‘I had him, had the target.’
‘And one of his detail, in the window seat. You had him. You had fuck-all that was important.’
It might have been the first time Rat had ever heard such talk, belittling him.
‘I know what I did. I had a zero on him, took him down.’
‘A nurse, a middle-aged woman, and a gook with an AK. That’s what you had. I bring you all this way, have to listen to your superior rubbish, and you screwed it big. I could accept it from a man with a quarter of your arrogance, but not from you. We hike in here, we go this far, and you failed when it mattered. All the talk meant nothing.’
Rat turned his head away, gulping, then looked for leverage. He hissed, ‘You saw it, Slime, tell the bastard, tell him I hit.’
A pause in the crossfire between them. Corrie tried to see Slime, but he was only a shape, and Rat’s hands had tightened on Corrie’s clothing. A hesitation. The silence that loitered. Both of them were now waiting on Slime’s answer. Corrie realised they went back a long way, Rat and Slime, and that the younger man was in thrall to the elder and was never asked for opinions. A big call and it landed flush in Slime’s lap. Corrie felt his confidence bloom. He had seen the man – seen him at the window and seen him in the vehicle – and the quiet broke.
‘Tell it, Slime.’
A trace of a stammer, ‘I didn’t have an eyeball – that’s honest, Rat. Didn’t. The glasses were burned out by the headlights. I was watching the goats. Didn’t see . . . You said you had the hit. That was good enough.’
It might have been fear that built Corrie’s anger. The anger was an open wound. He had been exposed in the village and had hugged shadows and had known that a glance at the wrong face, a step in the wrong alley, a smile or a sneer or a grimace or a shrug at the wrong moment and he would be down, the crowd around him, fists raised. Belcher would not have stayed with him, would have legged it. And he had been right to demand that he had proof of the casualty, that he should see for himself what the sniper had claimed as a kill.
Corrie said, ‘I think they picked you because you were cheap. I reckon they paid bottom dollar for you. He looked pretty good to me, the one you “killed”. Going to put that one up on the bedroom wall are you, a big tick so that the wife can see it? And maybe she’ll think better of you, or you’ll be one of those bloody sad figures in the corner seat of a bar. No one wants to hear stories of kills that weren’t. Past it, were you? Old and past it and put out to grass, that right?’
He’d expected it. Had braced himself for it.
The blow glanced off Corrie’s cheek. It was what Corrie had intended. He had driven the man beyond the limit of his control, had peppered insults at him, wanting to test to destruction the sniper’s composure. He heard a snort of shock from Slime.
Corrie was rolled on his back. He did it for the end game, ‘They should have bought someone who was good, who might have cost more. “Pay peanuts, get monkeys”, heard that? I was in there. Close to . . . And you, a quarter of a mile? Needed to be that far so you could do the quick runner. What did you tell me? Acknowledge my reputation, abide by it, and by the advice I offer, and it will be a good relationship. It’s in tatters, your precious reputation, because you missed. The other target I did myself, didn’t need you.’
And he was hit again, another blow that glanced off his chin as he twisted, and the pain ground in his shoulder and then hands were at his throat, and the fingers locked and the two of them thrashed and wriggled and fought for a kind of supremacy. But Rat didn’t have a bullet hole in him and had not taken a kicking that evening, and did not have a broken leg from months back that would never properly knit; and Rat had not killed that night either, had not taken the life of a master bombmaker, nor killed a girl who was little more than a child. He was choking. His strength to resist drained, and the fury was spent. Corrie felt the wet on his face, saw Slime’s tears as he grabbed Rat and dragged, heaved, his man back, and his throat was loosed and Rat gasped and fell away.
And it was over.
Slime said, ‘We called in, did the communications, the helicopter’ll be on its way. It won’t hang about. We’ve waited long enough, more than we agreed. We have to go.’
Corrie felt the sharp wind. When he rolled on his side there was earth and gravel in his mouth, but he felt too weak to spit the stuff out.
Slime said, ‘There should not be any more of that, Rat . . .’
Was not answered.
