Chapter Something A solitary figure walked briskly along the left hand side of the road on the run-down pathway. Potholes littered the path, and screwed up pieces of glad-wrap, cheap soft-drink cans and broken pieces of gib-board that some builders had left there. He glances to the left. An unkempt man is out to it, lying under a couple of damp, squashed card-board boxes. The familiar stench of heroin sickens the man walking past, and he shivers somewhat convulsively. The brick walls of the terraced houses on the other side of the road are almost completely covered in un-tasteful and poorly done graffiti. A couple of dull thuds. The man spins round, just in time to see a couple of very full plastic supermarket bags, full of rubbish, rolling off the pathway, from where they’d obviously been thrown from out of one of those smashed windows. He was wearing a pair of blend jeans. They were slightly faded from the thighs down to past the knees, but they weren’t like that when he bought them. It was years of wear and tear that had got them to this condition. That pair of jeans, - his third pair since he’d stopped growing, he’d had for a year and a half now. He wore the same pair every day of the year, unless he was somewhere where a more formal mode of dress was required, until they literally started falling apart, and finally disintegrating. Size thirty-two jeans, he wore them so that they almost, but not quite touched the ground at the back of his dark brown leather Clarks shoes. This allowed for a respectably “baggy” look, but not so much as to impede his progress. On the back of his black tee-shirt that was starting to fade, was an advertisement for the favourite Greek drink, Ouzo. “Ouzo-power” it stated. It hung over his jeans, covering pretty much all of his two back pockets. This was a tee-shirt he’d bought one time at a cozy little restaurant in his hometown of Christchurch, called Santorini. You wouldn’t see it, unless you had a trained eye, but this particular man was not ordinary. Firstly, the SIG Sauer in his right back pocket, only just hidden from view by the tee-shirt. His chosen weapon, the Swiss-made SIG Sauer P220, widely acclaimed as one of the best hand-guns in production, was always with him. Secondly, the light, regular way he walked, enabling him to get places quickly without standing out, the way he would if he ran. A sheathed knife, with a blade of 8 inches was strapped to the outside of his left thigh. The hole in the bottom of his spacious front left pocket enabled him, in cases of emergency, to reach through and quickly un-strap and pull the knife out. The stuffy London air in this particularly shoddy side of Battersea was just too hot. With his left hand, the man took off his navy NY cap, holding it the way you would a basketball, wiped his brow with his right hand, and put the cap back on again. Walking round the remains of a smashed and partly dismantled 49cc Honda scooter, he stopped. “Don’t look behind you”, he murmured, “but we are being followed”. He was always talking to himself, this man. Sure enough, from a third person perspective, you could see three – or was it four, large strapping men standing in a doorway – just out of sight. One of the heavies, Herb was rubbing the knuckledusters that he was wearing on his leathery, unshaven cheek. “Right. What do you say”. Herb raised his eyebrows and lifted his head slightly. The lad, who his friends referred to as Zee, - short for chimpanzee, and due to the fact that though this guy was small, he was wiry and vicious – partially closed his left eye, and with a stifled cough, quickly followed by something like a malicious smirk, nodded his head in the direction of where they knew the one lone man was. Reaching under his shirt, Zee pulled out a Steyr – a submachine gun which closely resembles the stereotype pistol, and is only slightly larger, having a handle under the short barrel which is held to stabilise the fire. Known for it’s lethal killing power from short distances, the Steyr has does not have the best accuracy, but the 9mm bullets do their ghastly work well. The man by the scooter, meanwhile was calmly pulling a telescopic sight out of his right pocket, taking the protective covers off the lenses, and deftly pulling the gun from his back pocket, he swiftly locked the sights in place. These sights were excellent, and very powerful, though old. He had once bought them at an auction, - very cheaply too, considering. Soviet made, these were the very same sights that Vassili, the famed sniper from the battle of Stalingrad had used, so many years ago. The man had had got his brother who was handy with that sort of thing to sort out a bracket so that the sights would clip onto his SIG. From one kilometer you could see if a man had shaved that morning. He quickly adjusted the focus of the sights and then, doubled over, ran forward. “Fellers ready?” Zee had screwed the silencer on his weapon. As he spoke, he rolled up one sleeve of his tidy Pierre Cardin V-necked jersey, revealing an un-sheathed knife that looked like a small machete, taped to his arm. Zee had thought himself quite “up with it” in fashion, and, finding the jersey at an opportunity shop, he had rolled it up and stuck it up the sleeve of his overcoat. Usually he would have paid, but being hard up at the time, he gave the elderly volunteer shop assistant a dangerous look, and left the neighborhood. The other two men looked up from where they were sitting on the steps, loading their guns. Zak, the Cambodian guy looked up. He had said that he hadn’t been able to find his passport, and so he couldn’t get any work. “It must have been stolen” he had said. Unclipping his four column magazine, he snapped it into position on his Spectra M4, a gun quite similar to the 9mm Uzi, and made by the Italians. He grunted and stood. The other man who had been sitting down, - Teddy his mates called him, due to