Killing for the Company

by Chris Ryan

  Somehow.

  He fingers felt for his radio as he started formulating a communication in his head.

  He felt Stratton’s eyes. Somehow he knew the bastard was on to him.

  They had to turn back. Luke opened his mouth to give the command.

  But too late.

  On Russ’s instruction, Fozzie had taken a sharp right-hand turn at a crossroad and started heading north-east up a busy commercial street. With no warning, he hit the brakes and the Land Cruiser came to a screaming halt.

  ‘Er, Houston,’ he said. ‘We have a problem.’

  Luke leaned over and stared out of the front windscreen.

  Then he looked out the rear.

  Fozzie was right. They had a problem. Big time.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  It took Luke just a few seconds to size up the situation.

  It was a busy street. The concrete buildings along either side were mostly four storeys high. One of them, fifty metres ahead, had a flagpole sticking out at an angle, with the bright green flag of Hamas hanging limply from it. Many had balconies on the upper floors, and although some of these were dilapidated and clearly not suitable for anybody to stand on, others were occupied.

  At ground level there was a smattering of parked cars on either side of the road. The street was lined with shops, most with metal grilles closed over them, and the grilles themselves were covered in graffiti. Behind the Land Cruiser and to the right, twenty-five metres from their position, was a particularly run-down building. There was no glass in the windows, and the concrete façade was streaked with black marks which suggested a fire had raged through it at some point in the past.

  But it was something else that told the unit things were turning to shit.

  About 150 metres ahead, the road was blocked – not by vehicles this time, but by a mob of people, maybe a hundred of them. They were advancing chaotically, but even at this distance and through the bullet-resistant glass of the Land Cruiser, the voices of the crowd were audible. They were shouting some slogan – a dull, rhythmic sound, like the beating of drums – and at least twenty of them were waving rifles in the air.

  Behind the vehicle the same story – a crowd had appeared from nowhere and closed off the access to the street. The mob to their rear was perhaps half the size of the one in front, but it was closer – 100 metres maybe. Luke looked left and right, searching for side streets from which they could exit the position. Nothing.

  He was aware of Finn raising his weapon to his closed window. ‘Let’s not go the way of those Signallers in the Province,’ his mate said. Luke knew what he was talking about. During the Troubles two green army boys were driving round Northern Ireland when they came across a Republican funeral, heavy with IRA marshals. The Provos mistook them first for a Protestant hit team. A crowd developed round the car and some of them dragged the Signallers out and examined their ID. One of the soldiers had been stationed in Herford, Germany. The IRA misread that as Hereford and the moment they thought their captives were SAS, their fate was sealed: they were stripped naked, dragged over some wrought-iron fencing, where one of them had his calf ripped off, and then they were executed with their own pistols.

  If the Signallers really had been Regiment, it might have been different. The SOP would have been quite clear – start shooting before the mob managed to drag you out of the car. Finn was preparing to do just that.

  Fozzie put the Land Cruiser into reverse. He hit the accelerator and the tyres screeched as he sped backwards, moving faster and faster towards the smaller crowd.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Stratton demanded.

  ‘You tell me,’ Luke retorted. Through the rear windscreen he saw a few members of the crowd run to either side of the road as the Land Cruiser approached, but the bulk of them – about thirty men – stayed where they were, chanting and thrusting their fists in the air.

  ‘Hamas?’ Finn demanded.

  ‘They wouldn’t dare,’ spat Stratton.

  Luke was still looking through the rear windscreen. ‘Incoming!’ he shouted. He had picked out the shooters when they were about seventy-five metres from the crowd: two men in jeans and T-shirts and carrying old AKs. The age of the weapons made no difference: they pumped several bursts of 7.62s at the Land Cruiser.

  Moving instantly, Luke pushed the back of Stratton’s head violently down so that he was bending at the waist and out of view of the rear window. As he did this there was a sudden drilling sound at the back of the vehicle. Although 7.62s, especially from that range, weren’t nearly enough to penetrate the armoured Land Cruiser, they still made an ear-splitting noise as they hammered into the black metal. Several rounds had hit the rear windscreen. They had failed to shatter it, but three sudden spider webs with bullet-hole centres splintered their way across the toughened polycarbonate.

