by Matthew Hall
The overpowering smell of evaporating aviation fuel reached his nostrils. His carefully plotted curve of risk was rapidly getting steeper. Soon it would be close to vertical.
He gave himself three minutes.
A taunting voice told him they might be his last.
56
Black pressed hard against the side of the building covered with satellite dishes, which he had termed the admin block, and peered around its edge. He could see them on the opposite side of the road that ran through the centre of the compound: two soldiers walking past the entrance to the double-width barrack house towards the parade ground. They were moving smartly towards the block on its far side where the hostages were held, rifles strapped tightly over their shoulders, taking their duties more seriously than the pair he had observed from a distance the previous morning. Black caught the pungent smell of diesel. It had reached the central drainage channels and was making its way steadily across the camp towards the ditch on the far side. When the two guards looped around the building and came back they would smell it and head straight to the tanks.
It was now or never.
Black darted out from cover and crossed the road, alternating his gaze between the two men walking away from him to his left and the sentry box at the gate, which stood fifty yards away in the opposite direction. He trod lightly and made it across unheard and unseen. On the far side he disappeared between the two adjacent buildings, one of which was the mess hall and the other accommodation for the mine workers. When he reached their far end, he turned right and crossed a short stretch of bare ground that separated them from the larger, wider, barrack block.
Ducking low, he jogged to the centre of the building, where he stopped at a midpoint between two of the evenly spaced windows. He pressed one of the larger lumps of Semtex into the corrugated ridges of the metal siding, then retraced his steps, making his way around the rear of the building to its far end from where he had a clear view across the parade ground. The two guards had almost made it across and were only yards from the long structure in which the hostages were quartered. Black calculated that at most he had thirty seconds while they were behind it and out of sight to plant his remaining two charges.
He waited, filling his lungs with several long, slow, deep breaths while he brought out the second two-pound bomb.
The patrolling guards turned the corner and disappeared behind the single-storey structure.
Black ran a short distance along the wall of the barracks exposed to the parade ground, jammed the explosive against it, then set off at a sprint across the open space towards the hostages’ building. The seconds ticked down in his head – twelve, eleven, ten. He made it across on five, his chest heaving and his shirt wringing with sweat. Tucked tight into the shadows, he heard the voices of the two soldiers as they re-emerged from behind the building and set off back across the square. They spoke in Spanish. He couldn’t understand the words but the pattern of their speech was clear: a question from one to the other, an uncertain response, a pause, then the first man spoke again as if to confirm a suspicion. They picked up their pace.
They had smelled the diesel.
The clock had run down.
Black moved quickly to the back of the building, ran along its length and turned the far corner, from where he could now see the two soldiers breaking into a run as they headed in the direction of the fuel tanks. He squashed the last remaining lump of explosive against the jamb of the building’s heavy triple-locked door, then ran out from cover into the centre of the parade ground.
Now was the time.
He counted out twenty-five seconds – long enough for the guards to arrive at the fuel tanks – brought out the detonator control unit and pressed both buttons at once.
There was a one-second delay as the capacitors in the detonators charged up before firing. Black used the moment’s grace to cover his ears to protect them from the shock waves. The five explosions were simultaneous and deafening. Ten thousand gallons of aviation fuel and many thousands more of diesel spontaneously ignited, lighting up the night with a billowing mushroom cloud of flame. Moments later the compound’s lights flickered and died as the generator standing next to the tanks failed under the intense heat. Tongues of head-high flame ripped along the central drainage channels at lightning speed and within seconds grew into towering walls of fire.
Black ran towards the barrack block that now had a large, jagged hole in its metal side. Shouts, screams and hellish wails of agony were coming from inside. He took out a grenade, pulled the pin and tossed it through. It exploded with a violence that even outside the walls sent shock waves through his internal organs. He followed up with a second and a third, then ran the length of the building, tossing more grenades through the blown-out windows.
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
After the eighth explosion he paused to listen – the screaming had all but stopped – then threw in a ninth for good measure.
He glanced back across the parade square. There was no sign of anyone leaving the hostages’ block. A flame flickered behind the window closest to the door and thick grey smoke was curling up from under the eaves.
He had a minute or two in which to escape through the chaos unnoticed. He had killed more than enough men to avenge Finn and many more besides.
And he wasn’t ready to die. Especially not to please Freddy Towers.
Choose to live.
Whatever it takes.
He ran towards the perimeter fence and hidden in the darkness made his way back towards the truck. He looked left and saw dazed and disorientated figures spilling out of two of the four unharmed buildings. Some were civilian mine workers, barefoot and dressed in their underwear, and others were Sabre officers, shouting to each other through the confusion.
Black approached a scorching wall of heat as he made for his truck. Boiling waves of fire, fifty feet high, were rolling upwards from the burning fuel tanks and lashing furiously against the sky. The unearthly light illuminated the burned, inert bodies of two men lying with their limbs jutting at obscene angles. Close to where they lay, the armoury building was invisible behind a white-hot wall of burning aviation fuel. Over to his right, the heli’s rotor was tilting at an almost vertical angle. The explosives had done their work: the Puma was a dead hunk of metal with mocking flames reflected in its windshield. He sprinted for the pick-up, his lungs burning on every breath. The furiously hot handle scalded his fingers as he unlocked the door and threw himself inside. Shielded momentarily from the infernal heat, he reached for the ignition. The engine burst into life.
