They never did tell us exactly how dangerous it was out there. But then why should they have? They had a business to run and we were there to run it for them - to a degree. The money offered was too good to turn down and we would've been silly to do so. Let me tell you now: It takes a certain kind of resolve to survive but if that resolve turns to greed then maybe survival is not on your list of priorities. We were assigned (the four of us) a bodyguard - - ex special forces apparently - - but to me and the others he was just a big, brash asshole, full of shit and bravado. And I was right. The bravado was false and the shit ran like a dog with a bad gut. At the first sign of trouble he ran, and he ran fast. At the time I couldn't believe how fast an eighteen stone brick shit house could move. At the time I wish I'd gone with him - had I had the chance - And when I saw their heads fall from their shoulders some days later I wished even more that I could have ran and ran . . . . and ran! I shouldn't be here, now. There was no reason why I had been last line. I could have easily been first. Everything happened so quickly you see; the ease at which their heads fell from their shoulders sickens me to the core. Fate had dealt me a hand that not even a lottery winner would stand a chance of obtaining. In fact fate dealt me two. I will tell my side of the story, I have no reason to lie, I was there and I saw every second of the malificent horror. We had arrived in the province in early may. Myself, our foreman Bob Reid, James Taylor and Max Reely - the bodyguard's name was Morris, Just Morris. The guy stuck out like a sumo-wrestler in a marathon race. Yeah, I know it sounds ludicrous but there was no other way of describing the yellow bastard. If he hadn't run then maybe we'd all still be alive. I always had a feeling - throughout the whole affair - that if challenged seriously by Morris, the men would have backed down. I refer to those murdering bastards as men because I still haven't decided on a harsh enough word for them. If Morris had done his job then just maybe . . . . Our company had sent us out to do a job that we had done hundreds of times but the money was ten times as much as we'd earn at home for a week’s work. We had been sent to the province - to set up a communications network for the newly formed government. The trouble was that not every citizen knew the war was over. I wont bore you with the details of the job - I don't care now and its relevance has nothing to do with the horror I'd witnessed. Escaped. Morris, up to this point, had felt like he was on a baby-sitting job. He'd been instructed never to leave our side and at one point commented that we'd need more protection on a night out in Islington - his hometown. We were getting pissed off with him - the wanker took himself far too seriously and didn't know how to relax. Us, on the other hand, treated the work like a holiday. Ok, so the weather was shit, but the scenery was beautiful and even though there had been a war, so were the women. Yes we had been naive and we knew it at the time but there really didn't seem to be any threat to us. The company had warned us about of the risks - the fact that warring factions in the breakaway republic were still a problem - but we just assumed that it was no worse than in Northern Ireland and that what had gone on there had nothing to do with us. We were into the third day of the contract and up to that point there had been no sign of trouble, save for small signs of destruction and a sense of fear every time we passed through small cells of poverty stricken communities, witnessing kids brandishing weapons. The guys and I were all aged within ten years of each other; even Morris was in the same band. We tried to make him feel like one of the lads even though he was a dickhead, and he was beginning to loosen up. He must have realised his brash demeanour wasn't going to impress us. Maybe that was our biggest mistake; maybe he'd let his guard down. Sometimes I blame myself for his actions. He was there for a reason and we took the piss. But he still ran . . .. The man still ran. The small town was pretty deserted by the time we reached it, and at first we wondered if we had got the right place, but Jim insisted that his map reading was spot on and that it would have been impossible to have taken a wrong turn. I had to admit that I had only seen three major turnings in the last hundred miles. There could have been more I suppose. After a brief argument we'd agreed that we had reached the right town. Morris, I remember, had a serious air about him as soon as we pulled into the town, of which I can't remember the name. I remember his concern now but at the time I can't really say that I took much notice. We finally located the address we had been given by the company after about fifteen minutes of looking, driving slowly around the deserted streets. Bob - who was driving - pulled up and we all casually climbed out, leaving our