Zero 22, p.9
Zero 22, page 9
part #8 of Danny Black Series
15,000.
10,000.
5,000.
Any moment now, the quad bike’s automatic deployment device would kick in.
4,000.
3,500.
Suddenly he saw the quad bike’s enormous chute deploy and billow, blocking his view of the lumisticks. He immediately deployed his own rig and sensed the rigging lines shoot up above him. He felt the instant pull of deceleration. The wind noise diminished. Almost complete silence. Just the gentle flapping of the spreader bar, a rectangular piece of material above him that held the rigging lines in place and stopped the chute from inflating too quickly and messily.
They didn’t need oxygen at this altitude. Danny reached for Bethany’s mask, pulled it away and removed his own. ‘You okay?’ he said. There was no need to raise his voice.
‘What if I said I wasn’t?’ Her voice had a slightly wired timbre, half thrill, half fear.
‘You’re doing great,’ Danny said, and instantly regretted it.
‘I’m not a child.’
Danny reached for the toggle lines of their parachute, which he could use to follow the quad bike to the ground and guide them on to target. They drifted quietly. The air, so cold when they’d left the Herc, grew warmer. Danny scanned the earth below, checking for threats or obstacles on the landing zone. It was a clear night, well lit by the moon, and he had a good view of the ground. He saw nothing to worry him.
The quad bike made contact with the earth and its chute started to deflate. Danny guided himself and Bethany to one side of it. When they were almost on the ground, he pulled both the toggle lines to flare the tandem chute and put them safely down. Their feet touched the ground and he could sense Bethany’s tension releasing. He immediately unclipped her from the tandem rig. She disentangled herself from the day packs round her legs and staggered forwards, plainly relieved to be on solid ground again. Danny gathered the chute. Once he had an armful of crumpled canvas, he took off his freefall rig. He opened his day pack and retrieved his collapsible entrenching tool. He unfolded it while scanning the area all around. The moon lit the terrain up well, but there was little to see. It was barren and almost featureless. Hard earth, with the occasional sturdy desert weed. The ground was level, giving Danny a 360 view of a couple of hundred metres into the distance. There was a shallow wadi, only a couple of metres wide and less than a metre deep, a little beyond the quad bike. He saw no vehicle marks on the ground, but that didn’t mean people never came here, and Danny couldn’t risk just leaving the parachutes. He would have to dig them in.
‘Gather that chute,’ he told Bethany, pointing at the quad bike’s rig. ‘Then keep watch. Let me know if you see anything.’ Bethany nodded. Danny took his entrenching tool over to the wadi. The ground would be softer in the ditch, easier to excavate. He jumped inside and started to dig.
It was hot, hard work. The entrenching tool could only cut into the earth inch by inch, with the metronomic scraping of a gravedigger’s shovel. It took a full twenty minutes for Danny to make a hole big enough to conceal both chutes, while Bethany kept watch. By the time he’d stuffed them inside, he was drenched with sweat. Before filling the hole in, he jumped up out of the wadi and turned his attention to the quad bike. It was still fastened to its wooden pallet with a tangled mess of strapping. He loosened, undid and removed the straps, then carried them over to the hole and buried them. He shovelled the dislodged earth back over the stash, flattened it down with his boots and redistributed the surplus. He rejoined Bethany, took the quad bike’s keys from the secure pouch, climbed on board and drove it off the pallet.
‘What do we do with that?’ Bethany said, pointing at the pallet.
‘We take it with us,’ Danny said. ‘Dump it somewhere else. If anybody comes across it in this location, chances are they’ll start nosing around and find where I’ve buried the chutes.’
‘How are we going to carry it?’
‘We’re not going to carry it,’ Danny said. ‘You’re going to carry it.’ He climbed off the quad bike and took the night-vision gear from one of the day packs. ‘We’ll be driving blind,’ he told her as he fitted one set of goggles to her helmet. ‘No headlamps. The moon’s pretty bright, but we might need these.’
