Chapter 26

 

Five hours to kick-off and the city centre bars and cafés were already full of football fans doing their best to drink Munich dry. Naturally the English fans were the loudest and seemed in good spirits, but the overall atmosphere in the city was as tense as it had been at the previous matches. Overweight men with tattooed forearms taunted and gestured to just about anyone and anything that wasn’t English. The local Turkish population seemed to cop most of the abuse, but that was nothing compared to the odd brave - or stupid - soul that wandered past wearing anything German.

“Two World Wars and one World Cup,” was their most popular chant.

Milton lit a cigarette; he had hardly noticed that he had become a smoker again. He had promised himself never to touch them again after his previous undercover job busting the drugs ring. He had been true to his word until arriving in Dubai.

This was just one of the many things that had changed about Milton without his realising over the past few weeks.

He took his position in the Irish pub across the road from where a huge throng of English fans had gathered. He sat out of view from the road but could hear the chants coming from the 200 or so voices some 30 yards away.

He made eye contact with the men from his Hit Squad, who were already in the pub, and they slowly started to assemble as the time of action - 3.00 p.m. - drew ever closer.

Milton could tell by their mannerisms that they were feeling as tense as he was. Jacks had worked his magic on each and every one of them over the years and they were determined not to let their messiah down. Lenny arrived last and the crew of ten was complete. It was Paris all over again for Milton and he was on edge. He had never been so nervous, but was doing his best not to show it.

“All right lads?” asked Lenny with a confident smile.

The general response was positive, but Milton felt like a footballer ready to take to the field before a cup final. The group chatted and melted into the general scenery of the pub, which was filling with England fans unable to get a beer in the packed bar across the street.

The men regularly looked at their watches and, as 3.00 p.m. drew nearer, they gulped down the remainder of their drinks and waited in silence. To the uninitiated, they just looked like a regular group of blokes enjoying a trip abroad. But in just a few minutes they were about to unleash hell.

Milton could feel his brow becoming damp, so he swiped his forearm across it.

“Damn, it’s getting warm in here,” he commented to one of his colleagues.

It fell on deaf ears. All the men wanted to hear now was the signal to allow them to kick into action.

They did not have to wait long. An explosion could be heard outside the pub and by the time the men had got outside there was a huge billow of smoke. It was the tear gas cylinder hurled by Pups, but it had failed to go through the window and instead had ignited harmlessly on the pavement outside. A huge roar came up from the mass gathering of Englishmen across the street and Pups was in trouble.

The canister was supposed to go through the window of the pub Milton was in. Thus, by the time the men across the street realised what had happened, Pups would already be on his way.

But it had not, and Pups, standing in the middle of the road between 200 angry Englishmen on one side and dozens of confused and dazed Englishmen emerging through the smoke on the other, was a sitting duck. What made it worse was that a German scarf covered his face, part of his guise as a rival supporter touting trouble.

Milton emerged through the cloud and through his watery eyes he could make out the angry pack converging on its prey. Pups was the cornered fox and he had no way of escaping the clutches of the hungry hounds that soon dispatched him to the floor with huge roars of approval from the bystanders.

Milton moved forward to try to intervene but Lenny held his arm.

“There’s nowt we can do, John. Let’s go,” he said.

Milton felt helpless as Lenny took up the baton, realising that the plan had to continue despite Pups’s demise.

“There’s a load of Krauts up this street. Let’s do ’em,” he shouted and gestured for the rest of the army to follow.

First two, three, four, then dozens and scores of men took up Lenny’s battle cry and disappeared up the street. Milton started to follow but turned back to see Pups. He lay motionless in the street as each rampaging Englishman who went past directed kicks at or stamped on his limp body.

Milton rushed over and pushed them away.

“All right, all right lads, he’s had enough. There’s plenty more up there. This one’s had enough for one day,” said Milton as he knelt beside Pups who was barely recognisable.

As the rampaging mob continued to file past, some of their spit caught Milton and few even bothered to check on Pups’s condition.

“German scum” and “Kraut” were coming from the mouths of the intoxicated pack, which soon thinned out as the yobs hurried to catch up with the mob ahead, baying for German blood.

