Night Strike

by Chris Ryan

  No thank you from Younes. He yelled orders at the guys on the .50-cal. It whirred on its axis as the fire team swivelled it to the twelve o’clock position: directly at the overpass. The gunner unleashed round after round. Bald could feel the waves of heat burning the hairs on his neck. He watched as the overpass was pummelled into a cinereal mist. Dust and mortar waterfalled from its middle section onto the highway. Younes and his men cheered.

  The Libyans didn’t involve Bald in their celebrations. And that was just fine by him. He needed to ditch Younes and his muckers before they figured out he wasn’t here on NATO’s dime. He spotted a grove of olive and orange trees 150 metres away, next to a left turn-off leading away from the Second Ring Road and in the direction of the Mansour Hotel. Bald grabbed Rachel and bugged out towards the trees, scuttling across open, exposed ground. He checked his six: Younes still had his back turned. So did his mates. But any second they’d realize that Bald had pulled a fast one, and somehow he doubted they’d be happy about it. A hundred metres to the grove now, and Bald glanced over his shoulder. Younes was turning around. Fifty metres to the grove. Bald was certain that a bullet was going to slap into his back at any moment. But then he was bursting in among the branches, putting Rachel behind cover of a cluster of orange trees. He looked back towards the Hilux, but Younes was nowhere to be seen.

  Bald could see the Mansour up ahead on the left. Moving fast, he led Rachel by the hand, out from the trees. They hugged the side of the road, where abandoned cars provided cover against any snipers lurking in the blocks of flats opposite. His limbs moved stiffly, under protest; the key muscle groups in his quads, upper arms and calves felt pained and tired. His body was overdrawn.

  They saw a freshly slotted rebel slumped against the twisted wreckage of a taxi. Nineteen or twenty. Just a kid. A kid with a white vest top drenched in blood and a neck that had a hole in it big enough to drive a flagpole through. But his guns were still intact. Bald knelt by the guy and grabbed his AK-47. The weapon was the fast food of the gun world. Quick, cheap and no frills, but it did the fucking job. The kid’s wasn’t the Soviet original. A Chinese copy: the Type 56. But pretty much the same tool. Equally effective. Bald pushed the magazine release latch. Full clip. Thirty rounds of 7.62x39mm short. He also took the kid’s secondary, holstered weapon. Another Makarov semi. Lot of Russian and Chinese guns for a North African state, thought Bald.

  One Type 56, one Makarov. Assault rifle and pistol. That was all he needed.

  The Mansour was smaller than Bald had expected, but then again he supposed tourism wasn’t big in Libya. There wasn’t much to see, unless you were interested in oil, Islam and state-sponsored terrorism. The hotel was shaped like a car battery. Four-storeys tall across the middle, with a fifth-floor annex fixed like a stump on the right and left corners of the building. Each floor was a symmetrical bank of dark glass panels held together by steel. A canopy the colour of recycled cardboard was draped over the marble-floored entrance. A garden separated the hotel from the road, so prinked up it looked to Bald like something from a fucking gardening show on TV. Strange, he thought, in the middle of all the rubble and bloodshed.

  A dark-blue Chevrolet Impala was parked out front. It caught Bald’s eye, as every other motor he’d seen in Tripoli was either a pulverized mid-nineties saloon or a pickup just about ready for the tow truck. The Impala, on the other hand, was all new and shiny, with heavily tinted windows.

  A heavy, all Ray-Bans and steroid smile, blocked their entrance.

  ‘You can’t come in,’ he said, nodding at the Type 56. ‘No weapons.’

  Now Rachel flicked on her anger switch. She stepped into the heavy’s face, doing her best to show off her impressive rack. ‘This is my personal security. Where I go, he goes. If you have a problem with that, let me speak to your commanding officer. I’m sure my audience on CNN would love to hear about how you put the lives of female news reporters in danger.’

  Ray-Bans stewed for a moment. He rolled his tongue around his mouth and spat on the floor and stepped a half-metre to the side. ‘OK. This time. But in the future, he can’t bring that kind of weapon into here. Personal defence guns only.’

  ‘Sure,’ Rachel said.

