Silent kill, p.5
Silent Kill, page 5
part #1 of Extreme Series
Costello gave her a dig in the ribs with his fingers. Nothing too hard, just a preview of what was on the menu. Chance felt pain flare through her side. She drew in a rapid breath, air grazing her throat like fingernails running down a blackboard. In the same moment Costello clamped his hand around her jaws and forced her to look him in the eye.
‘When I tell you to look, bitch, you damn well fucking look.’
Chance struggled to form words. Costello squeezing her jaws shut, her lips bunching up in the middle, his thumb digging into her cheek. ‘Please,’ she mumbled, overwhelmed by fear. ‘Please don’t do this.’
‘You should have thought about that before, you little slag. Before you hopped on that boat over to my country. Flipping my people.’
Chance tried to ignore the panic stirring in her stomach. ‘If you kill me,’ she said, ‘every British soldier in the province will be out looking for you. You’ll never get away with it.’
Costello laughed.
‘We’re in Republican territory now, sweetheart. Ain’t no one gonna come looking for you here. And if they do, we’ll put a cap in them and ain’t that the truth.’ Costello grinned his golden grin a second time.
Footsteps sounded just outside the barn, followed by a dull scraping as a door was hauled open. Costello stepped back from Chance and glanced at the entrance. Chance twisted her neck in the same direction. Stilts and Skinny, their AK-47 assault rifles slung over their shoulders, dragged Kicker into the barn. They lugged him towards the mincing machine, dumped him at Costello’s feet, then stepped back. They unslung their weapons and Skinny stacked them against the nearest wall. Meanwhile Stilts booted Kicker once, enough to stir the guy from his bloodied slumber. Coughing and groaning in agony, Kicker rolled onto his belly. Chance saw that his hands were tied behind his back, the plasticuffs pulled too tight, cutting off the circulation from his bloated, purple fingers.
‘You think maybe we killed him?’ Skinny said.
‘Jesus help me,’ said Stilts.
‘No, lad,’ Costello put in. ‘You just gave him a good licking, is all. It takes a surprising amount of effort to kill a man with your bare hands. You have to really put your back into it, and I speak from experience. Now, a gun, on the other hand – killing a man then is a piece of piss. No coincidence that the Brits, a nation of cowards if ever there was one, colonized the fucking world after the invention of the rifle.’
Costello swung his boot into Kicker’s ribs.
‘Wakey, wakey, Joe,’ he hissed.
Kicker squinted at the lightbulb. Then he focused on Costello and instantly jolted, as if someone had attached a pair of jumper clips to his balls and hit the juice. He winced in agony. In the dim light of the truck Chance hadn’t noticed the full extent of his injuries. Now she saw that he’d had been beaten to within an inch of his life. His right eyelid was swollen to a hard lump and his nose looked like a piece of gum right after someone had trodden in it. There were several gashes in his jeans where Stilts and his mate had knifed him, presumably for shits and giggles.
‘Jesus, look at you, Joe,’ said Costello, with a thin smile like a necklace in a pawnshop window, as he towered over Kicker. ‘You ain’t going to be winning any beauty contests, my son.’ He pulled out a cigarette from a packet of Marlboro Reds. Tapped it three times on the packet for good luck. Lit it. He stared at Kicker but spoke in a way that clearly indicated he was talking to Chance.
‘You’re no doubt wonderin’ how we knew this pathetic son of a bitch was squealing.’ Costello took a long drag on his tab. He didn’t seem to exhale. ‘Word of advice, Avery. Next time you try flipping one of our boyos, choose someone less thick than this sack of useless shit.’
Chance frowned. ‘Joe confessed to you?’
Costello chuckled meanly. ‘No need. I fairly suspected he was shagging Caitlin behind my back. I made that bitch pay all right. Gave her the Costello treatment. Pulled her teeth out one by one with a pair of pliers. I have plenty of experience in the tooth extraction business these days. Could probably open my own practice, come to think of it.’
He chuckled at his own bad joke. Stilts and Skinny felt the compulsion to laugh too. Costello bent down beside Kicker, ruffled his hair.
