I got on the radio. ‘All callsigns, we are in the mens’ area and in the mix, do you copy.’
Behind me Maryam pulled out a butterfly knife and flicked it 360 degrees with an evil snipping sound.
We were blinking through the last round of incoming. Bang-Bang was wiping at a busted lip and a nick on her shoulder. Her arm was soaked dark with blood. ‘S’ok. Frags. I’ll live.’ She grinned through bloodied teeth and lit a cigarette, pulled on it and passed it to me. I took a drag.
A corpse came back to life and started moving next to us. One of the attackers. He was jabbering in some Eastern European language and hauling himself towards us through a pile of his own intestines and filth, like a snail. The guts didn’t look real, not even sausages. White sausages. His voice wound down. Russian? Polish? His hand grasped my left trainer. Bang-Bang shot him with a double-tap and he dropped to the carpet in a puff of dust. ‘No hablo.’
My headset bleeped. ‘Riz, it’s Sadie. There’s another wave and they’re coming through the... ’
‘Shit, that was close. They’re coming through the main junction.’
‘Well pin ‘em down Sadie! You’re it.’
‘OK. Inshallah. Firing.’
We sought proper cover and I switched ears. I’d gone deaf in one in spite of the earplugs. I pulled out my crumpled photocopy of the mosque floor plan and jabbed at it as we huddled round. ‘OK girls, listen in. At the moment we’re like lab rats rattling round the outside of a massacre. We’ve got the perimeter covered, but we need to clear INTO the building. And when we get there and hit that start-line, we use the overmatch weapons.’
‘Hooah.’
They nodded. Below us, the mosque complex shuddered. I continued. ‘The only way we’re going to do that properly is through shock and speed. Divide it into sections and burn through those sections. Coordinate via radio. Smoke ‘em out, gun ‘em down. With me? We’re going up and over and into the womens’ section.’
They nodded again. Bang-Bang checked her ammo pouches. ‘Shit. Last two mags. OK, op order from me. Better start scavenging. Take the enemies mags or weapons.’
My radio bleeped. ‘Sasha for Riz. Got cameras showing X-Rays regrouping downstairs. Four or five. They’re reloading their weapons.’
I hit the pressel. ‘Thanks Sasha. How you lot holding up?’
‘OK so far. Gonna go down and wipe them out over.’
‘No. Sasha, don’t-’
The radio went dead. Car alarms were honking uselessly outside. Bang-Bang took a quick glance through a window. ‘Where are all the cops that were outside?’
‘You know the Active Shooter guidelines, love. If it starts going kinetic, they have to fall back.’
‘So it’s just us?’
‘Yep. Again.’
She shrugged and checked her glasses. ‘By the way, drone sees an open fire exit on the eastern side. Might be a problem.’
Machine gun fire roared through the smoke and we ducked and scrabbled for kit and cover.
Suddenly Maryam took leave of her senses, flinging down her gun and boonie hat. ‘I’ll kill ‘em!’
Rounds exploded around us and the refugees screamed. We wrestled Maryam back under cover but she kicked us away and I grabbed her shirt. We blinked and spluttered in the cordite and dust. ‘Maryam, hold it. Let’s catch ‘em out. HOLD it.’ But it was no use. She broke free and went forward yelling curses and brandishing that butterfly knife. Mishy stood over me and let off a burst of green tracer which took out a row of bookshelves and a fire extinguisher. Her PKM jammed. ‘Stoppage!’
I leapt up to frantically work at un-kinking the belt. Incoming rounds flamed all around. Me and Mishy fell to the floor and I scrabbled at the linkeage. Got it. The belt was smoothed and working again. Bullets puffed plaster over our heads. Mishy nodded and jumped up and resumed firing the PKM, deafening us both with hellish flame.
I got Sadie on my headset. ‘Sadie. SADIE. What ya got?’
‘Buncha…CRACK , dead guys in’t road. CRACK. Wait one… squad MG setting up at junction. Engaging. CRACK.’
‘You OK?’
‘Sure. Got fifteen so far. MG squad is… wait one. Down. La ilaha illa l-Lah, Muhammadur rasulu l-Lah. CRACK- CRACK. Reloading. SNAP. Sixteen.’
I could hear screams. ‘Sadie who’s that?’
‘Opposition. Looks like an Infidel. I’m shooting chunks off him in scrap yard. Can’t say he’s happy about ‘bout it CRACK CRACK’
‘Sadie come back.’
