Operation Motherland ac-6

by Scott Andrews

  It seems odd looking back, and I don't know what I planned to achieve by it, but I pretended to be asleep, squinting up at the person, hoping they'd go away. But they leant down and put their hand on my shoulder and gently shook me. No point pretending now, so I opened my eyes.

  "Who…?" I began.

  "It's me, Miss. Sue. Please don't make any noise, there isn't a guard outside your door, but they do patrol and I don't want to take the risk. I have a message for you from someone called Lee. He told me to give you his love and to tell you not to worry."

  In know it's a cliche, but there's no other way of saying it – my heart leapt. I can't remember what I said, it was probably just a mumble of vowels, I was so amazed.

  Sue sat on the edge of my bed and whispered softly. "I was in the courtyard this evening, when I heard someone hissing at me from the bushes. It was a man called Tariq. I knew him when I was stationed in Iraq. It's a long story, but I used to pass messages for him sometimes, to soldiers who weren't happy with the way the general was doing things. My, you could have knocked me down with a feather to see him here!"

  She talked with her hands, like a big camp drama queen, her eyes flashed with mimed shock and her mouth formed an O of surprise. "He told me that he's here with Lee and Lee's daddy. Now, they caused quite a rumpus back in Basra before we left, and it seems they stowed away on a plane or in a tank or something. To be honest that bit confused me. But either way, they're here now and they're coming to rescue you!"

  She flapped her hands and gave a little bounce of excitement as she said that, almost squealing. I had to smile. Her over the top Southern Belle act was so at odds with the way she looked.

  Finally I managed to speak. "Lee's here?" I said in wonder. I'd been so certain I'd never see him again, but he was back. The insane boy had actually flown to Iraq, found his father, taken on the American Army, and made his way home. It beggared belief.

  "You betcha!" she said with a huge smile. "He's a little beat up, poor kid, but he's here. Now, if you're still not willing to co-operate with the general by midday tomorrow, then that's when they start torturing your poor friend."

  "Is the general coming back to join the fun?" I asked.

  "No Miss, I'm told he'll only be returning when you decide to talk. In the meantime, while you're trying to make up your mind, I have the item you requested."

  She reached into the pocket of her jacket and produced a snubby little gun.

  "It's a berretta, Miss. I hope that's to your liking?"

  "Does it go bang?" I asked, amazed.

  "It surely does."

  "Then it's fine with me."

  "Tariq told me to say that the action will begin shortly before midday, for obvious reasons, and that you are to shoot anybody who comes through that door who doesn't say the code phrase first."

  "And the code phrase is…?"

  "Finally, someone with balls."

  I laughed, remembering Mac's final words. "Yes, it would be." I hesitated, but I had to ask.

  "Sue. I must say, you're quite a surprise. You are the last person I would have expected to find in uniform."

  "I'm a nurse, Miss. I just help put people back together. And the army pays good. Well, it used to."

  "But surely you're taking a terrible risk defying the general like this?"

  Sue dipped her head, suddenly serious. "I had a fiancee. He was in supplies and, oh, he was so sweet to me. And so brave. When the general started giving orders to attack the population in Basra my Josh stood up to him. Led a mutiny. But, well, he didn't realise how far the general would go. Josh was ever so smart but he could be naive."

  "What happened?" I asked softly.

  Sue sighed and inclined her head towards the window. "Like the man on the lawn. Josh was the ringleader and so the general made an example of him. After that most people just fell into line. Some went native, joined the Iraqi resistance, but mostly people were too scared of the general, or they agreed with his methods, or they just couldn't break the habit of obeying orders, even when the orders were so wrong."

  "And you?"

  "I bided my time, made contact with those few remaining soldiers I thought I could trust. Waited for an opportunity. We're not all like the general, Miss. Some of us joined the army because we believed we were doing good, fighting for something right and true. I honestly believe that if we can just remove the general and those closest to him, then things will change for the better."

  I gazed at her in wonder. "Sue," I whispered, "you may just be one of the bravest people I've ever met."

