Nothing Sacred (35 page)

Then: ‘Movement,' says Gabe. ‘7 Platoon.'

I swing my night sight left and see the bright white shapes of men moving fast from their position towards Petroski's house. I count four, then another behind them. Five men, with at least one left behind to drive the Land Rover. They are still over a kilometre and a half away. It will take them some minutes to reach Petroski's house. I look back at the Range Rover containing Blake's men. Two doors open and two men get out. They close the doors and walk along the road to Petroski's house.

Watching through the sight, these events seem unreal. What is about to happen cannot be real. These are actual men, Connor Blake's men, yet I have never met them. They have always operated in the shadows. This is the first time I have seen them and they are mere shades, wraiths, mysteries. My heart is beating hard against the cold ground and I feel the guilty thrill of the voyeur, getting my kicks vicariously.

I pan left and see that the men of 7 Platoon have covered a lot of ground and are closing in on Petroski's farmhouse fast. Blake's men are almost there. They walk onto his drive, split up. One goes to a window. The other to the front door. From this distance I cannot see them in detail but the way they are each dangling an arm makes me think that they are holding guns.

The man at the door kicks it open and both men rush in. I can no longer see them so I once again pan left and see that 7 Platoon are only five hundred metres away, less. Blake's men's Range Rover is the other side of the house from them. When they are within two hundred metres they slow and run in a crouch. Closer still, just a hundred metres away and they fan out, two heading for the front of the house, one to the back, one to each side. They approach the house very slowly.

‘They'll get to the walls,' says Gabe, ‘then wait.'

‘Check windows. Give it a couple, then go in hard through the front door,' says Petroski.

‘Two'll wait outside. One at the front, one at the back. Mop them up if they try to run.'

‘Those two idiots inside,' says Petroski. ‘Should have stayed at home.'

The soldiers are doing what Gabe and Petroski described, crouching low against the walls of the house. The two at each side join the two in front of the house. Three of them scrabble along the ground to the front door, one keeps watch. It is open from where it has been kicked in and this causes them to pause for a few seconds, wondering why this picture does not seem quite right. Then they stand up, one on one side of the door, two on the other. Then one by one the three men run in.

There is a long pause during which I hold my breath. It is silent in the house. The two soldiers outside are waiting. I cannot imagine what is happening inside. Terror visited on unwitting men in a confined space. Death appearing out of blackness. It must be pure horror. Then there is a flash in one of the windows and almost instantly the pop of small explosions.

‘Pistol,' whispers Gabe.

‘What kind?' I say.

‘Hell would I know?' says Gabe.

There is another sound, soft, like a two-stroke engine muted by the distance, a Vespa puttering away over the flat expanse.

‘Submachine gun,' says Petroski.

‘That'll be the end of your boys,' says Gabe.

I see another flash in a window, and another, the sound of the explosions reaching us fractionally later. Then there is silence.

‘Uh-oh,' says Petroski. ‘Check the car.'

I pan across and see three men getting out of the Range Rover and heading for the house. I guess the soldiers left behind with the Land Rover must be in radio contact with the soldiers at the house, because almost immediately one of the men at the house peels away and heads in the direction of the three men.

‘Why didn't they just leave?' says Petroski.

‘They don't have a clue,' says Gabe. ‘Not the first idea.'

I can see the soldier approaching Blake's men as they run towards the house, oblivious. The soldier stops, crouching. The men keep running, still unaware. I cannot help but notice that one of them is small, barely larger than a child, and limping heavily. Then they all fall down and that gentle purr reaches us again. The soldier approaches them and goes to each of them, kneels, checks. None of us say anything. I feel nauseous, revolted. What we have just witnessed was so efficient and so effortless that it seems unjust, nothing any spectator can take any satisfaction in. A cruel, cold and entirely one-sided display of overwhelming and murderous force.

‘Let's go,' says Petroski.

We crawl away in the opposite direction to Petroski's house. My legs are stiff and I have difficulty making them do what I want. I imagine that Gabe must be finding it even harder. We crawl until we are hidden by the rise of the land and then we stand and walk as fast as we can back in the direction of Gabe's car. We need to move fast. We need to move very fast.

35

GABE'S CAR IS
on its side in the middle of the road and I am standing next to it. It is lying lengthways across the road, blocking it completely. It is nearly as tall as I am.

Gabe and Petroski are nowhere to be seen. I can see approaching headlights in the distance. They will be here very soon. There will be one car, a Land Rover, and in it will be the ex-soldiers of 7 Platoon, getting as far away from the scene of the massacre as they can. I cannot see the car but I guess that they are travelling up an incline as I can see the beams of their headlights momentarily search the night sky. I can hear their engine. After what I have just witnessed, I do not want to meet these men. They kill with the contemptuous ease of young gods. The night is still and the moon is baleful. I am scared. I would rather be anywhere else than here, right now. I am in over my head, way over my head.

The wind gusts and dies, then gusts again, making the sound of the approaching car's engine fluctuate so that one moment I think it is nearly upon me, the next it sounds distant again. I do not know how long I have. I stand where I am. I am going nowhere.

Now the car is no more than five hundred metres away. It immediately slows down when they see me. I am picked out in the beams of the Land Rover like I am an actor on stage, the car on its side behind me the backdrop. It keeps approaching slowly and I imagine the soldiers in the vehicle calculating, evaluating, wondering what the chances are of meeting an overturned car on this isolated road, at this time, after what has just happened behind them. They will want to get away. They will want to get past me. They have weapons, they have firepower and manpower to spare. I am alone. They will keep coming, get as close as they dare. I hope that that will be close enough.

