Читать книгу Last Light - Alex Scarrow - Страница 25

11.18 a.m. local time Al-Bayji, Iraq

Sergeant Bolton joined Private Tajican standing on the stack of pallets and keeping a watch on events outside in the street.

‘What is it?’ he asked the Fijian.

‘Movement, Sergeant. Something going on.’

Bolton looked up at the soldier who dwarfed him both in height and width. Tajican pointed towards some activity down at the far end of the boulevard. ‘There, sir.’

He squinted against the dazzling mid-morning sunlight; even though the normally blue sky was veiled by a coating of featureless white cloud, the diffuse light leaking from behind made it hard not to screw up his eyes. A crowd of men were gathered around a truck parked in the entrance to a side-street, they were doing something with it, but it was hard to make out exactly what.

‘What are you buggers up to?’ Sergeant Bolton murmured to himself.

‘No good?’

Bolton grinned and nodded. ‘S’right lad, up to no bloody good.’ He spoke quietly into his throat mic on the command channel. ‘Lieutenant? I think we might need to get ready for another contact.’

Across the compound, Carter stirred to life, walking swiftly across the dirt, doing his best to look relaxed and in control. He weaved through the vehicles parked in the middle of the compound over to where Bolton and Tajican were standing on the pallets stacked against the wall.

‘What is it, Sergeant?’

Bolton ducked down behind the wall and turned to face his CO. ‘Well, sir, looks to me like they’re rigging something up on a truck.’

‘More specifically?’

Bolton shot a glance at the big Fijian. ‘I think they’re loading some ordnance, some sort of improvised explosive device.’

Tajican looked at the Sergeant and then nodded in agreement, ‘Reckon so, chief, an IED.’

Carter sighed. He climbed up on to the stack to join them, studied the activity for a few seconds, before ducking down and turning to the two men.

‘Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? They’ll drive the bloody thing over here, probably park by the gate and then set it off.’

Sergeant Bolton nodded. ‘Yup.’

‘So, we’ve got to stop it getting over here. What have we got in the platoon that’s meaty enough to disable it?’

‘The Minimi might have done it,’ replied Bolton. ‘We’ve got a couple of SA80s with grenade launchers . . . USGs.’

‘Have we got anyone good enough with their aim to drop a grenade into the back of that truck?’

‘Lance Corporal Westley, the Geordie lad, he’s pretty fit with it, but not at this range, sir. We’ll need it to be closer. Maybe we can catch it on the approach.’

‘Wait till it’s a moving target? That’s a pretty crap idea, Sergeant.’

‘Or we can try sending some of our boys out to nobble it before they get going, sir?’

Lieutenant Carter thought about it for a moment, and then shook his head. ‘No, they’d be dead before they got fifty yards - they’ve got guns on every damned roof.’

The options weren’t great, or varied. He balled his fists and tapped them together a few times as he weighed one against the other.

‘Okay, let’s go with your first crappy idea, Sergeant. We’ll put every gun we have on it, and the two USGs too if . . . when, it starts heading towards us. Maybe we’ll get lucky and something will hit the explosives they’ve loaded in the back.’

Carter took another peek over the wall. It looked like they’d just about finished loading whatever it was, and some activity was going on amongst the crowd towards the front of the truck.

Looking for a volunteer to drive, eh? That was something they seemed to have an endless supply of over here in this land of martyrs; young men ready to die.

Andy watched Mike as he got up and wandered over to the three Iraqis huddled anxiously together in the shadow of one of the Land Cruisers, a soldier a few yards away watching them. Mike squatted down in front of them, studying them silently for a moment as he held the AK47 loosely - not aimed, but not exactly swung away either.

‘What are you doing here?’

Farid shrugged, ‘I’m not understand.’

‘It’s simple, why the hell are you in here, and not out there with your buddies? I mean, if you’re such a good little brother like you said, and you think our shitty western ways stink, why aren’t you out there with them, taking pot-shots at us?’

‘I am a Muslim, is wrong for me to take your life, even though you are an infidel - even though you are nothing.’

Mike screwed his face up in disgust. ‘Oh we’re nothing are we? We’ve sacrificed several thousand young American lives so you savages can have a democracy; a chance to fucking well vote.’

‘And we will replace with Shari’ah as soon as you Americans gone,’ replied Farid defiantly. ‘Your ways are not ours.’

Andy could see the exchange between the two men was going to escalate quickly, particularly given how strung out they all were. He pulled himself up to his feet and walked over, uneasily, wondering how he was going to calm him down.

‘Mike,’ he interrupted quietly. ‘Take it easy. I don’t think he means “nothing” in the same way we’d mean it. It’s a language thing.’

‘Yeah, right,’ he smiled dryly. ‘Tell you what, why don’t I just hand over this gun to him, or one of his little buddies? You heard him . . . we’re nothing to him, just vermin. You think that’s a good idea? Think your little old friend here will stand shoulder to shoulder with you?’

‘Look,’ Andy replied, ‘this isn’t helping anyone, Mike. Like it or not, Farid and these two boys are in this mess alongside us. They’re here because they’re just as big a target as we are. Think about it! They’re LECs - locally employed civilians. If the insurgents out there get hold of them, they’ll be made an example of. You can bet on that.’

Mike looked at him. ‘You trust them?’

Andy shrugged. He wasn’t sure what answer he could honestly give; trust them or not, they were all in the same boat right now.