Danger Close

by Charlie Flowers

  Kiki pointed. ‘We put him in the store cupboard.’

  The deputy shrugged apologetically and we shook hands. He spoke. ‘Salaam aleykum. I’m Nadir. Are we going to be OK?’

  I didn’t know what to say. I ended up with ‘I’m Riz. Just follow me, Nadir.’

  I methodically checked each fire position in the cavernous building. Years ago it had been the local municipal baths. I’d been here once, in my long-distant jihadi days, but it had changed since then. The mosque deputy clucked after me, apologising for his boss. I gripped his shoulder as we went through the library on the first floor. ‘Look. Nadir. Akhi. It’s OK. But I want you to do something for me. Do you have floorplans of the building?’

  He nodded nervously.

  ‘Good. I want you to photocopy them, at least five copies, and bring them to all of us. Can you do that?’

  He nodded again and got to it. My radio bleeped. ‘Rizbhai. Bus is against the main doors. But we’d better batten down the hatches. I can’t see anything but I can hear shouting… chanting. They’re coming.’

  ‘Have that Fuzz. Get into position and good luck luv.’

  43

  The second-to-last fire position was covered by Sadie, in the tower facing west down Little Green Lane. She was sitting crosslegged and the livid bruise on her right eye was showing up nicely. The slit window was open giving a clear field of fire down the road back into town. Directly below us was the minibus, jammed up against the western doors. Sadie was reciting something under her breath as she laid loaded magazines, one after the other, before her on the carpet.

  ‘And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this

  Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it

  Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this

  Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards

  The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:

  They call it easing the Spring.’

  She looked at me and smiled. ‘You know that bit in Four Lions where the emir tells them his cousin died defending a masjid in Bosnia?’

  Sadie was carefully loading rounds into the last magazine, turning and rolling them in. Each round had a different tip denoting tracer, armour-piercing… ‘Well my uncle, God grant his soul peace, actually did die in a shootout outside a mosque. In Bosnia. And now look. Here we are defending a mosque. In Britain.’

  She finished loading the mag, slapped it into the magazine well, shouldered the rifle and checked her scope sight picture. I placed my hand on her shoulder. ‘I know. It’s a bad situation all round.’

  She smiled at me again and tapped the open copy of the Quran on the windowsill before her. ‘Surah l 'Imran 3:54. And they planned, but Allah is the best of planners.’

  ‘Ameen.’

  ‘But Riz, would you look at this shit?’ She gestured to a burst-open British Army ration pack behind her. ‘I could be up here for days and is any of this halal?’

  I inspected the packages. ‘Some of it is. Pot luck.’

  ‘Oh brilliant.’ She placed the rifle on a seat cushion on the window sill and tracked left and right. I started to pick at the rations, trying to guess which were and which weren’t halal.

  ‘Sadie. In all the excitement, I forgot to ask. If you survive this, what are you calling the kid?’ I nodded at her swollen belly.

  She was squinting through the telescopic sight. I knew she was taking the time to calculate distances to landmarks using the scope’s built-in rangefinding reticle. She looked from her scope to her handwritten dope charts, and back. ‘Well. After that last-minute fizzer at the roundabout, I reckon I’ll be calling him Zidane.’

  ‘Ha. Good one. So it’s a boy then?’

  ‘Yep. Mashallah, it’s a boy.’

  ‘Welcome to the war, Zidane.’

  The last fire position was covered by Calamity’s Shrike machinegun and the RPG-7, waiting on the carpet for Armageddon. It faced east, over the abandoned car park and the deserted pub. Well, mostly abandoned. Unbelievably, the Sky News crew were doing a piece to camera.

  I looked though my binoculars. I tracked left and right. Nothing yet. I handed out the last photocopy. Calamity lit a cigarette and looked at the printout, then back to the outside world.

  I went to the offices, picking my way round the nervous knots of refugees, and looked in on Sasha’s team. They’d started up all the building’s security cameras and her laptop had a feed from the drone hovering several hundred feet above us. She toggled through the channels and Kiki and Lana checked their radios. Nothing on the Airwave, nothing on the Bowman. Lana was puzzling over the Bowman’s rather old-school display.

  ‘Hold it.’ Sasha put her hand up. ‘Camera Five. What was that?’ She zoomed in to the pub up the road. I craned my neck to look and squinted. Did I see something moving? Some white blur. I didn’t know.

