There was no point bulls.h.i.tting him. We"d come too far now and he needed to know.
He put a hand firmly on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. "I"m already in the s.h.i.t."
He let go and started rummaging in his parka. "I think I"d better split these up." He handed me one of the cameras. "Just in case. It"ll make a little money for Renee. She"s with Chloe, at her mother"s in Detroit."
I shoved it into my pocket.
"She"s staying there until I get back from Brazil. You"ll find her. Give it to her. She"ll know what to do with it."
We both started across the gra.s.s. I laid the G3 on the ground and got my back against the wall, eyes straining down to the right, towards the checkpoint. The wagon"s engine still turned over in the darkness.
I bent my legs and cupped my hands between my thighs. Jerry stepped back a little, positioned his right foot in them as a launch pad, and jumped up. I kept contact with his foot, twisting myself round towards the wall and pushing myself up until it was past my face. Then I held it against the wall so he had something to push against. He hooked his arms over the top, and seemed to stay like that for ages. I didn"t know if he was flapping, didn"t have the strength to get the rest of his body over, or had spotted something.
A few seconds later, he started to scramble over the wall and his foot left my hands.
I picked up the G3 and put my ear against the door just as he landed with a b.u.mp the other side. Almost immediately, there was the gentle groan of metal being drawn across metal.
The door opened very, very slowly. I let Jerry do it: he was in control.
As I slipped through and into the courtyard, Jerry closed it again behind me. He didn"t bolt it.
To my right, ten or eleven metres away, was the room where we"d last seen the target. The lamps were still burning.
Somewhere in the darkness, cooking pans clanged. To my left was the one-storey building separating the two courtyards. There were no windows this side of it. The first floor of the guest block, where we had showered, was completely dark.
I got the b.u.t.t into the shoulder, flicked the safety on to single-shot, and positioned my trigger finger along the guard. Keeping Jerry behind me, I started to move towards the illuminated window. There was going to be nothing covert about this: there wasn"t enough time. I had no option but to open doors and look through windows.
I knelt beneath the window, to the right of the grime-covered frame. As I slowly raised my head, I could see the door to the left. I came up some more. The oil lamps were still burning where Jerry had left them. But the room was empty.
Even the meal things had been taken away.
I lowered myself, still b.u.t.t in the shoulder, safety off, and began to follow the wall to the veranda and the door we"d gone through. No shoes outside; no target inside.
The kitchen noises were louder now, and joined by muttering in Serbo-Croat. The kitchen had to be behind one of the doors along the veranda.
My breath clouded around me as I stopped and listened. The muttering wasn"t from the target; it wasn"t that slow, deliberate, favouriteuncle voice. It sounded more like some old bottle-washer having a moan about the greasy plates.
I touched Jerry"s arm and pointed towards the pa.s.sageway and across the courtyard.
I"d taken just a few steps when I heard an engine. A vehicle was approaching the house.
f.u.c.k the noise. We ran for it.101.
I grabbed the door handle and we legged it down the corridor. My left hand was out, ready to make contact with the door at the other end. I got there; took a breath, listened. There were voices the other side, four or five of them. The vehicle was static, but not in the courtyard.
Trying to block out the sounds of our breathing, I put my ear to the wood, my right hand firmly on the pistol grip, safety catch still off, trigger finger still across the guard.
The voices were urgent and low. None was the target"s. Then his gentle tones sparked up, calming everyone down.
The engine noise got suddenly louder. The gates must have been opened.
"Stand by."
I fumbled for the handle with my left hand. My fingers closed round it and I pulled back. The headlights were blinding.
I made out a ma.s.s of bodies in the beams, shrouded in their own breath and exhaust fumes.
From just two feet away a body loomed in front of me, weapon coming up. I fired; he went down. His AK clattered across the threshold.
There were screams and shouts from near the vehicle. The driver revved the engine. Weapons came up into the aim.
I just blatted away, single shots at anything that moved, then into the vehicle.
s.h.i.t, it started moving.
Rounds came back at us, taking chunks out of the plasterwork that sandblasted my face.
I turned and legged it down the corridor. Jerry grabbed the AK from the floor, its barrel dragging behind him as he wrestled with the b.u.t.t. "Back to the gate! Back to the gate!"
We burst through the door at the far end and headed across the family courtyard. Screams and movement under the veranda. It was a cl.u.s.ter of bottle-washers. They ducked when they saw us.
I was half-way across when we started taking fire from the follow-up behind us. I stopped, turned, and returned fire into the pa.s.sage doorway.
Jerry was to my right. He ran past me as I fired controlled shots, trying to stop them leaving the pa.s.sageway.
I squeezed off two more rounds at the door before Jerry started firing.
I turned on the spot and ran, got about four paces past him, turned again and started to fire. "Move, Jerry! Move! Move!"
He didn"t need to be told twice.
He stopped, turned, fired.
I turned, ran, stopped, fired.
As Jerry came past me I squeezed the trigger again. Nothing. Dead man"s click.
I dropped the weapon and kept running. Jerry was already the other side of the door, using the frame for cover as he fired. I pa.s.sed him, then headed down towards the checkpoint, hugging the wall. I couldn"t see any moving lights. But there were shouts ahead of me in the darkness.
