Thunder (41 page)

~~~~~

Herat

I haul the back door of the Toyota open, bundle Jack inside as gently as I can, slam it again, rush round to the driver’s door, jump in, and throw my pack into the footwell beside me. Only then do I remember the case. What if it’s another bomb? I lean over and fish it out quickly, flick the catches open, and offer it over the seat to Jack. “What’s this?”

“A scanner,” he says, as he eases himself uncomfortably onto the bench-seat. “That must be how Nagpal found Ebrahimi’s tracker.”

“Where was it?” I ask. “The tracer?”

“In his arse,” says Jack.

I scowl at him, and he shakes his head in disbelief.

“It’s not what you think,” he says. “Now let’s get out of here.”

~~~~~

“There!” yelled his bodyguard from the driver’s seat beside him.

In the distance, the tail lights of a car squirmed sideways out from behind the walls of the temple, slid wildly across the gravelly road, and then sprinted away.

“After them!” Bin Imraan shouted, and heard his 4x4’s engine roar like a lion. Its chunky off-road tyres churned vigorously at the loose gravel as they fought valiantly to gain traction.

The others, in a Mitsubishi flatbed truck alongside them, shot forwards sprinting into the lead.

“Ten thousand Afghani to the captor!” yelled Gulyar excitedly. He loved a good hunt.

~~~~~

We bounce violently across the rutted dirt track, so much so that my pack is flying around in the footwell next to me. I glance in the rearview mirror but can see very little through the swirling dust clouds which blossom behind us.

Jack moans from the back seats.

“Hold on,” I shout helpfully, as the car leaps up over the edge of a rough-painted strip of tarmac, and crashes back down again.

“Owwwww...,” he wails.

“Tarmac now,” I yell.

“Thank fuck!” he cries.

The dust cloud behind us is subsiding, but from within it I can make out headlights peering through the dirty smog. They’re dancing around in the mirror like some approaching alien spacecraft preparing to land. “We’ve got company!” I call out.

“Head south!” he instructs, and I see the reflection of the top of his head pop up in the rearview mirror as he peers out the back.

The car sprints forward, its road-tyres getting more traction on the tarmac, and I haul the wheel to the right, rubber screaming in frustration, as we reach the next junction.

“Ow, ow, ow,” Jack commentates.

I glance back at him. He’s heaving himself round and trying to get to the kit stored under the seat.

“Keep going,” he yells, and hauls out the EMT.

The headlights burst out from the junction behind us. One pair. Two pairs. A fiery strobe light blinks above the headlights of the first vehicle. “Incoming!” I yell, as a line of bullets tear a swathe of holes out of the nearby walls and smash into the windows of the houses on one side of the street.

Well wide.

“Keep going!” he repeats. “Head for the bridge! There’s one ahead of us.”

The road leads, in a straight line, ahead of us. Another burst of gunfire starts biting holes out of the houses on the other side of us. Bits of brickwork and glass shower down, tinkling and banging against the bodywork and windscreen.

Closer this time but still wide.

I jink left and keep the accelerator pressed hard into the floorboards. If anyone steps out in front of us this time, they’re going to end up as mincemeat.

“At the end of this straight section the road will curve to the left. Take the immediate right and get us over the bridge but, after we’re over, don’t follow the main road round to the right,” Jack yells, reading from the EMT. “Keep going straight. We’ll go into a hamlet where the road forks, take the middle one.”

“What about them?” I yell, nodding my head backward toward our pursuers.

“I’ll deal with them in a minute,” he shouts. “I’ve only got one pair of hands!”

More flickering lights from behind. Something hits the back of the car and I jerk further left mounting the pavement momentarily. There’s an explosion of glass and something whistles past my right ear and punches a big hole into the dashboard. I don’t think that the car radio is going to work again. It’s a good job I didn’t swerve to the right, or neither would I.

“Jesus,” mutters my passenger.

“What are you
doing?
” I yell.

“Sending a FUCKING MESSAGE!” he howls from behind me, but lifts his Browning and fires blindly over the back seat through what’s left of the rear windscreen.

That seems to help. I can see the headlights of our pursuers swerving around as they slow rapidly behind me.

Then they accelerate again.

“We need some more of that,” I call out.

“Stop nagging!” he yells.

That’s annoying. “I’m NOT
nagging!
” I protest angrily. “I’m trying to keep your sorry miserable backside alive, you ungrateful
bastard!
”

