Dead Centre

by Andy McNab

The ramp had gone down halfway. I could see Ant and Dec’s shoulders. They were standing, and they had longs into the shoulder.

  I yelled into the mike. ‘Joe! Dive! Dive!’

  The engine screamed as we tipped instantly right. I struggled against the Gs as the horizon disappeared. Then I was sliding towards the door. The ocean filled the hole. The sea was rushing up to meet me.

  I spread my legs, trying to get my socked feet across the airframe as some kind of brake. Both heels hit the door threshold at the same moment. I started tipping up vertically from the floor.

  Joe levelled it out. I dropped back. The air stank of burnt oil. He must have taken the engine near its limits. We surged beneath the Skyvan and out of Ant and Dec’s weapon arcs.

  I checked further down the fuselage. Mr Lover Man and Genghis were holding on to Tracy. Genghis lay over her feet. Mr Lover Man was at his shoulder. They must have had their work cut out keeping her in one piece while Joe did his Red Arrows bit.

  I checked back through the cargo door. We were low enough to see the sea. The sun beat down on it and bounced back up into the sky. It was almost blinding.

  Mr Lover Man shouted. He was glaring at me.

  I gave the calm-down sign I’d been using a lot lately. ‘It’s OK, mate.’

  Joe wasn’t impressed. ‘They got more than that fucking M4, man. This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to get above him, come right on top of the fucker, crossing the ramp so we can get a good look inside the cockpit. If that ramp keeps open we can still see inside. You got that?’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’

  ‘They’re going to be looking for us now. I’m not going to fucking hang about, man. No way. So keep sharp.’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘I’ll be able to check the cockpit as I come in on top of them. That heap of shit couldn’t outrun a fucking wheelbarrow.’

  The Cargomaster tipped right, and then we were suddenly climbing at forty-five degrees, gaining height as the engine screamed. Joe hurled the aircraft round in a tight turn. With blue sky and blue sea and no cloud, I had no point of reference with what was happening, apart from my stomach. I had to grab the struts on the side of the fuselage. I moved to the door, grabbed the rear of the frame with my left hand, keeping the weapon down on the floor with my right.

  I saw the horizon. Then I caught a glint of silver. Joe completed his manoeuvre and the Skyvan was two hundred feet directly below us. We surged down. I felt the force of several times gravity. The engine was going ape-shit. All the loose crap inside the cargo hold flew around like slow-motion shrapnel. Some got caught in the drag of the door and was sucked out.

  I felt the side of my cheek balloon as I tried to look out.

  The Skyvan leapt towards us. My eyes felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets. It was like we were doing a kamikaze dive on it until we were fifty feet away, then Joe pulled the airframe left, towards the rear of the target.

  He screamed into my cans, ‘The cockpit! He’s in the cockpit!’

  We roared past the open ramp. Ant and Dec, still bollock naked, were kneeling on the threshold of the cargo hold. The ramp was the only protection forward of them.

  A thin stream of tracer arced its way towards us. The rounds found their mark. Hot metal ripped through the Cargomaster’s floor.

  Joe dived still lower.

  Suddenly I was looking up at them. They were trying to move forward on the ramp, trying to get some rounds down.

  Their tracer really did make it look as if we were in some Second World War dogfight, until we levelled out again, way out of range.

  Joe sparked up: ‘The boy is definitely in the cockpit. He’s with that fucker who took him. They’re in the right-hand seat. You see them, Nick?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s definitely there. But that’s fucking close to the fuel tanks, man. It’s going to take some fucking good shooting. You up for that shit?’

  ‘I fucking have to be.’

  He laughed far louder than he needed to. ‘You told me you didn’t know how to use the fucking thing. But I had you drilled down as soon as I saw you, man.’

  ‘Joe, can you come in higher and just slightly to the left, over his left wing? I need a line straight down into the tanks and out the bottom without hitting the boy. Can you do that?’

  ‘As you say, man – I fucking have to.’

  The aircraft started to climb. He held the Cargomaster in a tight bank. I tried to look out of the door. I had no idea where the Skyvan was. The engine screamed. More crap got thrown about. We all held on to whatever we could.

