The First Daughter, page 37
Applied properly, tourniquets were very uncomfortable, but any medic worth their salt ignored the agonised cries of their afflicted patients and applied it even tighter if they could. It was there to keep the red stuff inside, and if that hurt like hell, well tough shit.
‘Gonna need every swinging dick out there friend, shot or not, and you ain’t gonna be much use bleedin out on us,’ he said, as he finished tying off his makeshift tourniquet.
‘Thank you, Mr Coffey!’ Adam hissed painfully through gritted teeth.
Carson appraised Adam with deep concern. He had lost a lot of blood and was now clearly shaky on his feet.
‘Fall back mate,’ Carson said.
‘Fuck off,’ Adam said, slurringly.
Carson glared at him.
‘Look mate, you’ve lost a shit load of blood, just hang back.’
‘And I sa, said—’
Adam made to move forward, but stumbled like a heavily inebriated man. He slipped on a slick of his own blood and would have fallen hard if Shaun hadn’t caught him. He quickly shuffled Adam into the elevator shaft that didn’t look like an abattoir, and set him down upon the scaffolding.
‘Let’s finish this,’ Shaun said as he stepped out, before realising everyone else was already way ahead of him.
He ran to catch up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Carson pressed ahead, throwing all caution to the wind. They were near as damn it out of time, if not in fact already out of time. He rounded the bend into a wide-open space, only dimly lit by green emergency exit signs, and what little light was spilling over from the incomplete stud wall ahead.
The centre of the area was littered with worktables laden with power tools, stacks of plasterboard and massive spools of various types of wiring stacked around them. There were four support columns at even intervals, the two on the right looking as if a bar was being built between and past them, going by the size and shape of the wooden timber frame running the length of the right-hand side of the space. Straight ahead was wall studding, the lower half having been fitted with plasterboard with an opening in the middle that appeared to be there to accommodate a set of double doors, low light emitting from the space beyond. The air had the faint burning smell of overheated electrical equipment.
Carson moved cautiously, peering into the gloom ahead, wishing that his weapon had an infrared sight fitted. As he moved forwards, he felt a cold prickle at the back of his neck.
‘Contact!’ He called, as muzzle flashes sparked up ahead of him, the air screaming with the deadly fusillade of incoming hot lead.
Carson hard targeted, zig-zagging his way forwards. There was a solid looking support column ahead on his left.
Carson made his way towards it. He fired as he ran. Bracketing his shots around the flare of the muzzle flashes. Shots coming the other way came so close he could feel the heat of the lead as it zipped by. He fired a few more bracketed bursts at the muzzle flares as he dodged hard left. Two of them dropped as he thudded into the cover of the column.
The muzzle flares ahead suddenly stopped short as they started taking casualties. The smell of overworked electrical equipment was fast being overpowered by the nitroglycerin reek of spent gunpowder.
Using the cover of the column, Carson flicked the magazine off his M4 and slotted in a fresh one. He quickly looked back; saw one of the team take up a fire position behind a massive heavy solid steel tool case on wheels. It was too dim to make out who it was but as the shooter opened fire, it was clear that it was Shaun, the light from the muzzle flash glinting off his dark skin. On the far side of Shaun, Blake broke cover and press forwards towards the adjacent support column, firing as he moved.
In seemingly slow motion, Carson saw rounds kicking up the ground around Blake, before one found its mark, and punched him in the centre of his chest.
‘Cover!’ Shaun yelled.
Brentford, who had taken up position beside Shaun, opened up with a blistering rate of fire. In the far corner by the bar, Brooke and Bradley were working in tandem, pinning the enemy down as Shaun broke cover to grab Blake.
The big man grabbed Blake by the back of the collar and ran back, dragging Blake into cover as if he weighed nothing at all, heroically indifferent to the rounds whistling past him.
Before Blake had even fully hit the ground, Carson had stepped back from the column to get a sightline on the enemy, squeezing the trigger as a form filled his sight picture. It was a man in cover, trying to draw a bead on the corner Brooke and Bradley were occupying.