  She put her hand on mine, looked up at me and smiled sadly. "That's sweet of you to say, Miss. I should go now. But you've got your gun and you know the code phrase, so just sit tight and we'll have you free in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

  "Thank you, Sue," I replied, squeezing her huge, strong hand. "See you when the dust settles."

  "I hope so, Miss."

  She rose and left. She was so softly spoken, so physically unprepossessing, but so brave and kind. I had a new ally and I had hope. But then I remembered what had happened to the last two people who'd helped me – Barker and Sanders. The people who got close to me kept dying.

  I just prayed that Sue wouldn't suffer a similar fate.

  Someone else brought me my breakfast, a stoney faced guy who spooned porridge into my mouth without a word. I was strong enough to feed myself now, but I pretended I was still too weak. It might not be much of an advantage, but it was all I could manage.

  I watched the sun climb higher, feeling more and more nervous. At quarter to twelve I heard someone shouting outside and an engine revving, then there was an almighty crash, my bed shook, and someone opened fire.

  I held the berretta tightly and took aim at the door. Moments later it was flung open and the soldier who'd brought me breakfast backed into the room. I squeezed the trigger and let him have it.

  The gun clicked and jammed, a useless chunk of metal. I tried to unjam it, but I wasn't familiar enough with the mechanism to do anything but make an awful grinding noise.

  The soldier, unaware of his lucky escape, kicked the door closed and pulled a huge knife from a sheath in his belt. He ran across to my bed, shoved it away from the wall and got between the bedhead and the wall, leaning over me and placing the knife blade to my throat with one hand as he raised his gun in the other.

  "I'm under orders to kill you if we come under attack," he growled.

  I heard a voice from outside shout, "Finally, someone with balls."

  It was Lee.

  I tried to shout a warning but the soldier clapped his hand across my mouth and took aim at the door. I bit the soldier's fingers but he didn't let go.

  I saw Lee's unmistakeable silhouette through the smoked glass panel on the door as he pushed it open. Then the glass shattered and he flew backwards, out of sight, as the soldier behind me shot him three times in the chest.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lee

  It was a day's drive back to Groombridge. As Dad drove, the nausea gradually subsided and my sense of balance slowly returned. The pain in my head helped take my mind off the crippling fear that everyone would be dead before we arrived.

  The emergency medikit that Dad had plundered for the injection yielded lots more painkillers, much stronger than anything you used to be able to buy at a chemist's. I began popping Tylenol 3 like it was going out of fashion.

  We stopped to rest for the night in a suburban cul-de-sac outside Tunbridge Wells, breaking into Barrett homes until we found one that wasn't full of corpses. The living room was lined with DVDs and sported an enormous widescreen TV. It looked new but it would never show a picture again.

  Dad carefully unwound my bandages and mopped the blood off my ear with water from the tank in the loft. When he'd cleaned me up he put his hands on my cheeks and rested his forehead against mine. "You're going to be okay, I promise."

  My left ear was still completely silent, but the dead TV tone in my right ear was s
ubsiding, and I found that I could just about hear Dad if he spoke loudly. I hoped the hearing would recover enough to be functional; I didn't think there'd be that many people left who spoke sign language. Being deaf in this world would be pretty fucking lonely. But I refused to give in to self pity. I had the school to worry about and mistakes to make right.

  Dad explained that the Stryker had external fuel tanks which were designed to explode away from the vehicle if ignited. The RPG had hit one of them, hence the unusually big bang, but the defences had held and we'd been able to drive away under heavy fire. Had I been wearing the gunner's helmet my hearing would have been fine; Dad just had a mild ringing in his ears.

  Tariq, who had been on the opposite side of the vehicle to the explosion, could still hear a constant ringing in both ears, but he could hear us through the background noise. He joked that he had Kevlar eardrums.

  We plundered a store of tinned food that we found in the kitchen; obviously the owners had started panic buying when The Cull started. I wondered what had become of them. I spent the night in a child's bedroom, sleeping underneath a Man Utd duvet surrounded by posters of long-dead sports heroes. Knowing that the morning would confront me with God knew what horrors, my sleep was fitful and disturbed.