They stood, both of them, towering over Corrie. Where was the woman and where was Belcher? They hooked up the Bergens. Corrie rolled again on to his front, then pushed and had to use the shoulder where the drilled hole was, and he didn’t know whether the girl’s bullet had exited or remained in there, and he felt the nausea building – and saw the lights. There were lights on the road and off it, from the big lamps mounted on all-terrain vehicles. Rat didn’t speak. Slime pulled him upright and the binoculars on his chest swung and clipped Corrie’s face. Corrie took them, yanked on the strap and swung them to his eyes, nearly pulling Slime over, and he looked through them and scrambled the focus. He saw them. Two figures, white on the pale grey of the landscape and at the bottom of the incline, and when he scanned behind and beyond them he could make out tiny figures on the ground. He was careful not to lock the lenses on the headlights.
Rat had started, taken the first steps.
Slime ducked so Corrie could hook the glasses off his neck, and Slime then bent and lifted his rifle and placed it in Corrie’s hand with three magazines. Filled Corrie’s pockets. Corrie could not see Slime’s face and did not know if the tears were still running. It had been brutal and it should not have happened, and would never be talked of again, but Corrie reckoned he had purged something from his mood. As if the violent words and punches had been needed. He could hear the muffled stamp of Rat’s boots, and scuffling as Slime hurried to catch him.
A final call back, ‘Don’t hang about, Boss. Get moving, soon as you can. If the chopper comes in it’s not going to stay and mooch . . . You might be wrong, though, Boss. I thought Rat had him.’
Then he was gone.
He thought he’d heard emotion in Slime’s voice, but emotion was irrelevant. He supposed that Rat followed principles that he might have laid down himself. Corrie Rankin had ditched three other hostages when he had left in the night, and Corrie Rankin had battered the life from a herdsman, little more than a boy, and had confronted a girl nursing a cadaver and had ended up fighting her for his life, and he had won. Different to Rat? Not much. Slime had understood. All the entreaties to hurry and not to be left behind were sincerely meant, but would not be listened to: Slime knew it.
Corrie settled down. He sat cross-legged on the lip of the plateau and the wind came from behind him, pushed at him, and he had to struggle to hold the glasses steady. They had started up the slope. He saw they were linked, their hands locked, and sometimes the woman dragged Belcher, and sometimes the man heaved to get Henry up. They were in darkness, and behind them were lights and a cordon of men advancing. He realised they were following a trail. Corrie might have been close to hallucinating, wanting to shout out or let the world and the wind hear his laughter. There were midweek days when he was not rostered and he would drive down to Oxfordshire, and the hunt would be out in all its finery, galloping over the fields where they had permission to drag a sack loaded with meat laced with aniseed oil and hounds’ urine, and they’d never lose the scent. He could see in the glasses that the line wavered and paused, then surged forward, and he knew it was the blood drops from his shoulder wound that they were chasing; he might as well have laid a deliberate trail.
The earlier fury had gone, and truths had been shown.
He thought she had chosen. When he looked at them, below him and coming up the steep slope, where even goats might have found it hard in the darkness, they were fused together. It was hard to accept, but clear.
If the helicopter came it would hover and hands would reach down
and grab whoever had made it to the rendezvous and it would load and then lift and swing, billowing dust, and be gone. It would not land and wait, see who turned up in due course. He was pleased to hold the rifle that Slime had left him, and the grenades were on his back in the small sack. He watched them come higher, and saw the pursuit of the men who hunted them. Tough old world.
‘It was a big call, Rat.’
‘You want to stay and hold his hand, do just that.’ A snarl of an answer, but Slime hardly heard it as they trudged into the wind, which tore the words away. The dirt stung his face.
‘I’m just saying it . . . leaving him, that is a big call, Rat.’
‘It’s what he gets.’
