by Andy McNab
007 checked the scene as best he could but the barrel never budged from my neck and the first pad of his forefinger never strayed from the trigger. Even if I got out of the van with Yulia right now there were another three weapons outside. I would die out of breath, which was just as bad as a bumpy-road gunshot in the head.
Whatever was happening beyond the treeline, Phoenix had made a decision on how to deal with it. There was pointing at Tailgate and Foma, short words, then nods from all three before they came back to the wagon. Yet again, he checked his watch.
Tailgate and Phoenix boarded the rear, slowly but purposefully, and Foma climbed back into the cab. I heard subdued murmurs coming from up front, and Tailgate explained to 007 what was next. I couldn’t hear a word. It had to be because of Yulia. They were sparing her something. Clearly she’d reacted badly to violence so far, and maybe something even worse was about to happen.
Soon the van was crawling along the track in first gear; Phoenix closed the sliding door onto one click. We travelled a few hundred metres, took a left for less than a hundred, then another left. We’d done three sides of a square.
Tailgate was on his knees at the side door, his Vector in the shoulder. He had his firing hand on the pistol grip and steadied himself against the VW with the other. Phoenix was on his knees, too, a hand poised on the door handle, ready to pull back.
We stopped and there was a voice, male, outside. The accent was northern, Manchester maybe. He was talking to the cab guys up close. I could hear it through the hatch: Foma’s window must have been open. The voice was close and clear. ‘It’s okay, we can stay here. It’s free land.’
Phoenix pulled back the door to reveal the talker at the cab window, but not for long.
’We have a right to—’
A double-tap went into his chest from Tailgate and he dropped like liquid.
Tailgate stepped out and leant down to him. Another two-round burst into his head. He had the Traveller’s white-man dreadlocks, pulled back in a thick ponytail with some multicoloured cloth that was now predominantly bright red.
Beyond him, framed in the doorway, was a big box van that looked at least twenty years old, hand-painted green, with a chimney sticking out of the top, smoking. A couple of candy-striped folding chairs were open at the rear, next to washing hanging from a rotary drier. There was movement inside. I could hear female sobs and screams. So could Tailgate. He already knew what was inside, of course, because he’d done the recce. That was why he hadn’t stopped moving. As soon as he’d head-jobbed the guy, he took the first strides towards the box van, weapon up. The woman was now in the driver’s seat, frantically scrabbling to turn the ignition key but flapping so much she probably hadn’t even got it into the slot.
Her sobs penetrated to Yulia, who put her hands over her ears, brought her knees up and tried to bury her head in her chest. Two rapid shots gently clicked out of Tailgate’s suppressed Vector and into the front cab of the hand-painted van. There were two dinks as the rounds drilled into the panels of the passenger door, and then even more double bursts and the safety glass shattered as she took a couple of rounds. She slumped sideways and disappeared down onto the passenger seat as Tailgate got right up to it and pulled at the door before leaning in to her for the head job.
Phoenix checked his watch and calmly made safe his weapon before it went into the bag along with his spare mag from the back pocket of his jeans. Tailgate headed our way. The cab crew got out and, as they started to dump their weapons and mags, we all heard the thump of rotors in the distance.
48
Phoenix punched a hand at the sky, urging events along. ‘Come on, let’s go! Come!’
007 leapt off me to allow Tailgate to drop his weapon just behind the dead body, then grab my swollen wrists at the plasticuff joint to drag me towards the door. I stumbled over the woman’s head as 007 dumped his weapon next to Tailgate’s and followed us. The rotors got louder.
Yulia was still in the rear, the last breathing body inside. My legs worked to stabilize themselves as I was pulled out of the van and onto the hard ground of the track. Tailgate didn’t let up, my arms out straight like he’d lassoed me and was dragging me behind his horse.
My eyes were assaulted by bright sunlight as I did my best to take things in, and it was clear why this was a perfect daylight pick-up point. The forestry was in dead ground surrounded by rolling moorland: the heli could disappear below the skyline, then disappear even deeper behind the trees. There was an open area, maybe the size of a football pitch, before the gentle rise of the high ground again, more than enough for a helicopter to land.
