"I'll call you any name I want to… Probably, like me, you reckon this set-up stinks."
Eshraq was Tango One, trafficker in heroin, always would be. There was no handshake. Charlie turned his back on him and walked away towards the army Landrover. Park followed, and behind him the Military Police corporal reckoned that it was safe to light a cigarette. There was an officer standing beside the Landrover, and squatting on the low seats in the back were two sergeants. David saw the olive-painted case lying on the floor between their feet.
The officer said, "Which of you is it? I was told the instruction was for one."
"For me," Charlie said.
The officer looked him up, down. "The LAW 80 is pretty straightforward.''
"Oh, that's good, you'll be able to manage the tutorial."
Park thought the officer might have cracked Charlie. He heard the sergeants laugh aloud.
They went out on to the range. The officer led. They'd given Charlie a tube to carry, and the sergeants each carried one. They seemed to walk a hell of a distance, past red flags, past warning signs, until they came to a place where the heather ground sloped away. There were tank tracks, and ahead of them was the burned, black hull of an armoured personnel carrier.
"Where are you going to use this, young man?"
"Is that your business?"
"Don't fuck me about, Mr Eshraq… On where you are going to use it depends my briefing. Are you going to use it in a battlefield condition? Are you going to use it over open ground? Are you going to use it in an urban environment?
You don't have to tell me, but if you don't then you are wasting my time and you are wasting your time. Got me?"
The officer smiled. He reckoned he had the upper hand.
"The first one will be fired on a street in Tehran. That's in Iran."
And the smile died on the officer's face.
"All I can say is that I am not totally confident at the moment,"
Henry said. It was the scrambled phone. "He's peculiarly aggressive when I attempt to pin down detail… Yes, it bothers me very much that I may be selling him short… I suppose we just have to soldier on. Thank you."
It was quiet in the house. They had indeed been to the pub, but that had not been a good idea, because the two pints of ale and Mrs Ferguson's lunch had given Mattie the excuse to retire to his room for a siesta. And it was Sunday afternoon, and the Director General was in the country, and the Duty Desk weren't quite sure where the Deputy Director General was, and the man who had taken the call from Carter was only a minion and Carter was a tedious fusser, and Mattie Furniss was a hero. Nothing would happen, not until Monday morning.
He crouched. His left knee was bent forward, his right knee was on the ground.
There were the steel gates ahead of him.
There was the derelict house behind him.
The oleanders were in flower and gave him cover, and he had elevation from the ruined and overgrown gardens and he could see over the wall that fronted the derelict house and he could see across the road and to the high sheeting of the security gates. There was a cramp settling in his legs, but he did not respond to it, and he struggled to hold the tube steady on his shoulder. The tube was well balanced and its weight of 18 lbs kept it firmly in place on his collar bone. His left hand gripped tight at the cradle under the tube, holding it, and the index finger of his right hand was on the smooth plastic of the trigger and the thumb of his right hand was against the switch that would change the firing mechanism from the spotting round to the main projectile. His right eye was locked on to the sight and in the centre of his vision were the steel gates to the Mullah's home. He knew that the Mullah was coming because he had heard the revving of the engine of the big Mercedes. The traffic in the road was continuous and the Mercedes would have to stop before it could nose out.
So hard to be still, because the adrenalin flowed, and the thrill of revenge stampeded in him. The gates opened. He saw two guards running forward and across the pavement, and they were gesturing for the traffic to stop, and the whistles in their mouths were raucous. The snout of the Mercedes poked through the gates. He had a clear view of the radiator grille and the front windscreen. The head-on target was not the best, side shot was better, but the side shot would be against an accelerating target… even better would have been the magnet bomb that Mr Furniss had given him, and the motorcycle, and the chance to see the face of the Mullah as he pulled away, as the pig knew that he rode underneath death – not possible, not with the escort car behind… He could not see the Mullah, he would be in the back, and through the sight he could only see the radiator and the windscreen and the face of the driver and the face of the guard who sat beside the driver. A boy pedalled past on his bicycle, and was not intimidated by the whistles and the shouts and the flailed hand weapons of the guards who were on the road, and the driver waited for the boy on the bicycle to clear the path ahead. The spotter rifle first. The flash of the red tracer round running flat, and the impact against the join of the bonnet of the Mercedes and the windscreen, and the windscreen had a clouded mark at the base, nearly dead centre. Thumb to the switch, push the switch. The finger back to the trigger.
Holding the tube steady, ducking it back into the fine of sight because the kick of the tracer round had lifted the aim fractionally. Squeezing a second time on the trigger… and the blast, and the recoil, and the white heat flash roaring behind him, behind his crouched shoulder. A shudder of light that moved from the muzzle of the tube at a speed of 235 metres in a second, and the range was less than forty metres.
The explosion on the front of the Mercedes, the copper slug of the warhead driven into the body of the car, and the debris scabs following it, and the car rocked back, and lifted, and the first flicker of fire… What he had waited for. The car burned, and the road was in confusion.
"Move yourself, Eshraq."
The shout in his ear, and his hands still clasped the tube, and the voice was faint because his ears thundered from the firing.
"Get yourself bloody moving."
And the officer was dragging at his collar, and snatching the tube from his grip.
"You don't stand around to watch, you move as if all the demons in hell are on your tail, and about half of them will be."
The officer had flung the tube aside, and Charlie was on his feet. He saw for one last time that the smoke billowed from the armoured personnel carrier target. He ran. He was bent low, and he ran for more than 100 yards up the shallow slope of the hill and away from the officer and the sergeants and the three discarded tubes and the target. He ran until he reached Park.
At his own pace the officer walked to him.
"That wasn't bad, Eshraq."
He was panting. The excitement throbbed in him. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me, it's your skin that's on offer. You have to move faster in the moment after firing. You do not hang about to congratulate yourself on being a clever kid. You fire, you drop the tube, you move out. You were wearing ear protectors, no one else in the target zone will be and they will be disorientated for a few seconds. You have to make use of those seconds."
"Yes, understood."
"You won't have realised it, time goes pretty fast, but you were four seconds and the rest between the rifle aiming round and the missile discharge. Too long. The target today was stationary, that's kids' play."
"Inside an armoured Mercedes…?"
"I'd rather not be the passenger. The LAW 80 is designed to take out main battle tanks up to 500 metres. No car, whatever the small arms protection, has a chance. Don't lose any sleep over that. Are you happy?"
"I will remember your kindness."
"Just give my love to the Ayatollah…"