Silencer (21 page)

I resisted at first, but knew it was useless. The auto-jet was already doing what it said on the tin: rapid heartbeat, dry mouth, vision hazy. Everything was going into slow motion. The drug had kicked in good style, depressing my central nervous system. I started to get that horrible drunk feeling. I felt myself drift away and there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it. The urge to sleep was just too strong.

Bruce gripped my arms as I slipped down the seat. I hated it when I lost control.

PART FIVE

My throat was painfully dry and somebody was operating a pneumatic drill in my head. How long had I been out? No idea. I remembered the auto-jet, being dragged out of a vehicle, no more than that.

I tried to sit up, but I was too out of it.

Everything was blurred. I was curled up in a dark space, and incredibly hot. My clothes were soaked with sweat and I was fighting for air. My hands were cuffed tightly behind my back. I must have been lying on them. I arched my back to make space to work them loose, but my wrists were raw and swollen to the size of melons. I felt the agony of blood trying to pump them back to life.

I could hear the grinding of an axle and the shriek of rubber, then the whine of an automatic transmission as my head sank and my feet rose. We were moving uphill. I scrambled into a sitting position and straightened my spine. The back of my head banged against a sheet of light-gauge metal.

I was in some kind of container.

My chest heaved. I had to stay calm. There must be oxygen; otherwise I’d be dead by now. I was still breathing, so I was still winning.

I tried to wriggle my toes.

I had to keep some kind of control over what I was doing: I
couldn’t afford to miss a single detail. Like the fact that a stream of vehicles was overtaking us on the left.

We were driving on the right-hand side of the road.

That meant the PRC.

I had some idea of where I was; it made me feel like I wasn’t completely in the shit.

There was no room to turn round. I scrunched my knees up to my chest. I had to keep still, control my breathing, control my body; I had no control of anything else.

I felt a sudden vice-like grip on the back of my calves. I stretched my legs as far as I could until my boots hit the far wall of the box, then tried to press the balls of my feet against it to alleviate the cramp. It didn’t work. I had to take the pain.

I had a flashback to when I was an eight-year-old kid. I used to have cramp in my legs so badly it made me cry out. My stepdad would storm into my room and tell me they were just growing pains, so shut the fuck up and go to sleep. I remembered thinking, If this is growing, count me out.

Short, sharp breaths … that was all I could do … and try as hard as possible to tense and release every muscle; try to pump my body; try to fight this shit.

I was worried about my hands. I had no sensation whatsoever in the fingers, not even pain. I could feel nothing beyond the wrists, where the cuffs had dug so deeply into my flesh that I could feel the stickiness of blood.

We stopped.

I heard the sound of electric shutters.

The engine ticked over.

We rolled forward. The new road surface was a lot smoother, but we weren’t on it for long. The vehicle slowed again, went over a bump, and all the noises became muffled. I could hear the rattle of shutters. We stopped. The engine idled for a moment, then died.

There was no waffle from whoever opened the back of whatever I was being transported in, only the incessant, high-pitched warning beep these things made when keys were still in the ignition or lights left on.

Then the top of the container opened and watery light poured in. Without warning, two pairs of hands followed. They gripped my arms and grabbed me under my armpits.

There was still no talking as they lifted me out. I gave them no resistance: my body was too busy trying to stretch itself out to relieve the pain.

We were inside a huge air-conditioned warehouse. I tried my best to get some idea of the layout, to start looking for a way of getting myself out of there, but my head was still hazy; details weren’t being processed quickly enough.

They dragged me past two dark Merc vans and – bizarrely – a small silver people-carrier with a baby seat in the back crammed with cuddly toys. Bruce led the way. A pair of hands still gripped each of my arms. My legs were working like a new-born foal’s but, fuck it, they were moving and that was good enough for me.

We were heading for a row of four white double-decker Portakabins. Sophie, now in jeans and a shirt, was halfway up a metal staircase that led to the upper storey. She was too busy on her mobile to pay any attention to the scene unfolding below.