Bethany pulled the goggles over her eyes, looked around for a few seconds, then raised them and stared at Danny. ‘They suit you,’ she said.
Danny ignored her. He loaded the day packs on to the bike. ‘Get on,’ he said.
Bethany mounted the bike. Danny lifted the pallet, upended it and handed it to her so it was positioned vertically with one edge resting on her lap. He took the driving seat again. ‘This isn’t easy to hold,’ Bethany complained.
‘I guess not,’ Danny said. He checked the quad bike’s GPS unit. It was set to night mode, so it gave off very little light. The coordinates of their destination were pre-set, and it gave them an estimated journey time of three hours. That meant they would hit the Roman ruins just before dawn, assuming they didn’t encounter any problems on the way.
They moved off, slowly at first but with increasing speed as Danny got a feel for the terrain and the level of light. The moon was sufficiently bright to cast a faint shadow from the quad bike, which trundled quietly over the rough ground. Only after they’d been going for five minutes did Danny stop and allow Bethany to discard the pallet. It broke up a little as she threw it to the ground. Danny drove off again immediately.
His senses were keen. He scanned the horizon as he drove, aware of Bethany watching to the side and behind them now that she no longer had to handle the pallet. There was something strangely reassuring about her manner. Bethany was a difficult, dangerous woman, but Danny had almost forgotten what a capable operator she was. At least as capable as many of the guys back at Hereford. He respected her, in a peculiar way.
He drove without the aid of his NV goggles for twenty minutes. But then a bank of cloud drifted across the moon, severely limiting his vision. He lowered the goggles and viewed the world through a green haze. The NV gave him a good sense of the detail of his surroundings. Small undulations in the terrain became more distinct and he could make out straggly patches of low brush. The use of goggles for extended periods could be tiring on the eyes, but right now it was necessary.
Half an hour passed. In the distance, maybe three hundred metres away, there was a road heading east-west. Danny’s preprogrammed GPS route took them that way, but they had to stay clear of the road itself, dressed and tooled up like this. Danny turned right a hundred metres before they met it, then followed the road’s direction without getting any closer to it.
The road was deserted, which made sense. It was a minor road leading straight to the Israeli border and into the West Bank. Any normal person wanting to travel in that direction would be safer taking a properly policed main supply route. A journey into that territory could go either way. It just depended if it was one of those days when the Arabs and the Israelis were taking chunks out of each other. But deserted or not, Danny kept to the unmade desert. There might be Jordanian police vehicles in the area. There might be Hezbollah militants. There might be ordinary citizens. None of them would react well to the presence of two British operatives. Much better to remain unseen.
Danny raised his NV goggles to relieve the strain on his eyes and allow some of his natural night vision to return. The moon was hazy but not completely obscured. There was just enough light to see by. He focused on the ground ahead. It had become slightly bumpier and required more of his attention.
Which was why he didn’t see the threat until Bethany alerted him. ‘Over there!’ she hissed.
Danny brought the quad bike to a sudden halt and killed the engine. Bethany was pointing up towards the road. They had been travelling parallel to it, but now it was curving round to the south. If they continued on the same trajectory, they would hit it in about 200 metres. Danny cursed himself for his momentary lack of awareness. Parked up by the road were several vehicles: at least three, perhaps more hidden behind those he could see. A saloon car. Two heavy trucks. There was movement of personnel around the trucks. Danny raised his night sight and surveyed the scene.
Something was going down. The men moving around the vehicles – Danny counted four of them – were armed. Two had rifles. Two had something heavier – RPG launchers, Danny guessed, though it was hard to be certain. Shamags covered their heads and they were facing away from the vehicles, out into the desert, in Danny and Bethany’s direction. They were obviously guarding whatever was in the trucks.
And they had just as obviously clocked the quad bike and its two passengers.