The driver ran to the centre of that open space to become a marker and scanned the sky. He would make sure the pilot knew all was good as he looked down on the mess below him.
Phoenix and Foma were halfway between us and the heli marker, whose arms were vertical by now, still looking skyward, waiting to see or hear which direction the heli was going to come from. The rotor noise was much louder, but low-flying aircraft are difficult to locate, especially when they’re ground-hopping below the skyline.
Tailgate kept dragging me. I checked behind me at the same time Phoenix did to see where everybody was. Just as I turned my head back the rotor blades roared above us, flying over the forestry block, no more than a couple of metres above the treeline. It swooped straight over the box van, then pivoted dramatically and flared out. The down-draught blasted the ground litter from the firs and the dust from the track, as the rotary clothes-drier spun as if it were in a hurricane and the candy-striped chairs flew at the dreadlocked head, bounced off it and crashed against the side of the VW, finally tumbling to the side and away.
The heli was red and white, an Agusta six-seater, more if the seats had been taken out of the back. 007 was coaxing Yulia towards the landing site. She bent forward, her mop of hair blowing about like she was in a wind tunnel. She was trying to keep the blast out of her face and avert her eyes from the body on the ground. In doing that, her eyes locked on the shot-out cab of the box van and what lay the other side of the open door, slumped in the driver’s seat, the head lolling above a pool of blood that had poured from her mouth. Yulia’s knees buckled and her hands dropped to her thighs. 007 fought to keep her upright and moving towards the Agusta as it descended in a deep flare. The rotors screamed in protest as it executed a tactical landing.
It was now or never.
Tailgate’s arms were so straight as he dragged his reluctant prisoner that when I propelled myself at him I burst free of his grip. I turned and started running back towards the VW. I wasn’t interested in what was happening behind me: my eyes were glued on 007 and Yulia, who were just a couple of metres away, making sure I could avoid 007 if he was quick enough and came for me.
I skirted the rear of the box van, my mind focused on the two Vectors the other side of the body in the VW. I’d passed 007 before he realized what was going on. Yulia looked up and there was horror on her face. Another killing? Maybe she wouldn’t get home.
Some of the weapons had been made safe. No idea about 007’s and Tailgate’s. It didn’t matter. All that did was getting my hands on one of the fuckers and making sure my balloon fingers could get the thing working.
Stuff must have been happening behind me but all I could hear was the deafening roar of rotors.
They would get Yulia on board but no one was going to leave without me.
I threw myself across the woman, the tops of my thighs grazing the door sill. My stomach landed on her chest, the rest of me on the boards; her body buckled and gas came out of her mouth.
My plasticuffed hands grappled for one of the Vectors. Would it be made ready or made safe? I’d soon find out. I grabbed the closest one and fumbled at the safety catch with my numb, swollen fingers. I had no sensation in them at all. I was working on visual as I pushed it down with the heel of my hand, not caring if it went to single shot, two-round burst, or full auto. I just wanted safety off.
I closed m
y conjoined hands around the pistol grip and willed the middle finger of my right hand into the trigger guard. I rolled over to see Tailgate less than five paces away. He wasn’t stopping for anything.
I squeezed the trigger.
Fuck-all.
Tailgate knew it and screamed some kind of battle cry. I saw his mouth and eyes widen as he took the last couple of bounds to the van and I held the weapon out with straight arms, trying to create a hard barrier that he would collapse onto. It was all I could do before he gripped me.
As I got ready for the fight a blue blur crossed from right to left, one of the candy-striped chairs held against its grille as it bounced over the body on the ground, the bonnet then rising and smacking straight into Tailgate, hurling him up and away from the door frame, out of my vision. A split second later the chair and Tailgate came back into view, tumbling through the air. They landed on the ground just beneath the driver’s door of the box van. The impact sent up a plume of congealing blood.
