Night Strike

by Chris Ryan

  He spotted fifteen guys storming at him from his ten o’clock. Jesus, he thought, they just keep coming. Another frontal assault. The soldiers were so close he could make out the details on their faces. But to him they all looked the same. Then their rifle muzzles sparked. Flames licked out of the muzzles. Gunpowder corroded the air. The night had been cool ten minutes ago. Now the air was overcooked. Rounds zipped and yawed past Bald. The soldiers were shooting on the hoof. A good fire tactic if your ambitions started and ended with putting rounds down on a general target. Pinning an enemy down. Not so good when you were trying to actually hit somebody.

  Again Bald squeezed the trigger.

  The 36 fumed. The rounds sliced and diced the fifteen soldiers. Body parts rained down. Faces and hands and feet were burnt crisp, like meat left too long in a George Foreman grill. Guts were incinerated and testicles blown to shit. Forty-nine dropped soldiers became sixty-four. A further group of eighteen soldiers hit the deck, reasoning that to be a coward was better than to be chopped up into a thousand tiny pieces. They were forty metres back. A line of fifty or more soldiers was behind them.

  ‘John!’ Gardner calling at Bald’s six o’clock.

  Bald rolled over onto his back. Gardner had trudged through the river and climbed up onto the far bank. He was climbing the incline towards the scrape. He hit the RV and gestured to Bald. Fucking hurry up.

  First, Bald thought, he needed to give the eighteen closest soldiers the good news. There was a forty-metre gap between those guys and the next nearest grouping. Put them down and he’d have a window of opportunity to dash for the RV. Bald positioned himself so he was looking back at the desert floor. At the eighteen. One of them, a short, squat guy built like a tree stump, was on his feet. His uniform boasted a different insignia from the others. A single gold star against an olive-green background. A rupert, thought Bald. The guy barked orders at his men and now the eighteen rediscovered their manhood and picked themselves up off the floor. They were dangerously close, so Bald sprinted down into the river. Rounds slapped into the wet soil on the far bank. Bald quickly discovered that it made no difference how hard he tried to run: the river bed was porous and the water was like sludge. It was like wading through quicksand. Hot lead broke the surface, sending jets of putrid water into the air and drenching Bald.

  ‘Give me some fucking covering fire!’ Bald shouted at Gardner.

  No answer.

  What is he doing?

  Bald glanced back. The eighteen guys were gunning down towards the river. Eighty metres, but they were eating up that gap with every passing second. Half the guys stopped at the edge of the water. Bald was sixty metres across the river, waist-deep in the gunge, struggling on. Nine soldiers were hurrying upstream to the narrowest point of the river in an attempt to flank him.

  Storming through the last few metres of the river, Bald hit dry land. Pop–thud–scream. A third round unloading. As Bald ran he turned to face his three o’clock, to see where it had landed. It had smacked into the group of nine PLA goons heading due east along the river for the narrowest crossing point. One soldier was miraculously still standing. The explosion had ripped away the lower half of his head.

  Bald was fifty metres up the bank now. Fifty to the scrape. Gardner discharged a fourth round at six guys moving tightly together down the bank. Pop–thud–scream. Bald closed the gap to forty metres. Then thirty. Rounds were slamming and scorching all around as the soldiers threw the kitchen sink at Bald and Gardner. Every last soldier was breaking towards the river bank. A hot circle of pain hit Bald. Blood leaked down his leg. He’d been struck in the back of his thigh. He automatically slowed to a crawl. Every time he had to extend his leg the muscles fired jolts of intense pain into his brain. He could hear, and feel, the squelch of muscle around the trapped bullet, the tip grinding against his slow-twitch muscle fibres. He was sick in his mouth. Gardner unleashed a fifth grenade at the river.

  Pop–thud–scream.

  But there were too many of them.

  Last stand, thought Bald. Take as many of these pricks with me as I can. He eased his finger back on the trigger of the 36. They were in his face. He had to drop them in the very next second.

  Click.

  Out of ammo.

  Now you really are fucked, Bald thought.

  Then the ground trembled.

  A pause.

