Rattlesnake

by Andy Maslen

  The assembled fighters murmured their assent. Proudfoot continued with his briefing, assigning teams for breaching, rappelling, covering fire and extraction of the hostages.

  The young Parachute Regiment captain, Gabriel Wolfe, was teamed up with a Delta Force sniper named Vinnie Calder. Wolfe was to take the spotter’s role for the first and possibly only thirty-minute stint. Together they made their way to the roof of a nearby hotel. The gap between the two towers was only five hundred metres.

  While Calder set up his Barrett Light Fifty sniper rifle, digging the pointed legs of the bipod into the soft bitumen roofing compound, Wolfe monitored the roof of the hotel where the terrorists were holed up. Through his binoculars, he could see shadows moving on the seventeenth floor. He turned to Calder, who was shuffling his long, lean frame up against the rifle.

  “How many kills have you got with that thing?”

  Calder twisted his head to look up at Wolfe.

  “Thirty-eight confirmed.”

  “Overkill at this range, though.”

  Calder grinned. “I like overkill.”

  Then he placed his jaw tight against the cheek-piece of the stock and sighted through the scope.

  Normally, the spotter’s job would have been complex, involving calculations for windage, the effects of warm air rising, mirages and a couple of dozen other factors that could affect a shot. But here, over a relatively short distance, Wolfe’s work was easy. He communicated the adjustments Calder needed to make in a few terse sentences.

  While Calder tweaked the scope, clicking the knobs clockwise, Wolfe scanned the roof lines around them, his own weapon, a Colt M16, pulled back into his shoulder.

  A brief flash of movement on the target building’s roof alerted him, and he swung his M16 back that way, finger crooked round the trigger.

  “Keep down,” he hissed, before dropping to one knee. “Two enemy fighters on the roof.”

  One of the two terrorists was manhandling an RPG onto his shoulder. The second was performing a similar role as Wolfe, scanning the area below them and the roof of the building opposite. He spotted Wolfe and turned to yell something at his friend.

  Too late.

  Wolfe took aim at the man holding the RPG and fired. The M16 fire selector was set to BURST and the reports of the 5.56 NATO rounds as they exploded from the muzzle were a staccato bang-bang-bang.

  The terrorist dropped to his knees, bloody wounds blossoming on the front of his khaki jacket. The distance was at the outer edge of the M16’s effective range for point targets, but Wolfe was an excellent marksman.

  The second terrorist grabbed the RPG, swung it up and fired the fearsome weapon. Then a shot from Calder rang out across the canyon separating the two buildings, and milliseconds later, the half-inch diameter round exploded the terrorist’s head, leaving a cloud of pink mist in its place.

  “Get down!” Wolfe yelled, throwing himself flat onto the sticky bitumen.

  Trailing white smoke from its motor, the RPG streaked across the 500-metre distance between the two buildings and exploded with a roar as it flew into the storey two down from the roof.

  The rumble of the explosion shook the fabric of the roof, and the two-man sniper team looked at each other. Should we evac? Or stay? were the unspoken questions that lay between them.

  They stayed.

  Wolfe belly-crawled to the edge of the roof and peered over the parapet, keeping his M16 levelled at the roof of the target hotel. What he saw did not fill him with confidence. Flames and oily black smoke were pouring out of the hole the RPG had blown in the side of the building.

  Then Calder called to him.

  “Just got the ‘go’ on the radio. They’re going in. Get your ass back here.”

  Wolfe scrambled back into position behind Calder and raised his M16 to his shoulder again.

  Through the binoculars, Wolfe watched as black-clad men rappelled down the side of the hotel, armed to the teeth with M16s, H&K MP5s, M9 pistols, Remington 870 shotguns and whatever other side arms and edged weapons the men comprising the task force had chosen for extra peace of mind.

  At the same time, Calder took his second shot with the Barrett.

  “Three down!” he said without taking his eye from the scope.

