The Kill Zone

by Chris Ryan

  Jack turned, just in time to see another RPG flying just forward from where Red was firing on the enemy still advancing from the west. Christ, these fuckers had been hit with thermobaric rounds from the LASM, thirty-cals from the Black Hawk and now Red was raining M16 rounds on them, but they wouldn’t lie down and die.

  ‘Get in the chopper!’ he shouted at his friend. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here!’

  Red was happy to oblige. He and Jack launched themselves into the aircraft. As it rose into the air, Red continued to fire down on the enemy while the pilots spun the bird round, pointing it to the north – the only direction they could travel if they were going to get out of the range of the Taliban’s rockets.

  Jack turned his attention to Pixie. He was stretched out on the floor of the aircraft, his eyes were closed, but he was breathing – just. One of the Paras was fixing a tourniquet at the top of his shoulder just above where the round had entered. Another was inserting a saline drip into his good arm. His face was grim. ‘He needs a hospital!’ he yelled.

  But the hospital at Bastion was fifteen minutes away.

  Red had stopped firing and had his back pressed against the wall of the chopper, his face covered in sand and sweat, a picture of exhaustion. ‘They knew where we were,’ he gasped. ‘It was a fucking ambush.’

  Jack nodded. Red was right. He also knew that if they didn’t get Pixie back to base quickly, he’d pay for it with his life.

  He looked out of the side of the chopper. The sky was much lighter now, and he could see the desert below. As they flew over the brow of the hills, the ground grew much closer. And it was just then that Jack saw them.

  Even from a height they were easy to distinguish. They wore black and white keffiyehs and khaki camouflage jackets; on their shoulders each man carried a weapon. From this distance Jack couldn’t make out the weapons precisely, but he had a pretty good idea what they were.

  ‘We’re going to take a hit!’ he yelled at the pilots up front, but with their headsets and the noise of the engines they perhaps didn’t hear him. ‘We’re going to take a hit!’

  Jack saw the rockets coming towards them. They didn’t hit the chopper, but they starburst all around like some colourless, metallic firework display. It only took a second for pieces of that showering shrapnel to make contact with the heli, but that moment happened in horrible slow motion. Jack instinctively grabbed hold of the webbing on the side of the chopper, listening to a hailstone sound of metal on metal. He braced himself.

  A massive explosion as more shrapnel hit the undercarriage of the aircraft.

  A high-pitched warning alarm that started beeping inside the helicopter.

  A thunder of fire as the side gunner started manically discharging his Minigun.

  A sickening jolt.

  A burst of heat that felt like it was scorching the skin from Jack’s face.

  They started to spin.

  The chopper filled with smoke – thick, black smoke that it was impossible to see through. Jack heard himself choking as they continued to spin blindly towards the ground. Instinctively he grabbed harder on to the webbing, but then, through the smoke, he saw Pixie. The wounded man was rolling across the floor of the Black Hawk towards the opening at the side.

  ‘Get him!’ he shouted, but in the noise and confusion Jack didn’t know if anyone had heard him. He moved almost without thinking, hurling himself at Pixie’s body as it continued to tumble towards the side. He grabbed him by the ankle and tried to pull him, but the forces were too great and instead he found himself slipping towards the exit along with his comrade.

  Suddenly Pixie’s body was half out of the chopper, and he was bringing Jack with him. Jesus, he could see the fucking sand. Twenty metres and getting closer. He yanked at his mate’s ankle in one final, desperate attempt to get him back into the chopper, but it was no good.

  Pixie fell.

  And then, in a moment of sudden terror and panic, Jack realised he was falling too . . .

  A moment of freefall. A second? Five seconds? In Jack’s confused mind he didn’t know. Hell, he could barely tell which way was down. But the smoke cleared from his eyes just as Pixie hit the ground and Jack slammed immediately into him, feeling his friend’s body mash and crunch beneath him. He ignored the pain that shrieked through him, rolled off Pixie’s contorted limbs and crouched in a foetus position, protecting his head from what he knew was about to come.

