Below Zero (Ryan Kidd Thriller series) Read online

  I was already on the phone to Greenstick. ‘You’re security’s leaking like a sieve, mate,’ I said. ‘The world and his wife know about the memory stick. An SIS man, name of Dalrymple, was waiting for us here at the hostel and took it. And if the SIS knows about us and where we are then god knows who else does!’

  Greenstick spat out an expletive and then cut the connection. I think we were suddenly surplus to requirements and any chance of us being paid a bonus had gone up in smoke. I just hoped we’d still get paid.

  I looked up at Carly and was stunned to see her grinning at me and holding up the memory stick. ‘Hey, Ry, I may not of gone to a posh grammar school like you, but where I went they taught us GCSE pickpocketing. They figured it was a life skill and way more use than studying all that Shakespeare stuff you like.’ Then she fluttered her eyes at me. ‘So, am I clever enough for you now?’

  I went all beetle browed. I liked it when she took the mickey, but I wasn’t letting on that I did. ‘Yeah, I guess so, but we should get out of here before he realises what you’ve done.’

  I could have called Greenstick back but the bastard had pissed me off. I don’t like being expendable and I wanted to see the expression on his stupid slacker face when Carly and I got back to London and handed him and Crispian the memory stick.

  Giggling like a couple of kids, we skipped down the stairs and out into the street. I saw Dalrymple heading off down the hill and flipped a V-sign at his back. Then two guys went whizzing by on a scooter and I couldn’t help noticing that the bloke on the back had a baseball bat. The road was narrow and people were jumping out of the way to avoid them. They skidded up to Dalrymple and the guy with the bat leapt off the scooter and smashed it into Dalrymple’s skull. The SIS man went down as if he’d been poleaxed. Several people screamed but no one ran to his aid. Then the bloke who’d dished out the punishment knelt down and started to rifle through Dalrymple’s pockets. I knew what he was looking for but he sure as hell wasn’t going to find it.

  I pulled Carly back into the hostel before they saw us. ‘It doesn’t look as if SIS’s operations are any more secure than Crispian’s,’ I said. ‘We’re on our own from now on, hun.’

  Carly looked at me with desperation in her eyes. Working with me was making her grow up fast, but there’re only so many shocks your mind can take without the cracks starting to show. I looked over at the reception desk. Rashid was leaning across it on his elbows and watching us. I’d just told Carly we were on our own, but maybe we didn’t have to be. I made a snap decision and marched up to the counter.

  ‘We’re in serious trouble, Rashid. Your friend Constantin Stere was brutally murdered last night and the men who did it are now after us. They’ve just attacked an associate of ours outside in the street and they’ll be coming in here looking for us at any minute. Will you hide us?’

  His eyes widened but otherwise he displayed no emotion. Instead he gave a curt nod. ‘Yes. For a price.’

  The guy was all heart, but I nodded. ‘You’ve got it. We can negotiate the details later.’

  Rashid’s eyes flicked over to Carly. I could see what he wanted as the price for his help, but no way was he going to get it. Though I figured now wasn’t the time to break the bad news to him.

  Chapter 11

  Rashid took us up to a room at the back of the hostel and left us there. He returned after a few minutes. He seemed edgy and I wasn’t sure how far we could trust him.

  ‘There was a robbery in the street and a man was knocked unconscious. His attackers fled on a motor scooter. Then the police arrived and took the man away. I don’t know how badly he was injured. Was this your friend?’

  I nodded. ‘Yep, I reckon so. Though I wouldn’t exactly call him a friend.’

  Rashid pursed his lips together. ‘Was he the man who killed Constantin?’

  I shook my head. ‘Nope, that was the Russian Mafia. We were trying to get him out of their clutches but we found him too late. He was already dying.’ I put on a doleful expression and nodded at Carly. ‘But Carly here gave him comfort in his last moments and eased his passing. That’s why he gave us the key.’

