Predator

“See the box over there?” asks the guard. “Put it in there.”

The guy behind the grille with the assault rifle tenses. You never know.

The shopkeeper (whose name, it turns out, is Artemiy) chucks all the bottles into a crate.

“What do you need?”

“Ammunition. Twelve-gauge.”

He purses his lips and looks sceptically at the bottles I’ve brought.

“Well, I can give you a couple of packs. Birdshot or buckshot? I can give you three of those.”

“What about fifty-fifty?”

“What?”

“I mean half of one and half of the other. How many shells in a pack?”

The shopkeeper grins.

“So, you’re a mathematician. Ten shells in a pack. So, a pack of birdshot and…” he thinks for a second, “a dozen of buckshot.”

“Fifteen.”

We agree to fourteen.

In the course of discussion, I discover that buckshot means balls of around four to five millimetres. Considering the large gauge of my gun, that’s more than sufficient for close quarters, but I’m not going to hit anything on the other side of the road unless it’s an elephant.

On my way out, I discover that my not-quite-sawn-off has been unloaded. The shells are arranged neatly beside it.

“In future,” explains the guard, “you do that yourself. If you come in here with a loaded gun, we’ll put you down.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we’ll blow your fucking brains out, and all that jazz.”

They’re a friendly bunch, aren’t they?

I hide the gun under my jacket and step out into the street. Those thugs that jumped me last time have a lookout post, if that’s what you’d call it, somewhere round here. From there they can see everyone who goes into or comes out of the shop. Now it makes sense why some of the paths to the door have been made so difficult – to ensure everyone approaches the same way. There’s a tree down suddenly on one side, or elsewhere a pile of rubbish has appeared out of nowhere – somehow the bins have turned themselves over. Bins that were never there before anyway. Most people don’t want to climb through a stinking pile of trash, or crawl through the earth under a fallen three. They’ll take the cleaner, more comfortable path.

So, that’s the deal. There aren’t many those wankers, and they can’t cover every approach to the shop. That’s how they’ve made their life easier. Where did they meet me last time? Next to that building there. Which means? They saw me, got ready, and jumped straight at me. And one of them did stink a bit, like he’d come from the trash. So, where are they sitting?

Wherever it is, they must also be able to see the flat they told me to take the stuff to. Otherwise they’d have to keep running backwards and forwards. If they see you go in, that means you’re paying your ten percent and everything’s OK. They don’t need to collect the stuff till evening. But if you don’t go in, they have to be ready to catch you.

It’s that building over there. None of the others are as conveniently placed. Elsewhere there are fences in the way. Making holes in them doesn’t make sense. Then anyone could use them and avoid the carefully laid path. The wankers wouldn’t like that.

I wait for a couple of seconds in the cover provided by the wall of the building and the protruding rubbish bin. I quickly put four shells in the magazine, slide the pump (I’ve learned how), and the gun’s loaded.

Five shots. In theory, that’s five deaths. If I actually end up shooting. But I know I’m going to have to. There’s no good way this ends up. And if they see my gun there’ll be all hell to pay. They don’t have guns. Well, maybe they have pistols. And I’m sure they’ve got knives, which no doubt they’ll cut me up with to get rid of their fear of an armed man. I’ve read about how it works. If they did have a gun, then they’d have waved it round under my nose already. For the sake of good form, as they say, and for greater persuasion. They’d have made me sniff it.

I loosen the strap I’m holding the gun with slightly, wrapping it in a loop around the round cover of the magazine. My shotgun sling (that’s the proper name for it, a shotgun sling!) is pretty new, with plastic buckles that can easily be adjusted. If you slip the loop from the magazine, the shotgun drops out from under my coat and hangs on a long strap, which makes it easy to handle. Sadly, this isn’t my invention, it’s something else I saw in a film. True, they did it with submachine guns there, but what’s the difference? It’s not very comfortable, so you can’t go far with it, but then I don’t have to.

And here’s the entryway I was told to bring my offering to in return for their so-called protection. To be fair, they’ve chosen the place pretty well. No need to make a special detour.

As I come inside, I unfasten my jacket and carefully step over the wire of their alarm system. It’s still in the same place. There’s no point announcing my presence too early. Even more so as I’m coming up the stairs and not down, and the tripwire’s designed to catch someone coming down from upstairs.

