by Chris Ryan
The tyre burst into flames. The fire quickly consumed the wheel, filling the air with the pungent stench of burning rubber and channelling coal-black smoke into the sky. Porter could feel the heat from the fumes scolding his back as he moved over to the eastern parapet. The temperature on the rooftop was unbearable now. Suffocating. Like wearing a wetsuit inside a sauna. Every time Porter breathed it felt as if someone was taking a blowtorch to his lungs.
After eight minutes he heard an incessant thump-thump noise at his nine o’clock. Coming from the north of the hotel. The noise grew louder by the second, until the whole building seemed to reverberate with the beat. Porter looked beyond the north parapet, shading his eyes against the savage sun. Three quarters of a mile out a helicopter swung into view above the bay and surged towards the hotel. Even at this range Porter easily recognised it as a Black Hawk, with its long, waspish design and bulbous cockpit, rotor blades slicing and dicing the air like a couple of giant blenders. A pair of General Electric M134 miniguns were mounted on fixed metal brackets, protruding from the doors on either side of the main fuselage behind the cockpit. Six-barrelled monsters capable of firing up to 6,000 rounds per minute. Porter felt his spirits soar as he watched the Black Hawk sweeping inland.
Finally. We’re in business.
The sat phone sparked into life.
Porter grabbed it. Hit Answer. ‘Hendricks?’
‘Our boys are one minute out,’ Colonel Hendricks drawled. ‘Can you confirm your coordinates?’
Porter replied in a slow, clear voice so there was no misunderstanding. ‘Our position is the black smoke on the rooftop of the Ambassadors Hotel. Repeat, we are directly under the black smoke rising from the hotel rooftop.’
‘One moment,’ Hendricks said. There was a pause while the ops officers checked in with the pilots. Then the colonel came back on the line. ‘Confirmed. We have a visual on the black smoke. Repeat, our guys have a visual on your location.’
Porter said, ‘The area surrounding the hotel is not deemed friendly. Neutralise anything 360 of this building. I say again, anything surrounding the black smoke is hostile territory.’
There was another pause. Then Hendricks said, ‘Understood. Sir, we’re going to patch you through to the pilots now. Communicate directly with them from now on. We’ll be listening in from the bridge.’
Hendricks’s voice disappeared. Porter heard a series of whirrs and clicks. He chucked the binoculars at Bald and gestured for him to begin identifying targets east of the parapet. The throb of the Black Hawk’s blades was deafening now as it came in fast towards the hotel. On eight-and-a-half minutes the connection went through. A voice cut through the static.
‘Ambassador 1, this is Helo Z-1. We are inbound to your position and ready to engage. Helo Z-2 is two minutes out.’
Porter said, ‘Helo Z-1, this is Ambassador 1. We have enemy forces in technical, three hundred metres east of our location. Engage, engage.’
Porter craned his neck up and tracked the Black Hawk as it banked heavily to the left and circled the hotel in a wide arc. Then the heli swung around and came tearing down towards the athletics track on the east side of the rooftop. The humming noise of the blades drowning out every other sound on the rooftop, sunlight reflecting off the cockpit. The Black Hawk swooped down on its target. At this distance Porter could see the loadies manning the M134s behind the cockpit. They were tied to lanyards to stop them from falling out. He looked away and shouted at the other guys on the rooftop, cupping a hand to his mouth.
‘Incoming friendly fire! Everyone get the fuck down. NOW!’
Tully, Nilis and the other Belgians hit the deck. The Black Hawk bore down on the technical stationed next to the pavilion. Most of the rebels blindly stood their ground, continuing to fire at the rooftop. Others pointed their AK-47s at the Black Hawk and emptied pointless bursts at the heli. They were either really bold, or really fucking stupid.
On nine minutes, the Black Hawk opened fire.