Pups was lifeless. Milton removed the scarf from his face, which was badly disfigured. He cradled him up onto his thigh and tried to bring him around. As he touched the youngster’s face, he could feel that the jaw was hanging together by a thread and his nose had become a bag of skin and crushed bone fragments. His eyes were already puffed up. He had taken a bad beating but, to his horror, Milton noticed blood seeping from Pups’s midriff. He tore open the buttons on his shirt and saw a gaping wound just above his belt line. He had been stabbed, maybe twice. Milton took the German scarf and tried to stem the flow of blood. He was numb as he felt the life leave Pups’s body with the unstoppable flow of claret.

The medics arrived within seconds and ushered Milton away. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a television camera crew running towards them. It was time to make himself scarce and catch up with the mob ahead.

He took one last reluctant look over his shoulder and watched the medics kneel alongside Pups, creating a hive of activity. Milton knew that it would be the last time he would ever see Pups alive.

Milton followed the path laid out by Lenny the previous day and within a few minutes he had caught up. As Lenny attempted to lead the mob into one of Munich’s main squares as per the plan, they ran into a wall of riot police who were waiting for them.

Milton breathed a sigh of relief, as he knew his plan had worked. There were some 300 fans fighting a losing battle against just as many riot police and the two water cannons were sending troublemakers crashing to the floor with the power of a heavyweight champion’s punch. Milton could see Lenny. He was trying to put his communications device into his ear and was looking to the skies, but there was no Eyes From The Air; no helicopter relaying a getaway route; no big brother looking after them.

Milton could see that some of the Hit Squad were already being restrained by the police and Lenny realised that the plan had been thwarted. They were in trouble.

He spotted Milton.

“We’ve been rumbled, Milton. We have to abort. Go and get Pups and I will see you back at the hotel,” Lenny said with a firm grasp on Milton’s upper arm.

Before he turned to flee, he caught sight of the blood on Milton’s hands.

“Where’s Pups?” he asked. His question was met by a blank expression from Milton. “Where’s Pups, Milton?”

“It didn’t look good, Lenny. We have lost him I think,” replied Milton, who was still feeling numb.

“Lost him? You mean he has been arrested too?”

“No, Lenny. I think Pups could be dead. He had been stabbed.”

At that moment, Milton felt that he had lost a friend. Pups may have been the youngest of the group and the subject of their practical and verbal jokes, but he was a good lad and Milton had grown fond of him. The nightclub trouser incident, the prostitute with the ice cream and hearing the heartfelt story of the death of his brother had all made Milton respect the kid.

“Shit. That is all we need; a man down. Look, get yourself to the nearest bogs, clean yourself up and I’ll see you in two hours back at the hotel. Good luck, mate.”

Lenny, dealing with the death of his comrade as if it had happened in the trenches, turned and headed off down a side alley away from the trouble.

Milton separated himself away from the fighting and found a small public toilet close by. He checked outside to make sure he wouldn’t be cornered and headed straight for the washbasin. His hands and forearms were covered in Pups’s blood but luckily his short-sleeved shirt was still relatively clean. Only his trousers had specks of blood from where he propped up Pups but it was certainly not enough to arouse suspicion.

Within minutes he was in the back of a taxi and on his way to the hotel. He was going against the grain of late-afternoon traffic, which predominantly comprised green and white security vans steaming into the city centre.

He knew it had been a success. Certainly Hit Squad One had failed to engage in any mass trouble with the German fans and the grounded chopper meant that they had enjoyed a further success there. The only way he would find out if the rest of the Hit Squads had been thwarted was by returning to the hotel where everyone was due to reassemble.

Milton should have been a relieved man. But seeing Pups had made him sick to the core and the fact that he was returning to the lion’s den made matters worse.

He ordered the taxi to stop sharply, and on the side of the busy road he doubled up, emptying the contents of his stomach onto the pavement. Wiping his mouth, he made the decision there and then that this was it. Never again. After all, he was a human getting paid an average wage. How he had ended up in this position God only knew, but at that time it seemed that his life was in tatters. He had watched as one of his friends had been beaten senseless and the reason he couldn’t do anything was because of his stupid job. Life was never going to be the same again … he hoped.