Conspiracy

by Adrian Wills

  Dobson put a single round between the man’s eyes, dropping him like a stone.

  ‘Shit, where did he come from?’ said Fletcher, sidling up to the window.

  In the courtyard below, the gate was wide open, and hordes of men were pouring in from the street, hollering and whooping in a frenzy of excitement. A barrage from Okeke’s Minimi sent them scattering like cockroaches, but a few seconds later they came back in greater numbers and determination.

  ‘What do you see?’ Dobson asked.

  ‘Keep a close eye out, and don’t let anyone get in.’

  The numbers outside were a concern, but the patrol still held the advantage barricaded inside the building with good angles of fire. Even the RPGs were pretty ineffective against the solid brickwork.

  Van Dijk wandered into the room as casually as if he was taking a stroll along Southend Pier.

  ‘Where the fuck did you go?’ asked Dobson.

  ‘I needed a piss.’

  Dobson rolled his eyes. Van Dijk took up a position on the other side of the bed, covering the angles Dobson couldn’t make.

  ‘How’re you doing for rounds?’

  ‘Seventy,’ said Van Dijk, settling on one knee.

  ‘Remember, single shots. We don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck here.’ Fletcher tossed them three magazines each. Then grabbed a frag grenade from his bag, pulled the pin and tossed it through the window. He ducked behind the bed, counted to three and waited for the bang. The grenade exploded in the courtyard with an ear-splitting blast that was followed by screams and a rising pall of smoke.

  ‘Keep your eyes open and stay alert,’ he said, as he left the room.

  He made it halfway down the stairs before Stone skidded to a halt in the hallway. ‘Sergeant, you need to come and see this,’ he said, the words rattling out of his mouth.

  ‘Slow down. What’s up?’

  ‘Come on, hurry.’

  Fletcher followed him down the hallway, glancing briefly at Hopkins who was now fighting a one-man battle at the back door where a handful of insurgents were trying to force their way inside. Every time they shoved open the door, Hopkins fired two shots and kicked it shut again.

  In the room at the front of the house, Okeke had mounted the Minimi on a coffee table in the shadows, mowing down anyone who attempted to reach the door. He was surrounded by spent brass shells.

  ‘Good work, Tony,’ said Fletcher, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Stay vigilant. The QRF’s on its way.’

  Stone led the way down a staircase and through a roughly hewn wooden door into a cool cellar with rendered walls and a bare earth floor compacted and worn smooth with age. A single electric bulb hung from the ceiling and cast a harsh light over the family huddled in a corner next to a freestanding pine cupboard. Fletcher’s eye was drawn to a rack of metal shelves against the back wall, laden with yellow oil cans.

  ‘Are you ready for this?’ said Stone. He threw open the cupboard doors and stood back to let Fletcher see the pile of AK-47 assault rifles.

  ‘It’s a fucking armoury,’ said Fletcher, genuinely taken aback by the discovery.

  ‘Enough guns to arm half the street,’ said Stone, looking pleased with himself.

  Fletcher slung his rifle over his shoulder and picked out one of the Russian guns, the weapon of choice for every self-respecting terrorist, Jihadi and freedom fighter across the world. He turned it over in his hands, examining it like an antiques’ expert handling a long, lost heirloom.

  ‘There’s ammo too.’ Stone reached for a cardboard box from a high shelf. It was packed with distinctively curved magazines.

  ‘I guess we just found the local arms’ dealer.’

  ‘That’s not all.’ Stone darted across the room towards a workbench cluttered with coils of wire and the guts of cheap mobile phones. He ducked under the bench, lifted a hessian curtain and pulled out a heavy, plastic box filled with rusty, conical-shaped scraps of metal. Stone picked one out and held it up to the light.

  ‘Mortar shells?’ asked Fletcher.

  ‘It’s okay. They’re all empty. The explosives have been removed.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Fletcher, the realisation dawning on him. ‘What’s in the oil cans?’

  Stone grabbed one of the yellow canisters from the shelves at the back and unscrewed the cap. He sniffed the contents and recoiled. ‘Smells like diesel,’ he said.

  Fletcher raised his rifle and aimed at the family, who’d been watching wide-eyed. ‘And I bet that’s fertiliser in those bags in the corner.’

