by Andy McNab
As the wagon pulled in at the side of the road, Jerry got out, unbuttoning himself as he went round the front, past the headlights, and towards the treeline, too modest to take his piss within view.
They looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
96
Jerry had been listening; he seemed to lose his footing, and fell with a shout.
I tapped Hairy and waved my hands urgently. ‘Go help him! Go help him!’
Jerry wasn’t going to get any Oscars for the moaning, but at least he kept doing it. Hairy muttered a curse or two, but opened his door anyway. As he climbed out, he put the G3 back in the footwell, resting it against the seat.
My eyes focused on the barrel. I wouldn’t get a second chance at this.
I grabbed the muzzle with my right hand, yanked it back between the seats towards me and simultaneously pushed back, opened the door with my left and rolled out on to the tarmac.
I felt the butt bounce across the rear seat, and crash on to my chest as I landed.
My left hand grabbed the plastic stock, my right slid down on to the pistol grip. The road surface was hard against my back as I pushed away from the door.
Ignoring the shouts from the front of the wagon, I concentrated on getting my left hand on to the cocking piece, flicking it so it stuck out at right angles to the barrel, then racking it back. A brass round spun out of the ejection chamber as I let the working parts go forward and pick up another. I knew now that the weapon was made ready. The shouts continued as I got to my feet.
Butt in the shoulder, I aimed at Hairy, both eyes wide, needing to see everything.
Jerry lay stock-still on the grass. ‘Jerry, on your feet – get him down, get him down!’
I kicked the driver’s door and moved back at least three arm widths. ‘Out! Out! Out!’ If he didn’t understand English, he got the drift. He came out of the car at warp speed, hands in the air, then sank to his knees and put them behind his head.
By now Hairy was on the floor too. I leaned into the weapon, safety catch off, first pad of the finger on the trigger. ‘Jerry, get them together in the light.’
Jerry did as he was told and they soon lay together face down on the grass verge. I moved round so I faced the tops of their heads. I could get clear shots into them if they started fucking about. ‘Search them. Make sure they’ve got no radios, no weapons.’
Long shadows were cast by the headlights as Jerry patted them down and rummaged in their pockets. Hairy had nothing on him apart from a wallet and cigarettes.
He moved over to the driver. ‘What we going to do with them, Nick?’
‘They stay here. Soon as you’ve finished, get them crawling into the treeline.’
We both followed as they shuffled to the edge of the canopy, their breath snorting out of them like racehorses’. The first line of trees blocked the Vitara’s headlights, casting weird shadows into the first few metres of forest.
‘Tie them up. Use their belts, shoelaces, whatever you can find.’
I kept them both covered as Jerry got them to sit against a tree. Then he had an idea, ran back to the Vitara and returned with the empty bumbags and a set of jump leads. He tied their hands with the leads, then clipped the bumbags round their necks and a tree. They didn’t resist: they wanted to live.
I rested the G3 on the ground and pulled my boots and socks off. The frost-covered grass was freezing, but it was worth it. Fuck knows who might be within earshot, but I didn’t want them spending the night screaming their heads off.
I put the damp boots back on and jammed a sock into each mouth. Then we shoved as much as possible of the bumbags into their mouths and tightened the straps around the tree-trunks so they were holding their heads and gagging them. If you don’t fill the whole mouth void, sound can be produced and projected. With the void filled with a stinking sock, they’d be more worried about breathing and avoiding gagging than making noise.
Now they were sorted, we had to get back to the house. We ran to the Vitara and I grabbed the Thuraya.
‘Do these things have silent alert or vibrate or what?’
Jerry shrugged as he shoved his passport and wallet into his parka.
I laid the G3 on the bonnet and powered it up while I retrieved my own docs. ‘We can’t risk using the wagon.’ I kept my eyes on the phone LED. ‘It’s going to make too much noise on the approach and it might be compromised before we get back to the house. Go and park it in the treeline, take out the rotor arm and we’ll keep it with us. We’ll use it to get the fuck out. Don’t forget the keys.’