  The blast.

  The noise came before the heat – a great, crashing explosion that didn’t just shake Jack’s body, but the very ground underneath him. When the heat came, though, it was like a wave of fire crashing over him. Jack screamed as he felt his clothes burn fiercely against his flesh.

  After a couple of seconds, the first wave of heat subsided. Jack unfurled himself, not fully knowing what kind of damage he’d sustained from the fall. To his surprise his limbs, though painful, were in working order. He managed to push himself on to his feet and look around. His mind was dizzy and unfocused, almost as though it was refusing to take in what was going on.

  The first thing he knew was that Pixie was a goner. Then, to his right, he saw figures. Keffiyehs and khaki. Maybe ten of them, maybe more. They carried guns and they were standing about twenty-five metres away. To his left was the chopper. What remained of it, at least. Jack could just make out the shape of the Black Hawk’s shell, which burned ferociously, causing the sky and the sand beyond it to shimmer with the heat haze.

  It was a nightmare vision. And it was about to get worse.

  A figure burst out of the inferno. Jack recognised him not by his face – the skin had sizzled away to leave nothing but a charred, red mess – but by his enormous bulk. It was Red, and he was on fire. His clothes burned. His hair burned. His skin burned. He staggered from the wreckage of the blazing helicopter, still holding both his own M16 and Jack’s, but his legs only carried him a couple of metres before he collapsed to his knees.

  Jack’s instinct was to run towards his friend, but the heat emanating from the fire might as well have been a steel barrier. Then, as Red hit the ground, two fragmentation grenades that he had stashed in his ops waistcoat exploded, one after the other, in quick succession.

  Jack covered his eyes with his arms. By the time he lowered them, Red was just a smouldering mound.

  Jack hauled himself to his feet and staggered back, turning to the group of figures now advancing towards him. In the absence of his assault rifle, he pulled his handgun from the holster strapped to his leg. He tried to remember how many rounds he had discharged back in the cave. Two? Maybe three? Whatever, he didn’t have enough to deal with all these guys – but they didn’t know that.

  He pointed the handgun in their direction. Instantly, four or five of them raised their own weapons.

  A moment of stand-off. Jack felt his head going thick with dizziness. The world around him seemed to spin, and he was aware of his arm wavering.

  He fired, but the round discharged harmlessly into the air.

  He started to fall.

  By the time he hit the ground again, Jack had already blacked out.

  The sun was high in the sky when he awoke. His head felt as though it was going to burst; his skin was raw and scorched; his mouth was dry. He was on his back and as he opened his eyes the sunlight was like knives in his brain. There was a sharp pain round his wrists, and he realised that someone had bound them with rope that dug into his skin. Trying to sit up, he felt the same was true of his ankles. So he just let his head fall back on to the sand, and a ragged groan escaped from his lips.

  A voice. Pashtun, maybe. Jack didn’t understand what it said, but he understood its implication. Moments later, a shadow fell on his face as a figure stood over him, blocking out the sunlight. Jack squinted, trying to get a look at the guy’s face, but it was just a silhouette.

  The man spoke. A thin, reedy voice. A hiss almost. And when he had finished speaking, he booted Jack hard just underneath his ribcage. Jack coughed an
d choked as the man knelt down.

  Now he saw his captor’s expression. The guy had a black beard, flecked with grey; his eyes were brown, his brow was sweating and his lip was curled into an expression of undisguised hatred. He was holding a gun – an AK-47 – his right hand firmly on the trigger, his left curled round the barrel. Jack looked at that left hand and saw only four fingers. The thumb was nothing but a rounded, weathered stump.

  Jack closed his eyes. He fully expected his captor to shoot him.

  But the shot didn’t come.

  It was just as he opened his eyes once more that the man with the missing thumb brought the end of his gun sharply down on to the side of Jack’s head.

  2

  Belfast. Northern Ireland.

