by Matthew Hall
‘Over him.’
Sphyris swerved to the right. The injured man raised his hand in a hopeless attempt to ward off the oncoming vehicle. Black felt the moment of his death as the broken parts of his body thudded against the undercarriage.
‘Faster!’
The truck cleared the parade ground and gunned along the road through flames, scattering the few who hadn’t already fled for cover. All along one verge were the injured and bloody survivors who had dragged themselves out of the barracks. The lame and dismembered. A vision from hell.
They closed on the gate. From the corner of his eye Black caught sight of two figures running for cover between buildings. He swung round to take aim but was a fraction late. They had disappeared from view. He swung his attention back to the sentry post. The single remaining man on guard took aim. This time Black was on point: three shots, three hits. The target jerked, flailed and fell, leaving the way ahead clear.
They sped through the gate and out of the other side into the dark embrace of the jungle.
Black turned to Bellman, who had welded herself to the truck floor. ‘We’re out. You’re OK. You’re going to be OK.’ He called through to Sphyris. ‘Keep going till I tell you to stop.’
Sphyris switched up into fourth gear. The headlights lit up a clear road ahead.
Peace. The cool air licked through Black’s hair. He leaned back against the cab and felt a surge of elation.
He had done it.
The bullet caught him beneath the left collarbone. For a second it felt like nothing, then came a sharp pain like a stab from a hot poker. Almost at the same moment the truck bounced over a rut, throwing Black off balance. He reached out for a handhold but the momentum had carried him too far. He pitched over the edge and landed heavily on his back in the scrub at the edge of the road.
The last he saw of the truck were two red tail lights fading into the night.
Black lay winded and gasping, feeling blood dribble from somewhere to the right of his shoulder into the crook of his armpit. His whole body was trembling as intensely as if he had been plunged into icy water. It was as much as he could do to snatch tiny gulps of air. He listened for footsteps, waiting for whoever had shot him to arrive and deliver the coup de grâce.
Seconds passed. No one came. But it didn’t mean they wouldn’t. It meant they wouldn’t come alone and without the ability to see. His own goggles were still in the pick-up. He was as good as blind.
Little by little, the ring of steel around his chest loosened, until at last he could force out his ribs and fill his lungs again like a skin diver returning from the depths. The trembling subsided. He rolled on to his side and, clenching his jaw against the tearing pain, reached his right hand over his left shoulder to feel for an exit wound. There was none. The bullet was still lodged in his body – a small mercy. A rifle round would have blown his shoulder apart and bled him to death. The slug must have come from a pistol. A lucky shot at distance.
The officers had pistols. He had seen them during his observations. Brennan and Drecker had been wearing sidearms on their belts. An image of Brennan formed in his mind and froze in vivid profile: tall, lean and cadaverous. Then he realized the reason why. Brennan had been one of the two figures he had glimpsed vanishing between buildings as the truck had sped towards the exit. Long spider-like legs and a thin neck jutting out at an angle from sharp-bladed shoulders. And the one behind him: shorter, but quick and agile like a rat.
Black locked his left arm tight against his side, rocked over on to his right elbow, drew up his knees and managed to kneel. He paused for breath, then forced himself to his feet. His head swam but his legs held steady. He glanced back at the sentry post that stood a little over a hundred yards away. It was lit up by the flames still billowing from the fuel tanks. The body of the dead sentry lay across the roadway, and, from beyond it, came the sounds of panic and confusion. He groped in his webbing and found the single self-adhesive field dressing he had brought. He tore the wrapper with his teeth and reached under his shirt to press it to the raw flesh.
A series of sudden explosions issued from the compound. They came one after another with increasing frequency until they climaxed in a single earth-shaking boom that echoed off the sides of the valley. A jet of flame shot high into the sky above the compound. The armoury had gone up. Tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition as well as mortars, RPGs and explosives. Black watched an inverted avalanche of burning gases spiral upwards and extinguish into nothingness. Despite the pain, he smiled. Finn couldn’t have done it any better.
