17
I let them get on with it for a couple of minutes.
‘All right, let’s have a look at them.’
Awaale didn’t answer. He was somewhere in the mêlée.
I moved forward. They carried on slapping, punching, raining down rifle butts.
‘Awaale, where the fuck are you?’
No reply.
‘Awaale!’
He emerged out of the darkness. A layer of dust clung to his sweat-covered face.
‘Enough, mate. You’re handing them over to Erasto, remember?’
His eyes were glazed, as if he was drunk or high.
‘Awaale, come on, mate, switch on.’
Behind him, the crew kept pounding into Ant and Dec. These lads really did have a different mindset.
I grabbed Awaale’s arms. ‘Get them to stop. I want these fuckers alive. You’re the main man, remember? You’ve got to step back from this shit and see the bigger picture. Awaale? You listening to me?’
He showed signs of rejoining Planet Earth. His eyes started to focus. ‘Yes, yes, of course, Mr Nick. Of course.’
He turned and re-entered the dust cloud, gobbing off as he went. He pushed and pulled the crew off the wounded animals. He had to slap a couple of the boys to make them get out of the way, bollocking them as if he’d had nothing to do with it.
Ant and Dec’s grazed and soon-to-be badly bruised bodies were curled up into balls. They looked as though someone had set about them with a cheese-grater.
They coughed and spluttered into the dust. Their tattoos glistened with blood and sweat. They were the normal snakes-wrapped-around-daggers stuff. Plus a couple of tribal tats, all that shit. It was the ones that had writing round them that I was interested in. Ant’s was a mermaid with tits. Dec’s was a fox. The writing beneath them looked like a row of twisted paperclips, like some sort of elaborate Far Eastern script. But having done some stuff in the Tbilisi neighbourhood, I knew exactly what it was. It was Mkhedruli, the Georgian alphabet.
I still had no boots on. My Timberlands had stayed behind in the AS compound, along with my day sack. But I kicked into them anyway. I wanted to get their attention.
‘Who sent you?’
Nothing.
‘If you don’t help me, these lads will keep on going until you do.’
Ant spat a mixture of saliva and blood into the dust, and maybe a couple of teeth as well. ‘Fuck you. Fuck all you bitches.’
Dec had a mouthful of the same, but he aimed it at me. It sprayed across the calf of my jeans. I turned back to the vehicle. Awaale was looking down the runway. I slapped him on the shoulder.
‘You OK, mate?’
He turned. ‘Yes, Mr Nick. I must control myself. I’m a leader now, the main man, yes?’
‘That’s right, mate. You must be able to turn that shit off — keep a clear head when it’s decision time.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, Mr Nick. Thank you. Yes, I will. I will.’
‘All right. Let’s get these fuckers back on the wagon. I’m done.’
I’d learnt enough. Now the other technical was at the aircraft, we needed to move.
I watched Awaale get the crew sorted. They dragged Ant and Dec to the flatbed and threw them onboard. We jumped up behind them. The driver ground the gears and we lurched off towards a quick exit out of there.
18
Back at the terminal, Mr Lover Man and Genghis weren’t giving Erasto time to think about what he might do next. They were both out of the Cessna with a bag over one shoulder, weapons up.
Mr Lover Man was shouting. Whatever it was about, it meant nothing to the crews around the two technicals. They looked jumpy and brandished their weapons left, right and centre. One lad even brought his RPG into the aim. Another swung the 12.7 on its mount.
Tracy and Stefan were waiting forward of Erasto’s wagon, just off to the right, twenty metres or so from the aircraft.
This was the bit I fucking hated on these jobs. In all the excitement, just one trigger-finger exerting a tad too much pressure was all it took to fuck the whole thing up.
BB shouted back at Mr Lover Man, like they were in some kind of High Noon stand-off.
We came to a halt behind Erasto’s technical. BB was still bawling out Mr Lover Man. Now I could hear him. ‘They don’t fucking speak English, you twat! Just give them the cash — give them the fucking cash now.’
Mr Lover Man and Genghis stood their ground, M4s still in the shoulder. These guys were chilled. Their expressions hadn’t changed the whole time I’d known them.
Now we were closer, I could see the wires snaking out of the bags. Each of Frank’s boys had the bottom three fingers of his pistol hand through the ring-pulls, with his trigger-finger free. They were ready to drop the bag and pull, then take casualties before they became one.
Joe was still in the left-hand seat. The electrics started to wind up, blanketing the area with their high-pitched whine.
Mr Lover Man’s eyes never left the crews. They bounced from man to man, checking where their hands and weapons were. He shouted loudly over the engine noise: ‘Put down your weapons!’ The crews screamed back and did nothing, still off their tits.
Genghis and Mr Lover Man stood their ground, one each side of the cargo-hold doors. Mr Lover Man spotted me. ‘Get the money-counter to tell them to stand down. We’ll all get onto the plane. We’ll throw the cash out as we taxi. No hostages, no deal. Tell him.’
BB’s head swung between us as he took all this in. It was only as he turned back to me that I noticed he now had Stefan. ‘We take the Georgians with us. We can’t leave them with these fucking animals.’
I stared back at him. I’d had enough of this fucker already. ‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll get one of these animals to stick a fucking rifle butt in your face. Shut it. Everyone fucking — calm — down …’
Awaale was at Erasto’s window. I walked over to him. The boss man was sitting precisely where I’d last seen him, not showing the slightest concern as he sparked up his two-hundredth Marlboro of the day.
‘Awaale, tell Erasto we have the two white guys for him. Tell him that we’ll now do the one-for-one swap. The money comes to him as the hostages come to us, OK? And then he can have the two lads in the back, and do with them what he feels like. Tell him that.’
‘No problem, Mr Nick. We’ve done this many, many times. You know, you must tell your guys to cool it.’
‘Mate, they’re not my guys, so that ain’t going to happen, is it? Tell Erasto that as soon as he gets the money he leaves with his crew. Tell him he’s to take two technicals with him, which just leaves your wagon, the two white guys, and your lads looking after them. All right? So that means everything’s calm, everything’s good, we can all relax, and you can make sure we get away. But right now, let’s all keep fingers off triggers, yeah?’
Awaale turned away from the window. ‘OK, Mr Nick.’ He gave it the full John Wayne. ‘Let’s do it.’
As I followed him towards the Cessna, Awaale started chatting like we were off to the pub for a pint. ‘So, I’ll give you my father’s number. We’ll all meet up in Minneapolis.’ He leant towards me and went back into conspiratorial mode. ‘Once I have taken over the clan I will then visit my father and tell him to come home. But, first, you’ll join us in Minneapolis, won’t you?’
‘Yep, no drama, mate. But we have to get out of here now, OK?’
I looked ahead at Joe and drew my index finger across my throat to signal that he should kill the engine.
We needed calm. No loud noises; no props turning; no fingers on triggers. We’d get the exchange done nicely and quietly and then we’d fuck off. If it did go noisy, at least we’d be doing it from a steadier platform.