I got the Thuraya on to vibrate. There were five bars on the sat signal and five for power. I scrolled down numbers called as Jerry jumped into the wagon. ‘Right, that long fucker, that George’s number?’
I took a couple of deep breaths and pressed Send as he headed towards the trees.
No answer. The phone just kept ringing. I gave it another twenty seconds before cancelling. That left only Ezra. I called the emergency number. Baby-G said 00:11. DC was six hours behind. Maybe he was still there, talking about trust to another of George’s suckers.
I got the answering-machine. I talked slowly and clearly. ‘It’s Nick, Nick Stone. I need to speak to George, urgently. Tell him I know what’s happening – tell him I will finish the job, but I must talk to him first. He must call me on the Thuraya. It’s life and death, Ezra – don’t think about it, just do it. Call him, go to him, whatever.’
Jerry had the Vitara in the trees, two long tracks gouged in the frozen grass behind it. The bonnet clicked open and Jerry climbed out. I went over to him as he bent over the engine. ‘You get him?’
I put the phone and G3 on the passenger seat, took off the mag and pushed down on the rounds. It was full, apart from the round in the chamber and the one I’d ejected. I put it back on the weapon and removed my parka, keeping an eye out for the ejected round in the back of the wagon. ‘Just a message.’
No luck with the round. I wrapped the parka sleeves round my waist. Jerry followed suit. ‘That was one fucking amazing meeting. What you make of him?’
‘Faith, my arse. He’s just as fucked up as any suicide bomber, bin Laden without a beard.’ There was a whole lot more I could have said, but it would have to wait. G3 in my left hand and the Thuraya in my right, I was ready to go.
I didn’t give a shit about what he’d done to Coke sales, fucking about with the West’s interest in dysfunctionality, or that he didn’t paint his toenails red, white and blue. I had my own reasons for wanting him dead.
97
Jerry double-knotted the parka’s sleeves round his waist. I put out a hand to stop him. ‘Nothing’s changed, mate, the offer still stands. You have a family, I’ve got fuck-all. Take the wagon, wait in the city. If I don’t come back inside two days, you go home and try your luck with George – tell him you managed to escape or something.’
He had stopped tying his parka, but there was no reply.
I lifted the G3 between us. ‘If George doesn’t call, I’m going to have to use this thing. No need for you to be there.’
He was still thinking. ‘Thanks, Nick, but no thanks. We both got the same job, for different reasons. I still gotta be there.’
‘We’d better get on with it, then, before he fucks off with Benzil to Shangri-La. We can’t go under the canopy until George calls. But we need to cover the road with the G3 to stop him leaving.’
I checked the Thuraya was still on, and we started jogging along the verge, using the grass to give us a little grip on the frost. I could soon hear him panting behind me. I must have sounded pretty much the same after so many months of cheese and Branston.
The parka flapped rhythmically against my legs. Sweat leaked down to the small of my back. My hands and feet were boiling.
We had done maybe four hundred when the phone vibrated in my hand.
George wasn’t one for small-talk. ‘You have Nuhanovic?’
‘Yes, but not for long.’ I took deep breaths,
wanting to be understood on the first attempt. ‘Here’s the deal. I’ll mark the target with the sat phone. You get the fix, I’ll talk the ordnance in, we get out and everyone’s quits. No more fucking about with kids’ lives, George, please.’
‘Agreed. But you must personally identify the target.’
‘We are about four hours out of Sarajevo. He’s time critical. You got Predators?’
‘I know where you are, I have you. There are three UAVs getting airborne now. Wait for a call from the operators. You will confirm the kill. I want him dead, son, not just a pile of rubble. Keep that sat phone on, they’ll be calling.’ The phone went dead.
I turned to Jerry. ‘We got a deal.’
His knees nearly buckled with relief.