They started shouting at each other. Hoarse, curt instructions in Arabic that travelled clearly across the still desert air. Danny recognised the tone of these shouts, even if he couldn’t discern the words. He knew that he and Bethany were about to come under fire. He swore under his breath, twisted round and, with all the force he could muster, pushed her from the bike. Danny grabbed his C8 as she fell to the ground, leapt off the other side of the bike and crawled quickly away from it. ‘Keep down!’ he shouted, pressing himself as closely as possible to the ground. ‘Get away from the bike! Contact!’
The distant fizz of an RPG launch was a sound Danny knew well. Every time he’d heard it in the past it had given him the same sensation: the bite of anticipation and fear, not knowing how or where the grenade would land, or what damage its shrapnel would inflict. Tonight, the fizz triggered a specific memory. He was back in north-eastern Syria, with eyes on an abandoned prison, and his team were unexpectedly under fire from a Russian ambush. For the briefest moment, he saw not the enemy before him, but a flashback of his burned and mangled unit mates, encased in coffins of twisted metal. He saw missiles hurtling through the air. He saw himself crouched in a cramped culvert as an earth-shaking fast air strike detonated above him.
He was there, and not here.
An explosion returned him to the present as the RPG hit the quad bike. The impact shook Danny from his moment of inattention. He felt a sour wave of self-loathing at his lack of focus as shrapnel showered around him and a second RPG flew towards the quad bike.
His training kicked in. Instinct. Situational awareness. He didn’t know who these people were or why they had engaged him and Bethany. He didn’t know if they had been expecting them, or if they were simply in the wrong place or the wrong time. But none of that mattered. All that mattered was the fight, and right now Danny was at the wrong end of it. That had to change. The second RPG hit the quad bike, knocking it back. As another shower of shrapnel fell, he heard the unmistakeable bang of an exploding tyre. The quad bike was fucked. But it told him one thing: the enemy targets were focusing on the bike. It suggested that they couldn’t see Danny and Bethany. Here, exposed and in open ground, that was their only strategic advantage. He had to make use of it, and quickly.
‘Stay down!’ he told Bethany. ‘Don’t move! If you move, they’ll see you!’
There was no response from Bethany. He couldn’t see her and had no idea if she was hit. He suspected not. He knew how a person screamed when they’d been injured by hot shrapnel. Not even Bethany, cold-hearted and self-controlled as she was, would be able to suppress that kind of pain. And if she had been hit? There was nothing he could do. Priorities. He had to deal with the threat first.
His C8, with its full thirty-round magazine, was by his side. He placed it in front of him in the firing position. Through the sight he could see the enemy targets: four guys, artlessly standing in a line with no apparent thought for taking defensive positions. He would have to pick them off, one by one, and quickly before they were able to work out his position.
The bad news for the four targets was that Danny Black had clocked up more hours on the range in Hereford than almost any other soldier, in this precise position, preparing for this precise moment. His weapon was also suppressed, which meant that although it was not silent, it would be difficult for the targets to identify the source of the dull knock of its retort.
He rested his finger on the trigger, breathed in and held his breath to keep his body as still as possible. Then he squeezed.
He knew the shot was good the moment the empty casing ejected itself from the rifle and his shoulder absorbed the weapon’s recoil. He half saw the first target crumple suddenly and heavily to the ground as he re-aimed and positioned the second target in his sight, the crosshair directly over his chest. It was one of the RPG guys. He had the launcher by his side and was scanning the desert, plainly not yet aware that his mate had been shot. Danny didn’t give him time to twig what was happening. His second shot was as swift and accurate as the first. The target hit the ground.
There was immediate panic now. The two remaining targets realised that events were not unfolding as they intended. They were shouting. Danny could hear their stressed voices. If they had any sense, they would run, but they were too busy yelling instructions at each other. Danny’s third target was standing side on, waving his arms and rifle at his companion. His movement and position made this a more challenging shot. Danny raised the rifle just a little, so the crosshairs were aligned with the target’s body. He fired and made no mistake.
The fourth man ran. Danny tried to follow him with his sights, but he sprinted behind the nearest truck before Danny could release a fourth round.
