Andy McNab - Exit wound

I’d seen Red Ken and Dex go down; seen them take a whole mag each. I thought I’d seen Spag get the same treatment, but he’d never been directly in my line of vision. There had been a gap of a few metres between Red Ken’s body and his. As soon as he saw Spag run out of the arc of fire, Red Ken must have realized it was a stitch-up and tried to drop him.

Four bodies came out of the terminal airside and headed for the Falcon.

I rattled off a series of pictures of Altun, the Taliban and Spag sharing a joke, then some more as they walked up the aircraft steps. Tattoo’s sidekick checked the bags were on board before joining them. The stairs were sucked into the fuselage and the aircraft headed off down the runway.

I scrolled back through the pictures. They were all in focus, and I knew without a doubt that I was looking at Spag and the second loadie, the one who had hosed Red Ken down.

I got out the sat comm and powered it up. ‘Jules, stand by, get a pen.’

‘Nick, listen, I want-’

‘In a minute. You ready?’

‘Nick-’

‘Mate, listen to me…’

The roar of the three engines drowned whatever he was trying to say.

‘That’s the Falcon, Jules. It’s just left IKIA. Altun is on board. So is the Taliban and Spag. Spicciati is alive. The fuck is part of the deal. Track it, tell me where it’s going and I’ll get there, find out what’s happening. Just find out where it’s going for me.’

There was a pause.

The Falcon’s engine noise faded.

Finally Julian spoke. ‘I know.’

‘Know what?’

‘I know that Spicciati is alive.’

This was not a good day out for Julian. I could feel his pain.

‘I’m sorry, Nick. This is where it ends. I’ve been ordered to stand you down. It’s been taken away from us. Stand down – acknowledge that, Nick.’

‘You pissed or what? We don’t know if the gear is in-country yet. And if it isn’t, we don’t know where it is or how they’re getting to it. I’ll find that out, mate. Follow the plane and I’ll get there and stop this shit. What if our lads get dropped out of the sky tomorrow? That’s all right, is it?’

‘No, it’s not.’ Julian sounded as pissed off as I was. ‘Nick, I can do nothing here. It’s not just you being stood down. It’s both of us.’

‘He still CIA? You telling me it was some fucked-up Ollie North-style double-dealing CIA bullshit that got Dex and Ken killed?’

The line stayed dead for a few seconds.

‘Jules! Is he?’

‘Roger that. He never got out. He’s been undercover for years. I’m sorry. We didn’t know. No one knew.’

I felt like I’d been hit by a sledge-hammer. ‘You didn’t know?’

‘Nick, if you decide to go ahead and do whatever it is you plan to do, it’s against my direct order. I will no longer answer your calls and I will track your sat comm. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘Acknowledged, I’m stood down.’

‘Correct. Good luck.’

I powered down. Fuck it. I didn’t trust our Firm. I didn’t trust the US Firm. Or any other fucker’s Firm, come to that. The whole fucking lot of them only gave a shit about one thing. Themselves. Well, not quite all of them. There was still Julian.

I checked my watch: 06.10.

I leapt out of the pipe and bundled my kit into my day-sack as I ran. I left the steel tube behind. I didn’t want to make too much of a mess of Tattoo. I needed clean clothes.

This was my start line. Nothing else mattered now apart from getting to Tattoo. He was going to die first, simple as that.

My head was crowded with images of Dex falling to the ground as Tattoo pumped rounds into him. And now he was just metres away from me. I wasn’t going to hang around.

I sprinted past the Merc, checking that there was no one inside it. It was parked less than a couple of metres from the entrance. The keys were in the ignition.

I pulled the peak of my ball cap down low, walked up to the door and rapped on the glass. Tattoo looked up from behind the desk, put down his drink and gave me a curl of the lip, half in sheer bloody-minded irritation, half in disdain. I wasn’t that surprised. I’d caught my reflection in the glass – a day’s stubble and filthy clothes. I wouldn’t have invited me in.

I banged harder.

Tattoo sprang up and powered towards me, his arms swinging like an RSM’s on the drill square. He had a holstered Makarov on his belt, along with three mags in holders.

I turned towards the Merc, gesticulating and waving.

He was nearly at the door.

I kept moving towards the car, pointing to the back of it as if there wasn’t a moment to lose.

I heard the buzz of the door-release mechanism. He started gobbing off at me in Russian.

I gripped the mobile in my right fist like a dagger. There was no time to answer him, to look up – no time to do anything. Head down, arm bent and solid, I spun around and rammed the top end of it into his gut.

He dropped, but only to his knees. He went for his pistol.

I slid behind him, totally focused on the weapon. I grabbed it and wrenched it downwards.

As it bounced off the tarmac, I lifted his chin with my left hand and jammed the top of the mobile into his throat with my right, just below the Adam’s apple. I pulled back with all my strength, trying to bury the thing in his neck.

His hands reached up to mine, fingers scrabbling, trying to pull them away. I dragged him out of line-of-sight of the entrance to the building and dropped to my knees. He came down with me, his legs splayed out in front of him.

I pressed my chest down on the back of his head, keeping maximum pressure on his throat. I pulled the mobile towards me as if I was trying to thrust it right through his throat and stab myself between the ribs. The more he struggled, the harder I leant against him.

He kicked and bucked like an animal until his windpipe was finally crushed. Snot and saliva frothed at his nose and mouth and his brain started to close down. His hands flapped weakly at my arms.

Hypoxia had him in its grasp. He collapsed, but it wasn’t over yet. I counted off another sixty seconds before I wrenched us both to our feet and starting dragging him towards the Merc.

I dumped him on the back seat and gave his shirt a wipe. There was no blood, but a good few nostrils-ful of snot. I pulled his coat off its hanger, checked its pockets, found what I was looking for and laid it neatly on the front passenger seat.

I jumped in behind the wheel, twisted the key in the ignition and slipped it into drive. I rolled slowly out of the turning circle, then accelerated towards the multi-storey car park.

The car park was as empty as the last time I’d been here. It seemed more like a century ago than a couple of days. I peeled off the ramp at the second floor. I wondered whether Qasim and Adel were up on the roof, not a care in the world, getting their rocks off as another airliner took to the air.

I opened the back door and started to undress Tattoo. He was bigger than me so there’d be no drama getting into his kit. I unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it over his shoulders. His chest and back were covered with tattoos. He’d obviously done some time. The pictures of bears shagging women and rats with numbers above them would tell anyone in the know what detention centres he’d been to, and why.

He had stars tattoo’d onto his kneecaps. In gang language, he was going to kneel for no man.

With Tattoo tucked safely into the boot, and none of his ID in the car, I emptied a couple of bottles of mineral water over my face and hair. I dried myself off with my own shirt before putting on his, brushed as much sand and shit off his trousers as I could, then finally slid on his jacket.