Night Strike

by Chris Ryan

  Bald watched him die and felt nothing.

  A lull in the shooting.

  The dead guys’ three mates pulled back to the sides of the Land Cruiser. To seek extra cover, Bald assumed. But also because they were thinking what every soldier thinks when he sees a mucker buying a one-way ticket to the graveyard: what if it’s me next? They were doing the maths in their head. They’d fired more than a dozen shots and killed nobody. Bald had fired two shots and chalked up two KIAs. It might make them think twice. For a few seconds. But their second thought would be, let’s nail this fucking bastard. Bald used this pause of uncertainty to cast a look at his six. No movement at the den. It had been fully two minutes since Gardner and Laxman had gone inside.

  ‘What’s taking them so long?’ Bald asked nobody.

  Fourie said, ‘Laxman is a fucking liar. It ain’t here.’

  Bald didn’t have time to play games with Fourie. In the corners of both eyes he clocked movement. Right and left. Simultaneous. Coordinated. Silhouettes shuttling across the sides of the road. Four to the right. Three to the left of Bald. The four at his three o’clock concerned him the most. They were encircling him. Closing the net. Smart for third-world squaddies. They grouped by the corner of the north- and east-facing walls of the mosque, dropped to one knee and started putting rounds down on him in three-round bursts.

  Now Bald swivelled round and from his kneeling fire stance unloaded a trim succession of rounds at the rebels. Shoot, breathe, shoot. One-two-three. The ground coughed up dirt in their faces. The mosque wall spat mortar over them. The rounds didn’t hit, but that wasn’t Bald’s primary aim. He wanted to keep them pinned down, make them shitless and run for cover. Four-five-six. Brass tumbled and clinked around Bald’s feet. He felt one round flick back in his face and leave a hot mark on his eyebrow. The ankle of the rebel furthest to his left first buckled and then folded in on itself. Seven-eight-nine. The other three guys retreated to the rear of the mosque. To cover. They left their mate howling at the bone and gristle exposed at the raw end of his leg. Piss and shit darkened the soil around him. A tenth round from Bald’s Type 56, unaccompanied, a lonely shot, nailed the rebel in the sweet spot, right between his eyes. Another cunt put out of his misery.

  Ten rounds at the mosque. Plus two at the guys on the .50-cal. Twelve spent, eighteen rounds of 7.62mm left. No spare clips.

  He saw two more guys scrambling onto the Land Cruiser’s cargo bed. The .50-cal. He had to choose between putting rounds down on them and the three guys at his nine o’clock. They were headed for the opium den. Bald concluded these were the more immediate threat. Gardner had the Sig, and he was a big boy, but he was outnumbered and outgunned. So Bald arced the Type 56 against the three guys and unloaded eight rounds in a rhythmic burst. He chopped down the guy leading the assault sixteen metres from the den. Rounds one and two dipped and dived and hit the dirt. Round three slapped into the guy’s gut and sent him into a balletic whirl. Round four was the money shot. Scalped the cunt. Brain matter sprayed across the ground. Bald could make out the coconut outline of his exposed brain, sloshing around in his skull like a meatball in a pan of water. The guy stacked it.

  Ten rounds left.

  Bald turned his attention to the opium den.

  Still no sign of Gardner or Laxman.

  Then he heard the sound he had dreaded the most.

  The .50-cal.

  The two guys had managed to climb up while he’d been taking one of the three guys heading for the den. Now they opened fire. The first three rounds impacted into the rear end of the Impala. The chassis squealed as the rounds opened up new craters in the bodywork and flung pieces of metal, leather and glass into the air.

  ‘Fucking cunting fuck,’ Fourie said as the rounds corkscrewed past him. Bits of shrapnel pinballed around the interior.

  A smell of burning rubber assailed Bald.

  He whirled back around. The den. Toxic black smoke was pouring from the building. The smoke was so thick he couldn’t tell whether it was coming from inside or from the stack of tyres he’d seen to one side of the den. He caught the spectral glimpse of two silhouettes rampaging through the smoke. The rebels. Tongues of fire sparked at the door. The Sig Sauer barked. A guy howled. Another guy shouted. The first guy howled again.