  Stone followed Fletcher’s gaze to a pile of heavy-duty plastic bags. He pulled one open and nodded.

  ‘You’d better go and get the captain,’ said Fletcher. ‘He’s going to want to see this.’

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The captain’s eyes narrowed as he picked up an old Chinese mobile phone from the workbench and noticed the box of empty mortar shells by his feet. ‘A bomb factory?’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ said Fletcher. ‘Looks like a reasonably sophisticated operation too.’

  ‘There’s assault rifles,’ said Stone, indicating to the stack of AK-47s in the cupboard.

  The captain stared across the room in disbelief, his gaze wandering from the cupboard to the family huddled tightly in the corner, looking terrified.

  The dangers of improvised roadside explosive devices had been drilled into the soldiers from the day they’d arrived in Iraq. But finding a way to cut off their supply had proved almost impossible. Plenty of guys had been killed already. Others had lost legs and arms or suffered terrible shrapnel wounds. Pelvic injuries were common, and it was clear many soldiers would need major reconstructive surgery if they were ever going to have kids, let alone piss again.

  ‘There’s plenty of ammo too.’ Stone had taken a magazine from the box in the cupboard and clipped it into one of the rifles. He loaded a round into the chamber, the sound of the slide snapping back echoing off the walls.

  ‘All right, put it back,’ said Fletcher.

  Stone raised the rifle to his shoulder and aimed at the bombmaker and his family. He pretended to pull the trigger.

  ‘I told you to put it down,’ Fletcher snapped.

  Stone shrugged. As he lowered the gun and set it against the bags of fertiliser, the bombmaker lunged at Fletcher, dropping to his knees with his hands pressed together in supplication. ‘Please, please,’ he said in heavily accented English.

  The captain stepped across the room and pressed the barrel of his Browning against the man’s forehead. ‘Shut the fuck up,’ he said, his jaw tightening. ‘Now what have you been up to down here with your dirty little bombs and your cupboard full of guns?’

  The man began to weep, making an unholy noise that seemed to rise from the pit of his stomach. ‘Sorry, Sir. Sorry, Sir,’ he repeated over and over.

  The captain pressed the gun harder against the man’s skull. ‘You should have been fighting Saddam, you dumb fuck. We came here to save you. This,’ he said, pointing to the workbench with his free hand, ‘is totally fucked up.’

  ‘We should take them back for questioning,’ said Fletcher.

  ‘Questioning?’ The captain raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘We’re surrounded by a mob of gunmen who want to string us all up by our bollocks, and you want to take him into custody?’

  ‘You can’t shoot him. That would be . . . barbaric.’

  ‘So’s leaving bombs on the side of the road to kill soldiers.’

  ‘I know, but —’

  ‘But nothing.’

  The man’s wife shrieked, her face wrinkled and crumpled in agony, triggering her young sons to yowl like frightened puppies as they clawed at the folds of her abaya. Only the young girl remained quiet, silently watching the scene unfold through dark eyes framed by thick lashes. She hadn’t so much as whimpered. Probably in shock, thought Fletcher. Poor kid. He felt bad for her. But his sympathy was short-lived. Without taking her eyes off the c
aptain, she stooped and whispered in her brother’s ear. Fletcher had no idea what she said, but her words had an instant effect. The boy stopped crying and wiped his tears away with the back of his hand. A second later, he ripped away from his mother and sprinted for the stairs.

  ‘Stop him!’ yelled the captain, as the boy vanished out of the room like a rat up a pipe.

  Stone chased after him while the girl met the captain’s hard stare with a defiance that belied her age. Stone returned dragging the boy by his arm. He threw him roughly towards the captain and took up a sentry position at the bottom of the stairs with his rifle in both hands.

  ‘You little runt,’ the captain sneered, snatching the boy by his hair. ‘Try that again and I’ll kill your father, and then you can watch the rest of your family die. How would you like that?’

  The girl kicked the captain hard on his shin, above the top of his boot, forcing him to drop the boy. ‘You little bitch.’ The captain raised his hand and struck her hard across the cheek, knocking her off her feet.