The target dropped. Carson felt nothing but the recoil. He felt about as much empathy as if the target had been nothing more than a standard Figure Eleven target on a range.
Which was fitting as those were based on the Word War Two enemy Nazi’s these bastards were trying to emulate.
Carson moved on, trying to keep as much of the support column as possible in front of him for cover. Saw a barrel traversing his way in the gloom ahead, the low light glinting off the barrel. He aimed slightly above it. Snapped off two quick shots. The barrel dropped. Carson took another step back, but as he did so, his weapon was suddenly ripped from his hands by an invisible force and he was flying backwards. The air exploded from his lungs as the solid ground beneath him slammed into his back.
Carson struggled to move, his mouth gaping as he tried to force air into his pained chest, and his shoulder throbbed where the M4 had smashed into it. He was dimly aware through the fog of pain and confusion that his weapon had taken a direct hit, the staccato of gunfire nearby sounding tiny and distant. The unlit strip lights overhead were hazy orbs against the exposed beams supporting the floor above. He tried to turn on his side. Saw Bradley moving over on his right. One second he was there, the next, he was picked up and thrown backwards like a rag doll.
Carson rolled over. Started crawling towards the column. He involuntary flinched as rounds smacked into the ground right by his face, one of them sending fine chips of concrete scouring the side of his neck. Over on his far right, bursts of fire answered the incoming, giving Carson some respite as he tried to haul his air starved body towards that column of steel. As he crawled, he began to feel his diaphragm work, heaving in painful, ragged breaths.
At last, he reached the column, and used it to haul himself up from the floor, grasping the pistol grip of his MP5 as he straightened, grunting in pain with the movement. Thumbing the fire selector to semi-automatic, he thrust the weapon around the column, leaning his left shoulder against it for stability.
As he peered around the column, he saw a sight that made his blood run cold and suck all the air he had just struggled so hard for from his lungs. The incoming enemy fire had kicked into overdrive as a relentless storm of copper jacketed lead rounds rushed continually towards them, making a horrendous crescendo of cracks and whines and zings. Amidst it all, a giant of a man with a thick mane of dark, red hair and a matted beard had a long, green cylinder over one shoulder, and you didn’t have to be Johnny Rambo to recognise it for what it was. The weapon was a Russian MGK Bur, and Carson had seen the kind of damage those things could do during his regular trips for training in Hereford.
‘RPG!’ Carson yelled as he desperately moved around the column to engage the enemy before he could fire, feeling the impact of incoming rounds thudding into the support column as he moved through what felt like a heavy syrup. Carson didn’t even try to aim down his sights. There simply wasn’t time. The launcher was lined up and ready to fire.
Just about as he managed to bring his weapon to bear, the Bur fired. As the shockwave picked him up and whipped him around, he seen a glimpse of Brooke disappearing behind a cloud of smoke.
Right before an invisible hand launched him across the room, like a child’s plaything.
CARSON WAS THROWN THROUGH A WALL. Fortunately, it consisted of thin sheet plywood that had been placed as a guide for the drywall construction, the thin wood warping and absorbing a significant amount of his momentum as he tore through it.
There was a painful ringing in his ears, and he felt like he had fallen off a cliff, bleeding from a gash in his cheek where the shockwave had smashed the sights of the MP5 into his face. But all the pain and discomfort washed over him.
It barely registered.
Brooke was dead. Of that he was certain. And by the look of it, so was everyone else. Good people, all of them.
An all-consuming anger welled deep from within. From the very core of his being.
Anger that burned like phosphorous.
Anger that had to be set free.
With a snarl, Carson leapt to his feet, his hands instinctively checking over his weapon as he thundered over the splintered remains of plywood. Disorientated from the explosion, one of the dead men on the floor lying beside his RPG tube put him right. There was a ragged new hole punched through his jaw, his right hand pointing back the way he had come. He looked over at the support pillar he had been using for cover, saw that a good chunk of the concrete had been blown out of the upper half of it with the steel re-bar visible. That pillar had saved his life.
