Stephen Leather - The Long shot

Time dragged interminably. His head throbbed with the rhythm of his thudding heart, the chain around his wrists felt as if it had worn through to his bones, and he could feel the sockets of his shoulders about to pop. His mouth was bone dry and his throat had swollen up so much that he had to force each breath into his lungs. He squinted up at his wrists and he saw the chain was fastened with a small brass padlock. Another, bigger, padlock kept the chain secured to the pipe. He knew how to pick locks, but his hands were in such bad shape he also knew that it would be beyond him, even if he could reach them.

He tried to balance on his toes again, to give his arms some measure of relief, but when his toes failed him and he had to drop down, the pain in his wrists was a hundred times worse. He had no way of measuring time, but daylight was seeping into the room from somewhere behind him so he knew it wasn’t yet dark.

Over to his right was a flight of steps leading up to a door. At the base of the stairs was a workshop table and various tools were lying there: a file, a set of screwdrivers, a saw, pruning-shears, a pair of bolt-cutters. There was a box of table salt and a wooden block from which protruded the black plastic handles of a set of kitchen knives. Joker had a bad feeling about the knives and the salt.

His shirt was soaked through with perspiration and he felt beads of sweat dribble down the back of his legs. The door at the top of the stairs opened and a figure was framed in the light behind it. The figure reached for a light switch and fluorescent lights blinked into life, flooding the basement with stark, white light. Joker screwed up his eyes and tried to focus on the figure on the top of the stairs. Shoes clicked on the stairs and two other figures appeared at the doorway. Joker heard masculine voices and a harsh laugh and then she was standing in front of him. Mary Hennessy. Her hair was dyed blonde and lightly permed, but other than that she had changed little from the last time he’d seen her, face to face. “I know you,” she said quietly.

Joker tried to speak but his throat was too sore and dry to form words. He coughed and tasted blood at the back of his mouth.

She turned to the two men behind her. “Gentlemen, meet Sergeant Mike Cramer of the Special Air Service. A hired assassin for the British Government.”

Joker shook his head but the movement made him dizzy and his vision rippled like a mirage. He groaned and tried to lick his dry lips. One of the men, with a receding hairline and a thick, black moustache, spoke. “Are you sure?” he asked Hennessy. His accent seemed vaguely Middle Eastern.

“Oh yes,” said Hennessy. “I’m quite sure.” She turned back to Joker and grabbed his shirt. She twisted and ripped it open so that his chest and stomach were bared, gleaming wetly under the fluorescent lights. She stepped to the side so that the men could see the thick, raised scar which ran from his sternum and across his stomach, down to his groin. Slowly, almost sensuously, she ran her index finger along the length of the scar, down to where it disappeared into his jeans. Joker felt his scrotum contract defensively. “I can see Sergeant Cramer remembers, too,” she said softly.

The Colonel was clearing his desk before going home, loading all confidential papers into the sturdy wall-mounted safe behind his desk and signing a stack of memos and requisition forms with his fountain-pen. The administrative work was the least attractive part of his job, but he knew that more careers died on the bureaucratic battlefields than ever were lost in combat. He treated paperwork exactly the way he faced a military operation: scouting ahead for ambushes, looking for terrain that would give him an advantage, and always keeping an eye over his shoulder for sneak attacks.

His telephone rang and he answered it as he read a report on a recent training exercise in the Brecon Beacons. The voice on the other end of the line was a typical upper-class British accent, polite but slightly bored, and the caller apologised for bothering the Colonel even though what he had to say was of the highest priority. “We have contact,” said the voice.

The Colonel put his pen down on the desk. “Where?” he asked.

“A house near Chesapeake Bay, not far from Baltimore,” said the voice. “Cramer followed a man there and was apprehended outside the house. We believe the man he was following was Matthew Bailey.”

The Colonel smiled. “Excellent,” he said.

“There was also a woman with Bailey. We don’t have a positive identification yet, but it could be Hennessy.”

“Even better,” said the Colonel. The operation was proving to be every bit as successful as he’d hoped. “How many men do you have on the ground there?”

“Two at the moment, but more on the way. I don’t want to move before we have sufficient manpower on site.”

“That is understood,” answered the Colonel.

“You realise there could well be some delay, and that Cramer has been compromised? I wouldn’t want any misunderstanding on this point.”

“That is also understood,” said the Colonel. That had been the position from the start. Mike Cramer was on his own. And he was expendable.

Joker coughed and spluttered awake, as water dripped down his face and splattered onto the concrete floor of the basement. He shook his head but immediately regretted it as the pain was acute, as if his brain was being squeezed by giant pincers. His eyelids were heavy and it required an effort of will to force them open. Mary Hennessy was standing in front of him, a red plastic tumbler in her hand. Satisfied that he had regained consciousness, she dropped the tumbler into a bucket of water which stood on the floor next to the workshop table. “Don’t fall asleep on me, Cramer,” she said. “I’d hate you to miss any of this.”

The bright fluorescent lights burned into Joker’s eyes and he screwed up his face as he tried to focus. His hands felt as if they’d swollen up like blood-filled balloons and that the slightest tear would cause them to burst. He tried moving his fingers. He could flex them, but the movement brought with it an agonising pain. He licked his cracked lips, trying to get some of the moisture from his face.

“Can’t talk, huh?” said Hennessy. “Perhaps you’d like a drink?” She bent down and refilled the tumbler. She held it to his lips but as his mouth opened gratefully she took it away. “Maybe later,” she said softly. “When you’ve told me what I want to know.” She let the tumbler fall back into the water.

He and Hennessy were alone in the basement. He didn’t remember the men going back up the stairs and closing the door, and he didn’t remember passing out. He was sure that the bucket of water wasn’t there the last time he was conscious. He looked down at it longingly. The surface rippled and Joker licked his lips again. This time, he tasted blood.

“Normally I give a little speech at this point,” said Hennessy, standing in front of him with her hands on her hips. She took an elastic band and used it to tie back her hair in a ponytail. “I explain that you’ll tell me everything eventually and that you might as well save yourself the pain. I usually lie, too. I explain that once you’ve told me everything, I’ll let you go.” She smiled. A few strands of hair were loose across her forehead and she brushed them away. “But you’ve been through this before, so we don’t have to bother with the preliminaries.” Slowly, her eyes never leaving his, she started to roll up the sleeves of her white linen shirt. It was hot in the basement and she was sweating, the moisture glistening on her tanned skin as she moved. “Do you have anything to tell me, Sergeant Cramer?”

Joker shook his head, the movement making him wince. The tendons in his legs felt as if they were on fire and his toes ached from the effort of maintaining his balance. His shirt was ripped open at the front and she’d unzipped his jeans so that his stomach was hanging out, the white scar lying against the flesh like a snake burrowing down into his groin. “Not Sergeant Cramer,” he said, the words coming out slowly. “Not any more.”