Without warning

by John Birmingham

  He gave it fifteen excruciating minutes before hurrying upstairs to rescue his friend. Suzie had fallen asleep for real while Barney stayed hidden in her toy stash. His legs had cramped painfully and he’d had a lot of trouble breathing in there. He emerged with a flushed purple complexion and a plastic tiara on his head.

  ‘You see, Kip? You see what we’ve been reduced to?’ he said, after he’d finished gasping for air.

  Kip put one finger to his lips to quiet him down. ‘Don’t wake Suzie. Come on, we have to get you out of here.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kip, I’m real sorry,’ Tench whispered. ‘I shouldn’t have come. I’m gonna get you in trouble.’

  ‘Just shut up, Barn, and come out of Suzie’s room.’

  Barb was waiting outside in the hallway, looking terrified but angry with it. ‘What the hell was all that about?’ she said, repeating her earlier question.

  ‘They were looking for me,’ Barney admitted, shamefacedly.

  ‘No shit, Sherlock? What the fuck’s going on, Kip? Barney?’

  ‘Just what I said would happen,’ their visitor replied. He grabbed Kipper by the elbow. ‘I can’t thank you enough for helping me back there, Kip. But more people need help – they need your help, buddy. What d’you think now?’

  Kip didn’t answer. He was looking at his wife’s eyes.

  Her frightened, haunted eyes.

  * * * *

  46

  18TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS

  His mother tucking him into bed, patting down the blanket and making sure that Thumper, his stuffed corduroy kangaroo, was snuggled in tight. A fire crackling in the pot-belly stove. Bret’s head hanging over the edge of the bed as he stared into the flames. Heat. Smoke.

  Rough hands. Cursing.

  He came to in the wreck of the Land Rover, American Dave’s caved-in head on his lap, as heavy as a medicine ball, spilling its glutinous contents over his legs. A dark man, without a face, rummaging in his jacket, looting his body.

  No. He was alive. He stirred, and the figure jumped and swore in Arabic.

  Hands closed around his throat and tightened. He gagged and tried to gulp down air, but could not. A struggle ensued, one he couldn’t hope to win, as Melton shot a hand out, reaching for the man’s throat notch. He missed and struck a bristled cheekbone.

  Flames licked at the back of his neck and smoke poured out of the rear of the wreckage. His hand scrabbled like a giant fleshy spider and quickly felt its way up his would-be killer’s face, finding an eye socket into which he dug his thumb, gritting his teeth against the inescapable revulsion as he felt it push in between the eyelid and socket.

  The man screamed, rearing back and hitting his head on something. Bret could see his hands, pawing at the injury. He lifted a leg and lashed out with one boot as best he could. Not a great kick, but enough to drive the man back another foot. The former soldier twisted and attempted to pull out his pistol, but pain, white fire, in his shoulder prevented him. Dark spots bloomed before his eyes, but he turned the other way and reached around with his good hand, reaching across his body and finding the weapon at his hip. Dave’s ruined head turned up to stare at him. One side of his skull had been jellied by the impact of the rocket blast. Trying not to let the gnawing, twisting rat of panic get control of his mind, Melton drew the pistol as quickly as he could, thumbed off the safety and fired two shots into the centre mass of his looter. The man flew backwards and down, hitting the pavement with a heavy thud.

  Melton scrabbled at the seatbelt, only to find it was already disengaged. He had no idea how – perhaps by the man he’d just killed. He couldn’t get out of the driver’s-side door since American Dave was blocking the way. With his one good hand, he attempted to open his own door, but it was buckled and jammed. Ammunition began to cook off in the rear of the vehicle… or was that shooting from outside?

  The heat was unbearable and his eyes stung with acrid smoke. He levered himself around, drew up both legs and piston-kicked the door. He was unbalanced by the ease with which it flew open, and suffered a painful blow on his shins as the door bounced back and struck him heavily just below the knee. Swearing loudly, he butt-shuffled across the seat and fell onto the cobblestone road.