  Sunlight leapt at me before the blue sky surrounded me, and then all of a sudden I saw it. The Skyvan was four hundred metres away and much lower.

  Joe was on the cans: ‘As soon as they see us they’re going to try and manoeuvre, but fuck ’em. You just get the rounds down, man. Right?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when.’

  I moved the mike out of the way and screamed to Mr Lover Man. ‘Come here! I need you!’

  He scrambled towards me. The Skyvan was still below us.

  ‘I need you as a platform. On the door.’

  Mr Lover Man knelt down, arms out, gripping the sides of the frame.

  25

  I KNELT DOWN beside his left arm, using it to support the weapon as I leant against the frame.

  I pushed the mike back on. ‘Joe, I’m ready.’

  ‘Here we go.’

  He crabbed neatly across the sky until he was right on top of the Skyvan. I leant forward into Mr Lover Man’s arm, bringing the weapon down, fighting the wind.

  The Skyvan was two hundred metres the other side of the sights.

  The wind was buffeting our faces big-time, but Mr Lover Man’s expression hadn’t changed. Its message was simple: You kill him, I kill you.

  The Skyvan was maybe a hundred metres below us now. The strain showed on Mr Lover Man’s face as he put everything into keeping his body as rigid as he possibly could. He knew how important this platform was.

  Joe’s voice came back through the cans: ‘I’m going to drop down and move a little over his left wing. They’ll see us soon enough. You get drilling as soon as you can.’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  We came so close I could identify faces in the cockpit. Stefan was on the right-hand seat, gripped between BB’s legs. BB was shifting continuously, twisting and turning, checking the airspace around them. He looked up. The M4 dug into the boy’s stomach and his mouth opened in a silent shout.

  I felt Mr Lover Man’s eyes boring into me, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway. Stefan was too valuable to BB now, and the only leverage he had. The only way the kid was going to get shot at the moment was through bad skills and a wayward 7.62.

  The airframe tilted left. I had a clear shot straight down into the tank at about forty degrees.

  I fired.

  I fired again.

  Joe came at me on the cans: ‘Your old friends are right on the ramp.’

  I glanced back. Ant and Dec were manoeuvring themselves into a position from which they could fire without hitting their own wing. The weapons in their shoulders wavered as they fought the wind rush.

  A tumbling 5.56 round ripped a hole many times its size in the aluminium floor, missing Mr Lover Man’s feet by inches before exiting through the roof.

  Mr Lover Man didn’t move a millimetre.

  I fired again.

  I steadied myself for the next shot. Something had changed down there. The fuselage between the Skyvan’s wing roots was staining as fuel escaped across it.

  I fired more rounds into the shed, until I got a big clunk as the working parts moved forward, and then nothing. The mag was empty. Ant and Dec just kept on going.

  Joe screamed. ‘Moving! Moving!’

  He pulled round in a wide turn.

  The Cargomaster threw a sharp left and tilted up. All I could see was sky. Then I caught another glimpse of the cockpit. BB had joine
d in. He was firing through the side window.

  Mr Lover Man and I tumbled back onto the fuselage as the Cargomaster screamed down out of range.

  There’d been no sign of Stefan.

  Joe was back on the cans: ‘Fuck it, we can’t afford to take rounds, man. We can’t go down before that fucker.’

  I looked at the daylight spilling through the holes around me. I was glad he hadn’t seen them yet.

  Mr Lover Man looked at me, waiting for an answer.

  I shrugged.

  Joe bellowed with excitement, ‘They’re heading for the coast, man. You fucking well did it!’

  I gave Mr Lover Man the thumbs-up.

  He nodded slowly. I moved aside so he could make his way back into the hold.

  Genghis screamed up the fuselage at us before he could move a muscle.

  26

  SHE LOOKED ALMOST at peace. I thought she even had a smile on her face. I hoped that as she fought to take her last breath she’d known I was going to save her little boy.

  I fell back, trying to take it all in. No Mong. No Tracy. Stefan looking down the barrel of a gun. And Anna too. I used to be able to cut away from this shit, but not any more.