The apartment turns out to be empty. Nobody’s bothered to wait for me. You’d guess the wankers have worked out that it may not only be conscientious payers that want to come in here. There really is a box in the kitchen, and right now it’s completely empty. Either they’ve already collected their bounty, or nobody’s brought them anything yet. Not all of the shopkeeper’s customers can be so helpless that they have to pay those arseholes off. I’d like to see them try to shake down those armed gorillas. In fact, I’d pay anything for it. I look into the neighbouring room and find what I need. I drag out a writing desk and use it to block the doorway to the kitchen. I also turn the kitchen table around. Now, in order to get from the hallway into the kitchen, they’ll have to get through my obstacle course, which isn’t easy as I’ve left only the tiniest gap. I then leave the apartment and go back out on the street, and turn in completely the opposite direction from the way I went last time, just to make sure no one intercepts me on the way home. They should have seen my visit to the apartment, and that means there’ll be somebody along soon to pick up my payment.

As I now more or less know the way, I make my journey considerably more quickly than the time before. It helps that the fire escape is completely out of sight from where I assume their lookout post to be. It’s wide open from the other side, however, so it’s best to get up fast. Across the roof, onto the familiar balcony, and through the apartment to the staircase without incident. Slipping cautiously into the kitchen, I take up position in the corner so I that I can’t be seen from the street. Just in case. I sit and wait. It’s a shame I don’t smoke, or the time might pass a little faster. I can’t snooze, and it’s not a good idea to relax too much.

So, will the courier be here soon? If my calculations are correct, he should be along any minute. At some point in my checkered career, I worked in logistics and had to organize all sorts of things. You get used to assessing a huge variety of factors, among them the walking speed of a courier on foot. So I do have some reason to believe my estimates are reasonably accurate.

And there’s the scrape of the door downstairs! Who’ll be the lucky first visitor? Well, I really couldn’t have hoped for better! Standing in the doorway is none other than the original lookout I saw from the balcony on my first visit. I’ve got a bone to pick with you, my friend.

“Waaaaa?” He clearly wasn’t expecting to find anyone here, and voices his confusion.

“Sit down!” I nod towards the floor.

“What the fuck?” shouts the little tit.

And then he notices the shotgun poking pointedly out from under the table.

He really is a little tit, too. Skinny and unkempt. You’d think he’d just be a hanger-on in most groups, but he’s trying to puff out his chest. You can see why, too. A dickhead like that will have spent all his life being kicked around – sent off to buy beer, cigarettes and girls. Then suddenly he gets to be the one shouting orders, and he’s got friends at his back to stop him getting punched in his ugly face. He must have liked the feeling, and decided that he was born to rule after all. Now suddenly he was being knocked back into his customary cringing position. He didn’t like it one bit.

“What do you think?” starts the wanker, still holding out hope.

Well, he should be a little more observant, shouldn’t he? Hasn’t he noticed there’s a chopping board right next to me on the table? It’s a good old-fashioned one, made of thick wood. Very comfortable to cut on. A useful thing in all sorts of ways. Easy to throw, too. So, when the heavy piece of wood hits our dickhead right in the middle of his ugly face, he finally stops talking. All that time playing table tennis turned out to have a use after all – it was a good, powerful throw with a good, powerful effect. The guy choked up, and all the words he was planning to let fly in my direction remained stick in his throat.

“Did anyone give you permission to talk?” I ask sweetly. I borrow the manner from our old HR director, who always kept a calm, pleasant tone. He knew what he was doing. It sounds like you’re being polite, but it’s very difficult to argue with.

The dickhead says nothing, just wipes the blood from his split lip. Sensible of him. Also standing on the table is an iron. It’s old, too, the sort made from actual iron. Get hit with that in the chops and you really won’t be saying anything. Ever again.

“Speak out of line again, and I’ll shoot you in the fucking kneecaps. Then I’ll leave you here, and by the time your friends come running to find you’ll have bled out all over the floor. Nod if you understand!”

I shout the last words at the top of my voice, and see the dickhead shudder before he nods. Even I’m afraid of what I’m saying. Afraid because I really am going to have to do all that. It may be easy to pull a trigger in the movies, but what’s it like in real life? So that’s why I’m shouting, to get my own nerve up.

“Where are your mates?”

“Not far. Number ten on Karpov Street.”

“Flat number?”

“Sixteen.”

I know the building. There used to be a shop on the ground floor. So, the bad guys are up on the fourth floor. Makes sense, there’s a pretty good view from there.

“How many of them?”