Suddenly the car is full of ear-shattering clattering noises, and I reflexively shrink down in my seat. The deafening racket is coming from Jack, who I can see in the mirror, pointing one of the rifles out through the shattered hole of the back window. In the darkness, flames spout dramatically out of its cartridge ejector port. The magazine empties. “Nag, nag nag!” he yells into the sudden silence, as he rips out the double mag, flips it over, and slams it back in.

The closest of the two pursuing vehicles has been swerving violently from side to side to avoid Jack’s bullets. I can just make out it’s a pickup truck. Someone is standing in the load space and being swung around as he, or she, clings grimly to some sort of tripod. This figure wheels towards us and the flickering light starts again.

“Tripod mounted machine gun!” Jack yells helpfully as more rounds slam into the boot lid on my side.

I jink right, then hard left, guessing that the gunman will struggle to track rapid changes of direction. A renewed cacophony of explosions announces that Jack is returning fire.

“They’re backing off!” he yells triumphantly.

I settle the car back into the middle of the road, and try to push my foot through the floorboard.

“Oh, shit,” says my passenger.

“What?”

“Fuck.”

“WHAT?”

“RPG!” yells Jack.

“WHAT?”

“RPG!” yells Jack.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS A...”

“MOVE!” he screams.

I pull violently on the steering wheel, and a strange object appears next to my window, snaking slowly past us, trailing a gently curving smoky trail in its wake...

“GO RIGHT!” yells Jack desperately.

I haul the car to the right, and off the side of the road. Thankfully we’re outside the city now, and the car bounds wildly, sliding as it fishtails, on the empty dirt verge. To the left hand side, in front of us, there’s a ferocious flash of light, and a car shaking boom, and I feel the Toyota being pushed up onto two wheels.

“SHIT!” I yell.

“SHIT!” agrees Jack.

I’m up in the air, and leaning hard left. Come on car! Come on!

I haven’t lifted my foot off the gas yet.

Come on...

The car drops violently down, and I see my passenger bounce past the rear view. Serves him right for having a go at me. “What the fuck was that?” I yell.

“An RPG,” he shouts from the footwell. “Like I was
trying to tell you
. A fucking rocket propelled grenade!” He’s up to something back there. “Get back to the road!” he instructs. “We’ve got to lose these guys!”

I heave on the steering and point the squirming Toyota vaguely toward the line of the road. There’s a newly formed, smoking crater of a pothole where the RPG went off a moment ago. God knows what would have become of us if we’d been any closer. Or, if it had hit the car itself...

“Get on the tarmac, and get us straight,” he calls forward.

I look back between the seats. He’s busy winding a wire round something.

He notices my glance. “Making them a present,” he explains. “Concentrate on the driving.”

In the mirror first one, then two, sets of headlights burst through the swirling cloud of RPG smoke.

“They’re still there!” I shout.

“Keep going,” he instructs. “And slow down a bit.”

“Slow
DOWN?
” Is he mad?

“Slow down,” he asserts.

I ease off the gas slightly. The headlights start closing on us.

“Easy,” says Jack calmly. “Easy now.”

I can just see his head in the mirror, looking back over the seats.

“How far are we from the left turn?” he shouts to me.

I can see it in the distance. “About five hundred metres,” I yell.

“Get ready to floor it again,” he coaches. “Not yet... Not yet...”

The headlights are getting closer and closer.

“Not yet...”

“What about another RPG?” I shout at the windscreen. “What if they have another?”

“Not at this range,” he says. “Get ready...”

Our pursuers are barely a hundred metres back from us. The machine gun, on its own, won’t miss at this range.

“Two hundred metres!” I yell.

“NOW!” he roars, tossing something large out of the back window. “GO, GO, GO!”

I drop the Toyota one gear and floor it. The car’s engine howls angrily, and I feel the seat pressing into my back. Then there’s an almighty flash which momentarily lights up both the car’s interior and a huge expanse of the flat desert around us. I can even make out the bridge in the distance. The explosive bang is loud enough to make my already throbbing ears ring with pain and something slams into the boot, driving the car forwards, and making the gears whine in protest at the strain of sudden speed.

“C4,” he yells happily.

In the rearview mirror the pickup truck is cartwheeling along behind us. For a few moments it’s still keeping pace: initially nose first, then there’s a smash of sparks and a scream of metal, and then the flatbed’s rising vertically, then it’s tail first upside down, and then there’s another smash of sparks and painful screams, then...

“WATCH THE FUCKING ROAD!” yells my backseat driver...

SHIT...! TURN...! I heave the steering wheel to the left...

