Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

Danny didn’t reply. He realised he was stumbling around aimlessly.

‘ Danny! Do you copy? ’

‘They were waiting for us,’ Danny muttered.

‘ You need to calm down, Danny. You need to listen carefully. Get away from the blast site. There could be . . . ’

Danny switched of his radio and the voice died.

The Bushmaster and the two remaining Jackals were mere shells. He went through the motions of checking for survivors, but he knew it was useless. He couldn’t even recognise the remains of his unit mates. Their skin was scorched away, their features melted. They stank of burned flesh and hair. Beyond the vehicles, closer to the remains of the prison, he encountered dismembered body parts among the chunks of rubble and pockmarked craters in the earth. He picked some of them up. A forearm. A lower leg. He felt he should do something with them, but he didn’t know what, so he dropped them on the ground again. None of them helped him with his objective: to identify the fighters who had been lying in wait for them, and who had killed Danny’s team. And so he started stumbling groggily in the direction of the bomb site.

He was 200 metres from ground zero when he found his first piece of evidence. To the untrained eye, it would look like nothing more than a hunk of twisted, mangled metal. But when Danny pulled out his torch and examined it more closely, he knew immediately what it was, or at least what it had once been: a metal tripod with a thick cylindrical tube atop, still warm to the touch. This was one of the anti-tank missile launchers that had made such short work of the convoy. It was a Kornet-EM. Laser-beam guidance system. Range of eight to ten kilometres.

And Russian.

Danny spat the dust from his mouth. His mind was clearing. He pulled out his camera and photographed the Kornet. He staggered on. A minute later, he came across a body. It was almost as mangled as the missile launcher, its limbs pointing at strange angles from broken bones, patches of clothing burned away and whatever skin remained on the face covered with a thick, sooty layer. Danny knelt down beside it. He took his water canteen from his ops vest and poured a little water on the dead man’s face, before scrubbing away the dirt and rinsing it again. There was no doubt about it: this was not the body of Kurd or an IS fighter. This was white skin.

He photographed the dead body then got back to his feet and stared down at the corpse. A wave of overwhelming anger rose in his gut. He drew his pistol and aimed it at the body. Discharged a full magazine into its torso and then, when it was empty, threw the weapon at its face. And then he felt stupid, he’d lost control and he had no spare magazines. Now he was without a useable weapon.

He muttered to himself. The Kornet. The white skin. They both pointed to a single fact: they’d been ambushed by Russians. How or why, he didn’t know. He bitterly turned his back on the burning bomb site and retraced his steps away from the prison. He switched his radio back on. Almost immediately, the voice was barking down the line. ‘ Zero 22. Do you copy? Repeat, do you copy? Over. ’

‘Yeah, I copy,’ Danny said, as he staggered towards the smouldering vehicles that contained the remnants of his mates, finally heading east like he’d been told. ‘Send that chopper in.’

‘ Roger that ,’ the voice said. Danny barely heard it. He had just seen something. A single light. A vehicle was approaching from a distance. A motorbike? Perhaps. The headlamp bumped over the rough terrain. It was coming from the north and advancing quickly. Danny tried to judge the distance. It was tough to do at night and with his head dazed. A mile? Maybe a little more? Who the hell was it? One of the Kurds, late to the party? No. The Kurds were dead. He’d put money on it. More likely, this was part of the hostile force. One of the guys, or maybe two, who had been coordinating the ambush from a distance and were now approaching to see what the hell had happened and if any of their men were still alive.

‘Fuck,’ Danny muttered to himself. He faced east and started to run. He didn’t get far. His ears were still bleeding, and his balance was all over the place. He tripped and fell, and the world started to spin. He was half aware of the bumping headlamp. It etched neon lines across his vision as he tried to stand up. He only managed to get as far as a kneeling position when he had to bend over to vomit. He felt an urgency to get away from there, but his body wouldn’t do what his mind demanded. He stayed there, hunched in a ball next to his own puke, resisting nausea and mustering strength. Then he managed to straighten up again. The bumping headlamp wasn’t bumping any more. It had stopped. It was twenty metres away and it dazzled him as he squinted at it.

A distended silhouette appeared in front of the headlamp. It approached slowly, preceded by its long shadow. Danny staggered to his feet, cursing himself for wasting his ammunition. The incoming danger forced his mind to achieve more clarity. Whoever this was, he wasn’t shooting. Did that mean he was friendly? No. It meant he’d calculated that Danny was unarmed, since Danny hadn’t drawn a weapon either.

He was ten metres away when Danny was able to get a proper look at him. He was huge. Danny was a big man. This guy was bigger. A head height taller and another foot around the shoulders. He wore standard military camo gear, but the sleeves of his jacket had been torn off to reveal thick, muscular arms, grimy with sweat. They were the arms of a bodybuilder, with perhaps a few steroids thrown in for good measure. His head was shaved, with the exception of a thick, black mohawk down the centre of his scalp, buzz cut to a height of a centimetre. The skin on one side of his head was horrifically marked with an embossed network of red scars. He had a weapon in his belt but he didn’t draw it. Obviously his hands were weapons enough. He was clenching and releasing them, like he was loosening them up, ready for action.

He stopped five metres from Danny, who staggered to his feet. The man looked him up and down, then he grinned. It was the kind of grin that had a very particular meaning: I’m going to rip you apart with my bare hands, motherfucker.

‘Fuck,’ Danny repeated under his breath.

The guy took a step forwards. Danny took a step back. He noticed something else. The guy had two patches sewn on to the chest of his jacket. They were SAS squadron patches. The A Squadron patch portrayed an animal that looked like a cross between a tick and a scorpion. The D Squadron patch was an Indonesian Kris sword. They looked like trophies.

Danny evaluated his options. He couldn’t run. The guy had a handgun and a vehicle. He couldn’t shoot. He had only one path open to him. This guy looked like he was spoiling for a fight. Danny had no choice but to give him one, when it was all he could do to stay upright.

‘ Fuck! ’ he said for a third time. If this guy hit him, Danny would be on the floor in an instant. No question. And there was a good chance he’d never get back up.

The guy stepped forwards again. His fists were permanently clenched now and the grin had morphed into a strained scowl. The guy lunged towards him, raising one fist to deliver a hammer blow to Danny’s head. Danny sidestepped. The guy overshot and Danny managed to raise his right heel and kick him hard in the kidney.

If he’d done that to anyone else, they’d have been floored, groaning in pain and possibly unconscious. This guy barely seemed to notice it. Danny felt like a wasp stinging an elephant – a minor inconvenience at worst. He glanced over at the motorbike. He could hear the engine turning over. Perhaps he could get to it. Not at the moment. The mohawk guy would just pull his weapon and shoot Danny in the back. Danny would have to play this out a little longer.