My two handlers dragged me to the first door at ground level. They weren’t fucking around. I was propelled into a bright, sterile, air-conditioned room, whiter than white, which smelt of Elastoplast. I was manhandled into a reclining chair surrounded by more grey machines than PC World. I tried to twist onto my left side to relieve some of the pain in my hands.

Bruce reappeared with a Gurkha
kukri
, which glinted in the bright fluorescent light. I suddenly made the connection: he was ex-military for sure. One of my two new best mates grabbed me by the hair, forced me to lean forwards. Bruce sliced through
what turned out to be a plasticuff and they strapped each of my over-inflated wrists to the chair arms.

A third guy, in green scrubs, wheeled an ultrasound machine towards me, threw a Velcro strap around my biceps and pulled a metal trolley laden with cannulas and syringes towards us. He wiped the crook of my arm with an alcohol swab and I watched the needle plunge into a vein. My blood surged into the plastic cylinder. He removed the hardware and pressed a cotton-wool pad on the site of the needle.

He ripped my shirt open, tore my pouch off my neck and pushed me back hard into the chair. I arched the small of my back and was rewarded with a smack across the head.

He ripped the lid off a tube of KY Jelly and emptied the contents onto my abdomen. He slid a cold metal disc across the surface of my skin, working his way in small circular movements towards my heart, then up and down my sides.

The routine was absolutely silent, apart from the odd internal gurgling sound through the loudspeaker. I watched fuzzy black-and-white images flicker across the monitor. I looked at the raw and bloody wounds encircling my wrists and waggled my sausage-shaped fingers. I’d need my hands to function sooner rather than later.

They undid the straps as soon as the scan was finished, grabbed both my arms and frogmarched me out of the Portakabin. Bruce choreographed the whole performance, but only with nods. I stumbled as I tried to keep up. All I could hear was laboured breathing; all I could smell was stale nicotine on the nearest guy’s breath.

I tried as best I could to remain upright. We swung left, to the next Portakabin along. This one was every bit as bright and sterile as the first, but had a lead-lined screen and control panel to the left of the door and an X-ray machine with a robotic arm in the far corner. They dragged me over to something altogether more medieval alongside it – a wooden H-shaped contraption – and spread-eagled me over it. Nylon straps were pulled tight across my arms, legs and chest.

Mr Green inserted an X-ray plate and arranged the tip of the
arm a couple of inches from my chest. Everyone disappeared behind the protective screen and a low electrical hum momentarily filled the room. He emerged, inserted another plate and repositioned the arm.

All I could hear now was the squeak of this guy’s trainers on the highly polished floor; Bruce and the other two just sat tight. I started to find it hard to breathe. There was no point moaning about it: no one was going to help me. Better to use the time to recover, trying to suck in what oxygen I could.

I heard a muttered exchange, then the straps were released. I tried to put in a lengthier stride or two to get my blood circulating as we headed back towards the Toyota, but almost immediately got a toecap in the back of the knee.

We bypassed the Toyota and the two vans as Mr Green went back to his furry family in the people-carrier. We were heading towards a row of three shabby blue cabins positioned some distance away from the clean white ones, like they were the poor relations. Each had a wire-mesh-covered window and the middle one had a wooden bench beneath it. Bruce threw open the door, still gripping the
kukri
.

There was a stained rectangle of foam in the corner and the floor was littered with ripped cardboard and all sorts of grimy shit. They dropped me onto the foam and I was immediately enveloped by a cloud of construction dust.

Someone grabbed my left hand, brought out another plasticuff and fastened it to a heavy-duty metal ring bolted into the wall. I felt a short, sharp stab and looked down. Bruce had jabbed another auto-jet into my thigh.

Rapid heartbeat, dry mouth, vision beginning to go hazy.

I thought I heard the door slam.

I awoke in a semi-daze, my nose half blocked by the grime and dust. There was a sudden pain between my legs but I couldn’t work out why. I thought I must have been dreaming. Then it was obvious I wasn’t. I looked down; a clear plastic catheter was being pulled out of my cock. Seconds later, Bruce walked out with a sample bag half filled with yellow liquid. The door closed and a bolt was thrown.