He stamped on the clutch and rammed the stick into first. Then as he made to press hard on the throttle, he was seized by a sudden paralysis, like ice-cold hands around his throat. He should be aiming straight for the gates and the road to Platanal. Mission accomplished. Sabre was degraded. A triple strike from Predator drones couldn’t have inflicted more damage. As if to emphasize the point, the two pick-ups mounted with heavy machine guns erupted into flame as the evaporated diesel inside their cabs spontaneously ignited.
Something was holding him back.
What would Finn have done?
An image flashed before Black’s eyes: his old comrade running through flames and a hail of bullets into a burning, bombed-out house. Black outside providing cover, down to his last magazine, waiting for the lights to go out – stupid bastard! – when Finn lumbered through the smoke, face black with soot and a kid under each arm.
Go! Go! Go! The big man’s voice sounded in his head as clearly as if he were sitting next to him.
Black’s foot hit the floor. He accelerated across the rough ground, heading for the perimeter fence, where he swung the wheel to the right and gunned down the outer flank of the compound past the blown-out barrack house. He snatched a glance to his right and saw that the people who had spilled out of the buildings were mostly gathered in the road on either side of the flaming drainage channels, responding to their instinct to shelter from the u
nknown that lay in the darkness beyond the fence.
He sped across the parade ground and careered around to the rear of the building on the far side, dirt and stones rattling the underside of the truck as he skidded to a stop. He grabbed his rifle and jumped out.
He was met with the sound of several desperate voices and in the dim light the sight of hands beating against the barred windows. He ran to the doorway and found the door blown off its hinges. A dead Sabre mercenary was sprawled on the concrete floor inside the entrance, his left arm blown clean off his mangled torso, which lay in a foul pool of liquid. The interior of the building beyond was filled with thick, toxic smoke that was circling down from burning ceiling panels.
A prison-style steel gate separated the entrance from the rest of the building beyond. From the little light cast by the flames Black gained the impression of a long corridor with locked doors either side that were being pummelled from the inside. He stooped to unhook a bunch of four keys from the guard’s belt, shook them off and tried several in the lock of the gate. The voices from within called out in desperation. People running for their lives did so in silence; the trapped and dying screamed until their last breath.
He turned the key as he heard the first spray of gunfire coming from somewhere in the midst of the compound. Panicked men firing at phantoms, he hoped. The smoke in the corridor was thick and choking and stung his eyes so that they streamed. Holding his breath, Black went to the first door and attempted to find the key to fit the lock. He tried two without success, his lungs screaming out in pain. Giving up on the keys, he stepped back, raised his knee and stamped hard against the door. It held fast. Solid timber with heavy-duty locks and concrete frames. No match for a boot.
Coughing and retching, Black ran back to the entrance and grabbed a lungful of air. He heard voices and glanced right to see three armed figures running towards the building across the parade ground. One of them raised a rifle. Black stepped back as he loosed off a burst of fire. Shots bounced off the masonry and spattered the ground outside the door. Black poked the barrel of his AK-47 around the jamb and let off a burst of his own. He glanced out and fired again, this time accurately, sweeping low and cutting the three down. They fell. He fired again at their horizontal bodies, then raised his gaze to the road beyond and saw more figures running in his direction through the flames.
The odds had narrowed. He had seconds. The element of choice was gone. Now it was a numbers game.
He ducked back inside and yelled at the top of his lungs. ‘Everybody down.’
No one heard. Their cries grew louder.
He ripped open the Velcro flap of his webbing and reached out two of his remaining eight grenades. He pulled the pins and threw them through the smoke into the black pit of the corridor beyond. Two seconds. He brought out two more, pulled the pins and threw them with less force. He ran for the door and dived to the ground outside, as four evenly spaced explosions ricocheted along the corridor, the shock waves bursting open doors.
Black scrambled to his feet. A haggard, wild-eyed figure emerged, coughing and half blind through the thick haze.
‘Outside! Turn left! On to the truck!’
He ran back into the corridor and ducked through the first door to his right. The smoke-filled room beyond was the source of the unearthly screams. He made out the outline of several large cages. Monkeys the size of small children were rattling the bars.
Too bad.
‘Everybody down.’
Two more grenades, then another. He threw them around the door and along the corridor, then swung back behind the frame, covering his ears as four more explosions rocked the building on its foundations.
The monkeys fell silent.
Another bewildered figure emerged from the smoke and dust: a young man Black recognized from a photograph he had seen at Credenhill. It was Sphyris, the computer genius who had modelled the human brain.
‘Sarah Bellman. Where is she?’ Black shouted.
‘At the end. On the right.’
‘Outside. On the truck.’
