CHAPTER 7
Aaron wandered into the shop; it seemed dark inside after the brightness of the sunshine, but in contrast to the heat outside, it was pleasantly cool. He had picked up a newspaper from the rack at the door, but trailed up each aisle, leisurely browsing, wondering if there was anything he could buy as a treat for Jackson.
The shop was almost empty; a young woman, looking bored, turned the pages of a magazine as she stood waiting for customers behind the counter, only glancing occasionally as the few shoppers crossed her line of vision or interrupted her reading, to pay for their goods.
Aaron was making his way towards the counter; a sudden flurry of movement behind him, by the door drew his attention. He almost turned.
The door slammed shut. A voice barked instructions.
"Do as you're told! Keep quiet and no one will get hurt. On the ground, all of you!"
From the corner of his eye, Aaron was aware that the few other people who had been in the shop were hurrying to obey.
"Down!" the voice barked again; sharply this time, close behind him. Something jabbed hard into his back, hurrying his movements. Something cold, something rigid, something that could only have been …
He felt sweat suddenly begin to prickle uncomfortably down the length of his spine as he dropped to his knees; trying to escape from the barrel of the gun pressed against his skin.
They were moving now, at least four of them; their feet crossing his line of vision as they went towards the front of the shop, behind the counter. He heard a squeal, a sharp, gasped intake of breath; the sound of a thud, a thump!
Tentatively he raised his head slightly; pausing, a little higher, higher again.
"Keep still!" A different voice snapped the order close behind him, punctuating the words with a kick, hard and vicious, to his side.
With his breath forced unexpectedly from his body, Aaron fought painfully for air even as he moved his hand to clutch at his side, bracing himself against the agony.
He lay for a moment, listening. He could hear the mumble of voices, sometimes a scared wordless sound of protest reached him from the cashier. Keeping his head close to the ground, he tried to shuffled his body first one way, then the other; struggling to see if he could see any other customers close to him.
"No! Please no!" The sobbing words, full of fear, were suddenly clear before disintegrating into a wordless scream.
He didn't think! Sense, conscious thought left him; he was on his feet, lurching towards the sound; he needed to stop the screams!
He didn't know if anyone else in the shop was moving to help him; he didn't care, all his focus was on getting to the front of the shop, stopping them; stopping the screams.
He didn't see the movement of the masked man. Knew nothing until his arm was caught, his shoulder wrenched violently backwards, halting him.
"Oh no you don't!" a voice exclaimed.
Pulled off balance, Aaron lashed out, his free arm making contact with the arms trying to restrain him, his fingers trying to find a grip on tee-shirt, dig into skin, into anything. Twisting sharply, he caught his leg around his assailant's leg, hauled until they both tumbled sprawling to the floor and rolled, each lunging, struggling to gain a lasting hold on the other.
Breathless with the effort, at last Aaron's fingers locked onto something soft, some unresisting material. He pulled.
It had been only seconds; rough, violent seconds of struggle. But now other hands joined the battle to subdue him.
Only he pulled and the mask came away in his hands.
"Shit!" the voice, no longer faceless, exclaimed as his hands, and those of the second thief finally controlled Aaron, slamming him roughly, face down, into the floor.
"Shit! He's seen me; fucking seen my face! I should fucking kill him!"
"I should fucking kill you!" A new voice, snarling with anger, came from the front of the shop. "Letting him get the better of you! This is a right fuck up! Now come on. And bring him with you!"
Four hands gripped him then, wrenching his arms behind his back, dragging him up from the floor, propelling him forward.
It had all been so quick; to jump up, to fight had been instinctive, no time for thought or fear. As he was dragged towards the door Aaron felt a wave of panic sweep through him; this was real, this was serious.
He began to struggle against the hands that held him, to yell, to draw attention to the shop!
He didn't see the blow to his head coming.
….
He felt sick; waves of nausea washing over him as the blackness retreated. He breathed, coughed, choked and realized he was gagged; he could taste the dirty cloth that was keeping him silent. He opened his eyes but didn't attempt to move, assessing his surroundings. He was lying on the floor of a van; a van that stank of fish; he realised there were dirty nets lying around him, under him, even old buckets, still covered with god knows what, rolling round the van.
The sickness, the dizziness was retreating a little now; he tried to move. And couldn't! He was tied up; his arms and legs restrained. He began to struggle, to test the tightness of his bonds as he attempted to sit up.
