Fair Game (19 page)

Katie scrambled backwards until she banged against the headboard. ‘Do you speak English?’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘French?
Parlez-vous français
?’

The younger man pulled out his machete and waved it menacingly at her.

Katie drew up her legs. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. ‘Please, just take me to the others,’ she said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

The man with the machete jumped on to the bed and straddled her. She tried to push him away but he jammed the machete under her chin and screamed at her.

‘OK, OK,’ she said. ‘Don’t hurt me.’

The teenager laughed and ran the tip of the machete down between her breasts and across her stomach, then slipped it under the bottom of her T-shirt and used the blade to rip it down the middle. He grinned as he saw her breasts rise and fall, then he used the blade to cut her bra.

Katie wailed like an animal in pain, her eyes wide with terror.

The second man took off his AK-47 and leaned it against the wall of the cabin, then pushed the younger man to the side and started pulling off Katie’s shorts.

She screamed and tried to stop him but stopped struggling when the machete was thrust under her chin again.

The man ripped off her shorts and tossed them to the floor. The younger man used the machete to cut away what was left of her T-shirt and bra. Katie tried to cover her breasts with her hands as she sobbed.

The older man slid his fingers inside her pants and slowly pulled them off.

‘Please, don’t do this,’ sobbed Katie, as the man untied his rope belt and pulled down his cargo pants. He was already erect as he got on to the bed.

The younger man said something but the older one shouted at him. They were arguing over who was going to rape her first, Katie realised.

‘I’ve got money,’ she said. ‘I can pay you.’

The older man forced her legs apart as he climbed on top of her. She struggled but the man with the machete waved it menacingly over her head and screamed at her. He made a chopping motion with the weapon and the message was clear – if she fought, he’d kill her.

She lay still and turned her head away from him. ‘Please,’ she begged, ‘won’t you at least wear a condom?’ She screamed as the man entered, his foul-smelling mouth just inches from hers as he grunted with every thrust.

There was a knock on the door and Charlotte Button looked up as it opened. A tall Asian man in his early thirties popped his head around the door. ‘You wanted a chat?’ he said.

‘More than a chat, Amar, come in,’ said Button. She waved him to a sofa that had been shoehorned into her cubicle of an office. Thames House was full to capacity and the office she’d been allocated was about half the size of the one she’d occupied when she’d worked for the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

Amar Singh worked for MI5’s technical support section, and had moved with Button when she had transferred from SOCA. From the moment that Button had first met Singh she had been impressed with his technical knowledge and positive attitude. Singh never saw problems, only challenges, and he would work as long and as hard as it took to overcome any obstacle in his way. He was wearing a soft brown leather jacket that glistened under the office lights, Armani jeans and a grey silk shirt, with a thin gold chain around his neck, and he sat with the straight spine and confident poise of a male model waiting for the camera to start clicking away.

‘How’s the family?’ asked Button.

‘A handful, as always,’ said Singh, and he flashed a Bollywood-star smile. ‘Being the only man in a family of women is getting tiring. But Mishti is pregnant again so we’re hoping to redress the balance.’

‘Congratulations,’ said Button. ‘Give Mishti my best. And the job, everything is OK? They’re looking after you?’

Singh had been reluctant to leave SOCA and its gold-plated pension and it had taken a large jump in salary to convince him to move to MI5. ‘It’s been a blast so far,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe the toys I’m getting to play with. They’re using stuff I never even heard about with SOCA. You know, we’ve got cameras here that can pretty much look through walls? They use infrared detectors but they are so sensitive that we can make out the sort of detail that you get with regular cameras. Had a job last week where we needed the combination of a target’s safe and we were able to pick out the keyboard code as the target tapped it in. And we were sitting in a van outside his house.’ He leaned forward, his eyes sparkling. ‘How cool is that?’

‘Amazing,’ said Button, amused as always by Singh’s enthusiasm for all things technical. ‘Let me tell you about a problem I’ve got that needs your talents. We’re looking at a guy in Ealing who’s running an operation out in East Africa. Up until a few months ago he was using phones all the time but then he switched to a computer.’

‘He probably figured out that it’s not enough just to change Sim cards these days. We can listen in on phones no matter what Sim card is in.’

