Chronicles of Revenge

Chapter 1 The sound of laughing and shouting echoed in the park as two young men and their parents were enjoying an afternoon walk together. The day was bright and warm for October, and the trees still had their summer coats on, although some were starting to turn a light brown. The mild summer had hung on longer than normal, but today was not going to be any normal day, one thing was for sure it would not end like it had started. Tim turned to his wife, smiled and said, “Lara, look at them two. I can’t remember seeing them this happy for a long time.” Lara stared lovingly back and replied, “That, Tim, is because you were always at work while we lived at 10 Downing Street. Now that part of our life is over we can have lots more days like this, and I can't wait.” “Me too,” he smiled while thinking the same, and made himself a promise that this is how it would be from now on, more family time and less work. Well, he thought, we have no money worries, who’s ever heard of a poor ex-Prime Minister? He certainly hadn’t. Since leaving government he had made a good living from after-dinner speeches, plus there were lots of companies offering work. Yes they were really very lucky, he had worked hard and now it was time to enjoy the fruits of his labour. Tim looked at his watch, a gold Rolex given to him by a wealthy friend. He loved this watch and would pass it onto his eldest son Timothy when he was twenty-one, but for now he could enjoy the wonderful timepiece. It was now 4:17pm, “Lara,” he said, “it's time we were heading back for dinner and the boys have got college in the morning.” She agreed and called to them, “Timothy, Robin, time to go home now.” He turned to her with an exasperated look and said, “Lara, you are the only one that calls him Timothy. Everybody else just calls him Tim like I do.” She pretended to look hurt, “That's what we named him so that's what I'll call him, or should we take the American way and call him Junior?” “No, no, no, anything but that,” Tim said. They both laughed and turned to head home. The walk back was a pleasant one as it was still quite warm outside. When they arrived home Lara decided they would have their dinner in the garden and while she was preparing their food Tim went to his office to do some work ready for Monday morning, and the boys kicked a ball around in the garden. In a rented flat a small black box suddenly came to life. Two tiny red lights switched on making the box look like a small, evil creature. More electrical equipment now switched on until the whole thing seemed to be alive, the only part of the beast that seem cold, hard and dead, was the black barrel of the 7.62 general purpose machine gun. Mounted on a servo assisted tripod it waited for its orders. Not the most sophisticated piece of equipment, but good enough for this task, and readily available if you knew where to look. Fixed just behind the optical sight was a mobile phone, securely in position on its own mounting. This also came to life, now going through its normal wake up procedure. Thirty seconds later it was sending a video signal back to another mobile, enabling the user to see through its camera and the optical sights on the machine gun. Electric motors started to hum and the gun slowly turned towards the window. Passing the window edge, a brick wall came into view. This slowly passed across the small screen and now the view changed; trees, bushes, flowers and a grass lawn on which there were children’s toys and a barbecue, all passed across the screen. Just an average English family garden. The motors kept running, turning the barrel towards its final targets, then a fence came in to view. As it slowly passed, the user was now looking into another garden. This one was very similar to the first except for the two young lads playing football. The user watched them for a while, waiting. No rush, just waiting for the right moment. As the two lads played, the cold dark barrel watched and waited. The two came together in a heavy tackle leaving them both flat-out on the grass side-by-side, laughing even though they were completely out of breath. Again, the servo motors hummed, the barrel moved a little left and up until the crosshairs aligned on the two lads lying on the grass. Suddenly the machine gun came to life, three short bursts barked from its long dark barrel, sixteen rounds in all travelling at over two thousand feet per second smashed into their target, ripping flesh, tearing muscle and smashing bones. Young Tim and Robin were killed in a hail storm of deadly, white hot lead. Due to the machine gun placement Lara and Tim never heard the shots, but their small dog had and barked furiously, but then he always did at any noise. Lara had made the boys a cold drink and thought she would take them into the garden for them. As she came out of the door and down the steps, she rounded the shed and saw the two boys, or what was left of them. The impact of the sixteen 7.62 rounds on the two young bodies can only be described as sheer carnage. For Lara everything seemed to stop; the two glasses fell to the path and shattered, but she did not notice. She tried to run to get to Timothy and Robin, but nothing seemed to work. Her whole body would not move, it seemed like hours to her as the shock of what she was seeing abated and she let out an almost inhuman scream. A scream that only a mother who has lost a child could make, let alone one who was looking at her two sons, slaughtered in their own garden. Tim was working in his small office. It was not the kind of office he was used to having, this one was more like the size of a large broom cupboard, but he liked it. He had all that he needed plus no room for anyone else, just his laptop, a photo of his wedding day and one of his two boys. Tim was just finishing some notes when he heard Lara scream. Even with all the walls and doors between them he heard it clear as day, and knew in his heart that something bad had happened. Thinking that one of