The only time all the equipment should come together is when you are going to detonate the charges, a lesson one or two Provisional IRA boys learned the hard way back in the eighties.
The foreplay was over next door and they were getting down to the heavy stuff. Either she was really enjoying it or she was going for an Oscar as the bed tried to bang itself through the wall and into my bathroom.
When I checked the mines, the water in the bath was rippling with the vibrations coming through the wall. There was still a while to go before I could start digging out the PE; to use the time productively, I took a sheet of toilet paper with me, put my jacket back on and walked out into the hall. The shag fest reached a rousing crescendo as I placed a small strip of the toilet paper by the bottom hinge and closed the door on it, checking there was just enough paper to be seen.
Silence fell next door as I left my neighbors to their cigarettes and Charlie's Angels and headed for the stairs.
The old woman was still glued to her TV. Frozen air clawed at my lungs as I peeled the newspaper off the Lada's windshield. The engine turned over sluggishly after I'd zapped the starter motor, but eventually it sparked up. I knew how it felt.
37
I cruised slowly around town looking for the materials I needed to construct the explosive charges, attacking another four aspirin to sort out the headache that I'd developed after playing with the mines.
Spotting a row of dumpsters behind a small parade of shops, I pulled in and sifted through the old bits of cardboard packaging, tins and rags.
There was nothing that would do for me, apart from a partly broken wooden pallet resting against the wall. Three sections, each about a yard long, were soon in the back of the car while a dog, cooped up in one of the shops, barked its head off in frustration at not being able to get at me. One section was going to help me get over the wall, the other two were going to prop the charges in place on target.
Lights were off and curtains were drawn as I left the area in search of more stuff, driving through the heavy mist that rolled in from the sea.
After ten minutes of patrolling the ghost town I saw a building that was worth a closer look. Trash was piled up outside it, but it was the structure itself that made me curious.
It turned out to be an air-raid shelter, built in the days when they were expecting Uncle Sam's hairy-assed B-52 bombers to come and dump on them big time. There was a concrete stairwell down to below ground level and a thick metal door, which was padlocked. The stairwell was full of wind-blown litter and heavier stuff that had been fly-tipped, and it was in among all this that I found some expanded styrofoam packaging. I selected two pieces, each just under a yard square. The corners were higher than the middle, which was contoured to fit the shape of whatever it had been made to protect; here and there holes had been punched to save material and give the structure a bit more strength. I now had the frames for the charges.
It reminded me of having to make claymore antipersonnel mines out of ice-cream cartons before going into Iraq during the Gulf War.
The last item I needed was a brick, and in a place like this I didn't have to look far for one.
Back at the hDtel, the old woman had deserted her post and the TV was running what looked like a Russian talk show, with the host and his guests talking at each other very glumly. It looked as though they were trying to decide which one of them should commit suicide first.
I walked up the stairs with my finds in my arms, feeling pleased that I had everything I needed for the attack and could now sit tight.
The old woman had just come out of the door next to mine and was heading along the hall away from me with rumpled sheets in her arms.
The room was probably rented by the hour, and she was cleaning up after the latest event.
With the faint sound of the talk show in the distance, I checked the telltale. It hadn't moved. I opened the door and waited for the heat to hit me.
As I took the first step inside, I knew straight away that something wasn't right. The plastic log-effect fire wasn't dancing round the walls, but it had been when I left.
I dropped the stuff I was carrying. The brick hit the carpet as I started to step back into the hall. And that was the last thing I did for a while, apart from trying to get off the bedroom floor, only to get a blow to the kidneys that put me back down. It was grit-theteethandcurl-up time. There was no time to draw breath. I was roughly turned over and a weapon muzzle was pushed hard into my face. I felt my jacket being pulled up as a hand frisked me.
Once I had curled up again and played nearly dead, I risked opening my eyes. The oldest of the Good Fellas towered above me, wearing his silver fur hat and black leather coat.
I could also see another pair of legs belonging to someone else, also in black. The two men stood on either side of me now, whispering aggressively to each other with lots of arm movement and pointing at the dickhead on the floor.
I made the most of this time while they waffled, trying to take long deep breaths but finding I couldn't. It was too painful. I had to get by with short, sharp gasps, trying to minimize the pain in my stomach.
Then I looked up and saw Carpenter. Our eyes locked and he spat at me.
I wasn't scared, I was just depressed that this should be happening to me, so much so that I couldn't even be bothered to wipe the mucus from my face. I just lay there not really caring. How had Carpenter even known I was here? Fuck it, who cared? I'd been dropped by two very pissed-off people and I didn't know if I was ever going to leave the room alive.
They pulled me up by my armpits, one man on each side, and propped me up on the end of the bed. Pushing my hands into my armpits, I tried to bend forward and get my head down onto my thighs to protect myself, to be the damaged gray man that was no threat to anybody.
It wasn't going to happen. I took a blow on the right side of my face, which took me straight down onto the bed. I didn't need to pretend; it had done me some damage.
Expecting more, I curled up on my side. Starbursts did their best to black me out as pain scorched through my body. I could feel myself starting to lose it, and I really couldn't let that happen. I worked hard to keep my eyes open. I was a bag of shit, but I knew that I had to pull myself together or I'd be dead.
The two of them were still talking, arguing I couldn't tell which in the background somewhere. I just lay there taking short, sharp breaths, keeping my eyes open and coughing blood onto the furry blanket.
My jaw joint was grinding on itself. I probed with my tongue and discovered one of my side teeth moving as a numb, swollen feeling developed on the right side of my face. I felt as if I'd just had a session with a psychopathic dentist.
With my head on the bed, I was level and in a direct line with the coffee table. My fuzzy vision locked on to the large glass ashtray.
I switched my attention to Carpenter and the old guy. They didn't even stop their waffle as a couple of people passed our door, heading toward the end of the hall. The older guy had a pistol in his hand; Carpenter had his weapon in a shoulder holster, which I could see as he put his hands on his hips and pulled back on his unzipped jacket.
They were both pointing at me. Carpenter seemed to be explaining who I was, or at least what I had done.
I could also see now what the older guy had hit me with. His hands could have done the job just as well, judging by the size of them, but he'd opted for a leather strop that looked like a big dildo, and which was probably filled with ball bearings.
The two of them were a couple of yards to one side of me, and the ashtray was one yard to the other. Both men were still more interested in their argument than in me, but would no doubt come to a decision very soon as to how to kill me probably slowly if Carpenter had anything to do with it.
I had to act, but I also knew that first I had to take a few seconds to sort myself out. I was still fazed; I'd have to break my actions down into stages in my head or I was going to fuck up and get killed.
I squinted at the heavy lump of glass on the table that might save my life and, taking a deep breath, I sprang off the bed. Keeping my head down, I charged at the two black shapes in front of me. All I needed was to get them