Black plunged into the wall of smoke. Burning, molten gobs of tile dripped down from above, speckling the floor with flames. He made it to the end of the corridor, his chest bursting with the effort of holding his breath. The door on the right had failed to blow.
Multiple rapid bursts of gunfire sounded outside the building.
There was no way out.
Black had no breath left to shout with. He raised his rifle and aimed the muzzle down at the lock at an angle close to vertical. He fired, the recoil causing the weapon to bounce crazily in his hands. Spent, red-hot cases sprayed out of the breach. Fifteen rounds ripped through the thick timber. Black stepped back and kicked hard. The weakened door split down its length and swung open.
A female figure was cowering face down in the far corner of the room. She was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt and had a towel over her head. Her body was still. She was either in shock or unconscious. Either way, it didn’t matter.
Gunshots ripped down the corridor and ricocheted off the walls. They were at the entrance to the building.
Fish in a barrel.
Suffocating fish in a burning barrel.
Black grabbed the young woman by the ankles and dragged her back towards the door. She kicked out, resisting him.
He couldn’t speak. His lungs were on fire. He felt himself swoon, as if he might collapse and choke to death with her. There was no air to breathe. Nothing. He reached out a hand to steady himself, feeling his knees start to give way beneath him. He staggered. Pinpricks of white light danced in front of his eyes.
He was dying.
57
From somewhere deep in the core of his being Black felt a surge of energy, like erupting lava spewing out from his core.
The death rush.
He reached for his rifle and emptied the rest of the magazine into the breeze-block wall beneath the window. Fragments of exploding concrete flew around the room like shrapnel. He fetched another magazine, locked, loaded and fired. More stinging shards hurtled in all directions. Black ran at the wall with his bayonet and thrust repeatedly. The shattered breeze blocks crumbled. He punched out a hole two blocks wide, stepped back, reloaded and fired again, blowing the two blocks above it to smithereens. He kicked with the heel of his boot. Kicked for his life. The two shattered blocks crumbled away and with his last ounce of strength he kicked out the two above.
He dropped to his hands, stuck his head to the hole and gasped like a man who had sprinted a mile. More gunshots rang out behind him. There were voices: an order to advance.
Black’s hand went unconsciously to his webbing where his fingers closed around his final grenade. He pulled the pin, stepped over Bellman and tossed it along the corridor, following up with a sharp burst of fire.
He turned, grabbed Bellman’s now limp body and was feeding it head first through the opening in the wall when the grenade blew. There were no more gunshots. He clambered out after her, rifle first. He lay inert and insensible for a moment as his lungs returned oxygen to his starving brain. The stars swimming in front of his eyes cleared and he became aware that Bellman was lying next to him, coughing her guts out. And ten yards to his right Sphyris was struggling to lift the body of his wounded companion on to the truck.
Black hauled himself to his feet, seized his rifle and rammed in his last magazine.
‘Leave him! Fetch her!’ he shouted to Sphyris, and ran past the pick-up to the corner of the building.
He poked his head around the edge. Two injured men were lying either side of the door, one of them struggling to his knees and reaching for his rifle. Black put him down with a single shot only to spot three armed figures hurling themselves to the ground on the far side of the parade ground. He took aim, fired a sweeping burst, then ran back to the truck as another flurry of fire rattled through the air behind him.
Sphyris had hauled Bellman on to the Toyota’s tailgate and was still struggling to raise the other cas
ualty – a hefty, middle-aged man – from the ground. He was conscious but bleeding freely from an ugly wound in the left side of the stomach and groaning in a way only the dying can. He had been shot through the liver. It was only a matter of time.
‘It’s Dr Holst,’ Sphyris said.
‘Get in the cab.’ Black drew his pistol. ‘You’re driving.’
Sphyris looked at the gun in Black’s hand and ran to the driver’s door.
Black glanced down at Holst and made an executive decision. Two rounds between the eyes. In the army they had called it ‘offing’.
Holst’s lips moved as if in a plea.
Black delivered the mercy shots.
It was a kindness.
He ran to the cab and shouted through the door. ‘Straight down the road and out of the gate, fast as you can. Don’t stop for anything. I’ll be up top.’
Sphyris shook his head as if it were beyond his powers.
‘Do it!’
Black jumped on to the pick-up bed and ordered Bellman to stay down. She pressed herself on to the metal floor. He slapped the roof of the cab. Sphyris started the engine and lurched forward.
‘Faster! Like you fucking mean it!’
Sphyris stepped on the throttle and aimed towards the end of the building where he turned sharp right. Black set his AK to single shot to save ammo and fired off single rounds in rapid succession – pop-pop-pop – as the truck’s wheels bumped over the bodies of the dead hostages. He could see one active shooter and two bodies on the far side of the parade ground. He ducked as a flurry of rounds screamed over his head.
‘Faster!’
Pop-pop. Two more shots. The truck was closing in on the shooter, who scrambled to his feet to avoid being run down. Black recognized him as one of the officers he had spotted during their recce. Black took aim as well as he could from the moving truck and caught him in the thigh. He fell on all fours and tried to drag himself along by his hands.