  ‘Stay down!’ Luke roared at Stratton, who was wriggling under his fierce grip like a petulant child. ‘Fozzie, fucking get out of here . . .’

  Fozzie spun the steering wheel as the rhythmic shouting of the advancing mob grew more frenzied. He swerved the vehicle round 180 degrees so they were facing the smaller crowd, which had fired on them, then shoved the gear lever into first and revved the engine to screaming point. When he let his foot off the clutch, the 4 x 4 lurched forward violently, jolting all the passengers as it shot towards the crowd like a stone from a catapult. Fozzie accelerated, his face set. It would have been obvious to anyone who saw him that he had no intention of stopping for anything – or anyone – in his way.

  He did stop, though. He had no choice.

  It was Russ who noticed it first. ‘RPG!’ he yelled when they had gone barely thirty metres.

  ‘What the fuck?’ said Luke. This was a street mob, not an insurgency. How the hell did they get themselves a piece of kit like that? But then he too caught sight of a thin Palestinian man at the front of the smaller crowd with a rocket launcher on his shoulder. The crowd had parted behind him to avoid the back blast, and as soon as Luke clapped eyes on him the grenade left the tube.

  If Fozzie had waited half a second more to yank his left hand down on the steering wheel, they’d have been mincemeat. As it was, the Land Cruiser swerved to the side of the road as the RPG thumped into the tarmac. The impact and explosion sent a shockwave right through them, and the blast caused the right-hand rear wheel of the vehicle to raise what felt like a good metre into the air. When it hit the ground again – to the accompaniment of shrapnel from the RPG showering down on the roof – there was an ominous crunching sound from the undercarriage.

  Fozzie tried to reverse again, but as his foot left the clutch there was a terrible grinding noise and a smell of burning.

  ‘Fucking axle’s twisted!’ he shouted. He looked over his shoulder at Luke. ‘We’re not going anywhere in this piece of crap, mate.’

  Luke removed his hand from the back of Stratton’s neck and recced the situation. It looked bleak. The two groups were closing in on them, the smaller one twenty metres away, the larger about fifty. There was a crater in the road where the RPG had hit, and although the shooter had disappeared along with the immediate threat of a second grenade, Luke knew it only took a couple of seconds to reload a launcher. The shouting from the approaching crowds was growing louder.

  They had to make a decision. And fast.

  ‘Finn, you and me are going to lay down warning fire. We need to disperse these crowds. And no stiffs. We start nailing people, we’re going to be in the middle of a riot . . .’

  ‘We are already,’ Finn shot back. ‘A few rounds in the air won’t do fuck all . . .’

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Stratton butted in. His face was moist with sweat.

  ‘You,’ Luke frowned at him, ‘shut up. Warning fire, Finn. I fucking mean it.’

  His mate looked uncomfortable with the order, but nodded his agreement.

  ‘Exit in three, two, one, go!’

  The two men opened the rear doors of the Land Cruiser and kicked them wide with
their feet. In the same movement, Luke raised his 53 so that it was aimed well above the heads of the larger crowd and fired two quick bursts. He heard Finn doing the same and the harsh, mechanical noise of the discharged rounds ripped through the air. Stratton shouted in alarm, but Luke ignored him and, semi-protected like Finn by his half-open rear passenger door, kept his weapon aimed firmly towards the mob.

  At first the sound of the rounds had the desired effect. About half the crowd hit the ground, their hands covering their heads. The thought crossed Luke’s mind that these were people used to the sights and sounds of combat. Perhaps that was a good thing. Perhaps it meant they would take a burst of counter-fire seriously. From the edges of the larger crowd he saw perhaps ten people run to the side of the road and take cover in doorways or behind parked cars. There was still a hard core, though, some thirty or forty who weren’t deterred by the warning fire. Most of them were wearing black and white keffiyehs and waving their assault rifles in the air. It crossed Luke’s mind that the threat of death didn’t seem to worry some of them. He’d encountered enemy like that before, in the Stan. It was a dangerous man who wasn’t scared of dying.