‘Checking. Wait one. Target down. OK stand by, hold fire. We’ve got Duckie coming in on exit two. Unsighted... Jesus. I nearly shot her.’
Maryam had taken cover behind a pillar three metres in front of us and was breathing heavily. She was holding that knife in her right hand and her fingers were flexing and unflexing on the grip. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moving. I knew what she was saying to herself. “Allahu Akhbar. Allahu Akhbar. Allahu…”
More rounds kicked round our position and the man I’d recognised stood and started walking purposefully down the hall towards us, his weapon in the aim. To his right, an Asian-looking guy got to a crouch and fired a PPSH, covering his approach. We dropped back under the white flame of the gun. There was a shriek. I checked with the mirror. The man had marched past Maryam and she’d stuck him in the eye with the knife and was now hacking at him like he was meat as rounds pocked around her, flinging up dust.
‘One down. Good work Maryam.’ All I could hear was her cursing on our channel as she chopped away at him and his fading screams. ‘Use him as cover. Hear me?’ She dragged him into cover and plunged the knife into his throat. His body jerked and kicked out as the PPSH fire whacked around her.
The Asian man swore and pulled a pistol and emptied it wildly in our direction. The rounds went wild and thwacked into dead bodies. The pistol locked back and he started yelling and threw the weapon in our direction. It dropped to the carpet. Calamity drew a bead on him and shot him. He fell into a wall, bouncing and smearing blood. It was getting difficult to see through the smoke and dust.
Silence. I spoke up. ‘Anyone got any water? I’ve got a mouth like Gandhi’s flipflop here.’
Calamity looked at the water cooler. There was a bullet hole right through it. She shook her head.
There was a hammering on the fire exit next to us. What? We looked at the blue doors. I readied my AK and tapped the exit with it. ‘Who is it?’
‘Sonic the fucking Hedgehog, who d’you think it is? It’s me, Duckie!’ I pulled the doors open and she stumbled in. She was wearing an Infidels hoodie. ‘Gimme a gun, quick!’
Roadrunner handed her the last AK. ‘Cheers.’ We ran back for the kitchen area. Mishy stood and loosed off a burst from her PKM to cover the retreat and metal cases flew. We made cover and ran down the corridor to the kitchen door. It was locked or jammed shut. Calamity hefted her fireaxe and began swinging desperately above the handle until the door splintered and crashed inwards. Into…
‘Oh no.’
We pushed open the splintered remnants of the door and skidded into the kitchen area, into a charnel house. At the other end, the connecting doors were ajar to another slow-motion massacre, a circus of hellish noise and flashing light. The battle for the mosque was turning into a living thing, devouring the quick and the dead without favour.
‘Ya Allah. All the Birmingham lot are dead.’
Very dead. They lay scattered like porcelain figurines in the kitchen galley among smashed crockery. The tiles were slick with blood. Here was Kiki. Dead. She’d taken a round in the throat and was staring glassily at the wall.
‘I told them to stay in the camera room. I told them. Where’s Sasha?’
Bang-Bang knelt to check the pulse of the girl next to her, and slowly shook her head.
‘Holly. Get their ammo and radios.’
She gave a sharp nod. The laptop and its connection was still going in their midst and their Bowman radio was hissing vacantly in a mosaic of pattered blood
. I picked it up. Where was their leader? Had she gone forward too, infected with the battle mania that had swept over Maryam?
Bang-Bang looked at the laptop. ‘It’s still working. She did good, got good views. Take a look.’
The screen was divided into sections, each showing a camera feed. One showed the other side of the hall. Movement. I counted several men moving around. We all glanced at each other. Time to go.
We went forward to the doors and peered through the gap. Smoke. Deafening bangs. More flashes.
An AK muzzle came poking round a pillar followed by a soot-smeared face and a wave of a hand. Sasha was alive. I clicked my radio pressel. ‘Sasha come back, can you hear me?’ Nothing came back. Bang-Bang muttered in my ear ‘I think her radio’s busted or her earpiece ain’t in. What’s she saying?’
Sasha looked back at us and made hand signals, with some difficulty as she’d lost two fingertips and blood was pattering from her hand onto the blue carpet. I transcribed. “Seven…enemy…left hand side…”
I signalled back. “OK. Hold the line.” Bang-Bang threw a field dressing at her and it bounced short.