They are so near that I can make out the distinctive shape of the Land Rover. I can see the circles of the head-lights and when I look away they leave spots in front of my eyes. They cannot get much closer.

There is a flat crack, which is so incredibly loud that I expect it to tear the air open, rend a hole in the sky. Light flares beneath the Land Rover and it jumps into the air, all four tyres leaving the ground. The explosion must have gone off towards the rear of the car because its back wheels lift higher and it comes down on its front bumper, like a bucking horse kicking up its hind legs. The shock wave hits me, heats my skin and blows through my hair like the exhaust of a fighter jet. My ears ring. I take a step back. The back of the Land Rover is on fire. I wonder if anybody inside can still be alive.

*

I do not think I have ever seen Gabe lower than when he was sitting on the floor of his dining room, beating the polished boards in anger and shame and humiliation. Leaving him then I worried that he might never come back, that I would never again see the Gabe I used to know.

But what was done to Maria has lit something inside him, reawakened his sleeping animal. The aura he used to wear when he was in uniform is back. Looking at him over the past twenty-four hours I can imagine the officer who led men into battle, who set an example so impressive that they would follow him anywhere, and willingly. He exudes the air of a man who is motivated and capable and utterly ruthless.

He told me that no officer would deal with IEDs on a day-to-day basis without learning about the threat they carried in detail. He told me that he had lost count of the number he had taken apart, examined their workings, what they contained, how they were triggered. He said that making one was a piece of piss. Look at the sort of people in Afghanistan who laid them – medievalists with an instruction manual. If they could do it, so could he.

Normally, Gabe said, a decent IED would be triggered by a mobile phone from a safe distance. But we did not have the time for this so what he and Petroski laid out on the road was little more than four grenades hidden inside the dead fox that Gabe had collected along the way and a roll of wire, which they unravelled twenty metres off the side of the road and behind a low stone wall. There was only one road in and out of where Petroski lived; nowhere else to go but the sea. We knew they'd be passing. It was just a question of making sure we didn't miss.

Rolling Gabe's car onto its side took all three of us and even then it was not easy. We had to jack it up first, put our shoulders into it. But it was, Gabe and Petroski assured me, a good decoy. The Land Rover would slow, keep approaching, would come to a stop less than thirty metres away. They sited the IED fifty metres away. In the event, they got it exactly right.

Two birds with one stone, Gabe had said. First we get 7 Platoon to do our dirty work for us. Then we take care of 7 Platoon. Leave them with an inoperative vehicle loaded with automatic weapons less than a mile from the scene of a full-blown massacre. See how that reflects on the image of Global Armour: their employees running around the Essex countryside assassinating prominent members of the underworld. Gabe had smiled, laughed. Good luck with that.

Gabe and Petroski are out from behind the wall and at the Land Rover almost before it has properly settled back on its ruined suspension. They have guns in their hands. They get one of the rear doors open and haul out the unconscious or semi-conscious soldiers, pull them to the ground. Petroski points his gun at them while Gabe takes weapons from them. They work quickly and efficiently and at no point do any of the soldiers have a chance to fight back, even if they were in a condition to. I watch them work by the light of the fire burning in the back of the Land Rover. I have to admit that it is an impressive sight. They have done this before; no movements are wasted and they work in efficient partnership.

The front door of the Land Rover is pushed open and Petroski points his gun at the figure emerging. The man puts his hands up and I see that it is Banyan, the man I saw at the tennis court and at our night at the edge of the cliff. He stands against the side of the Land Rover, does not move.

Gabe finishes taking the weapons from the men on the ground. He walks towards Banyan. When he is nearly to him he lifts his arm up so that it is parallel to the ground. He is holding a gun. His gun is only inches away from Banyan's forehead. I can see Gabe's face and he looks entirely remorseless. He means to shoot this man. He wants to shoot this man. He wants nothing more. This is the man who killed Lance Corporal Creek, the man Gabe felt he should have protected. I know Gabe. Know that he values the principle of revenge. This, shooting Banyan, would in his eyes even the score, deliver justice.

Petroski walks up to Gabe. His face is caught by the fire from the Land Rover. His shiny skin reflects the flames, which throws the ridges of his dreadful scar tissue into sharp relief, ravaged skin and shadow. In the orange flickering glare of the fire he looks like a creature from a lurid B movie: a sickly imagined monster.

Very gently Petroski places his hand in front of the barrel of Gabe's gun. I can see him speaking but I cannot hear what he says. He is speaking softly and I cannot imagine what he is saying but know that the words he chooses will be kind and reasoned. I have rarely met a man so good and generous. He leaves his hand in front of Gabe's gun and eventually Gabe nods and lowers it, takes it away from Banyan's forehead and turns and walks away.

We right Gabe's car, watching for movements from the injured men, and drive away from the destroyed Land Rover and the six ex-soldiers of 7 Platoon. As Gabe drives, Petroski calls it in, speaks to a police officer and tells him that he has heard shooting, gives them his address although he does not tell them his name or that he lives there. They will be there in minutes. They will bring a helicopter. I do not rate 7 Platoon's chances of getting away very highly, experienced soldiers or not. Though what the police will make of the scene when they get there I cannot imagine. Five dead bodies at the hands of men who have never seen or heard of them before, who have no motive or explanation for what just happened. It will take some unravelling.

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