in the mud. But the opposition goalie got cornered near the perimeter wall, whilst another player who’d run towards the under-twelves pitch to make sure that his kid brother was safe lost his footing and found three men surrounding him.
The player put his hands up to defend himself, but before he knew it he was taking a savage beating.
Major Dee fired his machine gun into the front windows of the clubhouse, splintering the bar and sending a cascade of glass on to the polished wooden floor.
‘Spread out and look for Sasha,’ Dee ordered, broken glass crunching under his Nikes as he stepped into the clubhouse.
Michael had been sandwiched in the middle so he was last out of the car. The opposition goalkeeper screamed fewer than ten metres away from him, and Michael was horrified to see a streak of blood where he’d been dragged across the floodlit grass by his hair.
He felt sick as he looked to the poorly lit pitches where the Sunday team played, and watched the players scrambling over a wall as one of guys from the Jeep fired a shotgun at them.
‘Michael, check the changing rooms,’ Dee shouted furiously. ‘He must have got away.’
Michael put his hand on the gun strapped to his waist as he stepped gingerly into the changing rooms. Everyone had scarpered, and a breeze blew through open fire doors at the back of the tiled room.
As he leaned into the deserted shower area, Michael realised that Major Dee had put all of his effort into the speed of the operation and none into tactics. If he’d sent the two cars in from each side of the playing field, the Mad Dogs would have been caught in a pincer and the raid probably would have turned into the bloodbath he’d been hoping for.
‘Get outta there,’ Colin shouted. ‘It’s going up.’
Dee and a couple of others had already lit petrol bombs and Michael heard a whoosh of fire in the adjoining clubhouse. As he ducked out through the back doors, a flaming bottle spun wildly across the muddy floor, turning into a fireball as it shattered beneath the changing bench and set light to a nylon backpack.
By the time Michael had run around the flaming building and back towards the Range Rover, the entire back wall of the Mad Dogs clubhouse was ablaze and the metal roof struts were buckling from the heat.
‘We did good,’ Colin said, blasting the horn of the Range Rover as Michael became the last man squeezed back inside the car.
‘I wanted Thompson,’ Dee snarled, ripping off his balaclava as the big car pulled away. ‘Tonight was our chance to win this before it even started.’
And you messed it up, Michael thought, as the 4x4 dropped off a kerb into the Mad Dogs FC parking lot and powered on through the main gates.
*
James made it out of the door behind the bar and ran for his life, with his socked feet skidding hopelessly on the mud. His football boots were in the clubhouse doorway and the rest of his stuff hung from a hook in the burning changing room, including his trainers, his mobile and nine-grand’s worth of carbon-nanotube-reinforced sweatshirt.
The first port of call was Sasha’s house, but Sasha didn’t want the heat and ordered everyone to clear out, including crying kids and a hysterical mother who’d seen her eleven-year-old chased into the trees by an armed man.
There was no sign of Junior, so James did what he was told and headed down a side street. There were plenty of people with cars, but most of the owners were dressed in their football kits and their keys were inside the blazing clubhouse.
It was a frosty night, and within a few hundred metres James’ soles were numb with cold. He was dressed for football and didn’t even have change for a bus fare, but he knew it was best to keep moving. There was a chance some of the Slasher Boys would still be on the prowl and his mud-caked socks and yellow football shirt would tell them exactly who he was.
After jogging for a couple of minutes, James heard a car pull up alongside and blast its horn. He ducked instinctively, but when he bobbed up he saw a woman sitting in the front, three young lads in their Mad Dogs kit in the back and another on the front passenger seat.
‘Would you like a lift home?’ the woman asked, as her electric window purred down. James could see she