  Bright flashes illuminated the inside of the suite where the terrorists were holed up with their hostages. They were too big and blinding to be gunshots. More likely flashbangs thrown in by the tactical entry team after breaching the door.

  Now Wolfe did see the sharp, bright muzzle flashes of pistols and the flickering of automatic weapons. He looked up at the roof again and saw more men, presumably a second team who were either trying to escape or planning retaliatory fire down on the task force vehicles below them in the plaza at the front of the hotel.

  “Roof,” he said to Calder. “Eleven o’clock.”

  Calder sighted on the roof and squeezed off another shot.

  Wolfe kept watch as another enemy fighter fell and the other men ducked for cover.

  “Keep them pinned down,” he said. “They can’t do anything without making themselves into targets, and our boys will be up there any second.”

  Calder nodded as he resettled his cheek against the Barrett’s stock.

  “You see where they ducked down? Watch this,” he said. “And get ready.”

  He sighted and squeezed the trigger.

  The copper-jacketed round, weighing almost as much as a golf ball, covered the distance to the low retaining wall in under half a second and drilled straight through the rendered brick as if it were cardboard.

  Two terrorists popped up from behind the wall, looking down at something between them. Seconds later they were both dead as Wolfe hit each of them with bursts of fire from his M16.

  “Nice shooting,” was his laconic comment as he settled back down behind their own covering wall.

  “Back atcha.”

  Over the way, white smoke was billowing from the broken windows of the suite. The rattle of small arms fire was audible across the 500 metres of clear air between the two buildings.

  Then all fell silent.

  Calder looked round at Wolfe.

  “What do you think? Reckon they finished ’em all off?”

  “Maybe. Or they’ve retreated to another floor.”

  The radio crackled to life again.

  Wolfe flicked the receive button.

  “Stand down, sniper team Alpha Two. Threat neutralised. Over.”

  “Received. Out.”

  Wolfe stood and stretched. The entire action had probably taken less than ten minutes, but it felt like someone had hit the pause button on the passage of time. He spoke.

  “We’re good to go. Pack up your pea shooter and let’s get down there before this place collapses. If we’re quick, we might make the team photo.”

  Calder laughed and got to his feet, shouldering the long-barrelled Barrett as if it were no heavier than an air rifle. Coils of black smoke were rising above the roofline from the fire below.

  Gabriel frowned, then stepped towards him, fast and knocked him to the ground.

  Calder swore.

  “Fuck, man. What’re you—”

  Gabriel raised his M16 to his shoulder.

  As bullets smashed into the air conditioning housing behind him, he began firing. Five three-round bursts. He heard a scream from Calder but didn’t look down.

  Instead, he kept firing until the magazine was empty.

  Thirty feet away, the body of a man in khaki fatigues and a red-and-white kaffiyeh wrapped round his head lay in a growing pool of blood, arms and legs splayed like a starfish. An AK-47 lay just beyond his outstretched right hand.

  Now Wolfe did check on his comrade.

  Calder was white-faced and clutching his right thigh. Blood was flowing fast from between his fingers.

  “Fucker hit me,” he grunted from between clamped teeth.

  Wolfe pulled his knife and cut away Calder’s trouser leg above the wound. The 7.62mm
round from the AK had ploughed a deep furrow through the surface tissue, but hadn’t penetrated the muscle.

  “You’ll be fine, it’s just superficial,” Wolfe said, pulling a field dressing from his belt and pressing it against the bullet wound before strapping it in place with a bandage.

  “Sure as hell don’t feel superficial,” Calder said.

  Tying off the bandage, Wolfe reached for the radio again.

  “Red Rover from Alpha Two, man down. Gunshot wound. Request medic. Urgent. Over.”

  “Alpha Two, stand by. Is he stabilised? Over.”

  “Yes. Bleeding controlled. Over.”

  “OK, Alpha Two, stand by. We’ll get a medic up there ASAP. Out.”