  The air cleared instantly, at least compared to the smoke-choked interior of the Land Rover. Left arm dangling uselessly, Melton quickly checked for the other passengers. One was obviously dead, shredded by the RPG, the other was missing. He hurried away, making for the nearest doorway.

  Unsure of where they were, disoriented by the blast and probably suffering concussion, he took in his surroundings as a dizzy, discontinuous swirl of images. Burnt-out vehicles. Gutted buildings. At least four bodies in the street. A wall of four- and five-storey terrace buildings in front of him. Old but well-maintained until recently. They were now pockmarked with bullet holes and disfigured by scorch marks. He was still in the old city. Somewhere near the BBC offices, he thought – but deep inside that jigsaw puzzle of irregularly shaped city blocks to which neither the Loyalists nor Sarkozy could lay claim.

  Bullets spattered and caromed off the wreckage of the Land Rover, just as the fuel tank went up with a dense, hot whump! Melton hobbled as fast as he could for cover. A doorway, hanging from its hinges just in front of him.

  * * * *

  ‘This is the last of them,’ said Caitlin. ‘If he’s not here, or hasn’t been here, I’m tapped out, Capitaine.’

  The French infantry officer patted her gently on the shoulder. ‘You have done well,’ he told her. ‘Better than we could have asked. Perhaps you should let us handle this now?’

  Caitlin peered out through the window of the ruined apartment, across the street from the tenement where Baumer had met with English members of Hizb ut-Tahrir on three occasions. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she replied eventually. ‘If that fucker turns up, there’ll be a reckoning between him and me.’

  ‘You are still very weak, Caitlin. If we are to get him, it will mean a struggle.’

  ‘I’m strong enough to pull a trigger.’

  Rolland pulled her around to face him. ‘We need him alive. Both him and Lacan. We need to know the extent of the School Masters’ influence.’

  Caitlin folded her arms and leaned against the wet, peeling wallpaper. A bomb had damaged the upper floors of this building, letting in the elements. She was wrapped in a padded army jacket but she still shivered at the unseasonable chill. Three French commandos kept watch on the street while staying well hidden from view. It had been a hellish business, just getting them into the neighbourhood, let alone into this house opposite the last of Baumer’s known addresses. For two whole days they had been on his trail, using her knowledge of al Banna’s networks and contact nodes. Two days of scurrying like dump rats from one ruin to the next, avoiding all contact with the enemy, both uniformed and otherwise.

  She felt much stronger in mind and body than she had for a long time, although her illness still weakened her, and it would take her months to fully recover from Noisy-le-Sec. In truth, she should not have been out here, but there was no choice. She was the expert on al Banna, and that meant being in on the hunt, no matter how damaged she may have been.

  A wet, dank-smelling armchair, covered in plaster and mouse droppings, sat in the nearest corner. After one more glance at the street outside, she dropped into it. She could hear sporadic firing somewhere out there and the occasional shout, but the street was relatively quiet for now. A more distant thunder spoke of the pitched battle at the edge of the park, as Sarkozy’s forces attempted to break into the heart of the old city.

  ‘He may not come,’ she said, forcing the weariness she felt out of her voice.

  ‘No,’ Rolland admitted. ‘Maybe not. He may have fled the city already. But we must do what we will. Would you like a coffee, Caitlin? I saw some in the kitchen before. I could have one of my men heat up some water. We may be waiting a while.’

  They did. It was not until night had fallen that any significant activi
ty returned to the street. There had been a small explosion, during the afternoon, and a cloud of dirty black smoke rose over the roofline of the buildings opposite, but nothing came of it. Just another skirmish in a city of a thousand myriad clashes. She dozed through the afternoon, fitfully, for a few hours, waking in the early evening as Rolland’s men ate a cold meal of MREs. She’d been hoping the French might have had better field rations than the US version, but there was no discernible difference in quality. It was all NATO standard slop, she supposed.