  Grey rain spattered on the pavements. It ran in little rivers down the edges of the roads and into drains. In the centre of Belfast, shoppers huddled under awnings, trying to decide whether to stick it out or make a run for it now. Most decided to stay put.

  On the northern edge of the city, in the poorest part of an impoverished and sprawling council estate, walked a thin man. He didn’t care that his trainers – years old and with holes in the bottom – were soaked through. He didn’t care that his clothes were saturated, or that water trickled down the back of his neck. He wanted to get home, sure enough, but that was nothing to do with the weather. It was everything to do with the small package he had stashed in the one good pocket of his hoody.

  It had taken all day to get his hands on it. First he’d needed the money. Experience had told him that his best chance of success was to go for an easy target, so he’d followed an old lady back from the post office and relieved her of her pension at the door of her flat when there was nobody about to stop him. She’d been a feisty old bitch, and she’d forced him to hit her round the face. But it had been worth it – 120 notes was a result, any day of the week. And it had meant he’d been able to spread the love a bit, and give his dealer rather more trade than he had been expecting.

  Now the thin man kept his head bowed as he approached the tower block, its cement covered with dark streaks from the rain. His trainers slapped against the floor as he walked into the deserted entrance hall. No point taking the lift – it hadn’t worked for years – so he started the long climb up the stairs to the seventeenth floor.

  It was as cold in the stairwell as it was outside, and it stank of piss. The man didn’t even notice it, though. He was well used to this place and besides, he had his mind on other things. Five floors up he stopped to get his breath, and again on the eleventh. By the time he got to the seventeenth, he was exhausted, practically gasping as he stepped down the outdoor corridor and stopped at the third door. He took his key from his pocket, fumbled at the lock for a few moments, then stepped inside.

  It stank in here, too, but a different smell. A musty, unwashed smell. The man walked down the narrow, dingy corridor, past a tiny kitchen filled with plates that were going furry, and into the main room at the end.

  The TV – a big, boxy old thing that they’d picked up from a skip – was on, but the girl lying on the dirty carpet wasn’t watching it. She was on her back, staring at the ceiling, a half-smoked cigarette in her hand and a crushed empty packet lying just next to her. She wore a pink tracksuit and a tight red top that accentuated the curve of her breasts even when she was lying down. The man stood in the doorway for a minute, rain still dripping from his clothes, and looked at her. He felt a strange mixture of arousal and contempt; he knew that she only felt one of these emotions towards him, and it wasn’t arousal. This was a relationship of convenience. Of necessity.

  She opened her eyes.

  ‘You score?’ she asked in a throaty voice.

  He didn’t reply immediately. He walked inside, kicked off his shoes and sat on one of the upturned milk crates that were the nearest thing they had to furniture in this place. Only then did he pull out the little sealed polythene bag from his pocket and dangle it in front of her.

  That made her sit up. She took a last, heavy drag on her cigarette, stubbed it out on the empty fag packet and made to grab the bag. He pulled it away at the last minute.

  ‘Uh-uh,’ he said with a smug little shake of his head. ‘You earn your keep, then you get your treat.’

  He smiled at her. Two of his upper teeth were missing, and he had a habit of flicking his tongue from the roof of his mouth into one of the gaps. He did that now, spraying her with a tiny shower of saliva.

  She curled her lip at him. ‘Cocksucker,’ she murmured.

  His smile grew even broader. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘That’s your job.’

  And it was. The man’s habit meant sex itself was beyond his capabilities. But there were still certain things she could do for him.

  He put the stash back in his pocket and waited for her to get to work.

  She spat into the bathroom sink.

  Her whole body ached for a hit; screamed for a hit; she’d do anything for it. But even so, she managed to feel disgusted with herself as she coughed and retched into the filthy basin. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She was an attractive girl – she knew that. But she didn’t look it now. Her honey-coloured hair was greasy and matted; her blue eyes were surrounded by deep, dark bags; her lips were cracked and the skin under her nose was red and sore, the rest of her face thin and pale. Only twenty years old.

  She staggered back into the main room.

