No more threats appeared. Nobody reacted to the small noises the silent and brutal takedown had made. Ash sniffed at the unconscious man, glancing up at Dan before cocking his leg and squeezing out a sprinkle onto their victim’s right sleeve.

  If he hadn’t been under such intense stress Dan would’ve burst out laughing at Ash’s unsportsmanlike conduct. He satisfied himself with a disapproving look and a slow, disappointed shake of his head which the dog totally ignored.

  “Fine,” Neil’s voice roared from the direction of the bridge. “Here!”

  Dan waited, creeping to the edge of the building to peer around and finding himself with line of sight on two of the ambushers.

  “There was four of them,” the one in the middle of the bridge said. “They said there was fucking four of them and a dog!” He raised his gun, pointing it down at the river which sealed his fate. Dan squeezed off four rounds into his back, his shots climbing higher as he went with the recoil. He didn’t know if the man was wearing any kind of body armour but at that range the ballistic impacts of the five-five-six rounds drilling into him were sufficient to throw off his aim at the very least.

  He went down, strings cut, and Dan lined up on the other man in his sight trusting that Mitch would have the third one covered.

  He spun, looked at his dead leader, then looked back towards Dan as the colour drained from his face. Boots scrabbled on the loose grit of the road’s degraded surface from out of sight on his left, telling him before he could phrase the words that the third man was running for his life.

  Directly into the path of a Scottish soldier with as much of a penchant for violence as Dan possessed.

  A crack of metal on flesh and bone echoed along the bridge as Dan emerged from cover to advance on the confused man.

  “Get on the fucking floor!” Dan bawled, unconsciously adding words he hadn’t used in years as though some hidden memory had been unearthed. “Armed police; get fucking down!”

  The man in Dan’s sights dropped his weapon and put his hands up before processing what he’d been told to do and dropped flat to his front and pushed himself away from his abandoned weapon like it was contagious.

  “I wouldn’t, pal,” Mitch’s stern warning came from Dan’s left, forcing him to glance up to see his friend pointing his big rifle at a man sat on his backside holding a nose pouring with blood from the rifle butt clothesline he’d run straight into.

  Dan returned his attention to the man he’d forced to the ground through sheer terror and the ridiculous fear of being arrested at gunpoint, dropping the carbine on the sling and drawing the pistol from his chest to drop a knee painfully into his back and search his pockets.

  “Roll on your back,” he ordered as he stood and stepped back, keeping the pistol aimed at his head. “Keep your hands above your head.” His actions and his words were fast, clear and forceful; all deliberate to keep his subject subdued and in fear.

  The man complied perfectly to reveal the front of his body which Dan checked for weapons, finding none and ordering him back onto his front where he whipped out a prepared set of black cable ties looped loosely together. He slipped one over each hand and yanked them tight, hearing the man hiss in pain as the plastic ratcheted onto his skin. He added another around his boots and snapped his fingers for Ash’s attention. He pointed to the man’s face and told Ash almost sweetly to watch him.

  Ash, enjoying his role as much as Neil did, stalked slowly forwards to treat the detained prisoner to a full display of large teeth by peeling back his lips to issue a low, lazy snarl.

  Neil had steered the boat to the bank by the bridge and tied it off. Climbing out amid a string of muttered curses, he clambered up the muddy slope to the bridge and walked to the unmoving man who had caught Dan’s bullets.

  Glancing left to where Mitch was trussing up his prize and right to where a man cried softly under the caring and watchful gaze of Ash, he stood overlooking the river and cleared his throat, wearing a grin which Dan recognised as the one when he’d already found the joke he was about to make hilarious.

  “Yooooou,” he intoned loudly, “shall not paaaass!”

  ENHANCED INTERROGATION

  “Alright, big man?” Neil asked in a conversational tone to the bound and gagged prisoner whose nose had now stopped bleeding. The man glared back at him with murderous intent, which made Neil chuckle.