  Fuck, thought Bald. The plan’s going down the shitter.

  Bald put down fire on the Land Cruiser and shut the .50-cal up for a few precious seconds, peppering the vehicle with hot lead. Eight rounds. Then he got the dreaded click-click. Empty mag. Bullets ricocheted off the bonnet of the Land Cruiser and glanced off the .50-cal. Bald looked back to the den.

  Through the smoke he saw a figure breaking through the door.

  Laxman.

  He was on fire.

  forty-three

  1659 hours.

  Flames licked at Laxman’s wild arms and legs. He was howling. The smell of burning human flesh festered in the air. Bald was powerless to do anything as Laxman fled towards the mosque. Powerless except to watch the .50-cal rounds pump away at Laxman and speedball through the air and slice and dice his torso in half, blood wellspringing out of his legs at the severed hips, all kinds of stringy shit evacuating from his stomach cavity. Fresh out of ammo, Bald couldn’t even put the cunt down and end his pain.

  He could only watch his five large, and his villa in Monte Carlo, going up in smoke.

  Bald stayed low by the Impala. The Chinese woman was cowering by his side. Her face was buried in the ground and she was breathing heavy, snotty breaths, like she was snorting sand. Now Bald was focused on survival. Not winning. Just getting out of this situation alive. He saw the three remaining rebels at the mosque emerge from cover. A second later he saw the two rebels from the opium den running towards him. He was trapped on both sides, with the .50-cal blocking off his only other exit corridor.

  The guys at the mosque were thirty metres away. Then twenty. Then ten. Bald considered the inescapable shitness of his situation. He was out of rounds, out of escape plans and out of hope. His best plan was to look dead. So he splayed himself face down on the sand, his legs and arms worked into the odd sprawls of the dead, and pressed the woman down beside him, making her play dead too. Then he waited, hoping to bollocks that Fourie didn’t make a noise.

  The smell of burnt flesh dissipated. Or rather, it was consumed by a stronger smell closer to Bald. Something tangy, spicy, but retaining the after-taste of an overflowing dumpster. He heard the slow grind of gravel trodden underfoot. The sound came from his six o’clock.

  A familiar voice said, ‘Give me the gun.’

  Younes.

  Bald stayed dead.

  ‘I know you are alive. You can stop pretending now.’

  Bald looked up. Younes towered over him. He had his Makarov lined up between Bald’s eyes. He took a long, satisfied drag on the smoke between his lips. His features were caked in a layer of mortar dust. His fatigues were dusted the colour of alabaster. He blew smoke at Bald and offered his hand. Bald didn’t accept it, but he handed the Type 56 to him, stood up and surveyed the damage. The ground was sprinkled with spent brass. Battle’s crop, waiting to be harvested. The fire raged inside the opium den. The rebels were heading back to the pickups. Younes nodded at them; he wanted Bald all to himself.

  Bald said, ‘So why were you after Laxman?’

  Younes shrugged with his bottom lip.

  ‘The Americans told us to protect him.’

  Bald coughed. Burnt air scorched his lungs.

  ‘What Americans?’

  Younes smirked. ‘CIA.’

  Bald immediately thought, Hauser.

  ‘But if you were told to protect him, why the fuck is he dead?’

  Younes threw his tab to the floor. It fizzled out in the sand.

  ‘Just because the CIA helped us, it doesn’t mean we are their slaves.’ Younes stepped right up to Bald and traced a dirt-flecked hand over the scar on his own neck. ‘You see this? The CIA and MI5 abducted me. Two years ago. I was
in Frankfurt. For a medical conference – I used to be a doctor. They stopped me at the airport, put me in handcuffs. They took me to a private jet and flew me to Bangkok. I was taken to a prison somewhere outside the city. They introduced me to a man from Libyan intelligence. He tortured me for three days. If you or your American brothers think we have short memories in Libya, you are wrong.’

  He spat on the ground.

  ‘Enough bullshit,’ Younes went on. ‘You are a dead man. But I can do it slow or do it fast. It’s up to you. If you tell me what you’re really doing here: fast. If not: slow. And please, no lies. I know your NATO cover story is lies. I asked my superiors. They know nothing about you.’