  It trembled again. Rocks shook; the soil shifted; a dislocated roar came from beneath the ground. Bald looked back across the river, at the square. The soldiers’ heads had turned too, and they saw the memorial hall spew orange and black mushrooms into the air. The horizon lit up like a fireworks celebration, and all three buildings in the square were obliterated. The seismic force of the explosion was way above the power generated by the propane and diesel fuel.

  Bald thought, the Chinese have been storing bombs in the underground city too. Suitcase nukes, warheads, experimental bombs – it didn’t matter to him. All that mattered was that the explosions had just saved his life.

  The soldiers were standing still. Some were retreating. The others didn’t know what to do. Bald hit the scrape. Gardner hauled him up. Bald could feel the energy from the explosion in his feet. He could hear the screams and gunfire of the soldiers drowned out by something much more sinister and devastating. The soldiers had dropped to their bellies at the lip of the river bank, next to the spot where Bald had ditched the 36, and put down three-round bursts at Bald and Gardner. At a range of more than two hundred and fifty metres the chances of them scoring a hit were slimmer than a cunt hair.

  Bald spotted the Five-Seven next to Gardner. He seized the semi-automatic and sprinted out of the scrape, eyes totally focused on the border. Three hundred metres to freedom. The rounds being fired at their backs were impacting further and further away from their position. Craters were punched into the soil. A yellow sign carried a warning in Cyrillic and below it one in Chinese. Bald didn’t speak either language but the Kazakh flag at the top told him they had reached the border.

  The gunfire from the soldiers dimmed to a distant patter, like raindrops lashing against a window pane. And now they reached the top of the incline and hurtled across the plateau. They left behind the smouldering earth and the river turned to yellow sludge. They left behind the carpet of dead soldiers and the underground city. They left behind Xia and the dust.

  They left behind all of it.

  They carried on for a single exhausting kilometre. Bald was half delirious with thirst. The migraines whispered to him in the back of his head, voices like crazed psychos in an asylum. The desert floor soon swirled with dust. Bald was close to collapsing. His fingers reeked of gunpowder. He felt the bullet lodged in his thigh. He was drenched in cold sweat from the waist up, and toxic river water from the waist down.

  But he had the Five-Seven, and he had Gardner in his sights.

  He raised the pistol level with Gardner’s head.

  Cocked the hammer.

  Gardner froze. Turned slowly on his feet.

  Bald said, ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t see this coming.’

  ‘But I saved your life, John. We’re even!’

  ‘You’re a bigger mug than I thought.’

  Gardner closed his eyes. Sweat dribbled down over his blood-stained eyelids. He took a deep breath, like a politician rehearsing a speech, and said, ‘There’s no fucking reason to do this, John. We’ve done the op. We can get our money from Land and go our separate ways.’

  Bald said nothing. Gardner opened his eyes and stepped forwards. His mouth was flecked with spittle. His eyes were burning red.

  ‘I was only following orders.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bald. ‘That’s the problem.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, I saved your arse today. If it wasn’t for me Hauser would have finished you. We’re fucking even.’

  Bald calmly shook his head.

  ‘The only way you and me will get even is when you’re six feet under.’

  He pressed the Five-Seven�
�s muzzle against Gardner’s forehead.

  ‘No,’ said Gardner.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bald.

  He tensed the trigger. Gardner went wild.

  ‘NO! Jesus Christ. Don’t do it, please, John . . . you fucking cunt . . . think about what you’re fucking . . .’

  fifty-five

  China–Kazakhstan border. 2259 hours.

  The bullet never came. Joe Gardner watched Bald crumple to the grass and the Five-Seven drop from his grip. Bald had clamped his hands at the sides of his head, like he was trying to plug gaps. He squinted and made a weird groaning noise. First he dropped to his knees. Then he sprawled onto his side and rolled back and forth. Gardner had heard rumours about Bald. About how he had never really recovered from that headshot in Kosovo. Gardner had dismissed all that shit. Anyone who met Bald for the first time was likely to conclude that he was unstable. But now Gardner was seeing first hand just how badly the head wound had afflicted Bald.

  The Scot prised an eye open. His lips were cracked. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin bleached beneath a thumbnail of greasy sweat.

  ‘Help me,’ he said hoarsely.

  Gardner said nothing. He bent down and gathered the Five-Seven.

  ‘Joe . . .’