I turned and started legging it. It wasn’t just because I wanted to get on to the road junction quickly. I didn’t want to answer any questions about whether I thought George would keep the deal.
We made it to the track and moved off into the first line of trees. The grass was wet, not frozen. I put the weapon down while I shoved the Thuraya in my jeans so I could feel when it went off. I slid the parka back on as I explained what George had said, slowly and quietly, so he wouldn’t miss anything.
‘You can dump the keys and rotary arm here. This is our meeting-place if we get split, OK?’
Jerry nodded, and put them at the base of what was left of the nearest tree, then untied his sleeves and put his own parka back on.
‘OK, actions on contact, on the way to target. You make your way back here. Pick up the wagon stuff and get away to the city. Don’t waste time if it goes noisy. I’ll try and get to target and get on with it. You’ll be able to do fuck-all without a weapon.’
The Thuraya rumbled against my stomach. I got to my knees and pressed the green button. The cold soaked into me as I kept an eye on the darkness up the track, hoping not to see headlights.
‘Who do I have speaking?’ It was an American monotone, like a synthesized computer voice.
‘This is Nick. You got a fix on us yet?’
‘Say again, slowly, Nick – I can’t understand you.’
‘Do you have a fix on us yet?’
‘That’s an affirmative, Nick.’
I checked the display. There was no number. ‘What’s your number?’
‘That’s classified.’
‘For fuck’s sake, we’re trying to carry out a fire-control mission here on a poxy sat phone. I need a number. We’re not on target yet. You’re going to lose the fix soon. I need to be able to call you once on target.’
There was a pause, then, ‘Wait out.’
Jerry came up behind me, his face hidden in his hood. ‘What the fuck they doing, man?’
I put my hand up to stop him. The monotone was back. ‘I have a number.’
I tapped it straight into the Thuraya. It was another sat phone. ‘OK, listen in. The target is about two Ks from this fix. It’s a house complex in the forestry block. Roger so far?’
‘That’s affirmative.’
‘You will lose this fix as we move under the canopy. I will call you once on target. Roger so far?’
‘That’s affirmative.’
‘You on a ship?’
‘That’s classified.’
‘We on the same side here? Just tell me how long you have to target.’
There was another pause. ‘Time to target is one hour, thirty-four minutes. One hour, three-four minutes.’
‘Got it. Wait out.’
I closed down and turned to Jerry as I zipped up my parka. ‘One hour thirty-four.’
Those things travelled at about eighty m.p.h., so they would be on target too quickly to have started on a carrier in the Adriatic. Maybe they were from some remote airfield in Kosovo. The US had quite a large peacekeeping presence there.
He nodded somewhere inside the hood. I pulled it down. ‘Get those ears working. We’ll be seeing fuck-all soon. When we move, I want you to count the distance. I do about a hundred and sixteen paces for a hundred metres. You know your rate?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘OK, then, we’ve got two Ks in there before the track junction. You count my paces, and tell me when we get to eighteen hundred metres. We can’t afford to miss that junction.’
I checked the G3’s mag, safety, and that the Thuraya was secure in the parka’s inside pocket. My feet were starting to freeze.
‘You ready?’
98
He wasn’t Nuhanovic any more, he was just a target. It had always been easier for me to think of people that way before I killed them.
Hood down, I set off fast along the track. If a vehicle came down the road I’d have to go noisy and take it on with the G3. If the target wasn’t aboard, we’d have lost him for sure, but what choice did I have?
Fir branches scratched my face as I pushed my way through. Trapped water cascaded down on me.
Every ten paces I stopped, holding my left hand behind me until Jerry jammed into it. We had to keep together in the dark. Conditions were good underfoot: soft pine needles kept the noise down.
I did another ten metres and stopped, butt of the G3 on the ground, leaning forward with both hands on the barrel as I rested, taking deep breaths and waiting for Jerry to bump into me. I was soaked with sweat under all the layers of clothes, and it dripped down my face, making the scratches sting.
