Thunder

by Anthony Bellaleigh

  Jack moans from the back seats.

  “Hold on,” I shout helpfully, as the car leaps up over the edge of a rough-painted strip of tarmac, and crashes back down again.

  “Owwwww...,” he wails.

  “Tarmac now,” I yell.

  “Thank fuck!” he cries.

  The dust cloud behind us is subsiding, but from within it I can make out headlights peering through the dirty smog. They’re dancing around in the mirror like some approaching alien spacecraft preparing to land. “We’ve got company!” I call out.

  “Head south!” he instructs, and I see the reflection of the top of his head pop up in the rearview mirror as he peers out the back.

  The car sprints forward, its road-tyres getting more traction on the tarmac, and I haul the wheel to the right, rubber screaming in frustration, as we reach the next junction.

  “Ow, ow, ow,” Jack commentates.

  I glance back at him. He’s heaving himself round and trying to get to the kit stored under the seat.

  “Keep going,” he yells, and hauls out the EMT.

  The headlights burst out from the junction behind us. One pair. Two pairs. A fiery strobe light blinks above the headlights of the first vehicle. “Incoming!” I yell, as a line of bullets tear a swathe of holes out of the nearby walls and smash into the windows of the houses on one side of the street.

  Well wide.

  “Keep going!” he repeats. “Head for the bridge! There’s one ahead of us.”

  The road leads, in a straight line, ahead of us. Another burst of gunfire starts biting holes out of the houses on the other side of us. Bits of brickwork and glass shower down, tinkling and banging against the bodywork and windscreen.

  Closer this time but still wide.

  I jink left and keep the accelerator pressed hard into the floorboards. If anyone steps out in front of us this time, they’re going to end up as mincemeat.

  “At the end of this straight section the road will curve to the left. Take the immediate right and get us over the bridge but, after we’re over, don’t follow the main road round to the right,” Jack yells, reading from the EMT. “Keep going straight. We’ll go into a hamlet where the road forks, take the middle one.”

  “What about them?” I yell, nodding my head backward toward our pursuers.

  “I’ll deal with them in a minute,” he shouts. “I’ve only got one pair of hands!”

  More flickering lights from behind. Something hits the back of the car and I jerk further left mounting the pavement momentarily. There’s an explosion of glass and something whistles past my right ear and punches a big hole into the dashboard. I don’t think that the car radio is going to work again. It’s a good job I didn’t swerve to the right, or neither would I.

  “Jesus,” mutters my passenger.

  “What are you doing?” I yell.

  “Sending a FUCKING MESSAGE!” he howls from behind me, but lifts his Browning and fires blindly over the back seat through what’s left of the rear windscreen.

  That seems to help. I can see the headlights of our pursuers swerving around as they slow rapidly behind me.

  Then they accelerate again.

  “We need some more of that,” I call out.

  “Stop nagging!” he yells.

  That’s annoying. “I’m NOT nagging!” I protest angrily. “I’m trying to keep your sorry miserable backside alive, you ungrateful bastard!”

  Suddenly the car is full of ear-shattering clattering noises, and I reflexively shrink down in my seat. The deafening racket is coming from Jack, who I can see in the mirror, pointing one of the rifles out through the shattered hole of the back window. In the darkness, flames spout dramatically out of its cartridge ejector port. The magazine empties. “Nag, nag nag!” he yells into the sudden silence, as he rips out the double mag, flips it over, and slams it back in.

  The closest of the two pursuing vehicles has been swerving violently from side to side to avoid Jack’s bullets. I can just make out it’s a pickup truck. Someone is standing in the load space and being swung around as he, or she, clings grimly to some sort of tripod. This figure wheels towards us and the flickering light starts again.

  “Tripod mounted machine gun!” Jack yells helpfully as more rounds slam into the boot lid on my side.

  I jink right, then hard left, guessing that the gunman will struggle to track rapid changes of direction. A renewed cacophony of explosions announces that Jack is returning fire.

