Justus helped her to her feet and led her back into the ruined changing room. In the faint moonlight there was no colour anywhere, just a ghost world of black and grey. Zalika’s hand went to her mouth at the sight of the intruder: his lolling head; his staring sightless eyes; the dark gaping hole that had been punched into his body.
The two of them made their way towards the door.
Justus opened it a fraction and peered out through the crack, expecting to see Carver waiting for him in the porch.
There was no one there.
Somewhere out in the darkness a man was screaming. Not far away a blazing flare was belching crimson smoke across the field. The helicopter’s approach was getting louder with every second.
But Samuel Carver had gone.
22
Seconds after Killaman sent Silent Death on his mission, he arranged a distraction to keep Carver’s attention away from anything that might be happening in the building behind him. He sent a man running directly across Carver’s line of fire. His orders were simple: run like hell till you are level with the porch, throw yourself to the ground, then fire at the man in the doorway, who will now be completely exposed to your shots.
The man started running.
Carver took aim like a punter at a shooting gallery and hit his target before he could dive to the ground.
A second man ran the gauntlet.
He had flung himself forward, like a rugby three-quarter diving for the try-line, when Carver’s shot caught him in the side, ploughing into his intestines. He lay on the ground, screaming in agony and crying out for his mother.
After that, there were no more runners.
Through the man’s screams, Carver could hear Morrison’s voice in his earpiece again: ‘We got problems. First, you are in severe danger of being outflanked.’
‘I’d noticed.’
‘Second, there is a man on the ground, behind the first line of troops, carrying an RPG. He hits us, we’re fucked.’
‘Can you get him first?’
‘Too risky. You will have to do it.’
‘Where is this guy?’
‘Right in the middle of the field, the centre circle, behind the first line of men.’
‘And where are you?’
‘Holding pattern, six hundred metres out.’
‘Then come on in.’
‘Nah way, man.’
‘Just do it, now. That’s an order.’
If Morrison had any reply to that, Carver didn’t hear it. From behind him came the echoing blast of a grenade going off in a confined space. What the bloody hell had happened in there?
There was no time to answer that question now. The chopper would come in at around fifty metres a second. Anyone who knew how to operate an RPG would wait until it was between one and two hundred metres away, almost impossible to miss, before they opened fire. That gave Carver an absolute maximum of ten seconds, probably less. Saving the chopper was his immediate priority. And that meant no distractions.
He took the emergency flare, pulled the tag and hurled it out on to the field, throwing blind. The moment it was gone, he took out his last grenade, counted two, stepped out of the porch, thanked God for the hellish red smoke now drifting between him and the enemy, and threw.
He ducked back inside the porch. Half a second later, the grenade detonated.
Before the sound of the explosion had died away, Carver was up and running.
A modern anti-personnel grenade will kill any unprotected human within a five-metre radius, and either kill or severely wound anyone within fifteen. Carver had therefore given himself a thirty-metre-wide window of opportunity.
He was going flat out, forgetting the pain from his rib, the choking billows of chemical smoke from the flare and the weight of the weapon in his hands. He paused, turned to face a threat, raised the MP5 and fired twice at a shadowy target. Then he was off and running again.
Carver burst out of the smoke and saw a knot of men ahead of him, apparently unharmed by the grenade. They were shouting, bringing their guns to bear on him. Behind them he could just make out the grenade-tipped barrel of the RPG, and beyond that the outline of the helicopter coming in low and flat over a copse of trees.
He did not stop running, shooting as he went. He was beyond any rational thought, entirely caught up in the frenzy of battle. He was dimly aware that he’d taken a hit in his left arm, though there was no pain there as yet.
He saw two of the men in front of him go down.
He sensed rather than heard the click as the firing pin of his gun came down on an empty chamber.
He felt the cracking of broken bones as he smashed the stock of the MP5 into the face of the last man standing between him and the grenade-launcher.
And then he was throwing himself with an inarticulate scream of rage at the man crouching on one knee holding the RPG, and a jet of flame was shooting from the rear end of its barrel, scorching Carver’s skin as he hit the man and his weapon. He knocked them both to the ground, smashing his own head against the metal body of the launcher and sending the RPG shooting low across the football field before it hit the modest little stand and blew it to smithereens.
Over the next few seconds, Carver lay dazed and winded on the ground, battered by the downdraft that told him the helicopter was landing. He was aware of the RPG operator wriggling out from under him and running away as fast as his legs would carry him. He did not, however, see Killaman emerge from the tangle of bodies behind him, drag himself upright, pull out the flick-knife and stagger towards his unprotected back.
23
Before the skids of the helicopter’s undercarriage had hit the ground, Justus was racing across the open ground towards it, urging Zalika to keep pace with him as he went. He tried to keep his body between hers and anyone who might still be out there, but only a few wild, aimless shots were fired in their direction. The downdraft had cleared away the smoke from the flare and it looked as though whoever had been attacking them had lost the will to fight.
Flattie Morrison was standing in the open doorway of the helicopter firing bursts at the retreating figures to speed them on their way. He stopped shooting and reached one hand down to help Zalika up into the passenger compartment.
Justus was next in line. He turned his head to look back across the football pitch.
‘Get in!’ Morrison shouted.
Justus ignored him. Instead he sprinted away from the chopper, back towards the remaining whispers of smoke.
Morrison made Zalika comfortable, then, still standing, turned back to follow Justus’s progress.
Now he knew what his old comrade had seen. Right in the middle of the pitch a black-clad body Morrison instantly recognized as Carver’s was lying face-down, moving slightly, as though retching or gasping for air.
Behind the body, another man was staggering towards it with a knife.