  Gardner pointed the Five-Seven at Bald and pulled the trigger. Bald blinked. But nothing happened. Then Gardner checked the chamber and emptied the clip. There were no rounds in either chamber or clip. Gardner chucked the empty clip, fished out the fully loaded one from his utility belt and inserted it into the underside of the Five-Seven’s grip. He was about to stand up when he noticed Bald struggling to say something. His lips were barely parting. Stale, wordless air drifted out. Gardner leaned in, and listened.

  ‘I just need . . .’ said Bald, then his voice drifted. He swallowed hard and went on, ‘I just need . . . a drink.’

  Gardner said nothing. There was a small part of him that knew it would take great pleasure in slotting Bald. But the greater part of him knew that to kill him would be going against everything he’d ever stood for. Christ, if he pulled that trigger then he was no better a man than Bald himself.

  He patted Bald gently on the shoulder. Then he stood up.

  ‘Please . . .’

  Gardner cast one final look over John Bald. At the man who had once been both a hero of the Regiment and his best friend. Now he had a bullet in his leg and demons in his head and he was dying in the arse-end of Kazakhstan. Gardner considered he was doing Bald a favour. He would never find peace in this life. Maybe the next life was where he belonged.

  ‘A wee fucking drink . . .’

  Gardner bid Bald a silent goodbye.

  Then he turned away from his mate for the last time and carried on down the scabbed field, following the coordinates that had been plotted into his GPS navigator. These took him on a bearing towards the valley. Soon the ground became lush with grass and the air cooled and the sky sprouted diamond stars. But Gardner saw no signs of civilization. The valley appeared completely uninhabited. He made the next kilometre and a half in good time, and according to the navigator he was now just five hundred metres east of the RV. He looked west, at his twelve. A rutted mud path led down the valley. And parked by the path there was a black Mercedes E-Class with heavily tinted windows.

  Gardner strode over to the Merc.

  As he approached, a rear passenger door opened and the polished tip of an Oxford brogue swung out, followed by a dainty white-trousered leg. Leo Land planted his feet firmly down on Kazakh soil, stretched and took a long drag on his Montecristo. He walked towards Gardner with an exaggerated grin and a bounce in his step.

  ‘Where’s Bald?’ he said.

  ‘He’s fucked,’ said Gardner.

  The grin on Land’s face went supersize.

  ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Bloody well played. I knew you’d come through for us in the end, Joe. And the Firm will show you its gratitude. Count on it.’

  Land reached into the inner pocket of his white jacket.

  ‘Here’s how we say thank you in Whitehall.’

  He proudly handed Gardner a dog-eared cheque. Next to ‘Payee’ Land had scrawled ‘JOE GARDNER’ in rough capitals. On the second line he’d written ‘TWO MILLION POUNDS ONLY’, and he’d put a line through the third. ‘Watts and Co.,’ Gardner read. He’d never heard of them.

  ‘Don’t spend it all at once,’ said Land.

  Gardner looked at the cheque, folded it in half and tucked it inside the left breast pocket of his overalls.

  Then Land said to Gardner, ‘Before you toddle off, I’ve got one last gift for you.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Gardner asked. He was thinking, John Bald is dead and I’m rich as sin. How much better is my evening going to get? Then he saw Land pointing at something fifty metres away.

  ‘You see that clump of rocks?’ Land said.

  Gardner squinted. ‘Yeah, I see it.’

  ‘Now look a little closer.’

  Gardner made out a figure kneeling beside the rocks. A woman. He recognized her immediately from the hotel in Libya. Rachel Kravets. Gardner stared uncomfortably at Rachel, and she looked indifferently back at him, and he wondered what the fuck was going on.

  Land circled Gardner, gave him a comforting pat on the back.

  ‘I’m sorry it has to end this way, Joe,’ he said. Then he chuckled to himself. ‘Actually, I’m not sorry at all. This works out just fine for me. Not you, though.’

  Gardner felt Land withdraw his hand from his back. In his peripheral vision he saw him returning to the Merc. The engine was gunning. But Gardner was transfixed by Rachel. He watched her reach for an object resting on top of the clump of rocks. He clocked the distinctive outline of a rifle barrel glinting in the moonlight.

  He watched her aim the sniper rifle at his head.