"Keep still!" The words were accompanied by a sharp kick, pushing him roughly back to the floor of the van.
Aaron lay still, catching his breath; this couldn't be real! Shit! He had only left the others to get a paper; if only he had stayed with them, just gone straight to the beach! Had they missed him? Had they realized he had been gone longer than he should have been, just getting a paper? He lay still, trying to think, needing a plan.
He had no idea how long he had been unconscious; how much time had passed, how far they had travelled, but suddenly the van stopped and he heard the opening and slamming of the front doors, then seconds later the back doors of the van opened.
The man who had been in the back with him jumped out and closed the doors behind him, but Aaron didn't move; he couldn't make an attempt to escape, tied as he was and he didn't want to antagonize his captors. He could hear them having a hurried conversation but the closed doors muffled their words.
Aaron lay in the semi darkness; he could feel his heart pounding in his chest, feel his anxiety rising with every second of waiting to see what they would do.
The doors opened again.
"Get a blindfold on him, Archie and get him out here," the authoritative voice that had issued the orders at the shop spoke.
"Fuck sake boss! You've told him my name!"
"Fuck sake Archie! He's already seen your face; what does it matter if he knows your name. Now get on with it!"
The one called Archie, the one whose mask he had pulled off in the shop, scrambled into the van beside him, half dragging him upright as Aaron struggled to help.
Aaron tried to speak behind the foul cloth jammed into his mouth; he was desperate to know what they planned for him yet frightened to find out, but only incomprehensible sounds emerged.
"Shut the fuck up, ok!" Archie raised his hand threateningly but the blow never landed, instead he turned, ripped at a length of old sheeting beside him; tearing off a makeshift blindfold.
Aaron pulled his head back as the other man approached him, dreading the blinding rag cutting him off from his surroundings, unable to see the strangers who suddenly were in control of his life.
"Don't," pleaded the other man, his voice barely above a whisper. "Don't cross the Boss, believe me, it's easier this way."
Aaron looked at Archie, looked into his eyes. He wasn't a lot older than himself, he realised, four years, maybe five but probably no more. He looked into his eyes, there was a warning there, unspoken, but fear too. Fear not of himself, Aaron realised, but of the man he called the Boss. Bending his head forward, he allowed Archie to tie the rag around his eyes. He tried to steady his breathing, breathing through his nose not the stinking gag in his mouth, trying not to let his rising anxiety betray him. He tried to keep still when all he wanted to do was pull away and run, run back to his real life.
Darkness descended again; he could feel hands pulling at him, freeing his legs before dragging him from the van, steadying him as he stumbled. Outside again, despite the effectiveness of the blindfold, he realized he could hear the sea lapping close by, could smell the tang of salt in the air.
"Just throw him," the voice he now recognized the Boss said.
"Not into the sea?" yelped Archie, close beside Aaron.
"Every single word you say makes me wonder why we brought you along," snarled the Boss. "You'd better buck your ideas up lad or it will be you thrown to the fishes. Now just get him into the boat."
Aaron felt himself being grabbed, manhandled, his shoulders grasped, hauled backwards. More hands lifted his legs, he felt himself being swung through the air before being released. For a second or two he flew unhindered, touching nothing, downwards until he landed, crashing in an ungainly heap on a pile of coarsely knotted fishing nets, the rough tangle of material scraping harshly across his naked skin. The jolt of his landing forced the breath from his body; for a few moments he just lay, feeling the gentle movement of the boat beneath him, its peaceful momentum at odds with the raging anxiety coursing through his veins making his whole body tingle with fear.
"C'mon, I'll help you sit up," another voice said beside him as hands pulled at him, not unkindly, easing him into a sitting position. "The Boss is just pissed that his plans have been fucked up."
With the gag still in his mouth, Aaron could only groan a response.
"Oh it wasn't just you," the voice continued in a bizarre kind of reassurance. "For some reason there wasn't the money in the safe there should have been, that's annoyed him more to be honest. There, you'll be fine there for a while."
The voice moved away. For a while Aaron half sat, half lay where he had been left. He could hear the sound of his captor's voices but not make out their words; instead he let himself be lulled by the movement of the boat. The movement of the boat; up and down, again and again, taking his stomach with it; gradually the movement became everything, all he could think of, overwhelming. Suddenly his insides were churning, protesting heaving in sympathy with the motion of the boat. He was going to be sick! He couldn't be sick, the gag was pulled tight into his mouth; his hands were still tied, he couldn't drag the gag away, free himself.