  “They’re backing off!” he yells triumphantly.

  I settle the car back into the middle of the road, and try to push my foot through the floorboard.

  “Oh, shit,” says my passenger.

  “What?”

  “Fuck.”

  “WHAT?”

  “RPG!” yells Jack.

  “WHAT?”

  “RPG!” yells Jack.

  “WHAT THE FUCK IS A...”

  “MOVE!” he screams.

  I pull violently on the steering wheel, and a strange object appears next to my window, snaking slowly past us, trailing a gently curving smoky trail in its wake...

  “GO RIGHT!” yells Jack desperately.

  I haul the car to the right, and off the side of the road. Thankfully we’re outside the city now, and the car bounds wildly, sliding as it fishtails, on the empty dirt verge. To the left hand side, in front of us, there’s a ferocious flash of light, and a car shaking boom, and I feel the Toyota being pushed up onto two wheels.

  “SHIT!” I yell.

  “SHIT!” agrees Jack.

  I’m up in the air, and leaning hard left. Come on car! Come on!

  I haven’t lifted my foot off the gas yet.

  Come on...

  The car drops violently down, and I see my passenger bounce past the rear view. Serves him right for having a go at me. “What the fuck was that?” I yell.

  “An RPG,” he shouts from the footwell. “Like I was trying to tell you. A fucking rocket propelled grenade!” He’s up to something back there. “Get back to the road!” he instructs. “We’ve got to lose these guys!”

  I heave on the steering and point the squirming Toyota vaguely toward the line of the road. There’s a newly formed, smoking crater of a pothole where the RPG went off a moment ago. God knows what would have become of us if we’d been any closer. Or, if it had hit the car itself...

  “Get on the tarmac, and get us straight,” he calls forward.

  I look back between the seats. He’s busy winding a wire round something.

  He notices my glance. “Making them a present,” he explains. “Concentrate on the driving.”

  In the mirror first one, then two, sets of headlights burst through the swirling cloud of RPG smoke.

  “They’re still there!” I shout.

  “Keep going,” he instructs. “And slow down a bit.”

  “Slow DOWN?” Is he mad?

  “Slow down,” he asserts.

  I ease off the gas slightly. The headlights start closing on us.

  “Easy,” says Jack calmly. “Easy now.”

  I can just see his head in the mirror, looking back over the seats.

  “How far are we from the left turn?” he shouts to me.

  I can see it in the distance. “About five hundred metres,” I yell.

  “Get ready to floor it again,” he coaches. “Not yet... Not yet...”

  The headlights are getting closer and closer.

  “Not yet...”

  “What about another RPG?” I shout at the windscreen. “What if they have another?”

  “Not at this range,” he says. “Get ready...”

  Our pursuers are barely a hundred metres back from us. The machine gun, on its own, won’t miss at this range.

  “Two hundred metres!” I yell.

  “NOW!” he roars, tossing something large out of the back window. “GO, GO, GO!”

  I drop the Toyota one gear and floor it. The car’s engine howls angrily, and I feel the seat pressing into my ba
ck. Then there’s an almighty flash which momentarily lights up both the car’s interior and a huge expanse of the flat desert around us. I can even make out the bridge in the distance. The explosive bang is loud enough to make my already throbbing ears ring with pain and something slams into the boot, driving the car forwards, and making the gears whine in protest at the strain of sudden speed.

  “C4,” he yells happily.

  In the rearview mirror the pickup truck is cartwheeling along behind us. For a few moments it’s still keeping pace: initially nose first, then there’s a smash of sparks and a scream of metal, and then the flatbed’s rising vertically, then it’s tail first upside down, and then there’s another smash of sparks and painful screams, then...

  “WATCH THE FUCKING ROAD!” yells my backseat driver...