49
The Jeep screeched to a stop somewhere to the left at the same time as I leapt out of the VW’s side door into a cloud of dust.
No more than five metres away, Rio was already out of the wagon and running towards me brandishing his KA-BAR like a claymore in a Highland charge. ‘Nick, come on! Fuck sake!’
The Jeep’s reverse light illuminated as I tried to make my fumbling balloon fingers lift the cocking handle that lay flush against the Vector to get the thing made ready. ‘No – Yulia! Yulia!’
I waved the barrel in the direction of the Agusta, still on the ground, the din of its rotors overwhelming the bowl of dead ground. 007 still had hold of Yulia. ‘Yulia! Get her!’
My eyes flicked to the other side of the box van as I finally cocked the weapon. Phoenix and Foma had seen what was happening and were sprinting back to fight.
I held up the Vector, my left hand trying to grab forward of the mechanism to give some support, but no luck. Not checking what Rio was doing, I screamed the same mantra: ‘Yulia! Get Yulia!’
Phoenix and Foma had a mission to complete, and taking me was part of it. They saw the weapon come up into the aim, held in my straight arms, just like the old square-on-both-arms-out-straight pistol method, and immediately bomb-burst. They knew they had a good chance of one of them making the distance to me.
Both eyes open, I squeezed the trigger and a double-tap went forward to the closer one, before I swapped to the right, swivelling from my waist, and getting another double-tap burst down, this time at Phoenix. I needed as stable a platform as possible to get these rounds down accurately. I worked to keep control of the weapon as I gulped oxygen, knowing that adrenalin would compensate for fucked fingers.
They were about ten metres away as I fired left to right again. The iron sights were down flat so I just fired instinctively, swinging towards the centre mass of each moving target in turn, weapon up horizontal, staring straight down it. Double-taps left and right, left and right, keeping calm, keeping focused on what was in front of me. Flapping about the possibility of missing wasn’t going to make me do the opposite. My feet were planted. There wasn’t time to make the platform complete by moving them.
I loosed off another burst at the fast-moving centre mass of Foma and he went down. I didn’t know if he was still breathing but who cared? I swung my arms to the right and Phoenix was now gone. Maybe he was behind the box van a few metres away. I stooped but couldn’t see any boots the other side. He might be behind the wheels. He could even have passed the box van and already be moving through the treeline to get behind me. For sure, he wouldn’t be running away. They had to get this done, because there was phase two.
I took a pace towards the box van, weapon still horizontal in my straight arms. The plasticuffs didn’t hurt now. Adrenalin was seeing to that.
To my half-left and ahead, Rio was in trouble on the ground with 007 on top of him. In the mess of flailing limbs, I couldn’t see who held the knife. Gabe was out of the Jeep and running as best he could, the cricket bat in his hands. Yulia was bent over, paralysed, neither help nor hindrance. I left them all to it. My problem was Phoenix.
I shouted to anyone who was listening. ‘Yulia! Get Yulia!’ I had no idea how many rounds were left but there was fuck-all I could do about it. Besides, all it would take was one round to sort this shit out when I found him – or he found me.
It wasn’t long coming. He appeared from the side of the box van and I instinctively jerked my head to ride the punch but still took it in the neck and staggered to the left. His other hand would be wanting to grab the weapon. I pulled down my arms and turned away from him to present my back to cover the Vector, and from there maybe I could do a complete 180 and get the weapon into him. He knew it, and another hard punch went into my side, straight into the kidneys. It took the wind out of me and I dropped to my knees. All I could do was bring the weapon up to my stomach and then just fall on it. With luck he would make a decision to run to the VW to get another, and that would give me time to roll over and get some rounds into him. But it didn’t happen. His boots rained into me and then his hands tried to lift me up and pull me over. Finally I felt his full weight on me. All I could do was keep covering the weapon with my front until I could get my blown-up finger back into the trigger guard.