One of the miniguns screamed. It sounded like the world’s biggest chainsaw carving through the world’s biggest tree. Porter thought his eardrums might explode from the noise. He saw the minigun barrel light up. Saw the rounds smashing into the technical in a red-hot stream. The burst lasted five seconds. Which equalled approximately five hundred rounds of hot lead, concentrated in an area the size of a bathtub. A deadly cocktail of heat, pressure and brass. Nothing could survive that. The technical was vapourised in front of Porter’s eyes. There was a patch of blackened land and smoke and flames where the vehicle had been. And not much else. The rebels camped around the pavilion instantly turned and ran for the roundabout. The minigun chainsawed again. The fleeing targets weren’t cut down. They were simply turned to dust. The gun stopped whirring. The Black Hawk flew back out towards the bay.
The pilot came back over the sat phone and said, ‘Ambassador 1, this is Helo Z-1. On target. Repeat, on target. Helo Z-2 incoming.’
‘Roger that,’ Porter said.
A second thumping sound boomeranged across the sky. Porter looked up, squinted, saw the second Black Hawk slingshotting in from the bay. The second heli flew past its twin and closed in on the hotel. Everything was happening very quickly now. Like a game of chess being played at a hundred miles an hour. Bald had already scuttled across to the south side of the rooftop, scoping out the next targets.
Porter noticed something in the corner of his eye. Smoke spooling into the sky from the wreckage of the technical to the east. Black smoke. Close to the plumes rising up from the car tyre. Close enough for the two plumes to be mistaken for one another.
Porter spoke into the sat phone. The second Black Hawk was already banking towards the hotel, circling it in the same broad arc as the first heli.
‘Helo Z-2, this is Ambassador 1. Be aware, vehicle is on fire. We have smoke coming off vehicle to the east, three hundred metres. Be advised, we are still on the rooftop. Repeat, the black smoke to the east is not our position.’
The line squawked with interference. Then the pilot said, ‘Read you loud and clear, buddy. Smoke to the east is not you guys. Helo Z-2 ready to engage next targets when you are.’
Bald said, ‘Ten X-rays south of us, mate. A hundred metres away, at the sheds.’
Porter got back on the blower. ‘Go south, go south. One hundred metres south of black smoke. Ten enemies with weapons. Engage, engage.’
The second Black Hawk banked steeply off to its left. Porter watched it perform a low fly-over south of the hotel. The minigun roared. The rebels seeking cover at the sheds were turned to mincemeat. Spent rounds poured out of the tubes attached to the side of the minigun and rained down on the swimming pool behind the hotel. Like coins out of a fruit machine hitting the jackpot. Half a dozen rebels legged it back towards the low wall in a desperate bid to escape the fire. The Black Hawk tore them to pieces and took out most of the wall too. The targets had literally been scrubbed out of existence.
Over at the bay the first heli had completed its turn and now swooped inland again for a second fly-over. Tully called out from the north side of the rooftop, where he’d returned to his firing position alongside Nilis. Rounds were spattering the top of the parapet in long, continuous bursts.
‘Need to get some fucking fire over here, fellas. They’re getting close!’ Tully shouted, his voice barely audible above the rounds lashing past his head.
Bald and Porter crawled over to the north side, moving as quickly as they could without raising their heads above the parapet. Porter’s combats were frayed at the knees from constantly scraping against the debris strewn across the roof. His elbows were bleeding, he had more nicks and cuts on his body than a Chinese torture victim. He stopped by the north wall next to Tully and immediately lay flat on the scorched concrete. More bullets tore into the rooftop in a deafening racket. One of the other Belgians had curled up in a foetal position in sheer terror at the storm of unrelenting gunfire.
In the distance Porter could hear the buzzing of the
first helicopter as it neared their position. The mechanical whine of its engines getting loader.
The pilot’s voice came over the sat phone. ‘Ambassador 1, this is Helo Z-1. Ready to engage next targets.’
We’ve got to deal with the rebels at the garage, Porter told himself. Before they brass us all up.
He grabbed the binos from Bald, swapping them for the sat phone. Then Porter scrambled to his feet before his mucker could say anything, shifted over to the north wall and gazed out through the glasses at the Cape Road, trying to pinpoint the enemy. Round after hot round whipped past him. Porter tried to remain calm in spite of the terrifying rate of fire bearing down on him. A burst rattled the top of the parapet six inches to his right, scattering chunks of concrete across the rooftop. Porter knew he was taking a massive risk by exposing himself to enemy fire. But he also knew he didn’t have a choice. The Black Hawks had missed the rebels camped out in the garage on the previous fly-overs. Unless Porter could point out their coordinates, the rebels were going to keep on peppering the rooftop with accurate gunfire. He glimpsed one of the rebels firing from the window on the first floor of the garage. Then he turned to Bald.