  As she fell, he raised his Browning and in the flutter of a heartbeat fired a single shot. The sound was deafening. The girl’s body went limp, and a shower of blood splattered her mother’s face and the wall behind.

  For a brief moment, time seemed to freeze. Nobody moved as the girl’s body hit the floor. Then her father went for the loaded AK-47 Stone had left resting against the bags of fertiliser. His finger was already on the trigger, his body turning towards the captain as Fletcher raised his own rifle. In that split second, Fletcher noticed the most mundane details; the hatred and sadness in the man’s eyes, a ragged brown scar on his cheek, and a button missing on his dishdash. He saw a vein pulse on his forehead and the sweat patches under his arms. He watched it all in slow motion, every detail lucidly clear. He didn’t even have to think about where he was shooting. He instinctively aimed for the sweet spot between the man’s collar bone and his sternum where he was sure to hit a whole load of important internal organs, and an easier shot than going for the head which was smaller and prone to move.

  The rifle kicked in his hands as an ear-splitting shot rang out, and for a moment Fletcher thought he saw the bullet expelled from the barrel at over a thousand miles an hour.

  By then it was too late to save the boy. Unseen by Fletcher, he’d thrown himself across the room seeking out his father’s protection, a tiny figure with a shock of black hair and blackened, bare feet, who should have had his whole life ahead of him. The bullet tore through his shoulder blade, ripping an almost insignificant hole in his fuchsia-pink t-shirt. As he stumbled and fell, his father caught him with his free hand.

  A second bullet, from Stone’s rifle, fired a fraction of a second later, whistled across the cellar and demolished half of the man’s face. His wife screamed. Fletcher’s ears buzzed. And no one moved, until Van Dijk appeared at the bottom of the stairs with his mouth gaping open and his gaze darting from the body of the young girl lying wide-eyed on the floor, to the boy with a crimson stain spreading across his back, and his father slumped against the shelves with a gory mess where his face should have been.

  ‘What is it?’ the captain snapped.

  Van Dijk jerked to attention. ‘I think I can hear the Challengers,’ he said, swallowing hard.

  ‘Right,’ said the captain, turning to Fletcher. ‘You’d better get this place cleaned up and get the men together.’ The air was heavy with the smell of cordite and blood. Fletcher’s ears were still ringing. ‘And make sure you get rid of the bodies.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Use your initiative and hurry up unless you fancy some jail time and a dishonourable discharge.’

  Fletcher stared in despair at the horrific scene, and at the woman kneeling over the body of her dead daughter, rocking back and forth on her haunches, sobbing. His mind was a whirl, and his stomach cramping as if he might vomit. The captain was right. If anyone found out what they’d done, they’d be finished. The court martial would be the least of his worries. They stood to lose everything.

  ‘Get Hopkins down here now!’ he ordered Van Dijk.

  The soldier scurried away, thudding up the stairs.

  ‘What about them?’ Fletcher nodded at the woman, still hunched over her dead daughter and with her surviving son tucked under her arm.

  ‘They’re witnesses,’ said the captain. ‘They saw everything that happened. You’ll have to kill them too.’

  Chapter Forty-Five

  ‘Kill them?’ Fletcher stared at the captain, imagining he must have misheard.

  ‘You killed her son. Her husband and daughter are dead. You’ll be doing her a favour.’

  ‘Are you insane?’ Bile burned Fletcher’s throat. He swallowed it back down.

  ‘Watch your mouth. I’m trying to help you.’

  ‘You’re asking me to shoot a woman and her child.’

  ‘It’s them or us. It’s up to you.’

  ‘But murder?’

  The captain’s face darkened. ‘This is a war, and every war has casualties. You didn’t mean to shoot the boy. I get that. But how do you think it’s going to look at a court martial? You’re guilty no matter how you present the facts. We all are.’

  ‘He had a loaded rifle. He was going to shoot you. The boy ran in the way!’

  ‘Your word against hers.’ The captain cocked his head in the direction of the wailing woman, cradling her daughter’s dead body.

  ‘Shit, what happened?’ Kyle Hopkins sucked in a breath as he bounded into the room.

  ‘Summary justice,’ said the captain.

