Killing for the Company (42 page)

Rounds from the crowd. Two of them thudded into the window where Russ was still sitting next to Fozzie in the front.

Finn’s voice. Urgent. ‘The fuckers are still advancing.’

‘Go again!’ Luke shouted, and fired a third burst over the heads of the crowd.

It was as the sounds of these shots died away, and the advancing mob failed to disperse any further, that Stratton spoke again. His voice was shrill. ‘Shoot them down,’ he urged. ‘These people will only disperse if . . .’

‘
Shut the fuck up!
’ Luke roared. But he had to admit to himself that their options were diminishing. He didn’t want any casualties – not because he was squeamish, but because he knew that in an urban combat situation like this, to slot the bastards would make things ten times worse, not to mention the wider implications of a British unit mowing down Gazan citizens – but if they kept coming, he wouldn’t have much choice.

‘Shoot them!’ Stratton repeated. ‘That’s an order!’

‘Fozzie.’ Luke’s voice was as bleak as his mood. ‘If he speaks again, grease him.’

‘Roger that,’ Fozzie replied. Luke didn’t look over his shoulder to see what Stratton’s reaction was. He lowered his weapon so that now he was pointing directly at the crowd and not above their heads. They were about thirty metres distant now. If he fired, things were going to get messy.

He tried to keep a clear head, to work out what the hell was going down. Had these people been sent here directly by the Hamas administration? On the face of it, it seemed unlikely. They were a cobbled-together bunch with little organisation and a mixed bag of weapons. There were no vehicles. No fire support.

But only Hamas had known the route they were taking through the city. As Luke kept his aim on the crowd, a thought jumped into his head. Surely not even Hamas would be so foolish as to make an overt hit on Stratton? But they could leak details of his movements down to the militants in their state who had no such concern for the balance of international relations.

‘
We need to nail them, Luke!
’ Finn shouted.

Nail them. Finn’s default setting. Luke remembered being in Iraq, and how Finn had wanted to waste Amit from the first instant.

‘
Luke!
’

Finn’s warning snapped Luke back to the present. He closed his left eye and with his right looked through the sight mounted on the body of the HK53. Members of the crowd ahead came into sharp focus, the cross hairs juddering over their heads and bodies as they jumbled forwards.

His forefinger, resting on the trigger, twitched.

They’d been forced into a corner. Their choices were limited. In fact, they were non-existent.

‘Fire in three . . .’ Luke shouted over the pounding noise of the mob’s chanting.

He could sense Russ and Fozzie unlatching their doors.

‘Two . . .’

Through the sight of the 53, Luke saw a commotion at the front of the crowd. There were four men in their twenties, wearing jeans and black and white keffiyehs round their necks. They had surrounded someone and were pushing him forward. Luke directed his sight into the middle of this little group, every instinct telling him that this was where he needed to direct his weapon.

‘
HOLD YOUR FIRE!
’

He roared the instruction at the top of his voice the moment the scene unfolded with more clarity.

The group of men had parted to a reveal a kid. Thirteen, fourteen maybe. He was a skinny little runt with sunken eyes, and the 53’s sights clearly picked out the unshaven hairs on his upper lip. They picked out, too, the expression of absolute terror on the boy’s face.

As Luke shouted, the noise of the mob suddenly fell quiet. His voice echoed briefly off the concrete walls of the street.

The kid stood motionless a couple of metres in front of the mob. In fact the crowd were shrinking back from him. Luke kept the child in his sights. He could see now that he was trembling. The boy took a step forward. And another. He appeared to be unarmed, so why were the mob retreating?

Fozzie’s voice. ‘What the hell’s happening?’

Luke paused a couple of seconds before answering. His sights had scanned the kid’s body. He was wearing a coat that came down to his knees. A raincoat, but it wasn’t raining.

‘We’ve got ourselves a suicide bomber,’ he stated.

He could almost feel the kid’s anxiety, even from this distance. It wasn’t just the way he trembled. It was his faltering steps, the nervous darting of his eyes left and right, the way he clenched and unclenched his palms as he grew closer and closer to the Land Cruiser.

The mob was running now in the opposite direction, taking cover behind parked cars and putting a good thirty metres between themselves and the boy. Luke flicked the safety catch on his 53 to semi-automatic and kept his cross hairs directly on the kid’s face. A single head shot was what he needed to put him down safely.

But something stopped him. And it wasn’t just that downing this kid would push the crowd over the edge.

He was back in St Paul’s. A shadowy figure had just discharged her first round into the head of a child not much younger than the kid Luke had in his sights.

Chet’s kid.

His face flared with anger at the memory of it.

Now he was about to do the same.

The boy was still advancing. Still trembling. Luke could see beads of sweat dripping down on to his unshaven top lip and chin. He could see the fists closing and opening, faster now than before.

‘
Shoot him!
’

Stratton’s voice was hoarse.

‘He’s a terrorist.
Shoot!
’

Luke blocked it out. If he was going to fire, it would be his decision, not Stratton’s.

‘Luke, mate . . .’ Fozzie’s voice was quiet and tense. ‘
Now
would be a good time to take the fucker out . . .’

But Luke didn’t move. Something wasn’t right. He knew he had to nail the kid if he got much further, but
something
wasn’t right.

The kid stopped. He closed his eyes. Opened them again. And continued walking.

Fozzie’s voice again. ‘Russ, take him out.’

‘
Hold your fire!
’ Luke barked.

The fists. Clenching and unclenching. There should be a detonation switch in one hand or the other. A cord peeking from one of his sleeves. But there was nothing.

