by Chris Ryan
His ignorance didn’t last for long.
Luke sensed movement on the balcony and looked over just in time to see his target topple over the railings. He seemed to fall through the air for an eternity, before hitting the ground with a crunch that was audible from the Land Cruiser on the other side of the road.
The kid stopped in his tracks.
He stared at the fallen man.
He turned round to look at the silent, retreating crowd, the nearest members of which had retreated to a distance of thirty-five metres.
And then he ran after them. His arms and legs were flailing and ungainly, but he bolted like a hare, just as the crowd realised what was happening. They parted to let him through, but their silence ebbed away, to be replaced by a low muttering, which quickly grew to something more sinister as they started to advance again.
‘Shit!’ Luke cried. First blood had been drawn. Some of the crowd had seen the dead man. It would be only seconds before the rest of them understood what had happened. And then the unit’s only option was to fight.
He turned to the guys in the vehicle and pointed through the front windscreen towards the dilapidated building with the scorch marks on the frontage, which was now fifteen metres from their position. ‘We need to head in there!’ he shouted. ‘It’s a defensible position.’
Fozzie nodded.
‘Finn, Russ, cover me. I’ll get Stratton inside first.’
The two men didn’t hesitate. Russ kicked the passenger door open and started firing towards the crowd, his weapon resonating in unison with Finn’s. Again they aimed above the heads of the mob, now advancing once more. They slowed down, but how long for, and how long until they returned fire, it was impossible to say.
Luke grabbed Stratton and pulled him forcibly from the 4 x 4. His clothes were soaked in sweat. As Russ and Finn laid down another burst of rounds, Luke yanked him towards the building. The doorway was wooden and looked solid, although its yellow paint was peeling. Luke kicked it with his right foot but it didn’t budge, so he took a couple of steps back and aimed his 53 at the lock. A quick burst and the wood splintered and cracked. Another kick and it was open.
Not before time. The mob was now just twenty metres from the vehicle. Russ and Finn, who were still next to their respective passenger doors while Fozzie remained in the front, continued to fire warning bursts, but these were no longer sufficient to hold them back. If they grew any closer, the unit would have to start killing people. Then it could only go one of two ways: a retreat, or a massacre . . .
Luke thrust himself into the building, his weapon pointing up then down as he checked if it was occupied. No sign of anyone. He exited again. ‘Get in!’ he bellowed at Stratton, who was staring wide-eyed at the stand-off. When he didn’t move, Luke grabbed hold of him again and sent him flying through the door with such force that he fell heavily to the ground the moment he was inside.
But Luke wasn’t much concerned with Stratton. All of a sudden his attention was elsewhere.
It was Finn who made the first kill. A round from one of the Palestinian AKs had just ricocheted off the Land Cruiser’s armoured chassis. Finn lowered his weapon so that, instead of pointing above the heads of the mob, it was aimed directly at them. As he fired, he panned from left to right; and although the burst from his 53 didn’t last much more than a second, it was brutally effective. The front line of the crowd crumpled like toy soldiers knocked over by a child. There was a heavy groan from the mob, with one man offering up a horrific counterpoint: he had clearly taken a round that had failed to kill him, and was screaming uncontrollably.
Luke ignored the shrieking. He ignored the sudden line of dead, torn bodies. He had noticed something else and he had almost no time at all to deal with it.
‘Get away from the vehicle!’ he screamed at his mates as he raised his weapon. ‘GET AWAY FROM THE FUCKING VEHICLE!’ But he saw Fozzie was still behind the wheel and the others were pinned down . . .
Twenty metres away was the guy with the RPG launcher. He had reappeared at the front of the smaller mob, the simple tube of his weapon raised up on his right-hand shoulder and with the curved and pointed shape of a fresh grenade clearly visible at the end of the spout.
Luke stood in the doorway of the building, pressed the butt of the 53 into his shoulder and searched his sights for the shooter. His senses seemed to slow everything down.
The crowd, whose noise had waned, grew louder.
The air was suddenly filled with the renewed chugging of Finn’s 53 as he slaughtered a fresh wave of Palestinians. He had ignored Luke’s warning to get the hell away from the Land Cruiser – perhaps he hadn’t heard it – but hadn’t clocked the RPG either.
