They crossed the road in twos.
‘Keep it moving!’
‘So quiet it’s like they got the whole place on lockdown.’
‘Or the Pied Piper’s just been through.’
‘I no like this shit.’
‘Okay, that’s a Combat Indicator. Take it slowly guys.’
The side street the APC came from was narrow, a chasm of tall buildings with overhanging upper storeys, throwing it into dark shadow. At the other end it opened into a small plaza. A group of women were huddled down behind wicker baskets in a deep doorway near the plaza entrance. They were waving them forward, pointing upwards.
‘Okay, let’s not do what the lady says just yet. Get visual on the rooftops.’
They froze, scanning the rooftops and every shuttered window. Blackburn saw the silhouetted figure first, just as the masonry beside him shattered. ‘Sniper! Cover, cover!’
Black wheeled round just in time to see Chaffin’s shoulder explode. ‘Man down. Smoke cover. Now!’
Campo tossed a white phosphorus grenade to block the sniper while Blackburn and Montes grabbed Chaffin and pulled him into a doorway, but he didn’t want to go, wrestling them with his dissipating strength. ‘Get me back up. I can still shoot. Let me at him, the fucker.’
‘Easy soldier.’
Matkovic was screaming down the radio.
‘Fucking smoke. I had visuals on three more!’
The wound was bloody but not deep. Blackburn let Chaffin get to his feet. He swayed, then grinned. ‘I’m fucked up but I’m up. Let me at ’em.’
Through the smoke, ahead, Matkovic loosed off a mag at the rooftop where Chaffin’s sniper had been. Paused, waited.
As the smoke cleared, Blackburn saw the sniper fold up on himself and drop like a bad guy in a Western. The body thumped into the street ten feet from Matkovic, who stood in a doorway. But Matkovic didn’t react. He was static, staring ahead into the plaza. Something about his stance, weapon down, told Blackburn that Matkovic had seen something he was going to have trouble forgetting. Without altering his gaze he beckoned to Black.
‘Think we’ve found what we came for.’
Two dead marines were sprawled at the gates to the plaza. One, helmet gone, face half off, looked like he’d been closest to an RPG. The other, a wide red crater in his chest, had a pensive look in his eyes, which were fixed on the blazing sky. Blackburn leaned down, took the tags off one, then the other, and pushed them into his top pocket. ‘Fuck this day.’
‘Black, look up!’
Matkovic was first into the plaza. Bodies and body parts had been thrown in all directions. The Stryker was on its side, its ramp down and its tyres on fire, with all eight wheels twisted at different angles. Close by was the chassis of what might have been a small truck or bus, the bodywork vaporised by the IED it had been carrying. A low, rhythmic groaning was coming from inside the Stryker.
Matkovic was already on the radio ordering CAS-EVAC, trying to keep his rage under control as the voice on the other end pressed him for more detail, eventually exploding. ‘Just get the fuck here yesterday, okay?’
He turned to Blackburn. ‘Going to check inside the Stryker.’
‘Stop.’ The word was out of his mouth before Blackburn knew why he’d said it. There were several other damaged vehicles in the plaza, two minibuses, glass all gone, peppered with shrapnel dents. Blackburn motioned them back, tracked right until he could see another vehicle, a Nissan pick-up, on the other side of the Stryker. Like the others it was a mess, its windows and lights gone, every panel dented. But something was wrong.
It was the tyres. Still inflated. They should have been shredded. Matkovic looked at Black, then the pick-up. Some civilians were starting to appear at their windows, looking down on the plaza. Matkovic waved his hands in the air like he was doing the breaststroke, screaming in Arabic: ‘Back inside!’
Black tracked further right, scanning what he could of the area round the pick-up, looking for detonator wires. Whoever planted this was waiting until as many US as possible were crowded around the Stryker tending the dying and wounded. A woman, only her large brown eyes visible under a dusty grey burka, was watching him from behind a fruit stand: a young woman — his age, maybe younger. He watched her gaze move slowly, deliberately, away from him and up to a first storey window on the south side of the square, then back down to him again. Then she slipped into the shadow of her doorway and was gone. He scanned the pavement again. It was strewn with bits of brick and metal and flesh. Amongst the mess he saw the wire snaking across to the building that had been pointed out by the woman’s eyes.
All the crew were stopped, waiting. They knew what he was doing. That was the upside of having been together in this shithole for so long — they could practically read each others’ minds. He’d miss that when it was over, when he was home. Where else would he ever have that closeness, that rapport? With a woman maybe? A family? Or would he be too fucked up by then. Maybe he’d become too good at this, and blow his chance of having a life. One thing at a time, he said to himself: focus.
He took his time, backed out of the square, fixing the building in his mind before he checked out an approach to it from its rear. Out of view, he slid swiftly through a passage that would lead to the back of the houses. He had cleared so many properties like these he could guess the layout, even though he had never been in this square before. Side entrances in the alleys were common. The stairs usually went sideways, the first floor front rooms, usually the largest, stretched across the building. There was music coming from this one, from inside the ground floor. He stepped in through a curtained doorway: a kitchen, two clean tea glasses on the draining board and a radio, playing that high pitched music. He reached in and, very slowly, turned up the volume. He thought of taking off his boots, decided against it. There were two bodies on the stairs, a woman and a girl. Both shot through the head, proof he was on the right track. He didn’t pause, but the split second’s vision was still sickening. He tiptoed up the stairs, listening to the blood hammering through his veins, adrenalin blocking every impulse but what he needed to get the job done.
At the top of the stairs he paused, about to step into the room. He saw the car battery, the wires, the jaws of the jump leads, one attached, one waiting. But nothing else. He just had enough time to see that it was empty before a blow to the back of his neck flattened him, his head inches from the battery. On his way down he managed to twist to one side and reach for his KBAR knife, his M4 too unwieldy in the narrow space. The figure was in shadow, a blur of fabric. As it lunged for the battery, Blackburn put the knife deep into a thigh — hitting the femoral artery. The scream was piercingly high. Too high for a man. A boy?
As he struggled to a kneeling position his assailant slammed down on to the floor beside him. Not a man or a boy, but a girl, a lake of blood gushing out from under her shalwar kameez, writhing like a beached marlin, seemingly unaware of the blood draining out of her. In between gasps she let out a torrent of Arabic. Blackburn could only make out scum pig and hell. But the message was clear. She went on struggling, sliding in her own blood. If he was going to save her he had about twenty seconds.
‘Let me help you. Or you will die.’
How many times had he said that, and how many times had his help been rejected? They had come to help. But it didn’t always look that way. As he reached down to her, she lashed out.
‘PLR?’
‘The PLR will destroy you all. You are finished. Finished.’