by Chris Ryan
A thick cloud of black smoke greeted the two men as they reached the second floor. Porter glanced to his left. Saw the reflected orange glow of a fire raging inside a room at the far end of the main corridor, twenty metres away. Crowder and a trio of volunteers stood inside the doorway of the north-facing room, dousing down the flames with fire extinguishers and buckets of water. Other teams of volunteers rushed up and down the corridors, struggling to deal with the fires that had broken out when the RPG rounds had struck the hotel. Porter swept past them and made for the staircase leading down to the first floor. He ran into a heavily bearded guy in a bright blue suit scrabbling up the stairs. One of the Lebanese businessmen he’d seen trying to leave the hotel the previous day. The guy waved his arms at Porter, calling out between ragged gasps for breath.
‘Help!’ the man cried, panting heavily. ‘Please. They’re killing them!’
Porter halted and said, ‘Who?’
‘My uncles,’ the man replied, pointing down the stairs. ‘They went down to the lobby, to see if they could leave. Then the rebels came in and attacked. You have to help them!’
‘Wait here,’ Porter ordered.
He stepped past the terrified Lebanese and moved more slowly down the next flight of stairs, with Nilis falling in a metre behind. Weapon stocks tucked against their shoulders, eyes scanning the floor below. Ready to bring up their SLRs and shoot at the first sign of movement. Porter stopped at the first floor and checked both sides of the main corridor. Once he was sure the landing was clear he inched around to the left and paused at the top of the stairs, checking the area immediately below. There was an intermediate landing halfway down before the stairs changed direction by 180 degrees and led straight to the ground floor. Porter couldn’t see any sign of the rebels on the lower landing but he heard several shouts echoing from down in the lobby. He knew then that the rebels had broken through the front barricade.
An unsettling thought prodded at him. Why aren’t the rebels charging up the stairs? That’s what I’d be doing, he thought. Heading straight for the upper floors to ambush the shooters camped on the rooftop. But these guys are still on the ground floor.
Why?
He shoved aside the thought and signalled to Nilis, motioning for the Belgian to follow him. They crept down the treads and hit the lower landing. Then Porter stopped at the blind corner. The shouts were louder now. They sounded almost delirious. Like a bunch of football fans cheering a penalty decision for their team. Porter moved over to the edge of the banister, motioned to Nilis and moved down the first tread. Then the second, and a third. He crept down until he was halfway down the stairs. Then he turned to his left and looked beyond the banister at the front of the lobby.
Six rebels stood around in a semi-circle in the middle of the lobby, fifteen metres away from Porter, either side of a pair of lavish marble pillars. Behind them, Porter could see the upturned piano and a sea of shattered glass from where the rebels had forced their way through the makeshift barricade blocking the entrance. He glanced through the open doors at the hotel grounds. Empty. No sign of any other advancing enemy forces. Which made sense, Porter knew. The rebels were operating independently of one another, attacking in uncoordinated waves. Somehow these guys had slipped through the net, but the rest of the enemy fighters were still struggling to advance under the weight of fire raining down on them from the rooftop. There was no immediate danger of reinforcements arriving, Porter decided.
He turned his attention back to the six rebels. In front of them lay a pair of bloodied Lebanese. One of the victims was slumped against one of the pillars. Dark blood pumped out of a puckered wound to his throat. He was already dead. The other Lebanese was on the floor next to him, kicking and screaming on the floor as one of the rebels hacked away at him with his machete. The victim gasped in pain as the rebel slashed open his guts in a single clean blow. Then the guy with the machete grabbed a handful of the man’s intestines and ripped them out of his stomach and held them aloft. Like they were some kind of trophy. The other rebels had their backs to the stairs as they hooted and cheered with excitement, fuelled by drugs, alcohol and bloodlust. Porter took one look at the rebels and understood why they hadn’t charged up the stairs. These guys aren’t thinking tactically.
They just want to kill.
Porter brought up his SLR as he edged further down the stairs alongside Nilis. The Belgian had his weapon raised too. Index finger tense on the trigger.