The dead men at his feet who had clearly been trying to flank him, not so much.
Carson stepped through the opening, weapon in the shoulder. He found himself in surroundings completely incongruous to the bare walls and the detritus of building works from the barroom he had just stepped out of. He was in a reception hall for what looked like a casino, with bathroom facilities on his immediate right, and ahead a secure room where chips would be dispensed and cashed in through a security hatch counter in the wall.
Unlike the bar room, this reception hall looked complete, with blue carpeted flooring, vivid yellow art deco décor, with small art deco pendant light fittings that looked antique and wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 1920’s.
A sudden squelch of radio static emitted from behind the hatch.
‘They’re all dead, boss, them and the rest of our guys out here. Only my ownself left,’ an American voice from the south drawled.
‘Sure thing boss, I’ll keep an eye this end,’ the voice said after a pause.
A jolt of adrenaline flooded Carson’s blood stream as he heard footsteps from within the secure room. His eyes caught upon a discreet door in the corner which was partially open, hinges visible on the left-hand edge. He ducked into the corner just as the door opened.
A man stepped out of the room, lighting a cigarette between his lips as he ejected a magazine, the metal box thudding down onto the thin carpet. If asked to describe the man in that moment, Carson would have described him as a great big rank’ slab of lard with a headful of mince. Going by the ripe smell he was emitting and his greasy, scruffy blond hair, he barely had a passing acquaintance with soap and water.
His sweat stained shirt was black, with 6 MWE in yellow emblazoned along the back in large font discernible between the crisscross webbing straps of a chest rig, which was an abbreviation for six million wasn’t enough, referencing the six million Jews killed in the holocaust. The bigot towered over Carson, with a stocky build that was a mix of flab and muscle. The sleeves of his shirt were cut short to display his hate, a mixture of Nazi white supremacist tattoos consisting of SS thunderbolts, eighty-eights that numerically said hail Hitler, and a flabby patch of skin on his right shoulder read superior race.
Superior race my arse Carson thought, as he crept up behind the big galoot, drawing the stock of his MP5 back with the intention of cracking him on the side of the head with it. Just then, the man turned back around as if he had forgotten something, while fumbling with a magazine halfway out of a digital camouflage pouch, his fleshy eyes alighting with dumb shock upon Carson as the lit cigarette dropped from his lips.
Carson didn’t waste a split second, swinging his stock. He caught him goon on the side of the head, opening up a cut. As he lurched forwards, Carson dropped his own weapon upon its sling and sent a finger strike towards his throat, his hands then dropping down and grabbing the man’s unslung M4, the barrel of which was pointing away from Carson, the working parts still locked to the rear. He pivoted the stock of the M4 up, catching the man on the other side of his head.
But his neck was thick, and he had begun lurching backwards as the finger strike had landed. It did enough damage to make him choke, but not enough to collapse his trachea and stop him from breathing completely as Carson had intended. The powerful blows to either side of his head barely seemed to faze him either.
Carson snapped his boot up, catching him full on the knee. The man let out a strangled cry as his left leg was rendered useless, but as he collapsed forwards his hand moved with a speed belaying his size, and caught a hold of Carson, pulling him down with him.
Carson’s hand went for the Glock on his hip, but as it began clearing the polymer fast draw holster, he crashed down onto the ground with his assailant's considerable weight crashing down on top of his ribs. The weapon skittered from his hand as the air exploded from his lungs.
But that was only the beginning of Carson’s problems.
The big lump clearly had some training in wrestling. He ragged Carson about, pulling him up and slamming him back into the solid ground twice, on the last one he slapped Carson hard in the side of the head right on top of his ear, the blow leaving him disorientated and dizzy. He then nearly succeeded in getting Carson’s left arm trapped in a lock that would have allowed him to hyperextend his arm at the elbow and break the arm. Carson twisted out of the lock but pivoted back around as he felt the man trying to turn him face down, knowing that if he succeeded, it was game over. He fell back, his opponents meaty right arm now under his back.