I raised my legs and used my free hand to try to drag my jeans and boxers back up. I managed to tug them about halfway up my thighs, then gave up. It was like I had extra-thick gloves on: I still couldn’t feel my fingers. I checked my left hand, as if a miracle might have happened, but it was still firmly attached to the ring. Looking at it closely I realized that it had probably been bolted into the wall of this shit-hole just for me. I relieved the pain a fraction by moving as close to the wall as I could then supporting my elbow to take the pressure off my cuffed wrist. Now I just needed time to sort out my head.

I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. My brain was still semi-submerged. My vision was blurred. Everything was running at half speed. The auto-jets had probably mostly contained scopolamine, with a morphine chaser. The combo induced a state known as twilight sleep. Once used for obstetrics, it was now considered far too dangerous – except when, like the British and American intelligence services,
you’re not too concerned about a call from InjuryLawyers4U.

I opened my eyes again. Lying next to me was a drinks can covered with Chinese writing and pink and orange motifs, and half a dozen bite-sized cakes in a clear plastic container. The rest of the floor was littered with the remains of cardboard boxes – some intact and neatly folded, others just torn and discarded – and plastic parcel-ties of varying widths, colours and sizes.

I reached out as far as I could with my free arm, working it like a dredger as I scooped up the food and drink and dragged them across the steel floor towards me.

I tore at the cellophane cake packaging with my teeth, smearing the greasy, sugary film on the inside of it across my cheek. I had no idea when I was next going to be able to eat or drink, so I got the contents down my neck as quickly as possible, eating them straight out of the box, like a dog.

I tried and failed to open the ring-pull on the can with my index finger and ended up using my front teeth. I drank the sweet, fizzy orange all in one go, in case I didn’t get the chance to pick the can up again, or dropped it when I did. Then I shoved it under the foam, away from prying eyes.

I lay down, covered with greasy crumbs. My left hand felt like it was about to explode, but I managed to close my eyes. I had no idea how long I stayed like that, drifting in and out of my twilight daze, but I began to feel better. Maybe the sugar rush was working its magic.

My hands were still swollen but my fingers started to sting, which was a good sign. I lifted the corner of the foam and fished out the can. Gripping it in my secured hand, I squeezed its sides between the thumb and forefinger of my free one until they touched in the middle. I bent top and bottom together, then apart, then together, then apart, until the thin metal cracked and I was able to tear it into separate pieces.

I gripped the base section in my secured hand and looked for the best place to start peeling the sides like an orange. I found what I wanted and started to pick and tear. My fingers slipped a couple of times, slicing themselves open on the razor-sharp alloy. But there wasn’t time to worry about that: the pain was nothing
compared to what they’d inflict on me if I didn’t get away.

I aimed to keep peeling until I had about five millimetres of serrated blade at the base of the can. That would be enough to wound, but not so much that it would buckle when it made contact with flesh and bone.

Using a combination of hands and teeth, I finally sorted the bottom of the can and slid it back under the foam.

Before starting the same process with the top, I bit a chunk out of the foam to give my fingers some sort of protection. Then I ripped off strips of the metal with my teeth, slicing the inside of my bottom lip in the process. I tasted blood. I spat the next couple of pieces onto the foam, where they sat in a nest of pink saliva. Finally I had what I needed: an aluminium tool that was going to free me from this fucking plasticuff.

I heard the whirr of a roller shutter. Light and sound spilled through the mesh as a vehicle entered the compound and engine noise bounced off the Portakabin walls.

I brushed all the fragments of can under the foam, then bent and picked up the best-shaped sliver of metal with my tongue. I worked it between my gum and the inside of my cheek, in case they found the rest of my handiwork.

Trying as best I could to hold up my jeans, I managed to lever myself onto my knees, then, painfully slowly, to my feet. I was still stooped like an ape-man because of the plasticuff, and blood and saliva dribbled from my mouth as I tried and failed to reach the window. All I could see from below it was the top floor of the white Portakabins on my far left, the roof of the Toyota and, as I continued to watch, the roof of one of the dark blue Merc vans. I couldn’t see the second.