‘Whatever the reason, he’s started using mobiles a lot less. We were able to monitor his email traffic through GCHQ and all was good but now he’s using Skype. We haven’t been able to access his Skype account so we need to get something in the house that will let us monitor his Skype conversations.’

‘Not a problem,’ said Singh. ‘How many computers does he have in the house?’

Button shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘We haven’t been able to get inside.’

‘Does he use dongles or does he have wifi in the house?’

Button shrugged. ‘Sorry, Amar. All we know is that he opened a Skype account three weeks ago. I don’t know anything about the equipment he uses.’

‘I’ll check our databases,’ said Singh. ‘If he has wifi in the house it’s just a matter of getting our own router in there. We can do that in minutes – we just arrange for his service to go down and when he rings up to complain we take in our own equipment. It’s a bit more complicated with dongles but the principle is the same.’ He grinned and stood up. ‘I thought you were going to ask me for something difficult.’

‘Always a pleasure doing business with you, Amar, thanks.’

The boat powered across the waves, bucking and lurching like a living thing. Katie held on to the side of the skiff and narrowed her eyes against the wind. Tears were dragged across her cheeks and she sniffed and spat saliva over the side.

Hoop was sitting opposite her but he kept avoiding her eyes. He felt guilty, Katie knew, because he was the captain and she had been his responsibility and he hadn’t been able to prevent what they’d done to her. Hoop’s left eye was almost closed where he’d been struck with the butt of an AK-47 when he’d argued with them about leaving the yacht. The pirates had screamed at them and pointed at the two skiffs moored alongside the
Natalya
. Hoop had said that there was no reason for them to be taken off the yacht and one of the pirates had smashed him across the face.

The pirates didn’t speak English or French and Joy had even tried a few words of Arabic but there didn’t seem to be any way of communicating with them. That was what made it so frightening, they had no idea where they were being taken or what the pirates planned to do with them.

Katie shifted on her seat and grimaced as she felt sperm trickle down her thigh. They hadn’t let her shower after raping her, just thrown her off the bed and tossed her clothes at her. The T-shirt had been ruined but she had managed to grab another one from the laundry basket. She tried to blot out what they’d done to her but images kept flooding back. The machete. The foul smell of their breath. The hatred in their eyes as they’d pounded into her and the way they’d laughed afterwards. She was nothing to them, they knew nothing about her and they didn’t care, they’d just wanted to use her.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. The man who’d been the first to rape her was standing at the front of the boat, looking out over the sea. The second man who’d abused her was in a second boat, following them across the waves.

Eric and Joy were in the second boat. The pirates hadn’t tied them up or gagged them. There was no need. The pirates had guns and knives and they were all lean, hard men with the scars to prove that they were no strangers to violence.

Katie flinched as a hand touched her on the shoulder but then she realised it was Andrew. ‘Are you OK?’ he mouthed.

Katie shook her head. No, she wasn’t OK. She’d never be OK again. She wasn’t a virgin, she’d had two serious relationships at university and several flings, but the men who had raped her had changed her for ever. She closed her eyes and wished that she was dead.

Andrew squeezed her shoulder again but she shook him off. She didn’t want anyone to touch her.

The sound of the engines faded for a few seconds and Katie opened her eyes. One of the pirates at the back of the boat was standing up and talking into a transceiver. He was the oldest of the group, in his mid-thirties maybe, with jet-black skin and greasy ringlets almost down to his neck. He was wearing a photographer’s vest with dozens of small pockets on it and jeans that had been cut off at the knees, and around his neck was a leather necklace with a single shark’s tooth hanging from it. The pirate saw that Katie was looking at him and he grinned at her, showing blackened teeth as he pressed the transceiver to his ear. As he stared at her he slowly licked his lips and widened his eyes. Katie shuddered and looked away.

Crazy Boy used an Uzi to spray bullets at a passing Porsche and the car spun off the road and burst into flames. The driver climbed out, screaming in pain as he tried to extinguish his burning shirt with his hands. Crazy Boy switched to his sawn-off shotgun and blew off the man’s head with one shot. ‘That’s the way to do it!’ he shouted. He reloaded and ran down the street towards a group of drug dealers. They looked his way and reached into their jackets, where he knew they had MAC-10s. He switched back to his Uzi as he ran and blew them away.