  Rashid looked thoughtful. ‘Then perhaps I do owe you something. You see, Constantin and I became friends after he stayed here a few times. We liked the same things and you can find them easily enough in the medina.’ He fell silent for a few seconds and he seemed to be mulling things over in his head. Then he reached a decision and spoke directly to Carly. ‘OK. I was going to ask for a night with you as my price, but I think now that perhaps I won’t.’ He turned to me. ‘But my price is still high. I want 300 euros for hiding you.’

  I frowned. ‘All right, but we’re going to need your help to get back to Spain as we daren’t risk taking the ferries or a plane ‘cos people will be watching for us. So, can you sort something out for us?’

  Rashid smiled but there was no humour in it. ‘Of course, but the price is now 500 euros.’

  That was going to clean me out of all my ready cash but he had us over a barrel. Still, we were in Morocco so I thought I’d follow the local custom and haggle. ‘Call it 400 euros plus a peck on the cheek from Carly thrown in for good measure and you’ve got a deal.’

  Rashid was not impressed. ‘Constantin was a friend but not the best I have ever had. It’s 500 euros or you can try and find your own way to Spain. And I wish you luck with that.’ Then he glanced at Carly. ‘You I will still help but I will want something more than a peck on the cheek in return.’ His tone was chilly but it was underpinned with a faint tremor of hope.

  Carly shook her head. ‘No way that’s gonna happen pal.’ Then she glared at me. ‘Look, Ryan stop pissing about and just give him the money OK? I want out of here now.’

  There was nothing else for it. I handed him 500 euros. He counted it and then smiled like it was his lucky day. I guess it’s an ill wind as they say.

  ‘All right, so what’s the plan?’

  ‘My cousins are fishermen and they have a boat. They used to use it to smuggle illegal immigrants into Spain.’

  I held up my hand. ‘Hang on. What do you mean they used to use it? What’s the matter with it? Has it sprung a leak or something?’

  He shook his head impatiently. ‘No, but the Guardia Civil grew tired of penniless Africans arriving uninvited on their shores so now they have powerful speedboats that patrol the coast day and night. The trade was no longer profitable for my cousins and their friends and so the illegals don’t come here to Tangier anymore.’

  ‘But they’ll take us across?’ Carly sounded anxious.

  ‘Yes, for the price you’ve paid.’

  I had a strong feeling that Rashid’s cousins were not going to see a whole lot of the 500 euros but that was none of my business.

  ‘Yeah, but what if the Feds intercept us?’

  Rashid looked puzzled. ‘What feds? It is the Guardia Civil, the Spanish police, who patrol the sea.’

  ‘It’s OK, Rashid,’ I said. ‘That’s who she means.’

  Rashid pulled a face. ‘If they catch you they will see that you are Europeans with passports — not beggars from south of the Sahara. Tell them you went on a day trip to Tangier and rather than taking the ferry back to your hotel in Spain you decided to have a romantic adventure instead. Your boyfriend here paid these poor Moroccan fishermen to bring you back to Spain in their boat because he was trying to impress you. The police will think it all very silly but will understand. They are Latin men and will want to impress you too.’

  When he put it like that it all seemed pretty straightforward. I mean what could possibly go wrong?

  Chapter 12

  We didn’t stay at the hostel. There was too big a chance that the guys who’d attacked Dalrymple would come back and shake it down looking for us. Instead Rashid took us down a rabbit warren of back alleyways to a tiny house where we spent the rest of the day sitting on cushions and drinking endless cups of mint tea and nibbling on bread and salty chickpea cakes brought to us by an
elderly woman. She may have been Rashid’s mum for all we knew, but Rashid didn’t introduce us and she didn’t say a word.

  That evening we slipped out of the medina and took a taxi to a beach where Rashid’s cousins had their boat. The battered old tub was nothing to write home about. It was a long wooden effort with a wheelhouse at the back end and space for about a dozen people or so on its deck. It was in need of a lick of paint and some TLC and it stank of diesel and rotting fish. Obviously, I’d have had to have been drunk as a skunk to hire it in an attempt to make a romantic impression on my girlfriend, and she’d have had to have been blind drunk to have been impressed. But then seeing as both Carly and I are English, nobody was going to think that scenario beyond the realms of possibility. Or at least I hoped they wouldn’t.