He said, ‘That slag spilled her guts about how Joe was always buying her gifts. Fancy clothes and the like. That got me wondering. A guy like Joe is no good with dough. I mean, he gets fuck all as a lowly lieutenant working for me, and he’s too dumb to dabble in the drugs business. There’s only one way Joe would’ve got his hands on a stack of readies, and that’s by playing snitch for the Brits. I had my boyos follow him to his meeting. Then I caught him hopping into your car. Bit of good fortune, that. Bagged myself two bastards for the price of one.’
Chance hated him more than she had hated anyone in her entire life, and she shot him the look to go with it. ‘Whatever you do to me, it won’t make a blind bit of difference. The war is over, Costello. Sinn Fein is negotiating. You’re done.’
‘Thanks for the offer, love, but I didn’t drag you all the way over here to listen to the latest propaganda from Westminster.’ Costello stared at the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. Twirled it. Glanced up at Chance and said, ‘Here’s my offer. You tell me what other lads you’ve flipped and I tell the boyos to go easy on you.’
Costello smoked some more and let the offer hang in the air. Chance swallowed hard. She said nothing. Goosebumps crawled like spiders down her arms. All the while Costello was grinning at her, waiting for an answer. Kicker whimpered into the hay on the floor.
‘Don’t keep us in suspense now,’ Costello said.
‘I don’t have that information,’ Chance replied.
‘Bullshit!’ Costello jabbed a finger at the agent, his yellowed fingernail an inch from her face. She could smell the tobacco on it. ‘You’re MI5. I know for a fact there’s a list of everyone in the IRA who’s been flipped, and as an agent you’d have access to that list. And you’re going to tell me who’s on it, or I’ll make you hurt so bad you’ll be wishing I’d only ripped your fucking teeth out.’
‘I swear I don’t know.’ Panic choked Chance as she spoke, reducing her voice to a faint scratching sound. The closer she came to death the more scared she was, and the less she could fight it. ‘We aren’t kept in the loop about sources flipped by other field agents. That’s standard agency policy.’
‘You’re lying. I can fucking smell it on you.’
Chance stayed very quiet. Costello was seething through his nostrils, putting the lid on his temper. ‘Here’s the craic. I’ve interviewed hundreds of men, women, even children. And not one of them has failed to spill their guts. Know why?’
Chance shook her head, holding back tears.
Costello grinned again. ‘I call it the breaking point. Everyone has one, and there’s no one better than me at finding it and smashing it. You can sit there and act tough, but you will break. And with a sheltered little slag like you, it won’t take much. A case of pushing the right buttons, is all.’
He dropped to a knee beside Kicker. Skinny grabbed the lieutenant by his greasy hair, lifting his eyes to Costello. Stilts, Chance noticed, had disappeared into one of the barn’s smaller rooms. She glanced back at Kicker as Costello blew smoke in the guy’s face. A moment later Stilts returned carrying a pair of aluminium baseball bats in one hand and a blowtorch in the other.
‘You should’ve kept your dick in your pants, Joe,’ said Costello. ‘Think you could get away with knobbing my missus, eh? Now you’re gonna fucking suffer.’ He smiled at Chance. ‘Pay attention now, sweetheart. This is what’s in store for you.’
Patting Kicker on the shoulder, Costello straightened up. Extinguished the cigarette and grabbed one of the baseball bats from Stilts, wrapping his fingers around its black polyurethane grip.
‘I’m a big fan of baseball.’ Costello had a dreamy look in his eyes as he ran his fingers gently along the bat. ‘Frankly I couldn’t give a fuck about Gaelic football and the rest of it. But baseball, now there’s a sport I can relate to. You know why I love it?’
‘Don’t do this, Costello,’ Kicker groaned.
The Nutting Squad chief appeared not to have heard the lieutenant. ‘It’s the crack of a batted ball in an empty stadium.’ He tapped the bat against the palm of his left hand. ‘The best sound in sport, that. The sharp report when the bat strikes the ball. Beautiful. You know, from a certain point in the stadium, it sounds a lot like a rifle discharge.’
Kicker’s face turned to chalk. His head jerked furiously from side to side. Skinny pinned him down, pressing his right knee as hard as he could into the guy’s back.
‘No!’ Kicker screamed as Costello took a swing at him with the bat and cracked him bang in the guts.
The blow winded Kicker. He grunted, doubled up, rolled onto his side. Almost immediately Silts started belting him with the other baseball bat, whacking him on the back and shoulders, his face shading red with exertion. Costello puffed out his cheeks, winding up for a big blow. Like he was about to hit a home run out of the stadium. He took a big swing at Kicker. There was a distinct metal ping as the aluminium met the side of his head. Kicker crumpled. His eyes rolled up. He went limp and lifeless.