  Oblivious to what had happened, Joe was almost jumping for joy. ‘Definitely, man! That fucking shed is heading for land, man. You shot that fucker to shit.’

  The Cargomaster tilted right, heading low towards the coast. ‘Let’s go see what’s left of them when they dump, eh?’

  Mr Lover Man was checking for a signal on his mobile as Genghis went and closed the shutter door. I climbed into the right-hand seat. There was fuck-all else I could do for the moment. There was fuck-all anybody could do.

  Tracy was dead. That was it. But we still had a job to do. We had to keep focused on that. I did, anyway.

  I didn’t have time to mourn her yet. There was nothing we could have done on the aircraft, and there was nothing that could have saved her in Mog. Stefan was the one I was feeling for right now. He had no mother, and if the cards fell badly, a fucked-up, traumatized life ahead. Or no life at all.

  Joe shook his head slowly as he took on board what had happened. ‘Fucking shame, man. But we’ll get the fuckers. Yes, sir.’ He jiggled the controls and the Cargomaster’s wings responded, waggling like they meant business.

  The Skyvan was just a smudge in the distance, heading west. It crossed the surf line, then followed its shadow across the scrub and red sand that seemed to go on for ever.

  Joe sparked up: ‘He’s looking for a place to put down.’

  We were soon over the wasteland ourselves. Joe tapped his sat-nav monitor. ‘Jilib is a fuck of a shit-hole town, about eighty klicks west. They must be trying to dump there. If they can get to Jilib, they can get a vehicle.’ He slapped me on the arm with the back of his hand. ‘You fuckers better be quick when we land, man.’

  I looked behind me. Mr Lover Man was gobbing off on his mobile. He saw me turn, waffled some more, then got up.

  It looked like he was about to give me the phone. I moved the mike out of the way. ‘Tell him no, not now. Now’s not the time. Cut it. We’ve got work to do.’

  Mr Lover Man’s face clouded. He didn’t like the fact his boss was being blanked.

  I shifted the mike back into position and pointed to the blob ahead of us. ‘Can you get us down at the same time without those fuckers taking us apart?’

  He nodded. ‘When that shed hits the ground it’s going to kick up so much shit they won’t even see their hands in front of their faces. But we’ll have to come in hard. I might lose my landing gear.’

  I nodded. ‘Then we’ll just have to hope we don’t have too far to walk.’

  Joe’s happy face disappeared. ‘That fucking boss man of yours better fork out for a new airframe, man. I got other jobs after this shit.’

  27

  MY EYES WERE glued to the Skyvan through the cockpit window as we rode the thermals across the miles of desert.

  Joe had asked for a damage report. He muttered even more darkly to himself when he got the news. ‘Fucking shit, man. He really better pay up.’

  I looked in vain for another AK mag, then unfastened the emergency box between the seats. Inside, among all the other stuff, were two yellow rectangular plastic containers of Pains Wessex mini flares. Each held nine cartridges and a pen ejector – penjector – fitted with a stainless-steel spring and striker pin. These ones would be red. They were rescue kit. The military used different-coloured ones all the time as signal flares. They normally rocketed to a minimum height of about forty-five metres, depending on the spec, and burnt for six seconds. The small magnesium payload blazed so intensely it could be seen for nine K in daylight and sixteen at night.

  I grabbed both packs and shoved them in the waistband of my jeans. I checked that the iPhone hadn’t gone AWOL.

  The flares were easy to fire. They had to be, in case your hands were wet and cold and shaking. You got the penjector and twisted it into the thread projected from the flare cylinder as it sat in its case. You pulled back. There was a sucking sound as the cylinder came out of its holder. Then you pulled back the cocking piece, which would compress the spring. When you let go, the firing pin shot into the back of the flare, and off it went with a loud bang. It started burning immediately.

  A massive hand appeared between us and pulled the escape axe out of the emergency box. Mr Lover Man also needed a weapon.

  Mr Lover Man gave me his thousand-yard stare. It told me that if this ended up as a gang-fuck, the axe was for me. I moved the mike aside. ‘Get your mate up here.’