  “You say Big Mac?” Mitch asked him as he walked past.

  “What? No! I said big man.”

  “Oh, my mistake,” Mitch snickered.

  “Okay,” Dan said as he hauled a bucket of river water to the roadway and looked down at their two detainees. “Normally I’d take my time and work up some kind of rapport before we chat. You know, establish a baseline and build trust before I start asking questions, but honestly, I ain’t got the fucking time. So, who wants to go first?”

  Broken Nose glared at Blubbering Man, his eyes promising violence if he talked. Blubbering Man started to blubber louder, making Broken Nose turn his death stare on Dan.

  “Ladies and gents,” Neil said flamboyantly, “we have a volunteer…”

  He grabbed Broken Nose’s ankles and pulled, making him buck and twist against the force he was powerless to resist. Dan took a blanket from their hovel and dropped it on his face where Mitch and Neil both put a boot on either side.

  “Hold your breath,” Mitch muttered to him. “It makes this easier for us.”

  Dan lifted the bucket and began to pour, spilling some over the sides before he’d achieved a steady flow onto the covered face.

  It was cruel, he knew that, and it was inhumane. He also knew that torturing innocent people by nailing them to crosses and setting them alight to burn to death in agony and terror was wrong, so he quickly made peace with his own actions.

  On balance, with all things considered, Dan decided he was okay with waterboarding this piece of shit.

  He said nothing, simply put down the empty bucket and picked up the second one before repeating the process. He liked to follow a pattern when it came to questioning bad people in a hurry, and that pattern was to establish in their minds from the outset that it wasn’t going to stop; the fear and pain was going to continue without reprieves where questions were asked and resisted or ignored.

  He carried the two empty buckets back to the water to fill them, passing Jimmy on the way who was intentionally staying apart from what was happening on the bridge. Dan didn’t judge him, and he didn’t blame him either. This wasn’t his thing at all.

  Broken Nose was still gasping and spluttering when Dan returned and started to pour a third bucket without saying a word. He added the fourth before Blubbering Man broke.

  “I’ll tell you anything,” he wailed. “Please don’t…”

  “What’s he to you?” Dan asked calmly, indicating the man writhing on the roadway covered in cold river water.

  “What? Nothing. I don’t care about him, just…just don’t do that to me!”

  Dan looked at Mitch who wore an expression that was as shocked and amused as his own was.

  “What a fucking fanny,” Neil muttered disappointedly. “Come on then, twatbadger. Tell us everything.”

  “Wh…what do you want to know?”

  “Start with your name?”

  “People…people call me Woz.”

  “Alright, Woz,” Dan said. “Let’s start with the location of Shergar, the real identity of Jack the Ripper and who actually shot Kennedy. And none of your conspiracy theory bullshit.”

  Woz looked confused, making Dan feel annoyed.

  “How many of you are there, what are your orders, who’s in charge…everything. Tell me absolutely everything or I’ll dangle you upside down in the river so your neck’s only just out of the water and leave you there.”

  Even Mitch recoiled slightly at that threat but said nothing. Dan kept his face a stony mask in case he betrayed that he’d actually upset himself with that one.

  “Nasty pasty,” Neil whispered, making Dan fight the urge to laugh. Letting out a chuckle after threatening a horrible death might paint him in a less controlled light than he’d like, plus he knew that both him and Neil laughed under stress.

  “There’s four of us,” Woz answered, glancing at their evident spokesperson who was still lying crumpled in the position he’d fallen in.

  “I don’t mean here,” Dan said with feigned patience. “I mean in total.”

  “Oh, maybe fifty?”

  “Okay, who’s in charge of your maybe fifty mates?”

  “A guy called Mo.”

  Dan rubbed an annoyed, exhausted palm over his face and let out a sigh.

  “You ever heard the term ‘pulling teeth’?” he asked.

  Woz’s eyes flickered over Dan’s shoulder and he quailed, trying to wriggle away without any success as he begged.