‘Wake this idiot up,’ Costello demanded, catching his breath.
That was the cue for Stilts to slap a butane cartridge into the blowtorch. He fired up the blowtorch. A bluish flame glowed out of the stainless-steel nozzle. Kicker was still out of it as Stilts drew the flame to his face. The heat burned a hole in his cheek and a squeal escaped his lips, the pain snapping him back into consciousness. His eyes popped open so wide that Chance could almost see the veins at the back. He tried to jerk his head away but Stilts held the flame in place, with Skinny still pinning Kicker to the ground. Now Stilts raised the blowtorch to his one good eye. Kicker instinctively clamped it shut. It made no difference. The flame burned away his eyelid and blazed at his eyeball. He made a gurgling noise in the back of his throat. The sight of the blowtorch toasting his eye hypnotized Chance. Her brain refused to allow her to believe the same horrible pain awaited her. She tried to fight the logic of it. Told herself, Costello wouldn’t do that, not to a woman. He’d only do that to one of his own.
Stilts turned off the blowtorch. The flame cut out. Skinny hopped off Kicker’s back and dusted himself down. The three Nutting Squad men stood around Kicker, Stilts and Costello laughing as the guy pawed manically at his face, his eyeball oozing from its socket like melted gelatine and slicking down his scalded cheek. His face was a crater of blistered, blackened skin. The raw stench of burned human flesh hit Chance, flooding her nostrils. Skinny was quiet, she noticed. His hands were trembling with fear.
‘Stop squealing like a baby, Joe,’ said Costello, admiring the handiwork. ‘For fuck’s sake, kill this prick before he wakes up every peeler from here to Limerick.’
Stilts picked up the baseball bats. He chucked one to Skinny, who wielded it awkwardly. Then the two men rounded on Kicker. He didn’t see the attack coming. He was blind in one eye and the other was clamped shut.
‘Oh, Jesus! Fuck! Oh God,’ Kicker groaned. ‘My eye, Costello, my fucking eye . . .’
Costello laughed. Then he turned his smile on its head, into something like a frown.
‘Kill him,’ he said.
Stilts brought his baseball bat crashing down on Kicker. Skinny followed up with a powerful blow of his own. But Stilts did the lion’s share of the work as they belted Kicker for what felt to Chance like a very long time. When they were done, the hay around him was drenched with blood. Bits of gristle, shattered teeth and bone were visible. Kicker was an unrecognizable bundle of bruised flesh. Chance stared at his limp body, a vicious wave of nausea swelling inside her chest and prodding at the back of her throat.
Costello turned back to Chance.
‘Who else have you flipped, Avery?’
‘I told you, I don’t know.’
‘Now, you and I both know that’s a bag of bollocks. You can tell me what you know, or you can follow the example of Joe here. Choose wisely, darlin’.’
Chance still said nothing. Costello strode over to the MI5 agent, stooped down next to her and whispered into her ear, but it wasn’t sweet nothings. ‘You ain’t as smart as you think, Avery. Saying the war’s over and all that. You don’t know shit.’
She couldn’t help herself from rising to the bait. ‘I know you’re bringing in Stinger missiles tomorrow.’
That prompted a laugh from Costello. ‘That a fact?’
There was a desperation in Chance’s voice as she ploughed on, unnerved by Costello’s good mood. ‘I know where the shipment is coming in. Our assets are mobilizing as we speak. They’ll intercept the shipment.’
She didn’t know what she was hoping to achieve by telling Costello this. She was stabbing blindly, trying to prompt some kind of a reaction from him. She clung to a grain of hope that maybe he would see that his plan was being derailed, cut his losses and let her go. But even as she spoke, Chance knew she was going to lose. She saw Costello break out the broad smile once more, his gold teeth glowing under the barn lights.
‘That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?’ He laughed heartily. ‘Darlin’, that ain’t even the fucking half of it.’
Chance cursed herself through the pain for allowing her to be abducted by Victor Costello and his crew. The stupidity of it tied her stomach in knots. She looked Costello in the eye. Then she spat at him, sinking to his level at last as she seethed, ‘You’re a piece of shit, Costello. A relic still playing at soldiers while the rest of the world is moving on.’
