Standish shook his head.
‘OK, get up here and relieve Davy.’
The girl watched Standish jump from the wagon, then gazed at Frankenstein as he barked more orders.
‘You –’ he pointed at me ‘– you stag on the comms. Soon as you hear a squeak out of the Yanks, give me a shout, OK?’
I jumped on to the back of the wagon and held out a very grimy hand. ‘I’m Nick.’
She shook it and smiled. ‘Annabel.’
A burst of small-arms fire kicked off in the distance and red tracer floated across the sky above us. Her face was tense in the glow of the sat-comms’ display. ‘Why is that man on the roof – Gary, is it? Why is he the one giving orders? I thought Miles was in command . . .’
‘He is, in a way . . .’ I knew better than to explain that it was because Standish was even more of a dickhead than most time-serving ruperts, and Gazza knew exactly what he was doing. ‘But things are run differently in the Regiment. Officers have to pass Selection like everyone else, but they only do a three-year tour. There isn’t time for them to learn patrol skills, so in a situation like this the troop senior takes over.’
‘What rank is Gary?’
‘Staff sergeant. But there are others here who could do it just as well.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m the new boy. My job description is, sit up, shut up and learn.‘ I smiled. ‘Where are the other two?’
‘Alice and Helen? Inside. They’ve been very kind to me, taken me under their wing. Their tours are up in a few weeks. They should be going home to their families. Not out here, like this.’
Alice and Helen came out of the house, looking around wildly, desperation etched on their faces. They looked like the Queen and Princess Margaret on speed.
‘Over here,’ Annabel called. ‘On the truck.’
The royal sisters ran towards us, Margaret in the lead. ‘Annabel, thank God. What’s happening? Are we going to get out?’
Both sets of eyes were just inches above the wagon’s flatbed, looking even more like pleading Labradors than the last time I’d seen them. Margaret’s brimmed with tears. She pulled some photographs from her waistcoat and shoved them towards me. I found myself looking at two proud parents displaying an overwrapped baby to the camera. ‘My first granddaughter. I haven’t even seen her. We will get out of here, won’t we?’
How the fuck did I know? ‘Yes, of course. The fleet are on their way and they’ll get us out. Not a problem.’
She took the pictures back, giving the group a loving look before they went into her pocket. Annabel was busy nodding at them both. ‘These men have it all under control. We’re getting out. Soon.’
Margaret grabbed my arm. ‘Thank you. Thank all of you.’
The Queen put an arm round her and led her back to the house.
‘How come the three of you got mixed up with the convoy?’
Annabel did her best to give me a smile. ‘It makes the president feel important, keeps him happy. Alice and Helen enjoy the trips – it’s a nice break from routine.’
‘You do a lot of these?’
‘Every month.’
‘What’s it in aid of? What’s in the boxes?’
She smiled again. ‘Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it? Let’s just say it’s important for us to help the president.’
A crackly ‘Hello? Hello?’ leaked from the sat comms. The accent certainly wasn’t American.
I picked up the handset. ‘Hello, this is Nick. Who are you?’
‘The high commissioner. Where’s Miles?’
I turned to Annabel. ‘Go get Gary.’
She jumped from the wagon. Whoever was on the roof gun let off a long burst, which seemed to provoke a big commotion in the house. It sounded like the soldiers were agitated, and the general’s rants were right off the Richter scale. Annabel shouted above them for Gary.
‘The boss is coming.’ I spoke into the handset. ‘Wait out.’ I liked ordering high commissioners about.
The next thing I heard was Frankenstein getting bollocked by the general as they came out into the courtyard together. The Zairean’s sweat-soaked face glinted in the moonlight.
Frankenstein took the phone from me and shoved a finger into his spare ear. ‘It’s Gary. What the fuck’s happening?’
He listened for several seconds, his jaw clenched with frustration, then piled on the sarcasm. ‘Yes, he may be, in your fucking head. But out here I do front-of-house and he polishes things up in the kitchen. So what the fuck’s happening?’
He listened some more, then finally cut away, almost throwing the handset back at me. ‘For fuck’s sake! The fleet’s not close enough yet for the helis, and there are no fast jets because there’s no fucking political clearance. But our wonderful high commissioner is doing all he can, bless him.’
Annabel opened her mouth to stick up for her boss, then wisely had second thoughts as Gary stormed back into the building.
9
He’d been gone no more than five minutes when I heard the rattle of small-arms fire and the distant sound of two RPGs cracking off. Seconds later they smashed into the side of the house.
The pressure waves hurled me to the ground. My ears were still ringing as I staggered to my feet in a cloud of sand and mortar dust.
It was impossible to tell where they’d hit.
There was silence for the next two or three seconds while everyone came to their senses, then Davy screamed, ‘Man down! Man down!’ from above us.
I grabbed a torch and a bag of field dressings from the footwell of the wagon and ran back into the house. The dust was just settling. I flicked the beam round the room. The royal sisters, and what looked like four of the soldiers, lay motionless on the floor, their shattered limbs at crazy angles. The walls were splattered with blood. Margaret had a neat hole in her chest where the shaped charge from one of the grenades had punched its way through her, on its way to fucking up everyone else.
I barged through the confusion and screams. I was sweating big-time as I climbed the spiral staircase on to the roof.
Gary was lying on his back, his blood-drenched face pale and shiny in the moonlight. He wasn’t moving and his eyes were wide open. I leaned over him, knowing immediately that there was nothing I could do. He was totalled. A round had hit him in the throat and smashed its way out through his neck, taking the vertebrae and his spinal column with it. He must have dropped like liquid.
I caught a glimpse of Standish: he wasn’t trying too hard to conceal his delight at being the only one left alive.
‘What the fuck?’ Davy shoved him backwards. ‘You think that’s funny, yeah?’
Standish lost his smirk and his eyes blazed. ‘What do you think you’re doing? I’m in command here.’
Davy was about to give him the good news with his fist and size nines when Sam jumped between them. ‘Stop! Save it for that lot out there.’
A loud metallic scrape announced the opening of the main gates. The general screamed at the backs of his remaining soldiers as they legged it into the darkness.
I grabbed my AK and got into a fire position, aiming at the shadows as they melted into the darkness. If these guys were changing sides, they needed to be stopped now. I readied myself to shoot, but my blood-soaked hands slipped on the stock. ‘We dropping them?’
Standish sparked up from behind. His time had come. ‘Yes, do it. Take them.’
I might have been the new boy, but I knew who was now the real boss around here. ‘Sam?’
