by Andy McNab
We made it to the track and moved off into the first line of trees. The grass was wet, not frozen. I put the weapon down while I shoved the Thuraya in my jeans so I could feel when it went off. I slid the parka back on as I explained what George had said, slowly and quietly, so he wouldn’t miss anything.
‘You can dump the keys and rotary arm here. This is our meeting-place if we get split, OK?’
Jerry nodded, and put them at the base of what was left of the nearest tree, then untied his sleeves and put his own parka back on.
‘OK, actions on contact, on the way to target. You make your way back here. Pick up the wagon stuff and get away to the city. Don’t waste time if it goes noisy. I’ll try and get to target and get on with it. You’ll be able to do fuck-all without a weapon.’
The Thuraya rumbled against my stomach. I got to my knees and pressed the green button. The cold soaked into me as I kept an eye on the darkness up the track, hoping not to see headlights.
‘Who do I have speaking?’ It was an American monotone, like a synthesized computer voice.
‘This is Nick. You got a fix on us yet?’
‘Say again, slowly, Nick – I can’t understand you.’
‘Do you have a fix on us yet?’
‘That’s an affirmative, Nick.’
I checked the display. There was no number. ‘What’s your number?’
‘That’s classified.’
‘For fuck’s sake, we’re trying to carry out a fire-control mission here on a poxy sat phone. I need a number. We’re not on target yet. You’re going to lose the fix soon. I need to be able to call you once on target.’
There was a pause, then, ‘Wait out.’
Jerry came up behind me, his face hidden in his hood. ‘What the fuck they doing, man?’
I put my hand up to stop him. The monotone was back. ‘I have a number.’
I tapped it straight into the Thuraya. It was another sat phone. ‘OK, listen in. The target is about two Ks from this fix. It’s a house complex in the forestry block. Roger so far?’
‘That’s affirmative.’
‘You will lose this fix as we move under the canopy. I will call you once on target. Roger so far?’
‘That’s affirmative.’
‘You on a ship?’
‘That’s classified.’
‘We on the same side here? Just tell me how long you have to target.’
There was another pause. ‘Time to target is one hour, thirty-four minutes. One hour, three-four minutes.’
‘Got it. Wait out.’
I closed down and turned to Jerry as I zipped up my parka. ‘One hour thirty-four.’
Those things travelled at about eighty m.p.h., so they would be on target too quickly to have started on a carrier in the Adriatic. Maybe they were from some remote airfield in Kosovo. The US had quite a large peacekeeping presence there.
He nodded somewhere inside the hood. I pulled it down. ‘Get those ears working. We’ll be seeing fuck-all soon. When we move, I want you to count the distance. I do about a hundred and sixteen paces for a hundred metres. You know your rate?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘OK, then, we’ve got two Ks in there before the track junction. You count my paces, and tell me when we get to eighteen hundred metres. We can’t afford to miss that junction.’
I checked the G3’s mag, safety, and that the Thuraya was secure in the parka’s inside pocket. My feet were starting to freeze.
‘You ready?’
98
He wasn’t Nuhanovic any more, he was just a target. It had always been easier for me to think of people that way before I killed them.
Hood down, I set off fast along the track. If a vehicle came down the road I’d have to go noisy and take it on with the G3. If the target wasn’t aboard, we’d have lost him for sure, but what choice did I have?
Fir branches scratched my face as I pushed my way through. Trapped water cascaded down on me.
Every ten paces I stopped, holding my left hand behind me until Jerry jammed into it. We had to keep together in the dark. Conditions were good underfoot: soft pine needles kept the noise down.
I did another ten metres and stopped, butt of the G3 on the ground, leaning forward with both hands on the barrel as I rested, taking deep breaths and waiting for Jerry to bump into me. I was soaked with sweat under all the layers of clothes, and it dripped down my face, making the scratches sting.
This time he got up close, his panting, minging breath across the side of my face. ‘That’s just over eighteen hundred.’
‘We’ll go a bit slower now; eyes open for the track junction on the left, OK?’
I closed my mouth, trying to get some saliva going to help my dry throat, and pushed myself upright on the G3.
A few minutes later I was at the junction with the track up to the house. I stopped again and waited. Now it was going to be his turn to smell my breath. It was eerily quiet, not a hint of wind to stir the trees. ‘Count off five hundred this time, OK? After that we’ll cut right and work our way through the trees towards the boundary wall. I want to box around that checkpoint.’
‘Got it.’
We moved off again, keeping in the middle of the track. I had the G3 in my hands. There wasn’t time to move tactically, weapon in the shoulder. I just moved with my head tilted to the right, keeping my ear pointed along the track. My eyes were hard right in their sockets, staring into the darkness ahead, trying to see any movement, any light, any indication of bodies.
I stopped and listened every five or six metres, trying to take deep, controlled breaths. Sweat poured down my face. Eventually Jerry came up, his mouth near my ear. ‘Five hundred.’
I set off very slowly this time, weapon held at its point of balance in my right hand. The left reached behind for Jerry, making sure we had contact all the time.