  He was sitting cross-legged on the floor. He hadn’t bothered to put his trousers back on, but was just wearing a pair of shapeless, stained underpants. Spread out on the carpet in front of him was the paraphernalia of their shared habit: lighters, spoons, a little bottle of vinegar, a couple of pipes and, of course, needles and syringes.

  ‘Something special for you today,’ he said without looking up.

  She blinked at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Back to back,’ he said.

  She tried not to give him a reaction, but couldn’t help licking her dry lips. ‘Go on then,’ she said, unable not to sound keen. ‘Let us have it.’

  He shook his head. ‘We’ll cook up first,’ he told her. ‘Don’t want to have to do it when we’re high.’

  She let him perform the ritual by himself, watching as he sprinkled the brown powder into a spoon, poured a couple of drops of vinegar into it to dissolve the heroin, then lit a flame under the spoon to cook it well. A thick, acrid smell filled the room as the liquid bubbled and steamed. When he was satisfied that the H was cooked, he sucked it up into a hypodermic syringe, before laying it to one side and repeating the process for a second injection.

  ‘Hurry up,’ she told him, her nails pressed into the palms of her hands, but he ignored her.

  When the two syringes were prepared, he turned his attention back to his polythene bag and pulled out a small wrap of paper. He carefully opened it up and pulled out what looked like two tiny milk-coloured pebbles. He held one of them up towards her between two fingers, like a jeweller displaying a fine diamond, and gave her another of his toothless grins.

  She crouched down on the carpet next to him.

  A back to back. A rock of crack followed by a veinful of H. It was a rare treat. God knows where he’d got the money for this kind of gear. She didn’t care – it wasn’t her part of the deal. She just gave him what he wanted in return for, well . . . this.

  He was handing her a pipe and a lighter. She grabbed them hungrily, lit the rock inside and quickly sucked on the pipe, not wanting to waste any of the precious vapours.

  She closed her eyes and waited.

  It took about fifteen seconds for the high to hit, a rush of pleasure running through her veins. She toked on the pipe again, and again. It didn’t take long for her to use up the whole rock.

  By that time, he had already finished his own rock and was rolling up his sleeve, a dreamy look on his face. He pulled an old leather belt from the trousers that were dumped by his side, strapped it round the top of his arm and pulled tig
ht. He waited for a vein to appear, then gently pierced the surface of his skin with the needle. As he squeezed the syringe with a trembling hand, ecstasy passed over him.

  He closed his eyes, then fell backwards. His head caught on the corner of the milk crate but that didn’t seem to worry him as he lay on the floor.

  She looked at him, her mind filled with hate. Was it him she hated most, or herself? She didn’t even know any more, but her loathing for that bastard was almost limitless. If only she could walk away.

  But she couldn’t. How many times had she almost walked out of the door of this miserable flat in this miserable tower block, only to find herself pulled back in by the certain knowledge that she couldn’t survive more than a day without the hits that her so-called boyfriend provided her with.

  She snorted. Boyfriend. He was twenty years older than her. Scumbag.

  She reached out with trembling fingers for the remaining syringe. There was no way she could resist it. Crawling over to where the man lay, she unstrapped his leather belt and wrapped it round her own arm. She spat in his face – her one, pointless act of rebellion.

  The inside of her arm was bruised, the veins collapsed – it took a minute or two for her to coax a bulge out of them. But as soon as she did, she slid the needle into her flesh and squeezed the syringe.

  Within seconds, she felt all her anxieties melt away, like snow in the sunshine. A smile spread across her face as she too lay back on the floor.

  It was only in a tiny corner of her mind that she realised something was different. That there was a sensation she neither recognised nor wanted. A nausea that seemed to paralyse her limbs and numb her brain.

  And even through the calming effect of the opiate she knew that something was very, very wrong just before she passed out.

  They lay on the floor. To look at them, you’d think they were dead. Maybe they were. Certainly they didn’t hear the television that still chattered in the corner of the room and filled it with its glow now that the light outside was failing.