equipment in the car. There was plenty of time to get the job done and we all hoped our hosts would have a brew on. Jimmy led us up the steps but it was me who stopped him as we approached the door. It was then that I felt a malevolent air about the place, as it seemed to close in around me. I glanced at Morris, he seemed unfazed but he gave me a cautionary glare. I realised at that moment that Morris must've been in situations like this before only this time he wasn't surrounded by his fellow soldiers - we were just maintenance men. He moved to the front but it was Jimmy who spoke out at my concern. I pointed at the door, slightly ajar, banging quietly in the wind. I was well jittery, Jimmy laughed and pushed me aside and before Morris could stop him Jimmy pulled the door open. It was then that all hell broke loose. The men - animals I call them now - obviously hadn't heard us pull up outside. I don't know, maybe they were too engrossed in what they were doing and you'd need to be because what I could see from my vantagepoint behind Jimmy would need all the attention the animals could muster. I saw the blood and the two so obviously dead bodies, but the third was still alive and covered from head to toe in blood. I think it was a she; I was sure, but what the tall, dark-haired animal was doing when Jimmy burst through the door made it so it didn't matter. Jim had disturbed the animal and in that instant he had pulled away from the girl, rapidly doing up his trousers. The other with him promptly shot her dead, no mercy, and no remorse. If it hadn't been for what was to come I'd have said that was the worst sight I'd ever seen. But it wasn't, not by a long shot. It must have been only Jimmy and myself that saw what happened to the girl, but the gunshot and the yelling told the others that there was trouble. The next bullet must have gone straight through Jimmy because the back of his jacket suddenly turned scarlet as he fell to the floor like a rag-doll. I was rigid with fright but when I saw that he wasn't dead it made me move. I realise that the bullet must have missed organs that would have killed him instantly, but that didn't mean Jimmy wasn't in pain. He felt it - oh, how he felt it. In the confusion Max and Bob had been knocked back as Jimmy fell. They shouted in blind panic as they rolled down the steps into the road. I tried to drag Jimmy even though the animal that raped the girl was lunging toward me yelling something that I could loosely describe as a bastardised Russian curse. As he reached me he wasted no time in punching me in the head. I'm not going to be over dramatic about this: now I'm a big man but this bastard laid me out, only not before sending me flying down the steps too. The punch and the fall may have knocked me out, but that hadn't stopped me from seeing Morris speeding off in the car, making his escape. I remember that sight of him, hunched over the wheel as if ducking from the bullets. Maybe in the quickness of it all I didn't see his heroic attempt at saving us, but to tell the truth I am not prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. As I said it all happened too fast and he was already half way down the street, wheels spinning like a tornado at maximum spee I think they scared the shit out of him to be honest, and his little popgun might have killed one of them but it certainly wasn't going to be sufficient in saving us all. We should have been warned of the real danger. No money was worth this. At this point I'm afraid you'll have to forgive me. Everything has proven a bit of a blur from the moment I lost consciousness to the point I actually escaped. But I still recollect what happened. They had beaten the crap out of us - repeatedly - and I can't even remember the point I regained my senses and quite frankly in light of what had happened it was probably a god send. But all the same I certainly knew what they had done to me and at no point do I have any recollection of them asking us any questions. We were held - the four of us - in a dingy room, stone floored and walled - with no other distinguishing features except blood stains; our own and of others gone before. We had been blindfolded most of the time, only allowed to see each other now and again. Jimmy was in shit state, close to death from the bullet wound he had taken. Some asshole had tried to tell us what was happening but his English was bad, shit in fact. I gathered that we had been there four days and that nobody had paid the ransom fee. The bloke had no explanation of why we were being held for ransom, only that because of the lack of response from our government we were being sold to a rival, more powerful gang on the fifth day. I don't think that the lads and myself spoke to one another after that. All I can remember is being dragged from our cell some hours later. As soon as I hit the outside air, free from decay, I started to come round. From this point I became more aware. The weather was crap, there was mud