  We rose with the sun and drove the final leg of our journey in silence. We had prepared all our weapons and I had talked them through the layout of the place as best I could. We left the Stryker in the thick woods north of the grounds and approached the house on foot. We stayed inside the woods, scanning the rear of the building with binoculars. It was still standing, but it was eerily quiet. The gardens are ringed by woods on three sides, so we were able to work our way around, checking the house from all angles. Finally we came around to the front and saw a humvee parked next to Blythe's calling card – an impaled man. The man was wearing British Army gear and I didn't recognise him. So the Yanks had been here, some had stayed, and there'd been a killing. But nothing told me what had happened to Matron and the others. I was frantic with worry.

  Then Tariq gave a start and pointed to a female American soldier who was walking into the courtyard.

  "I know her, she's a friend," he said. Before either Dad or I could stop him he was off, running around the edge of the woods to get closer. We stayed put, watching from a distance as Tariq got the woman's attention and she ducked into the tree line. After a few minutes she walked back out and Tariq rejoined us.

  "They haven't got the kids," was the first thing he said, and I was overwhelmed with relief. "But they have got your matron and another lady. The lady is in the cellar, the matron is on the first floor in the south wing. She has been very ill and is recuperating."

  "How many men?" asked Dad.

  "Five, including Sue, and she says one of the others is not happy with things and would probably side with us if she had a word with him." He smiled. "Good odds, yes?"

  We retreated and made our plans.

  What we didn't know was that our every move was being watched.

  I'd always assumed that one day Dad would teach me to drive, but I thought it would be in a Ford KA or a Mini; I didn't expect my first driving lesson to be in an armoured minesweeper.

  I remembered when he'd taught me how to ride a bike. It had stabilisers on the back but somehow I kept managing to fall off anyway. Dad would pick me up, dust me off, dry my tears, and ask me if I wanted to give up. I sniffed and shook my head, checked my helmet was secure, and got right back on the saddle. Learning to drive an armoured car was much easier; if I made a mistake, it wasn't my knees that got damaged, it was whatever car, tree or house happened to get in our way. It was more fun getting it wrong and crashing in to stuff, but I forced myself to concentrate; every minute I wasted was another minute Matron spent in captivity.

  "I don't want you out in the open, Lee," Dad had insisted. "You won't hear if I shout you a warning, or if someone's yelling at you to put down your weapon. Going into battle deaf is a surefire way to get yourself killed. I want you in here, safe."

  "I'm not disagreeing with you, Dad. But this isn't your fight. You don't know these people, they're my responsibility."

  He shook his head in wonder. "Listen to you. Son, you're sixteen. The only responsibility you should have is passing your GCSEs. And as for no ties, this is your home now. So it's mine too. If you're willing to risk your life for your friends, then so am I. Okay?"

  "Okay," I said with a smile. "And thank you."

  "Don't mention it. Now, let's get these gear changes sorted."

  My Dad. Cool as fuck.

  So at 11:45 the next day, at the same moment that I knew Dad and Tariq were approaching the house from the West, I strapped myself in, revved the engine, and drove the Stryker as fast as I could across the moat bridge and straight into the front doors of Groombridge Place. As soon as the vehicle ground to a halt, jammed in the doorway, I unbuckled myself, ran back to the gunner's seat and pressed my eye against the periscope. Didn't take long. Two of them came running down the stairs, guns blazing and I took care of them sharpish. Wow, I thought, that was easy. Only one left. Dad and Tariq appeared at the end of the entrance hall, so I grabbed my gun, opened the hatch and climbed out to join them.

  Sue was close behind them with another soldier, a young African-American guy, thick set and jowly.

  "We'll get the woman from the cellar," said Sue. "You get Jane."

  They peeled away and the three of us ran up the stairs, guns raised, ready for attack from the landing. None came. We turned right at the top of the wide staircase and followed the landing around to the three doors that led off it. The final one, with its thick frosted glass panels, was where Sue had told us Matron was being held. I ran forward but Dad grabbed my arm and shook his head.