his child-like features and slight obesity, - also stood up. “Ready Ted?” Zee asked him. “I always prepare before hand” smiled Ted. Though a violent minded criminal, Ted was a slave to order, - his flat was perfectly tidy, and he wore tidy but dull-coloured clothes. The single man had run up the street, away from these dangerous looking men. Escape, was not in his mind. Rounding a slight turn in the road, he quickly crossed over to a likely looking doorway. Finding the door ajar, he quietly entered. An empty, gutted apartment. “Great”, he breathed, and headed for the stairwell. The large fellow, Herb pulled two Llama M-82’s, one from each pocket, and each fitted with a strong laser sight, merely fairly high quality laser pointers, with batteries twice the amps than recommended by the manufacturer, and producing a small but distinct red blur from a wee distance, even in daylight. The Llama is a 9mm Spanish gun, a take-off of the Colt, and at one time used by the Spanish army. Teddy didn’t appear to be in a rush to get out his weapon, and Zee decided just to let it drop for now. “K, you guys.” He said in his Scausser accent. “This time”. He patted the knife which was taped roughly to his arm. “This time, his wife is going to wait a long long time for him to come home for dinner…” The men laughed under their breath. Fishing a light-weight tear-gas grenade from the filthy left-hand pocket of his unwashed corduroys, Zak handed it to Zee. Zee, in turn, ducked his head out from behind the doorway and tossed the grenade, letting it land just in-front of the scooter. “Gotcha”, he grinned. “Okay, boys, lets move move MOVE!” Zee lead the way out into the street as the men dashed out, crouching low and staying close to the walls of the terraced houses on either side of them. “He’s not there boss” yelled Herb. Zee didn’t answer, but motioned for his men to move forward slowly, and carefully. Herb and Zak positioned themselves behind the cab of a double cab ute, Teddy positioned himself behind the deck of the ute with his trusty German made Mauser, again with a laser sight, but this time professional, and of the highest quality. He had inherited the gun from his stepfather, who had told him at the time that it was the gun he had been issued with for “excellence in conduct and courage” as a member of the Hitler Youth movement in Ireland. Not many people would know, but quite a number of young Irish lads had been fired up to start up their own branch of the Hitler Youth, after hearing several of Hitler’s speeches over the radio. Though the gun wasn’t at all new, both his father and he, Ted had cherished and looked after the gun, and it was only just recently, having fallen into debt and entered into the life of a well paid criminal assassin that Ted had had a real use for the gun. Zee stood under a doorway on the right side of the road, as they waited. The hunted also waited. Standing beside a window, and with the mildewing curtains almost completely closed, the man with the SIG maintained a watch on the street below. His body was relaxed as he stood, leaning against the wall, holding his gun in his right hand, and resting it on his shoulder. But his mind was tense. His thoughts went back a bit. His life had been endangered for a while now. Who was it that wanted him gone, he wondered. Fine, these four guys obviously wanted to kill him, but only because that was their job. And, true, he was doing dangerous work, bordering on breaking the law – only, not quite. Who was it that was behind this particular quite desperate attempt on his life? Someone who didn’t like the disturbing, somewhat disruptive message found in the Bible quite probably. There were several men who it could be – he just wasn’t sure. They were definitely making the most of these new hate speech laws, he thought. This normal looking guy was not all that normal at all. He had trained for three years with the New Zealand Secret Service, quickly establishing a reputation as being extremely resourceful, very handy with a gun, and becoming a distinguished and recognised leader. Not only this, but he was on the board of a group, one of the founding members of a group started in Christchurch, New Zealand, by himself, his two brothers and some close and trusted friends. The group was totally under-cover and un-official, as they worked, distributing Bibles to Christians in countries where it was even harder to get hold of. True, even in New Zealand, owning a Bible was something you didn’t take for granted anymore. But there were countries, countries like England which had become so accepting of new religions and cultures, especially Islam. There was more and more debate on whether the Bible should be allowed to be owned or printed in England – already, some of the books and chapters of the Bible had been officially labeled as hate-speech. He was over here in Britain, to get a first hand look at what the latest developments related to the hate-speech laws, and restrictions imposed especially on Christians. And, also, to discretely visit and encourage the believers that he had contact with. Things were not looking good. Though the guy with the SIG and the ouzo tee-shirt trusted God to never let His Word, the Bible ever be destroyed or lost, he was not going to stand by and do nothing. He didn’t want to hurt – or possibly kill anyone, but when you can’t go to the authorities without getting imprisoned yourself, and when self-defense is your only hope, then that’s what you do – if you’re Darren Raxworthy, anyway. Next to write about: The guys walk up the street Darren prays. Darren wounds maybe three, kills maybe one. Or shoots the guns out of some of their hands. Some hand-hand combat either up in the apartment, or down in the street The he gives them the message either when they’re dying, or incapacitated, wounded, he tells them the message of hope for eternal life. He hops on a plane back