His moment of satisfaction was short-lived. Two figures armed with rifles and night-vision goggles approached the sentry post. Black tossed the wrapper from the dressing into the road and stepped back into the trees.
The only light he could muster was the dim glow cast by the screen of his GPS unit. He held it like a candle out in front of him and staggered into the jungle. The ground was soft and muddy. There was no way to proceed without leaving a trail of deep footprints. He increased his pace in the hope of finding firmer going but encountered only thicker and thicker clumps of palm and tangled webs of vine and creeper. He thrashed and barged his way through them. Several minutes had passed since he had left the road. They wouldn’t be far behind. Finally, his boots hit solid ground. He pushed on quickly, stumbling over roots and fighting the stabbing pain in his chest that felt as if it might tear him open on every breath. He covered thirty yards, then came to a halt. He reached under his shirt, peeled off the blood-soaked dressing and placed it on the ground. Then he struck left for another ten paces. With his visibility limited to no more than a few feet he couldn’t afford to be choosy.
Through the gloom he made out a thick, grizzled tree trunk. He stepped behind it, switched off his GPS and drew his pistol.
He waited in the near pitch darkness. Slowly, by tiny degrees, his eyes adjusted as best a human’s could to the minimal light. Solid objects became dark shadow against a vaguely lighter backcloth, but the moment he strained to discern their detail they bled into one another again. Without eyes and with his ears filled with the sound of cicadas he was forced back on his animal sense.
It told him they were drawing closer.
Further minutes passed. He imagined them picking their way, step by step, drawn deeper into the bush against their better instincts by an irresistible need to kill and dismember him. They would be angry and excitable. Emotions that led to quick and bad decisions. It was all he had in his favour.
The first indication of their approach was an almost imperceptible crawling of the skin at the back of his neck that spread down his spine and slowly out along his arms to the tips of his fingers. Black held this sensation in his body, as if by maintaining the wavelength he might detect subtle movements beyond the range of his lesser senses. He was rewarded soon after with the sound of a foot landing gently on damp leaves.
The footsteps grew louder. He strained his ears and made out two sets. He willed them closer, picturing them sweeping the ground through their goggles, then alighting on the strange object on the forest floor. They would come to inspect it. They wouldn’t be able to resist. And that would be his moment. His best shot.
The anticipation was electric. Black felt its erotic drug seep into his blood and dissolve away his pain.
Kill or be killed.
What could be simpler?
The footsteps stopped.
Whispered voices.
They had seen it.
Now they would be scanning, searching for signs.
Black drew in a slow, deep breath, kissed his pistol to his forehead and stepped out. He let go six rapid shots sweeping left to right, covering an angle of thirty degrees. There was a high-pitched cry and a lower grunt. Two bodies hit the ground as they fell or dived for cover. Black ducked back behind the tree. A long burst of rifle fire cut through the air off to his right. The shooter had misread his position.
Silence.
And then a moan.
&nb
sp; A female. She was hit. Irma Stein. The woman they called Susan Drecker. It had to be.
Black stepped out and loosed off another two shots.
Mistake.
The shooter fired back, running straight at him, screaming like a demon. Pieces of bark exploded off the trunk, stinging Black’s body and face. He poked a hand around the outside and let off another shot, his eighth. He had only one round left.
The shooter pitched forward and hit the ground to his right. Black holstered his pistol, drew his Bowie knife and threw himself at the dark shadow on the ground. His target rolled. Black’s blade hit the dirt.
A fist slammed into Black’s temple. A shock of stars exploded in front of his eyes. He lost his grip on the knife and was knocked sideways, landing on his back. A wiry body squirmed over him, clamping a single hand over his throat. It was Brennan. The bitter, acid odour of his sweat filled Black’s nostrils.
