Recoil - Andy McNab [116]
I took aim, took first pressure, but couldn’t fire. I couldn’t see much from this distance, but Bateman looked as though one side of his head was missing. Somehow, even without a weapon, he was still going for him. I hoped he’d wring the fucker’s neck.
Standish turned and stared down at the man a few metres below him. He brought the weapon into his shoulder and fired.
The muzzle flashed and Bateman toppled backwards.
I squeezed my trigger and tracer arced uphill. More followed from Crucial. Some of it struck rock and ricocheted into the air. Some floated over the lip and disappeared.
Good. I wanted that spread. I wanted to cover every square metre of hillside with five-round bursts. ‘Bastard!’
But when we stopped firing, Standish was gone.
Bateman lay face down on the track about twenty metres away from the lip. A small river of muddy water cascaded over his lifeless body.
8
No point worrying about what had just happened. Bateman was dead – nothing we could do about it. We had to move on.
Sam took command. ‘Listen in. We still stand our ground. I’ll take Bateman’s gun. Let’s get on with it.’
I fantasized that maybe Standish was lying just over the lip, with his intestines hanging out like the boy’s. That would have been nice.
Silky was in the backblast channel of my trench.
‘Bateman’s dead.’
‘He’s not the only one.’ She looked away. ‘I’m afraid we couldn’t save the boy . . .’
All my energy drained out of me. I had to sit. I had to put my head in my hands and sort myself out.
The Chuckle Brothers looked up at me from the bottom of the trench. A bony finger pointed at me. ‘Mr Nick, Mr Nick.’
‘That’s right, mate. Mr Nick. This is Miss Silky. Back in a minute, yeah?’
I walked her back to the tent. Tim was on the floor with the other kid, washing the fragmentation wounds with water from the jerry-can. The boy was still breathing, but his eyes were glazed. My kid was now on the ground too, but covered with a blood-soaked blanket.
Tim glanced at me. ‘What are we going to do, Nick?’
‘There’s just three of us out there now. We’re still holding till first light; then we’ll go for it.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I heard two of them arguing about using the boys . . .’
We looked at the huddle in the middle of the tent.
‘I’m really torn, Nick. I don’t think we’ll make it out of here unless they help. I don’t want to die right now, or here, but if it happens, it might as well be while we’re all trying to do as much as possible to keep them alive . . .’
I nodded and left. What could I say?
Sam was behind his GPMG now, head strained forward as he tried to penetrate the darkness.
I called Crucial over from his fire trench. ‘Both of you, don’t say a word, just listen.’ I wiped the sweat from my face. ‘We’re in the shit. That’s OK with me. If we die, so what? It’s got to come sooner or later. The kid with the gunshot wound is dead, and unless we use these little fuckers on the RPGs, we’ll be condemning the rest of them as well.
‘We’ve got to win this, or we’re going nowhere. Having the kids on the launchers would give us the extra firepower we’re going to need. At the moment we’re just half cocked.
‘I know it’s the last thing you want to do, and I know they’re already traumatized, and will be even more so after this – but one thing’s certain. If we don’t use them, we’re dead, and so are they. So, let’s try to keep them alive, and worry about the consequences later . . .’
I waited for a reply.
‘That’s all I’m saying.’
I waited some more.
Nothing. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad sign.
Then, to my right, I heard a sniff, then another. Crucial was crying.
At last Sam sparked up, but it was Crucial, not me, he spoke to: ‘You’re going to have to drill and command them. You OK with that?’
Crucial jumped up and coughed some stuff from the back of his throat. ‘I’d better get on with it before I change my mind.’
He strode towards the tent, screaming and hollering like a Foreign Legion drill sergeant with his lungs full