  Wolfe knelt beside Calder.

  “You hear that? They’re on their way. Nothing to worry about. You might even get a medal. Do they still give out Purple Hearts?”

  “Like candy,” Calder said, by way of reply, cracking a toothy grin that may have been half pain, half Texan humour.

  Later, on the beach, celebrating the release of all the hostages with no casualties – at least not among the hostages – Wolfe and Calder clinked bottles of beer together.

  “Thanks, man,” Calder said after taking a long pull on the beer.

  Wolfe smiled.

  “That’s the trouble with you snipers. You can shoot the balls off a mouse at two thousand yards but can’t see a fully armed fighter thirty feet from the end of your nose.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Listen. I owe you one OK? And if you’re ever in the US, come and look me up. You can meet Terri-Ann. Prettiest girl in Texas.”

  7

  Leaving Peace Behind

  HONG KONG

  GABRIEL opened his eyes, massaging his temples. The whisky had set off a piercing headache behind his eyes. He went inside and swallowed a couple of painkillers, washing them down with water from the tap.

  While he waited for the pain to subside, he sat in the chair behind what he still thought of as Master Zhao’s desk. Standing in a line were the three jade figures he remembered playing with as a child, and which now belonged to him. A monk, a fisherman and a dragon. He rearranged them into a triangle. The green stone was smooth and cool beneath his fingertips. Zhao Xi’s death was on his head. Yes, Sasha Beck may have struck the fatal blow, but she was there because Gabriel had angered her client.

  Sometimes he felt the burden of guilt he carried would overwhelm him. So many people dead. The ones he’d killed in combat were bad enough, but at least that had been his job. His duty. He’d been protecting his comrades or saving civilians. But since taking on the role of government troubleshooter with The Department, there had been a blurring of the lines. Don didn’t think so, but then Don wasn’t the one pulling the trigger.

  On a sudden impulse, he pulled out his phone and called a London number.

  “This is Fariyah.” A calm, controlled voice, as if being called late at night from unknown numbers was part of her everyday life. Which, Gabriel reflected, it probably was.

  “It’s Gabriel, Fariyah. Gabriel Wolfe. I’m sorry to call you so late. It must be twelve thirty there. I was expecting to get voicemail.”

  “First of all, you don’t need to explain which Gabriel you might be. Even though you haven’t called me for a year. And you certainly don’t need to apologise to me. Ever. Besides, it’s only ten thirty. I was reviewing a paper sent to me by the British Journal of Psychiatry. But the fact you didn’t know the time in London makes me wonder where you are? Not England, certainly.”

  “I’m in Hong Kong. I needed to disappear for a while. To try to make sense of things. But it hasn’t really worked.”

  “I’m not entirely surprised. You lost almost everybody close to you. Tell me, is Britta safe?”

  Gabriel sighed.

  “As far as I know.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means she’s alive and well. I rescued her from Erin Ayers, but she and I are, we’re not getting married anymore. She went back to Sweden.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Aren’t you going to say anything else? Try to counsel me? Isn’t that what psychiatrists are supposed to do?”

  “Would you like me to? Until two minutes ago, I was peer-reviewing an academic paper about the effects of childhood abuse on adult emotional resilience.”

  Gabriel looked up at the ceiling, aware that tears were pricking at the corners of his eyes. He swiped a palm across them.

  “No. Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call you from halfway round the world and harangue you. But I’m passing through London tomorrow. And I, well, I—”

  “And you wondered, as you always do, whether I could see you at short notice?”

  Gabriel felt himself blushing as she said these words. Eminent psychiatrists with teaching and clinical responsibilities, and clearly publishing ones too, didn’t just hang around doing crosswords on the off chance that a vanished patient might suddenly reappear demanding an audience.