  “No, God please no!”

  Dan glanced behind him to see Neil innocently admiring a set of pliers he’d produced from a pocket for no apparent reason.

  “Even for you, that’s a low blow,” Dan said chidingly. Neil looked aghast at the tool in his hands and pulled a face so innocent that even he didn’t believe it himself.

  Dan turned back and slapped his willing interviewee around the face to focus him.

  “I didn’t mean literally,” he said. “I mean that every answer has to be dragged out of you by the exact question. Get creative!”

  Woz looked at him with pleading eyes as though the stress of his current predicament had robbed him of his cognitive ability.

  “Tell me what you were doing here,” Dan instructed him slowly.

  “Guarding the bridge.”

  “And?”

  “And the road.”

  “Jesus Harold fucking Christ on a bike,” Dan spat in frustration, standing to point at the evidently not clever one of the bunch and looking at Ash. “Watch him!”

  Ash did his thing, obviously having seen too many of Neil’s movies and re-enacting that part where the alien didn’t kill Ripley.

  Unless he was stupid enough to take a swipe at the dog, which all common sense and self-preservation instincts should warn him not to, then he wouldn’t be hurt. Dan lit a cigarette with shaking hands as he faced Mitch who was standing guard over the two surviving members of Team Toll Road.

  One, Mr Broken Nose who refused to say a word but still spluttered up river water, tried to fix Mitch with his best death stare. Mitch, a man who’d actually earned the thousand-yard stare even back in the world before, found it about as threatening as a vicious attack from a litter of dachshund puppies.

  Dan’s first contact was still sleeping, which was the kindest way to say that he was still in the recovery position and likely had a concussion if not some damage that was at least semi-permanent from their brief encounter.

  Blowing the smoke directly upwards, Dan gathered himself and turned back to tell Ash to leave it. The dog backed away reluctantly, not once taking his eyes off the terrified man.

  “Who sent you to guard the road and the river, and what were your instructions?”

  “You say one more fucking word, Woz, and I’ll—oompf—eeeeeeeuurgh…”

  From the ensuing noises Dan didn’t need to look behind him to know that Mitch had discouraged further comment by the swift and judicious application of boot to ballbag. The interruption also served to focus Woz’s attention a little better.

  “Mo,” he said. “Mo sent us and Goran told him to. We have to watch the road and the river and take whatever anyone has if they came through.”

  “Like what? What were you supposed to take?”

  “Guns, food.” Woz shrugged.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Two days? No, three. Three days. It was two nights so I got confu—”

  “Did you attack the settlement upriver?” The coldness in Dan’s voice silenced him, draining what little colour had returned from his face back out again.

  “No, that wasn’t me. I…I…”

  “You don’t do things like that?” Neil asked, risking the wrath of his friend who hated being interrupted during an interview.

  “That’s right,” Woz answered, smiling to try and appear less threatening. “I’m not like that. Some of the others came through from that direction; they must’ve done it.”

  “Done what?” Dan asked, seeing if he’d trip himself up easily or whether he’d make it a challenge as so few adversaries did under interrogation.

  “Uh, attack anyone?” he answered, unsure if he was giving the right answer. Dan didn’t believe his innocence just yet; or to be more specific he didn’t quite believe that he was too dumb to be trusted with any kind of important information or complex instructions. There was something behind the guy’s eyes that he didn’t like, but he couldn’t put his finger on it just yet.

  “So you’re one of the good ones, right?”

  “That’s right! I’m not like them. They’re the ones who’ve hurt people, not us. We just guarded the road.”

  “And the river,” Neil put in.

  “And the river,” Woz echoed, as though he was happy they understood his place in the world.

  “Where’s this Mo, Goran and the others now?” Dan asked him. His voice had softened, sounding almost conversational.

  “They went that way.” He nodded in the direction the road snaked away to the east.

  “Walking? Driving? When? How many with him?” Dan listed the questions, feeling his annoyance creeping back to the surface again.

