by Frank Coles
Three guns fired as one and the back end dropped down.
'Evacuate?' Andre said.
'On two, driver side.'
With the last of the car's momentum Andre swung them side-on to the bridge.
Savage emptied the mag at the ruined cars from the passenger window.
When Andre's gun fired on Savage's left he scooted backwards out the driver-side door, dragging extra ammo with him. He ran to the back wheel, maximum metal between him and the bullets, but stopped short when he saw Viktor on the back seat. The man sat perfectly still while bullets danced around him. Calm as a Hindu cow. A strange smile on his face.
Savage reloaded and stood up, laid down half a mag, taking the side windows out, then dragged Viktor onto the sand. Yelled, 'Fight back!' and ran to his position.
Their AK74s with shortened barrels were more lethal and accurate than the 47. Savage knew they could hold their position until their ammo ran out. But all it took was one bullet.
A shot whumped into the metal beside Savage's head.
Especially with someone in the desert taking pot shots at them. He turned and saw a shape amongst the grey polluted sand next to the road. Sniper?
A head and shoulders rose above the rim of a ditch.
Savage fired on automatic, three shots and the puppet's strings were cut. He took his spot at the back wheel and lost himself in the fight, then heard fast-steps behind.
He span, found his shot, held fire when he saw Viktor running full pelt away from them.
'What the-?'
Bullets hit the car. Savage slammed down into the wheel arch, caught his breath, and watched Viktor disappear along the road into the night.
Andre ran out of ammo and ducked to reload. The silence scared Savage more than being shot at.
He jabbed a finger at the retreating figure.
'Cock sucker,' Andre said.
Then, to the left of the open ground, Savage saw something worth seeing.
'Andre.'
'What?'
'How many mags you got?'
Andre fondled his chest rig.
'Four, half up the spout, you?'
'Three and a half. Look.' Savage pointed. 'Past the pit, between the buildings.'
'SUV,' he said.
'A way out.'
'Looks battered, might not work.'
'Might not have fuel.'
'Shit. It'll do. What about these guys?'
'Assault their position.'
'Nah man, fall back.'
'Yeah, but we keep trading shots, we run out, then their pals turn up with an RPG.'
'I feel you. Ready?'
'Fuck yeah,' Savage swapped a half mag for a full.
'I'd say get your game face on, but-'
'What?'
'You always pout like that before you let psycho jack out the box?' Andre laughed, even as bullets peppered the car, taking out the final pieces of glass left in the windows.
'Yeah, well, you just cover me,' Savage grinned, 'and try to keep up.'
Andre stood up and fired across the bonnet. Savage ran forward, straight line. Once he was clear of the vehicle he fired rapid controlled bursts, no gang-banger ejaculations of automatic fire allowed.
He heard Andre's shout and together their bullets ripped through the metal of the vehicles ahead.
Twenty meters out, Savage knelt down and reloaded. Gashing his hand open on the bolt. It didn't matter. Back in. Ten meters on Andre did the same. Good drills, Savage knew, but at that pace, they'd run empty as they reached the vehicles. He dropped to two shot bursts and sped up.
Savage jumped on to the bonnet of the car on the right. Two crouching men looked up, raised their weapons. Savage's bullets rip-pip-pipped into them, demolished features, and smashed their limp bodies to the sandy floor.
Andre's fire crossed Savage's path and the third man rolled back in an undignified heap. Savage remembered to breathe, glanced at the main street, then ran from one vehicle to the other and yanked Andre down by his shoulder.
'What?' Andre said.
'Men, guns, lots of.'
Discussion over, both men ran to the Nissan. Savage grabbed the head by the hair and reached in for the bag. Then they veered left towards the new vehicle.
Near the pit they saw movement, a flash of pink. Both men raised their guns, then lowered them.
A young girl, no more than ten or eleven, wailed and beat the ground.
They saw why. The body in the pit.
The shooter Savage had taken out was only a year or two older than the girl. A brother perhaps? The sight scraped its fingernails down the fleshy blackboard of Savage's conscience.
Killing men who were trying to kill you was one thing. He could rationalize that. But killing kids?
'Nothing we can do here,' Andre said. 'Keep on.'
The girl screamed at the two men, a mixture of fear and anger, then pointed at them as if they were demons come to take her to hell.
The two men walked past the pit, not running, a sullen respect for the dead.
The girl screamed louder, banshee wails turned to anger. She knelt down. When she stood back up she held the boy's gun in her hands. Savage saw her find the trigger.
Neither man reacted quickly enough. The bullets slammed into Andre's chest. The girl lost control of the gun, just for a moment, then swung it round on Savage.
He already had his gun up. 'No!'
She hesitated.
He held his trigger hand off the weapon where she could see it.
'La,' he said, no in Arabic. 'La,' again in a soft voice.
He took the gun with the other hand and lowered it. Only then did he realize he still held the decapitated head in his hand.
Her lips trembled but her eyes raged. Tears streamed down both cheeks. Her gun pointed at his feet.
'Min fadlak, la.'
Please, no.
But she wasn't looking at him, just the woman's dead eyes. When she raised the gun to his face, he drew his pistol, and took the only shot he could.
