Andy McNab: Recoil

I took control of my gun and rested it on the parapet, jerking back instinctively on the cocking handle to check that the working parts were still to the rear and made ready. As the steel parts of the cocking slide rubbed against each other I heard the rasp of sand. I pushed in the safety bar that ran through the pistol grip from right to left before punching down on the top cover to make sure.

The clunks and clicks of two RPGs being loaded came from just behind me, but the guys held their fire. To get in a decent shot, the vehicles needed to be within spitting distance at night. The launchers only had iron sights.

Yet more sets of lights appeared and peeled off to the right. The fuckers were going to try to surround us. Still we waited for Sam's order.

The headlights closed to 300 metres and I could hear faint shouts and hoots. The boys must have been having a good old night on the ghat.

Sam ducked and weaved like a boxer as he tried to get a better view, then a finger poked at my shoulder. 'Take the lead vehicle.'

I shifted position until my foresight rested on the closest set of lights. He designated other vehicles until everyone had a target. When mine was about two hundred away, he said, 'Stand by, stand by, fire!'

The noise of eight weapons opening simultaneously was deafening. I was buffeted by shockwaves from the RPGs, then the hot back-blast washed over me. Gravel splattered me. My nose filled with the acrid smell of cordite and spent propellant. My eardrums zinged.

I put another double-tap into the lead vehicle as one of the grenades hit home about three back. Its headlights swerved and the dustcloud it threw up obscured the set I was aiming for.

Next thing I saw, my vehicle, too, was swerving. It went into a complete roll not more than twenty metres from the wall.

Bodies kept advancing, firing wildly, their screams and shouts getting louder by the minute.

The first vehicle made it to the wall and into dead ground. It had to be heading for the gate. Sam ran along the parapet. 'Take the wagon! Take the wagon!'

I made a grab for the carry handle but missed. My fingers closed around the red-hot gun metal and nearly stuck to it. My hand sprang open and the gun dropped. I made sure I got the handle this time.

Sam's rounds stitched holes in the light sheet steel of the gates. 'Right of the gate,' he screamed. 'Get some rounds through the wall!'

I stood with the weapon in my shoulder, hands on the pistol grip and butt with the barrel on the parapet to allow me elevation down. I could smell my own burned flesh as I squeezed off a long burst.

A few inches of breezeblock were no match for 7.62mm of steel travelling at 800 metres a second.

The section of wall disintegrated.

Instead of scattering, the ghat-fuelled bodies behind it fired back through the hole.

Others still rushed the main gate, so high they didn't even realize they were leaking blood.

04:20 hours They came at us in waves, maybe fifteen to twenty bodies at a time. The flash eliminator at the end of my gun barrel glowed red from the sheer number of rounds that had rattled through. Standish was certainly getting his body count now.

When the lull came, I opened the top cover in an attempt to cool the working parts.

Sam called round for ammo states. The shouts that came back from all of us were exactly the same: 'Low.'

'All right, listen in. First light's in two hours. Davy and Nick, get Gary and the rest of them on the back of our wagon.'

I left the gun on the terrace with the top cover up, and went over to Frankenstein's body.

Davy looked up. 'He's stiffening.' He was trying to get Gary's arms down by his side. 'Another hour or so and we won't get him down the stairs.'

I grabbed under his armpits and Davy took his legs. He looked shaken.

'You all right, mate?'

'It's just… Well, I know his girlfriend. They have a couple of kids together.' Davy grunted with the effort. 'But she's going to get fuck-all. She didn't want to marry this fucker.' He nodded at Frankenstein's head, lolling from side to side as we moved along the landing.

We got to the top of the stairs and the stench of shit and death hit my nostrils.

We carried Frankenstein down the staircase the best way we could, got him past the other bodies and the gold and on to the back of our wagon.

Standish and Annabel were sitting against a wheel of the Renault. He was setting up the comms, and clearly brooding. We'd fucked him off big-time, but so what? He could do all the talking and organizing he liked, but he most definitely wasn't one of us.

'So what will she do?'

'Fuck knows. The army's not going to do anything – she's not "wife of".'

There was a shout from Sam, up on the parapet. 'Davy, Nick – stay there.'

A minute later he materialized out of the gloom. 'Get out and scavenge some mags. We'll cover.'

I looked through the gap I'd shot in the wall. More than a dozen bodies lay scattered in the moonlight. If Davy thought Gary's girl had pension problems, what about the girlfriends of this lot?

We scrambled over the rubble into no man's land.

Davy knelt at my side, weapon in the shoulder. I lifted an AK from the sand, pressed the release lever behind its mag and pushed the mag forward until it came away from the weapon. Then I frisked the body lying a metre or so from it. There was another mag jammed in the waistband of his jeans, and one in his back pocket. I tucked in my football shirt and threw them all down the front.

The body was covered with blood and sand, and it was still tacky. I tried to avoid it as best I could. We'd talked about the AIDS thing ever since the scare first hit the papers three or four years earlier, but none of us knew much about it. Was it transferred through blood, gay sex or kissing Rock Hudson? He had died of it last year and all his acting partners were flapping big-time after sharing so much mouth action on screen.

I moved on. AIDS was one thing, but running out of ammo was far more life-threatening.

The next guy had been wearing a canvas ammunition vest. Six more mags.

The one after was on his back, eyes wide open. And he was whimpering.

'We got a live one!'

Standish shouted back, from the gap in the wall, 'Leave him and move on.'

'Sam, it's a kid. He's in shit state.'

Standish repeated his order, but Sam had the last word from the parapet. 'Bring him in.'

I looked down. The little fucker couldn't have been more than ten or eleven. Moonlight glistened in the dark liquid pooling beneath him. Lumps of rubble lay all around him. I picked up the bundle of skin and bones, leaving my AK for Davy to bring into the compound. Fuck the AIDS – I might be dead by morning anyway.

Sam was already on the back of our truck, pulling on a pair of surgical gloves from the trauma pack. 'Dear God.' He laid his hand on the boy's head. 'Sssh, hey, OK… You're going to be fine.'

I went to his other side. The kid's clothes were in shreds and it was easy to see the huge slit down his left thigh. It looked like a sausage that had split in a frying-pan. Most of his flesh was peppered with fragments of broken stone. His hair and face were caked with blood, sweat and sand.

We didn't have any fluids to get into him. There was nothing we could do but plug up the holes and try to stop him losing any more blood. He was going to be in a lot of pain and he'd probably get badly infected, but if we could stabilize him and get him to a hospital, all that would be sorted out later on.

Sam had his hands on either side of the gash, squashing it back together. Pressure was the only thing that would stop the blood.

I ripped open a dressing with my teeth and unwrapped the cotton tape that was supposed to keep it in place. The moment you applied pressure it always behaved more like a ligature. There was no way the fucking things would do what it said on the tin. I handed the dressing to Sam, who jammed it into the oozing cavity carved by the wound.