I heard him before I saw him. He was talking in Arabic, which I understood. He was on a phone, so I guessed he was outside to get a better signal. I listened to his side of the conversation.
“We have the son. That was the contract!”
“No, we had to bring one of the women, as the other got away and has probably alerted the police.”
“No, a friend of the girl he had dinner with.”
“I don’t know.”
“We tried, but the man I sent was a fool, he let them escape, so we had to take him at the girl’s hotel.
“I have no idea, some girl he picked up.”
“We shall go back and check once you collect the boy.”
“Two days, but that’s too dangerous, why can’t you collect as planned?”
The call was terminated, as the man swore most colourfully. He was not a happy man, so I smiled. He lit a cigarette, sitting on the front wheel of a rusting tractor that hadn’t moved in fifteen years. He was facing away from me, but he was a good ten yards distant, making it risky for me to try to reach him. I was just gauging the likelihood of succeeding when the door opened and another man came and joined him.
The first man gave him the packet of cigarettes and lit the one he selected.
“Well?” the second man asked in English. He had a strange accent, I couldn’t place him.
“We have to stay here for two days. They won’t collect the boy until then.”
“Why not?”
“Complications, due to the women.”
“What should we do with this one?”
“Find out who she is and what she knows, then kill her.”
“Here?”
“No, we may need this place again. Take her to the river, kill her and dump her there.”
“What about the other one, the one that escaped?”
“We will have to find her and take her out. She probably doesn’t know anything, but it pays to be careful.”
“I disagree, you didn’t see her jump. She’s too fast, too good to be a casual acquaintance. I reckon she’s CIA.”
“She’s English.”
“Okay, then she’s British MI6, either way, she could be dangerous.”
The first man swore again in Arabic, making his colleague laugh.
“Look on the bright side, Omar, we can at least have some fun with the other girl before we kill her.”
“No, it’s too risky. Leave no trace, no DNA or any links to this place or us.”
“Come on, there have to be some benefits!”
“Then be careful, if you fuck up, I’ll kill you myself!”
The other man laughed, throwing his cigarette across the small yard.
“I’m going in, it’s too fucking cold out here.”
It was the turn of the first man to laugh. “You Afrikaaners, you can’t take the European weather.”
“Shut up, you Arab fool!”
Both men returned to the warmth, chuckling as they exchanged insults. I silently thanked them for telling me as much as they had. Retracing my steps to behind the barn, I checked my phone again, one bar. I tried calling the colonel, but the signal kept dropping out. I had a choice, to go in and risk everything, but possibly save Carlene and Jon, or to wait, summon backup and arrive too late. They already knew that I had a problem and, if the phone GPS tracking system was working, they even knew where I was.
Capable of using ones initiative and of independent action, that was me - in the old days.
I made my decision.
High heels and dresses weren’t designed for climbing crumbling drainpipes, but I made it. As I squeezed through the first floor window, into a musty smelling room, I eased myself to the floor and felt my way forward. The bare floorboards were crumbling beneath me, but as I spread my weight and kept to the edges, I reached the door, opening it by hooking my fingers round and easing it a bit at a time.
The glow of the lanterns told me they were in a room downstairs and to the left. The stairs were a crumbling relic, even I could see in the half-light that they wouldn’t take my weight, let alone allow me to approach unannounced. I lay prone on the upper landing, peering down at the hall. The voices and lights told me where the enemy was, I wondered where they held Jon and Carlene.
A man walked out from their room and crossed the hall, unlocking a door at the foot of the useless stairs. He had a Heckler-Koch MP5 slung over his shoulder, and a SLP in a holster on his belt. He was carrying a plastic cup; I assumed it contained water, and a lantern.
He went into the room and out of my sight.
“You, keep quiet and drink!” he said, in accented English.
“Why have you done this?” asked Carlene.
“Shut up and drink!”
Moments later, he reappeared and locked the door again.
He returned to his original room, only to come back having refilled the cup. This time he crossed the hall and opened a door somewhere underneath me. I waited for
That gave me an idea.
I returned to the room I had just left and felt the floor. It was reasonable around the edges, but the middle was particularly rotten.
I easily pulled up the rotten boards, exposing the joists underneath. It was also relatively quiet, as the wood was the consistency of paper. The joists were a good two feet apart, and the ceiling below was also holed and completely bare in places.
“Who’s there?” came Jon’s voice from below me in the gloom.
“It’s Rebecca, now shut up!”
“Becca? How?..”
“Jon, shut up, while I work on how to get you out!”
I managed to free a hole that I could squeeze trough, laddering my new stockings in the process.
“Bugger!”
“What’s up?”
“Quiet! I’ve just laddered my stockings.”
Holding onto the joists, which creaked alarmingly, I dropped the few feet to the floor. Once down I found my way in the darkness to a metal framed bed, with bare springs and no mattress. Jon was handcuffed to the bed, still with a hood over his head.
I touched him to reassure him and then worked round the room to familiar myself with the layout.
“Becca? Free me, please?”
“Shh! I don’t have a set of keys on me, so just be patient, I’ll do my best. Now, be a love and shut the fuck up!”
The door was locked. The window was shuttered from the outside in good Gallic tradition, so the only way out was up and out the way I came in. I fumbled in my bag for a metal nail file. I then approached him and slid the file down between the ratchet and the ratchet seat. They had been sloppy and hadn’t double locked them. I depressed the ratchet and freed his hands.
Leaving him to pull off his hood, I went to the door and listened.
“Okay, help me with this bed!” I said. We lifted the bed and carried it the few feet to the centre of the room, so it was directly under the hole in the ceiling.
“Right, up you go. Once you get up, lie on the floor and worm your way to the open window. There’s a drainpipe on the left, shin down and run for the barn opposite. Once past that, go to the wall by the field and then get behind it. There’s a sheet of corrugated iron behind the wall, duck underneath it and wait there, do not move until help comes.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve got to get Carlene.”
“She’s here too?”
“Yes, now go!”
The bed shook and rattled alarmingly as he stood on the headboard. I had to stand on the other end to stop it tipping up. He squirmed through the hole and then I heard him slithering across the floor above. Dust and bits of plaster fell, marking his route.
I heard the thump as he landed on the ground outside the window. I hoped that no one else had. Turning to the door, I heard footsteps approaching from the other side. I dived behind the door and waited, my gun in my hand.
The door opened and light from the lantern flickered into the room. The empty bed was so obvious that I knew he’d call out immediately. I stepped round to see a very surprised man staring back at me.
“Who the fuck….?” he said, it was the Afrikaaner.