This time he got up close, his panting, minging breath across the side of my face. ‘That’s just over eighteen hundred.’
‘We’ll go a bit slower now; eyes open for the track junction on the left, OK?’
I closed my mouth, trying to get some saliva going to help my dry throat, and pushed myself upright on the G3.
A few minutes later I was at the junction with the track up to the house. I stopped again and waited. Now it was going to be his turn to smell my breath. It was eerily quiet, not a hint of wind to stir the trees. ‘Count off five hundred this time, OK? After that we’ll cut right and work our way through the trees towards the boundary wall. I want to box around that checkpoint.’
‘Got it.’
We moved off again, keeping in the middle of the track. I had the G3 in my hands. There wasn’t time to move tactically, weapon in the shoulder. I just moved with my head tilted to the right, keeping my ear pointed along the track. My eyes were hard right in their sockets, staring into the darkness ahead, trying to see any movement, any light, any indication of bodies.
I stopped and listened every five or six metres, trying to take deep, controlled breaths. Sweat poured down my face. Eventually Jerry came up, his mouth near my ear. ‘Five hundred.’
I set off very slowly this time, weapon held at its point of balance in my right hand. The left reached behind for Jerry, making sure we had contact all the time.
About one fifty short of the checkpoint, I could still see and hear nothing. We could have played safe and cut right, into the forest, but that would have slowed us down even more. We’d just have to stay on the track for as long as we could.
Another twenty and there was a clanking of metal, forward and left. I froze. I could see nothing but black and then more black.
99
I held my breath and leaned forward, eyes closed, head tilted. All I could hear was Jerry breathing to my left.
Then there it was again, metal on metal.
I turned back to Jerry and pulled him slowly into the treeline. Fuck the mines. The target’s people were under the canopy the other side of the track, so that was obviously secure. If they hadn’t cleared this side, we’d soon get to know about it. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen. Maybe some of that fatalism shit had rubbed off on me after all.
I kept a grip on Jerry’s sleeve. Even a few metres’ separation could mean we lost each other, and it wasn’t as if we could just call out to regroup. Now was the time to slow down.
It’s so easy to lose any sense of direction in pitch dark, but I got a good marker from the occasional clank and snatch
of conversation the other side of the track, which became clearer the closer we got. With luck we were going to hit the edge of the treeline soon, and there’d be a short stretch of open ground, then the wall.
I felt my way along, waving my left hand in front of me for obstructions, the right still holding the weapon. Jerry’s hand gripped the butt to keep contact.
I stopped when a branch blocked my way, took a few paces back or sideways, tried to move round the obstacle and not make noise. Now that I’d slowed, I was more aware of the scratches to my face. My salty sweat made them as painful as wasp stings. My sockless feet had blistered in my boots. My whole body felt as if it was boiling under all the layers.
I stayed focused, trying to keep my sense of direction. An engine started up to our left. I guessed it must be further up the track, the other side of the hedgehogs. I hoped it didn’t move. If it did, and up towards the house, I’d have to assume it was going to pick up the target. I’d have to get out of the trees and take it on. There’d be a gang-fuck with so many bodies about, and only nineteen rounds.
We came to the edge of the forestry block. I dropped to my knees and crawled the last two metres on my own. After the inky blackness of the canopy, the stars seemed as bright as the sun.
The wall facing me was the one running along the right-hand side of the compound as viewed from the track. The door into the family courtyard was about forty metres down it. Beyond the wall I could catch just the odd glimpse of terracotta rooftop. The three- or four-metre strip of rough grass between the wall and the treeline was white with frost. No vehicles or bodies had been along it tonight.
Somebody near the checkpoint had a bout of coughing. Maybe it was the exhaust fumes. The engine was still on, but the vehicle was stationary.
I moved back to grab Jerry, and together we followed the edge of the trees away from the checkpoint, towards the family entrance. We came level, and I inched forward.
I looked left. No movement from the checkpoint. Vehicle still stationary.