  Sasha took one last look. She stood up and shook her head. ‘I think we’re OK just for-’

  Suddenly there was an explosion outside and I could hear the yammering of the Shrike. They were here. I ran into the womens’ area and looked over the huddled refugees. Calamity was firing the Shrike, pak-pak-pak it spat. She stopped firing and turned back to give a thumbs-up to me. ‘Targets down!’

  I checked chamber on my weapon and ran in the other direction, calling Bang-Bang on the radio.

  She answered. ‘Hello babe. Drone cam sees multiple hostiles heading towards us from every road. That was a grenade you heard, the Shrike team got them outside the pub though. But the main lot are nearly here. We’re about to get hit. You’ll have them in sight in two minutes, see you at Sadie’s.’

  Sasha hashed in my walkie-talkie earpiece. ‘OK you lot, they’re here. Watch the approaches and watch the exits. Mark ‘em.’

  I ran back to Sadie’s position. Bang-Bang was there and had had her internet glasses over her eyes. We looked out of the window. I had my binos. We looked. Nothing. Sadie was marking ranges on a card. This wasn’t right and I said as much. ‘This ain’t right. Doll. Think like a terrorist. You two - look at this building.’

  They thought. Bang-Bang looked down, readied her AKS-74U, looked up, and spoke. ‘OK. Brick building on a convergence of two roads, perfect interlocking fields of fire. Good heavy structure. Small windows. This building practically defends itself.’

  And she blanched. ‘Shit. You’re right. I wouldn’t hit it. From the outside-’

  I raced downstairs. Stairs. Kitchen. Office. And grabbed the mosque second-in-command and I already knew what was coming. I pushed him against a wall and a Hajj tours calendar fell to the carpet. ‘The strangers! Point me out the strangers!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘People who don’t normally pray here you dipstick!’

  ‘Oh. Well we have some new men from Eastern Europe. And some nice Asian men who I haven’t seen before… they were very polite.’

  We looked at each other. He looked like he was about to cough something up and finally spoke. ‘…Oh my God.’

  I hit my radio pressel. ‘Holly, Fuzz, main level they’re already in here! Sikhs V Shariah and some white guys and... ’

  Below us, inside the mosque, the shooting started.

  44

  I hit my radio pressel again as I ran. ‘Mishy, Holly, Maryam, Fuzz, downstairs, follow on me!’

  ‘They’re here?’

  ‘They are. They are.’

  The second-in-command coughed vomit through his hand and his pale moon face gazed at mine, shamefacedly. I racked the action on my AK and a cartridge flew. Shit.

  Bang-Bang walked up behind me and gripped my shoulder and gave me an enquiring look. Ahead of us was an entrance to the main male prayer hall. Mishy and the crew ran up behind us and dropped into a loose line. Maryam checked the PKM’s belt feed. Pixie had joined us and mouthed ‘what?’ at me. I shook my head. Not thirty feet away and the hall was shuddering under the impact of bullets. Dust and splinters flew into the corridor.

  Bang-Bang ran fo
rward and threw the doors open and dropped and fired her carbine into the vortex on full auto.

  The hall fired back in a blaze of bullets and debris.

  The main male prayer hall was a flaming deafening hell. The crowds were screaming and scrabbling to escape, piling up against each other. The screams of the children rose like a chorus. Tracer zipped and ricocheted. I jumped up and ran forward, loosing off a blind wild burst. I caught a split-second glimpse of a man in a long dark coat aiming a PPSH. His face registered from the screen shots. Davey. A white burst of submachine gun fire drove us back into cover. ‘Jesus Christ, what are they doing?’

  We dived behind the doors as the wood splintered outwards and Pixie dropped to the floor, smashed by multiple rounds. Bang-Bang waved at me and chopped the right hand signals and then pulled at Pixie’s bloodied prone body.

  ‘Holly. Pass me your makeup mirror!’

  She rummaged and threw it across the doorway at me. ‘Sikhs and white guys. They’re shooting into the crowds.’ There was a colossal bang that shook the walls. ‘Grenades.’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘We go up and over, and’ I chopped my hand, ‘flank ‘em from the other exit. C’mon. Hurry!’ I tripped over the mosque office guy’s body. He was grimacing into space with a jagged bullet hole in his head.