~~~~~

London

Greere scanned the chatter appearing in broken lines and scrolling down his screen. “Shots reported,” he read out. “Automatic fire reported...
Shit:
two men reported running from area dressed in Western military uniforms... Multiple vehicles involved in high speed pursuit... Firefight involving local criminal gangs reported.”

“I’ve got something!” shouted Ellard. “Hang on, sir!”

“Ping it over to my screen too,” said Greere.

A small text box popped up in front of him:
‘12 – 01 – 52 – 99 – 34.2587:62.1883’
. A message from the EMT.

“Targets hit successfully, with collateral damage,” translated Ellard. “One person injured,
again
... Exiting off plan and by best means possible. They’re requesting urgent extraction from the specified location using the emergency ‘9x’ notation.”

Greere’s phone started buzzing on the desktop. He snatched it up. Sentinel’s number. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“What the fuck’s going on, Greere?” demanded Sentinel. “I’ve had the army on to me, asking if we’ve got any operations running in the Herat area!”

Greere smiled to himself and spoke loud enough so Ellard would hear him. “Unfortunately there are reports of men in Western army uniform being seen fleeing the southwestern suburbs,” he said calmly. “It would appear that Tin and Mercury have stirred up a hornet’s nest, sir. Large numbers of local militia or possibly gangsters are pursuing them out of the city.”

“Fuck,” said Sentinel.

“Yes, sir. Unfortunate as it seems, it is my strong recommendation that we sever all links. We are ready for such contingency. We need to ensure that there is no trail back to here. Best to move quickly, sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, do it,” said Sentinel. “Were the agents successful?” he asked. Greere could hear an unexpected hint of sadness in his boss’s voice. The guy was too soft for his role. Greere had always thought as much.

“Not sure yet, sir,” he lied carefully, conscious of Ellard looking at him over the partition.

“Okay,” said Sentinel. “I’ll get rid of our army chums,” and the line clicked off.

Ellard continued to stare at him.

“What’re you looking at?” Greere demanded. “You always hated this project anyway. Didn’t you?”

Ellard shrugged. “I suppose,” he said. “Always seemed to be very high risk. Did Sentinel ask about the targets?”

“No,” said Greere. “Too worried about covering his backside as usual. Shut down these chatter filters and screens, and start deep-wiping every digital record of our traffic, including the ones to and from the satellite. Sentinel needs me to make a couple of calls. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Greere stood up, stepped out of the office, and made his way along to one of the tiny quiet rooms scattered along the corridor outside. He called up Joker’s number on his secure cell.

“What?” his agent answered, abruptly and unprofessionally. “I’m busy.”

In the background, Greere could hear some woman, moaning rhythmically. “I need you to get another message to our friend,” he growled.

“I said, I’m
busy
,” Joker replied.

Greere snarled, “Remember who pays for your whores, Joker. And remember where you
are
in the world. You don’t get to say yes or no. Don’t make me send someone to find you...”

“So, what’s the message?” Joker’s voice reeked of contempt, but the moaning in the background stopped.

“Write this down.”

Shuffling noises. “Okay, go.”

“Message reads: valuable assets at Long 34.2587, Lat 62.1883. Message ends.”

Joker confirmed the message back, and Greere immediately hung up on him. His first job when he got back in the office would be to strip the records of both this and his earlier call to his agent. Ellard could deal with the rest of the boring Tin and Mercury rubbish.