The front of the Merc van was still ablaze. It was surface burn, not close to touching the inside of the engine bay or the fuel system, but Hollywood has implanted the idea that any vehicle on fire is likely to explode at any moment. I could hear shouts and screams from the men inside.
Just as we reached the van the driver’s door was flung open and a burning apparition lurched out, bleeding from a dozen deep shrapnel wounds. I realised to my horror that, when Sean’s Molotov hit, the driver must have been partially leaning out of the window, possibly trying to see round the obscured windscreen.
Now, he was coated in flaming petrol that, as it was intended, had welded itself to his skin as it burned. The stench of his flesh and hair on fire almost made me gag. He rushed at us, flailing his arms and shrieking like the damned.
Without the faintest hesitation, Sean pivoted on one leg and kicked the Merc driver high in the chest. The man’s legs swept out from underneath him with the force of the blow and he landed hard on his back on the ground. Sean immediately stripped off his own leather jacket and smothered the flames, pinning the man down as he put him out.
As he did so, one of the other men from the front of the van appeared through the smoke billowing round the bonnet. He barely glanced at me as he came past, dismissing whatever threat he thought I might present, all his focus on Sean.
Sean was crouching by the driver, still stifling the flames as the man thrashed and screamed. I knew I couldn’t let the driver’s accomplice get to him in such a vulnerable position.
This new player was smaller than the driver, thin and wiry, with dark hair and a couple of days’ beard growth. He didn’t quite fit Gleet’s description of a bouncer type but, when he reached inside his jacket, I saw why he didn’t need to rely on muscle to get the job done for him.
His right hand came out of his pocket holding a baton like the one Eamonn had used, in the closed position. He moved around me, still advancing, and snapped his arm down and back and away from his body to telescope the two inner segments of the baton into place.
I darted sideways, eyes on the hand that held the weapon. I jerked up with my left hand behind the man’s wrist as I punched down hard with my clenched fist on the back of his elbow joint.
Normally the elbow is one of the strongest joints in your body because it’s well protected by the surrounding muscles, but not this time. The man’s arm was straight to the point of hyper-extension from the action of opening out the baton.
I heard the splintering crack of his elbow joint popping apart, even over the driver’s cries.
His arm seemed to instantly disconnect from the rest of his body, taking on a dead rubbery quality. The baton dropped from fingers he suddenly had no control over. He had time to turn his head in my direction, eyes wide with a kind of hurt surprise, as though I’d cheated somehow.
I didn’t give him time to get used to the idea.
I snatched up the baton on its second bounce, reversed it into my hand and slashed at his right kneecap with it, putting him down and out of the fight.
Aware that there had been three men in the front of the Merc, I spun round, tensed, the baton gripped tight in my fist, to find William, Paxo and Daz staring at me from about ten metres in front of the van. The third man was slumped on the grass at their feet. There was enough blood on his forehead to suggest he’d knocked himself about in the crash and they’d just dragged him clear.
I shut my mind to the horrified fascination on their faces.
“Don’t just stand there,” I shouted, my own shame making my voice harsh. “Jamie’s still in the back. Get him out!”
There was a second’s immobility, then Paxo broke it, making quickly for the rear of the van. The others were close behind him, wrenching the doors open just as I reached them.
Inside, the back of the Merc had been panelled out to make a flat-sided plywood box. Jamie lay crumpled in one of the front corners, hard up behind the cab. His hands were roughly tied behind him and to his ankles, so his knees were bent right back.
The fear on his face when the doors were thrust open took a moment to change to relief as he screwed up his tear-riven eyes against the sudden flood of light.
“Christ,” he said on a gasp that was almost a sob. “Oh, thank Christ.”
I jumped up into the back, unzipping my jacket pocket and pulling out my faithful Swiss Army knife to slice through the packing tape they’d used to secure him. They must have got through half a roll of it, wrapped round and round his limbs until it had become one twisted sticky brown band.
“What about his bike?” William asked as we cut the last of the tape free and Jamie unfolded himself with a grunt.
The little Honda had been shoved into the back of the van and lashed to ring-bolts at one side. It was leaning precariously but the webbing straps they’d used had held. Good job too, or the bike would have toppled right on top of Jamie during the crash.
“Forget it,” Sean said from the rear doorway. He jerked his head in the direction of the road. “We’d never get it back up the embankment and we’ve attracted too much attention as it is.”
Jamie was too shaken up even to protest about abandoning his ride but he had other things on his mind. “Hey, what about the money and the stones?”
“Leave them – leave them all,” I snapped as Daz and William half-dragged, half-carried him out of the back of the van, the blood-flow to his legs still fighting the constriction.
The driver was out, in both senses of the word. Wisps of smoke still rose from his skin and clothing, but there were no actual flames. Sean had left him in a semi recovery position sprawled on his side in the grass. The man the others had rescued was still unconscious, too, but the one I’d hit was sitting up a few metres away, clutching his broken elbow in a way that reminded me sharply of Gleet.
And suddenly I had a series of vivid mental images, not just of Gleet with his shattered arm, but of the