  Bang-Bang slapped a new mag into her AK then checked her photocopy. ‘OK. Through the mens’ section. Follow me.’

  We ran left, forward into the office section, through the opened door. And slipped on blood.

  The stink of arterial blood hit my nostrils and I slipped and slid again. Bang-Bang grabbed my hand as we stepped over the corpses sprawled around the office and pulled me along. ‘Where are they? Get on the radio.’

  Ahead were the second, splintered set of doors to the mens’ mosque area. ‘Three…two…’

  We hit the doors. A storm of fire smacked and whooshed around us. We quickly made for cover and returned fire. To my left Fuzz turned, rattled off three quick shots round a pillar and ducked back. Maryam had dragged Pixie’s body with us into the office in a slick of blood. She was dead. A dead deadweight. I took her mags. From now it was a race to reload, and whoever won the race won the firefight. Whoever lost died.

  A man in a long coat jumped up from behind a barricade of corpses he’d shot and made a break for the exit. He was carrying a screaming child as a hostage. Fuzz shot him in the back and he fell spastically onto the kid in a puff of dust and blood. ‘He’s still moving.’ She shot him again. He died. Fuzz adjusted her floppy hat and chopped her arm down towards the enemy. ‘Heads up, that’s Davey! Shoot!’

  Everyone opened up on full auto around me.

  Davey had a sick grin on his face as he walked through the hall and machine-gunned the crowd and they were battered away from him like fuck knew what. He looked like he was hopped-up on speed or something as our fire tracked around him.

  And then his gun jammed. The grin died on his face. He looked down at the submachine gun and tried to rack the bolt back.

  Bang-Bang stood. ‘It’s jammed! It’s jammed, go!’

  She ran round the pillar and loosed a burst which took Davey in the jaw. It blew half his face off and he was slammed to the ground. He writhed and lay still. And a grenade rolled towards us from his dead fingers. It detonated with a shattering bang.

  I checked my limbs were working. The dust was choking and I could hear a high-pitched ringing sound. Maryam was under a smashed table, her legs kicking. Bang-Bang scrabbled across the carpet, grabbed her mag harness with me and we pulled her back to our barricade of corpses and wrecked furniture. Maryam flailed and smacked at the bolt of her AK. ‘What. Where. Fuckers.’

  I gripped her face and checked her eyes for concussion. ‘Maryam! MARYAM! C’mon, get back in the fight.’

  She blinked. ‘Yeah. Hooah.’ She shook her head and jumped up, rifle in the shoulder and let fly. ‘YOU-’ BRRRRAPPP ‘DOZY BRUMMIE SKREWDRIVER-LISTENING NAZI’ BRRRAAPPP ‘SLAGS!’

  Rounds whacked and whined around us. She changed magazines. ‘DID I MISS YOU OUT?’

  I pulled her back down as tracer zipped one foot above our heads. The windows behind us disintegrated into the street. Above us Bang-Bang jumped up, rattled off a mag, ejected it and slapped a new one in and gave the other side of the mosque the good news with short, controlled bursts. Flames and searing-hot cartridges spattered.

  I got on the radio. ‘All callsigns, we are in the mens’ area and in the mix, do you copy.’

  Behind me Maryam pulled out a butterfly knife and flicked it 360 degrees with an evil snipping sound.

  We were blinking through the last round of incoming. Bang-Bang was wiping at a busted lip and a nick on her shoulder. Her arm was soaked dark with blood. ‘S’ok. Frags. I’ll live.’ She grinned through bloodied teeth and lit a cigarette, pulled on it and passed it to me. I took a drag.

  A corpse came back to life and started moving next to us. One of the attackers. He was jabbering in some Eastern European language and hauling himself towards us through a pile of his own intestines and filth, like a snail. The guts didn’t look real, not even sausages. White sausages. His voice wound down. Russian? Polish? His hand grasped my left trainer. Bang-Bang shot him with a double-tap and he dropped to the carpet in a puff of dust. ‘No hablo.’

  My headset bleeped. ‘Riz, it’s Sadie. There’s another wave and they’re coming through the... ’

  ‘Shit, that was close. They’re coming through the main junction.’

  ‘Well pin ‘em down Sadie! You’re it.’

  ‘OK. Inshallah. Firing.’

