FOX FIVE: a Charlie Fox short story collection

by Zoe Sharp

  “You didn’t mention we’d have to pass through any checkpoints on this road,” I said.

  Zak gave a subdued shrug. “They come and they go,” he said, striving for the philosophical air of someone describing the seasons. “All the time.”

  I moved my face closer to his ear, shifting the SMG across and into my hands at the same time. “Are you sure about that?”

  “Of course he is sure,” Nils said impatiently, reaching for his passport and papers from the outside pocket of his rucksack. “We stop, we give them money, and they let us pass. Like the man said – it happens all the time.”

  “On a side road in the middle of nowhere?” I said, not taking my eyes off Zak. “With no backup nearby?”

  Zak didn’t answer but I saw his Adam’s apple dip rapidly in his skinny throat. Meanwhile, one of the slower vehicles we’d passed – a battered pickup, its exhaust smoking like a wet bonfire – overhauled us and lumbered towards the roadblock. The soldiers tensed for a moment, clutching their weapons, then rolled the drums aside and waved the pickup on.

  “Well, they do seem to be letting people through,” Alison said.

  “Either that,” I said, “or they’re waiting for someone in particular.”

  She frowned. “We can’t go back, so . . . what do we do now?”

  My turn to shrug. However tempting it was to push on regardless, sometimes going back was by far the most sensible – and safest – option. But, still . . .

  “We go forwards,” I said.

  Zak stretched an arm to put the Toyota into gear. As he did so, I slid the SMG across my lap and jammed the muzzle hard into the back of Zak’s seat. The elderly Toyota had only a passing nod to lumbar support, and I knew from the way he arched that Zak had not only felt it, he knew exactly what it was. He tensed in automated response, and then relaxed.

  “Is all OK, no problems,” he said and before I could react he’d stuck his head out of his open window, yelling, “Unarmed! We are unarmed.” And he launched into more of the same in several different local dialects.

  What the hell . . .?

  I gave him a vicious prod with the gun through the thin seat back. “Zak, shut up.”

  “Is OK,” he said again, a patent untruth as the soldiers readied their weapons in front of us.

  What happened next is known as tachy-psyche effect. The way time slows in moments of duress as if squashed and stretched by the extreme pressure.

  Tick.

  Suddenly, between one second and the next, I had all the time in the world to assess the situation. Apparently random images flashed through my consciousness in a continuous stream that flowed to form a single bright cohesive strand.

  All the soldiers at the checkpoint were wearing army uniforms that didn’t quite fit, as if borrowed from another owner – with or without consent. Their vehicle could have been mocked up or simply stolen. They should have been carrying standard-issue AKs, but only two were armed with the classic assault rifle. One of the others had what looked like an old Mac-10, and the fourth cradled a 9mm SMG.

  Just like the one in my hands – the one Zak had supplied. The one he seemed so relaxed about when I jammed it against his spine . . .

  Tick.

  Although I’d put thousands of rounds through similar weapons in my time, I’d had no chance to test-fire this particular SMG, and there are plenty of ways to subtly sabotage a gun that would not be immediately obvious – even during the strip-down inspection I’d given it the night before.

  A few fractions of a mil shaved off the firing pin and all I’d get when I squeezed the trigger would be the dull clack of the mechanism trying to strike the primer cap of the first round, which would be just out of reach. No primer cap detonation, no ignition of the main charge, no projectile leaving the end of the barrel.

  It was a good job the SMG was sturdy enough to use as an emergency club, because if my suspicions were correct, that was all it was good for.

  Tick.

  I let go of the gun and ripped the survival knife out of concealment, firm in the knowledge that there’s not much you can do to interfere with a knife that isn’t obvious, especially if you’ve spent time checking the blade is sharp.

  This blade was plenty sharp enough to pierce the thin vinyl back of the Toyota’s seat, slice through the flimsy internal padding, and out again through the front. I only stopped when I felt the point’s resistance as it entered skin and flesh.

  This time, Zak jerked forwards with a hoarse cry. I snaked my left arm around the headrest and clamped my forearm hard across his throat, gripping the other side of the headrest to keep him pinned there.

  Alison, sitting alongside me, had an unobstructed view. “Charlie!” she shouted, aghast. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Shut up,” I said calmly. “Zak – drive.”

  ***

  Zak did nothing. He simply sat, with the tip of the knife he’d given me now embedded in his back.

  “I cannot,” he said at last. “I am very sorry.” The clown personae he adopted to fit his bizarre distorted appearance dropped away. His voice was different again, less ingratiating, more dignified. He sounded resigned, too, as if the fates had taken things out of his hands and he was OK with that.

  Two of the soldiers started to approach us, yelling for us to not move, to get out of the car, to put our hands up, to lie on the floor. I resisted the urge to shout, “Make up your minds!”

