Crossfire

by Andy McNab

  I slipped behind one of the Russian wrecks and changed. When the Gunga Din kit was back in the Bergen, I prepared the weapon.

  A magazine was already loaded into the pistol grip. I pulled back on the cocking handle and the working parts stayed to the rear as I slid it back to the forward position. There would now be a round poking up from the magazine, ready to be snatched when I squeezed the trigger and the bolt went forward. I hoped I wouldn't have to use it. The ejection system was so poorly designed that, with the working parts held to the rear, the ejector-opening became a fucking big hole just waiting to suck in all kinds of shit and give you a stoppage.

  I shoved the hotel torch into the front pocket of my trousers and a spare mag into each of the back ones. I felt in my sock for the cash and the Stevens passport. Finally I shouldered the Bergen, pulling the waist strap tight, and held the weapon vertically at my side to hide its silhouette. After a couple of jumps to check for noise, I started back downhill.

  My mind was zoned in. The only thing in my head now was getting inside the target. And after that, nothing would matter but getting Dom out.

  73

  The target house, still in darkness, loomed on my left. Down in the valley, most of the Gandamack district was still plunged into darkness. The only ambient light up here came from the stars.

  I walked carefully up to the wagon, bent down and touched its exhaust. It was cooler than the rocks after a day in the sun. A couple more dogs got pissed off with each other further up the hill.

  I picked my way along the pathway towards the rear, lifting and lowering my feet in a slow-motion moon walk. I didn't want this to go noisy. There could be half a platoon inside for all I knew.

  The back door was dead centre, like the front, with a window each side of it and three across the floor above. I stopped at the first window. It was boarded on the inside by what looked like scaffold planks. Whoever was in here was very determined to keep the rest of the world outside.

  A key turned in the door.

  I dropped to my knees and brought the weapon up, pushed the safety to its first click and squeezed my hand hard against the pistol-grip safety.

  The door creaked open. Torchlight flooded out into the yard.

  A shout came from deep inside the house. 'Shut that fucking door – keep the heat in, will ya?' The voice was American, and not sober.

  The door opened wider. 'Yeah, yeah, fucking yeah.' This one spoke a lot like me. Joey and I were about to be introduced.

  I lowered the Mini-Ero and laid it on the ground, then closed my hand round a rock.

  A figure emerged, silhouetted in his own torchlight. His left hand was still on the door handle and he had something clutched in the right.

  I jumped to my feet and grabbed whatever I could of him as the door slammed shut. I brought the rock down as hard and fast as I could. It hit the top of Joey's head with a dull crack. He groaned and I pulled him towards me, trying to control his fall. I toppled backwards with him on top of me, my Bergen taking the brunt. A long, matted beard covered my face and his blood trickled into my ear.

  Joey was fucked and drowsy but not completely unconscious. A roll of toilet paper had dropped from his hand and flapped in the wind like a kite tail.

  He groaned again as he started to come round. I smashed the rock against the back of his skull, rolled him over and brought it down a couple more times for good measure. The wind carried the sound of his death up the hill.

  I patted him for keys, sat back and wiped his blood from my face and ear, then retrieved the Mini-Ero. I took out my torch, stepped back to the door.

  Two deep breaths and I eased it open, weapon in my right hand, web pushing against the safety grip, finger on the trigger.

  Immediately I smelt cannabis. I brought the torch up to the weapon and gripped it against the barrel so I'd be able to see what I was firing at.

  The American kicked off the moment I moved inside. 'Turn that fucking light off, will ya?'

  74

  The room took up maybe two-thirds of the ground floor. There was a concrete staircase to the right.

  I stayed behind the torch. Four sleeping-bags lay on roll mats. Three were occupied. A ginger head stuck out of one. I jerked the beam in his direction and he screwed up his eyes. Noah was not pleased. It really wasn't his night. 'Jesus, will you turn that fucking thing off?' A joint dangled from his lips as he spoke.

  The other two bodies looked like maggots and were totally out of it. Scattered around them were syringes, spoons, all the rest of the paraphernalia, and a variety of weapons.

  I could have just fired. But I needed to find out if Dom was there and get him out. I'd only deal with these guys if I had to. It would bring ISAF down like a ton of bricks – and, besides, I might lose.

  I pushed the door closed with my foot. There was another near the staircase, leading to the remaining third of the ground floor. I headed towards it.

  Noah's joint glowed in the darkness.