  He inched towards the door and shouted the code phrase: "Finally, someone with balls."

  There was no reply, so he raised his gun and pushed the door open. There was a series of shots from inside the room, the glass shattered and Dad flew backwards, shot in the chest. He hit the ground hard and slid back against the banister, mouth gaping, blood splattered across his face and hands. His gun fell from his useless hands and he gasped for breath as I heard Matron scream "No!" from inside the room.

  Why I reacted the way I did, I don't know. Maybe it was second nature to me now. But I didn't run to help my dad. Even though I was in shock, and screaming in fury and pain, I didn't go to help him. Instead, I took the necessary steps to neutralise the threat first. Just like a proper soldier.

  I flung myself forward, rolled on the landing and came up crouching, gun raised, in front of the swinging door. I saw a tall soldier standing behind a bald woman in a bed. Without hesitation I put a bullet right between his eyes, spraying his brains all over the wall. I didn't stay to watch him fall. I threw my gun aside, spun around and grabbed my dad, who was blinking in shock.

  I wrapped my arms around him, trying not to look at the gaping holes in his chest and the thick blood pouring from them, staining his combats. He looked up at me and mouthed something I couldn't hear. I leant closer with my good ear, trying to catch the words, but his eyes rolled back in his head and he became limp and unresponsive.

  I cradled him, rocking him back and forth, stroking his hair, crying. I don't know what I said, but I was speaking to him, trying to keep him with me, trying to talk him out of dying.

  I was aware of a commotion behind me but I ignored it. There were people running up the stairs too, but I didn't spare them a glance. Then there were hands on me, pulling me away. I kicked and fought, but they were too strong. I looked up and saw that it was Tariq and behind him there was that weird bald woman with the sunken eyes and grey skin. She was in a wheelchair now, shouting orders at Sue. Mrs Atkins stood behind them, her hand to her mouth. Tariq held me there, shouting that I should let them work. But the dead TV tone was louder now, rising in pitch in response to the gunfire.

  The soldier I had seen with Sue lifted my dad in his arms and carried him away, Mrs Atkins
close behind. Sue followed, going down the stairs backwards, carefully pulling the woman in the wheelchair behind her. When they had disappeared Tariq let me go, to sprawl on the landing in my father's blood.

  I felt numb. All I could hear was dead air and static.

  Jane

  I saw Lee fly backwards from the door and I screamed. He couldn't be dead. He just couldn't. And then my eyes seemed to play tricks on me, because there he was, shaven-headed and bruised, crouched at the door, shooting the guy behind me and then turning round to grab… who?

  A young man stepped between us and reached down to put his hand on Lee's shoulder.

  "You!" I shouted. "Come here, get me out of this fucking bed."

  The man turned to face me. He had brown skin, black hair and kind brown eyes. This must be Tariq, I thought. He didn't move, stunned, it seemed, by what had happened, unsure which way to turn.

  "Quickly," I yelled. "I'm a doctor." That did the trick. He ran into the room, grabbed the wheelchair and pushed it alongside the bed. Then he stood there, hesitating. "What?" I said, exasperated beyond words.

  "Um, you're…"

  I looked down. I was in my pyjamas.

  "Oh for God's sake just pick me up, man."

  "Right, yeah, of course."

  I could hear a low keening noise coming from the landing as Tariq lifted me from my bed into the wheelchair and pushed me towards the two people on the floor. It was only when I reached the door that I realised who the shot man must be.

  "Is that Lee's dad?"

  "John, yeah," mumbled the Iraqi.

  I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and then John croaked: "A school. After all that, I buy it in a bloody school," and gasped. Lee bent over his dying father and moaned, a low piteous wail of pure emptiness and grief.

  I looked to my left and saw Mrs Atkins, Sue and a Yank soldier racing towards us.

  "Sue," I shouted. "You're a nurse, yes?"

  "Yeah," she said as she skidded to a halt beside me.