  We sought proper cover and I switched ears. I’d gone deaf in one in spite of the earplugs. I pulled out my crumpled photocopy of the mosque floor plan and jabbed at it as we huddled round. ‘OK girls, listen in. At the moment we’re like lab rats rattling round the outside of a massacre. We’ve got the perimeter covered, but we need to clear INTO the building. And when we get there and hit that start-line, we use the overmatch weapons.’

  ‘Hooah.’

  They nodded. Below us, the mosque complex shuddered. I continued. ‘The only way we’re going to do that properly is through shock and speed. Divide it into sections and burn through those sections. Coordinate via radio. Smoke ‘em out, gun ‘em down. With me? We’re going up and over and into the womens’ section.’

  They nodded again. Bang-Bang checked her ammo pouches. ‘Shit. Last two mags. OK, op order from me. Better start scavenging. Take the enemies mags or weapons.’

  My radio bleeped. ‘Sasha for Riz. Got cameras showing X-Rays regrouping downstairs. Four or five. They’re reloading their weapons.’

  I hit the pressel. ‘Thanks Sasha. How you lot holding up?’

  ‘OK so far. Gonna go down and wipe them out over.’

  ‘No. Sasha, don’t-’

  The radio went dead. Car alarms were honking uselessly outside. Bang-Bang took a quick glance through a window. ‘Where are all the cops that were outside?’

  ‘You know the Active Shooter guidelines, love. If it starts going kinetic, they have to fall back.’

  ‘So it’s just us?’

  ‘Yep. Again.’

  She shrugged and checked her glasses. ‘By the way, drone sees an open fire exit on the eastern side. Might be a problem.’

  Machine gun fire roared through the smoke and we ducked and scrabbled for kit and cover.

  Suddenly Maryam took leave of her senses, flinging down her gun and boonie hat. ‘I’ll kill ‘em!’

  Rounds exploded around us and the refugees screamed. We wrestled Maryam back under cover but she kicked us away and I grabbed her shirt. We blinked and spluttered in the cordite and dust. ‘Maryam, hold it. Let’s catch ‘em out. HOLD it.’ But it was no use. She broke free and went forward yelling curses and brandishing that butterfly knife. Mishy stood over me and let off a burst of green tracer which took out a row of bookshelves and a fire extinguisher. Her PKM jammed. ‘Stoppage!’

  I leapt up to fran
tically work at un-kinking the belt. Incoming rounds flamed all around. Me and Mishy fell to the floor and I scrabbled at the linkeage. Got it. The belt was smoothed and working again. Bullets puffed plaster over our heads. Mishy nodded and jumped up and resumed firing the PKM, deafening us both with hellish flame.

  I got Sadie on my headset. ‘Sadie. SADIE. What ya got?’

  ‘Buncha…CRACK , dead guys in’t road. CRACK. Wait one… squad MG setting up at junction. Engaging. CRACK.’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Sure. Got fifteen so far. MG squad is… wait one. Down. La ilaha illa l-Lah, Muhammadur rasulu l-Lah. CRACK- CRACK. Reloading. SNAP. Sixteen.’

  I could hear screams. ‘Sadie who’s that?’

  ‘Opposition. Looks like an Infidel. I’m shooting chunks off him in scrap yard. Can’t say he’s happy about ‘bout it CRACK CRACK’

  ‘Sadie come back.’

  ‘Checking. Wait one. Target down. OK stand by, hold fire. We’ve got Duckie coming in on exit two. Unsighted... Jesus. I nearly shot her.’

  Maryam had taken cover behind a pillar three metres in front of us and was breathing heavily. She was holding that knife in her right hand and her fingers were flexing and unflexing on the grip. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moving. I knew what she was saying to herself. “Allahu Akhbar. Allahu Akhbar. Allahu…”

  More rounds kicked round our position and the man I’d recognised stood and started walking purposefully down the hall towards us, his weapon in the aim. To his right, an Asian-looking guy got to a crouch and fired a PPSH, covering his approach. We dropped back under the white flame of the gun. There was a shriek. I checked with the mirror. The man had marched past Maryam and she’d stuck him in the eye with the knife and was now hacking at him like he was meat as rounds pocked around her, flinging up dust.

  ‘One down. Good work Maryam.’ All I could hear was her cursing on our channel as she chopped away at him and his fading screams. ‘Use him as cover. Hear me?’ She dragged him into cover and plunged the knife into his throat. His body jerked and kicked out as the PPSH fire whacked around her.