  “I suppose it’s a tall order. Look, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called you out of the blue—”

  “Yes.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Yes, I can see you at short notice. This may be deeply unprofessional of me, Gabriel, but I have come to like you during our admittedly infrequent sessions. I want to see you well and happy, and if that means rearranging my schedule and calling down my secretary’s wrath on my head, well, so be it. When do you get in?”

  Gabriel checked his flight times, and after a brief conversation about logistics, they agreed on a time for his appointment. He rang off, feeling buoyant and within reach of some sort of salvation after the events that had brought him to Hong Kong.

  His next call was to the airline. British Airways was apparently used to the fast-changing schedules of its First Class passengers, and apparently, spending over nine thousand Hong Kong dollars on a ticket granted them a degree of flexibility denied to those flying on a budget. He arranged a one-day layover in London, then booked a hotel room near The Ravenswood private hospital in Mayfair.

  While Gabriel was checking in at the BA First Class desk at Hong Kong International Airport, Vinnie’s former boss, Clark Orton, was having coffee in a diner in Natalia, a town thirty minutes' drive southwest of San Antonio.

  Where Orton was built like an athlete, five-ten, slim but muscular, his guest was more the linebacker type. Two hundred pounds, six-three in his stockinged feet, and a head carved from a solid block of some impenetrable material. Granite, maybe, or ceramic armour. The eyes didn’t appear to blink, slivers of blue in an impassive face shaved so closely the pink skin shone in the fluorescent light from the overhead tubes.

  Both men wore suits, Orton’s a flashy Italian three-piece a couple of shades darker than turquoise, the man-mountain’s a conservative grey two-piece.

  A waitress approached to refill their mugs but the big man waved her away, not unkindly but with a sharp gesture with the flat of his hand. She got the message and changed course without breaking step.

  “You fucked up,” the big man said, his lips barely moving. “No. You didn’t fuck up. Fucking up would have been feeding him to the hogs but leaving a pinkie in the mud. Fucking up would have been dropping him into the sea and him getting swallowed whole by a great white and ten years later an accountant from Maine on a game fishing trip to celebrate his retirement hooks the bastard and pulls it out of the water, slits it open and finds Calder’s fucking dog tags in its gut. What you did was way beyond fucking up. It was so fucked up I don’t know if I even have the vocabulary to explain it to you. Let’s just say there are people in the Agency who would have been happier if you’d bought all the space in AT&T Stadium for a Cowboys home game and hired some fucking ad agency to write a dumb-fucking-ass ad saying, ‘Fly the Unfriendly Skies: With Orton Airways.’ You dumb fuck.”

  While he was speaking, his skin had remained unflushed, his breathing untroubled, his muscl
es unclenched. Now, having delivered himself of the final insult, he sat back and signalled for the waitress.

  “Honey,” he called. “I’ll take that refill now, please.”

  She hurried over, pink-and-white gingham skirt swirling as she negotiated the crammed-together tables, and refilled his mug.

  “For you, sir?” This to Orton.

  “I’m good. Thank you.”

  She left them to their conversation.

  “That was quite a speech, Baines. Did you write it yourself or have one of the communications officers in public relations do it for you?”

  “Always the smart mouth, Orton. Did anything I just said to you get through? Why’d you dump him in the fucking desert? And why Texas? You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “You have to understand, Baines, I dumped him in the desert because I was running low on fuel and I decided that the local wildlife would do just as good a job on dry land as they would in the water. Plus, bodies are always bloating and popping up like fishing floats. And you know how popular the water is off the California coast. What happened?”

  “A Texas State Trooper found the body. Or what was left of it. Called it in.”

  “How did you get to hear about it?”

  “They found his service number – it was tattooed on his chest – and reached out to the Marine Corps. That set the wires humming and we got a ping when they ran a database search.”

  Orton raised his eyebrows.

  “A ping?” He looked theatrically to left and right, then whispered. “You mean you monitor the Marine Corps IT system? It’s prudent, but oh, Baines, is no place sacred?”