Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) (17 page)

Then he squeezed the trigger.

*

I didn’t know what to expect. My ideas about fighting c
a
me from watching films, not real life.

I’ve not been around guns.
Other than that one moment of chaos at The Brethren’s Toy Run when the bullets suddenly flew,
I
’ve never had that sort of life and I
was never in the forces
. I
n fact the only time I’ve ever held one was an afternoon of corporate entertainment laid on by some bank
just as I was on my way out of t
he business desk. They wanted us to write nice things about them so they decided letting us bang away at clay pigeons with shotguns at some country pile was just the thing to help make us do it. Given my complete
cack handedness
it came as a pleasant surprise when I hit a few
,
although standing next to the editor with a loaded firearm was a dark temptation for much of the afternoon.

So the sheer noise in the small room as Bung and Scroat opened up was deafening.

From outside there was some answering fire
. I couldn’t tell what noise was coming from where as I curled myself up into the smallest ball I could manage, wedged into the corner of the room between what I hoped were two
very
solid brick walls. Thank Christ it was an old Victorian building
,
was all I could think.

But it didn’t look good, I could tell that. There were only the four of us in the house. Bung and Scroat were in here, covering the front of the house. From what I could hear it sounded as though Scampi was downstairs in the kitchen looking after the back. But the house was surrounded. We didn’t know how many of them there were outside in the dark. And as Bung had pointed out, th
e
y didn’t actually need to shoot any of us in here to win.

All they needed I knew, as amongst the blasts of the bikers’ rounds going off I heard the crash of the downstairs windows going in, was to manage to get a good firebomb or two in and the chances were the whole place would go up.

I didn’t know if Bung and Scroat were scoring hits, but even if they were, this was only going to end one way. I had to think about how the
hell
I was going to get out of this alive.

*

The h
ouse
was
surrounded.

For a few moment
s
all I could hear was g
unfire
, and from somewhere the sounds of shouting and screaming voices.

Then above the noise cam
e
the c
rash of breaking glass from
below, immediately followed by a s
oft ‘w
hump
’
of an explosion
from downstairs that shook the floor
beneath me and blasted a fierce wave of heat up the stairs and into
where we were stuck
.

Almost i
mmediately I could hear the crackle of flames and
see the smoke start
ing
to pour up through the cracks in the floorboards from the room below.

‘
Fuck it
,
they’ve got one in
!’
shouted Bung
.

‘
Christ we’ve got to get out of here,
’ I screamed back at him,
‘
T
he whole
bloody
place is going to go up
in a minute!’

‘
We can’t
,
’
bellowed Scroat above the din,
‘
we’ll get mas
sacred out there
.’

‘So it’s t
ake our chances
outside
, or
burn
in here? I know wh
ich one I’m going for
…’ I said
,
rising to a crouch to keep clear of the windows
and heading towards the door.

There was another r
ound of firing from outside
, but more intense
and prolonged
this time
, the hammer of fully automatic weapons followed by yet more
screams
and shouting
.
But they had changed in tone this time. I’m no expert but it sounded as though this latest firing wasn’t directed at the house, at us.

Now w
hat
the hell was that
I wondered, hesitating? More of them?

Bung was sliding away from the window as Scroat peered out into the darkness, now illuminated in the flickering light of the flames
, straining to see what was going on.

‘
What the fuck?
’ Scroat murmured to himself.

But he didn’t have time to say anything
more
as Bung stepping quickly behind him, lifted his rifle and brought the butt
slamming
down
on to
the back of
Scroat’s
head.

For a moment, despite where we were and the situation we were in, I could have stood up and cheered.

Scroat slumped to the floor unconscious as Bung
quickly
stooped over him and rifled the pockets of his cut.

‘
Time to go mate
,’
Bung
announced, and without waiting for an acknowledgement, he
grabb
ed
me by the arm and virtually thr
e
w me out of the room.

O
ut o
n the landing the heat was
now
intense.
Peering over the banister and shielding my face as best I could with the arm of my jacket
against the searing temperature,
I could see flames and smoke pouring out of each of
Scampi’s
downstairs prep rooms
and
funnelling
up the stairs
.

