by Mark Dawson
Pope paused and turned his head. Salim must have been watching and waiting for an opportunity, and this, evidently, was it. As soon as Pope had turned away from him, he set off in a dead sprint. Pope was looking at Isabella and, upon seeing the surprise on her face, turned back as Salim put distance between them. The storm had abated for a moment, and visibility was a little better. The sky was lightening, too, and it was possible for them to see Salim as he struggled through the sand away from them.
Pope slipped his arms out of the backpack and let it fall to the ground. “If I don’t come back, go north. You understand?”
Isabella shouted back that she did.
Pope turned away and sprinted after Salim.
Isabella went to Aqil. He looked dazed and confused, and as she was about to try to help him back to his feet, he doubled over and vomited on the sand. She grabbed onto him and tugged to stop him from falling over onto his side.
Concussion? Isabella had no idea, but she knew that there was no way he was going to be able to continue.
The wind picked up again. Isabella grabbed on to Aqil’s shoulder and raised her head, looking for Pope, but she realised with alarm that she couldn’t see him. The storm was easing, and visibility was better than it had been for hours, but there was still no sign of him. She knew in which direction Pope had set off, but that was it. She wondered whether she should shout. She decided that she had to risk it.
“Mr Pope!”
She strained her ears, but all she could hear was the wind.
“Pope!”
She closed her eyes, concentrating as hard as she could, but there was nothing. She opened her eyes again and looked down at Aqil. He looked as if he was asleep. She shook him, and then, when that failed to rouse him, she struck him with a light open-handed slap. His head lolled to the side, and his body, already a dead weight, slipped out of her grip and keeled over to the ground. Aqil wasn’t concussed. She didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t that.
“Mr Pope!” she called again. “Pope!”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Salim was faster than he looked, and Pope had to run hard to reel him in. The footing changed from hard sand to loose shale, and he had to concentrate on every step to avoid turning his ankle. He realised that he was climbing. He was tired, his reserves of energy almost depleted after his trek to al-Bab, but that was no excuse for his failing to see what lay ahead of him. He realised, too late, that he was climbing up to an escarpment. He reached the top, a narrow plateau that crumbled as he planted his boot in it, and then lost his balance and tumbled forward. He fell, landing flat on his face, the momentum enough to bring his legs up and over his head, flipping him so that now he was on his back. He started to roll, plunging down the suddenly steep incline with no way to stop himself. An avalanche of shale slid down with him, and sand got into his eyes and mouth and nostrils. He put up his hands to protect his head, felt a sharp pull as the sling that secured the M4 went taut and then an easing as it snapped and fell away. He rolled over and over, sideways now, his momentum gradually arrested as the incline levelled out. He rolled forward and bumped up against a shoulder of bedrock.
Salim must have fallen down the slope, too. He was ten metres away, but he wasn’t moving. He was on his knees, his back to Pope, staring out into the desert at the single bright white light that was approaching them. The horizon was blurred, and it was difficult to distinguish between the ground and the quickly lightening sky, but as the light drew nearer, Pope heard the sound of an engine. It was a muffled whine, a purr rather than the usual roar of turboshaft engines, but he could see that it was a helicopter. It drew closer still, and he recognised it: an AgustaWestland AQ159 Wildcat.
Salim rushed ahead, waving his arms and yelling at the top of his lungs.
Pope instinctively brought his hand up, reaching for a rifle that was no longer there. He swivelled quickly, looking back up the slope of loose shale, and saw the M4 halfway up it. He was about to stand, but something told him that he shouldn’t. Instead, he pressed himself up against the exposed bedrock so that he could hide behind it.
He peered over the top of the slip face. Salim was still waving his hands, and the pilot had evidently seen him, because the chopper was descending. The rotors kicked up a storm of wash, a vortex that propelled yet more sand into the air, and the Wildcat landed in the middle of it, the wheels sinking into the sand and shale as they touched down. The engine did not power down, the unusual muffled roar easier to hear now that it was close. The new day’s sun sparkled on the black gloss of the fuselage.
Salim started to yell. He must have reached the obvious conclusion: the insurgency didn’t fly smart new helicopters like this, so it must, therefore, be friendly. It was a reasonable supposition to draw, but still Pope stayed almost all the way down below the line of the bedrock. He watched as the door in the side of the fuselage was pulled all the way back and four men, dressed in desert camouflage, dropped down. They were all armed: two of them had FN Minimis and the other two had SA80 assault rifles.
Salim took a step towards them.
One of the men at the front of the group raised his rifle and aimed it at Salim.
Oh shit.
The bullets hit Salim before Pope heard the rattle of their discharge.
Salim fell back, landing flat on his back. The first man stepped up until he was standing over him, aimed down, and fired two more times.
And the second man looked out over the desert.
Toward the escarpment.
Right at Pope.
He had only been glimpsing over the top of the bedrock, with surely only very little of him visible, but now, as he pressed himself down on his belly, he found that he was holding his breath.
More gunfire.
Pope glanced up just as the top of the rocky shoulder exploded in a shower of fine stone chips.