As was usual, Slime carried the bulk of the kit. Pretty much everything they had brought in was on his back. The two Bergen packs were hooked together, and he’d one arm laced through the strap of one of the rucksacks, his own, and the other arm through Rat’s, and he needed to double over at the waist to prevent the wind from toppling him backwards. Rat was ahead of him, wheezing and kicking up small stones when his boots weren’t lifted high enough, a clear target for him to follow. Rat had the marksman’s rifle, and the spare one and had the grenades and, most important, was holding the satellite navigation kit. It glowed in front of him and gave directions. Most of the time, Slime could see the light, dim, on the screen, and that helped him.
‘Never done that before, nor thought I would.’
‘Do I have to repeat myself, Slime? Feel free . . .’
He had never before challenged Rat’s judgement. He would have said he owed pretty much everything in his adult life to the gruff attention paid him by Rat. For a start, when he’d been in a ditch on the outskirts of Basra, nerve gone, human and donkey shit all over his combat trousers, cringing as he waited for some guy with a bloody great knife in his fist to happen upon him. He had lost it and Rat had pulled him up and told him that the story would be that he had tripped and fallen into the ditch and that he’d bashed his head and been almost unconscious, and that story had done the business with the unit orderly officer when Rat had returned him to the compound. That had been just the start. Rat had taken him on, had arranged the transfer, had turned him from a boring creature, an Intelligence Corps analyst, to a master sniper’s sidekick. Had given him status, and pride, which he cherished. Seeing Rat up on top of the ditch and looking down on him, expressionless, had been the best moment, ever, in Slime’s life. He had to say something.
‘We would not have done it in Helmand.’
‘Would not. In Helmand no Rupert would have dared tell me that I screwed up.’
‘I think you had the hit.’
‘No “thinking” about it. I had the hit. I know it. He’s trouble, too big an opinion of himself. I did my job. Took advantage of an opportunity.’
Because of Rat, Slime had enjoyed prestige in Helmand, and had been freed of the tedium of working in front of a screen, was talked to as if he had a viewpoint worth hearing. But now he was beset by problems, which nagged at him, filling his mind. First there was the appearance of the ‘Boss’. Slime was certain that the guy had been somewhere difficult, a crap place to be; the scars on his face and the limp, were clear evidence of an ordeal, not spoken of or even hinted at. Slime reckoned Rat’s opinion of him as a stereotype was ill-judged, but he had never contradicted Rat to his face – or behind his back – and was not about to change that now.
‘Just seems bad, Rat, leaving him.’
‘So, he’ll have to pedal a bit harder, won’t he? Keep close, Slime, don’t drop off.’
‘Doing the best I can.’
‘And I’m going to get you home, Slime. Where you belong. Out of this shit heap . . . and it was a hell of a shot, don’t mind saying so.”
Slime did not doubt that Rat would do as he guaranteed. Because of Rat, he had enjoyed the flush of employment with the private military contractor. He had been well paid, had secured the deposit for his and Gwen’s new flat. His CV looked good and he would have no hesitation in saying that a bright future was ahead. He would be grateful to Rat – as long as he ended up in a helicopter’s bucket seat, the bird lifting. An alternative: the other option was to have stayed with the ‘Boss’, waited for the woman and for the turncoat, who might make it out and might not. But the ‘Boss’ was weak and slow and would have delayed them. The worst he had ever felt – any time and about anything – had been when taking the first steps away from the guy. But Slime was not about to fight.
‘Yes, that’s good, Rat.’
‘We came in and did what was asked of us, did it well, and we’re coming out, not hanging about like it’s a bloody bus tour and waiting for the people who are always late. I’m taking you back to where you belong. Haven’t I always looked after you?’
They went north, and their boots hit softer ground, but the wind strength stayed constant, except for the big gusts that came into their faces and made Slime sway and cower from the force of it. The dirt thrown up seemed to make clouds around them. It was softer underfoot because the rock was giving way to sand, and there was more of that in their faces, but Slime did not have a hand free to keep it away from his eyes. Ahead of him, Rat set a good pace. That didn’t make it right, not to Slime’s way of thinking, but he didn’t argue it, just pushed on.
‘Yes, thanks, Rat.’
‘What are you thinking?’ Jericho asked him.
