Recoil - Andy McNab [114]
It was so loud even Bateman could hear him. He hollered back, incandescent: ‘Shut the fuck up, man! We stay and fight. When we get back, that’s me finished. I’m not working for you any more. I’ve had enough of this shit. You Brits bitch like fucking women!’
That got a laugh out of Crucial.
I kept my AK, picked up the gun and two boxes of ammo and staggered across to my position. The trench was now empty of RPG rounds; the launcher was where I’d left it. So was the jerry-can, with the remaining AK mags stacked on top.
I set the gun on the parapet so the loaded rounds lay on the crate top. Then I went back with my AK and picked up the plunger, firing cable still attached. I looked down at Sam. ‘The pigtail was good.’
He nodded. Standish had been the only one to voice it, but we all knew things would have turned out very differently had the device kicked off on command.
I jumped into my trench and started to pull in the two hundred metres or so of firing cable. It only took thirty seconds or so till the two muddy wires at the end were in my hands. I checked that the cable was still well attached to the butterfly nuts, then laid the two wires a millimetre apart on the crate top. Holding them in place with my left hand, I pulled up the plunger handle and pushed it down. A spark arced between the two wires.
It must have been a faulty det, and there was nothing I could have done about that: we didn’t have a tester. Either that, or there wasn’t enough charge to run down both lengths of cable once I’d joined them. Not that any explanation made me feel any better.
I pushed the plunger out of the way, in front of the trench.
I lifted the lid off the link boxes, pulled out a factory-made belt from the first and attached it to the rounds already queuing in the feed tray. When I fired, the link would flow out of the box like a snake out of a basket.
I tested my arcs, then there was fuck-all else I could do but wait. I picked up the jerry-can, took some more big, greedy gulps, and waited, alone with my thoughts. Anything that bought us time, anything that kept the LRA at bay, or even fucked them off completely, could only be good. Using these kids was better than us all being killed.
Standish had a point. It pissed me off, but he did.
6
Crucial lowered one kid each side of me. I beamed down at them. ‘All right mate? All right?’ I tapped my chest. ‘Mr Nick, Mr Nick.’ I got no response. They squatted in their corners and gave me a bleak stare.
‘Your names? What are you called? Me, Mr Nick.’
Still no response. Bet it would be a different story if I had chocolate. The thought made me feel hungry. My stomach rumbled. These two had probably known that feeling for most of their lives. Their eyes were too old for their faces, and their bodies were too young for what they’d been through.
We stagged on, making best use of the occasional splashes of moonlight to scan the area for movement. I couldn’t help asking myself the question I always asked whenever I’d stagged on a gun in the still of the night. ‘What the fuck am I doing with my life?’ Strangely, it gave me a little comfort. I’d been on stag around the world since I was sixteen. Mostly I’d been cold, wet and hungry. At least this time I was warm.
Standish yelled from my right and broke my train of thought: ‘There must be more! I don’t give a shit if Nick has looked – I’m checking for myself.’
I turned as he stormed past behind my trench. ‘What are you after?’
‘There’s got to be more RPG rounds.’
‘Twenty-four, that’s all we’ve got. There’s none down there.’
‘According to you.’ It was like we were back on the team job. He was the captain, I was the trooper. What the fuck did I know?
He carried on heading for the track and I grabbed my AK, leaped out and followed. ‘I’ll cover you.’
‘I don’t need babysitting. Stay there.’
And with that he headed off without a backward glance.
7
20:27 hours
There was nothing else to do now but stand behind the gun and try to make sense of the shifting shadows