  ‘I’m offering you a treasure,’ said Bald. ‘I’m talking gold bullion. Buried in the desert. I have the coordinates.’

  Younes laughed at the ground, his corpulent belly jellying up and down, his double-chin wobbling.

  ‘Treasure. Buried in the desert. Now we are in a children’s story.’ He looked back up at Bald. The smile was uncurling itself into a plain and simple rage. ‘You think I am a peasant? Or worse, a fool? It must be one or the other, since only a fool or a peasant would believe such a tall story.’

  Fucking Fourie, Bald thought. The cunt played me.

  ‘Of course,’ Younes went on, ‘this is not the first time you have lied to me. Just like you lied about being sent here by NATO.’

  The words hit Bald like a fist. He felt the rebel’s raw, intense stare-down. The man’s black poker-chip eyes searched the lines of Bald’s face. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Bald said. ‘I’m here on NATO business. Go check if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I already did.’

  Bald stiffened.

  ‘None of our NATO contacts has ever heard of you.’

  Younes flipped the Type 56 around and pointed it at a spot between Bald’s eyes. The black hole of the muzzle stared indifferently at Bald. His life whittled down to one pissy second or perhaps two. No way out this time, the rifle seemed to be saying to him. No last fucking words.

  Bald waited to die.

  A grinding noise trembled across the air. It was backdraughting from up the street, beyond the rebels’ pickups and towards inner-city Tripoli. Now Bald and Younes traced the sound with their eyes. A dust cloud was spurting up behind the gleaming frame of a Mercedes Benz C-Class, cocaine-white, brand-new, unscathed by the conflict unfolding around it. Each of the front wings carried a flag: a navy-blue field with a central white compass rose emblem and four white lines radiating from the rose. Bald immediately recognized them as the NATO flag.

  The Merc swerved to a halt next to the pickups. Two men got out of the rear. The guy on the left was an Arab dressed in military fatigues. The one on the right was European-looking, grey-haired, wearing a suit, sunglasses and a stern expression.

  ‘John!’ the guy in the suit shouted at Bald, waved at him too, like a long-lost brother. ‘Christ, I’ve been looking for you all over.’ He marched confidently over to Younes, while the Arab folded his arms and stayed back by the Merc. The suit whipped off his sunglasses and pointed them accusingly at the rebel.

  ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ he said.

  Younes wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were on the Arab, a puzzled look sewn into his features. He shot the same look at Bald, the Scot just as thrown by the guy in the suit as he was.

  Then, his voice laced with uncertainty, he said to the suit, ‘Who are you? And what business does my general have here?’

  The man flashed Younes his most evil expression. ‘Brad Stromback, NATO liaison. General Safiyah tells me you have one of my contacts hostage.’ He nodded sagely at Bald. ‘It looks to me very much like you were planning to put him in an early grave. And that would be a grave mistake.’

  Younes grimaced. ‘I thought he wasn’t NATO.’

  Stromback jabbed his sunglasses at Younes’s chest. ‘Well, do us all a favour and un-fucking-think. Christ, we’re here to help you win this bloody war and all you’re doing is trying to execute my men.’

  Then he turned to Bald, put an arm around his shoulder and said, ‘It’s bloody good to see you again, John. How’s the wife?’

  Bald hoped the confusion he was feeling wasn’t billboarded all over his face. He tried to keep his features straight and blank, but he was slow to respond to Stromback’s question and the NATO man quickly filled the awkward silence. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. You’re separated these days. My memory.’

  ‘Something is not right here,’ Younes said, shaking his head.

  ‘The only thing not right is your kidnapping of an ally.’ Stromback was suddenly sneering at Younes, looking so authentically pissed off that Bald found himself half-believing it too. ‘Hand my guy back over to me before General Safiyah puts you before a firing squad. Your choice.’

  Younes hesitated. General Safiyah gave a slight, impartial nod.

  Bald wondered why the general wasn’t joining Stromback and talking to his man Younes. He figured it was a pride thing. Stromback was in control here; he had his dick wedged up the general’s arse, and the general knew it.

  Younes slowly lowered the Type 56. Stromback put his sunglasses on, eyefucked Younes for a moment longer, then told him, ‘Your business here is finished, sir.’