‘Twenty-five X-rays north of us!’ Porter shouted. ‘At the garage with the blue roof. Two hundred metres. Get some fire down on those cunts.’
Bald got on the sat phone and relayed the int to the pilot. He had to shout to make himself heard above the bursts of gunfire and the howl of RPG rockets. Porter saw the Black Hawk banking sharply to the left, her rotors straining under the pressure of the turn. Then the M134 on the left-hand side buzzed. A river of fire spurted out of the minigun, blasting the garage. Porter couldn’t see much of the strike area. There was a lot of dust and debris, and occasional flashes of bright red light as tracer rounds sliced through the walls. Pulverising any targets camped out inside the building.
Five or six rebels had managed to escape the garage before the minigun struck. Porter heard the pa-pap-pa-pap-pa-pap of the M134 on the right-hand side as it fired again. The fleeing rebels disappeared in cloud of blood and smoke. Like a killer magic trick. Further to the east some of the enemy emerged from behind cover at the banana trees and tried to bring down the heli with their small-arms fire. The Black Hawk blitzed them with a long squirt from the minigun, chopping up the plantation and everyone in it. By the time the heli flew back out to the bay, the entire road had been decimated.
Porter stepped back from the parapet. Bald stared at him with a look of grudging respect.
‘Fuck me, mate. Maybe I was wrong.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Bald grinned. ‘Maybe you’ve got a pair of balls on you after all.’
‘Fuck off, Jock.’
They went back to work, racing from one side of the roof to the other as the Black Hawks took turns to make sweeps of the hotel. The operators worked like a married couple. Porter sighting the next target through the binos, determining the distance and number of enemies. Bald transmitting the int back to the pilots on board each heli. After five or six minutes Porter looked past his shoulder and noticed that the flames on the car tyre had almost burnt themselves out. He dispatched Tully and Nilis down to the car park to fetch more wheels before the fire extinguished. Then he ordered the other three Belgians to spread out across the north, east and south sides of the rooftop, watching in case any more rebels attempted to advance on the hotel. But he figured it was unlikely the enemy would try to attack again. Not with the Black Hawks on the prowl. The few remaining rebels were now camped out behind the old police station. They were taking pot shots at the rooftop, accompanied by the occasional RPG rocket or mortar round.
Porter got a visual on the enemy’s location. Bald called it in.
The heli swept inland. The minigun chainsawed.
The bullets shredded the police station.
After eight sweeps the rebel guns began to quieten. Hardly any rounds were coming in at the rooftop now. One rebel stepped into the Cape Road and pointed his RPG skywards as the second Black Hawk swung back in from the bay. Big mistake. The M134 chopped him up into pieces so small they were practically molecular. A few pockets of rebels stood their ground but most of the survivors were driven back under the huge rate of gunfire raining down on them in clinical bursts. Fires had broken out across the Cape Road and towards the roundabout in the east as the Black Hawks laid waste to the technicals and outlying buildings, obliterating anywhere the enemy tried to hide. The sky blackened. The palm trees swayed under the hot blast of the helis’ blades. Dust swirled over the mutilated bodies strewn across the tarmac. Everywhere Porter looked he could see smoking piles of rubble and limbs.
After twelve sweeps the guns stopped firing.
The dust settled. Porter gazed out across the Cape Road. The enemy was in full retreat. Twenty or so rebels had managed to escape the killing spree. They had ditched their weapons and were scrabbling back past the roundabout, running away from the helis as fast as their skinny legs could carry them. Overhead the two Black Hawks sequenced into a holding pattern, circling the hotel rooftop and searching for any more opportune targets in the surrounding buildings. But none of the enemy showed their faces or returned fire. They’ve given up the fight, Porter realised.
It’s over.