  Rounds from the crowd. Two of them thudded into the window where Russ was still sitting next to Fozzie in the front.

  Finn’s voice. Urgent. ‘The fuckers are still advancing.’

  ‘Go again!’ Luke shouted, and fired a third burst over the heads of the crowd.

  It was as the sounds of these shots died away, and the advancing mob failed to disperse any further, that Stratton spoke again. His voice was shrill. ‘Shoot them down,’ he urged. ‘These people will only disperse if . . .’

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Luke roared. But he had to admit to himself that their options were diminishing. He didn’t want any casualties – not because he was squeamish, but because he knew that in an urban combat situation like this, to slot the bastards would make things ten times worse, not to mention the wider implications of a British unit mowing down Gazan citizens – but if they kept coming, he wouldn’t have much choice.

  ‘Shoot them!’ Stratton repeated. ‘That’s an order!’

  ‘Fozzie.’ Luke’s voice was as bleak as his mood. ‘If he speaks again, grease him.’

  ‘Roger that,’ Fozzie replied. Luke didn’t look over his shoulder to see what Stratton’s reaction was. He lowered his weapon so that now he was pointing directly at the crowd and not above their heads. They were about thirty metres distant now. If he fired, things were going to get messy.

  He tried to keep a clear head, to work out what the hell was going down. Had these people been sent here directly by the Hamas administration? On the face of it, it seemed unlikely. They were a cobbled-together bunch with little organisation and a mixed bag of weapons. There were no vehicles. No fire support.

  But only Hamas had known the route they were taking through the city. As Luke kept his aim on the crowd, a thought jumped into his head. Surely not even Hamas would be so foolish as to make an overt hit on Stratton? But they could leak details of his movements down to the militants in their state who had no such concern for the balance of international relations.

  ‘We need to nail them, Luke!’ Finn shouted.

  Nail them. Finn’s default setting. Luke remembered being in Iraq, and how Finn had wanted to waste Amit from the first instant.

  ‘Luke!’

  Finn’s warning snapped Luke back to the present. He closed his left eye and with his right looked through the sight mounted on the body of the HK53. Members of the crowd ahead came into sharp focus, the cross hairs juddering over their heads and bodies as they jumbled forwards.

  His forefinger, resting on the trigger, twitched.

  They’d been forced into a corner. Their choices were limited. In fact, they were non-existent.

  ‘Fire in three . . .’ Luke shouted over the pounding noise of the mob’s chanting.

  He could sense Russ and Fozzie unlatching their doors.

  ‘Two . . .’

  Through the sight of the 53, Luke saw a commotion at the front of the crowd. There were four men in their twenties, wearing jeans and black and white keffiyehs round their necks. They had surrounded someone and were pushing him forward. Luke directed his sight into the middle of this little group, every instinct telling him that this was where he needed to direct his weapon.

  ‘HOLD YOUR FIRE!’

  He roared the instruction at the top of his voice the moment the scene unfolded with more clarity.

  The group of men had parted to a reveal a kid. Thirteen, fourteen maybe. He was a skinny little runt with sunken eyes, and the 53’s sights clearly picked out the unshaven hairs on his upper lip. They picked out, too, the expression of absolute terror on the boy’s face.

  As Luke shouted, the noise of the mob suddenly fell quiet. His voice echoed briefly off the concrete walls of the street.

  The kid stood motionless a couple of metres in front of the mob. In fact the crowd were shrinking back from him. Luke kept the child in his sights. He could see now that he was trembling. The boy took a step forward. And another. He appeared to be unarmed, so why were the mob retreating?

  Fozzie’s voice. ‘What the hell’s happening?’

  Luke paused a couple of seconds before answering. His sights had scanned the kid’s body. He was wearing a coat that came down to his knees. A raincoat, but it wasn’t raining.

  ‘We’ve got ourselves a suicide bomber,’ he stated.

  He could almost feel the kid’s anxiety, even from this distance. It wasn’t just the way he trembled. It was his faltering steps, the nervous darting of his eyes left and right, the way he clenched and unclenched his palms as he grew closer and closer to the Land Cruiser.