He heard the reports from the rifle: crack, crack, crack.
Another impact, frighteningly close, and then another.
He was penned in. He looked up. It was three or four metres up the slope to the plateau from where he was, and the shale was soft and unstable. He could scale it, get up to the plateau and get out of range, but not quickly enough. And while he tried, he would be an easy target. The men who had just executed Salim would be able to aim and pick him off at their leisure.
He couldn’t fight back either. His own rifle was stuck halfway up the slope. He could get to it a lot more quickly than he could get to the top, but he would still be vulnerable. He didn’t think it would work, but he didn’t have many other options. He certainly couldn’t stay where he was. The folly of that particular course of action was reinforced as a round crashed into the shale behind his head, sending a little avalanche down onto him.
He crawled along the trench, changing positions, and then risked a look over the top of the rock.
Two of the men had advanced. Their faces were covered by scarves. One of them had a Minimi and the other had an SA80. The men saw Pope and fired again. Pope ducked beneath the lip of the rock as the rounds crashed all around him, a dozen little detonations of sand and stone cast into the air.
“Come out, Pope,” a voice shouted up to him over the whine of the helicopter’s engine.
“Come up here and get me.”
“There’s four of us. What are you going to do?”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Isabella saw the helicopter as it raced in from the horizon. It started as a small black speck, so low to the ground that it was almost indistinguishable. She heard the engines and the whup-whup-whup of the rotors, and she knew she had to see what it was. Aqil was unconscious now, and she didn’t want to leave him, but she wouldn’t be far away. She used Pope’s backpack as a bolster, resting Aqil’s head on it. She laid her hand on the receiver of the AK that was attached to the sling around her neck and jogged ahead.
She reached the lip of the plateau and realised why she had lost sight of Pope; he was at the bottom, sheltering behind a
n outcrop of rock that was before an undulating sea of sand dunes that gradually flattened out.
She saw Pope’s rifle several metres away from him.
She saw Salim waving his arms as the chopper descended, losing him within the eddies of sand that were disturbed by the downdraft.
She looked down at the helicopter and she realised that they were going to be saved.
Pope must have called for the cavalry, and here they were.
She saw the door open and the men emerge from inside the helicopter.
Isabella was about to start down the slope herself when one of the men raised his weapon and shot Salim at close range. She dropped to her belly and backed away from the edge, staying just close enough to see over it as the man aimed downward and fired into Salim’s body.
She glanced down at Pope pressed down on his belly. She bit her lip as one of the men raised his weapon, aimed and fired a volley that landed very close to where Pope was hiding. The other men followed his example and the desert rang with the sound of their gunfire.
None of them had seen her; she watched as one of the men turned back to the helicopter and held up a gloved fist: the signal that he wanted the helicopter to stay where it was.
Two of them advanced under the cover of the pair in the rear. They were closing the distance between themselves and Pope. She looked down and saw that Pope was on the move, too, crawling to his right. She looked across to his discarded rifle and realised that that must be what he was trying to reach.
Pope looked up again, and the advancing men sprayed him with another volley of automatic gunfire.
Isabella put both hands on the AK, sliding the strap over her head so that she could lay it flat. She rested her cheek against the receiver, closed her left eye and lined up the iron sights.
Pope flattened himself to his belly as the soldiers fired, a barrage that studded the slope behind him. It stirred up another fall of pebbles and he was quickly covered by them. He tried to slither back again, but he was frozen to the spot by another barrage.
“Come out, Pope.”
“I don’t think so,” he called back. “Why don’t you come up here? Let’s talk about it.”
“I’m going to count to five. And then I’m going to throw a grenade.”
He heard the clatter of automatic gunfire again, but this time it was coming from above rather than from below him. He looked up to the top of the slope and saw muzzle flash.
Isabella.
He put his head up out of his fragile cover and saw the two men running back toward the helicopter. They were in the open and vulnerable, and although she hadn’t hit either of them, she had bought him precious moments.
He had to take advantage of them.
He scrambled up the shale, his boots sliding as he clambered up to his M4. He grabbed the rifle, turned around onto his back, and started to slide back down the dune again. He dug his boots into the pebbles to slow his descent and aimed. The first three shots went high, but the soldiers heard them and ran harder.
The helicopter’s engines grew louder and the rotors began to spin more and more quickly. It started to lift, the wheels emerging from the sand, a vortex of sand quickly obscuring it.
Isabella fired again.
The soldiers were sprinting now, running full pelt for the helicopter. Pope lowered his aim and fired again. This time, he was successful. A round hit the nearest soldier in the back. The man staggered ahead, dropped his Minimi, and fell onto his face.
The helicopter lifted up and into the air. The door was still open, and one of the men inside was reaching down. The second soldier dropped his rifle and leapt for the sill of the door. He grasped onto it and was pulled into the cabin.
Pope knew that they were still in terrible trouble. The Wildcat was equipped with a big Browning M3M, the .50-calibre machine gun mounted on a pintle in the open door. The pilot would simply ascend so that they had a few hundred feet of altitude, high enough to render Pope and Isabella’s small-arms fire ineffective, and then the gunner would pick them off with the Browning.