  Younes trudged back towards the Land Cruiser with his head down. He stopped after ten metres, looked back at Bald and said, ‘They say the CIA helped Bin Laden against the Soviets. Now they help us. It’s a good thing that the Americans are so naive.’

  Then he walked on.

  Stromback curled a long finger at Bald. ‘You’re to return to the Mansour sharpish. Your guest is waiting there for you.’

  What guest? Bald thought. ‘Uh, yeah. My guest. Got it.’ He looked back at the burning building and called to Stromback, ‘I’ll catch you up.’

  The NATO man was already spinning around as he said, ‘Don’t take too long. There’s still pockets of loyalists around here. Wouldn’t want you to catch a stray bullet.’

  Bald was left with the woman and a pounding headache like a grenade had gone off next to his ear. He watched the fire lap over every last inch of the opium den. The building was almost razed to the ground. Two dead guys to the right. One was the rebel Bald had slotted. Another rebel lay ten nearer to the den, his jeans burnt away by the fire, his exposed flesh all flaky and charcoaled, like dark walnut.

  The dust, Bald thought.

  He started for the den. He didn’t give a fuck whether Gardner was dead or not. But he still figured he could make his fortune off the dust. Even better, if Gardner was out of it he could cut a more pleasing split with Fourie. And he reasoned that a top-secret technology like ID wouldn’t be carted around in a standard briefcase. No. It would be sealed up inside a Pelican-style box, engineered to be fireproof and waterproof and bombproof and everythingproof. Bald got to within ten metres of the place before the heat suddenly became intolerable. It scalded his skin and singed the hairs on his face. He took another step forward and felt like someone was holding a Zippo lighter under his eyes.

  Bald stopped. The heat was sending his sweat glands into overkill. Through his blurred vision he surveyed the damage to the opium den. He saw collapsed concrete and twisted metal and the outline of a body fused to some kind of warped plastic. The features had been burnt to shit, but Bald figured it was Gardner.

  ‘Fucking cunt. Couldn’t even do a simple little thing right.’

  He peeled away from the blaze and strode back towards the Impala, his face lit up with determination. Telling himself that since Laxman was dead, his mission had been achieved. It didn’t matter that some rebel chancer had put him down. Who the fuck was going to know? And one dead Laxman meant five million quid. Which wasn’t anywhere near as good as twenty million, but it was better than a kick in the teeth.

  He spotted the Chinese woman scurrying away from the Impala. She was headed in the same direction the pickups had taken. Bald withdrew the Makarov from his jeans a
nd cocked the hammer. The sound was distinct and crisp in the air. The woman stopped running. He watched the slim line of her shoulders sag. Then she did a little pirouette. A smile vacillated on her face beneath the dirt.

  ‘Where the fuck do you think you’re going?’ he said.

  ‘Home,’ the woman said.

  ‘I didn’t say you could go anywhere.’

  The smile thinned out.

  ‘Why you keep me?’

  ‘Because you were with Laxman.’

  She tried to conjure up the smile again, but this time it just looked sad.

  ‘He paid me for sex. That was it. I didn’t know him any better than you.’

  Bald said nothing.

  ‘I’m just a call girl.’ The woman folded her arms impatiently. The black pearls of her eyes stared at Bald.

  ‘You know something, don’t you?’ he said.

  She didn’t get a chance to reply. The pickups were suddenly coming under heavy fire from a thin line of loyalists pitched fifty metres further up the street. Incoming rounds dashed around the vehicles. A couple of strays bounced around Bald and the woman. She managed to shake herself free in the confusion and made for the dirt field, in the same direction as the civilians who’d earlier fled from the mosque. Bald moved to chase her. Then he caught a sound coming from his immediate right.

  Inside the Impala.

  Fourie.

  Bald edged towards the back of the car. Fourie was still inside, head in his lap, hands by his side. Just like the illustration from the airplane safety sheet. Except that Fourie’s brains were splashed all over the place, ruining a perfectly good interior. His head was tilted at a slight angle and his right eye was prised open and hooked on Bald. Blood, gummy and mixed up with bits of brain matter and chipped bone, was leaking out of the hole.