As he passed each victim and moved on to the next, the Pakistani pushed them into the holes. They had to kneel, with only their head and the tops of their shoulders showing above ground.
A group of young guys arrived from nowhere at the front of the crowd. They wore the same kind of headgear as the boss, and black-and-white
The four AS big dogs headed back inside the building.
My chest heaved. I couldn’t help it. My breath quickened. I tried to control it. My skin broke into a sweat. My whole body felt like it was going to burst.
Anna filled my head. I was going to lose the only two women I cared for in the space of the same night.
Where the fuck was Awaale?
The Pakistani led Tracy out. She carried Stefan in her arms. His head was on her shoulder, his legs wrapped around her, her arms wrapped around him. She was struggling to carry him. Both of them shielded their eyes from the bright lights, as they started the long walk.
It took all three of the other al-Shabab to bring BB out.
Skull-cap shrieked, pointing at these evil people coming towards us like they were Satan come to Merca.
BB’s eyes darted around. He was trying to suss out what was going on. It dawned on me. They didn’t know what the fuck was happening. Otherwise he would have tried something by now. The three of them were dead men walking. What had they got to lose?
They reached the gates. The old school mullah walked up to Tracy and grabbed Stefan. The boy was his now. But Tracy had other ideas.
She pulled back her child and uttered a long, heart-wrenching cry that silenced the crowd. The women around me moaned quietly. Hands went up to mouths as Stefan hollered out for his mother. His arms clung tightly around her neck as Tracy tried to break the old mullah’s grip.
Skull-cap brandished his blood-covered machete at her and yelled to the crowd.
BB didn’t move a muscle to help her. He did exactly what he should have done. He looked around, taking everything in, wondering what the fuck he was going to do with the information.
BB then saw the four getting buried, and the two empty holes, and knew precisely what was about to happen.
I moved forward from the crowd, pushing up the
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The Pakistani swung to face the crowd. He would have seen straight away why they were screaming and who they were running from.
As I got the weapon into the shoulder I pushed the selector all the way down to single shot. The Pakistani fixed his eyes on me. I had both eyes open, focused on the foresight. The Pakistani pushed BB out of the way to get his own weapon up but he was too slow. My weapon kicked and he went down. I’d got him with one round into the chest.
The noise around me faded the further the crowd dispersed. Then I heard gunfire. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from or where it was going. Tracy was just metres away now. Stefan had disappeared.
One of the other AS big dogs was bringing his AK up but BB had grabbed the Pakistani’s weapon and gave him a three-round burst. He helped himself to a chest harness full of mags.
‘Tracy! Tracy! Here — with me! It’s Nick! It’s Nick!’
BB was still firing. He took on the other AS to my right.
‘
Tracy couldn’t compute.
‘
BB looked round. He got it.
I grabbed hold of Tracy and pulled off my
She was rooted to the spot; confused; scared.
‘Nick …?’
‘
I grabbed hold of her and began dragging her into cover. BB was changing mags. I got eye-to-eye with him and he started closing in. I pulled her down on her knees, so that her head was below the parapet. The crowd was still scattering in all directions. They didn’t know which way to run. The fire was coming from the court-house. They could get a lead on us pretty much anywhere they liked if we tried to make a break for it across the open ground.
BB took up position alongside us and knelt with the AK.
Tracy tried to pull away from me. ‘Stefan! I must get Stefan!’
She pointed frantically at the
Everything was total confusion but her screams were louder than the crowd’s.
I looked over the wall. Skull-cap was on the veranda of the main building with the others, weapon up. They were shouting, more in anger than in fright. They’d been done out of a good day’s stoning.
To our right, the Somali women scrabbled to get out of the dirt. The lads accused of shagging them were well and truly gone.
The skull-caps on the veranda popped in and out of the doors like Swiss cuckoos, firing indiscriminately at anything that moved. A
A burst stitched along the wall the other side of us. 7.62 is a big-calibre round. The sound of at least a dozen of them thumping into the block-work nine inches from our heads was deafening. I felt the tremors.
I pushed Tracy down flat and crouched over her as BB got his AK over the wall and gave it bursts towards the court-house.
I jumped up, my legs astride Tracy’s back, and put some rounds down towards the veranda.
Still no sign of Awaale.
I yelled across at BB, ‘They’re going to be all over us. Take her down to the beach, turn left, get out of the town. We’ll RV somehow. I’ve got a skiff there waiting. Just get out of the town. You’ll see me moving along the beach. I’m going to go and get Stefan.’
More rounds slammed into the far side of the wall. Tracy sobbed into the dust. ‘My baby … my baby …’
We jumped back down.
‘Fuck, Nick — did you come on your own? Whatever. Thank fuck …’ He slapped a hand on my shoulder.
I shook my head. ‘I thought I’d brought backup, mate. But the fuckers seem to have left us to it.’
I grabbed another look over the wall. A cloud of grey smoke erupted from a corner of the compound and the back blast kicked up a storm of sand. The sustainer motor kicked in and the round screamed towards us.
‘RPG!’
We ducked. But it wasn’t coming for us. Chunks of breezeblock and rendering blasted in all directions from the court-house. Debris rained down on us like hailstones.
Screams, shouts and the rattle of automatic fire came from the far side of the
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