  They brushed past the guy, walked under the canopy, and then, as casually as possible, through a set of tinted-glass doors. The glass was scratched and flecked with mud. Inside the lobby the floor was polished marble, the atmosphere placid, refined. Arab-style muzak seeped out of unseen speakers.

  A middle-aged white guy in a crumpled linen suit sat cross-legged on a leather armchair, flicking through the news on his white iPad 2. A podgy woman in an ill-fitting suit sat on a sofa opposite him. She was jabbering into an iPhone 4. A waiter moved among the crowd, serving tea. The Mansour looked like any hotel in the world.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ said Bald, nodding at her chest.

  ‘I work for the Agency. They teach you a lot of things, but rule number one is, if you’ve got it, don’t be afraid to use it.’

  ‘They’re your secret weapon?’

  ‘Is that your idea of a compliment?’

  ‘Get this right,’ said Bald, ‘and you’ll get plenty more. Now go and do your thing.’ He lingered in the lobby while Rachel sauntered over to the ladies’ restroom. She emerged a minute later with her face cleaned up and her hair loosened, each blonde curl like a finger encouraging you to come a little closer. She approached the main desk. A guy stood behind it, wearing a faded white shirt and a harassed look.

  Rachel leaned across the desk and brightened up his day. She presented the guy with the best close-up of a miraculous rack he was likely to see outside of RedTube. He suddenly looked less harassed. Meanwhile Bald couldn’t help himself from checking out Rachel’s arse. One look reminded him how desperate he was to sling her one.

  The guy said something to Rachel. She laughed teasingly and gave him a smile. Then turned away and retreated to Bald.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You’re right. My secret weapon is pretty damn effective.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Laxman checked in this morning.’

  Thank fuck, thought Bald. He was still on course for his five million. ‘Room number?’

  Rachel smiled at him with her eyes, offshore-blue, and said, ‘Two-one-two.’ Bald half-turned but stopped when he realized that she was staring at him, the smile smoothed into her delicate features, her face straight and serious and itching to share something else with him. He turned back and she said, ‘He’s not in his room.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Our friend,’ she said, thumbing at the manager. ‘He says the guy flunked out about an hour ago. Handed in his keys for safe keeping. He told the manager he wouldn’t be back for a couple of hours.’

  ‘I’m going to check out his room. He might have left the Intelligent Dust up there.’

  ‘Unguarded? Hard to believe.’

  ‘Sometimes people do stupid shit.’

  She winked. ‘You’re the expert.’

  ‘Wait here in the lobby. If Laxman comes back, stop him from going up to his room.’

  ‘Got it,’ Rachel said.

  Bald started for the lift but decided to take the stairs instead. A lift usually opened out into the middle of a corridor, and a threat could be lurking in either direction. Stairwells ran up the sides of buildings. You could push the emergency door ajar and take your time to assess threats, rather than risk jumping out into the middle of a clusterfuck.

  No one was around, and Bald took the stairs three treads at a time. Each stride took him one step closer to the promised land: five big ones and a chance to build a new life somewhere, away from the shit and the bullets and the Firm. The stairway was basic: concrete steps, metal railings that were coming loose from the concrete, cracks in the walls. His muscles were pumped. His blood was up. Adrenaline needled his spine like a burst of electricity. He reached the second-floor fire exit, pushed both palms down on the crash bar and peered into the corridor.
Empty. He scanned it for twelve more seconds, his eyes alert to the smallest detail. An open door, a tray left outside a room. A smell of smoke in the air.

  He entered the corridor, softly closing the door behind him.

  Almost there.

  His eyes flicked left to right: room 201 to his left, 202 to his right, 203 . . . A knackered air-con system spewed out reheated air, like someone permanently breathing in your face. Bald slowed his pace, his trainers cushioned by the geometric-patterned carpet. He counted the doors on the right, at his one o’clock. The next door was 204. After that 206 at ten metres. Then 208, 210 and the door which had to be 212, twenty metres ahead. The Type 56 was slung over his shoulder on its strap.

