Gary Haynes - State Of Honour

He heard a motorcycle engine and saw the man hobbling along, his left leg dragging behind him. He was heading towards a teenage boy sitting astride the bike. The boy, twisted around on the two-man saddle and wearing only thin white cotton and sandals, was calling out and beckoning with his hand. The man released the clip on the canvas bag, and the Stinger fell to the floor. In his condition, the dead weight was slowing him to a crawl.

The side street was narrow, bordered by open-fronted stores, a smattering of people running about or pointing at the flames and smoke rising above the buildings opposite. A motorcycle was undoubtedly the best option. Tom broke into a run behind the shooter, saw him cock his leg over the back of the motorcycle and grab the saddle bars. He realized he had to act decisively. He stopped, bent down onto one knee, his lungs heaving. He raised his SIG, steadying his aim with his left hand, the tear gas still forming a milky sheen on his eyes. The motorcycle sped away, the engine screeching like a kicked cat as the back tyre skidded and threw up dust and grit.

You got one shot, Tom thought. Make it your best.

The SIG bucked and the spent case skipped out. Tom didn’t move. The motorcycle was doing maybe thirty when it lurched to the left at a ninety-degree angle, smashing into a stack of wooden cages full of chickens. The few people in the street ran for cover, the women pulling at their hijabs. Tom stood up just as the owner of the store stormed out, a rotund middle-aged man wearing a long white shirt. He dragged the boy up by his arm, and cuffed him over the head. But when he saw Tom running towards him, gun in hand, he rushed back into the store.

Tom pointed the SIG at the boy, gestured to him to stand still. The shooter was strewn on the ground, the motorcycle’s battered fuel tank lying on his right thigh. He lifted his gas mask, clearly struggling to breathe. Gasping, he held it out for a second before letting it drop back. Tom didn’t see his face, just the sunlight glinting off a gold necklace, half lost among the curling black hairs, damp with sweat. He was a tall man, Tom estimated, perhaps six-four, his limbs beneath his dark fatigues appearing well-muscled. But he wasn’t strapped.

Holstering his SIG, Tom bent over, about to jerk the man up, put an arm lock on him and half drag him back to … what? he thought. The Pakistani police would get him talking soon enough, but that kind of harsh treatment made a man say anything to save his ass. He thought briefly if he should get the CIA to pick him up and take him to a remote, classified detention centre. Maybe he should ask him some questions of his own.

Halfway down, Tom saw the boy, who looked about seventeen years old, pull out a handgun from his waistband. He pointed it at Tom, who recognized it as a Kel-Tec P11 semi-auto; a little over thirteen centimetres long, with rounded edges designed for concealment. But it was chambered in 9mm Lugar and could stop a gorilla in its tracks. They were rare in this part of the world, so Tom figured it was a gift from the kidnappers; an inducement, perhaps.

The boy shouted at him to step back. Tom straightened up, told the boy in Urdu to relax. The boy’s eyes were glazed, he noticed, his face unusually gaunt, the skin sallow and spot-ridden. There was something in those oyster-flesh eyes that told Tom the boy was both unstable and fearless.

The man managed to ease out from under the motorcycle and, grunting, struggled up. Tom stretched towards him, but the boy shot at the dirt between them and he stepped back. The man remained silent, turned and limped off. The boy smiled at Tom, his teeth stained a dull yellow. An opiate addict, Tom thought. He knew that, despite being a Muslim country, Pakistan was awash with drugs. The kid was high or coming down. Either way, he was capable of putting a bullet in his chest.

Tom offered him his watch and wallet. The boy just grinned. Seven metres, he thought, the takedown zone. The kid was less than two metres away, but the gun was pointing at Tom’s head now, and making a grab at it would be suicidal.

He watched the man slink into an alley and cursed himself. But even if he hadn’t holstered his SIG, he knew he wouldn’t have shot the boy. He’d joined the DS to protect people, and that meant he might have to kill. But not like this. Not a kid on drugs with no immediate and direct danger to his charge.

Tom said he should put the gun down, that he’d done his job and that he would vouch for him. Truth was, he needed him alive. With the man gone, he was a potential link to those who had abducted the secretary. Although he knew that meant probable brutality at the hands of the Pakistanis, there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

He could see that the boy was wavering, that, despite the drugs, he didn’t have it in him to kill a man without cause. He would wait. The boy would succumb to his prompting, and if he didn’t drop the weapon he would risk disarming him as he lowered it, just in case he changed his mind. He kept talking, his tone sober and sympathetic. The boy’s head began to bow, his eyes blinking frantically, his mouth forming words he couldn’t speak.

He’s going to drop it, Tom thought.

A shot rang out. The boy buckled. Instinctively, Tom reached out to him, but he knew he was dead as soon as he slumped to the ground. A fountain of blood had spurted out from his left temple as the round impacted. A split second later, another round pinged through the air just centimetres from Tom’s head. He drew his SIG, and, spinning around and ducking down, he heard rapid fire.

He saw Steve Coombs about six metres away, his gun raised towards the flat roof of an adjacent store. His face was creased, his body relaxed. He had both hands on his SIG and was leaning forward a little from the waist, as if he were on a range doing target practice. But the roof was empty.

Tom turned back around, holstering his SIG. He took off his jacket and, bending down, placed it over the kid’s upper body and head. He heard Steve come up behind him, sniffing and clearing his throat. Tom figured the unknown assassin had killed the boy to prevent him from talking. He glanced over his shoulder just as his friend jerked out the silver crucifix he always wore around his neck. Placing it to his lips, Steve kissed the crucified Christ.

Linda lay face down in the rear footwell of a car that was now travelling at a sensible speed. She had a boot on her neck and another on her ankles. Her hands and feet had been secured with flex-cuffs. She was gagged with grey masking tape and a hessian sack had been placed over her head. The car radio blared out what sounded like a string of Pakistani pop songs. She hadn’t seen her captors’ faces. They hadn’t spoken. She’d travelled in the footwell before, after a nut had fired what turned out to be a starting pistol at her. An agent had covered her whole body with his and hadn’t let her up for what seemed like miles. This time it was different.

She felt sweat bead on her forehead, and dug a fingernail into her thumb to stop herself from weeping. She thought about her husband, John, and her two girls. She cursed herself for agreeing to visit the hospital and for not heeding the advice of the deputy director and Tom Dupree. But she still had the presence of mind to know that that wouldn’t help her now, so she did her best to concentrate on counting her breaths.

Two minutes later, she decided to survive by whatever means and fought to focus on something more positive to assuage her escalating fear. She told herself that her people would be looking for her, that roadblocks had been set up. They could follow her, after all, at US Air Force bases, via drones, or whatever else they had that even she didn’t know about.