Behind us a body stirred. Bang-Bang ran back to check. ‘That’s Lana. She’s just alive. Weak pulse. Bad way doll.’
‘You stay with her. Try and get a line into her.’
‘I’ll try. Where are the packs? Line? She’s got a sucking chest wound. This is not good.’
The Bowman suddenly squawked into life. ‘Voodoo One-Three what is your status over?’
God. I dropped the Bowman to the bloodstreaked floor like it was a snake. I got on the secure radio. ‘Riz for Cope. Who’s Voodoo One-Three over?’
‘Not one of our callsigns. Be advised we’re gonna hit the main building in five minutes. Can you put out smoke or markers over.’
‘We haven’t got any smoke or markers left, Cope. Just concentrate on the perimeter, it’s too mixed up in here. And the shooters in the building are ours.’
‘Have that.’
I dialled back to our channel and looked around. Shit. My earpiece bleeped.
‘Sadie to Riz – a van just pulled in. Unsighted.’
‘Have that. Is it Regiment?’
‘Nah. Regiment are… ah I can see them forming up. Wrong side.’
Bang-Bang consulted her glasses and tapped my arm. ‘OK drone sees the van, and five or so X-Rays coming in round the back wall, sneaky like. They look like they’re in uniform. Three feet, two feet… Lana just died on me by the way. Sorry guys.’
There was the click-clack of a weapon action. ‘Ready.’
I changed radios again for Dinger and the Army guys.
‘Riz for Dinger. What are your lot doing over?’
‘Rolling start line Riz. Expect action in four minutes.’
‘Four…? We need to go.’
Bang-Bang looked at me. ‘Four minutes to clear this building?’
‘Yes! Let’s go!’
Sasha loosed off a burst from her AK and ran back to join us. She grinned shamefacedly at her missing fingertips. ‘Shot ‘em off myself, in the excitement.’ Bang-Bang tutted and started to bind them with a dressing. There was a commotion from behind us and we aimed our weapons. Maryam scrambled into the kitchen, spattered with blood, and gulped at the carnage on the floor. ‘What, the…?’
‘No time, Maryam. We’re running out of people. Follow us.’
‘Er… OK.’
We formed up and ran back out of the kitchen and left, down the corridor, down…and past the morgue. ‘Wait!’ I hit the door and looked in. A white-tiled room. Yep. Steel trays for the bodies. I motioned Bang-Bang in and we grabbed two. ‘Follow me!’ We ran for the ladies’ prayer area. Here was the sign in Urdu. Twenty feet…ten…we skidded to a halt and got ready.
45
We were at the main door of the ladies’ section. This was it. The shooting rattled and whacked off the walls. The whole level of the building was shaking under the onslaught of the enemy weapons, tearing into innocent men, women, children… I could hear the walls shuddering. Dust puffed from our side of the wall, almost in sympathy for the slaughter on the other side.
I looked back along the wall at my assault team. ‘Girls. Stand by, stand by…’
The AKs were stowed now, we had gone to Overmatch mode, cocking the array of brutal weapons my uncle had provided us and readying the barrel-mounted laser dazzlers.
Duckie spoke from the end of the line. ‘Guys. This isn’t gonna work. But I can make it work. Look.’
She whacked a photocopied map on the wall and jabbed her finger. ‘They know me. I’m an Infidel now. You get me? I’m wearing the clothes and I’ve been with them for the last week. You give me the best gun, I walk in from the right…’
We got her. I assented.‘Do it, Duckie.’
Duckie worked her way along the line, giving each girl a goodbye hug, and outlined her plan to the gang. We looked at each other and Fuzz handed her a spare Binatone and an Alliance Accelerator. A red 12-gauge shell was visible in the breech. Duckie ran to the second fire exit and snicked the bolt forward on the shotgun. ‘Switch to Channel 2, ready come back.’
‘Ready.’
Hell was coming. I breathed out.
Fuzz pulled her samurai sword from its sheath and then replaced it. Her hand flexed on the grip of her weapon.
Down the hall, Duckie pressed the button on the machine shotgun’s dazzler and it lit the ceiling in a luminous 50’s horror movie glare.
In my earpiece, the right-hand exits whacked open and I could hear Duckie. ‘Elllo, chicos. Say hello to my little friend.’
