Moving instantly, Luke pushed the back of Stratton’s head violently down so that he was bending at the waist and out of view of the rear window. As he did this there was a sudden drilling sound at the back of the vehicle. Although 7.62s, especially from that range, weren’t nearly enough to penetrate the armoured Land Cruiser, they still made an ear-splitting noise as they hammered into the black metal. Several rounds had hit the rear windscreen. They had failed to shatter it, but three sudden spider webs with bullet-hole centres splintered their way across the toughened polycarbonate.
‘Stay down!’ Luke roared at Stratton, who was wriggling under his fierce grip like a petulant child. ‘Fozzie, fucking get out of here…’
Fozzie spun the steering wheel as the rhythmic shouting of the advancing mob grew more frenzied. He swerved the vehicle round 180 degrees so they were facing the smaller crowd, which had fired on them, then shoved the gear lever into first and revved the engine to screaming point. When he let his foot off the clutch, the 4 x 4 lurched forward violently, jolting all the passengers as it shot towards the crowd like a stone from a catapult. Fozzie accelerated, his face set. It would have been obvious to anyone who saw him that he had no intention of stopping for anything — or anyone — in his way.
He did stop, though. He had no choice.
It was Russ who noticed it first. ‘RPG!’ he yelled when they had gone barely thirty metres.
‘What the fuck?’ said Luke. This was a street mob, not an insurgency. How the hell did they get themselves a piece of kit like that? But then he too caught sight of a thin Palestinian man at the front of the smaller crowd with a rocket launcher on his shoulder. The crowd had parted behind him to avoid the back blast, and as soon as Luke clapped eyes on him the grenade left the tube.
If Fozzie had waited half a second more to yank his left hand down on the steering wheel, they’d have been mincemeat. As it was, the Land Cruiser swerved to the side of the road as the RPG thumped into the tarmac. The impact and explosion sent a shockwave right through them, and the blast caused the right-hand rear wheel of the vehicle to raise what felt like a good metre into the air. When it hit the ground again — to the accompaniment of shrapnel from the RPG showering down on the roof — there was an ominous crunching sound from the undercarriage.
Fozzie tried to reverse again, but as his foot left the clutch there was a terrible grinding noise and a smell of burning.
‘Fucking axle’s twisted!’ he shouted. He looked over his shoulder at Luke. ‘We’re not going anywhere in this piece of crap, mate.’
Luke removed his hand from the back of Stratton’s neck and recced the situation. It looked bleak. The two groups were closing in on them, the smaller one twenty metres away, the larger about fifty. There was a crater in the road where the RPG had hit, and although the shooter had disappeared along with the immediate threat of a second grenade, Luke knew it only took a couple of seconds to reload a launcher. The shouting from the approaching crowds was growing louder.
They had to make a decision. And fast.
‘Finn, you and me are going to lay down warning fire. We need to disperse these crowds. And no stiffs. We start nailing people, we’re going to be in the middle of a riot…’
‘We are already,’ Finn shot back. ‘A few rounds in the air won’t do fuck all…’
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Stratton butted in. His face was moist with sweat.
‘You,’ Luke frowned at him, ‘shut up. Warning fire, Finn. I fucking mean it.’
His mate looked uncomfortable with the order, but nodded his agreement.
‘Exit in three, two, one, go! ’
The two men opened the rear doors of the Land Cruiser and kicked them wide with their feet. In the same movement, Luke raised his 53 so that it was aimed well above the heads of the larger crowd and fired two quick bursts. He heard Finn doing the same and the harsh, mechanical noise of the discharged rounds ripped through the air. Stratton shouted in alarm, but Luke ignored him and, semi-protected like Finn by his half-open rear passenger door, kept his weapon aimed firmly towards the mob.
At first the sound of the rounds had the desired effect. About half the crowd hit the ground, their hands covering their heads. The thought crossed Luke’s mind that these were people used to the sights and sounds of combat. Perhaps that was a good thing. Perhaps it meant they would take a burst of counter-fire seriously. From the edges of the larger crowd he saw perhaps ten people run to the side of the road and take cover in doorways or behind parked cars. There was still a hard core, though, some thirty or forty who weren’t deterred by the warning fire. Most of them were wearing black and white keffiyehs and waving their assault rifles in the air. It crossed Luke’s mind that the threat of death didn’t seem to worry some of them. He’d encountered enemy like that before, in the Stan. It was a dangerous man who wasn’t scared of dying.
Rounds from the crowd. Two of them thudded into the window where Russ was still sitting next to Fozzie in the front.
Finn’s voice. Urgent. ‘The fuckers are still advancing.’
‘Go again!’ Luke shouted, and fired a third burst over the heads of the crowd.
It was as the sounds of these shots died away, and the advancing mob failed to disperse any further, that Stratton spoke again. His voice was shrill. ‘Shoot them down,’ he urged. ‘These people will only disperse if…’
‘Shut the fuck up!’ Luke roared. But he had to admit to himself that their options were diminishing. He didn’t want any casualties — not because he was squeamish, but because he knew that in an urban combat situation like this, to slot the bastards would make things ten times worse, not to mention the wider implications of a British unit mowing down Gazan citizens — but if they kept coming, he wouldn’t have much choice.
‘Shoot them!’ Stratton repeated. ‘That’s an order!’
‘Fozzie.’ Luke’s voice was as bleak as his mood. ‘If he speaks again, grease him.’
‘Roger that,’ Fozzie replied. Luke didn’t look over his shoulder to see what Stratton’s reaction was. He lowered his weapon so that now he was pointing directly at the crowd and not above their heads. They were about thirty metres distant now. If he fired, things were going to get messy.
He tried to keep a clear head, to work out what the hell was going down. Had these people been sent here directly by the Hamas administration? On the face of it, it seemed unlikely. They were a cobbled-together bunch with little organisation and a mixed bag of weapons. There were no vehicles. No fire support.
But only Hamas had known the route they were taking through the city. As Luke kept his aim on the crowd, a thought jumped into his head. Surely not even Hamas would be so foolish as to make an overt hit on Stratton? But they could leak details of his movements down to the militants in their state who had no such concern for the balance of international relations.
‘We need to nail them, Luke!’ Finn shouted.
Nail them. Finn’s default setting. Luke remembered being in Iraq, and how Finn had wanted to waste Amit from the first instant.
‘Luke!’
Finn’s warning snapped Luke back to the present. He closed his left eye and with his right looked through the sight mounted on the body of the HK53. Members of the crowd ahead came into sharp focus, the cross hairs juddering over their heads and bodies as they jumbled forwards.
His forefinger, resting on the trigger, twitched.
They’d been forced into a corner. Their choices were limited. In fact, they were non-existent.
‘Fire in three…’ Luke shouted over the pounding noise of the mob’s chanting.
He could sense Russ and Fozzie unlatching their doors.