He could only have a few seconds before they opened fire. He craned his neck and looked back; the helicopter was starting to turn.
“Isabella!” he yelled. “Get my pack.”
He saw her head above the line of the sand. She was aiming her AK at the helicopter, and he saw the discharge from the muzzle as she loosed off a burst. There was too much noise—the sound of the helicopter, the report of her rifle—he didn’t think that she had heard him.
“Get my pack!”
She stood and then stepped back, out of sight. Pope lost her.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The helicopter ascended quickly and rotated through ninety degrees so that the port side was facing Isabella and Pope. She saw the big machine gun. One of the soldiers had fitted himself behind it and was taking aim. Isabella swung around as the gun opened fire, the big .50-calibre rounds detonating metre-high explosions of sand as they carved a track toward Pope.
She ran. She had no idea whether the rounds had hit Pope or not, and there was no time to check. Her elevated position had protected her before, but now the cover it had afforded had been negated. If Pope had been hit, then she would be next.
The AK-47 was useless to her now. She threw it to the ground and sprinted as hard as she could.
The sound of the helicopter grew louder and louder. It seemed to be directly overhead. She expected to hear the roar of the machine gun again, to feel the sting of sand as the rounds chewed up the desert floor.
She gasped for breath.
Faster.
Faster.
Aqil was still slumped against the backpack. She slid down to the sand next to him. She had seen the tube that was fastened to the side of the pack and thought that she recognised it.
It was an unguided disposable 66mm rocket.
It was a little over two feet long and, as Isabella unclipped the carabiners that attached it to the backpack, she realised she had no idea how it was fired. Her mother had discussed them with her, and she remembered that it consisted of one tube inside another one. The inner tube contained the rocket. The tubes were pulled apart and the rocket was armed.
She struggled with it, pulling and twisting it, but nothing happened.
She glanced up and saw the helicopter, nose down, off to her right, swooping in her direction. She saw the gunner as he adjusted the .50-calibre machine gun.
Come on!
She twisted and yanked and still nothing happened.
The helicopter was fifteen metres above the desert and thirty metres to Isabella’s left.
“Isabella!”
Pope was running across the escarpment toward her.
“Give it to me!”
The pilot slowed to a hover.
She lobbed the launcher at him. He caught it, pressed down on a clip that she had missed and, with a loud click, the clasps that held the two tubes together were unfastened. The launcher extended and the sights popped up.
The gunner started to fire.
Pope swung the 66 around until it was resting on his right shoulder.
The fifty cal roared, louder than the engine and the rotors, and the desert floor exploded in a track of tiny impacts that aimed right for them both.
Pope pulled out the safety plug, put his eye to the rear peep sight, aimed and squeezed the rubberised trigger.
Whoof!
The round fired, the rocket launching it away on a fast upward diagonal track. It was too close for the fuse to arm, and instead of detonating, the missile punched a hole through the helicopter’s side window, exited through the roof and ploughed through the rotors. The pilot lost control, the helicopter rotating sharply. The .50 kept firing, but the rounds swerved away from them at the last moment. The helicopter jerked downwards, quickly losing lift, and crunched down onto the desert floor. But the impact ruptured the fuel tanks and there came a huge detonation. The aircraft was ripped apart by an explosion that quickly expanded, a fi
reball of oranges and reds that tore it to bits.
Isabella slumped down onto her back and stared up into the morning sky.
PART FOUR
Montepulciano
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Aqil was dead. Pope had examined him, but it was obvious that there was nothing to be done. He said it was probably a subarachnoid haemorrhage, internal bleeding that would have been caused when he banged his head during the crash. It would have explained his symptoms and his sudden collapse. He told her that there was nothing that they could have done for him out there in the desert; he would have needed surgery, and that would have been impossible.
Pope left her with the boy’s body as he went to frisk the dead men.
Isabella knew that Pope was right, but it didn’t make her feel any better about it.
There was no time to bury Aqil, and as they hurried north, away from the crashed helicopter, Isabella turned back to the south to see a wake of buzzards circling on the thermals high above.
They had left a feast for them down below.
The terrain became more mountainous as bedrock and shale replaced the sand.
Pope paused for a moment. “Hold on.”
He removed a satellite phone from his pocket and removed the rear cover. He took out the battery and a tiny circuit board.
Isabella watched him. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t trust my orders or the man who has been giving them to me. There’s too much going on here that contradicts what I’ve been told.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think Salim was set up. I was sent here to kill him. Well,” he corrected himself, “I came here to get you, but I had orders to kill him. The phone has a GPS receiver in it. I have a bad feeling that that helicopter found us because they used the tracker to find me. We got lucky. I don’t really want to encourage a visit from a drone.”
“Why would Salim be set up?”
“I have a few ideas about that,” Pope said without elaborating. He put the pieces of the phone into his pocket and zipped it up. “Come on. We need to get out of sight.”