  'Hey, Joey, man! Get me a Mars, will you?'

  It was only a makeshift kitchen. No sink or oven, just some bottled water on a table next to a couple of butane gas rings, and a pile of dirty pots. Another table boasted a week's worth of half-eaten food, liberally punctured with dog ends, on a couple of haphazard piles of metal plates.

  The torchbeam hit on a box of Mars bars.

  'You picking the fucking cocoa beans, man?' Noah definitely had the munchies.

  A reply of sorts came from upstairs. Moans and murmurs of pain. A stifled sob.

  'Shut the fuck up, cunts, or it'll be beasty-beasty time again,' Noah yelled, then chuckled to himself.

  I grabbed a Mars bar and stepped back into the room. I threw it to him, then swung the torch up the staircase.

  The wrapper rustled. 'Yeah, go on, Joey. Strut your stuff, dude.'

  As he chuckled some more, I followed the torchlight up. The smell was terrible, a mixture of sweat and shit and stale cannabis.

  The beam illuminated a bare hallway with a door left and right. Another at the far end was heavily padlocked.

  A pool of water had seeped under the door to the left. I switched off the torch. There was no light from under any of them. I switched it back on.

  Weapon up, I stood in the puddle as I closed my other hand round the plastic handle. The moment it was ajar, I was hit by the stench of human shit.

  Two naked bodies hung by their feet from the ceiling. One was still alive, though every inch of her was cut and blistered. She was able to support some of her weight by pushing herself up on the back of a chair. She screwed up her eyes against the torchlight and whimpered softly. I didn't understand what she was saying, but I knew she was begging. As I took a step closer, she sounded like she was praying.

  Noah heard it, too. His laugh echoed round the building. ''Bout time that bitch learnt a little respect . . .'

  The other girl was way out of Basma's reach. She hung like a tongue-dangling carcass in a slaughterhouse. Her teenaged body was covered with black scorchmarks and red blisters. In places, her skin peeled.

  75

  A flick of the torch revealed butane bottles, gas rings, a kettle. The fuckers made them watch the water come to the boil knowing what was about to happen.

  I gave the live girl a slap. I had to make it sound like I'd come up here to carry on spreading the good news. Noah heard the scream and approved.

  I left the door open and headed to the one opposite. It opened, but there was nothing inside except a tea chest in the corner. That left the padlocked room.

  The keys hung from a nail punched into the doorframe. The reek of shit coming from the other side made me gag. I knew this wasn't going to be a good day out.

  The Yale turned and I pulled open the door. The torchlight swept across a huddle of maybe twenty girls, heads bowed, bodies naked, emaciated, bruised and cut. Some were so young they didn't even have pubic hair.

  The heads of the two nearest me were swollen from beatings. I pushed them aside. There
was no sign of Dom. I moved through the middle of them. All they could see was torchlight, and they were flapping big-time. This wasn't whore-conditioning, this was sadistic shit. These fucks were enjoying this. That was why they were here in-country. They could get away with it.

  I left the room and locked them back up for now. It had looked like a scene from a Nazi death camp, or the Idema pictures on the door at the Jock's. The guys hanging, burnt and whipped, the guys in the cupboard, the guy in the . . .

  The hanging girl was still whimpering as I ran past and into the empty room. I shone my light on the tea chest.

  Noah's laugh rolled up the stairs.

  I ripped the nail holding the hasp closed and lifted the lid. The body was big, and white, its skin bruised and battered. They must have jumped up and down on the poor fucker to get him into this thing.

  I leant closer. He was breathing.

  I put down the weapon and torch, grabbed a handful of matted, blood-soaked hair and pulled. There was a moan. I couldn't make out what he was saying, but it was definitely Dom.

  He rasped at me through swollen lips and gaps torn in his once perfect teeth. 'Please, please . . .' His eyes were so swollen they couldn't open.

  I tipped the chest gently on to its side and pulled him out. He was cramped into a ball and his joints had locked. He couldn't unfold. Blood and saliva poured from his mouth as his begging went into overdrive.

  It was Noah's kind of music.

  'Only a few more hours, dude – he's gonna make us fucking millionaires!'

  76

  I ran back, unpadlocked the other room and threw the door open. The girls cowered in the corner, each not wanting to be the one the torchlight picked out.

  'Go! Go! Get the fuck out!' I pointed the Mini-Ero at them, trying to get them sparked up.