Black lashed out with his right hand and ripped the goggles from Brennan’s head. The fingers tightened, digging into the flesh either side of his neck, searching for the jugular. Black forced his shoulders tight up against his jaw, balled his fist and punched Brennan’s bullet of a head. The fingers dug and twisted. Black punched again, then again, and with each blow he heard the sound of more air sucking and gurgling into a punctured lung. Brennan had taken a shot in the chest.
Black punched once more, smashing the cartilage of Brennan’s nose. An angry, strangled cry escaped the other man’s mouth but his grip refused to slacken. Black felt his windpipe slowly collapsing and the strength draining from his limbs. He tried to raise his left arm but it was a useless appendage at his side. He groped with his right hand to find Brennan’s throat, but was outreached, his fingertips barely grazing Brennan’s bloody chin.
Black felt the paralysis creeping through his body as his life receded to its last vital parts. Brennan coughed with the effort of strangling him. His regurgitated blood spewed over Black’s face and into his mouth and spurred him into a dying rage. He thrust his hand at Brennan’s chest and found the weeping bullet hole. He jammed the ends of his fingers into the open wound and twisted them left and right, forcing his knuckles between the ribs and driving for the heart. He felt its pulse just beyond his fingertips. Brennan let out a scream. His fingers spasmed and slackened for a split second in which Black drew a breath and thrust harder until he was wrist-deep in Brennan’s chest. He clasped his fist around the hot, beating muscle and squeezed the life from it.
Brennan’s body jerked and twitched. Black ripped his fingers from the open wound and swept Brennan’s hand from around his neck. Brennan slumped, blood flooding from his chest and spilling over Black’s body. Black threw him off in disgust and scrambled free on to his knees. He groped in the darkness and found the tip of his blade. He reached for the handle and closed his fingers around it. He turned and heard Brennan drowning in his own gore. He decided to show him mercy he didn’t deserve. He sheathed his knife and drew his pistol. He aimed at the source of the sounds and fired.
Silence.
He replaced the pistol and reached out again with the sensitized tips of his fingers, sweeping in wider and wider arcs until they brushed the strap of Brennan’s goggles. He put them on and saw the dead man’s body lying four feet in front of him. He was spread-eagled on his front, his right cheek pressed to the ground. His deep-set eyes were wide open either side of an exit wound the size of a fist. A short distance away, lying on her back, was a female figure, who was pumping blood from wounds to her legs and upper chest. An AK lay at her side and she wore a pistol on her belt. Black picked up Brennan’s rifle and approached cautiously.
Her eyes were obscured by her goggles. She appeared to be playing dead but the rise and fall of her chest betrayed her. Black saw her problem: a bullet had entered a fraction beneath her collarbone as she had turned at the sound of his shots. It had travelled through her body and most probably hit her spine.
He poked the muzzle of the rifle under her goggles and flipped them off.
It was Stein.
She stared up into the face of the man she couldn’t see. There were many questions he would like to have asked her but she was way beyond speech.
Black stroked the rifle along her cheek and brought the tip of the muzzle gently to rest on her forehead.
‘Your choice. Yes or no?’
Her breathing quickened.
He waited.
Eventually, she tilted her chin a fraction.
The thought of killing her turned his stomach, but so did the thought of leaving her to the creatures of the night.
He squeezed the trigger.
It was done. He unfastened her belt and, using his knife, cut a strip from the leg of her combat trousers. He folded the fabric into a thick pad, pressed it against his wound and wrapped the belt twice over his shoulder and under his armpit, before pulling it tight to hold the makeshift dressing in place.
He retrieved his GPS, intending to plot a course through the jungle, but familiar words sounded once again in his head: events unfold only because they’re heading towards an inevitable conclusion.
The job wasn’t finished.
Black made his way on foot towards the compound’s entrance. As he drew closer the flames still burning from the fuel tanks and along the drainage channels illuminated a scene of carnage that outdid anything he had ever witnessed. The ground was littered with bodies, limbs and entrails. Anyone within a hundred yards of the exploding armoury had been torn apart and hurled in a thousand directions by the force of the blast. All the buildings this side of the parade ground had been flattened.
