He fought panic, realizing that it would land him in a dirty watery grave. The first thing he had to do was remain calm, surface and purge his lungs of what he’d swallowed, even though that action could result in death, too.
But he had no alternative. He had to go up and hope the guys weren’t serious about finishing him off.
With a huge effort that sent an explosion of pain through his side, he kicked upwards and broke the surface, choking and spluttering. He opened his eyes and was momentarily confused at finding himself surrounded by darkness. Air sucked automatically into his lungs and he realized he’d surfaced right underneath the slatted wooden boards that formed the unsteady quayside.
He trod water, looking up, knowing that his upsurge to the surface must have made a noise, his coughing and spluttering not having been exactly surreptitious.
His side hurt. He inhaled and spat out — quietly — and saw no blood in his saliva, giving him hope he hadn’t been shot in the chest. However, it was fucking creasing him and as he rocked gently in the water, holding position, his ribs felt like they were scraping together like tinder. Maybe the bullet had just gouged him. His self-absorbed musing stopped.
Footsteps on the planking six feet above his head. Shadows moving. Talking, muttering.
Flynn kicked across to one of the stanchions, pile-driven into the mud, holding up the quay, and hugged it, trying to keep his breathing even, trying not to emit any pathetic squeaks of pain.
The gaps between the planks were uneven — it was a shoddily built structure and Flynn had a theory that it was the Ba-Ba-Gee keeping it upright. Sunlight shone through some of the wider gaps between the planks, whilst other planks tightly abutted each other.
He could see the soles of shoes right above him, hear urgent whispering and Michelle moaning further down the quay. The men had stopped, now no longer talking. They were listening, trying to locate Flynn.
He heard a slide being pulled back, then slotted back into place, one of the scariest noises in the world. A gun being loaded, ready to fire. Flynn could not say which weapon it was until it opened fire.
It was the AK47, the Kalashnikov, the widow-maker, Russia’s present to the world. The man holding it opened fire and Flynn recognized its very individual signature noise. Whoever was firing it was doing so randomly down through the quay, spraying bullets through the planks into the water below. A guessing game. They had easily worked out they hadn’t fatally shot him, and that he must now be underneath them, cowering in the water.
They got that bit right.
The bullets tore through the wood, splintering it. Flynn gripped the stanchion and hoped for the best.
Then the gun did exactly what he would have prayed for. Flynn heard the firing mechanism clunk and jam and the bullets stopped as suddenly as they’d started. The AK47 was a very robust weapon, but it had to be lovingly maintained and decent quality ammunition was always best. Flynn guessed that neither was the case here.
The shooter cursed. Flynn could hear the man trying to loosen the slider and drag it backwards to clear the problem.
After taking a deep breath against the agony in his side, he pushed himself away from the upright, silently he hoped, and started to breaststroke quietly under the quay, pushing his way through the debris that had accumulated on the surface. This included a lot of floating rubbish, polystyrene cups and, gruesomely, the carcass of a dead boar. Horrified, Flynn reared away from this, trying to contain a gagging reflex in his throat. He kicked away, remaining underneath the quay, moving further and further away from the houseboat which he could still see behind him. The water was still muddy brown, but was warm, and he noticed he was leaving a trail of blood, already attracting little fish that fed in a frenzy of tiny splashes. He knew he had to get out, dry off and see what damage had been done. He was feeling weak and woozy now.
He grabbed another stanchion, paused, looked back, listened, watched. He groaned noisily when a shot of pain tore at his ribs, like a lion had scraped a claw along them, then inserted the same claw for an extra jolt. Working his way around the stanchion, he found a thin rope ladder tacked to it. Flynn grabbed hold of the bottom rung and slowly eased himself up until he could raise his head just above the quay and peer back to the scene of the incident.
He watched with horror.
One man was kick-rolling Boone’s body to the edge of the quay, his lifeless limbs flailing with each revolution of his body.
Another man was holding Michelle down on her knees, his hand wound tightly in her hair, causing her face to warp in agony as she was forced to watch the other man flatfoot Boone’s body off the quayside into the water below.
A third man, the one shot by Boone, stood as witness to this, his right arm dangling uselessly by his side, blood dripping from the wound.
When Boone’s body splashed into the water, they turned their attention to Michelle, who struggled to break free from the man holding her hair. He held tight.
Using the last of his waning strength, Flynn hauled himself on to the quay and rolled quickly out of sight behind a low wooden fence that surrounded two large waste disposal bins. He squatted low and pulled up his shirt to inspect his own wound.
He almost fainted when he saw a huge chunk of his side had been gouged out. Steeling himself, he touched it warily, gasping and nauseous, using his wet fingers to probe. There was some relief when he was sure the bullet had not entered him, but if this was what it was like to be winged, he didn’t recommend it. There was a lot of damage and blood was pouring out. He pulled off his T-shirt, rolled it into a ball and held it against the wound.
Keeping low, he started to work his way back to the next creek where his beloved Faye2 was moored next to Boone’s boat. He knew he was leaving a trail of wet footprints and spats of blood, and he hoped it wasn’t a trail the men would even look for. But he moved quickly, with a loping sideways gait to compensate for the agony he felt in his side.
By the time he reached his boat he was gagging for breath, light-headed, legs dithery and weak. But he knew he didn’t have the time even to think about treating himself.
If the bad guys were thinking about coming for him, the trail he’d left could have been followed by a child and he didn’t want to take the chance of them turning up. He jumped on board with the mooring rope, turned the hidden cut-out toggle and started the engines. They came to life first time. Then, with a wistful glance at Shell, Flynn crept out of the creek and into the main river channel, setting out west towards the estuary and open sea. Once there, he steered north and fixed the autopilot that would take him right to the harbour mouth at Puerto Rico, and would automatically steer a safe route through any other shipping they might encounter.
Guilt burned away at him like a laser for leaving Michelle to her fate, which, he thought bleakly and in a cliched way, would be worse than death… followed by death. But he knew he could not have saved her without being killed himself.
He stripped off in the cabin, and seeing his blood dripping on the floor reminded him of how Boone had failed to clean the blood on Shell, the boat he’d named after the love of his life. Flynn thought of the irony of the name of his boat, Faye2. Faye was his ex-wife’s name. Not the love of his life.
Then he stepped into the narrow shower to clean himself off and treat the wound, hopefully discover it wasn’t life threatening.
It had been a terrible thing to leave Michelle behind. The expression on her face as the men approached her was already etched in Flynn’s mind. As was the image of Boone’s face as it exploded after being shot in the back of his head. Flynn cleaned himself mechanically, thoroughly… knowing that he would return to the Gambia sooner rather than later, and that his friends would be revenged.
THIRTEEN
They had been too late.
After the HQ dining room meeting with the chief constable, Henry, Rik Dean and Donaldson had driven quickly back to Blackpool and to the flat that Sadiq and Rahman had been using in North Shore. It had been stripped clean, like vultures had been on a wildebeest carcass. Everything had gone, every scrap of furniture, every strip of carpet ripped up and taken away, along with all the food, crockery, cutlery and toilet rolls. All that remained were
