The Secret Soldier

The fact that she was still calling him Frodo was definitely not a good sign. He didn’t argue, though. She had the kind of knockers he loved, big and full, a real handful.

“Hey. Quit staring at my breasties. They’re available to first-class passengers only.” She smirked. “Notice anything about this place, Frodo?”

Robby turned his head. He felt like he was looking through a snorkel mask. Six pints would do that. JJ’s was hopping. Three tall black blokes — American sailors, no doubt — towered above the crowd. On the screens overhead a new soccer match had begun, Manchester City and Tottenham. He couldn’t tell what she wanted him to say. “You mean that girl in the corner? The one with the lip ring.”

“Not her. She is cute, though. I mean the whole place. Notice anything?”

“It’s pretty chill. Wouldn’t expect it in Bahrain.”

“But you would, see. You know, Emirates, we fly to New York. Tokyo. Buenos Aires. Sydney.”

“You’ve been all those places.”

“Not yet. But a bunch.”

“I’ve been to New York,” Robby said proudly. “It was awesome. Times Square and all that.”

“Shush. And everywhere we go there are these Irish bars with DJs and tellies playing live football. I swear, even in Dublin it’s just like this. Even in Ireland the bars have lost whatever made them authentic and turned into replicas of themselves.”

“Dublin. Fantastic, innit?”

“I give up. You’re missing the point.”

“I get your point. People like the same stuff everywhere. So what? We’re all the same in the end. A few drinks, have a good time, a few shags. More if we’re lucky. Settle down with the missus, get old, piss off. Remember that song, got to be twenty years old. ‘Birth! School! Work! Death!’”

“The Godfathers. But that’s what you don’t get. We’re not all the same. Not everybody wants this stuff. We think they do because it’s what we want—”

Robby was sick of hearing deep thoughts from this flight attendant who was nowhere near putting out for him. He stood on the bench, threw his fists in the air: “Birth! School! Work! Death!” Around him, Beyonce sang: ‘All the single ladies…’ The girls danced and raised their arms, and the bar descended into the beautiful drunken majesty of Thursday night.

And then — weirdly — Robby was sure he heard the quick snap of a pistol shot. A branch breaking cleanly. Over the music pumping, over his own voice yelling. He looked around, sure he was wrong.

Then he heard two more.

FAKIR REACHED INTO THE nylon bag, came up with an AK. Omar grabbed the second rifle. Amir and Hamoud opened up outside, firing long bursts. Omar couldn’t see them, but he knew they were standing on the street, firing through the windows at the bar.

The bar’s front door popped open and four women in T-shirts and jeans ran toward them. Fakir unloaded a burst on full automatic. Two of the women flopped down in the corridor a couple steps from the door. The third tripped over a bouncer and started to scream in English before Fakir blew her head off.

The fourth kept coming, screaming. Omar raised his rifle. His first shot spun her, and his second and third went through her back. She reared like a frightened horse and fell.

It’s happening, Omar thought. It really is.

INSIDE JJ’s, PANDEMONIUM. ROBBY Duke felt himself falling before he even knew he was hit. The round caught him in the left shoulder and spun him off the table. He sprawled on the ground and grabbed his shoulder, feeling the blood trickle under his fingers in steady pulses, not enough to be life-threatening right away.

Bizarrely, the speakers were still pumping Beyonce: “…shoulda put a ring on it—”

The music broke off. Screams and shouts tumbled through the room.

“I can’t—” “My leg—” “Call 119—” The Bahraini equivalent of 911.

Above Robby, Josephine was screaming. He knocked the table aside, spilled his Carlsberg. Even in this madness, a tiny part of his mind regretted the loss of a good cold beer. He reached up, pulled Josephine down, covered her mouth with his hand.

“Are you hit?”

She shook her head.

“Shut it, then. There’s enough shouting already. Right?”

She nodded. He lifted his hand.

“The police—”

“These bloody camel jockeys aren’t going to wait for the police.”

The lights were still on. Robby rolled to his knees and looked left. He didn’t see Dwight, but Cinzia was lying face-first on the table. Her brains were all caught in her pretty brown hair. A round had peeled off the top of her head. Lucky shot. Not for her. Robby wondered if he could get to the entrance. He peeked up as the doors opened and a group ran out—

And a burst, full auto, echoed outside, and a woman screamed, “No, don’t—”

Another burst ended her plea.

“Jesus God,” Josephine shouted.

He squeezed her lips shut. “We have to move—”

“I can’t.”

“Then you’ll die here.”

He’d been to JJ’s enough times to know that the place had only two exits on the first floor. These twats were obviously covering both of them. But the balcony that overlooked the dance floor had some narrow windows that Robby was guessing opened onto an interior airshaft. If he and Josephine got up there, he could try to break them. Then they could shimmy to the roof and wait for the cops.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but they didn’t have time for a better one. Robby had been in the British army for four years after he turned eighteen. He’d served in Basra. Not too far from here. He knew the men outside. He’d seen what they did to their own, much less to foreigners. They wouldn’t stop shooting until everyone was dead.

The firing started again. Bottles smashed open, and the pungent smell of whiskey filled the room. Most people had gotten under tables now or hidden in corners. Robby heard a dozen panicked calls to the police. He grabbed Josephine’s arm and tugged her, but she wouldn’t move.

He couldn’t wait longer, not for this woman he’d just met. He let her go, crab-walked toward the stairs. And then he heard it. The hiss of a burning fuse. “Grenade!” he yelled. He dove forward, flattening himself on the floor. The training for grenades and mortars was simple. Get low and hope the shrapnel goes high. He heard it land, its metal shell bounce along the floor. It didn’t blow straightaway. It was an old one, then, with a time fuse—

“Christ, throw it back—” he yelled.

And then it went. The bar shook with the impact. His ears turned inside out. For a couple seconds, he couldn’t hear anything at all. The grenade was maybe fifteen feet from him, too close. The shrapnel shredded his jeans, cut his thighs into ribbons, hundreds of needles stabbing him at once. He couldn’t bear to look back. He had tried, he’d tried to get her to move, and she wouldn’t—

He looked back. He shouldn’t have. It must have landed practically on top of her. She was even worse than he expected, her breasts and belly pulped open, half her jaw gone—

Another grenade exploded, on the other side of the bar. Robby could barely hear this one. His eardrums must be blown. The room shook. Part of an arm slung across the room. Jesus. A hand. A woman’s hand, red nail polish and rings. It hit the bar and knocked over a glass of beer. Guess we won’t be needing that one, Robby thought wildly. The beer or the hand, either.

The game was obvious now. Pin them with rifle fire and then lob in grenades. With proper gear and a few mates from the 7th Armoured, he would have torn these bastards to shreds. But he didn’t even carry a knife