He made his way past the blown-out sentry post, stepped over the maimed body of a civilian worker and made his way along the main roadway, passing the remains of the admin block, mess hall and barracks. Here and there he spotted signs of life. The occasional disorientated figure huddled in the darkness. Mercenaries and civilians lying groaning and wounded beyond all help. Anyone capable of moving, it seemed, had fled into the jungle to take cover wherever they could.
Black pulled on his night-vision goggles and continued towards the parade ground, following an instinct that was leading him back to the building where the hostages had been housed. He passed the mangled remains of the officer they had run over in the pick-up, his features crushed into a bloody pulp and his neck snapped so that his head lay fully to the side of his shoulder like a broken puppet.
He continued on for several paces and beyond the smoking, bullet-scarred building detected a solitary figure, exhausted and limping, dragging a jerry can towards it. He moved slowly, every step a great effort. He had evidently brought the can from one of the large machines in the mine and dragged it back into the compound. Black adjusted his focus and zoomed in. His instinct had been correct. It was Ammal Razia.
Without either goggles or torch Razia could see only by the light of the fires at the far end of the compound. Nevertheless, he was determined in his task, a man driven by a need that overcame pain. Black circled left and came around the back of the building. He stayed in shadow, observing Razia dragging the heavy can the last yards to its entrance. The purpose of his mission became clear when Black spotted a feature that had escaped his notice in the earlier confusion: an air-conditioning duct that emerged from the ground tight to the rear of the building.
There was a basement.
Razia dragged the can through the blown-out entrance, grunting with the exertion.
Black drew the pistol he had retrieved from Brennan’s body and followed.
He came silently to the doorway. Several bodies lay on the concrete floor. Bitter, acrid smoke from the burned-out ceiling hung in the air. Beyond them, to the left, Razia was unlocking a door. He hauled it open. Through his goggles Black saw that beyond it there were stairs going down, but Razia made no effort to descend. He stooped to unscrew the lid of the can. Black took careful aim and fired a single shot into the back of his knee. Razia let out a scream of equal pain and surprise as he dropped
to the floor where he squirmed and thrashed and cried out in terror as Black moved towards him.
‘Dr Razia.’
Clutching his shattered joint, Razia breathed in short, terrified fits.
‘Leo Black. We met in Baghdad. I had the dubious pleasure of accompanying you to Camp Cropper.’
Razia found his voice. ‘Please … I didn’t want to be here. I had no choice.’
Black scanned the interior of the room and stepped back over the bodies to the doorway. Hanging from a hook inside it was a torch. He retrieved it, lifted his goggles to his forehead and switched it on.
He was leaking blood from his wounded shoulder and losing strength. His limbs were leaden. Time and energy were running short.
He turned to Razia and trained the beam into his frightened eyes. ‘Who let you go from Cropper?’
Razia shielded his eyes with a hand. ‘I-I don’t know –’
With his spare hand Black drew out his Bowie knife and brought the tip to the soft underside of Razia’s chin. Razia flinched and recoiled.
‘If your tongue’s no use to you, Razia, I’ll cut it out. Now try again.’
‘I think it was Brennan.’
‘You think?’
‘It was him.’
‘Where did he take you?’
‘Into the city. Stein was there, with Daladier and others. I was traded … Many of us were. Sabre bought me.’
‘I’ve watched you, Razia; you’re no prisoner. You’ve got a stake in this enterprise.’
‘No … No. I swear.’
‘Like you swore to me that you were just a schoolteacher.’ Black shone the torch into the stairwell. ‘What’s down there?’
Razia swallowed. ‘I’ve got money. I can get you a million dollars. Two million.’
Black gestured with the muzzle of his pistol. ‘Down the stairs. Go.’
‘I can’t –’
Black kicked him hard in his wounded leg. He let out a scream and in response, from somewhere in the darkness beneath them, came sounds of alarm. Human sounds without words, male and female.