  ‘Things got out of hand,’ said Fletcher. ‘You know a bit about explosives, don’t you?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Enough to be able to destroy the building? We think they were producing IEDs in here. We can’t risk letting any of this stuff get into the wrong hands. There’s plenty of diesel and a few bags of fertiliser. You’ll find whatever else you need on the workbench.’

  Hopkins surveyed the room and nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, should be possible.’

  ‘Right, get on with it then,’ said the captain. ‘Fletcher, give me the phone. I’ll liaise with the QRF while you finish up. And remember, no loose ends.’

  Fletcher watched him walk casually out of the basement and listened to his boots climb the stairs. ‘Stone, go and let the others know the QRF is here. I want them ready to ship out in five.’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ said Stone, nodding as he charged for the stairs.

  ‘Not you, Dutch,’ said Fletcher as Van Dijk turned to follow him.

  ‘Sir?’

  Fletcher bit his lip so hard he tasted blood in his mouth. He hated giving the order, but there was no other way, and time was ticking. The captain was right. The only way to guarantee the patrol’s silence was to make every soldier complicit. They couldn’t afford any loose tongues.

  ‘Shoot the woman,’ said Fletcher.

  A weak smile crept across van Dijk’s face, as if he thought Fletcher was pranking him. ‘Sir?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Dutch, we don’t have all day. Take your rifle and fucking shoot her!’

  Van Dijk’s smile fell away. ‘Why?’

  ‘Are you questioning my orders?’

  ‘No, Sir. Course not.’

  ‘Look, her husband was a bomb-maker. He’s responsible for the deaths of God knows how many soldiers. He tried to shoot the captain. But she’s not going to see it that way. Do you understand? She’ll tell anyone who listens that we murdered her husband and her children. I don’t like it any more than you, but we have to get rid of the witnesses and destroy the evidence. She’s already lost most of her family. You’ll be putting her out of her misery anyway. Just do it quickly. At least you can give her that dignity.’

  Van Dijk had turned pale. ‘What about the boy?’ The child was clinging to his mother’s robes, his cheeks stained with tears.

  Fletcher grabbed him by the arm and pulled him sharply away. The woman shrieked in protest. ‘Do it now,’ he sa
id. ‘Quickly.’

  Van Dijk stared at the woman, and back at Fletcher, gripping his rifle tightly in both hands. ‘I don’t know if I can.’

  ‘Do it or I’ll let the mob outside have their way with you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just fucking shoot her, Dutch!’

  With shaking hands, van Dijk raised his rifle. Fletcher turned away and slid his hand over the boy’s eyes. A single shot reverberated off the walls, followed by the thud of the woman’s body hitting the ground.

  Fletcher threw up in the corner, his stomach cramping, disgusted with himself and what was still left to do. He took a deep breath, wiped his mouth and clapped van Dijk on the shoulder. ‘You did the right thing,’ he said, softening his tone. ‘Now go and join the others upstairs.’

  The soldier brushed wordlessly past Hopkins who was standing with his mouth open, his pupils full and black, focused on the pool of blood seeping into the mud floor from a gaping exit wound at the back of the woman’s head.

  ‘Snap out of it,’ said Fletcher. He grabbed a roll of black tape from the workbench. ‘Get the explosives rigged up down here. You’ve got about four minutes.’

  The boy kicked and screamed as Fletcher dragged him past his mother’s body and up the stairs. The poor kid had probably already guessed what was coming. If there was any other way, Fletcher would have snatched it with both hands, but they’d all gone way past the point of no return.

  In the room at the front of the house, Okeke was down to his last few rounds, the floor around him carpeted by spent casings. Stone was on one knee with his rifle aimed at the front door.

  ‘Here, hold onto him,’ said Fletcher, pushing the boy towards Stone and marching into the dining room to fetch one of the high-backed chairs. He set it against the wall and made the boy sit, avoiding looking him in the eye while he bound his limbs to the chair legs with the roll of tape.

  The boy had given up struggling as if he’d accepted his fate or was simply numb with shock. When Fletcher was done he sat motionless with tearful eyes as wide as saucers. An explosion rocked the foundations of the house. Not an RPG. Something bigger, more high-powered. Shells from the Challenger tanks. Their rescuers were near.