The rebels didn’t see them coming.
Porter looked down the length of the barrel at the rebel holding up the intestines. There was no time to aim properly. The target was too close. At a range of fifteen metres, it all came down to instinct. A combination of reflexes, muscle memory and thousands of hours of weapon-handling. Porter double-tapped the guy. The rounds struck just below the neck and passed through him, thumping into the rebel standing to his rear and nailing him in the broad trunk of his chest.
Two targets down.
Everything happened in a blur. The three other rebels spun away from their slotted mates and turned towards the stairs. One guy in a bright orange shirt and Ray-Bans snapped up his weapon and fired at Porter, spraying bullets from the hip. The classic Hollywood pose. The rounds thwacked into the stairs half a metre in front of Porter and chewed up the bannister to his left, spitting wood into his face. Porter moved swiftly down the stairs and dropped the guy before he could fire again, emptying two rounds into his groin. The rebel grunted as he fell back, cupping a hand to his shredded balls. Then Porter put a third round between his eyes.
In the same breath a fourth rebel trained his AK-47 at the stairs. Porter saw the new threat too late. The guy had time to aim his rifle while Porter had been knocking down the three other rebels. He had half a second to react before the guy fired, Porter realised. Not enough time to pivot, adjust his aim and squeeze off a round. Not even close. For a cold instant Porter thought he was going to die. Then there was a brilliant flash of orange at his three o’clock as Nilis surged forward, rattling off a three-round burst at the target. He fired and moved with precision, displaying the kind of shooting skills that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Regiment. The rebel’s head snapped back as the bullets tore into his skull. His gun arm tilted upwards, reflexively pumping out a burst at the ceiling before he stacked it, the bullets punching out lights on the tacky chandelier.
The fifth rebel stood to the immediate right of the guy Nilis had dropped. He was dressed in a patterned skirt and sandals, and he was the slowest of the bunch. Nilis unloaded a three-round burst at the rebel before he could loose off a shot. The rounds struck the guy in the upper chest, tunnelled through his vitals and exited through his back, spiderwebbing the glass doors behind him. He stumbled backwards and crashed into the stack of weapons and kit left by the Nigerians. He didn’t get back up.
One rebel left to kill. Porter hit the lowest tread, his weapon still raised. The sixth rebel swung his weapon towards Porter in a blur of motion. A muscular guy in knee-length basketball shorts and pecs the size of hubcaps. He had a black leather grenade belt slung diagonally across his bare chest with half a dozen hand grenades secured in the elastic loops. Hubcap shaped to open fire at Porter. His three-round burst struck high, zipping over Porter’s head and thudding into the treads at his nine o’clock. The guy reset his aim. He wasn’t a great shooter. But at a range of fifteen metres, he didn’t need to be, Porter told himself. He just needs to get lucky.
Make the next shot count.
Porter stayed calm. He lined up the barrel with Hubcap’s centre mass. Aiming for the biggest target, to give himself the best chance of a hit. He squeezed the trigger a fraction of a second before Hubcap fired. The round struck ten inches high. The upper half of Hubcap’s face exploded. Blood squirted out of the lower half, spraying the pillar with brain matter and bits of skull. The guy dropped, landing on top of the gutted Lebanese.
Porter scrambled forward, sidestepping the slotted rebels. He hit the entrance
and through the doorway sighted two more rebels. They were picking their way down the access road forty metres away. One guy had the greyhound build of a long-distance runner. He was sprinting ahead of his mate, chopping his stride. He was thirty-five metres away from the front of the hotel now. He never made it to thirty-four. Porter swiftly dropped to a crouching firing stance, lined up the target and squeezed the trigger twice. Nailing Greyhound in the throat and upper chest. The second guy kept on running. He wore a blonde wig and a floral dress and waved a machete above his head, screaming madly. Porter emptied three rounds into Blondie’s torso, knocking him down.
‘Secure the breach!’ he yelled to Nilis.