From above me came hard, fast, controlled breathing as I kept my body tense, elbows in, head down, mantling the Vector between my body and the dust. Not many metres away, the rotors still churned, the heli was still on the ground. The rest of my world was pain.
Phoenix had obviously decided to fuck me up so much that he could either grab the weapon or buy himself enough time to run to the VW. I couldn’t let that happen. No one was coming to help me. I could definitely hear Gabe shouting. There was nothing from Rio. Where the fuck was Jack?
I stopped trying to get my finger into the trigger guard and let go of the Vector. With both hands in the dirt I pushed up, trying to twist at the same time, like an alligator with its prey. Just a couple of seconds would do. His weight pushed down against my left shoulder and I pushed up with my right. It was enough to unbalance him momentarily. I punched out with both hands, not as much as I wanted to but it was enough. I slipped my arms over the back of his head, like I’d done with 007. He knew what I was doing, that I was trying to turn him around, get behind him and strangle him.
His hands went either side of me on the ground and he redoubled his efforts to grab the Vector under my back. I pulled down on the nape of his neck, dragging his face towards me and into my chest. He writhed about, kicking out, then using his toes to gain purchase in the dirt and push into me. He did almost a press-up in an attempt to lift me at the same time as he lifted himself. I closed my legs around him, pinning him, crushing my thighs against his as I heaved my wrists even harder against the back of his neck. It was all I could do: speed and surprise weren’t going to turn him over. I caught a deep breath and used it to its full effect. ‘Help! Fucking help!’
Phoenix did another push up before collapsing on his elbows, and I collapsed my whole bodyweight in the hope gravity would help me. ‘Someone, get here!’
I opened my eyes to see Rio staggering above me, knife in hand. He dropped to his knees looking for a free place to stab into Phoenix’s legs and not mine.
‘Fuck that – kill him!’
He gripped the handle of the KA-BAR and raised it before ramming it down into Phoenix’s back. There was an instant rigidness as he took the pain and tried to resist it. Rio yanked the blade out and slammed it back down. This time the body relaxed. I heard the last rasp of defiance as blood cascaded onto my chest and I let go. His head fell sideways. His eyes passed mine and they were still open, but already starting to glaze over. I kicked him off and grabbed the Vector.
Rio staggered to his feet. Behind his bloodstained features I could see he was getting ready to ask me a million and one questions. We had no time for that.
‘Yulia?’
He nodded and came to me, KA-BAR
ready to cut me free. I shook my head. ‘I’ll sort it.’
I looked over to see Gabe dragging a physically incapacitated Yulia into the Jeep. He had a bloodied cricket bat in one hand from where he’d left the mush of 007’s head on top of its lifeless body.
I waved the Vector at Rio. ‘There’s more of these in the VW. One behind the woman’s body and some in a Ripcurl bag with mags. Don’t forget the mags.’
I dropped the Vector to the ground before lifting my arms above my head and bringing them down hard against my stomach as I strained out with my wrists, putting the maximum pressure I could onto the restraining bracket. Nothing. The bracket still held the cuff’s ratchet. The second time, I pulled down even harder, and the bracket broke under the pressure. I was free. It would have been easier for Rio just to cut the cuffs off me but I’d never tried it before and I wanted to know if it could have worked back at the toilet block. And, of course, I wanted to get free under my own steam, for no reason except that it felt better.
The heli pilot had clearly seen the fuck-up because the rotors were winding faster and faster and, within seconds, the aircraft was lifting and making dramatic turns to get out of the dead ground. The down-draught exploded into us.
I looked up to see the driver and two other faces peering out of the side windows, probably the embassy people who’d been sent to take the van and clean up the mess. They were surveying much more tidying up than they’d bargained for. They would already be radioing to wherever for new orders.
I picked up the Vector and tried to run towards the Jeep but it was more of a stumble. Gabe was in the driver’s seat when I got there, with Yulia next to him, bent over, the hair in front of her face soaked with tears. As he checked her for weapons, mobiles, anything that could become a danger for us, her shoulders moved up and down in time with her sobs.