the boys had been badly hurt, he ran into the garden. Tearing through the back door, he cleared all three steps in one leap. The sight before him stopped him dead in his tracks. He’d expected a broken arm or leg maybe, even a bad break with bones poking through the skin, but what he found was his two sons completely torn to pieces, the grass around them was covered in blood and bits of skin and bone. Lara had both the boys’ bodies, or what was left of them, in her arms. She had stopped screaming now and was just making a low moaning whimpering sound. Tim tried to speak but nothing came out, his jaw just moved up and down like a silent movie actor. He dropped to his knees next to Lara, slowly shaking his head, trying to make sense of what had happened but not believing what he was seeing. Moments later his mobile phone rang. The phone was one of those new Blackberry sorts, but at that moment it could have been a stone for all he knew. He looked at the screen; number withheld, not that he cared. His thumb pressed the green answer button and he put the phone to his ear. “Hello?” Tim said. No answer. Again he said, “Hello, who is this?” Then the voice of a man that Tim thought was dead spoke, chilling him to the bone, it said, “Nobody takes from me what I'm not prepared to give, and I was not prepared to give my sons. Now I have taken your two sons from you, so you can suffer the same as I am. You are the first, but not the last. The same fate will befall all who were involved in the murder of my two sons, and I will have my revenge.” The phone clicked and went dead. Tim stared at the small Blackberry in his hand, turned and hurled it against the wall, breaking into pieces. He looked across at Lara holding their two sons’ bodies, got up and headed back inside. He had to make some calls, other people had to know. The police and ambulances arrived within minutes. Lara was given a sedative and taken upstairs. Tim reach for the phone and dialled, “Bill,” said Tim, “I need you here at my house right away. No, drop whatever you are doing and get here now,” then he hung up, sat back and waited. Twenty-two seconds after he had spoken to Tim Greening the user dialled another number and waited. In a third floor apartment in an expensive part of Paris Ile Saint-Louis, tucked away in a small cupboard, was an old brown suitcase. It was nothing much to look at, but it was her father's and she liked to have it with her wherever she went. Unknown to Desiree Beuli, someone had broken into her apartment two weeks earlier and removed the contents of her suitcase and replaced it with a small amount of C4 explosives and four litres of petrol. This was wired to a small black box which was the ignition switch. On top of the box was a mobile phone which now lit up showing an incoming call. The phone answered and started the LED lights in the box. They came on, lighting the inside of the case with an eerie red glow, and at the same time three hidden spy cameras came on. The user looked through each one until he found what he was looking for. There in the lounge was Desiree, alone, revising for a test she had soon. The user took in all the expensive things in the apartment, from the hand printed wallpaper in gold and greens, to the real polar bear rug in front of the fire, and the large brown leather couch. He now made one last check to make sure she was alone. His finger moved to the keypad, and with the cold, calculating manner of a man who had killed many times before, pressed the four digits needed to set off the bomb. Desiree Beuli, for a fraction of a second, felt the blast and the heat from the bomb, then she was engulfed in flames. Death would have been almost instantaneous. The blast blew out all of the windows and the French doors, and as the flames subsided and the smoke started to clear there, in the corner behind the burning sofa and next to the smouldering polar bear rug, lay Desiree’s lifeless, charred body, peppered with broken masonry from the blast. This is how she was found. Her parents were informed, but unlike Tim Greening they had no idea who had done this, but they soon would. The time was now 4.24pm GMT, and once again the user dialled another number. It was 11:24am in Miami. Chad Denning was at home, well, home being a converted double garage at his parents’ house. Chad now twenty-two and wanted his own space. It was a typical young man's lair, just as he had wanted it. One of the doors had been removed and replaced with a window and he had kept the other for his 1960 Corvette sports car. The two seat convertible had been his dad’s and when he had turned twenty-one Chad had been given it for his birthday. Most people have a giant TV or an inglenook fireplace for a centrepiece in the lounge, Chad just parked the Corvette. A moving piece of art is what he liked to call it, and it certainly was a head turner that’s for sure, along with the flat screen TV, large old leather couch and the kitchenette. That was Chad's place; his bedroom was in the rafter space, compact but his. It really did impress the girls when he drove into his own lounge in the Corvette. Chad loved that car so much that no one was allowed to drive it except him, even when it went for its yearly service he would drive it there and back. No greasy mechanic was driving his car. This though, was to be his undoing. When the car had its last service three weeks earlier it had stayed in the garage overnight, and in that time at the garage, a piece of C4, no bigger than a golf ball, had been placed under the driver's seat, along with a tiny black box a mobile phone and a mercury tip switch, the type used by the IRA years before. The users had a vast knowledge of these, having disarmed and used them many times. The phone under the seat lit up and answered the call, the small black box coming to life. The user put in the four digits that would activate the mercury tip switch, and now the bomb was armed, all it needed was a sharp movement to detonate the C4 underneath the seat.