About one fifty short of the checkpoint, I could still see and hear nothing. We could have played safe and cut right, into the forest, but that would have slowed us down even more. We’d just have to stay on the track for as long as we could.
Another twenty and there was a clanking of metal, forward and left. I froze. I could see nothing but black and then more black.
99
I held my breath and leaned forward, eyes closed, head tilted. All I could hear was Jerry breathing to my left.
Then there it was again, metal on metal.
I turned back to Jerry and pulled him slowly into the treeline. Fuck the mines. The target’s people were under the canopy the other side of the track, so that was obviously secure. If they hadn’t cleared this side, we’d soon get to know about it. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen. Maybe some of that fatalism shit had rubbed off on me after all.
I kept a grip on Jerry’s sleeve. Even a few metres’ separation could mean we lost each other, and it wasn’t as if we could just call out to regroup. Now was the time to slow down.
It’s so easy to lose any sense of direction in pitch dark, but I got a good marker from the occasional clank and snatch of conversation the other side of the track, which became clearer the closer we got. With luck we were going to hit the edge of the treeline soon, and there’d be a short stretch of open ground, then the wall.
I felt my way along, waving my left hand in front of me for obstructions, the right still holding the weapon. Jerry’s hand gripped the butt to keep contact.
I stopped when a branch blocked my way, took a few paces back or sideways, tried to move round the obstacle and not make noise. Now that I’d slowed, I was more aware of the scratches to my face. My salty sweat made them as painful as wasp stings. My sockless feet had blistered in my boots. My whole body felt as if it was boiling under all the layers.
I stayed focused, trying to keep my sense of direction. An engine started up to our left. I guessed it must be further up the track, the other side of the hedgehogs. I hoped it didn’t move. If it did, and up towards the house, I’d have to assume it was going to pick u
p the target. I’d have to get out of the trees and take it on. There’d be a gang-fuck with so many bodies about, and only nineteen rounds.
We came to the edge of the forestry block. I dropped to my knees and crawled the last two metres on my own. After the inky blackness of the canopy, the stars seemed as bright as the sun.
The wall facing me was the one running along the right-hand side of the compound as viewed from the track. The door into the family courtyard was about forty metres down it. Beyond the wall I could catch just the odd glimpse of terracotta rooftop. The three- or four-metre strip of rough grass between the wall and the treeline was white with frost. No vehicles or bodies had been along it tonight.
Somebody near the checkpoint had a bout of coughing. Maybe it was the exhaust fumes. The engine was still on, but the vehicle was stationary.
I moved back to grab Jerry, and together we followed the edge of the trees away from the checkpoint, towards the family entrance. We came level, and I inched forward.
I looked left. No movement from the checkpoint. Vehicle still stationary.
I moved over the grass, leaving sign in the frost. There was no gap between the doors, but maybe an inch and a half beneath them. I got down on my knees, then lay flat on the ground. The grass was icy against my cheek. I couldn’t see any light or movement at ground level. There wasn’t the perspective to see any higher up.
I got back on my feet and gave the doors a gentle push where they joined, just in case they were unlocked. As if.
I moved back to Jerry and knelt down next to him. We stayed like that, just inches apart, as I got out the Thuraya and powered it up, one hand cupped over the display.
100
I crawled forward a couple of metres, got a signal, and pressed Send on the new number. There was only one ring before the monotone answered.
I talked normally, but kept my voice low. ‘It’s Nick. Get a fix: what’s the time to target?’
Monotone came back, ‘Eleven minutes, twenty-two seconds to target.’
Slowly and, I hoped, clearly, I began to explain the set-up of the house to him as if he was walking through the guest doors – the guest courtyard with its one-storey building dead ahead, and two-storey guest accommodation to the left, with the passageway into the family compound where the buildings met.
I checked after each detail with ‘Roger so far?’ I got back, ‘Affirmative,’ each time.
‘The target’s last location was the far right corner of the long building in the family courtyard. Roger so far?’
‘Affirmative. We have a fix on you. I repeat, we have a fix.’
‘Roger that. Wait out for the fire-control order: I do not have a target yet. This is not a weapons-free zone. You understand?’
There was a second or two’s pause. Then, ‘Affirmative.’
‘Roger that. Wait out.’
I kept the Thuraya switched on. I wanted to be able to pull it out, get a satellite, and start talking the moment we had the target. Until then, I didn’t want some colonel, or whoever was watching the screens in the operations room and making decisions, to go and hit whatever he saw on the other side of the wall because he was flapping about fucking up.
We needed to be well away from here when the Hellfires came calling. The target had to die. There was no margin for error.
The operators in the AWACS would be watching their screens, running checks on the Predators’ surveillance packages as Bosnia passed beneath them. The forward-looking infrared would be giving the operators a green negative of the landscape. Thermal imagers aboard the UAVs would be homing in on heat: the hotter the source, the whiter the image. Bodies would be picked out easily, even through the canopy. Just as important would be the LTD in the nose, and the feedback saying that the Hellfires were online and ready to go.