  ‘Caitlin? Come here, please.’

  She came fully awake with a start, and slid from the chair like a cat. Rolland stood by the window, narrowing his eyes, peering through the lace curtain.

  ‘Those men, do you recognise any of them?’

  She peered out. At least four men, all civilians, all Arabic or African in appearance, were gathered outside the target address across and down the street a little way. It was dark outside, but some of them smoked, and as they passed around a lighter she was pretty sure she recognised a couple of faces.

  One in particular stood out. Short, round-shouldered, with a potbelly. Grey stringy beard but no moustache. His skin was dark brown, as though stained by tobacco juice. He smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and in her imagination she could smell the fragrant blend. Some acne pits blemished the left side of his face, but melted skin from a homemade bomb gone wrong marred his other profile. The permanent squint to his right eye was a result of the same disfiguration. She couldn’t see from here, but she knew he would have yellowed, crooked teeth, with two of the lower incisors missing, thanks to a beating from the Malaysian Special Branch five years ago. Completing the picture were his powerful forearms and thighs from years of silat and karate training.

  ‘The chunky-looking groover in the nasty grey acid-wash jeans and cheap vinyl jacket, his name’s Noordim ul Haq. He’s an Indonesian. Javanese. We called him “Doctor Noo”. He’s a Jemaah Islamiyah commander, a bomb maker too, but not a great one, as you can see from his pretty face.’

  ‘He is part of Baumer’s network?’ Rolland asked. ‘I have not heard of him.’

  Caitlin frowned. ‘Nope. But he and Baumer have met, twice that we know of. Once in Singapore in August 1998, and in Surabaya later that year. We’re not sure to what end or if they ever met again under the radar. But the Doc there is a heavy hitter in Mantiki 3, the Jemaah Islamiyah franchise with responsibility for the Philippines and central Indonesia.’

  Rolland looked lost.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Caitlin. ‘I can be a bit of a fucking train spotter, can’t I? Noordim’s CV doesn’t matter, the fact he’s here does. He should be about ten thousand miles away, blowing up noodle shops in Jakarta for the glory of God.’

  ‘Well, we don’t have many noodle shops in Paris anymore.’

  ‘You never did, Marcel. Not worth a pinch of shit anyway.’

  ‘So, this Noordim,’ said Rolland softly, peeking out into the dark again, ‘if he is here, there must be something important going on.’

  ‘Dude, if he’s here, it’s the end of the fucking world,’ Caitlin replied before realising what she’d just said. ‘Oh, wait… We already did that, didn’t we? Okay, look, it’s not just delicious noodles and opportunities for mass murder that kept Noordim in Mantiki 3. This guy, he doesn’t like whitey. His father was a mid-level official in Golkar, the guys who put the “party” into Indonesia’s one-party state under Suharto. His mother was a singer, but more importantly a second cousin to Tuk Tuk Suharto, the big guy’s daughter. The family controlled the distribution of kretek cigarettes in East Timor and lost it all in the Australian takeover of ‘99. Doctor Noo was already into the whole jihad thing by then and his family may well have been funding him, but Timor pushed him right over. Ruined the family and put the zap on his head. So he really hates whitey’

  She paused and Rolland took the hint. ‘But?’ he said.

  ‘But,’ she continued, ‘he really fucking hates Arabs and resents their control of international jihad. To his way of thinking, the Arabs never recovered from the crusader attacks after 9/11. All of the best jihadis since then have been Asian or African, but in the mythology of the jihad, it is the Arabs who matter. And they make sure their little rice-eating cousins know about it, too. Our understanding was that Noordim got ass-fucked three ways from Sunday while he was in Afghanistan. The camel humpers really broke his balls. His raison d’кtre ever after has been to see himself acknowledged as a player of equal importance to the likes of bin Laden and Zawahiri.’

  ‘So he blew up noodle shops?’