The two men hurried over to the lounge area to the right of the entrance. A trio of worn mid-century sofas arranged around a long, dark-wood coffee table, enclosed by a bunch of exotic plants. Porter slung his SLR over his shoulder and pointed to the coffee table. He grabbed one end of it while Nilis heaved up the other. They lugged the table over to the entrance and tipped it onto its side so that the smooth top surface was pressed up against the door, with the table legs pointing out at the lobby. Like the pins on a plug.
They were still dragging over one of the sofas to reinforce the barricade when Porter heard the crisp, urgent shattering of glass at his six o’clock. He stopped what he was doing and looked south of the lobby. Nilis looked in the same direction. Down the corridor, past the manager’s office and the staff room. Towards the tall glass windows fifteen metres away at the far end of the corridor, overlooking the terrace at the rear of the hotel. The windows had been sealed off the previous day, Porter recalled.
Then he saw the rebels.
Two of them had climbed through one of the barricaded windows, smashing apart the glass pane and knocking aside the stack of interlocking chairs that had been placed in front of the window. Furniture and broken glass lay scattered across the lobby floor. Porter looked on in horror as a third guy clambered through the opening and dropped down from the window, clutching his AK-47 and joining his two mates. In another couple of seconds, they’ll have sighted us, Porter realised. We’ve got nowhere to take cover. They’ll slaughter us.
Nilis sprang into action. He rushed over to Hubcap, knelt down beside his corpse and grabbed one of the F1 grenades from his leather belt. Then he yanked out the pin and launched the grenade in an overarm throw at the three rebels. It hit the floor, bounced up and then the ground shuddered and there was a dull boom as the grenade detonated. Porter heard a scream as the rebels disappeared in a cloud of smoke and splintering steel. The explosion ripped through the targets and blasted the pictures hanging from the walls either side of the corridor, scarring the corridor. The rebels were strewn across the floor in front of the window, their skin shredded and blackened. Blood everywhere. Chunks of masonry collapsed from the ceiling, falling on their lifeless bodies like burnt snowflakes.
More voices sounded from the other side of the window. Nilis snatched another grenade from Hubcap’s belt, sprinted forward and lobbed it through the window opening. There was another dull, damp crack of thunder from the terrace as the second grenade detonated. Porter heard the hideous screams of those rebels trapped in the fragmentation area. He trained his SLR on the window in case any more rebels attempted to climb through the breach. But no one came.
Nilis stepped back from the window and flashed a chummy smile at Porter. ‘That showed those sons of bitches, no?’
Porter stared at the Belgian. This guy is a complete nutter, he thought. Once this is over, I’m going to find out who this bloke and his mates really are.
He heard footsteps to the left. Coming from the restaurant. Porter instinctively swung to face the restaurant, his index finger curling around the SLR trigger. Three shadowed figures approached the lobby. For a cold second Porter feared more rebels had broken into the hotel. But then the figures stepped out of the shadows and he saw that the guys were dressed in the same cheap suits as the two dead Lebanese. They had the same dark features and thick moustaches. The same tacky gold watches strapped to their wrists. They were identical to the dead guys. Except they hadn’t been carved up with a machete.
One of the Lebanese stepped warily towards Porter, his chubby hands raised above his head. Then he saw his dead friends, and his expression crumbled. His face trembled with unspeakable grief.
Porter had no time to comfort the guy. ‘Anyone else back there?’ he said, pointing at the restaurant.
The fat guy regained his composure and shook his head. ‘No. Just us. We hid in the kitchen as soon as we saw the rebels coming.’ His eyes wandered back to the dead Lebanese. ‘We heard them. We heard our friends screaming for help and we did nothing.’
‘Make yourselves useful,’ Porter said, pointing to the window. ‘Get that fucking breach barricaded properly. Stack it with furniture and anything else you can get your hands on. Anything to stop them fuckers getting in. Unless you want to end up looking like your mates.’
The Lebanese stared at his dead friends and nodded vaguely. Porter looked towards the two other Lebanese.
‘You. Search the rebels for weapons and ammo.’