It was up to Luke to lock on to the target. The cross hairs hovered over the shooter’s chest.
Both men fired at the same time.
The single shot from Luke’s weapon cracked in the air at precisely the same time as the RPG fizzed towards the unit’s vehicle. The shooter went down, but it was too late.
The projectile hurtled with absolute accuracy towards his companions. The Land Cruiser was tough, but it wasn’t tough enough to withstand that. The grenade crashed through the windscreen. It was inside the vehicle when it detonated.
The explosion was brief, but it was powerful. It sent a shock wave emanating from the 4 x 4 that threw Luke a metre backwards into the building. He fell heavily on his left shoulder, but was able to look back out through the doorway just in time to see the carnage.
Fozzie couldn’t have known what hit him. There was no doubt that the blood and gore that spattered the remaining windows as the RPG’s shrapnel peppered them from inside was his. Russ and Finn were less lucky. As they were both standing at the open rear passenger doors, the shrapnel that emerged from the openings darted into the backs of their bodies in the fraction of a second before they were thrown forward, away from the vehicle. Luke saw Russ’s body flying though the air on the other side of the Land Cruiser; Finn landed on his front no more than three metres from where Luke was lying. Blood was pissing from the back of his neck; his clothes were scorched and burned away; and although there was insufficient life left in him to scream, his body twitched and shuddered like someone was passing an electric current through him. It didn’t take a genius to tell he was fucked.
That all three of them were fucked.
A huge roar erupted from the crowd, and several celebratory AK rounds were fired, both up into the air and towards the vehicle. Luke knew there was nothing he could do for the rest of his unit now. He gave himself a couple of seconds to regroup. It was just him and Stratton now. Him, Stratton and the mob. They were surrounding the Land Cruiser, stripping the dead men of their weapons. Luke reckoned it was thirty seconds before the braver ones among them would follow him and Stratton into the structure where they had taken cover. It was as dilapidated inside as out, pungent with the soot-soaked smell of a previous fire. The bare brick walls were crumbling, but from the right-hand side of a hallway a narrow wooden staircase led all the way up the building and it still seemed to be sound. Stratton had shrunk into the shadows just beyond the staircase. His face was pale and he looked rather small, almost childlike. Luke grabbed his arm.
‘Up,’ he barked, and when Stratton hesitated, he just pushed him so that he stumbled up the stairs. He looked back through the door. No sign of the mob, but he could hear them. They were getting louder.
‘UP!’
Stratton started scrambling up the stairs. It was very dark here and precarious too because the banisters had mostly been burned away and there was a sheer drop to the ground floor. Every ten steps or so, Stratton stumbled; but each time he fell, Luke was there to pick him up by the scruff of his neck and urge him on.
They were three storeys high before he heard the sound of voices echoing up the stairwell. Sharp voices, barking instructions. Stratton stopped and looked behind him, to be rewarded with another push from Luke. As the older man scrambled further up the stairs, Luke aim
ed his weapon down the stairwell and fired a short burst. The sound echoed all over the building and for a moment the voices ceased. It wouldn’t be for long, Luke knew. The crowd had a taste for blood.
They were coming.
On the fourth-storey landing there was an opening where a door had once been, but only the rusted hinges now remained. It looked out on to a set of rusted metal steps that clearly gave access to the roof. ‘Get up there,’ Luke barked. Stratton looked anxiously towards the steps, but he didn’t need any more encouragement. He climbed them, swiftly followed by Luke, and they stepped on to the rooftop.
Both men were black with soot and drenched with sweat. Luke looked around. They were on a flat roof, about thirty metres square. The metal staircase had emerged through a small open skylight approximately five metres from the back wall; on the street side of the roof, also five metres from the edge, was a grey breeze-block shed, about two metres high and four wide, which looked like it housed the building’s electrical supply. There was no barrier around the roof. The front looked straight out on to the street below, the rear on to a concrete courtyard and there was a gap of about six metres – too far to jump – between the adjacent roofs. The sound of the mob below drifted upwards. It was getting angrier.
