Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

But Luke didn’t move. Something wasn’t right. He knew he had to nail the kid if he got much further, but something wasn’t right.

The kid stopped. He closed his eyes. Opened them again. And continued walking.

Fozzie’s voice again. ‘Russ, take him out.’

‘ Hold your fire! ’ Luke barked.

The fists. Clenching and unclenching. There should be a detonation switch in one hand or the other. A cord peeking from one of his sleeves. But there was nothing.

Remote detonation. He’d seen it in the Stan — kids forced into martyrdom against their will, their generals in charge of the moment of bliss in case they bottled it. Was there was someone watching, ready to blast this child to paradise when he’d cause the most destruction?

‘This is madness,’ Stratton hissed. ‘Will someone just do it?’

‘How many more kids are going to die, Stratton?’ said Luke. He focused in on the bomber’s eyes.

‘This is insanity…’

Luke almost missed it. The kid’s eyes flickered upwards and to the right, before returning to the road ahead. It was the smallest of movements. Hardly anything at all. But it was enough.

He redirected his weapon so that it was pointing not at the boy, but across the street. The street was deserted at ground level, but the kid had looked upwards, so Luke raised his sights, scanning the buildings opposite. He moved his field of vision left and right, picking out the cracks in the wall and the railings at the front of balconies.

‘ What the fuck are you doing, Luke? ’ Fozzie didn’t just sound on edge, he sounded angry. Luke knew he didn’t have much time before the unit started ignoring his instructions and opening up of their own accord.

He scanned the buildings. Left to right. Up. Right to left.

When Luke saw him, it was only momentary. He had to pan back quickly to get him in his sights again. The figure was alone on a fourth-storey balcony, about twenty-five metres up and thirty-five metres from Luke’s position. He was looking down at the street below, concentration all over his swarthy face. Luke picked out his short black beard and flat brown eyes; and panning down half a metre, he saw something in the man’s hands. It was the same size and shape as an old-fashioned mobile phone, but it had an antenna, about five inches long, sprouting from the top.

Luke moved the cross hairs back to the man’s head.

‘ Jesus, Luke… ’

‘Hold tight, fellas,’ he said, just as the man in his sights turned his head to notice that Luke had eyes on and was staring directly into his sights.

Luke knew he had only a millisecond. The range was fine, but he had just the one chance. With the cross hairs directly over the man’s forehead, he squeezed the trigger. The 53’s butt jerked sharply into his shoulder, and the sound of the discharge cracked loudly, echoing from one side of the street to another. The recoil of the shot had nudged the target out of Luke’s sight, and he was forced to realign his weapon to see what the result was.

A direct hit.

The man was slumped precariously over the balcony’s railings. On the wall behind him blood was spattered; more was dripping from the head wound down to the pavement below. Luke redirected his aim towards the kid in the road. He was looking frantically left and right and didn’t appear to know what was happening.

His ignorance didn’t last for long.

Luke sensed movement on the balcony and looked over just in time to see his target topple over the railings. He seemed to fall through the air for an eternity, before hitting the ground with a crunch that was audible from the Land Cruiser on the other side of the road.

The kid stopped in his tracks.

He stared at the fallen man.

He turned round to look at the silent, retreating crowd, the nearest members of which had retreated to a distance of thirty-five metres.

And then he ran after them. His arms and legs were flailing and ungainly, but he bolted like a hare, just as the crowd realised what was happening. They parted to let him through, but their silence ebbed away, to be replaced by a low muttering, which quickly grew to something more sinister as they started to advance again.

‘ Shit! ’ Luke cried. First blood had been drawn. Some of the crowd had seen the dead man. It would be only seconds before the rest of them understood what had happened. And then the unit’s only option was to fight.

He turned to the guys in the vehicle and pointed through the front windscreen towards the dilapidated building with the scorch marks on the frontage, which was now fifteen metres from their position. ‘We need to head in there!’ he shouted. ‘It’s a defensible position.’

Fozzie nodded.

‘Finn, Russ, cover me. I’ll get Stratton inside first.’

The two men didn’t hesitate. Russ kicked the passenger door open and started firing towards the crowd, his weapon resonating in unison with Finn’s. Again they aimed above the heads of the mob, now advancing once more. They slowed down, but how long for, and how long until they returned fire, it was impossible to say.

Luke grabbed Stratton and pulled him forcibly from the 4 x 4. His clothes were soaked in sweat. As Russ and Finn laid down another burst of rounds, Luke yanked him towards the building. The doorway was wooden and looked solid, although its yellow paint was peeling. Luke kicked it with his right foot but it didn’t budge, so he took a couple of steps back and aimed his 53 at the lock. A quick burst and the wood splintered and cracked. Another kick and it was open.

Not before time. The mob was now just twenty metres from the vehicle. Russ and Finn, who were still next to their respective passenger doors while Fozzie remained in the front, continued to fire warning bursts, but these were no longer sufficient to hold them back. If they grew any closer, the unit would have to start killing people. Then it could only go one of two ways: a retreat, or a massacre…

Luke thrust himself into the building, his weapon pointing up then down as he checked if it was occupied. No sign of anyone. He exited again. ‘ Get in! ’ he bellowed at Stratton, who was staring wide-eyed at the stand-off. When he didn’t move, Luke grabbed hold of him again and sent him flying through the door with such force that he fell heavily to the ground the moment he was inside.

But Luke wasn’t much concerned with Stratton. All of a sudden his attention was elsewhere.

It was Finn who made the first kill. A round from one of the Palestinian AKs had just ricocheted off the Land Cruiser’s armoured chassis. Finn lowered his weapon so that, instead of pointing above the heads of the mob, it was aimed directly at them. As he fired, he panned from left to right; and although the burst from his 53 didn’t last much more than a second, it was brutally effective. The front line of the crowd crumpled like toy soldiers knocked over by a child. There was a heavy groan from the mob, with one man offering up a horrific counterpoint: he had clearly taken a round that had failed to kill him, and was screaming uncontrollably.

Luke ignored the shrieking. He ignored the sudden line of dead, torn bodies. He had noticed something else and he had almost no time at all to deal with it.

‘ Get away from the vehicle! ’ he screamed at his mates as he raised his weapon. ‘ GET AWAY FROM THE FUCKING VEHICLE! ’ But he saw Fozzie was still behind the wheel and the others were pinned down..

Twenty metres away was the guy with the RPG launcher. He had reappeared at the front of the smaller mob, the simple tube of his weapon raised up on his right-hand shoulder and with the curved and pointed shape of a fresh grenade clearly visible at the end of the spout.