Through the
rapidly
growing roaring inferno, I could see
Scampi was lying face down on the floor of the hallway
, a pool of blood around him
. I
guessed he’d been shot and I
couldn’t tell if he was dead of just unconscious
. Either way it didn’t look good.

‘
There’s no way out down here
,’
I screamed
pulling back from the blaze
,
‘
even if we could make it down the stairs against the heat, we’d never make it past his prep rooms to the front door.
’

‘
Right
,
’
said Bung,
shoving me along the landing to the bathroom at the rear of the house ’we’ll go
out the back
way
then.’

The bathroom had a relatively s
mall window,
and the security sheeting had been
secured by
a
big
fat
driven
screw
into the wooden frame
at each corner.

4.02 grams doesn’t sound much
does it? Hardly enough weight to do anything to anything?

But when it’s a steel cored M855 NATO standard 5.56mm round, fired at point blank range, and travelling at a speed of 3,084 feet per second
,
or to put it another way, two and
three-quarter
s the speed of sound at two thousand one hundred miles an hour, a bit of mild steel sheeting, a screw and an old wooden window frame don’t stand a chance.

Bung r
ip
ped the tattered remains of the steel
sheeting off,
and rever
s
ing the rifle, expertly
s
mashe
d
out
the
remains of g
l
a
ss
with the butt.

‘But w
hat about the
Troll
s?
’ I yelled from behind him above the
howling cacophony
of the flames.

‘
Don’t worry about them
,
’ he
roared back
confidently, ‘they’r
e be
ing
taken care of.
’

Hanging on to the rifle in his right hand he swung himself out through the window and
on to
the ledge with his left, ‘All we’ve got to
d
o
now
is get the fuck out of here.’

And with that he was gone.

I took one look behind me at the flames licking at the landing
ceiling
and the choking cloud of smoke billowing towards me and
I knew
there was
really
no choice at all.

I dived out after him.

*

We slid down the roof of Scampi’s
single stor
e
y kitchen
, and, barely breaking our fall by catching
on to
the guttering as we went over the edge, we fell
heavily and noisily
into
the
back yard.

Bung was up and on his feet, almost as he landed, rifle
at the
ready, surveying the space.

‘
You OK
?’
he asked not sparing a glance to look down.

‘
I’m fine
,’
I said scrambling up beside him
and deciding that nothing seemed broken, or at least if it was, it could wait
.
‘
Now what?
’

‘
You
take this and
get the
gate
,’
he said thrusting the rifle into my hands
.

‘
What
…?
’ I stammered.

‘
Just o
pen the fucking gate
,’
he yelled over his shoulder as he ran to the side of the house.

‘But w
hat
the
hell
am I meant to do wi
th this
?’
I yelled back
,
looking down at the rifle in my hands
.

He turned and looked at me as if I was the world’s biggest idiot.

‘
If you see someone,
you
shoot the fucker
,’
he yelled back.
‘
What d’you think you’re supposed to do with it?
’

I must have just been in shock I suppose. I looked back down at it in my hands and I remember thinking to myself, well OK, that makes sense, I can see that.

The gate was
yet
more sheet steel,
topped with strands of razor wire to keep out the ungodly,
with three heavy bolts securing it top
,
bottom
,
and centre
.
Hanging on the middle bolt t
here was a heavy padlock that looked as though it had come out of
a
dark ages dungeon
,
but fortunately it wasn’t secured. The
Troll
s had taken Scampi by surprise so he hadn’t had a chance to get outside and use it.

Working as quickly and as quietly as I could I pulled the bolts, all the time wondering whether Bung had some kind of plan for getting us out of here, and if so what the hell it was. Behind me the noise of the fire was growing, I could see flames and smoke streaming out of the bathroom window we had left only seconds before. Outside I could still hear firing, mainly around the front and far side of the house although the intensity seemed to be diminishing.

Carefully
,
I slid the gate open a fraction and peered outside.

No one shot at me which
,
on the whole
,
I regarded as a good sign
at this stage
.

It was
difficult to be sure as the flar
ing light from the flames behind me thr
ew
the ground outside into constantly flickering and dancing shadows
,
but as far as I could see, other than the single and very dead body stretched out at the side of the lane, an oily pool of black blood spreading from beneath his head
from which
a
hatchet handle protruded
, there was no one lying in wait.