  Rashid’s three cousins were tough-looking, wiry guys who grunted at me but smiled and strutted around like peacocks when they saw Carly. I could tell she wanted to go on their boat about as much as she wanted a dose of bubonic plague but she was putting a brave face on. I wasn’t that keen either, but we had no choice. Rashid gave his eldest cousin, Hamiz, some of my hard-earned dosh and he motioned that we should climb aboard.

  ‘My cousins don’t speak much English,’ said Rashid, ‘but they know where to take you. You may get your feet wet going ashore but you’ll be OK.’

  We shook hands and Carly gave him his peck on both cheeks. I thought she was being more than generous seeing as how the guy had taken every last cent we’d got. But we were still above ground and sucking in air and we had the memory stick, so I wasn’t complaining. Well, not much anyway.

  The little trawler pitched and rolled a bit as we chugged steadily out into the Med. Carly looked as sick as a dog that’s overdone it with the pedigree chum but she sat tight and made a valiant effort to keep her dinner down, and for that I was eternally grateful. I really didn’t need her throwing up and giving Rashid’s cousins the chance to show their caring side. I had the feeling that their nursing style would be a bit too hands on for comfort.

  The night was pretty cloudy and dark when we left the lights of land behind and I took that as a good sign. All I wanted was an uneventful trip back to Spain and, if we could avoid bumping into a Spanish coastguard vessel on the way, then I would consider it 500 euros well spent. I was going to claim it back on expenses anyway, though I figured I might have a bit of a struggle getting a receipt off Hamiz. But, I reasoned to myself, surely a grateful Crispian would be in the mood to put my claim through on the nod, no questions asked, as soon as he had the memory stick in his hot little hand. After all, that’s what I’d have done in his situation.

  I smiled and allowed myself to relax slightly. Although Carly was still dying quietly next to me, it seemed that the worst was over and we were now on the long run for home. You know, people have often said that cheery optimism is one of my more likeable traits. It is, but sadly in 99 cases out of a 100 my cheery optimism turns out to be totally unfounded. And, tonight, as I should have known from bitter experience, was going to be no exception.

  Chapter 13

  Hamiz took the boat in a wide arc to avoid the radar sensors the Spanish had installed down on the cliffs above the Strait of Gibraltar. As a consequence, we were now about a mile or so out to sea off a quiet stretch of coast just north of Marbella.

  I was busy indulging my passion for counting chickens when one of Rashid’s cousins shouted and pointed back out to sea. I looked up and saw a big powerboat heading our way, and it was catching up fast. It wasn’t flying the skull and crossbones but it may as well have been. We’d been rumbled. We had no chance of outrunning it and no way was Hamiz even going to try. I was about to argue the point with him, but then some bastard on the powerboat fired off a burst from an automatic weapon. They weren’t trying to hit us. They were just letting us know they meant business and we should do the sensible thing and stop.

  Hamiz and his brothers had a brief and very rapid exchange of views in Arabic. Now, I may have given you the impression earlier that, what with my Spanish and Hebrew, I’m a bit of a cunning linguist but actually, like most Brits, I’m a dummy when it comes to foreign languages. Even so, I could tell from the way Hamiz and the boys were jabbering and gesticulating that they wanted rid of us as soon as possible with no damage to themselves or their boat. I didn’t blame them but it cut down drastically on Carly’s and my chances of surviving the night.

  There was no point in us jumping overboard and trying to swim to the shore either. Not even an Olympic open water gold medallist would have made it before the opposition pulled up alongside, and anyway I’m more of a doggy paddle than Australian crawl type of bloke so there was nothing else for it but to sit tight and wait for the inevitable.

  I knew I was definitely fish food. Nobody needs a failed Private Investigator taking up space, least of all a bunch of Russian Mafia hit men, and I could almost hear the sucking of greedy fishy mouths beneath the boat. But Carly had a definite value in the market place. So I figured the goons in the powerboat would probably keep her alive — but not for anything good. It was a chilling prospect. I went to put my arm around her to comfort her but she pushed it away and felt in her bag.

