.
The best chance of breaking clear was in the first seconds, while the wannabe captors were overdosing on adrenaline and stressed half out of their minds. ‘Go for it then. Do it then because it will never be as good again.’ Could have been that FSB did the same course. The girl was slow. She was dragging a plastic bag from her hip pocket.
Gaz hit him again. A hard slug of a blow. Should not have been necessary. It should not have been the work of an SRR ex-corporal to disable a middle-ranking officer and do it short-handed. The Hereford crowd would have done it with four, minimum; trained guys, brutal and fast and ruthless, and the target out of his mind in shock, and feet not touching the ground. The second blow stunned. Gaz snatched the bag from the girl’s hand and shoved it into the officer’s mouth. Had to prise the teeth apart but dug it in and heard the coughing and retching. Natacha stared at him, then remembered her instructions, what had seemed a joke, and had the second bag ready. He took it from her and pulled it down over the officer’s head and his cap fell from his head. Gaz had the pistol under the officer’s chin and his other hand held the officer’s left arm, had it wrenched up behind his back, and was trying to run, dragging the target with him. Past the car, down the path, on to the pavement and over it, and into the road. A van came by. What would the driver do? Might just look hard at the far side of the road and see nothing and hear nothing and… what real people did who were not queuing to be heroes. The van went by. The officer might have been on the same level of course as offered by Gaz’s people. Locked his legs. Swung with his free hand. Tried to buckle his knees.
It was the first crisis. There would be more. Gaz understood that a half measure was useless. ‘Go for broke’ was what he had been lectured, ‘Don’t show weakness’ was their call. Wondered if the noise of the safety coming off, being slid across with his thumb would be sufficient for the target to realise it would finish badly if he fought back. Gaz ducked under the blow, swung blind, and had to do no more.
Natacha kicked the officer.
The pain would have spread sharp and clean in his shin, and then she kneed him. A gasping and sobbing sound gurgled through the plastic bag in the target’s mouth, and his legs went slack. She had hold of his right arm, and Gaz thought the officer was trying to vomit.
Two more cars passed them, going towards the heart of Murmansk, and neither stopped. They dragged him fast and the headlights of the Fiat flashed and he could see that Timofey was out of the car and peering up the road, would have been waiting to hear the sound of double tap, would have wondered why he hadn’t. Timofey had the back door of the Fiat open, the engine running, and stared in astonishment, a fag dripping off his lower lip. They passed the old woman with her bags of swedes and turnips, and she had to back away and give them a clear run of the pavement, or they would have flattened her.
They came to the Fiat. A group of kids were watching… the officer was pushed forward, his head cannoning into the far side of the back seat. Gaz wrenched his legs into a foetal position and grabbed two more plastic bags from the front seat. Natacha was now in the passenger seat beside Timofey. Gaz tied one of the plastic bags round the officer’s ankles, knotted, and knotted again, and the second went round his wrists, at the small of his back, knotted, and knotted again. The tyres screamed, and the Fiat was heading down the road.
“Now what?” A squeal in her voice.
“Now where?” Confusion in Timofey’s.
“What did he tell you?”
“Nothing.”
“Why did he not shoot?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why is the bastard not dead?”
“Was not told, Timofey. Used like I am a servant.”
“He was going to shoot. Kill, then we take him to the harbour.”
“That is what I thought.”
“But he did not shoot, why not?”
“Listen… he did not tell me. Did not tell me why he wanted the bags.”
“Could he have shot him?”
“It was perfect. He was body to body with him. The man had no defence.”
“Where does it put us?”
“Don’t know. I know nothing. I know nothing more than you do.”
“Will we be paid?”
“How can I answer, Timofey?”
“He took him well.”
“Took him like a fucking cat after vermin, Timofey. Took him brilliantly. Has not spoken a word to him, not one word.”
Timofey twisted, eyes off the road and looked back. “What do we do now? Where do we go?”
A quiet voice behind him. “We go to your apartment, and we organise and you do the last thing I ask of you. Then we are gone, and your part is forgotten, except for the reward paid you. I am going to take him out. End of story.”
“Were you frightened to kill him?”
“No.”
Timofey drove and Natacha had her hand on his thigh, and the laughter was gone from her and the mischief had fled.
The old woman, moving slowly and gasping under the weight of the swedes and turnips, saw the military cap. She put down the bags and massaged her hands to get the feeling back into the fingers, flexed her joints, cracked them, and wondered what she had seen and how what she had seen might affect her… But she always liked – despite a grim and grey appearance – to laugh. And did not deny herself. She picked up the cap and placed it on the bonnet of the German car. Then extracted her apartment keys from her purse. She scraped the sharper side of the main key along the door of the BMW black saloon, then kicked the driver’s door as hard as frail feet and her boots would permit. She picked up her bags and was back inside the hallway with a speed that surprised her. She was on the third floor, had hurried up the stairs, and was inside her own pocket handkerchief living-room and at the window in time to see two bleary-eyed men emerge from the car, notice the cap, scratch and fidget, and wave their arms in confusion. She went to make tea… an arrogant bastard would have been her description of the officer who had lived two floors higher in the block. But the amusement was short-lived because the taller of the minders saw her and started toward the door.
I am going to take him out. End of story.
The man was straddling him, his neck was ruptured from the blows, he felt he was suffocating inside the plastic bag, and it had taken moments before his mind had begun to clear.