He slumped back against a ruined section of the wall. Looked down at his watch. 1342. They had been directing the top cover for more than half an hour. It felt more like three hours. It had been the longest thirty minutes of his life. His head was mashed, his clothes glued to his skin, his forearm muscles burning. He reached over and grabbed a half-full bottle of water. The plastic was hot to the touch. The water tasted warm when he pressed it to his lips. Porter didn’t care. He took a long gulp, wiped his dry lips with the back of his hand and closed his eyes for a beat.
Bald got off the sat phone with Hendricks. Porter chucked him the water bottle. He took a deep swig, blinked sweat out of his eyes. ‘Fucking hell that was close. If them helis had been a minute or two later, we’d have been toast.’
Porter nodded at his mucker. ‘You all right?’
‘Nothing a pint of Bell’s won’t sort out.’ He shook his head and laughed at the madness of it all. ‘That was fucking wacky, mate. When they briefed us on the op, I wasn’t expecting us to end up in a remake of Zulu.’
‘Me neither,’ said Porter. ‘I thought we were done for back there. Good job you were handy with that gimpy, or we’d have been in serious shit.’
Bald nodded grudgingly. ‘You’re not such a bad operator yourself. Even if you are a southern cunt.’
‘Scottish wanker.’
‘Says the poof who can’t handle a drink.’
Porter managed a weak smile as the Black Hawks circled above. Neither of them said another word. They didn’t need to. Both of them had stared death in the eye, up there on the rooftop. There was a special bond that existed between operators who had faced certain death and survived to tell the tale. It put everything else into perspective. All the petty bullshit of the world, all the pointless crap that people stressed over. None of it mattered.
Maybe I was wrong, Porter reflected. Bald isn’t such a bad guy after all. We might have our differences, but he had my back today on the rooftop. When the shit hit the fan, he stepped up. You can’t ask for more than that in a bloke. Bald had a mean streak and a savage tongue, but underneath it all he was loyal. And that was all that mattered, really.
He said, ‘When we get back to London, we’ll owe that Angela bird a pint.’
‘Just the one? For saving our bacon?’ Bald pulled a look of horror, then shook his head. ‘And everyone says us Jocks are tight bastards.’
They lapsed into a casual, friendly silence for several moments. Then Tully called out from the south side of the rooftop. Porter and Bald picked themselves up, moved stiffly across the roof. They kept their heads low, in case any of the rebels had managed to avoid the pummelling dished out by the Black Hawks. Unlikely, but neither of them wanted to take a chance.
They passed the noxious fumes rising up from the burning car tyres and the damaged water tower. Smoke hung like a veil over the rooftop.
The smoke cleared. Porter saw Tully kneeling at the air-conditioning duct beside one of the Belgians. The guy was all kinds of fucked-up. His stomach was slashed open and his guts were hanging out of the wide gash, like the inner tube spilling out of a slashed car tyre. His face and hands were pockmarked with bits of shrapnel. A puddle of glistening blood had formed around his entrails. The guy’s breathing was shallow and his eyes were dancing wildly in their sockets. Porter dropped beside the Belgian to examine his injuries. Bald cocked his head at Tully.
‘What happened?’
‘Poor cunt must have been hit by one of them RPGs.’ Tully pointed to a huge hole in a lower section of the southern wall. Chunks of concrete were scattered all over the place. ‘Right when one of the helis was making a pass over us.’
Porter tore a strip off the guy’s shirt then covered it over the wound as a temporary dressing. The Belgian moaned in pain, muttering a few incoherent words under his breath. Porter had done enough basic medical training in the Regiment to know his chances of survival were grim unless they medevacked him to a hospital immediately.
He finished applying the dressing, then looked up at Bald. ‘What did Hendricks say about the evacuation?’
‘Rescue choppers on their way now. Sea Stallions.’
‘How long till they get here?’
‘Hendricks reckons twenty minutes,’ Bald said. ‘They’re going to land at the helipad west of the hotel with a detachment of marines then start ferrying everyone out to the aircraft carrier. Yanks and Brits first. Then Europeans. Then everyone else.’
Porter nodded. He thought, one thousand civilians. Plus the staff. The Sea Stallions had a maximum capacity of fifty-five passengers. Which meant they would have to make twenty trips in order to get everyone out of the country. He gestured to the wounded Belgian.