Remote detonation. He’d seen it in the Stan – kids forced into martyrdom against their will, their generals in charge of the moment of bliss in case they bottled it. Was there was someone watching, ready to blast this child to paradise when he’d cause the most destruction?

‘This is madness,’ Stratton hissed. ‘Will someone just
do it
?’

‘How many more kids are going to die, Stratton?’ said Luke. He focused in on the bomber’s eyes.

‘This is
insanity
. . .’

Luke almost missed it. The kid’s eyes flickered upwards and to the right, before returning to the road ahead. It was the smallest of movements. Hardly anything at all. But it was enough.

He redirected his weapon so that it was pointing not at the boy, but across the street. The street was deserted at ground level, but the kid had looked upwards, so Luke raised his sights, scanning the buildings opposite. He moved his field of vision left and right, picking out the cracks in the wall and the railings at the front of balconies.

‘
What the fuck are you doing, Luke?
’ Fozzie didn’t just sound on edge, he sounded angry. Luke knew he didn’t have much time before the unit started ignoring his instructions and opening up of their own accord.

He scanned the buildings. Left to right. Up. Right to left.

When Luke saw him, it was only momentary. He had to pan back quickly to get him in his sights again. The figure was alone on a fourth-storey balcony, about twenty-five metres up and thirty-five metres from Luke’s position. He was looking down at the street below, concentration all over his swarthy face. Luke picked out his short black beard and flat brown eyes; and panning down half a metre, he saw something in the man’s hands. It was the same size and shape as an old-fashioned mobile phone, but it had an antenna, about five inches long, sprouting from the top.

Luke moved the cross hairs back to the man’s head.

‘
Jesus, Luke . . .
’

‘Hold tight, fellas,’ he said, just as the man in his sights turned his head to notice that Luke had eyes on and was staring directly into his sights.

Luke knew he had only a millisecond. The range was fine, but he had just the one chance. With the cross hairs directly over the man’s forehead, he squeezed the trigger. The 53’s butt jerked sharply into his shoulder, and the sound of the discharge cracked loudly, echoing from one side of the street to another. The recoil of the shot had nudged the target out of Luke’s sight, and he was forced to realign his weapon to see what the result was.

A direct hit.

The man was slumped precariously over the balcony’s railings. On the wall behind him blood was spattered; more was dripping from the head wound down to the pavement below. Luke redirected his aim towards the kid in the road. He was looking frantically left and right and didn’t appear to know what was happening.

His ignorance didn’t last for long.

Luke sensed movement on the balcony and looked over just in time to see his target topple over the railings. He seemed to fall through the air for an eternity, before hitting the ground with a crunch that was audible from the Land Cruiser on the other side of the road.

The kid stopped in his tracks.

He stared at the fallen man.

He turned round to look at the silent, retreating crowd, the nearest members of which had retreated to a distance of thirty-five metres.

And then he ran after them. His arms and legs were flailing and ungainly, but he bolted like a hare, just as the crowd realised what was happening. They parted to let him through, but their silence ebbed away, to be replaced by a low muttering, which quickly grew to something more sinister as they started to advance again.

‘
Shit!
’ Luke cried. First blood had been drawn. Some of the crowd had seen the dead man. It would be only seconds before the rest of them understood what had happened. And then the unit’s only option was to fight.

He turned to the guys in the vehicle and pointed through the front windscreen towards the dilapidated building with the scorch marks on the frontage, which was now fifteen metres from their position. ‘We need to head in there!’ he shouted. ‘It’s a defensible position.’

Fozzie nodded.

‘Finn, Russ, cover me. I’ll get Stratton inside first.’

The two men didn’t hesitate. Russ kicked the passenger door open and started firing towards the crowd, his weapon resonating in unison with Finn’s. Again they aimed above the heads of the mob, now advancing once more. They slowed down, but how long for, and how long until they returned fire, it was impossible to say.

Luke grabbed Stratton and pulled him forcibly from the 4 x 4. His clothes were soaked in sweat. As Russ and Finn laid down another burst of rounds, Luke yanked him towards the building. The doorway was wooden and looked solid, although its yellow paint was peeling. Luke kicked it with his right foot but it didn’t budge, so he took a couple of steps back and aimed his 53 at the lock. A quick burst and the wood splintered and cracked. Another kick and it was open.

Not before time. The mob was now just twenty metres from the vehicle. Russ and Finn, who were still next to their respective passenger doors while Fozzie remained in the front, continued to fire warning bursts, but these were no longer sufficient to hold them back. If they grew any closer, the unit would have to start killing people. Then it could only go one of two ways: a retreat, or a massacre . . .

Luke thrust himself into the building, his weapon pointing up then down as he checked if it was occupied. No sign of anyone. He exited again. ‘
Get in!
’ he bellowed at Stratton, who was staring wide-eyed at the stand-off. When he didn’t move, Luke grabbed hold of him again and sent him flying through the door with such force that he fell heavily to the ground the moment he was inside.

But Luke wasn’t much concerned with Stratton. All of a sudden his attention was elsewhere.

It was Finn who made the first kill. A round from one of the Palestinian AKs had just ricocheted off the Land Cruiser’s armoured chassis. Finn lowered his weapon so that, instead of pointing above the heads of the mob, it was aimed directly at them. As he fired, he panned from left to right; and although the burst from his 53 didn’t last much more than a second, it was brutally effective. The front line of the crowd crumpled like toy soldiers knocked over by a child. There was a heavy groan from the mob, with one man offering up a horrific counterpoint: he had clearly taken a round that had failed to kill him, and was screaming uncontrollably.