  ‘If those fuckers think they’re gonna get their hands on the memory stick then they’ve got another think coming. I’m gonna chuck it overboard and they can bloody well whistle for it.’

  I grabbed her hand. ‘No, hang on. We can use it as a bargaining chip to negotiate. We’ll tell them they back off or we’ll send it to the bottom of the ocean.’

  Carly shook her head. ‘Oh c’mon Ry. That’s a Mexican standoff and it’s never gonna work. All they’ve gotta do is come after us as soon as we make it to the beach.’ Her eyes were blazing with anger. ‘We’re dead meat, Ryan, but whoever they are, they are so not gonna get it all their own way.’

  Fury steamed off her like dry ice in hot water and I pitied anyone who thought she’d be easy pickings. She was the kind of hell cat who’d go down fighting and I was betting that she’d take a few down with her when she did. Just looking at her made me think it was time I got a backbone implant. So I let go of her hand and was about to tell her to chuck the bloody thing when Rashid’s cousins surprised me.

  They pulled up some planking from the deck. Hamiz shoved his hands into the hole and, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a top hat, produced a Soviet issue AK-47 with a GP-25 grenade launcher attached! OK, so the weapon was 30 years old but then so am I, and I still pack a punch.

  In the meantime the other two cousins had also dragged out some heavy duty weaponry from a secret stash and they looked like they knew how to use it. It hit me like a frying pan in the face that I’d seriously misjudged these guys. Since the people-smuggling lark had gone down the tubes, they’d obviously turned their attentions to other more lucrative and dangerous ways of using their boat to make a living — and it certainly wasn’t fishing because you could have invaded a small country with the firepower they were toting.

  Hamiz gestured that we should keep down and out of their way. Then he waited until the powerboat was closing in, popped his head up and let them have it with a grenade. He didn’t hit the boat but he did cause quite a splash when the missile exploded right in front of it. The two cousins opened up as well, aiming quick fire bursts at the opposition.

  I reckoned that the bad guys would have been as shocked as me at the reception they were getting. I heard a scream and the powerboat spun away from us and went off at full throttle like a dog with its tail between its legs. All right, so that’s not a very nautical simile, but you get the picture.

  Carly was screaming insults at the fleeing powerboat and punching the air. Despite the pungent smell of nitro-glycerine and graphite from the guns mingling with the reek of diesel and dead fish to make a stench powerful enough to turn the strongest stomach, she now seemed fully recovered. Apparently, a fire fight is a great cure for seasickness. I mean, who knew? But as she’d just been saved from a fate worse than death, and
I’d just been saved from being the main course at a sharks’ banquet, I guess we both had reason to be well chuffed.

  After a couple of minutes the three brothers decided the opposition was definitely not coming back for another bloody nose, so they put down their weapons and stared grimly at us. I had a horrible feeling they were thinking that maybe we were more trouble than we were worth, but then Carly bounced across the deck like a hyperactive kangaroo with a trampoline on each foot and hugged, kissed and high-fived them. Suddenly their grim expressions were gone and they were the very picture of macho men basking in the approbation of a hot female. As Carly often remarks, ‘Blokes are such prats.’

  Anyway, her girly show of admiration for her heroes did the trick because Hamiz didn’t demand extra money for saving our backsides – which was good seeing as I didn’t have any and I doubted there was an ATM on board. Instead he took the old tub in as close to the beach as he could and with much waving and thumbs up-ing, Carly and I waded ashore.

  We found ourselves on a narrow stretch of sandy beach, which soon shaded into sand dunes and then some scrubby woodland. Thankfully, nobody was lurking under the trees waiting to ambush us so we headed on through the woods until we came out on a side road that led to what the Spanish call an urbanización. That’s a bunch of houses, villas and apartments that were thrown up when the Spainish property market was booming. Now the market’s gone tits up thanks to the recession, loads of these residential areas are only half full at best so that meant there were plenty of places we could break into to crash out and catch our breath. After all, we’d just been involved in at least one murder plus a heavy duty shoot out on the high seas, so a bit of breaking and entering whilst we took stock of the situation and decided what our next move should be seemed almost genteel in comparison. But nothing ever quite works out the way you plan, does it?