One of the guys stared in trepidation at the slotted rebels.
‘Search . . . these men?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Aye,’ Porter replied. ‘We’re going to need every round we can get our hands on. Whatever you find, bring it up to the roof. Get a move on.’
The Lebanese nodded at his mate. They both took a deep breath and tentatively approached the corpses. Porter gave his back to them and looked towards Nilis.
‘Back to the roof. Let’s go.’
They hurried past the slotted rebels, boots brushing aside the spent jackets as they pounded back up the stairs. The non-stop whip-cracks of gunfire had faded to the occasional dull boom now, and Porter figured the rebels outside must be in retreat.
We might win this battle after all.
Keep going.
Don’t stop now.
They hit the second floor and moved down the corridor. Crowder and his team of volunteers were still tackling the blaze. They had extinguished most of the bigger fires and were now dousing down the few remaining pockets. Now, suddenly, above the crackle and hiss of the flames, Porter could hear dozens of cries and shouts from the rooms on the floor directly above. Nilis stopped and tilted his head at Porter.
‘You think they’ve managed to breach the upper floors?’
Porter listened then shook his head. ‘They’ve been screaming for a while. If they were being hacked up, they would have fallen silent by now.’
But the screams did tell Porter something. The civilians must be absolutely terrified, he thought. They reminded him of the awesome responsibility that lay on his shoulders. There’s a thousand people in this building, relying on us to keep them safe. We can’t let them down.
We can’t let the rebels win.
As he moved towards the stairwell he heard Soames beating his fists on the storeroom door. The guy’s muffled voice shouting from the other side of the door, demanding to be let out. Porter breezed past a pair of Nigerian soldiers sitting on their arses by the stairwell, and made for the storeroom. Dug out the set of janitor’s keys from his trouser pocket. Twisted the key in the lock. Shoved the door open.
In the doorway, wearing a face like an Arab at a Gay Pride parade, stood Soames.
‘Porter. Christ!’ he said in a hoarse tone. ‘Took you long enough. What the bloody hell is going on out there?’
‘The rebels are throwing everything they’ve got at us,’ Porter replied firmly. ‘RPG rounds, heavy machine-gun fire, the lot. There’s a hundred of them out there and more arriving every minute.’
‘What happened to the Nigerians?’
‘They fucked off at the first sign of trouble.’
Soames looked stunned. ‘Then who’s protecting us?’
‘We are,’ said Porter. ‘Me and Jock and Bob Tully. And a few of the guests,’ he added, gesturing to Nilis.
Soame
s clapped eyes on the Belgian. A brief look of suspicion crossed his face. Then Soames swung his gaze back to Porter. ‘I see. Perhaps you and I might have a word in private.’
Porter nodded at Nilis. ‘Go on. I’ll catch up with you.’
The Belgian stared curiously at Soames for a beat. Then he nodded. ‘Sure. Whatever you say, chief.’
He turned away from the storeroom and bounded up the stairs. Soames watched him, waiting until the guy had disappeared from view before he spoke again.
‘Who’s that fellow?’
‘An engineer,’ Porter responded. ‘Him and his four mates work for a mining company. They’re helping us out on the roof.’
That look of suspicion resurfaced on Soames’s face. His left eyebrow arched up a couple of inches. ‘They can handle a weapon?’
‘They did national service in Belgium. If it wasn’t for them, we’d be fucked by now. As it stands, we’re just about holding the fort.’
Soames nodded gravely. ‘Listen to me. We need to leave right now. There’s a jetty to the north. I know it well enough. There are usually a few fishing boats moored there, and I’m sure we can bribe the fishermen to lend us one of their boats. It won’t be enough to get everyone out, of course, but we can escape up the coast.’
Porter thought for a beat, then shook his head. ‘I can’t. If we leave, everyone inside this hotel is dead.’
‘They’re dead anyway. Face it. You don’t stand a chance. A handful of defenders against an army? It’s no contest. You and I both know the people in here are done for. But we still have a chance to get out.’
