You can't just whip a head around to break someone's neck. The design is too good for that. What you have to do is screw it off, as if you were untwisting the cap on ajar. You're trying to take the head off at the atlas, the small joint at the base of the skull. It's relatively easy if you're doing it against somebody who's standing, because if you get them off balance, their body is going down and you can twist and turn at the same time, so their momentum works against them. But I couldn't do that; all I could do was keep my legs around him and try to keep him in one place.
I managed to get my boots interlocked, and at last I could squeeze and push down with my legs, at the same time twisting up with my arms as hard as I could. I kept on turning as we both screamed at each other. The fucker didn't like it; he knew what was going on, but fortunately for me he was too old and too fat to do much about it.
His neck went without too much of a crack. He slumped down, and there wasn't much noise coming from him; there wasn't even a body jerk.
He just went very still. My hands were covered in blood, snot and saliva. I rolled over and kicked him off.
My weapon was only about five feet away. I picked it up and checked that the magazine was on tight, and that I still had a round in the chamber.
I started to move back to Sarah, then stopped. I ran back to the Syrian.
I could hear firing again, and people screaming and shouting, both Brits and Arabs, maybe just thirty meters away. It's funny how these details take a back seat when you're worrying about other things.
I scrabbled around and eventually found the piece of my ear still in his mouth. I couldn't be assed trying to stop the bleeding on the side of my head because I knew it wouldn't; capillary bleeding goes on forever. It would sort itself out. But I would want to get the severed bit sewn back on. It wouldn't be too good with a chunk missing because I'd have a VDM (visual distinguishing mark); but worse than that, I knew a couple of people with bits of their ear missing, and it looked fucking ugly. The only alternative was to have a 1980s Kevin Keegan haircut to cover it up.
I got back to the room and banged on the door.
'Sarah, it's me. I'm coming in, I'm coming in.'
Glen was still at the end of the corridor. When he heard my voice he shouted, 'Come on, for rack's sake! Drag her fucking ass out... now!'
He was right.
Enough was enough, we were all going to die here soon.
I pushed the door open and Sarah was still standing over one of the PCs with her laptop plugged into some other shit. I looked over at the Source.
He was sitting in the same position I'd left him in, as if he were watching the TV A small amount of blood was trickling from a hole in his shirt, but it was the one in the front of his head that gave the game away. Blood was oozing out like lava flow. The back of his head lolled against the sofa; it had ballooned out slightly, but the skin was keeping all the fragmented bone in place. It looked like a car windshield that's been punched; the glass goes out in the shape of a fist, but it's still held together. Blood and gooey gray tissue were dribbling onto the sofa. You didn't have to be George Clooney to know this boy wouldn't be surfing the net anymore.
Not even looking at me as she manipulated the keyboard, she said, 'He tried to attack me. But he is happy God would have sent him seqina.'
She knew I wouldn't have a clue what she was on about, and added, 'Tranquility.'
I looked at him again. He hadn't moved from where he'd been when I'd left the room and there was no look of tranquility on his face. He hadn't attacked her. So what; as if I gave a fuck. It was probably part of the alternative brief she'd been given. AK fire called me back to the real world.
'Come on, let's go. Now, Sarah!'
'No.' She shook her head.
'I'm going to be a few seconds more.'
The incendiary devices were still on the table. One of my jobs, unless she was going to tell me that had changed, too, was to destroy any equipment on target.
She hit the final key.
'OK, we can go.' She started to pack herself up.
I went to the sofa, pulled the Source away and let him roll onto the floor. Picking up one end of the sofa and dragging it across the room, I leaned it against the bench of computers. I got the wastepaper basket, scattered the contents on the bench top and added a rug from the floor and a couple of chairs. I wanted as much flammable stuff as possible near the incendiaries.
I said, 'Are you sure you're ready now?'
It was the first time she'd looked at me since I'd returned to the room. I saw her studying the red mess on the side of my head. I pulled the pin of the first device and positioned it on the table between two VDUs. The handle flew off, and by the time the last one was placed two were already burning fiercely. I could feel the heat, even through my jump suit.
I ditched the bergen; everything I needed now was in my belt kit. The air was filling with the noxious black fumes of burning plastic. I grabbed hold of Sarah, who had her repacked bergen slung over her shoulders, and headed for the door. I opened it a couple of inches and shouted to Glen, 'Coming through! Coming through!'
He yelled back, 'Shut the fuck up and run! Run!'
I didn't look left or right, just ran for the door by the same route we'd come in. Within less than a minute I was in the cold night air, my eyes peeled for the gap in the fence. It was pointless worrying about getting shot; I just ran in a stoop to make as small a target as possible, keeping Sarah in front of me.
I caught a glimpse of Glen behind me, plus another bloke still farther back. They followed as we sprinted toward the fence, rounds thudding into the ground around us. The Syrians were firing far too many rounds in one burst and couldn't control their aim.
Reg 1 pulled open one half of the upside-down V Sarah slid into the gap like a baseball player going for base. I prepared to do the same. I caught up with her as her slide stopped on the other side and kicked her out of the way so I wasn't blocking the gap for the other two.
'Move! Move!' I expected them to do the same to me. Nothing happened.
Reg 1 had already seen the reason why: 'Man down! Man down!'
Looking back through the gloom, I could see a shape on the ground about twenty meters away. Whoever was with him already had his hand in his loop and was trying to drag him toward the fence. Each of us was wearing a harness, a large loop made of nylon strapping between our shoulder blades with which a downed body could be dragged or hooked up to a heli winch for a quick extraction.
'Stay here don't move!' I could see from Sarah's expression that for once she was going to do as she was told.
I ran out to the dragger, and between us we pulled Glen toward the hole in the fence line. He was moaning and groaning like a drunk.
'Shit, I'm down, I'm down.'
Good. If he was talking, he was breathing.
I could see that the legs of his coveralls were shining with blood, but we'd have to look at that later. The first priority was to get him, and us, out of the immediate area.
I slid through the fence, turned on my knees, got hold of Glen's harness and dragged him through the gap. Sarah said and did nothing. Her bit was done; she was way out of her depth now. Reg 1 and 2 were waiting with her; the other two patrol members were giving covering fire from the olive-grove side of the fence as we moved toward them, letting off double taps at anything that moved. They needed to conserve ammo; we didn't have Hollywood mags.
Reg 1 was shouting commands.
'Move back to the FRV, move back.'
He had a sat comm out, its miniature transmission dish pointing skyward, telling the world that we were in the shit. I didn't know who he was talking to, but it certainly made me feel better.
Every other man carried a poncho stretcher a big sheet of green nylon with loop handles as part of his kit. Reg 2 laid his on the ground as I removed Glen's belt kit and bergen and put it on my back. So much for traveling light. As we rolled him onto the stretcher he was still conscious but, if he hadn't already, he'd soon go into
