The system is made up of two handy units, the first being a sealed launch canister, containing the missile, and the second being the semi-automatic-line-of-sight-guidance system, which has a lot of very small, very clever, very expensive electronic stuff inside it. Once assembled, the javelin is capable of performing one job supremely well.
It shoots down helicopters.
That’s why I’d asked for it, you see. Bob Rayner would have got me a teasmaid, or a hair-dryer, or a BMW convertible, if I’d paid the right money.
But I’d said no, Bob. Put away those tempting things. I want a big toy. I want a javelin.
This particular model, according to Bob, had fallen onto the back of a lorry leaving an Army Ordnance depot nearColchester. You may wonder how such a thing can happen in the modern age, what with computerised inventories, and receipts, and armed men standing at gates - but, believe me, the army is no different from Harrods. Stock shrinkage is a constant problem.
The javelin had been carefully removed from the lorry by some friends of Rayner’s, who had transferred it to the underside of a VW minibus, where it had stayed, thank God, the course of its twelve hundred mile journey to Tangier.
I don’t know if the couple driving the bus knew it was there. I only know that they were New Zealanders.
‘You put that down,’ screams Benjamin. ‘Or what?’ I say.
‘I’ll fucking kill you,’ he yells, moving closer to the edge of the roof.
There is a pause, and it’s filled by buzzing. The fly in the bottle is angry.
‘I don’t care,’ I say. ‘I really don’t. If I put this down, I’m dead anyway. So I’ll hang on to it, thanks.’
‘Cisco,’ shouts Benjamin in desperation. ‘We’ve won. You said we’ve won.’ Nobody answers him, so Benjamin starts his jumping again. ‘If he shoots at the helicopter, they will kill us.’
There’s some more shouting now. A lot more. But it’s getting harder to tell where the shouting is coming from, because the buzz is gradually turning into a clatter. A clatter from the sun.
‘Ricky,’ says Francisco, and I realise that he is standing right behind me now. ‘You put it down.’
‘It’s going to kill us, Francisco,’ I say.
‘Put it down, Ricky. I count to five. You put it down, or I shoot you. I mean it.’
And I think he probably does mean it. I think he really believes that this sound, this beating of wings, is Mercy, not Death.
‘One,’ he says.
‘Up to you, Naimh,’ I say, adjusting my eye to the rubber collar on the sight. ‘Tell them the truth now. Tell them what this machine is, and what it’s going to do.’
‘He’s going to kill us,’ screams Benjamin, and I think I can see him leaping around somewhere on my left.
‘Two,’ says Francisco. I switch on the guidance system. The buzzing has gone, drowned out by the lower frequencies of the helicopter’s noise. Bass notes. Beating of wings.
‘Tell them, Naimh. If they shoot me, everybody dies. Tell them the truth.’
The sun covers the sky, blank and pitiless. There is only sun and clatter.
‘Three,’ says Francisco, and suddenly there’s some metal behind my left ear. It might be a spoon, but I don’t think so. ‘Yes or no, Naimh? What is it to be?’
‘Four,’ says Francisco.
The noise is big now. As big as the sun. ‘Kill it,’ says Francisco.
But it isn’t Francisco. It’s Murdah. And he’s not saying, he’s screaming. Going mad. He is ripping at the handcuffs, bleeding, shouting, thrashing, kicking grit across the roof.
And now I think Francisco has started shouting back at him, telling him to shut up, while Bernhard and Latifa scream at each other, or at me.
I think, but I’m not sure. They have all begun to disappear, you see. Fading away, leaving me in a very quiet world. Because now I can see it.
Small, black, fast. It could be a bug on the front of the sight. The Graduate.
Hydra rockets. Hellfire air-to-ground missiles..SO cannons. Four hundred miles an hour, if it needs to. One chance only.
It will come in and pick its targets. It has nothing to fear from us. Bunch of crazy terrorists with automatic rifles, popping away. Couldn’t hit a barn door.
Whereas the Graduate can punch a whole room out of a building with one press of a button.
One chance only.
This fucking sun. Blazing at me, burning out the image on the sight.
Tears started in my eyes from the brightness of the picture, but I held my eye open.
Put it down, Benjamin is saying. Screaming it in my ear, from a thousand miles away. Put it down.
Jesus, it’s fast. It jinks along the rooftops, maybe half a mile. You fucking shit bastard.
Cold and hard on my neck. Somebody is definitely trying to put me off. Pushing a barrel through my neck.
I’ll shoot you dead, screams Benjamin.
Remove the safety cover, and flick down the trigger. Your javelin is now armed, gentlemen.
Choking on the shot. Put it down.
The roof exploded. Just disintegrated. And then, a fraction of a second later, the sound of the cannon fire. An incredible, deafening, body-shaking noise. Chunks of stone flew up and sideways, every piece as deadly as the shells that caused it. Dust and violence and destruction. I winced and turned away, and the tears ran down my face as the sun let me go.
It had made its first pass. At incredible speed. Faster than anything I’d seen, anything but a fighter. And its turn was unbelievable. It just dropped an elbow and spun. Flat out one way, spin, flat out the other. Nothing in between.
I could taste the fumes from its exhaust.
I raised the javelin again, and as I did so, I saw Benjamin’s head and shoulders thirty feet away. The rest of him, fuck knows where.
Francisco was screaming at me again, but this time it was in Spanish, and I’ll never know what that was about.
Here it comes. Quarter of a mile. And this time I really could see it.
The sun was behind me now, rising, getting up to speed, shining its full force on this little black bundle of hatred coming towards me.
Cross-wires. Black dot.
Flying a straight course. No evasion. Why bother? Bunch of crazy terrorists, nothing to fear from them.