‘Of evils.’
‘Thought you people worked with exact sciences, not the abstract.’
The pilot responded, ‘I’m thinking of evils and weighing evils.’
The night drifted and the guns slept behind them, and the helicopter still shook from the impact of the wind, and the vents and orifices were blocked off, which supposedly prevented the airborne sand and debris from entering the delicacies of the engine, but the rotors were exposed. Jericho understood that. Jean-Luc was the first man Jericho would want to fly him if conditions were ridiculous, beyond any normal levels of acceptable risk. The weather window, supposedly, would come later, in the daylight. Later on in the day, danger would ratchet higher again – but it would not be Jericho’s decision, anyway.
‘I want you to know that I have great confidence you will make the right decision on whether we lift or not.’
‘It stays about “evils”.’
Jericho did not need it played out for him. An ‘evil’ if they left men abandoned in foul weather with an almost inevitable pursuit and hunkered down with no lift coming in for them. A secondary ‘evil’ was to get there, hover if that were possible, be unable to put down safely, but have the effect of lighting a beacon that would attract the hunting pack. The third ‘evil’ and the one that screwed in Jericho’s intestines, was that Jean-Luc would get them there and they’d be coming down and be hit by the gale, and they’d topple or slide and the main or tail rotors would be damaged and they’d be damn well dumped there. So Jericho said little and could not escape a smidgeon of guilt that he had passed on the responsibility: how to confront the host of ‘evils’.
‘Not science. It’s just gut stuff.’
Jericho said, ‘Wrong of me to imply it, apologies . . . Yes, our world is not governed by the super-efficient makers of hi-tech infrastructure. That is me in utterly pompous mode, but true, I think. I respect your “gut” and it’s feeling. What to do?’
‘Sit a little longer, and have faith in the window.’
Good enough . . . Jericho closed his eyes. He wanted oblivion, not the thought of men, fleeing, who’d count on them turning up, being there and waiting; he hoped to sleep.
Xavier asked him, ‘Are we going to go?’
Casper scratched his crotch and pulled a long face, then shrugged, ‘We’ll go.’
Bart grimaced. He stayed quiet, but his lack of words was about an inability to get clear streams coming down from Hurlbert Field, other than the chatter dealing with the offensive beyond the Iraqi city of Mosul. Yemen was a back marker on the priority list; they were not authoris
ed but were not refused: it sort of put the matter in their corner.
‘You happy to go?’
‘Might just be a lifting of the weather, but nobody is putting forward a definite.’
‘Because it’s our place—’
‘Good enough for me,’ Casper said.
‘. . . And we’ve business there.’
The signal was sent.
They were good at King Khalid; the crew would be quick to act on an order. Within a handful of minutes their Predator, already refuelled and the armament checked and the lenses cleaned, would be out on the runway. Then he’d get the shout, and he’d smack his fingers on to the buttons and start her up, and the cameras would come alive and he’d face her up the strip and go to war. She was a good old girl, and she was theirs. Despite the hard times with her instrumentation and engines, maintenance had always sorted the glitches. Life with her parked up in the hangar had seemed empty.
Flying in these conditions would be, for Casper, an ultimate challenge of his skills. He said, ‘You guys, do you have a feeling that nobody else gives a fuck where we go, what we’re doing?’
Xavier said, ‘The folks on the ground, if they’re still there, and if we find them, they’ll care.’
The word was of treachery.
Those in the cordon, going cross-country in an extended line, searching for blood specks by torchlight, did not know if someone among them would be accused. Vehicles attempted to light their way; they were loaded heavily with machine-guns, and no one knew if one of them, in a cab or behind a weapon, might be challenged, declared guilty.
A new leader urged them on. The Egyptian had usurped control; as a stranger, he did not appreciate the familiarity among men who knew each other. He had promised a new regime, and the hunt for the offender would not be deflected. A child was dead, her clothing suggesting evidence of molestation. The Ghost had also been killed. They believed he would have brought papers with him, descriptions of his work, but his pockets were empty and no evidence had been found.
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