  SHIT...! TURN...! I heave the steering wheel to the left...

  ~~~~~

  London

  Greere scanned the chatter appearing in broken lines and scrolling down his screen. “Shots reported,” he read out. “Automatic fire reported... Shit: two men reported running from area dressed in Western military uniforms... Multiple vehicles involved in high speed pursuit... Firefight involving local criminal gangs reported.”

  “I’ve got something!” shouted Ellard. “Hang on, sir!”

  “Ping it over to my screen too,” said Greere.

  A small text box popped up in front of him: ‘12 – 01 – 52 – 99 – 34.2587:62.1883’. A message from the EMT.

  “Targets hit successfully, with collateral damage,” translated Ellard. “One person injured, again... Exiting off plan and by best means possible. They’re requesting urgent extraction from the specified location using the emergency ‘9x’ notation.”

  Greere’s phone started buzzing on the desktop. He snatched it up. Sentinel’s number. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “What the fuck’s going on, Greere?” demanded Sentinel. “I’ve had the army on to me, asking if we’ve got any operations running in the Herat area!”

  Greere smiled to himself and spoke loud enough so Ellard would hear him. “Unfortunately there are reports of men in Western army uniform being seen fleeing the southwestern suburbs,” he said calmly. “It would appear that Tin and Mercury have stirred up a hornet’s nest, sir. Large numbers of local militia or possibly gangsters are pursuing them out of the city.”

  “Fuck,” said Sentinel.

  “Yes, sir. Unfortunate as it seems, it is my strong recommendation that we sever all links. We are ready for such contingency. We need to ensure that there is no trail back to here. Best to move quickly, sir.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, do it,” said Sentinel. “Were the agents successful?” he asked. Greere could hear an unexpected hint of sadness in his boss’s voice. The guy was too soft for his role. Greere had always thought as much.

  “Not sure yet, sir,” he lied carefully, conscious of Ellard looking at him over the partition.

  “Okay,” said Sentinel. “I’ll get rid of our army chums,” and the line clicked off.

  Ellard continued to stare at him.

  “What’re you looking at?” Greere demanded. “You always hated this project anyway. Didn’t you?”

  Ellard shrugged. “I suppose,” he said. “Always seemed to be very high risk. Did Sentinel ask about the targets?”

  “No,” said Greere. “Too worried about covering his backside as usual. Shut down these chatter filters and screens, and start deep-wiping every digital record of our traffic, including the ones to and from the satellite. Sentinel needs me to make a couple of calls. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Greere stood up, stepped out of the office, and made his way along to one of the tiny quiet rooms scattered along the corridor outside. He called up Joker’s number on his secure cell.

  “What?” his agent answered, abruptly and unprofessionally. “I’m busy.”

  In the background, Greere could hear some woman, moaning rhythmically. “I need you to get another message to our friend,” he growled.

  “I said, I’m busy,” Joker replied.

  Greere snarled, “Remember who pays for your whores, Joker. And remember where you are in the world. You don’t get to say yes or no. Don’t make me send someone to find you...”

  “So, what’s the message?” Joker’s voice reeked of contempt, but the moaning in the background stopped.

  “Write this down.”

  Shuffling noises. “Okay, go.”

  “Message reads: valuable assets at Long 34.2587, Lat 62.1883. Message ends.”

  Joker confirmed the message back, and Greere immediately hung up on him. His first job when he got back in the office would be to strip the records of both this and his earlier call to his agent. Ellard could deal with the rest of the boring Tin and Mercury rubbish.

  ~~~~~

  Herat

  The dark skinned Afghan rolled reluctantly to one side and then span himself round, naked, to sit on the edge of the girl’s bed.

  “Why you stop?” she wailed to him.

  He glared at her wordlessly, and reached across to grab his coat. He had a small pad and pen in one of its pockets which he retrieved quickly. “Suck this,” he muttered leaning slightly to one side so that his glistening wet penis flopped toward her.

  The fifteen year-old scrambled obediently around and he felt himself stiffening at the touch of her small hands and moist warm lips.

  “Wasim!” he yelled. “Wasim! Get in here!”

  On the notepad he scrawled Greere’s message. He hated the infidels. Hated them with all his heart and soul. But they paid. Paid very well. In a land that had too little wealth, easy money was difficult to find.