There was a deep silence. No movement.
Danny glanced to the left. The quad bike was smouldering. There was still no sign of Bethany on the other side, nor any indication that she was alright. He didn’t budge. He could feel his heart beating strong, but his pulse was slow, controlled by his regular breathing as he turned his attention back to the vehicles. He appraised the situation. There was at least one enemy target left, but there could well be more, and he might be calling for help. The four guys had looked like they’d been guarding something or someone. Danny’s money was on more personnel waiting. What would their next move be? Either they’d make a run for it, or they’d continue their attack. Stalemate wasn’t an option. So Danny needed to be ready to suppress any contact from the targets. He continued to look through his rifle sight, panning the area from left to right. Truck. Open ground. Truck. Open ground. Saloon car. And then back again. Saloon car. Open ground. Truck. Open ground. Truck.
A minute passed. No movement.
Another minute. Danny’s mouth felt dry. He knew something was coming. Any moment now . . .
He nearly wasn’t fast enough. The target appeared from behind the middle truck just as Danny’s sights had panned past him. He only saw a clip of movement on the edge of the sight. By the time he had panned back, the militant was in plain view, an RPG launcher on his shoulder, ready to fire. From the angle at which he was standing, Danny knew the target was not now aiming at the quad bike, but at him.
He released three rounds in quick succession. The first missed, striking the side of the truck. The second hit its mark. As the target crumpled uselessly to the ground, the third round flew over his head and into the desert beyond.
Silence again. Stillness. And then, seemingly from nowhere, more movement and noise. Two of the vehicles pulled away: the saloon car and the truck that had remained untouched by Danny’s ammo. Danny followed the vehicles with his weapon but let them go. Shooting out their tyres meant prolonging the contact. He’d kept the upper hand so far, but firefights when you were as heavily outnumbered as this were unpredictable. Much better for him if the remaining targets got the hell out of here.
The distant sound of the vehicles’ screaming engines faded. The vehicles themselves disappeared along the road.
Danny lay still for a further two minutes. He could see one truck and four corpses, but it would be a mistake to assume the threat had disappeared. There could still be targets behind or inside the truck.
‘You okay?’ he called to Bethany.
‘Just lying here enjoying the show.’
‘No injuries?’
‘I’m okay, alright? Who they hell were those people?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. They weren’t pros. My guess is we stumbled over some sort of deal. Drugs, maybe.’ He glanced at the quad bike again. One tyre was smoking, but that wasn’t the full extent of the damage. The bodywork at the front was gnarled and twisted, and the whole thing was leaning to one side in a way that suggested a broken axle. ‘The bike’s fucked,’ he said. ‘We’re going to need another vehicle.’
‘Only one vehicle that I can see,’ Bethany said.
Danny examined the distant truck. There was no option: if their journey was to progress, he would have to approach it at some point. ‘Stay where you are,’ he said. ‘I’m going to recce the truck.’
A pause.
‘Be careful, Danny,’ Bethany said. She had momentarily lost the edge in her voice.
‘Stay where you are until I give you a signal.’
He got up in two movements; firstly on to one knee, weapon still engaged and pointing at the truck. He flicked his weapon to the automatic setting. Then, a minute later, when there was still no sign of enemy personnel, he got to his feet. The truck was 200 metres away. He advanced, the butt of his weapon pressed hard into his shoulder, his finger resting lightly on the trigger. His boots crunched on the hard earth as he advanced, ready to fire at the slightest hint of a threat.
Distance to target: 150 metres. No sign of enemy personnel.
100 metres.
75.
The attack, when it came, was sudden. A figure appeared at the front of the truck, head wrapped in a shamag, an ostentatious bandolier of ammo slung round his chest. He appeared crazed, screaming some kind of war cry, which served no other purpose than to alert Danny to his position. It only took a short burst of three rounds to silence him. His body was thrown back against the truck, then it slid to the ground. Even from this distance, Danny could see the dark swab of blood he left on the bodywork.