  When Genghis appeared, I moved behind the seats so I was up close to both of them. I pointed to the Skyvan. Its tailgate was still down but we were too far away to see what was happening inside. The point was, we were both much closer to the ground now.

  ‘Listen in. As soon as they land, so will Joe – right on top of them, while the dust is up. We’ve got to be really quick. Get in there fast and take those fuckers on. Hopefully the ramp’s still going to be down. I don’t know if you can land with it like that, and I really don’t care. We’ll find out when we get there.’

  Mr Lover Man translated. Then he turned to me. ‘We will kill them all. Mr Timis wants them all dead. All of them.’

  I got it. If I’d zapped Stefan, that included me.

  ‘I will take care of Stefan. That’s still my job, to get to the boy. OK?’

  Both of them understood what I was saying that time.

  ‘Justin – he’s not going to kill Stefan unless he knows he’s lost. At that point, he won’t give a fuck. So we must let him think he’s got a chance. We let him escape out of the aircraft. If we get in there and corner him, Stefan is dead. Let him run. I know him. I know how he thinks. I’ll get the fucker.’

  Mr Lover Man wasn’t happy at all, but fuck him. ‘You want the responsibility of fucking up and getting the boy killed? Do you?’ I poked his chest. ‘I’ll take that fucking responsibility. Just like I did hitting the fuel tanks. Let Justin get out of that fucking aircraft, think that he’s running. I’ll sort him out. Don’t corner him.’

  Joe rejoined the party. ‘This is it, man. The fucker’s dumping down. He can’t make it to the town. We’re about twenty klicks short. The moment I get you on the ground, I’m going to fuck off while there’s rounds flying about. That’s if you want an airframe to get you home, man.’ He played about with his instruments, his eyes constantly flicking up to lock onto the Skyvan and the terrain below. ‘Assuming I’ve still got fucking landing gear in five minutes’ time.’

  I ripped off the cans and went and started pulling up the shutter. The Cessna descended. Mr Lover Man put his body armour back on and Genghis checked his M4.

  He saw me looking at it and the scowl I got in return told me it was staying where it was.

  28

  THE WIND RUSHED in but not with such force now. We were lower and slower. The scrub was no more than two hundred feet below us.

  I stuck my
head out into the slipstream. The Skyvan was touching down ahead.

  The Cargomaster’s engine revved higher as Joe corrected. Mr Lover Man and Genghis watched the action from behind the seats.

  Power back. The plane slowed. We hit the final fifty feet.

  Frank’s lads moved back with me and took up position in the doorway. A huge dust-cloud erupted and swallowed the Skyvan. Grains of sand pitted my face.

  I could see the Skyvan’s wheel-prints in the hard red crust directly beneath us. Joe was making sure he landed on proven ground.

  Our wheels touched. Joe braked as the Cargomaster bounced towards the dust-storm.

  Mr Lover Man jumped, curling his body, ready to take the hit on his Kevlar. Genghis followed. The Cargomaster was bouncing along at about thirty miles an hour. We’d only been down for two seconds.

  Fuck it. Why not? I pulled out the mini-flares, gripped one in each hand, and went for it.

  The thump as I hit the ground drove the wind out of me. I rolled into a bush, dropping one of the flare packs. Inch-long needles pierced my skin, but I kept on rolling.

  I finally got up, spitting out sand and grit.

  Genghis sprinted past me. He disappeared into the dust-storm, weapon at the ready. Mr Lover Man was no more than a metre behind him with the axe.

  I retrieved the flare pack and started to leg it after them.

  29

  JOE REVVED HARD, taking off to the left of the Skyvan. The shed was static, but its engines were still running, still stirring up a maelstrom of red dust. There were shouts from inside. I could hear the signature of 5.56 being fired.

  I ran to the right of the cloud, to get ahead of it, and dropped into a dip, panting, trying to get oxygen into me. My feet told me there were needles in them too.

  There were more shots inside the Skyvan. The props began to wind down. One of them coughed to a halt.

  BB stumbled out of the front of the storm, M4 in hand. No Stefan. Fuck.

  I willed my body deeper into the sand.