Trainers jammed the short against his forehead.
It was the last I saw of him.
Sundance bustled me outside to where a white GMC Suburban gleamed in the starlight.
A single shot rang out behind us.
Moments later, Trainers closed the door tidily behind him. He swapped a glance with Sundance and they burst out laughing.
The double doors at the back of the GMC were open and the passenger lights were on.
Sundance gave me a prod. 'They got big plans for you, son. No quick exit like Sunny Jim back there.'
I hesitated at the back doors. Dom was already inside the vehicle, curled up behind the rear seats.
'Get in.'
Mr Sheen was at the wheel. Top Lip rode shotgun. A thermal-imaging monitor from the Predator glowed in the footwell.
Both Serbs turned and stared at me in silence. It was the kind of silence that told me we were in a bottomless pit of shit.
I lay down next to Dom. Sundance pulled a taser from his coat, pushed it into my stomach and gave me a 100,000-volt helping of good news.
I shuddered for two or three seconds, then blacked out.
79
I lay half on Dom, my cheek against his stomach, and half on the floor of the wagon. A blur of light flashed through the window as we raced past a line of shops. My head spun. My insides still shuddered. Fuck knew what lay in store. But the first chance I got to escape, I'd grab it. Then I'd come back to kill these fuckers for what they'd done to Magreb. And not just maybe.
The GMC smelt as if it had been brought straight from the showroom. My face bounced off Dom and on to the carpet as Mr Sheen threw us into a series of sharp turns.
I moved my hand slowly towards Dom's. He gripped it tight. I hoped it felt as good for him as it did for me.
He tried pulling my head towards his, but he wasn't strong enough. He wanted to tell me something. I pushed down slowly on the carpet with my feet so I could get closer to him.
'I'm sorry, Nick,' he breathed. 'I thought you were with them – the Irish guys. They're the ones that killed Pete.'
'Sure?'
'They dragged us out of the camp . . .' He shook his head and I felt his tears sprinkle across my neck. 'They took us out . . . and they shot him . . . right in front of me . . .'
A voice yelled, 'Shut the fuck up,' and a fist appeared over the back seat and punched us apart.
Occasional bursts of street-light strobed across the vehicle. There seemed to be no other traffic. The automatic gearbox stayed in fourth. We were moving with speed and purpose, and the road was long and straight.
We slowed after fifteen minutes or so and the GMC hung a right and stopped. A gate creaked open. We rolled forward maybe a hundred across rough ground and stopped again. Mr Sheen's window powered down and there was a muted conversation with someone outside. Agate opened with a metallic creak. We rolled another few metres and stopped. Then Sundance and Trainers threw open the passenger doors and jumped out. A gust of freezing air took their place.
The heat had been a security blanket, even for that short space of time. Cold meant shit was about to happen.
Top Lip opened the back. It was pitch dark, but he pulled a pair of blacked-out ski goggles over my eyes for good measure. I felt my feet being gripped and then I was on the move. My hand slipped away from Dom's and I fell on to a pile of rubble.
Sundance said goodbye with his boot.
Two sets of hands grabbed me under the armpits, frogmarched me across a stretch of gravel, then bounced me up a couple of steps. There was no talking but plenty of grunts as they struggled to get through a doorway without letting me go.
I knew we were inside, because the screams and pleading echoed off the walls. I was being dragged along a corridor. I listened for Dom's voice, but he wasn't doing the begging. Unless someone already had his balls in a vice and he'd suddenly become fluent in Arabic.
I could smell cigarettes and kerosene. We halted, and a set of ear defenders was pulled over my head. That meant only one thing. Everything I'd heard so far, they'd wanted me to.
I could feel rough concrete under my boots now. They'd taken