Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

They had to make a decision. And fast.

‘Finn, you and me are going to lay down warning fire. We need to disperse these crowds. And no stiffs. We start nailing people, we’re going to be in the middle of a riot…’

‘We are already,’ Finn shot back. ‘A few rounds in the air won’t do fuck all…’

‘What the hell’s going on?’ Stratton butted in. His face was moist with sweat.

‘You,’ Luke frowned at him, ‘shut up. Warning fire, Finn. I fucking mean it.’

His mate looked uncomfortable with the order, but nodded his agreement.

‘Exit in three, two, one, go! ’

The two men opened the rear doors of the Land Cruiser and kicked them wide with their feet. In the same movement, Luke raised his 53 so that it was aimed well above the heads of the larger crowd and fired two quick bursts. He heard Finn doing the same and the harsh, mechanical noise of the discharged rounds ripped through the air. Stratton shouted in alarm, but Luke ignored him and, semi-protected like Finn by his half-open rear passenger door, kept his weapon aimed firmly towards the mob.

At first the sound of the rounds had the desired effect. About half the crowd hit the ground, their hands covering their heads. The thought crossed Luke’s mind that these were people used to the sights and sounds of combat. Perhaps that was a good thing. Perhaps it meant they would take a burst of counter-fire seriously. From the edges of the larger crowd he saw perhaps ten people run to the side of the road and take cover in doorways or behind parked cars. There was still a hard core, though, some thirty or forty who weren’t deterred by the warning fire. Most of them were wearing black and white keffiyehs and waving their assault rifles in the air. It crossed Luke’s mind that the threat of death didn’t seem to worry some of them. He’d encountered enemy like that before, in the Stan. It was a dangerous man who wasn’t scared of dying.

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…’