His right arm now free, Carson worked it furiously like a piston, firing his fist into the side of his opponent's head, who had dropped down on top of him and had the rest of Carson’s body pinned down tight, the side of his head being the only part of him that Carson could get at.
But as the old adage went; No brain, no pain.
Suddenly, the man rolled left then slammed back right, smashing all his weight down upon Carson’s rib cage. He felt the air explode painfully from his lungs. Then, he did it again, this time Carson saw star bursts when the back of his head caught on the ground. He felt a frisson of horror as he felt the surprisingly nimble lard ass make his way further up Carson’s torso, applying some pressure now to Carson’s throat.
If he succeeded in pulling that move off again, it would all be over.
Just as Carson felt himself being rolled again, his right hand shot out blindly, desperately. His thumb caught upon the man’s left eye socket. Using the momentum as he was pulled up towards him, Carson savagely rammed his thumb inwards, feeling an initial bite of resistance against the slimy, vitreous gel of the eye ball, before it popped like a grape and his thumb hooked on inside of the socket.
Yammering in pain, his assailant tried desperately to flail away as he lurched to his feet, but Carson hung on grimly, grabbing a hold of a chest rig magazine pouch with his left hand while keeping his thumb hooked in place. As he jerked away from him, Carson let go with his left hand and using his opponents own momentum against him, slammed the webbing between his thumb and forefinger into the guys throat, cutting off the growing, high pitched howls of agony.
Carson spun around behind him, wrapping his right arm around the throat. With his right hand, he grasped his own left bicep, his left hand now pressing against the back of his skull, forming a tight fulcrum as he squeezed the hold tight with everything he had.
With most people, they would black out in a matter of seconds, but this man dropped backwards, crushing Carson beneath him. Resolutely, Carson managed to hold the lock in place, despite now finding breathing almost as difficult as the man that was the dead weight on top of him.
As he began to feel the strength waning from his enemy, he felt hands scrambling at his right forearm which, had it been bare, chunks of flesh would have been torn out by his nails.
Suddenly, he switched tack, his hands flaying the ground around him. A moment later, the tables were beginning to turn rapidly back upon Carson.
Oh shit! Carson thought, as he heard more than saw the man’s left hand scoop up his Glock pistol. Carson’s MP5 was no use, it was jammed between them, and even if he could get to it, he didn’t want the sound of gunfire giving him away to this tub of lards Nazi mates. Desperately, he redoubled his efforts, putting everything he had into making the hold even tighter, knowing that letting go was not an option.
The tremendous blows into the man’s head, even with the stock of the MP5 and his M4, had been ineffectual, and that was before Carson had been dazed and winded. He bucked and moved, trying desperately to keep his enemy's body between him and the Glock, when out of nowhere he heard a sudden smack, and the sound of something heavy and metallic thudding into the floor nearby.
Right after which, his enemy’s body went completely slack.
Looking up, he saw Bradley’s grim face looking down at him, his face and beard streaked with dirt and blood.
‘Looked like you could use some help,’ he drawled in his characteristically dry, laconic manner.
‘I had him right where I wanted him,’ Carson groaned, his voice hoarse. ‘Get this sack of shite off of me will ya!’
‘But y’all look so cozy,’ Bradley quipped.
There was a wet sucking sound as Bradley pulled a combat knife out from the corpses left armpit which he had thrust the blade through, cutting into the heart, killing him near enough instantly. He wiped the blade on the dead man’s clothing, slipped it away, then rolled him off Carson. He then reached over, pressed Carson’s Glock back in his hand, then bodily pulled him up to his feet.
‘How are the others?’
Bradley shook his head.
‘I don’t know man, something knocked me for six. Came to I couldn’t see much of anything. I just followed the trail of bodies and came across you and this piece of shit here. The rest you know.’