  “Not walking…Goran was in a car, and there were a few other cars, well, trucks actually, but some were walking.” He looked upwards to his left as if trying to remember the other questions. “Yesterday? No, really early this morning.” He smiled as though pleased with himself for getting the answers right.

  “And how many?”

  “Oh, err, don’t know.” The smile stayed on, fading slowly as he realised Dan wasn’t impressed with him. “Three cars – trucks – I didn’t look inside all of them.”

  “Big trucks or normal trucks?” Neil asked.

  “Yeah,” Woz answered, sounding as though his IQ was leaking the longer the conversation when on.

  “Is this idiot diabetic or something?” Neil asked Dan. “Does he need a mars bar to talk any bloody sense? I say throw this one back.”

  Dan made a non-committal noise. As hard work as it was, he’d gleaned at least some intelligence from the idiot, even if it wasn’t all that actionable just yet.

  He’d learned, combined with what he already knew from others, that Goran, whoever the fuck he was, had entered the territory with a mobile force of armed men and had caused at least two settlements to seal up tight for protection. He knew he had at least one lieutenant, this Mo character, who he trusted to pass on his orders.

  Steve was aware of it, according to Dave at The Wash, and the last known sighting of Goran was with a mobile force of between fifteen and fifty others, estimating with a massive margin for error given that they were in trucks and not cars, and his direction of travel was north east of where Steve’s town was.

  Dan walked away from where Neil watched over the idiot and his dead friend to where Broken Nose glowered at him through red eyes beside his friend, who was unconscious but still alive.

  “He’ll kill you, you know,” he said, struggling over the words courtesy of the pain he was still evidently experiencing.

  “Who?” Dan asked, knowing the name he’d hear but recognising another way to gather intel.

  “Goran. He’ll cut you to pieces.”

  “You think I’m bothered about a little boy like you?” he goaded, hoping for the response he wanted and not being disappointed.

  “Little boy?” Broken Nose laughed in spite of his mangled face and bruised balls. “He’s bigger than you are, you old prick. He’ll set you loose in the dark and find you.”

  Dan was more concerned about the unprovoked dig at his age than the threat of a painful and terrifying death at the hands of the mythological demon they followed. He fixed Broken Nose with a look and treated him to a fake shudder before snapping his fingers to call Ash into play. The dog glided to his heel and sat, big eyes fixed on the bound man who tried to retain a look of resilient hostility in spite of being so blatantly frightened.

  “What’s to say I won’t find him first?” Dan asked conversationally as he rolled his cigarette between finger and thumb to regard it carefully. “What’s to say I don’t find him in the dark and have Ash here rip his throat out? Or maybe I’ll tie the fucker to a cross and set him on fire, how does that sound?”

  Broken Nose sneered at him as best he could past his injuries. His lack of reaction at hearing about the barbecuing of innocent people was enough to tip Dan over the edge but he kept his cool.

  “Please,” sobbed Woz who had only just woken up to the fact that he was likely to be executed. “Please just let us go. We’ll go home, we promise, we won’t come back here again, just…please…”

  Dan glanced at Mitch, their unspoken words conveyed through facial gestures and body language. Mitch shrugged, as if the proposed plan made no difference to him. That was what passed for support when it came to Mitch; he was happy to follow Dan and rarely objected, so acquiescence was the status quo which made anything he disagreed with worth listening to.

  He walked a short distance away after nodding his head for Neil to join him and the two muttered a brief conversation before Dan walked back to Woz.

  “Which way is home for you?” he asked.

  “That way,” he answered, nodding in the direction of the setting sun.

  “How far?”

  “Three days?” he answered, daring to hope that he’d survive the encounter.

  “Good. Take your mates and fuck off, but know that if we see you again – ever – we won’t waste time talking. You understand me?”

  Woz nodded manically, desperate to please and appease the man with the dog who terrified him.

 

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