  I slid the knife out of Zak and his seat, shifted my grip and laid the blade across his right cheek, close to his one remaining eye. His eyelid twitched as he flicked his gaze down to it, and I knew he had not missed the fact the tip was still smeared with his own blood.

  “Drive, or I will blind you,” I said tightly.

  “I cannot,” Zak said again. “Please – I am much sorry.”

  The soldiers were only a few metres from us now, crabbing forwards. One carried an AK, pulled up hard into his shoulder, the other the SMG. They were younger than I’d first thought, probably only in their late teens, and they looked scared and excited in equal measure.

  Firearms and bravado – never a good combination.

  Surprisingly perhaps, it was Nils who took action. He lifted his booted foot over the centre console and stamped down on the Toyota’s accelerator. Zak’s feet had been covering the brake and clutch, but the shock of Nils’s move and the instinctive fear of a man in sandals for having his toes mashed made him jerk them out of the way. The Toyota lurched forwards, engine revving into a loose-fanbelt squeal. Nils grabbed for the wheel.

  The soldiers opened fire in reflex at the car’s sudden move. Nils and Zak fought for control and neither of them won. The Toyota veered wildly towards the driver’s side, striking the soldier with the SMG. He disappeared so fast under the front wheel he didn’t have time to make a sound, the suspension bouncing sickeningly as the car rode up and over him. Then the front corner hit the rock face, and Nils’s short-lived break for freedom came to an abrupt halt.

  The other soldier raked the passenger side with fire. I heard the Swede cry out as I grabbed Alison by the collar of her shirt and punched open my door to bail out.

  I found myself staring straight down into the wide-eyed corpse of the soldier we’d just hit. The front tyre had rolled across his chest, forcing his insides out through every available orifice. Which was not, I judged, a pretty way to die.

  On the bright side, the SMG he’d been holding was both accessible and intact. I snatched it up as I got out, ignoring the greasy stickiness on the strap, and forced the pair of us round the back of the Toyota.

  “Keep your bloody head down,” I growled to Alison, knowing that civilians – especially reporters – have a habit of wanting to gawk, thus turning themselves into very inviting targets.

  The soldier who’d shot Nils had seen me get out and was expecting my head to pop up above the roof line, and that’s where he was aiming. I took advantage of his distraction to lean out from behind the far rear tyre and put
a three-round burst into his pelvis. He dropped, screaming.

  The remaining pair of soldiers had initially hung back, only starting their run for us when the Toyota hit the rocks.

  Laying down an accurate field of fire while sprinting towards a hostile target takes training and practice. They had neither. Still, there was always the chance of a lucky shot. I stayed low, braced on my elbows, and stitched across them as they ran, then rolled away.

  The echo of blood and cordite lifted slowly, leaving only a stark, static silence. I was aware of a low moaning from inside the car, the rasp of my own breath, and the hiss of steam from the Toyota’s ruptured radiator. My eyes raked the landscape, looking for movement, threat. There was nothing. It all seemed to have happened in the space of a heartbeat.

  You go into another zone in a firefight, one where normal morality is suspended, normal feelings of fear or revulsion are put aside. Sometimes it was hard to tell when everyday reality recommenced. Some soldiers never returned.

  I swallowed a throatful of bile, starting to come back. My hands, gripping the SMG, were not quite steady. When I staggered to my feet, using the back end of the Toyota as a makeshift crutch, I found my legs were not quite steady either.

  Four on one, and we survived – mostly. How the hell did that happen?

  Alison took standing up as her cue to move, too. She scrambled up and dived back into the car, as if that might provide cover.

  “Charlie, Nils is hurt!”

  The soldier that had shot Nils was no longer screaming, I noted. He was no longer making any sound. I stepped over his body and yanked open the passenger door. Nils all but fell out into my arms. He’d taken a couple of AK rounds at close range in the arm and shoulder and had already managed to bleed enough to give the Toyota’s front seat upholstery a colour change.

  There was no arterial spray, which was a good thing. If we could patch him up long enough to get him across the border, and if he didn’t go into shock first, Parker’s people would take care of him from there.

  The shoulder wound was a fairly straightforward hit. The 7.62mm round had smashed his collarbone and gone straight through the flimsy seat back to bury itself around where Alison and I had been crouching, before I’d pulled her out of the car.

  Nils hadn’t been so lucky with the second round. That looked to have entered his forearm at a shallow angle, ploughed a furrow into his flesh like a diving submarine, and exited, messily, through the back of his elbow. I was no orthopaedic surgeon, but one look was enough to tell me his lower arm was completely screwed.

  I retrieved the rudimentary first-aid kit and roll of duct tape from my holdall on the rear seat. Alison ripped open a couple of field dressings and I taped them in place. There wasn’t much I could do with the arm except tape it back together and hope for the best. Duct tape is tough enough and waterproof enough to contain bleeding in an emergency. I wouldn’t go anywhere without it.

