Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [93]
‘Kane, you’re a sodding hero,’ she said and kissed him sweetly.
Kane barked with savage laughter and glee.
Every dog has his day.
He crushed her lips with his, squeezing her against him as if he somehow knew he would never get the chance again, and was going to make up for all the lost time - all the pouts and scornful glances, in the pub, in the street; all the sarcastic put-downs that he had always known were hiding some obstinate passion. Time to collect, bitch.
And she tasted good.
The crowd roared with approval, and Kane finally lifted his head from her delicate beauty and pushed her firmly away, smacking his lips with the back of his hand as he strolled towards the mummer.
Yates led his troops around the crowd. Nobody tried to intercept them, confounding the captain’s expectations after the mob’s summary treatment of the token police force. As the UNIT men got nearer the furiously performing band, the hellish noise made Yates feel his head was about to pop open like a nut squeezed in 221
a nutcracker. He halted, lifting up a hand to warn the soldiers.
They were in a position to the right of the crowd, behind a standing stone that blocked them from full view of the mummer, who, though he was only twenty yards from them, was apparently not aware of their presence in the field,.
‘OK,’ he briefed the men, ‘we’re going to take out the band.
You’ve seen what their influence has caused the crowd to do to those policemen; you don’t need me to remind you of all the other atrocities that have taken place probably because of them. I’ll handle the mummer.’ He turned to a gangly private next to him, whose eyes were wide and scared.Yates sympathised with him; he felt unnerved himself. There was something horribly unnatural about the whole situation.
‘Hooper: terminate the singer.’
The private immediately steadied his FN against the standing stone, sighting along the barrel. He fired a quick burst that was only just audible above the din coming from the band. The singer was performing a macabre jig, spiked codpiece thrusting out lewdly. The round caught him full in the chest and hurled him backwards, microphone spinning from his hand. He landed in a thistle patch and lay still. The rest of the band continued to play as if nothing had happened. The mummer turned slowly in their direction.
You’re mine, you bastard. Yates aimed his revolver at the gaily coloured figure. The gun coughed in his hand, once, twice, three shots. The mummer jerked as each bullet smacked into him, but did not go down. Yates steadied his arm for a head shot, and delivered it. A rose of dry, ruptured flesh bloomed on the mummer’s forehead and he grinned wide, wider. As he grinned, the singer sat up with a sudden movement, his shades still in place. He groped for the microphone and finding it, stood up and lurched towards the mike stand where he slotted the mouthpiece back into place with an almost disgruntled air.
The mummer’s grin was impossibly wide now. He looked past the soldiers crouching behind the standing stone, and Yates followed his gaze.
222
The cattle truck was parked not far from them and now, as the UNIT captain watched, its back doors were opening.
‘You’ve got to be joking!’ he hissed incredulously as a group of figures began to descend the ramp. The five troopers stiffened, and one of them dropped his sub-machine-gun with an oath of horror.
Jo saw Yates hiding behind the stone and wondered for a moment how she knew him. She watched as the singer was shot down, his howling momentarily and rudely cut off. Then the word she was groping for popped into her mind just as Sin voiced it for her:
‘Pig! It’s that pig friend of yours!’ the Chinese shouted over the roar of the band.
‘No friend of mine. I told you -’ Jo began, and then stopped. The mummer was buffeted by bullets from the ‘pig’s’ gun. He was Captain Mike Yates of UNIT, and she was Josephine Grant of the same organisation, assistant to...
The patroniser.The bully.The know-it-all. Yes, she thought uncertainly, that’s right.