The channel exploded in gunfire and screams.
I jumped up and shouldered the doors in.
‘GO!’
We banged the main doors and rushed in, the killing weapons ready. The left door smacked a man right in the face and Bang-Bang slammed her steel tray bodily into him and fell on his prone figure. He fired his weapon spastically into the ceiling and plaster fell on us like snow as she struggled to knock him out with the end of the tray. She stood, kicked his gun away and brought the heavy steel tray down with all her force on his head with a shocking clang. He jerked and we swarmed over them and the tray and tried to form an ambush line among the dead bodies.
I yelled ‘Everyone standing is enemy LIGHT THEM!’ Deafening strobing fire opened up in the hall from all directions. I saw Duckie pouring shotgun rounds into the hall and killing everyone standing. It had worked. I sprawled to the floor. Calamity swung her axe and it took the struggling prone man’s head nearly clean off. She stumbled over Bang-Bang and fell into the spraying blood, desperately trying to wrench the axe out of the man’s head.
‘Contact right!’ I shouted as rounds pummelled into his body and whanged off the steel tray in a hail of white sparks. I returned fire wildly one-handed just to get heads down. We hugged the carpet behind the morgue trays and the walls of corpses as the rest of our gang piled through the exit and lit up their dazzlers, tracked…
Fuzz tripped over us and howled a command as shell cases flew. ‘Allahu Akhbaaar, get in the line!’ We scrambled to our feet and aimed. Time and space slowed and focused. Before us were two groups of cowering refugees and a fragmented line of enemy. The enemy were getting to their feet and turning, blinded by Duckie’s attack. They looked confused. Too slow. Fuzz elbowed me aside and tracked her dazzler onto their faces.
The glare of her AM-15’s dazzler hit the main Eastern European guy square in the eyes. He screamed and clapped his hands to his face, dropping his weapon, and then Fuzz squeezed the trigger and 60 rounds of .22 Rimfire chewed him as though he was wet, bloody tissue paper. The whole attack line opened up and the building shuddered and shook.
The AM-15s held 275 rounds, the Alliance Accelerators each held twenty rounds of 12-gauge, the PKM had over 50 rounds left. Above us Mishy yelled and stitched the PKM across the scattered remnants of enemy in a flail of luminous green tracer. The combined assault drove the enemy flopping down the hall lik
e flotsam, bits flying off them in the sick green glare of the dazzlers. Five seconds. The guns roared. Ten seconds. Body parts flew. An air conditioning unit shattered and fell in front of us. Fifteen seconds. The mags ran dry and whirred and snapped empty with loud clacks. Blue smoke curled from our weapon’s receivers.
The echoes faded. The refugees clung to the floor or behind the partition walls. My ears sang and I coughed on the cordite and the garlic stink of high explosive. There were three bullet holes in the top of the steel tray I was holding. To my right, Duckie gave a little wave and hashed our channel then dropped back into overwatch. We waved back. Fuzz drew her samurai sword and paused. She looked over the sprawled corpses next to us. One stirred. She walked over, chopped him down with one swift economical movement and sheathed the sword. His neck spumed blood and he died and she looked back and grinned at me.
I ran forward, tracking my rifle left and right, concentrating on the reflex sight. CQB sight. Focus on the inverted -
A man struggled up, raising his arms. I drew a bead on him and he fell back down. A local refugee. Christ that was close. A silence dropped on the building. Mishy and Duckie had disappeared. Where were they? My earpiece squalled. Fuzz racked the bolt back on her AK.
My earpiece bleeped.
‘Sadie for Riz, movement outside, watch your left!’
The loose fire exits opened and a bunch of police and CSOs walked in, laughing. Except they weren’t police or CSOs and they were carrying…
They stopped laughing.
‘Contact right, freeze you mother-’ yelled Fuzz and then opened up with her AK anyway in a spall of yellow flame. They walked into the last of our ammo and died and dropped, shocked. To our left there was a commotion as a knot of enemy took advantage to make a break from behind their barricade of piled bodies. One fell and howled as a shot took him in the leg. Rounds whacked off the door frame as four ran for it into the sunlight outside. Missed ‘em. I looked back. Who was who?
More men surrendering. In long coats. Shouting in a strange language. I raised my AK to shoulder height. I looked left and right. No-one knew what to do.
Locked and Loaded: A Riz Sabir Thriller Omnibus Page 35