everywhere. I noticed that a dirt road ran alongside the cabin that they had held us in and in the rain it had turned to nothing more than a rutted ditch. There were five men outside and after they had removed our blindfolds one of them motioned to us to stand up from our prone positions. Jimmy was hauled to his knees. I immediately recognised two of the men as the animals we first encountered. Now, I know what happened next was stupid but I refuse to feel any remorse or blame for the coming atrocities. I spat a huge globule of blooded spit at the rapist, maybe I was delirious but I just couldn't help myself. The red-green discharge hit him squarely in the mouth; I couldn't contain the grin as it spread my face like a naughty schoolboy who had just done the same thing to his English teacher. The bastard just stood there, motionless for only a moment until the butt of his gun found my skull and gave it a good talking too. I didn't even see him move. As I fell to the ground like a sack of shit I remember wishing that I had passed out . . . . . god how I wished. I lay there, hands still tied, my face sideways in the mud facing my friends. Blood from my head had started to fill a footprint in the mud. I saw two of the men arguing, one spoke in a broken English, forcing the other to comply. Not for one moment did I think it was for our benefit. My vision eventually cleared from the blow and I saw that one of the men was the rapist and the other a fresh- faced bearded character. Fresh-face wasn’t the same nationality as the others, that was clear, but some kind of mercenary, the type Morris probably could have taken on given he'd had the opportunity. It seemed that the rapist was trying to sell us onto the other for god knows how much, but what I heard next was something that so obviously scared the shit out of them both. Something about us being able to make a positive ID of them seemed to be a major concern. That was when the rapist started to lose it. He seemed panicky at first, then scared - shit scared. The other started to leave with two others in tow and that wawhen it happened; and it was quick. The bandits obviously saw that, for some reason unknown to us, we were a serious threat to them and in that wet, muddy atmosphere they decided to bail out. The blade appeared quickly, it was a kind of sword but cruder but obviously just as sharp. Why they couldn't just shoot us was beyond me and I doubt Jimmy even had the chance to think along those lines, if at all. All I can hope was that Jimmy was in a world of his own then, it was likely judging by the state of his wound, obviously gangrenous, because his face was set in stone as he peered into nothingness. Then his eyes peered into mine as I lay there, and as his head came away from his shoulders I saw his body twitch. His eyes continued to penetrate my own as his head fell into the mud. I was last in line, maybe because I was face down in the mud but I will still be haunted by those visions. Bob and Max suffered the same fate over the following moments as the rapist, now murderer took them in turn. It had all happened in a blur, a distorted vision that became shaky as my own body twitched from the vomit I brought up, a vision that in a surreal moment brought the killer down, pierced by a dozen holes, blood seeping out of the freshly made wounds inflicted by the noise of machine gun fire that hadn't even registered in my awareness. Out of the nearby wood came four men, dressed in military gear, laden with weaponry. I couldn't tell what nationality they were, there were no words spoken as their cool professionalism cut the malificent atmosphere. But they were too late. My friends were dead and all but the murderer had escaped into the forest behind the shack. I think I choked on my vomit after that; I can't really remember but the blackness swiftly followed. My saviours had obviously underestimated our captors intent but their reaction was swift. Unfortunately for Max, Bob and Jimmy were not swift enough. I still don't know who they were exactly but when they broke their silence they spoke English, albeit in different accents. I sit here now writing this account with my memory intact. Maybe I'm being harsh in declaring my rescue a bungled attempt. I survived, but my friends didn't; I should have died too. I can't help feeling this way because it was only by luck that I didn't. The quickness of it all meant that my saviours reaction wasn't fast enough, I had survived by chance. Apparently Morris had identified the body of the rapist come killer days later. That was all the help he gave in our rescue and my information on fresh-face was apparently not enough to go on. As far as I'm concerned what's done is done. My friends won't be coming home and I for one will only be setting up networks at home, for another company, from now on in my own world, away from the wod's atrocities that up until now I had only seen on television. Only now I know the dangers, and we were just engineers. |