  He didn’t want to go into a close-quarter battle situation with a weapon as clunky and awkward as an assault rifle. In a confined environment like a hotel room you needed speed. Speed of movement, speed of thought. So he went with the Makarov. He gripped the pistol in his right hand and flicked his thumb to the slide-mounted safety catch and pushed it down to the ‘fire’ setting. The Makarov bore all the hallmarks of a Soviet firearm. An elegantly simple design, features way ahead of its time, and a reliable assembly. But, like other Russian guns, it was heavy and loud as fuck. The Russians specialized in functionality. They didn’t care much for elegance. Normally the noise would be an issue. Not here. Bullets were cracking off in the distance every few seconds, interrupted by the occasional wall-shattering thud of incoming mortar rounds. A couple of shots being unloaded in a hotel room would go unnoticed. You wanted to murder someone and get away with it, a war zone was your ideal fucking location.

  Bald tightened the screw on his breathing. Then he edged closer to room 212.

  A few more careful strides and he was at the door. He pricked his ears. A hollow, wooden noise: the sound of a drawer being opened or shut. Bald froze. Shit, he thought. Laxman’s home after all. I’ve hit the jackpot. This is it.

  He assessed the lock. It was an old-fashioned thing with a doorknob and a keyhole, not one of the modern keycard-operated things. He gave the knob a try, his fingertips lightly touching the brass. He slowly twisted the knob clockwise, and it turned a lot more than a locked door would do. Satisfied that he could enter without forcing the door, Bald adjusted his stance so that his right leg was half a foot’s length behind his left leg, and bent his knees slightly. He took in three deep breaths and tensed his ab muscles, so that his core was stable.

  Makarov in his right hand. With his left hand he rotated the knob again, slowly and soundlessly, until he heard the tiny click of the latch releasing. Now the door was loose, and he gave a final twist and pushed it inwards. It opened quietly.

  Bringing his left hand up, he wrapped his fingers around the ridgeline of his right hand to give himself a solid firing platform for the Makarov. The door stilled, almost fully open, giving Bald a complete view of the hotel room. Operators are trained to assess every potential threat inside a contained environment in 1.5 seconds. The room was six metres deep and three wide. To his left was the bathroom. To his right was a trouser press and a wooden desk with a small flatscreen TV mounted on top, plus the usual hotel facilities of mini-bar, room service menu, phone and hairdryer. A king-sized bed stood against the left wall and consumed most of the floor space. At the far side of the room was a sliding door – closed – leading to a balcony.

  A figure was in front of the bed.

  Bald was ready to give Shylam Laxman the good news.

  Then he clocked the face. A single thought pickaxed his skull.

  No. Can’t be . . . Fucking impossible.

  The man in the room was Joe Gardner.

  thirty-seven

  1144 hours.

  They stood apart for what felt to Bald like a long time, but in reality was only five or six seconds. Bald studied the man six metres from the business end of his Makarov. The man who had once been a mucker, then an enemy, and finally a washed-up bag of shit. As if to prove he wasn’t a ghost, Gardner bore the scars of his recent encounter with the Thames. The front of his face was stamped with bruises. His cheekbones were misshapen lumps, as if someone had sewn peanuts under the skin. The skin around his eyes was coloured all sorts of putrid yellows, purples and browns.

  Gardner didn’t say anything. He kept his hands by his side. His eyes were big and wide. His left one, anyway. The right was puffed up and the eyelid drooped down over half his eyeball. He looked startled, like a kid caught mid-wank by his mother.

  Bald kept the Makarov trained on a spot between Gardner’s eyes. He pictured a round pencilling his forehead, spitting brain matter over the furniture and the cream walls, the round yawing through soft flesh and hard bone, his body going limp.

  Then he let his eyes run across the room, more slowly this time. It was a fucking mess. Drawers had been ripped out of the desk and upturned on the floor. Clothes were scattered all over the place. The sheets had been ripped off the bed. A knife slash like a ‘Z’ had been carved into the mattress. The edges of the carpet had been rolled up and the ventilation grille had been torn off. Everything that could be removed had been. The room looked like it had been hit by Hurricane Katrina.

  Like Gardner had been looking for something.

  Like the Intelligent Dust.

  Bald’s eyes returned to Gardner. He opened his gob to ask about the ID but cut himself off before he got a word out. Maybe Gardner knew about the stuff. But maybe he didn’t, and Bald wasn’t in the business of giving out free fucking int.