  The mob was running now in the opposite direction, taking cover behind parked cars and putting a good thirty metres between themselves and the boy. Luke flicked the safety catch on his 53 to semi-automatic and kept his cross hairs directly on the kid’s face. A single head shot was what he needed to put him down safely.

  But something stopped him. And it wasn’t just that downing this kid would push the crowd over the edge.

  He was back in St Paul’s. A shadowy figure had just discharged her first round into the head of a child not much younger than the kid Luke had in his sights.

  Chet’s kid.

  His face flared with anger at the memory of it.

  Now he was about to do the same.

  The boy was still advancing. Still trembling. Luke could see beads of sweat dripping down on to his unshaven top lip and chin. He could see the fists closing and opening, faster now than before.

  ‘Shoot him!’

  Stratton’s voice was hoarse.

  ‘He’s a terrorist. Shoot!’

  Luke blocked it out. If he was going to fire, it would be his decision, not Stratton’s.

  ‘Luke, mate . . .’ Fozzie’s voice was quiet and tense. ‘Now would be a good time to take the fucker out . . .’

  But Luke didn’t move. Something wasn’t right. He knew he had to nail the kid if he got much further, but something wasn’t right.

  The kid stopped. He closed his eyes. Opened them again. And continued walking.

  Fozzie’s voice again. ‘Russ, take him out.’

  ‘Hold your fire!’ Luke barked.

  The fists. Clenching and unclenching. There should be a detonation switch in one hand or the other. A cord peeking from one of his sleeves. But there was nothing.

  Remote detonation. He’d seen it in the Stan – kids forced into martyrdom against their will, their generals in charge of the moment of bliss in case they bottled it. Was there was someone watching, ready to blast this child to paradise when he’d cause the most destruction?

  ‘This is madness,’ Stratton hissed. ‘Will someone just do it?’

  ‘How many more kids are going to die, Stratton?’ said Luke. He focused in on the bomber’s eyes.

  ‘This is insanity . . .’

  Luke almost missed it. The kid’s eyes
flickered upwards and to the right, before returning to the road ahead. It was the smallest of movements. Hardly anything at all. But it was enough.

  He redirected his weapon so that it was pointing not at the boy, but across the street. The street was deserted at ground level, but the kid had looked upwards, so Luke raised his sights, scanning the buildings opposite. He moved his field of vision left and right, picking out the cracks in the wall and the railings at the front of balconies.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, Luke?’ Fozzie didn’t just sound on edge, he sounded angry. Luke knew he didn’t have much time before the unit started ignoring his instructions and opening up of their own accord.

  He scanned the buildings. Left to right. Up. Right to left.

  When Luke saw him, it was only momentary. He had to pan back quickly to get him in his sights again. The figure was alone on a fourth-storey balcony, about twenty-five metres up and thirty-five metres from Luke’s position. He was looking down at the street below, concentration all over his swarthy face. Luke picked out his short black beard and flat brown eyes; and panning down half a metre, he saw something in the man’s hands. It was the same size and shape as an old-fashioned mobile phone, but it had an antenna, about five inches long, sprouting from the top.

  Luke moved the cross hairs back to the man’s head.

  ‘Jesus, Luke . . .’

  ‘Hold tight, fellas,’ he said, just as the man in his sights turned his head to notice that Luke had eyes on and was staring directly into his sights.

  Luke knew he had only a millisecond. The range was fine, but he had just the one chance. With the cross hairs directly over the man’s forehead, he squeezed the trigger. The 53’s butt jerked sharply into his shoulder, and the sound of the discharge cracked loudly, echoing from one side of the street to another. The recoil of the shot had nudged the target out of Luke’s sight, and he was forced to realign his weapon to see what the result was.

  A direct hit.

  The man was slumped precariously over the balcony’s railings. On the wall behind him blood was spattered; more was dripping from the head wound down to the pavement below. Luke redirected his aim towards the kid in the road. He was looking frantically left and right and didn’t appear to know what was happening.