Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

Yeah. Danny got it. He got that he was on the side who would think nothing of using a dead kid to their advantage. He killed the call and lowered the phone.

‘Well?’ Bethany demanded. ‘Are they going to do it?’ Her voice was shaky. It had turned hoarse. ‘ Are they? ’

Danny didn’t know what it was that communicated the truth to her. The crease of his frown, perhaps. The self-loathing downturn of his mouth and eyes. Maybe it was the way he distractedly failed to raise his left hand up to his weapon again, as he should have done. Or maybe it was simply his silence. His inability to say anything, for fear of revealing the one fact he knew he had to conceal.

All he knew was that she understood.

She shook her head. The faintest shake. More of a twitch, as though she couldn’t quite believe the truth that had just struck her. Her lips moved. Danny could tell what she was whispering to herself. Her child’s name, perhaps. She closed her eyes briefly. Danny experienced a curious sense of time slowing down. He saw raindrops splash in slow motion from her eyelashes. Then she opened her eyes again and it was as if she was a different person. Everything about her had changed. She was not the Bethany White who had been on ops with him over the past days: ruthless, certainly, but calm and in absolute control. It was the Bethany White he had seen back at Brize Norton, caged in the guarded Portakabin, raw aggression and fire.

She screamed. It was pure emotion and it cut through everything: the sirens, the rain. He could tell that instinct and fury had taken over her. He knew she was going to fire.

He hit the ground just as she released her round. And as he dived and rolled on the wet pavement, he fired his Sig. The two retorts followed each other in quick succession. It was only after Danny released his round that he felt a sting in his right arm and realised Bethany had clipped him. The impact had compromised his own ability to shoot straight. His round had hit her in her right forearm. She screamed again and pulled her arm up. The memory stick fell from her grasp, into the grate, washed away with the torrential flow of rainwater. Danny clasped one hand to the wound. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. It felt like there was some blood loss and the arm was shaky. Bethany was on her feet. Her own arm hung loosely by her side and rainwater washed off the blood that dripped on to her hand. She staggered back and fired again, but the bullet went loose, Danny didn’t know where. She turned to run towards the far end of the alleyway. The exit was about thirty metres away and, so far, there was no indication of a police presence there.

Danny took another shot. But she was a moving target and the graze on his arm affected his aim. He cursed as his own bullet missed his target. He steadied his hand. Fired again. But Bethany was running fast, at an angle from his line of fire, and she was beyond his effective range.

He pushed himself to his feet, ready to chase her. But then he heard voices and he looked back. Blue lights flashed at the entrance to the alleyway behind him, no doubt drawn to the sound of gunfire. Silhouetted figures moved in front of them. Four, maybe five. Armed? This was America, so yeah, armed. He couldn’t tell what they were shouting through the noise of the rain, but he could guess.

Decision time. The footage was lost. Bethany was gone. Those American police officers would be trigger happy, especially if they recognised his face.

He had to get out of there.

He ran in the same direction as Bethany, towards the far end of the alleyway. Fast.

TWENTY-FIVE

Five past nine and the park was so busy. Much busier than during the day. Everyone was here for the fireworks at nine fifteen and the streets were packed. It was difficult to move through the crowds. But Hamoud did it. Rabia and the children struggled to keep up.

Every now and then, he caught a glimpse of the man with the long face. Or at least of his back, and the Donald Duck baseball jacket. The sighting never lasted more than a few seconds before the crowds closed around him. Hamoud was aware of Rabia calling at him to slow down. He couldn’t. He was drawn to this man, desperate to see his face again, desperate to identify it. Maybe it was someone from his past. He had to know.

He stopped.

He had reached the edge of a large circular fountain that blasted water twenty metres into the air, lit up by lights of all colours. On the far side was a set of steps leading up to a cafe. A crowd several people deep enclosed the fountain. Hamoud’s children cupped the water in their hands and naughtily splashed each other. Rabia was giving him her concerned look. Hamoud was staring over at the steps. The man with the long face was there. He was almost at the top, so he was visible above the crowd. He was scanning it, as though looking for someone. The baseball jacket really did look too big for him, and he was muttering to himself and absentmindedly touching his face, as though he was somehow unfamiliar with it.

Hamoud blinked and realised what he was seeing.

He was seeing a man unaccustomed to being clean shaven. A man used to wearing a beard. That thought made Hamoud touch his own beard, and it made him envision what the man with the long face would look like if he had one.

And then, instantly, he knew.

Hamoud closed his eyes. He pictured himself back at home, sitting at the table, opening up the box of newspaper clippings that he kept on the top shelf of the bookcase, and which Rabia wanted him to throw away. The clippings about former Guantanamo Bay prisoners Hamoud had never met or even seen, but with whom he felt a connection. One of them was a man with a long face and a long beard. In his picture, he had looked friendly and appealing. Hamoud had found himself wondering if in another life they might have been friends.

He opened his eyes. Superimposed a beard on the man’s face. It was him. There was no question. Only he didn’t look friendly and appealing now. He looked nervous and dangerous. Nausea flooded through Hamoud’s gut. He thought of the man and the woman who he’d seen on TV. How he’d told himself not to be too quick to judge. And he realised he had been misjudging the man in the clipping. Perhaps he was not innocent, like Hamoud. Perhaps his case was not a miscarriage of justice.

And it was suddenly, strikingly, horribly clear to Hamoud why the man’s jacket was oversized, and why he had shaved his beard. He was absolutely certain that if he looked under the man’s clothes, he would discover that he’d shaved his body hair too. He remembered the urban myth that had come to him the previous night, that the fireworks coincided with a spike in gun crime nearby. Was that true? Perhaps, perhaps not. But there was no doubt that the best time to set off an explosion was when everybody’s attention was on the sky, not on those around them.

The man walked down one step towards the fountain. He was still muttering to himself, as if praying. Why could nobody see what Hamoud could see?

Dizziness almost overpowered Hamoud. He had to grip the edge of the fountain to stay upright. He couldn’t hear anything. The people in the crowd were a blur, with the occasional face suddenly crystallising into absolute clarity. A young woman with a shaved head. A black man with his son on his shoulders. A couple of teenagers kissing. All of them unknowingly seconds from horror.

‘Hamoud! Hamoud! ’

His hearing returned. The excited buzz of the crowd, and Rabia urgently saying his name and pulling at his sleeve.

‘What’s the matter? What’s going on? You look . . . you look terrible .’

He stared at her. She had tears in her eyes. He looked down at his children. They had stopped playing with the water. They were watching him, their adorable eyes so wide.