  ‘Yeah. Lots and lots of noodle shops. Apparently Allah really fuckin’ hates noodles.’

  Captain Rolland smiled, an exhausted, washed-out smile.

  Caitlin watched the men in the street as they moved into the building. ‘Tell your guys they need to be on the stick now,’ she said. ‘They need to…’ She trailed off as a car appeared.

  Gasoline was so scarce that any moving vehicle was invested with significance. This one, a blue Volkswagen Passat with a cracked windscreen, appeared to be full of passengers. She motioned Rolland over to the gap in the curtains.

  As they watched, saying nothing, the car came to a halt and all four doors opened like insect wings. Heavily armed, unshaven young men stepped out and scanned the street. Neither Caitlin nor Rolland moved. Nobody pointed them out or paid anything but scant attention to the ruined building in which they stood. As a jet screamed overhead somewhere nearby, the last of the passengers exited the rear of the Passat. Baumer and Lacan.

  * * * *

  Melton was lying in a child’s bed, his head pillowed by a mildew-riddled stuffed elephant. The room was dark and the multi-level house empty, abandoned. Or at least it had been.

  As he came awake, he heard voices on the lower floors. Men talking in a ghetto mixture of Arabic and French. He was jolted awake as all of his body’s remaining adrenalin reserves sluiced into his nervous system. A cool ball of ice seemed to form in his stomach, making his balls contract and loosening his bowels.

  He wondered if some friends of the man he’d killed earlier had come looking for him, but the few snatches of conversation he heard clearly seemed to be all about the civil war.

  A quick scan of the room where he’d hidden out, far above the street, told him there were no obvious hiding places. He slowly, carefully, eased himself up, fearful of a creaking bed spring that might give his presence away. For the same reason, he dared not put his feet on the floor as the boards would surely creak. Instead, he lay in darkness, straining to hear whatever he could pick up. He stroked his pistol for reassurance and checked that he still had the spare mags in his vest pocket. Not that a dinky little handgun would be much help if he’d woken up in a houseful of jihadi street fighters. And really, who the hell else was left in this part of Paris?

  As the minutes ticked by with infuriating slowness, his heart rate began to calm a little and he even managed to relax. Nobody had come up to check on this room. He hadn’t been discovered. Indeed, there didn’t appear to be anybody on this attic level of the house. But he found that hard to accept. It commanded a good view of the street below and some of the approaching roads. If this were his show, he would have put a lookout up here, even if he was just running a small gang of looters. Then again, his instructors at Ranger school had probably drilled the basics into him with more alacrity than the towel-headed loser who’d trained these guys downstairs. If trained they had ever been. Judo rolls and paintball in the forest didn’t really count.

  Slowly, and as quietly as he possibly could, Melton eased himself off the bed and slid across to the door. He placed his ear against the cool wood for two minutes, straining to hear anything that might indicate he wasn’t alone up here. After that, he gripped the old-fashioned brass knob and turned it gently but firmly until the door clunked open. It sounded as loud as a grenade to him, but there was no discernible change in the flow of conversation from downstairs. He was able to make out a lot more
of what was being said, however – not that it did him much good. The men’s French was heavily accented and their Arabic so guttural and fast spoken that his very basic understanding of the language was all but useless.

  Then someone spoke whom he could understand. A Frenchman, with a polished, well-educated voice. Again, Melton’s French wasn’t great, but he was certain this guy was giving them a pep talk. Something about how well the fight had gone in the suburbs and how they had to delay the fascist Sarkozy forces long enough to get their leaders out of this area. Or at least, that was what Melton thought he said. He simply couldn’t be sure, and it made no sense. He had no context in which to frame the conversation.

  It was infuriating, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  * * * *

  ‘They will be here in fifteen minutes,’ said Captain Rolland, referring to the back-up he’d called in. ‘They are coming through the storm water drains. There is a… how do you call it… a man’s hole in the rear courtyard of the building two doors down.’