*
The vehicle rumbled down the road. Savage had one hand on Andre's chest, the other on the wheel, headlights out. With only the light of the Ramadan moon he had his foot down as much as he dared.
Andre's body armor had taken the bulk of the hit but the bullet impacts had split the skin open, caused internal bleeding, god knows what else. Savage had seen seven or eight minor wounds. He'd slapped gauze on and bundled Andre into the passenger seat.
The knife he'd used to start the ignition rattled in the key slot.
Savage didn't know how long it would take the men to start following them, or if they would. But if they made it twenty miles along this road they'd be out of the worst area and back to the outskirts of safety.
He'd switch vehicles at the next town in case someone recognized this one. After that it was another thirty miles plus to base.
Savage felt the skin prickle on the back of his neck, someone behind?
He checked the mirrors. Nothing.
But the sensation wouldn't go away. Sweat popped onto his skin, breathing became harder.
Someone on the back seat?
'Ridiculous,' he said, and looked behind. The woman's head had rolled on to one side and, if anywhere, looked out of the window. Dead eyes can't see, he knew that, there was no one there.
With his eyes back on the road he tried to relax.
The prickle crawled up his neck once more.
What have you done?
'Fuck, fuck, fuck.' His heart beat took off, his breath came in juddering gulps, panic seized him.
He scrabbled through the medkit with one hand. Found what he was looking for, proprananol. His own little addition. A beta-blocker for anxiety and high blood pressure. Two taken six hours after combat-stress could prevent lasting trauma.
He swallowed four.
What have you become?
He looked to his sleeping friend for help, Andre lay slumped in the corner.
The last time the guilty voices had pla
gued Savage he'd found a way to silence them, a penance: he'd come here. It had worked, until now.
He twisted quickly to the back seat, tried to catch the watcher unawares.
They hit a bump and the head bounced upright, the eyes half open, bloodshot, bruised and unseeing.
He turned back to the road.
Then checked again. The eyes still stared at nothing.
He clamped his hands tighter on the wheel.
Something brushed his shoulder. He made an animal noise.
I see you.
'Get out of my head woman,' he shouted.
Just my imagination, he told himself, and it's trying to scare the shit out of me.
On the road ahead a flash of something pale dropped off the road to the left. A welcome surge of adrenalin quashed the fear.
He thought about driving on, alone, then slowed to a stop where he'd seen the shape move and opened the window.
'Get in,' he said.
The shadows shifted and Viktor opened the door. He smiled when he saw the head. The door slammed.
Savage pulled away. Someone else could take the heat on the back seat.
Chapter Two
The dream woke Savage. He stared at the air con unit on the wall trying to remember. A woman's face, no body, a fall from height, a whisper in his ear.
'Why did you kill me?'
Just thinking of the voice made the hairs on his arms stand on end.
His eyes played over his room on base. Fresh carnage made it seem like the first time. It always did. Home for too long, he could leave everything behind in a moment. His only real needs cash, passport and a gun.
It also doubled as his office. In or out at any time of day or night, he didn't necessarily want anyone else knowing what he was up to. It had been used for interrogation, more than once. The echoes lingered.
A divider in the middle of the room kept his bunk and personal effects segregated. A bowl for washing in, some pictures on the walls. The colors in every picture: white on black with red somewhere in the background. The subject, always the same thing. The silhouette or shadow of a man seen from a distance. Different poses, positions and actions, but always the same faceless icon.
He didn't know why he liked it, somehow it just resonated.
On the other side was the office. Books and files on the wall, wide open desk, clean apart from computer screen and keyboard and the laptop plugged into them. Stacked paperwork, three folding chairs, lamp, an extra standing fan, for when the air-con packed in.
The dream had left him covered in icy sweat and upright on the bunk in the middle of the night, again. He waited a while longer for the guilty images to come.
Nothing happened. Beta-blockers, it seemed, worked.
If only he'd known about them years ago. Is that what woke him? The years gone by?
He padded over to the desk naked. The bag he'd taken from the dead journalist lay there. He pulled the blind and looked out over the rooftops. The cool night air tickled his skin, caressed aches and pains he hadn't noticed when he'd dragged Andre onto base.
He'd slammed into ex-Colonel Henry's meeting room and dropped the head on the desk with a cheery, 'Mission accomplished. One good man wounded, one scared man standing, permission to pass out, sir?' He'd fired off a mock salute and walked out again.
Henry, his mentor, would kick his arse. The other men around the table had been ex-military too, they liked authority, chain of command, all that.
Savage towed the line for years in his old life, did as he was told, been a good boy. And for what? Grief and heartache.
He'd had principles once.
Only six months after his arrival, a trophy video appeared on the company website. Bored operators with little experience shooting out civilian cars, killing Ahmed Bloggs to test their mettle, sometimes just for fun. The local police nearly started a minor war in retaliation.
Henry's hatchets came out. Savage one of them, Andre another. When they took the men's trigger fingers and gifted them to the local captain it never happened again. Not on this base.
Live by your principles Savage thought. Where the hell are they now?
He seized the journalist's bag, took out the journal and recorder, pressed 'play all files'.