Costello coolly wiped away the spit from his cheek. Inspected it in the palm of his hand. ‘No, Avery. Don’t lump me with those other boyos running around making cooker bombs in their grandmothers’ kitchens in Bayswater. I deserve respect. Who managed to score a bunch of Stingers on the black market? Me, that’s who. I’m the one who reached out to Colonel Jim. I’m the one who set this whole thing up.’
Chance shook her head at him.
‘There’s no one called Colonel Jim on our radar.’
‘That’s because he ain’t on your radar.’ The hesitation in Costello’s eyes had evaporated. He was openly bragging now. ‘Colonel Jim is a merc who just so happens to be sitting on a pile of Stingers in Angola. So much for your intelligence-gathering skills. British intelligence? Don’t make me laugh. You scum couldn’t figure your way out of a wet paper bag.’
Chance felt her heart skip a couple of cold beats. Costello smiled at the puzzled expression on her face.
‘Got your attention now, ain’t I? No doubt you’re wondering how our friend the colonel got his hands on the Stingers. Easy one, that. Reagan sold a bunch of Stingers to the UNITA anti-communist rebels in Angola during the civil war in the late eighties. Luckily for us, the batteries in these beauties are good for five years. So who’s the thick one now, Avery? Cos it sure as hell ain’t me.’
Chance hung her head low now, utterly deflated. Tears welled in her eyes. Outwitted by an uneducated psychopath. For the first time in a long time, she wanted to cry. Costello tutted at her.
‘Hurts, don’t it? When someone else has got you by the balls. And you and the rest of the scum in the services are too late. The deal is done. We’re getting the Stingers and Colonel Jim gets the twenty million shekels he needs.’
Chance glanced up suddenly, a thought bristling the hairs on the nape of her neck. ‘Needs for what?’ she asked, her voice cracking.
‘You Brits really don’t know shit.’ Costello grinned, unable to help himself, laying it on thick now and getting a kick out of the obvious despair on his victim’s face. ‘Colonel Jim needs money to fund his rebel army. That’s what he told us, anyhow. He’s planning to take over Zaire.’
Seven
2248 hours.
Costello wheeled away from Chance and nodded at Skinny.
‘Give her the Costello Special,’ he said.
Skinny hesitated for a beat. His face drained of colour. He glanced nervously at Stilts.
‘Do as the man says, lad,’ Stilts said to him.
Skinny opened his mouth to protest but Costello cut him off. ‘Hurry up with it. I don’t have all night.’
‘Aye, Victor,’ Skinny said as he reached for the blowtorch.
Costello watched Chance the whole time, clicking his tongue. ‘It’s always the civvies, you see. The ones who think they’re tough. Christ, if they only knew. See here, this bitch has grown up differently to you and me. She hasn’t seen the things we seen. She doesn’t know the limits of suffering. Ain’t that the truth, darling?’ He winked at Chance, slapped her across the cheek. Dropped his voice. ‘Now you’re about to find out.’
Skinny fired up the blowtorch. The flame seethed. He paced uncertainly over to Chance, hand shaking, eyes wide with the horror of what he was about to do. He looked almost sorry as he touched the flame to her crotch.
Chance screamed.
The pain was electric, sudden. Unbearable. She instinctively clamped her legs shut. Stilts snapped forward and forced her legs apart. Something shifted inside Skinny as he lowered the blowtorch. Chance saw it. The fear melting in his eyes, replaced by a kind of cruel and savage amusement. He started giggling maniacally. The flame singed her pubic hair. Pain instantly exploded in her synapses, sharp bursts of it stabbing her brain. She puked up into the back of her mouth. Her body convulsed. Skinny was now laughing hysterically. Two, three seconds and then the agony overwhelmed her and she began shaking in her chair, her head jerking left and right, pain shooting like broken needles through her veins and screeching inside her skull.
‘Enough!’ Costello boomed.
But Skinny kept the blowtorch in place, his victim’s screams drowned out by the childlike giggles coming from the gunman as he developed a taste for torture he never knew he had. Chance voided her bowels and bladder. Felt the hot release streaking her legs.
Costello grabbed Skinny, pulled him away and wrenched the blowtorch from his hand. ‘Give that here! I said stop, lad, for fuck’s sakes. We want to get her to talk, not kill her. Not yet, at least.’