  Then Gardner spoke up. ‘John—’

  His voice was suffocated by the flushing of a toilet filtering through the bathroom door. Bald turned to his eight o’clock. Eyes on the door, Makarov on Gardner. The water gargled and swilled and then petered out, replaced by the hiss of the cistern refilling. Bald flashed a look at Gardner. His old mucker was eyeballing the door and grinding his swollen jaws. As if trying to send a thought message to whoever the fuck was the other side of the bathroom door not to come out.

  The door was a plain slab of wood with a dozen blackish smears and a brass handle. A half-inch gap between the bottom of the door and the carpet.

  The handle tilted down. Halogen light seeped out. The door pulled back fully and revealed a guy standing in the doorway. Slim build, but not puny. Angular, bony. Like a flyweight boxer. Mid-forties. He wore just stonewashed jeans. The belt buckle hung loose and his flies were undone. A Sig Sauer P228 was tucked into the waistband. His chest was one giant fucking tattoo, depicting an eagle grasping the Irish Republican flag between its talons and the letters ‘NO SURRENDER’ below, surrounded by shamrock leaves.

  The guy stepped out of the bathroom. Hands in the air, a pungent smell of shit in his wake. The wire-mesh shadows on his face dissolved, and Bald found himself staring face to face with a man he hadn’t seen for a very long time.

  ‘John fucking Bald,’ the man said.

  Gardner’s eyes played eeny-meeny-miny-moe with Bald and the guy in the bathroom doorway. ‘You two know each other?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, I know Bill fucking Fourie all right,’ said Bald. His stomach muscles tensed. His index finger ran up and down the trigger mechanism.

  ‘But he quit the Regiment before you’d even joined.’

  ‘He had his fingers in a lot of pies in Hereford,’ said Bald. ‘Our paths crossed.’

  ‘They more than fucking crossed,’ said Fourie. ‘We worked together. On the Circuit. Two proud Scots, doing what they do best. Drinking and fighting.’

  ‘That was a long time ago,’ said Bald. ‘Then I realized you were a cunt.’

  Fourie pantomimed a pout. ‘Jesus, John, you say it like you really mean it.’ Fourie took a step closer to Bald. Two metres between the men. ‘Put the gun down, lad,’ he said.

  ‘Stay where you are. Both of you. Either one of you cracks so much as a wet fart and I’ll slot you.’

  Bald arced the Makarov at Fourie and gave him a close-up look at the barrel, to emphasize that he was dead serious. Fourie got
the message and stopped in his tracks. Shoved his hands into the air. His skin had a marinated look to it, like rust, and wrinkled with it, a quality peculiar to Scotsmen who’ve spent too long in the sun. His eyes were locked in a permanent squint. It got Bald thinking. It looked like Fourie hadn’t graced Hereford or his native Stornoway for longer than a little while.

  Bald traced the Makarov from Fourie to Gardner and back again. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

  ‘Me? Why, I’m enjoying the weather, John.’ Fourie sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘But I heard you got rich. Big drug deal down in Rio. Is that so? But hold on, John. If you filled your boots down south, what’re you doing here?’

  ‘None of your fucking business.’

  Fourie exaggerated a shrug at Gardner. ‘Then I guess you didn’t get that rich after all.’

  ‘What’s it to you, Bill? You’re forty-fucking-eight. An old cunt with a shit face and a shit life. All you’ve got to show for it is a security company you bankrupted and a load of other Blades who’d love to skin you alive. It won’t take two guesses to figure out who the loser is in this room.’

  Fourie suddenly worked his face into a snarl, as if the expression had been lingering under the surface of his skin all along and the flick of a switch had brought it out. He said, ‘Fuck you, John. Remember who you’re talking to.’

  At five feet five, Fourie had been the shortest guy in the Regiment. The other lads had relentlessly ripped the piss out of his height. But the man had always given off an air of great confidence. His beard was reddish-brown and bristly like an old broom, and his small black eyes and distance-runner frame made him seem even smaller than he actually was. Some joker had nicknamed him ‘Inch’ and the name stuck. Bill ‘Inch’ Fourie had been the human illustration of the law that says the smallest dogs have the worst bite. During his time in Boat Troop he’d had so many complaints against him he made Bald look like fucking Bono. Then he’d handed in his papers and fucked off on a security contract, and no one had heard from him in more than five years.