The first recording was just the white noise of someone trying to figure out how to use the thing, followed by a woman's muffled voice.
He flipped open the journal. Every page thick with writing. Lots of different jobs. She'd been an immaculate reporter. Everything had a date, story name and location on it. The latest entry, July 14th, Press Con, 'Reconstruction Successes', US Army. Side interview: Abdul Dawood, Ministry of Information. Her clear soft voice came on the recording.
'This is Jess Price... sorry, is this on?' a beat, 'This is Jessica Price for Universal News, with me is Mohammad Al-Rashid, a member of the new reconstruction parliament who claims police units run by the Ministry of the Interior are operating sectarian death squads and re-opening secret prisons run by the former dictator. I'm here today to examine the evidence, Minister, please continue.'
'I've been investigating these reports for several months,' the minister said, 'and now I am forced to go public. The police threatened me with assassination if I continue.'
'Are these threats real?'
'Extremely,' he paused, swallowed, 'last week nine family members from out of town were turned away from my son's wedding. According to witness reports they were followed and executed-'
'Executed?'
'The flyers they left said: this is what happens to enemies of the administration, congratulations to the killers for their noble deed.'
The minister, a professional speaker, tempered his anger with perfect pronunciation.
'If you examine the films we shot secretly in the prisons, you will see hundreds of men held without trial. They are tortured, sexually abused and their families threatened with rape in front of their eyes-'
'Why?' she said.
'To secure confessions to crimes the men have never committed. If you had a choice between watching your family suffer and, well, what would you do Miss Price?'
If only he had the films.
He found the pen-drive in the bag, Arabic writing on its side 'itbat' if you said it out loud. Its meaning: evidence or proof.
Nice signpost. Savage the uber-investigator strikes again, bonus time if this had been in the mission brief.
He woke the computer and, while he waited, read further back through the journal entries. A load of support info, names of ministers supposed to be in charge of the death squads, their main officers, dates and times of specific acts.
Seemed the military contractors weren't the only ones taking a free and easy approach to reconstruction.
But one entry caught his eye for the second time, 'Maclays Banking Group???' It was circled, extra vigorously. The name Sutherland scribbled next to it in the margin. He flicked through the pages, found no other reference.
The pen-drive was the story's money-shot. All the evidence Price would need. Filmed interviews and footage of imprisoned Muslims of one sect - who held only slightly different beliefs to Muslims of another sect - the ones doing the killing. One believed a religious bloodline should be followed, the other believed its leaders should be drawn from those worthy to do it.
Any historian of royalty or democracy could spot the flaws in either argument Savage thought. Belief could be dangerous, each thought themselves right, surely they couldn't both be wrong?
Savage copied the video and audio files then opened his internet browser, waited for the dodgy connection, then re-routed all his traffic through his personal VPN - virtual private network. It meant he could surf without any of the corporate, military or religious monitoring programs knowing what he was doing.
Maclays. Their homepage said they had two clusters of business: global retail banking and investment banking and wealth management. Their latest quarterly reports showed record profits, while everyone else, worldwide, was down.
How? Apparently their overseas investment arm avoided suspect housing debts the rest of the world devoured and they remained, unlike everyone else, very flush and very sexy to any investor. Their current CEO was called Sutherland.
Using his superman-like powers of deduction Savage typed "Maclays" + "death squads" + "middle east shit-pit" into the search field. It spat back websites discussing the illuminati and the 'economic death squads' of most major banks - those who invested in companies that sold or manufactured arms. Not much else.
The bank did help process all the reconstruction dollars flooding through the region. And, of course, lots of wealth management. Reconstruction made people rich.
So, the internet didn't have all the answers. Who knew?
He'd have to look elsewhere. But it was the middle of the night and with sleep no longer an option he'd be climbing the walls before dawn.
He showered and dressed in his local garb then headed out past security.
*
A few doors hung open on the street, harsh fluorescent light spilled out as men prepared themselves for work.
He skirted rubble, hopped over high kerbs and sauntered past a bombed out building with a garden of scraggly date palms. Dead to any western eye fresh off the plane, but, after a while, even a hint of green was like walking through a corridor of French maples.
The café's sign was a brightly lit composite of food, coca cola and perfect surf. He pulled up a chair at one of the tables beneath the fantasy. Two tired men with big moustaches smoked shisha pipes, he looked again. Taxi drivers at the end of their shift.
Yusef, stuck his head out of the door and salaamed.
'Qahwa?' he said.
'Na'am,' Savage said back.
A few moments later Yusef returned, a big pot of the sweet grain-filled murk that Savage had grown to love, two small cups and water to rehydrate afterwards. Yusef sat down at the table and poured.
'Good morning, my friend,' Yusef said in English. 'How are you?'
The man's genuine warmth always brought a smile to Savage's face.
'I am well Yusef,' a small bow of the head, 'A little tired perhaps.'
'You work too much. Will you go home this year?'
Savage shook his head. The last holiday two years ago, to see his sister in England, had been disastrous. Life experiences had pushed them apart, they hadn't been able to connect. Instead of heading to the states to see his mother and brother, he cancelled and came straight back. He hadn't left since.
