The windshield took hits but didn’t break. Spider web cracks in the ballistic glass.
Bullets splashed mud and rainwater.
‘JTAC says stay put and dig in. The Quick Reaction Force are staging at Camp Freedom. We should have air cover in ten minutes. Mechanised exfil in twenty.’
‘This is nuts. We have to pull the fuck back, get out of this enfilade.’
‘RPG,’ screamed Amanda.
The guy stepped out of an alley. Amanda shot him in the gut as he pulled the trigger. Flash. Billowing blast of rocket efflux. Streaking projectile.
The grenade punched through the windshield and blew out the command Humvee. Lucy threw herself down and lay in the mud. She hid her face from the scalding pressure wave, the supersonic corona of metal and glass.
She struggled to her feet like a boxer trying to beat the count. Concussed. Deafened. She tongued a tooth. She had lost a filling. She wiped blood from her nose with a gloved hand.
She grabbed Danver by his tac-vest and pulled him upright.
Debris imbedded in the road. Jagged shards of metal dug into walls, coiling smoke. Acrid stench of cordite.
The gunner rolled off the roof, legs and hair on fire. Lucy slapped out the flames, seized his collar and dragged him across the street.
A volley of AK fire. Bullets blew rock chips from a nearby wall.
Lucy kicked open a door and pulled the injured man inside, Danver on her heels. Toon and Amanda followed closely behind her, laying down fire.
A shuttered hair salon. Big mirrors. Beautician chairs. Wigs and hair extensions hung from the wall like scalps.
‘Go firm,’ she shouted into her radio. ‘Huang, we need you.’
They lay cover fire as Huang sprinted down the street.
Huang unzipped his trauma kit. He cut away the guy’s tattered pants and wriggled on Nitrile gloves. He swabbed the wounds with Betadine and pressed burn gel dressings on weeping flesh. He checked the kid over, patted him down for wounds.
‘Fucker’s veins are collapsing. Shrapnel. Must be an internal haemorrhage somewhere.’
The gunner fumbled at his groin.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Huang. ‘You haven’t lost your dick.’
Huang pulled his bayonet from a belt sheath and sawed at the injured man’s clothes.
The soldier trembled and arched his back. Grand mal.
‘Can’t you give him something?’
‘Blood pressure is too low for morphine. You. Danver. Help me find the bleed.’
Voss ran through the doorway, slammed against a wall and slid to the floor. He was panting. He dropped a spent magazine and slapped a fresh clip into the receiver.
‘More of them by the minute. We can’t stay here, boss.’
Crackle of gunfire. Lucy crouched in the doorway. She gulped from her canteen. The Humvee was ablaze. Ammunition cooking off. Pistol rounds popped like corn. .50 cal rounds discharged with a heavy thud. The street filled with the sour stench of ignition.
‘Were there phosphor grenades in that thing?’
‘A few,’ said Danver.
‘The SUVs are starting to burn.’
‘Where’s the money?’
‘Fuck the money.’
‘We should throw a strobe.’
‘No need,’ said Lucy. ‘Choppers will see the smoke.’
Bright arterial blood bubbling from a hole in the injured man’s belly.
‘Smells like shit,’ said Danver.
‘Gut wound,’ said Huang. ‘Intestinal bleed. The guy is pretty messed up. We need those fucking Bradleys.’
Lucy glimpsed movement in the lead Suburban. Private Rubin, frozen with fear, money bag in his lap.
‘Ah fuck.’
The hood of the SUV was enveloped in flame. The tyres were ablaze. Burning oil and brake fluid trickled into the gutter. Rubin was starting to nod on the back seat, overcome by fumes.
Lucy gripped her rifle and prepared to sprint to the SUV. The wooden doorframe beside her exploded. She fell backward into the salon and rolled for cover. She pulled a shard of wood out of her cheek.
‘Sniper. He’s on the roof directly across the street. Mandy, lay suppressing fire. Brass him up. Toon, get Rubin out the car.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m going to take this fucker down.’
Three-count.
Amanda ducked out the doorway and directed burst-fire at the parapet across the street.
Toon ran to the SUV. He shouldered the money bag and pulled Rubin clear.
Lucy ran across the street and kicked in a door. Some kind of trashy boutique. She toppled mannequins as she ran for the stairs. Three flights. A ladder to a roof hatch. Lucy paused to catch her breath. A sudden wave of too-old-for-this-shit. Her hands were shaking.
She shook out cramps and climbed the ladder. She prodded the hatch open with the muzzle of her rifle.
She lunged up and out. She rolled clear and lay prone.
A wide, flat roof slick with rain. A rusting satellite dish. A couple of air-con units. A water tank. Thick smoke from burning vehicles in the street below. The bitter stink of melting plastic.
Lucy got to her feet dripping rain. She walked along the parapet. A young kid wrestling to reload a massive Dragnov rifle. He looked twelve, thirteen years old.
A gap between buildings. A thirty-foot drop into a garbage-strewn alley. She ran, and vaulted the chasm.
Lucy’s boot clinked spent shell cases. The kid looked round. They stared at each other.
‘Drop it,’ shouted Lucy.
It broke the spell. The kid struggled to work the rifle bolt.
‘Drop the fucking gun.’
The kid chambered the weapon and raised it. Lucy shot him in the chest. A tracer round pierced straight through him like a streak of laser light.
He lay on his back. He wiped rain from his eyes.
She could hear the thrum of incoming choppers. AH-6 Little Bird gun ships ready to lay suppressing fire at six thousand rounds a minute.
She knelt beside the kid. She examined the scorched wound.
‘Can you hear me? Can you understand English?’
The kid smiled. Blood bubbled between his teeth.
‘Fucking whore. Fucking American whore. You bad luck. You die soon.’
She grabbed the kid by his shirt and pulled him to his feet. He drooled blood and saliva. He pulled burnt dollars from the ripped chest-pocket of Lucy’s flak jacket.
He held up the money.
‘My god is greater than your god.’
Lucy threw him over the parapet. He fell three storeys into the wreckage of the burning Humvee, and was lost in flame.
She crouched on the roof and picked wet dollars from rainwater puddles.
Lucy and her crew in their suite. The room was furnished with leather armchairs and lawn furniture stolen from the Scheherazade Bar on the roof. Stars and stripes nailed to the wall with a couple of bayonets.
A mortar attack had blown the power. A random shell fired over the Zone’s seventeen-foot blast wall had taken out a pylon. The room was lit by candlelight.
The team had stripped down to T-shirts and shorts.
‘Hey,’ said Amanda. ‘I saw this marine sniper on TV the other night. Reporter asked what he felt each time he killed a guy.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Recoil.’
Lucy smiled.
‘Wish I could sleep,’ said Lucy.
‘I got Ambien. Might have some Motrin.’
Amanda fanned herself with a magazine. Her good looks uglified by heavy tattoos and a nose stud.
‘I popped three bombers,’ said Lucy. ‘And NyQuil. Tripping my arse off. Too humid. Just can’t sleep in this heat.’
‘Hear that?’
The distant sound of guys bellowing ‘Living on a Prayer’.
‘Bechtel guys making their own fun until the power’s back on.’
Lucy pulled a fresh Michelob from an ice bucket and ran the cold bottle across her forehead.