Hard Knocks Read Online Free PDF

branches, somewhere off to our left in the trees. “Oh don’t start getting paranoid on us now, Elsa,” he said, but there was a nervous tickle to his voice, “you’ll be giving the lot of us the jitters.”
     
    He went on a few strides, moving close to the edge of the track. “Hello, hello,” he called, out into the forest. The trees took his voice and sucked the power out of it, handing it back to him somehow small and lonely. “Are there any ogres, wolves or bogeymen out there?” He turned back towards us. “You see, fair ladies, noth—”
     
    Out of the blackness a dark shape flowed up. In less than a second it seemed to utterly engulf the Irishman, taking him down like an animal kill. He fell as a dead weight. The only sound made was the breath exploding from his body as he hit the ground.
     
    Memories and images I’d thought were buried deep reared up, vivid as a nightmare. Shock and fear clutched at me, and it was the fear that held on hardest. It gripped my heart, my throat, my gut, with steel-tipped talons. Just for a second it stopped my breath, and froze my limbs.
     
    Then, almost in unison, Elsa and I dropped our bags and started to turn. Instinct made me keep low as I spun round and I felt the slither of something sweep across my back. An arm. It gave me a bearing and I lashed out, chopping the side of my fist into a leg at the knee. I was rewarded by a grunt of pain.
     
    I dived sideways, hearing the German woman’s wrenched-off cry as she was overwhelmed by the shadows. They seemed to swallow her up whole.
     
    And then there was just me.
     
    I rolled to my feet, tensed into a crouch, eyes raking the darkness. My blood was thundering through my veins, scrambling oxygen to my muscles. Every nerve and instinct told me to flee while I still had the chance.
     
    Then, in the back of my head a tiny thought flared. “They like to play mind games with you,” Sean had told me. “Like seeing how you react . . .”
     
    Another heartbeat. The shapes surrounding me converged another step. The edge of the tree-line was less than two metres to my right. I could still make it . . .
     
    I straightened up, stood still, and let them come and get me.
     
    ***
     
    They were rough, I reflected a short while later, but they were efficient, I had to give them that. Declan, Elsa and I were rolled onto our stomachs in the mud. I could feel the dampness of the ground leaching insidiously through each layer of my clothing. Our hands were fastened tight behind our backs with thin cord. Thick cloying hoods were dragged over our heads so that hearing became my only available sense.
     
    Beside me, Declan was swearing under his breath, running through a list of saints and curses. Over the top of our heads someone else was muttering through clenched teeth. Probably the man I’d hit.
     
    Well, good.
     
    Up ahead, an engine vibrated resentfully into life, a big commercial diesel. Somebody grated the gears badly as they engaged the clutch. It was difficult to judge distance because of the muffling effect of the trees and the hood, but it seemed close by, and getting closer, rumbling the ground under us. So, they were waiting for us. This was always going to be an ambush. Somehow, the thought made me feel better.
     
    Hands grabbed and hoisted us quickly into the back of the truck. It seemed a long way off the ground, with an iced bare floor that shivered as the lumbering engine was revved. I heard a flapping noise like a slack sail, and realised the truck had a canvas tilt. An army truck. I’d been in plenty of those.
     
    “Where the feck are we going?” Declan demanded.
     
    “No questions!” A boot scraped across the steel, connecting with the vulnerable softness of a body. Declan groaned and went back to cursing under his breath again.
     
    I lay on my side with my head resting on somebody’s shin and concentrated on finding a position that lessened the pain in my chest. Two months previously I’d cracked my