I crawled back to Jerry. ‘Listen, they’re here in about ten. The doors are locked. I need you to get over the wall and open them. I’ve got to stay this side. If that wagon comes to pick him up at the other doors, I’ll need to get down there with the G3.’
He started getting to his feet. I grabbed him. ‘When you get to the other side, you might not be able to open it, you realize that? It might be padlocked and then you’re in the shit unless you can get back over. You understand what I’m telling you?’
There was no point bullshitting him. We’d come too far now and he needed to know.
He put a hand firmly on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. ‘I’m already in the shit.’
He let go and started rummaging in his parka. ‘I think I’d better split these up.’ He handed me one of the cameras. ‘Just in case. It’ll make a little money for Renee. She’s with Chloë, at her mother’s in Detroit.’
I shoved it into my pocket.
‘She’s staying there until I get back from Brazil. You’ll find her. Give it to her. She’ll know what to do with it.’
We both started across the grass. I laid the G3 on the ground and got my back against the wall, eyes straining down to the right, towards the checkpoint. The wagon’s engine still turned over in the darkness.
I bent my legs and cupped my hands between my thighs. Jerry stepped back a little, positioned his right foot in them as a launch pad, and jumped up. I kept contact with his foot, twisting myself round towards the wall and pushing myself up until it was past my face. Then I held it against the wall so he had something to push against. He hooked his arms over the top, and seemed to stay like that for ages. I didn’t know if he was flapping, didn’t have the strength to get the rest of his body over, or had spotted something.
A few seconds later, he started to scramble over the wall and his foot left my hands.
I picked up the G3 and put my ear against the door just as he landed with a bump the other side. Almost immediately, there was the gentle groan of metal being drawn across metal.
The door opened very, very slowly. I let Jerry do it: he was in control.
As I slipped through and into the courtyard, Jerry closed it again behind me. He didn’t bolt it.
To my right, ten or eleven metres away, was the room where we’d last seen the target. The lamps were still burning.
Somewhere in the darkness, cooking pans clanged. To my left was the one-storey building separating the two courtyards. There were no windows this side of it. The first floor of the guest block, where we had showered, was completely dark.
I got the butt into the shoulder, flicked the safety on to single-shot, and positioned my trigger finger along the guard. Keeping Jerry behind me, I started to move towards the illuminated window. There was going to be nothing covert about this: there wasn’t enough time. I had no option but to open doors and look through windows.
I knelt beneath the window, to the right of the grime-covered frame. As I slowly raised my head, I could see the door to the left. I came up some more. The oil lamps were still burning where Jerry had left them. But the room was empty.
Even the meal things had been taken away.
I lowered myself, still butt in the shoulder, safety off, and began to follow the wall to the veranda and the door we’d gone through. No shoes outside; no target inside.
The kitchen noises were louder now, and joined by muttering in Serbo-Croat. The kitchen had to be behind one of the doors along the veranda.
My breath clouded around me as I stopped and listened. The muttering wasn’t from the target; it wasn’t that slow, deliberate, favouriteuncle voice. It sounded more like some old bottle-washer having a moan about the greasy plates.
I touched Jerry’s arm and pointed towards the passageway and across the courtyard.
I’d taken just a few steps when I heard an engine. A vehicle was approaching the house.
Fuck the noise. We ran for it.
101
I grabbed the door handle and we legged it down the corridor. My left hand was out, ready to make contact with the door at the other end. I got there; took a breath, listened. There were voices the other side, four or five of them. The
vehicle was static, but not in the courtyard.
Trying to block out the sounds of our breathing, I put my ear to the wood, my right hand firmly on the pistol grip, safety catch still off, trigger finger still across the guard.
The voices were urgent and low. None was the target’s. Then his gentle tones sparked up, calming everyone down.
The engine noise got suddenly louder. The gates must have been opened.
‘Stand by.’
I fumbled for the handle with my left hand. My fingers closed round it and I pulled back. The headlights were blinding.
I made out a mass of bodies in the beams, shrouded in their own breath and exhaust fumes.
From just two feet away a body loomed in front of me, weapon coming up. I fired; he went down. His AK clattered across the threshold.
There were screams and shouts from near the vehicle. The driver revved the engine. Weapons came up into the aim.
I just blatted away, single shots at anything that moved, then into the vehicle.
Shit, it started moving.
Rounds came back at us, taking chunks out of the plasterwork that sandblasted my face.
I turned and legged it down the corridor. Jerry grabbed the AK from the floor, its barrel dragging behind him as he wrestled with the butt. ‘Back to the gate! Back to the gate!’
We burst through the door at the far end and headed across the family courtyard. Screams and movement under the veranda. It was a cluster of bottle-washers. They ducked when they saw us.
I was half-way across when we started taking fire from the follow-up behind us. I stopped, turned, and returned fire into the passage doorway.
Jerry was to my right. He ran past me as I fired controlled shots, trying to stop them leaving the passageway.
I squeezed off two more rounds at the door before Jerry started firing.
I turned on the spot and ran, got about four paces past him, turned again and started to fire. ‘Move, Jerry! Move! Move!’