Choking, he began to kick his feet against the decking under him, trying to attract the attention of his captors. He tried flinging himself to one side, giving the foul vomit filling his mouth the greatest chance to find the smallest escape route. It didn't help! Nothing helped, his mouth was full, he tried to breathe through his nose but he could feel panic rising as he couldn't help but snort the thick acid liquid out of his nose. Behind the blindfold, tears welled in his eyes as he gasped for breath, as stars began to flicker across the darkness that was beyond the blackness of the blindfold.
"Fuck! He's throwing up!"
He heard the words but they were distant, as though he was hearing them through a fog as his limp body was suddenly pulled this way and that as urgent hands dragged at the gag, dragged him round onto his side. He coughed, gasping for breath as the vomit poured from his mouth.
For what seemed like an eternity he lay, his chest heaving with the effort of getting his breath back, letting the light-headedness retreat. He didn't care that he was lying in a pool of his own vomit, that it stank, that he stank, that he had been kidnapped and was in a boat sailing god knows where. All that mattered for the moment was that he was alive.
At last he turned to move, slowly rolling around onto his back until discomfort from his still tied hands stopped him. It was only then he realised that he could see, that the rag that had blindfolded him had gone, had been ripped off in the race to free him from the gag. Slowly he raised his eyes to see two men watching him, Archie and…
As their eyes met, at almost exactly the same time, they all realised. The rag that had blindfolded him had gone, dragged off in their haste to stop him choking to death.
"Shit!" breathed the man whose voice Aaron recognised as the one who had settled him on the pile of old nets.
"Fucking hell, Fetch!" the angry voice of the Boss came from the small wheelhouse. "This is going from bad to worse! You might as well untie him; he ain't going anywhere just now. And throw a bucket of water over him; I can smell his stinking puke from here!"
The boat lurched against the bouncing waves as though it was responding to the anger in the Boss's voice.
Grimacing resignedly, Fetch moved away from Aaron and lurched out of his sight, steadying himself as he went. Awkwardly Archie crouched behind Aaron, his fingers working to free the knots in the rope binding Aaron's wrists.
"Are you ok now?" he asked, resting back on his heels as Aaron slowly moved his arms forwards, rubbing his wrists tingling with pins and needles as the blood flow returned to them.
Aaron looked at him, raised his eyebrow in silent wonder; had he really just asked that question.
He lay back against the outside of the wheelhouse, his eyes closed. He didn't want to think of anything at the moment; what was happening, what could happen.
"Here," Fetch had returned, any noise from his footsteps masked by the noise of the sea. He placed a half filled bucket of water beside Aaron. "Clean yourself up a bit, there's a towel and some clothes to put on." He dropped a bundle beside Aaron, a tin of fizzy juice on top of it before turning away, just a little, although he didn't move any distance from him.
After waiting for a moment, Aaron understood that neither Fetch nor Archie were leaving him alone while he washed or changed into whatever clothes Fetch had found for him. He eased himself forward; there was a towel amongst the bundle of clothes, just a small one, not big enough to wrap himself in. Suddenly not caring anymore, he stood and slid off the sick soaked shorts that were all he had on, picked up the bucket of water and poured it over himself.
The cold water cascading over his naked body made all his senses tingle, come alive once more. He shook himself, then caught the towel to his face, rubbing it dry.
Suddenly, incongruously, a phone started to ring.
Aaron recognised the ring tone, he froze. It wasn't worth even hoping Fetch and Archie hadn't heard.
Fetch dived for the discarded shorts; ignoring the mess they were in, his rapid movements found the pocket and pulled Aaron's mobile from it.
"Jackson," he read, looking at the screen. "Who's Jackson?"
For a moment Aaron said nothing.
A noise came from behind them, a low rumble, a growl; both Fetch and Archie looked towards the wheelhouse where the Boss was steering the boat. They looked beyond the small wheelhouse, to the front of the boat where a fourth man had been scanning the sea around them but was now looking directly at them, interested. Catching each other's eyes for a split second, Fetch spoke again and this time there was a chilly edge of menace to his tone.
"You'd better tell us, who is Jackson?"
