Gerald Seymour - Home Run

It was quiet in the house. They had indeed been to the pub, but that had not been a good idea, because the two pints of ale and Mrs Ferguson's lunch had given Mattie the excuse to retire to his room for a siesta. And it was Sunday afternoon, and the Director General was in the country, and the Duty Desk weren't quite sure where the Deputy Director General was, and the man who had taken the call from Carter was only a minion and Carter was a tedious fusser, and Mattie Furniss was a hero. Nothing would happen, not until Monday morning.

He crouched. His left knee was bent forward, his right knee was on the ground.

There were the steel gates ahead of him.

There was the derelict house behind him.

The oleanders were in flower and gave him cover, and he had elevation from the ruined and overgrown gardens and he could see over the wall that fronted the derelict house and he could see across the road and to the high sheeting of the security gates. There was a cramp settling in his legs, but he did not respond to it, and he struggled to hold the tube steady on his shoulder. The tube was well balanced and its weight of 18 lbs kept it firmly in place on his collar bone. His left hand gripped tight at the cradle under the tube, holding it, and the index finger of his right hand was on the smooth plastic of the trigger and the thumb of his right hand was against the switch that would change the firing mechanism from the spotting round to the main projectile. His right eye was locked on to the sight and in the centre of his vision were the steel gates to the Mullah's home. He knew that the Mullah was coming because he had heard the revving of the engine of the big Mercedes. The traffic in the road was continuous and the Mercedes would have to stop before it could nose out.

So hard to be still, because the adrenalin flowed, and the thrill of revenge stampeded in him. The gates opened. He saw two guards running forward and across the pavement, and they were gesturing for the traffic to stop, and the whistles in their mouths were raucous. The snout of the Mercedes poked through the gates. He had a clear view of the radiator grille and the front windscreen. The head-on target was not the best, side shot was better, but the side shot would be against an accelerating target… even better would have been the magnet bomb that Mr Furniss had given him, and the motorcycle, and the chance to see the face of the Mullah as he pulled away, as the pig knew that he rode underneath death – not possible, not with the escort car behind… He could not see the Mullah, he would be in the back, and through the sight he could only see the radiator and the windscreen and the face of the driver and the face of the guard who sat beside the driver. A boy pedalled past on his bicycle, and was not intimidated by the whistles and the shouts and the flailed hand weapons of the guards who were on the road, and the driver waited for the boy on the bicycle to clear the path ahead. The spotter rifle first. The flash of the red tracer round running flat, and the impact against the join of the bonnet of the Mercedes and the windscreen, and the windscreen had a clouded mark at the base, nearly dead centre. Thumb to the switch, push the switch. The finger back to the trigger.

Holding the tube steady, ducking it back into the fine of sight because the kick of the tracer round had lifted the aim fractionally. Squeezing a second time on the trigger… and the blast, and the recoil, and the white heat flash roaring behind him, behind his crouched shoulder. A shudder of light that moved from the muzzle of the tube at a speed of 235 metres in a second, and the range was less than forty metres.

The explosion on the front of the Mercedes, the copper slug of the warhead driven into the body of the car, and the debris scabs following it, and the car rocked back, and lifted, and the first flicker of fire… What he had waited for. The car burned, and the road was in confusion.

"Move yourself, Eshraq."

The shout in his ear, and his hands still clasped the tube, and the voice was faint because his ears thundered from the firing.

"Get yourself bloody moving."

And the officer was dragging at his collar, and snatching the tube from his grip.

"You don't stand around to watch, you move as if all the demons in hell are on your tail, and about half of them will be."

The officer had flung the tube aside, and Charlie was on his feet. He saw for one last time that the smoke billowed from the armoured personnel carrier target. He ran. He was bent low, and he ran for more than 100 yards up the shallow slope of the hill and away from the officer and the sergeants and the three discarded tubes and the target. He ran until he reached Park.

At his own pace the officer walked to him.

"That wasn't bad, Eshraq."

He was panting. The excitement throbbed in him. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me, it's your skin that's on offer. You have to move faster in the moment after firing. You do not hang about to congratulate yourself on being a clever kid. You fire, you drop the tube, you move out. You were wearing ear protectors, no one else in the target zone will be and they will be disorientated for a few seconds. You have to make use of those seconds."

"Yes, understood."

"You won't have realised it, time goes pretty fast, but you were four seconds and the rest between the rifle aiming round and the missile discharge. Too long. The target today was stationary, that's kids' play."

"Inside an armoured Mercedes…?"

"I'd rather not be the passenger. The LAW 80 is designed to take out main battle tanks up to 500 metres. No car, whatever the small arms protection, has a chance. Don't lose any sleep over that. Are you happy?"

"I will remember your kindness."

"Just give my love to the Ayatollah…"

Charlie laughed, and he waved. He walked away and Park followed him. He thought Park was like the labrador dog that Mrs Furniss had owned when the girls were still at school, and which had been detested by Mr Furniss. He thought the officer was great, because there was no bullshit about the man and he had given him the depth of his experience, and freely.

He reached the jeep.

"I am going back to London, are you coming with me?"

"Those are my instructions, that I stay with you, but I've my own car."

He heard the tang of dislike in the brittle voice. "Then you can follow me."

"I'll do that."

"I'm going to my flat."

"I know where your flat is."

"I'm going to my flat and I am going to take a shower, and then I am going out to dinner. I am going to have a very good meal. Perhaps, you would care to join me?"

He saw the snarl on Park's face, his face was almost amusing.

"I'll eat with you because I have to be with you, and I'll pay my own share. So we understand each other -1 don't want to be with you, but those are my orders. I'll tell you where I'd like to be with you. I would like to be sitting alongside the dock in Number Two, Central Criminal Court, and I'd like to be there when a judge puts you away for fifteen years."

Charlie grinned. "Perhaps you'll win some other ones."

He had stayed in his room all afternoon, and when Henry had come to the door and knocked and told him that supper was ready he had said that he had no appetite and that he would skip the meal. It had been late when he had come down. He had been driven downstairs by his growing loneliness that had become keener as the light fell over the trees in the garden.

They were in the drawing room. For that time of year it was unusual for it to have been so cold, and Mattie stayed close to the fireplace, which was idiotic since there was no fire, but he felt the chill of his loneliness and he could not shrug the warmth back to his mind. Henry wasn't communicative. It was as though he was watching the clock, had decided that Sunday evening was his free time and that the debrief would continue in the morning. Henry had brought him a whisky, sat him in a chair with back editions of the Illustrated London News and Country Life, and returned to the study of a brochure advertising holidays for ornithologists. He craved to ask the question, but Henry was far from him, lost in the Danube's marshes. He held the drink. He hadn't spoken to Harriet, not since the phone call that was their reunion, three quick minutes, and stiff lips, and both too gushing because they were too old and too regimented to have cried down the lines, and he wouldn't speak to her again, not until this was over.