  A couple of heads lifted and stared. I dragged them out by their hair. 'Go on! Get the fuck out!' I left the rest to it. They looked too scared to move, but they'd get the idea.

  I went back to Dom. He hadn't moved an inch. These fuckers hadn't any intention of releasing him, and he knew it.

  The hanging girl managed a scream. I ran to her room and grabbed the chair. She started pleading, wondering what the fuck new kind of pain was coming her way. I climbed on the chair and told her to shut the fuck up.

  'Yeah!' Noah liked to hear his mate Joey having fun.

  Fighting to keep control of myself, I yanked on the rope knot that secured her to the ceiling hook and tried to break her fall as best I could.

  She crawled across and ran her fingers over the dead girl's face. She wasn't going anywhere either.

  I stopped in the hallway as the first two girls from the room scrambled towards me. They froze in the torchlight like petrified rabbits and I hurried them towards the stairs.

  Dom hadn't moved. I leant down and put a hand on his shoulder. 'Come on, Fat Boy, come on. Dom, get up, we're moving.' I couldn't tell if he recognized the voice. It didn't matter either way. We could have a hug and a love-in later on, when he understood what was happening. I put my arm around him and took his weight.

  More naked bodies hobbled past us as I staggered towards the stairs.

  Noah had a sudden rush of blood. 'The bitches are getting away, man! Get the fucks, c'mon!'

  There was more movement at the bottom of the stairs as the other maggots stirred. 'What the fuck, Joey?'

  Dom's body began to unfold as naked, scared but now increasingly excited girls streamed past us to freedom.

  Noah was outside, hitting the ones he caught, shouting at others melting into the darkness. The other two were out of their bags and joining in. It wouldn't be long before they stumbled across the real Joey. It was going to get noisy.

  Weapon up, safety grip pushed in by the web of my right hand, I took my time going down the stairs.

  'What the fuck . . .?'

  They'd found him.

  I waited halfway down, torch up in my left hand and parallel with the barrel, ready to light up the targets.

  The first body stormed back in, shoving the girls aside to get to his maggot and weapon.

  I waited some more. I wanted the full set.

  The other two ran in. The moment they saw them, the girls still on the stairs below me were screaming. I thought my eardrums were about to explode.

  I wanted the fourth body, but the other two already had weapons and soon they would have light.

  I had to kick off now.

  I hit the torch button and caught them both in a tunnel of light.

  All I could do was stand my ground and fire, both eyes open, bringing the torch and weapon to bear on their centre mass.

  Double-tap.

  Double-tap.

  It was almost like a range day, and had to be. Otherwise I would make mistakes and die.

  Cordite filled my nostrils and the blast of the Mini-Ero filled my ears as I kept on firing into the killing area below me.

  A thick cloud of cordite now hung in the torchlight and there was no movement from the bodies. The two bearded fuckers lay at the bottom of the stairs. The black-haired one had died with a sneer on his face; the brown-haired one with a look of utter shock.

  I lowered the weapon. The remaining girls needed no second bidding to get the fuck out.

  I cleared the doorway and moved outside, but Noah had gone. He'd left the others to it.

  I had no time to lose. The Turks would be here soon and I wasn't going to waste time looking for the wagon keys only for them to follow me down the hill.

  I ran back upstairs to Dom and gripped his arms. 'Get up! Help me, Dom. I can't do this alone!'

  77

  'My legs . . .'

  He was trying, but not much of him was working yet.

  I got him as far as the top of the stairs and had to move down three or four so I could get my shoulder under him and lift.

  His feet bounced off each step as I went down. The torch lit the way, sweeping across two dead bodies and one very live one. Noah's massive frame filled the doorway.

  'Fucking asshole!'

  He ran at me.

  I tried to avoid him, but with Dom's weight on me it wasn't going to happen.

  He body-checked me. Dom slid off my shoulders as I stumbled over one of the dead and fell on to the concrete, syringe-strewn floor.

  Noah threw himself on top of me. He wasn't bothered about grabbing a weapon. He was going to tear me apart with his bare hands.

  'Asshole – fucking gonna die.'

  He sat up, his entire weight pressing on my chest. His hands covered my face, then moved to my neck. I kicked and bucked to try to dislodge him, but it was like being trapped under a car. The Bergen dug into my back.

  His huge fingers gripped my windpipe. I bucked again as he squeezed. I started to choke. My hands flew up to his wrists but I knew he was going to win.

  I jerked my head from side to side.

  'Fucking die.' His saliva sprayed across my face.