Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

But there were none. Danny realised a moment later that she was not shooting at them. She was shooting beyond them, and he quickly turned in time to see one of the Wagner Group guys who had been put down in the original blast. He was a mess. His face was burned and blistered and one arm was hanging off. But the other was raised and he had a handgun aimed at Danny.

Not for long. Bethany released another round and it slammed straight into the hostile’s chest. He slumped heavily to the ground and there was an immediate, heavy silence.

The General was breathing heavily. Danny too. ‘Thank you,’ he muttered.

Bethany glanced calmly around the Roman ruins. The burning Nissan. The butchered bodies. The corpse on Danny’s shoulder. ‘And they say I’m sick,’ she said. ‘If you boys have quite finished playing, do you think we should get out of here?’

Danny ignored the sarcasm and surveyed the scene. He had the strange sensation of seeing it for the first time, as though a mist of rage and determination had fallen over him prior and was only now clearing. The Roman ruins were a death site. The state of the corpses was shocking. Turgenev was a smouldering husk. Bethany was right that they needed to move quickly. If the sounds of gunshots and grenade explosions didn’t attract people, the plume of black smoke snaking up from the Nissan certainly would. ‘You want to finish your job?’ he said.

Bethany displayed no qualms about delivering precautionary headshots to each of the remaining dead men. She made an uncompromising sight, silhouetted by the moonlight, arm straight, head slightly inclined. The retort of each gunshot clapped across the terrain. Each corpse juddered slightly. The stench of Turgenev’s burning body filled the air as she quickly went about her work. ‘Maybe it’s not such a bad thing she’s still with us,’ the General said.

‘Maybe,’ Danny said. He turned his back on the ruins. The Wagner Group were no longer his concern. He knew that word would get back to their paymasters of what had happened here. Maybe they would think twice before putting the Regiment in their sights again. He thought of the Zero 22 crew and felt a moment of grim satisfaction that he’d done right by them.

Bethany and the General followed him back to the copse. Back behind the treeline, where the Dragunov was lying on the ground, he dumped the body. It fell on to its back and stared at the treetops, mouth grotesquely open. Danny examined the face. The hair was burned away and the skin scorched down to tissue. Yet it somehow still retained a whisper of its previous features, and those features were not the General’s. He drew his Sig and aimed at the face. Fired two rounds directly into it. The retort of the shots clattered loudly around the copse and across the desert. The bullets did their work well. Even Danny, no stranger to such sights, was repelled by the sight of the gouged flesh, exposed skull and bleeding eyeballs. He didn’t linger on it.

The General was standing behind Bethany, grimy, sweating and blooded in the corpse’s original clothes. He looked at her, then at Danny, a questioning look on his face. Danny made no response. ‘Pick up all the gear,’ he said, indicating the sniper rifle and the ammo. ‘Get it back in the truck. We’ll take that to the pick-up point.’

Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed a couple of ammo crates and turned his back on the ruins. The glow of the burning Nissan cast his shadow long into the trees, which faded as he walked back to the lorry.

TWENTY

The children had never stayed in a hotel. Every aspect of it delighted them. The ice machines in the corridors. The foil-wrapped cookies on the coffee tray in their twin room. The bouncy single beds and en-suite shower room. The interconnecting door that led to their parents’ double, and which Rabia insisted must be propped open at all times. Hamoud didn’t mind. They hadn’t been intimate since his return from Guantanamo. It was impossible for him, and she was very patient.

The hotel was vast. A triangular mirrored building with calming lakes in the grounds. Hamoud knew it was not the most expensive hotel in the resort. It was separate from the parks themselves. They would need to catch the free shuttle bus each day. But that was alright. The truth was that he shared his children’s excitement. He smiled as he watched Rabia examine the miniature bottles of shampoo and body lotion in their own en suite. She wasn’t accustomed to luxury.

There was no hope of staying in the rooms for long. The children were desperate to head straight to the parks, even though it was gone six in the evening. Hamoud found their passes in the FedEx package and, before Rabia could even unpack their suitcase, they walked to the bus stop outside the hotel that would shuttle them to the Magic Kingdom. ‘I’d like to go on Space Mountain,’ Malick said quietly as they walked. He tugged gently on his sleeve.

‘Me too!’ Melissa agreed, more buoyant than her brother as usual. ‘Me too!’ Hamoud and Rabia smiled at each other and held hands as Melissa chattered happily. She fell silent once they reached the bus stop, however. There were three other families waiting. White, American families. They sat in the early evening sun, all baseball caps and Mickey Mouse T-shirts, all chewing gum and sun-kissed skin, and they stared at Hamoud and his wife and children as they approached, and shuffled further up the bench to avoid having to sit too close to them. No words were spoken. They weren’t necessary. The difference in skin colour between Hamoud’s family and the others said it all. That and the overt expressions of distaste on the faces of the American holiday-makers. Hamoud’s children sat silently between their mum and dad. They understood, perhaps without even knowing why, that it would be unseemly of them to make an exhibition of themselves. Hamoud wished he could persuade them otherwise. But that would be hypocritical, because he and Rabia shared their discomfort and their reticence. How could they not, when they received this treatment wherever they went? Hamoud felt self-conscious about his beard. The scar on his face, which made him look so suspicious and unsavoury, throbbed in the heat. They all sat in silence, Hamoud scratching his palms, as they waited for the bus.

The back seats were free. The family settled into them and soon the children became animated again. They could see crowds congregating around the entrance to the Magic Kingdom and the turrets of the Cinderella Castle peeping into the sky. They held the children’s hands firmly as they stepped off the bus. There were hundreds of people here, all bustling to pass through the entrance turnstiles. It would be very easy to get lost.

There was music playing. A brass band. Hamoud couldn’t see it but the jaunty, happy music made him smile again. The family stuck close to each other as the momentum of the crowd swept them towards the turnstiles. Hamoud fumbled one-handed for their passes. He experienced a moment of anxiety. What if they didn’t work? What if it was all a con? But the turnstiles allowed them through and suddenly there they were, inside the park, the crowds dispersing around them, his children trembling with anticipation. They could see the castle directly up Main Street. The brass band was louder and, up ahead, there were people in character costumes waving and greeting all the new arrivals. Donald Duck put his arms around a delighted toddler. Mary Poppins, complete with umbrella, was surrounded by young girls. Captain Jack Sparrow held aloft a wooden cutlass.

Hamoud turned to his children. Their cherubic faces stared up at him. ‘Where first?’ he asked.

‘Space Mountain!’ they squealed. ‘Please, Daddy!’

‘Let’s go then!’ Hamoud laughed. ‘I bet you’ll scream more than I do.’