  “WASIM!” he roared.

  The door to the small room burst open and a small boy appeared. His hair was disheveled and his eyes were bleary from disturbed sleep. The child paused for a second, shocked and unsure about seeing the nakedness in front of him.

  Code-name Joker brandished the small sheet of paper and two twenty Afghani notes toward the boy. “Get this to Bin Imraan within the hour,” he instructed. “You keep one,” he waved the money. “The other is for the next boy. Do not betray me or you know what will happen to you.”

  The child nodded grimly as he rubbed his tiny fists at the sleep in his eyes – he didn’t want to be beaten again, or worse – and rushed forward, grabbed the papers and scampered out, slamming the door closed behind him.

  Joker grabbed two handfuls of hair, yanked upward, and then threw the young girl back onto the bed. She stared up at him, eyes full of fear. “Open your legs,” he snarled at her.

  ~~~~~

  I turn the car’s lights off and crawl through a small hamlet of dilapidated houses which are scattered randomly along both sides of the dirt-track road. There are a couple of dozen structures and, even at this speed, in a few short seconds we are nearly out of the other side.

  “Get us off the main road,” says Jack. His voice sounds strained. I suspect he’s feeling more pain now our adrenalin levels are dropping. “Try behind those abandoned buildings.”

  He means a clutter of tumbledown brickwork on the left of us, so I guide us off the roadway.

  “There’s a good spot,” says Jack, easing himself forward between the front seats to point.

  A narrow gap, barely wide enough for the battered Toyota, leads between collapsed walls and I steer us carefully into it. The car is hidden from view from the main road and, if glimpsed, would appear as if it’s just another piece of familiar discarded wreckage. Around here the crumpled panels, broken windows and bullet holes only help it to blend in.

  I kill the engine.

  To the front we have a clear view into the flat expanse of wasteland laying to the South.

  “Watch for helicopters,” he says.

  ~~~~~

  His bodyguard brought the 4x4 crunching to a halt. “Where are they?” the big man muttered.

  The first glimmer of dawn wh
ispered its promise of a new day across the eastern horizon and lit up plumes of dust, rising like dusty pennants, at various points on the surrounding roads. The plumes marked his men’s vehicles as they searched for the fleeing thieves.

  Gulyar’s phone buzzed angrily in his pocket and he fished it out. The call was from one of the men left guarding his main house in Herat. “What is it?” Bin Imraan barked angrily, his brow furrows deepening as he listened to the message. “Give me that number again,” he said. “Slowly.”

  He punched the string of coordinates into the expensive vehicle’s dashboard satnav system.

  “Got them,” he said, smiling wickedly.

  ~~~~~

  A cavalcade of vehicles bundle down the main street kicking up clouds of dust. As they burst out of the village, heading south, I can see pickups, four-by-fours, and even a couple of small trucks. All of them are loaded with heavily armed men. We watch as they slowly spread out into a line about half a klick away from us. There they stop.

  “Shit,” says Jack grimly. “We’re fucked. They know about the Extraction Point.”

  “How?” I ask in disbelief. “How could they know?”

  He sighs deeply and shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he mutters.

  “Maybe they’re just regrouping?” I offer. “Maybe they’ll head off again in a while?”

  Jack says nothing. I look round at him and his expression is one of ashen sadness. Defeated. I am more shocked by this than the arrival of the gangsters with their trucks and guns. Jack has been my rock, my guide, my ally, my safe-haven. To see him like this – suffering, in pain, beaten – tears at my heart and soul.

  “Wait here,” I say.

  I will not let us be defeated.

  Not now.

  I slip quietly out of the car and round to the Toyota’s bullet-riddled boot.

  ~~~~~

  Jack eased up the flaps of his bloodstained shirt. He hurt all over but his chest was worst. Grimacing he gingerly peeled the shirt over his head. Nick had passed a bag, full of fresh local clothes, into the car and told him to get changed before heading off.