Luke glanced down the skylight. Nothing yet. He looked over his shoulder to see Stratton cowering by the blockwork shed – a truly wretched picture, but at least he’d had the presence of mind to stay out of sight of both the street below and the windows of the buildings opposite. Three good men had just lost their lives protecting this tosser, thought Luke.
He turned his back on Stratton and activated his sat phone. ‘Zero!’ he shouted into the mouthpiece. ‘This is Tango 17!’
‘Tango 17 this is Zero. What the hell’s happening th . . . ?’
‘I’ve got three men down. The Cardinal is safe for now but I’ve got limited ammo. I’m on a rooftop – do you have my position marked?’
‘Roger that, Tango 17.’
‘I need a fucking chopper, buddy.’
‘Tango 17, your location is a no-fly zone. Attempt return by vehicle or foot . . .’
‘Fuck the no-fly zone! I can hold these bastards for five minutes. Ten minutes tops. Leave it any longer, you’ll be scraping what’s left of Stratton off the fucking rooftop.’ And me, for that matter, he thought, but he didn’t say it.
Luke disconnected the sat phone. The ops room had all the intel they needed. They’d either infringe the no-fly zone or they wouldn’t. His priority was to go about defending their position.
But there was something he wanted to do first.
He checked the skylight again, then strode towards Stratton. As he grew nearer, he realised that his man wasn’t cowering at all. He was on his knees with his head bowed, his hands clenched together, and his lips moving silently. For some reason the sight just infuriated Luke even more. He grabbed a clump of Stratton’s hair and pulled him shouting to his feet before throwing him down on to the ground again. Towering over him, Luke aimed his 53 directly at Stratton’s head.
‘All right, you piece of shit,’ he growled. ‘Let’s talk.’
Stratton’s face was a mixture of outrage and defiance. He appeared to be quite unconcerned by the sight of the weapon as he pushed himself up on to his elbows. ‘I think,’ he whispered, ‘that the time for conversation is running out.’
As if to confirm Stratton’s observation, Luke sensed movement over by the skylight. He turned in time to see a black-haired head poking out. ‘Get down!’ he shouted as he raised his 53 and discharged a single round into the new arrival’s skull. There was a cracking sound, followed by a tiny fountain of blood, before the head disappeared as its owner tumbled back down the stairs. With luck that would discourage anyone else. For a bit, at least.
Luke turned back to Stratton. Far from looking to protect himself, the idiot was back on his knees.
Again Luke sensed movement. Again he turned to fire a single round in the direction of the skylight, and to down the enemy that was bravely – or stupidly – coming for them. And again he returned to Stratton, and this time swiped his weapon down on the side of his face, knocking him from his kneeling position so that his body slammed against the shed and a large welt appeared immediately on the side of his face. Luke bent down, grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back up to his feet, before pressing him against the wall.
‘What are you planning with Maya Bloom?’ he demanded.
Stratton’s eyes widened. ‘Maya Bloom. She has even more enthusiasm for killing people than you do . . .’
‘What are you planning?’
But Stratton just smiled.
Movement from the skylight. Luke turned and discharged a third single round as the top of a head appeared. They weren’t giving up. But neither was Luke. He returned his attention to Stratton, who still had his back to the wall of the shed. He looked a mess – his clothes ripped and his face dirty and bruised – and yet that strange smile was still on his face. Luke felt an overwhelming urge to get rid of it.
‘Do you know how easy it would be for me,’ he said, ‘to shoot you now and tell everyone you caught an enemy round?’
No reply. Luke pressed his weapon against Stratton’s forehead.
‘You think I won’t do it? Ten years ago, you ordered that woman to take out a friend of mine. I should kill you now just for that . . .’
No reply.
‘I know you’ve got something to do with the train bombings. You and Maya Bloom . . .’
Stratton’s eyes shone, but still he gave no reply.
‘Why?’ Luke yelled, suddenly losing control of any restraint he had. ‘Money? The Grosvenor Group?’
When Stratton finally spoke, it was barely more than a whisper, and at first Luke thought he’d misheard.
‘He told me to do it.’
Luke blinked. ‘What?’
