Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

The General was shifting position. Danny could tell he was about to take a shot, most likely to put one of the screaming men out of his misery. ‘ Hold your fire! ’ he hissed.

‘These guys need finishing off. It’s inhumane.’

‘Not yet,’ Danny said. ‘ I mean it. Not yet! ’ He was looking past the kill zone now, at the line of vehicles in which the Wagner Group had arrived. These guys might be mercenaries, but they were also soldiers, and among soldiers there was a code. You help your mates when they’re in trouble. If there were any further targets still in the vehicles, these screams would most likely bring them running. But if they thought there were shooters behind the treeline, they would have no choice but to retreat. Danny’s job would only be half done.

It happened after a minute. A long minute, filled with the diminishing screams of the men and the greasy stench of burning fuel. Three car doors opened. Five more guys appeared. Danny felt his stomach lurch. One of them was substantially taller than the others. Danny could just discern the outline of his buzz-cut mohawk.

Turgenev was here.

Like the others, he was armed with a rifle. Danny guessed they’d been waiting to check if any enemy personnel showed themselves. But they didn’t have Danny’s patience, and the sound of their companions screaming was too much for them. Turgenev’s four mates sprinted towards the kill zone, but Turgenev was smarter and held back a little. As they ran, Danny picked up his Kalashnikov. He aimed so that the dull grey tubular underslung launcher would fire a grenade between the two left-most guys. When they were ten metres from the clearing, he fired. The launcher made a hollow, echoing pop as it spat its contents, and the stubby grenade flew visibly through the air. When it exploded, its effects were as devastating as Danny intended. Shrapnel peppered the two guys in a sudden, shocking burst. They went down, their screams adding to the bitter yells of their mates. They writhed on the ground, entirely out of action, minutes or even seconds from death.

Now, however, the remaining three Wagner Group guys knew they were going to come under fire. They hit the ground, Turgenev about ten metres behind the other two, and crawled to cover behind bits of protruding ruins: Turgenev behind a column, the other two behind a low wall about twenty metres away. They were out of sight, but Danny knew their counterattack would come at any moment. He threw himself to the ground, Kalashnikov by his side, and pressed himself into the earth alongside the prostrate general. They were hidden in the darkness behind the treeline. Danny also knew that the gunfire, when it came, would be the random spray of shooters hoping for the best . . .

The wounded men stopped screaming almost at the same time. A dense silence settled. Then the gunfire came. It was the harsh cough of two automatic weapons releasing short bursts towards the copse. Danny was aware of bullets slamming into the trees above him, of bark splintering and falling to the ground. He saw two muzzle flashes from the shooters’ firing points behind the low wall to his one o’clock, about metre from each other. A bullet ricocheted from a nearby tree. He felt a vibrating thud pass through his arms and for a moment he thought he’d been hit.

But he hadn’t. The gunfire stopped. Silence returned. The muzzle flashes had given Danny their precise location. Bad mistake. They were close enough for Danny to take them out with a single burst once they showed themselves again.

He moved, very slowly and quietly, up into the firing position. Aimed his Kalashnikov, set to automatic, and rested his finger lightly on the trigger. Kept his breathing shallow. Waited.

Thirty seconds passed.

Forty-five.

The shooters popped up like jack-in-the-boxes. Danny fired.

There was nothing. Just an impotent click. His rifle had a stoppage. He swore silently, and went through the motions of clearing the stoppage, a process so familiar he could do it in seconds. He tried to fire again. Nothing. He realised that the vibrating thud must have been a stray round hitting the weapon. It was fucked. The targets started firing again. Danny slammed himself back down to the ground. The incoming was more on point this time. Was it luck? Had they seen him? Danny didn’t know, but now Turgenev’s two mates had emerged from their hiding position. They were firing in turn, short bursts towards the copse as they approached. Danny was pinned down. Unable to move. Unable to defend himself.

Distance: twenty metres. They closer they came, the more danger he was in because they would spot him if he moved. His rifle was out of action, but the grenade launcher could still be okay. The grenades were stashed several metres to his left. Could he risk rolling to them, reloading and firing? How long would that take? Several seconds, by which time the advancing guys would only be ten metres away and they would see him for certain.

Rounds landed left and right of him. Too close. Much too close . . .

‘Put them down!’ he hissed to the General.

From somewhere to his right a shot rang out. The single dead thump of a sniper rifle. He saw one of the guys fall, and even before he hit the ground, there was a second shot. A bullet hit the head of the second guy, causing a grotesque fountain of blood and brain matter to spurt from the shattered skull as the man slumped heavily to the ground.

Which left Turgenev himself.

He appeared from behind thirty column thirty metres distant, his weapon engaged. He had clearly made an accurate judgement of the General’s position and he fired a burst. For a sickening moment, Danny thought the bullets had hit their mark, but then he heard a third shot from the sniper rifle. The General wasn’t hit, but his third round went awry, and Turgenev was still standing, huge and hulking, and about to fire again.

What he didn’t know was that his hesitation had given Danny the time he needed.

He rolled over towards the stash of grenades. Grabbed one and loaded it quickly into the underslung launcher on his Kalashnikov. In a single deft movement, he pushed himself upright and aimed at Turgenev. There was another almost silent click as he launched the grenade. It fizzed towards the target and hit him directly in the upper leg before he was able to fire on the General. The grenade exploded, knocking him on to his back. Danny couldn’t see the extent of the wounds, but he didn’t need to. He could hear the screams, worse than any of the others. Even Turgenev was in no position to fight back with an injury like that.

Neither Danny nor the General moved. Together they’d put down fifteen men. There was no guarantee, however, that there were no more enemy personnel waiting in the vehicles. The Nissan was still burning, still pumping out black smoke. There was a second, smaller explosion. The burning corpse that was slumped against the side of the car fell forwards. Danny waited a minute, ignoring Turgenev’s screams, then lowered his Kalashnikov and grabbed his night sight. He focused in on the cars. The glow of the burning Nissan compromised the NV capability a little, but he was able to check each vehicle for the sign of occupants. There was none.

‘We’re good,’ he said.

Both men stood up. Danny saw something in the General’s face that he recognised. The wired, bright-eyed excitement, tinged with relief, that routinely followed a successful firefight. ‘Nice shooting,’ Danny said.

‘You looked like you could use a hand,’ the General replied. He grinned. ‘Been a while since an old timer like me was allowed on the front line.’ He nodded towards the clearing. ‘That was quite a trap you laid.’

‘If a job’s worth doing . . .’ Danny started to say. He peered at the screaming Turgenev. ‘We should talk to him,’ he said. ‘See if he has any intel we can use.’