The entryphone buzzed. ‘Who the fuck’s that?’ he shouted.

Levi’s walked over to the bank of CCTV screens, stripping leaves off a khat twig and popping them into his mouth. He picked up the receiver. ‘Yeah?’ he said, through a mouthful of khat. ‘What do you want?’ He listened, then replaced the receiver. ‘Internet guy at the gate,’ he said.

‘Yeah, they said they’d be here today,’ said Two Knives.

‘About bloody time,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘What the fuck are we paying for if it keeps going down? I wanna play Halo online and I can’t do that with no internet. And I need to talk to my uncle and can’t trust the fucking phones.’

‘Buzz him in,’ Two Knives said to Levi’s. He pointed at the two Glocks on the table by the window. ‘And hide the guns upstairs.’

Levi’s did as he was told.

‘Don’t forget to frisk him,’ said Crazy Boy.

‘He’s the internet guy, how can I frisk him?’ asked Two Knives.

‘Same as you frisk anyone who comes into this house,’ said Crazy Boy. ‘He could be anyone.’

‘I called the internet company, they said they’d send a guy. This is him.’ A blue van pulled up outside the house.

Crazy Boy looked over his shoulder. ‘Just do it,’ he said.

Two Knives nodded, knowing that to argue would only provoke an angry outburst. Crazy Boy never reacted well to criticism, even when he was in the wrong, and especially when he was high on khat. Two Knives had learned the hard way that the best way to handle his boss was to agree and smile and to do as he was told. They heard the van door open and slam shut and footsteps heading for the front door. Two Knives got there just as the doorbell rang and he opened the door to see a tall Asian man in dark blue overalls carrying a plastic toolbox in one hand and a clipboard and cardboard box in the other. He had a company ID pinned to his chest pocket. He smiled at Two Knives. ‘Simeon Khalid?’

‘This is the right house,’ said Two Knives. ‘I need to look in your toolbox.’

The Asian frowned. ‘My what?’

Two Knives gestured at the box. ‘Can you open it for me?’

The Asian’s frown deepened. ‘It’s just my tools.’

‘Just open it for me, please.’

The Asian sighed, then gave the clipboard and box to Two Knives so that he could use both hands to open the toolbox. Two Knives saw only tools, wire and insulation tape. ‘Happy?’ said the Asian. He closed the toolbox and took the clipboard and cardboard box back.

Two Knives lifted his hands and touched the Asian on the hips. The Asian stepped back. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘I need to check that you’re not carrying a weapon.’

‘A weapon? Are you crazy? I’m a technician. You called us, remember?’ He looked at the clipboard. ‘Simeon Khalid?’ He showed the clipboard to Two Knives. ‘And this is the right address?’

‘It’s the right address,’ said Two Knives patiently. ‘But we have had security problems in the past and my boss insists.’

The Asian laughed. ‘What do you think, I’m carrying a gun?’

‘Look, just let me pat you down. There’s a tip in it when you’re done.’

The Asian nodded. ‘That’s more like it,’ he said, putting down the toolbox and raising his arms. ‘Pat away.’

Two Knives ran his hands up and down the overalls but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.

‘You should think about installing a metal detector, the sort of thing they use at airports,’ said the Asian as he picked up his toolbox.

‘Through there,’ said Two Knives, nodding at the sitting room. The Asian walked down the hall and Two Knives could smell his aftershave, sweet with a hint of oranges and something else. He closed the door and went after him.

‘Manhunt, huh?’ said the Asian as he looked at the screen. ‘Cool game.’

‘You play?’ said Crazy Boy.

‘Yeah, but I’m a fan of PlayStation 3. I prefer the graphics.’

‘Yeah? Same games, though, right?’

‘Pretty much. But I prefer the PlayStation controller. Better feel.’ He looked around the room. ‘So your internet connection died, yeah?’

‘It was intermittent yesterday and went completely last night,’ said Crazy Boy.

‘Where’s the router?’ asked the Asian.

‘Study,’ said Crazy Boy, still watching the screen. ‘Show him, yeah?’ he called over to Two Knives.