Frederick Forsyth: The Kill List

A small pye-dog trotted down the alley, stopped and sniffed. Another joined it. They were both mangy, possibly rabid, accustomed to foraging amid the garbage, eating excrement or, on feast days, the entrails of a slaughtered goat. They sniffed again, suspecting there was something out there but not yet alarmed enough to bark and trigger a multi-dog alarm.

The Tracker took something from a breast pocket and threw it like a baseball pitcher toward the dogs. It landed with a soft phut in the sand. Both dogs jumped, then sniffed again before barking. Raw beefsteak. They approached, sniffed again, and the lead dog swallowed the tidbit in a single gulp. Another followed for his friend. The second treat disappeared.

The Tracker sent a salvo of meat chunks into the mouth of the alley. More dogs appeared, nine in all, saw their leaders gulping down the treats and did the same. There were twenty morsels, more than two each. Every cur got at least one. Then they sniffed around to see if there were more.

The original eaters began to stumble. Then their legs failed and they fell over, lying on their sides, kicking feebly. Finally, they ceased to move. The remaining seven did the same. Within ten minutes of the first throw, they were all unconscious.

David rose to a crouch and gestured forward, rifle at the port, finger on trigger. Five followed him. Barry remained to scan the exteriors of the houses. A donkey brayed from deep inside the hamlet. Nothing moved. The enemies ahead of them either slept or waited in ambush. The Tracker believed it was the former. The men from Marka were also strangers, and the dogs would have barked at them also. He was right.

The attack group entered the alley and approached the house on the left. It was the third up, facing the square. The masked men could make out a door on the alley, thick old timber, brought once from somewhere else, for only scrubby camel thorn bushes grew nearby. The plank door had two ring handles but no lock with keyhole. David tested it with fingertips. It did not budge. Barred from the inside, crude but effective. It would take a battering ram. He beckoned to Tim, the munitions man, pointed at the door and withdrew.

Tim was holding what looked like a small wreath. He applied this to the crack between the left- and right-hand halves of the double door. Had it been metal, magnets or putty would have worked. Being timber, he used thumbtacks. There was no hammering, just pressure from his thumb. When the wreath was fixed, he set the short fuse and waved the others back.

They withdrew fifteen feet and crouched. Because it was a shaped charge, there would be no outward explosive force. The fury of the PETN plastic explosive would all be forward, cutting the wood like a chain saw in a fraction of a second.

When it came, the Tracker was surprised how low the noise was: a muted crack like a twig snapping. Then the first four were through the door, which swung weakly to the touch, its inner crossbar splintered and broken. Tim and Dai remained outside, covering the square with its three pickup trucks, tethered donkeys and corralled goats.

The para captain was first in, the Tracker at his shoulder. There were three men rising, half asleep, from the floor. The hitherto silent night was ripped by two M4 carbine on automatic mode. All three were from the Marka party. They were the Preacher’s bodyguards. They were dead before they got upright. Yells came from an inner room beyond a farther door.

The captain paused a moment to ensure all three were very dead; Pete and Curly came in from the alley; the Tracker kicked the inner door and went through. He prayed Opal, wherever he was, would have responded to the first fusillade by diving for the floor, preferably under a bed.

There were two men in the room. Unlike their companions in the hall, they had requisitioned two of the family’s beds, rough charpoys with camel’s hair blankets. They were up but sightless in the pitch-blackness. The burly one, the fourth bodyguard, had been perhaps dozing but not fast asleep; clearly he was the night watch, supposed to stay awake. He was up, with a handgun, and he fired.

The bullet went past the Tracker’s head, but what really hurt was the blaze of light from the muzzle, magnified many times by the goggles. It was like a searchlight in the face. He fired blind but on auto, sweeping right to left. His bullet stream took both men, the fourth Pakistani and the one who turned out to be Jamma, the private secretary.

Outside at the entrance to the square, as agreed, Tim and Dai raked the house across the square, the one sheltering the Sacad clansmen from Garacad. The paras fired long streams through each window. There was no glass in them, just nailed-up blankets. They knew their bullets would be above bed height, so they slammed in fresh magazines and waited for the reaction. It was not long.

In the headman’s house there was a low scuffling noise and a hint of movement. The Tracker swung toward it. A third truckle bed, tucked away in the corner. Someone beneath it, a hint of baseball cap.

“Stay there,” he shouted. “Don’t move. Don’t come out.” The scuffling stopped, the cap was withdrawn.

He swung around to the three men behind him.

“Clear in here. Go help with the northern gang.”

Out on the square, six from Garacad, convinced they were betrayed by those from Marka, came across the square in a charge, Kalashnikovs held low, dodging between the donkeys, which screamed and reared on their halters, and the three parked vehicles.

But they were in darkness. The clouds now covered the stars. Tim and Dai picked out one each and “slotted” them. The muzzle flashes were enough for the other four. They brought up their Russian guns. Tim and Dai went facedown fast. Behind them, Pete, Curly and their captain came into the alley, saw the muzzle flashes from the Kalashnikovs and also went down.

From prone positions, the five paras took out two more of the running men. The fifth, firing on empty when his magazine ran out, paused to slot in a fresh one. He was clearly visible beside the goat pen, and two M4 rounds took his head off.

The last was crouching behind one of the technicals, out of sight. The firing died and stopped. Trying to find a target in the darkness, he popped his head around the front of the engine block. He was unaware his enemies had NVGs; his head was like a green football. Another round blew his brains out.

Then there really was silence. There was no more response from the house with the pirates, but the paras were two short. They needed eight; they had taken down six. They prepared to charge and risk taking casualties, but there was no need. From way behind the village, they heard more shots, three in all, spaced a second apart.

Seeing the village well roused, Barry had abandoned his useless vigil outside the alley and raced around to the back. With his NVGs, he saw three figures running out of the back of the pirate house. Two were in robes, the third, stumbling and pleading, being hustled along with the two Somalis, had a thatch of blond hair.

Barry did not even challenge the runners. He rose from the camel thorn scrub when they were twenty yards away and fired. The one with the Kalashnikov, Duale, of the one eye, went first; the older man, later identified as al-Afrit, the Devil, took two spaced bullets in the chest.

The huge para walked over to his kills. The blond lad was between them, on his side, in the fetal position, crying softly.

“That’s all right, son,” said the veteran sergeant. “It’s over. Time to take you home.”

He tried to raise the teenager to his feet, but his legs had given way. So he picked the lad up like a doll, put him over his shoulder and began to stride back to the village.

The Tracker stared through his goggles at the room where the last of the Marka party had died. All but one. There was a doorway to one side; not a door but a hanging blanket covering the aperture.