‘I pity you,’ Stratton said, ‘if you have no faith.’ He stared at Luke with such arrogance that the Regiment man yanked him by the collar once more and hurled him to the ground so that he was lying on his front with the left side of his face pressed against the roof. Kneeling down, Luke dug his right knee sharply into the man’s back, knocking the wind from him, and pressed the 53 hard into the fleshy area under his ear.
‘You think I’m not serious, Stratton? You think I won’t waste you right now? I’m going to give you one more chance – who told you to do it?’
Luke could hear shouting from below the skylight, but all his attention was fixed on Stratton, who had started to whisper again. ‘I told you you should have paid more attention to the scriptures.’
Luke twisted the butt of the 53 harder into Stratton’s flesh.
‘The troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary . . .’ Stratton went on.
‘What the fuck are you on about?’
‘Its end shall come with a flood . . .’
More noise from below the skylight.
‘And to the end there shall be war . . .’
Luke raised his 53 again. He’d had enough of this bullshit. He struck the side of Stratton’s face once more and this time the cunt gasped with the pain. But he continued whispering, repeating himself. ‘The troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary . . .’
‘What city?’ said Luke. ‘What are you talking about?’ And then, almost without hesitation as he remembered the conversation he’d overheard with Maya Bloom, ‘Jerusalem?’
Stratton smiled again. A chilling smile, devoid of mirth. ‘Hanukkah is almost here. When the wall falls, no one will be able to stop the war that is coming . . .’
‘When what wall falls?’ He hit the side of Stratton’s face again. ‘What the fuck are you planning?’
He didn’t have time to listen for an answer. Two things had caught his attention. The first was the noise of an aircraft in the distance. But at the same time he saw another figure emerging from the skylight, forcing him to turn h
is 53 in that direction to nail him. Luke aimed and squeezed the trigger, only to feel and hear a loose click. He swore. The mag was empty. He had another in his ops waistcoat, but to reload would take about fifteen seconds. The enemy was almost out – Luke could see his shoulders.
Luke got to his feet and yanked Stratton up from the ground, dragging him behind the shed, where he threw him down again. ‘Don’t fucking move,’ he said as he removed the empty mag and inserted a fresh one. He’d been at it long enough, though, for the guy he’d just seen to be on the roof, and maybe more of them.
A round pinged past the shed, a couple of feet from Luke’s position – close enough for him to feel the air displacement. Sweat poured off him and as he tried to work out his next move, he was aware of Stratton’s voice. The man had fallen to his knees again. ‘I know that my rewards will be in heaven,’ he said. ‘Yours, no doubt, will be in a different place.’
Luke delved once more into his ops waistcoat and brought out a fragmentation grenade as the sound of the approaching air support grew louder. He squeezed the detonation lever, pulled out the pin and hurled the grenade over the shed.
One second passed.
Two seconds.
Three.
The frag exploded with a sudden sharp crack, which was followed by the sound of screaming. Luke pressed his back against the corner of the shed, pointed his weapon around the corner and fired a random burst, before peering round to take stock of the situation.
The frag had done its work well. Three militants were on their backs. Two of them were motionless; the third had blood pumping from his leg and was rolling about so frantically he was painting the area around him red. Luke aimed the 53 in the wounded man’s direction and with a quick double tap put him out of his misery.
And then he looked up.
Two helis, both coming in sharp and from a great height. One looked like a Puma; the other, smaller and hovering just above and behind in a chaperone position, was clearly an Apache. Luke pulled his second and final fragmentation grenade from his waistcoat, yanked away the pin and lobbed it into the opening of the skylight. The muffled crack of its explosion was followed by more screaming. Luke blocked that from his senses, and pulled Stratton round to the front of the shed. He waved at the descending chopper, but the pilot clearly already had a trace on his position and was coming in to land, while the attack helicopter stayed about thirty metres clear, hovering at an angle so that its formidable arsenal was pointing directly at the roof. The roar of the two sets of rotary blades was immense; as the Puma touched down it was like a force-nine wind had blown over the building. The side door opened and Luke recognised B Squadron’s Sergeant Major Bill Thomas shouting at them to run on board.