  Nils had blenched beneath his tan – any paler and we’d be able to see right through him. His skin had that waxy tint and he was panting around the pain, swearing in several different languages when he had the breath to do so. Shock was already setting in.

  Alison used her scarf to fashion a sling, keeping his injured arm tied close to his body for support. I went and checked the Land Cruiser, found the keys were not in it. That meant going through the pockets of the dead men for the keys. Not a task I relished.

  It did tell me part of the reason I’d been able to kill them, though. They were all young, without the toughened hands of professional soldiers. Only one had army-style boots on. I did not allow myself to dwell on it. I’d done what I had to.

  I went back to the car. Alison had managed to get Nils out and was trying to persuade him to lie down to ease his depleted circulation, something he refused to do.

  “Get him into the Land Cruiser,” I told her. “We’re leaving.”

  Alison looked at the bodies as if seeing them for the first time. “What about―?”

  “Now, Alison.”

  I leaned into our wrecked car across Nils’s empty seat and looked at Zak. He hadn’t moved since the soldiers had opened fire on us, and I expected to find him dead, but his eye opened and swivelled slowly in my direction. His body was beyond still, it was immobile. I glanced down, saw the blood on the side of his clothing and realised he’d taken a stray round in the ribs that had probably lodged somewhere near his spine. He was paralysed.

  “I am sorry,” Zak said again, little more than a whisper.

  “So am I,” I said gravely. “Was it for money?”

  Zak’s face twitched into something that was more grimace than smile. “No,” he said. “It was for my country. For honour, yes?” His gaze followed Alison and Nils as they stumbled across towards the other vehicle. “They will . . . ruin us.”

  ***

  I didn’t expect to see Alison Cranmore again except on the news – and there I couldn’t miss her. The dramatic – not to mention dramatised – story of how she and her intrepid cameraman had escaped from a war zone, pursued by all sides, was syndicated to every channel who would give it air time.

  Alison looked good on camera, with a black-and-white keffiyeh slung casually around her neck, steady of eye and serious of voice. I was glad she didn’t try to rope me into her personal media circus, and to begin with she didn’t.

  Then about six weeks after the extraction, I got word she was asking for a meet. I had a London stopover on the way back from a job in Saudi, and – more out of curiosity than anything else – agreed to meet her in Soho House on the corner of Greek Street.

  The once-seedy area was now filled with TV production companies and trendy wine bars where the movers and shakers of the arts world could not only be seen but heard as well.

  The more things change . . .

  It was summer in London and the city was wilting in the unaccustomed heat. It was a relief to climb the stairs to Soho House’s upper-floor bar where the open windows allowed cross-flow ventilation.

  I was early as a matter of course, but Alison was already there, having an intense discussion with a man I judged from his clothes and manner to be a TV producer of some kind. I sat at the bar nursing a tonic water until they were done. He gathered up his iPad and strode away with the air of a man who has far more important places to go and people to see.

  “Sorry about that,” Alison said, coming over. “Come and join me.”

  She looked fit and well, and far more relaxed than when I’d last seen her. She was dressed to blend with her surroundings, fashionable and expensive, her hair styled and nails shaped and polished. I’d just got off a long-haul flight and what felt like an equally long-haul taxi ride, and it showed.

  We skated round the pleasantries while we ordered food and the waitress departed.

  “I was hoping you might agree to an interview,” Alison said then. “About your part in our escape.”

  A little late for that, isn’t it?

  “I can’t,” I said, trying to make a show of regret. “There’s no way I can blend into the background well enough to do my job if you put me centre stage. I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, as if she’d half-expected that response, but it was something that had to be tried. “Well, at least let me buy you lunch – as a thank you.”

  I picked up my glass. “So, how’s Nils?”

  “Recovering well, as far as I know,” she said, smiling now. “It’s amazing what they can do with prosthetics these days. He’s even talking about getting a camera built into his new arm.”

  “A pity Zak wasn’t so lucky,” I said.

  The smile faded. “Excuse me?”

  “Zak,” I repeated. “There was nobody to medevac him off to a private Swiss clinic, so he had to rely on the local butchers. Infection got him in the end – took him about a fortnight to die.”

  “Oh . . . that’s―” she searched for the right word, “―sad,” she came up with at last. “But he did lead us into a trap.”


  I looked at her. “So he deserved what he got, is that it?”

  She flushed, but I didn’t miss her sideways glance to check who might be listening in. She needn’t have bothered – I was purposely keeping my voice down. For now.

  “No, but you know what I mean. We could have been killed,” she said, gaining confidence. “Nils lost an arm, for heaven’s sake. You can’t expect me to weep for someone who would do that.”

  “He did what he believed was right,” I said. “It’s the most any of us can do. The most any of us should do.”