I pulled the Thuraya from my parka and held it to my face. "Fire mission! Fire mission!" f.u.c.k the signal: if I got one, it"d work. I had to get down there to see where the f.u.c.king wagon was.
Jerry was not many paces behind me when we started taking fire. The follow-up were through the gate and putting some down.
I swung left and dived into the treeline. "On me, on me!"
I just kept going, crashing through the trees, trying to keep parallel to the wall. They ran down the gap, firing into the darkness, their muzzle flashes rippling across the tree-trunks.
We plunged on towards the checkpoint. With luck, the chicane was the only way out.
With no more than twenty metres to go, the follow-up got level with us. I stumbled and fell. Jerry stood his ground and opened up with long bursts. The noise was deafening. His white muzzle flash lit the darkness. Ejected rounds tumbled over my back.
I was still fighting to get up when Jerry let out a high-pitched scream. He collapsed on top of me, still firing, rounds going way up into the canopy before both he and the AK fell silent.
His blood was hot and wet on my face as I pushed him off me. The follow-up were still firing into the treeline, everywhere, anywhere; I grabbed him by the legs and pulled him deeper into the forest.
It wasn"t far, but enough to buy me time. I collapsed next to him. His breathing was rapid and rasping, spraying me with blood at each exhalation.
I ran my fingers over his chest and found the entry wound in his stomach. No need to feel for the exit. My hand slid into it as I turned him over.
More screams from the follow-up.
Jerry gripped my head with both his hands, bringing me down to him with the last of his energy. "f.u.c.ked up... sorry."
I threw my arms round him and gripped hard as he jerked his last resistance. Seconds later, his body went limp. I checked his neck. There was no pulse.
The follow-up still fired blindly into the trees. They were covering the light I now saw moving out from the guest doorway.
I laid Jerry"s body down and scrambled forward. A vehicle was just pulling out of the gates, guys running all around it, shouting at each other. It was chaos. One of the headlights was shot out.
I kept low and tumbled through the undergrowth to the left, down to where the treeline met the chicane.
The wagon was coming down towards me. I couldn"t see if the target was inside or not.
It got closer and slowly negotiated the first hedgehog. The rear window was open. The target was talking to his protection as they ran alongside, even smiling at them as he pointed towards the follow-up. Then his head went back inside, and made itself comfortable against the headrest. The window powered up.
I looked down and checked the Thuraya. f.u.c.king canopy.102.
I started legging it, paralleling the wall about twenty metres inside the trees. I needed to get out of the way, well past the family doors, right to the corner of the compound. I needed clear s.p.a.ce.
I slipped and stumbled as I scrambled to make the distance. Torchlight now flickered between the trunks.
f.u.c.k the follow-up. I got up and kept running. Aminute or two later, I broke out from under the canopy and made my way behind the rear wall. Kneeling in the gra.s.s, gulping down oxygen, I checked the Thuraya. Five bars.
One more deep breath to slow myself down.
"h.e.l.lo, this is Nick, this is Nick. Are you up there yet? Are you up there yet?"
Monotone came back. "Affirmative, Nick. We see your contact. We see your contact."
"In the forest, towards the metalled road you have a vehicle. One headlight. You see it?"
It seemed to take for ever for the operator to manoeuvre the UAVs thousands of feet above me, their surveillance packages scouring the ground for heat and light.
The phone was glued to my ear. My chest heaved, thirsty for oxygen. I worked my jaw, trying to conjure some saliva into my dry mouth, my head spinning with dehydration.
"I have it, Nick, I have it."
"Roger that. That"s your target. That"s your target. Acknowledge."
He still spoke as if he was ordering pizza or talking to his granny. "Roger. We have a northbound vehicle towards the metalled road."
"Roger that. The activity at the front of the house, anything inside. Hit it, for f.u.c.k"s sake, hit it now!"
"Roger that. You might wanna get your people back."
"Too late. Look towards the back of the house. You will see me, I"m waving my left arm. Do you see me? Do you see me?"
"Roger that, we have you, we have you."
"I"m the only one. Follow the right-hand treeline. You see a body lying about twenty-five metres from the front of the house?"
"Yep. Roger that. We have a body. We have a body getting dragged out. That"s three guys, three guys dragging out a body." He paused. "Target now free of the treeline, on the metalled road. Stand by, Nick. Here they come."
I ran into the forest, then threw myself to the ground as two explosions rocked the front of the building. The shockwaves were soaked up by the buildings and the woods, but the ground trembled beneath me.
Then another, this time closer. Inside the compound.
The pressure wave pushed through the forest, bringing gallons of water down on me. My ears started ringing as I waited to hear a more distant hit on the vehicle.
Seconds later, it came, and another two seconds after that.
I hoped Nuhanovic was able to see a blur of red in the distant sky as the first h.e.l.lfire kicked off. He wouldn"t understand the significance, but it would mean a f.u.c.k of a lot to me.
I got back on my feet and turned to head deeper into the forest. I switched off the Thuraya. Best conserve power till I got to the wagon and called George to confirm the slaver was dead.
Not that he would give a s.h.i.t about that, now. But I would.
Also by Andy McNabNon-fictionBRAVO TWO ZERO.
IMMEDIATE ACTION.
Fiction REMOTE CONTROL.
CRISIS FOUR.
FIREWALL.
LAST LIGHT.
LIBERATION DAY.
DARK WINTER.