The Network - Jason Elliot [149]
I know I’m yelling for them to take cover, but I can’t seem to hear my own voice, and the whole of time seems to be stretching out again as if I can’t get things to happen fast enough. I dive to the ground along the parapet and cover my ears and head with my forearms and distinctly see Manny turn towards me. The whole turret seems to disappear in a burst of smoke and I feel a shower of debris as if I’m suddenly being pecked to death by a flock of crazed birds. When I look up, there’s a gaping space where the turret used to be.
I throw myself off the parapet onto the stairs and run down to the room into which Manny has fallen. The roof has absorbed the force of his fall and he’s struggling to his feet, dazed and gripping his head. Aref has been blown into the courtyard, and either the blast or the fall has killed him outright. His clothes have been partially stripped from his body by the blast, and I involuntarily register how white the skin of his chest seems in comparison to that of his face.
We have to leave. We are being killed and will soon be overrun. I help Manny to the car, then run to the missiles. It seems a lifetime since we were calmly examining them in the sunshine a few hours ago. I’m aware, as if a quiet matter-of-fact voice is telling me so, that it’s cooler and darker in the room. I take the grenade from my pocket. It’s a dark-green egg-shaped Soviet-made RGD-5. I unscrew the fuze, see that’s it’s a UZRGM and wonder if it really is the ten-second version, though it hardly matters now. There’s a strip of black tape still hanging from the detcord, so I use it to bind the detonator end to the cord, then look back into the courtyard to see where everybody is.
The doors to the G are all open. Manny’s already inside. Momen and the other Afghan guard are lifting Aref’s body into the back. Sher Del runs up, hauls the others in and pulls the door closed. A round from beyond the gates somehow finds the windscreen of the G and richochets from the armoured glass with a whizzing sound like a party firework.
I call to H to start the engine and briefly contemplate the stretch of open ground I have to cover in order to reach the G. Then I pull the safety ring on the grenade and release my grip on the fuse handle. It springs onto the ground. I run.
I can’t hear the engine because my ears are ringing so loudly, though it’s the first time I’m aware of it. I slam the door closed and see the rev counter leap as I test the accelerator. Sher Del grabs my shoulder from behind and I turn to him and it’s then I see that his earlobe has been shot away.
‘Besyaar khub jang mikonid!’ he says. A huge grin reaches across his face. ‘You fight really well!’
The empty pickup is in front of us with the brakes off, so that as it emerges it will roll to the edge of the flat ground and draw the enemy’s fire. They won’t know we aren’t in it, at first. And we’re glad we’re not, because as the G surges forward and pushes the pickup onto the open ground we see the rear window of the cab grow cloudy with bullet holes as the rounds tear into it, scattering fragments of its interior into the air.
Then as we gather speed I throw the G to the right, feeling the power of the engine surge as the pickup rolls away from us, and we circle under the foot of the turret, and suddenly it’s as if a team of people are hammering at the doors and windows with all their might. The windows emit a high-pitched crack but the rounds that hit the doors make a deep thud like stone into mud. The spare wheel on the rear door bursts with a violent hiss of air. Then as we climb the slope that leads to the track beyond the rear of the fort, the back window finally shatters and collapses inwards, torn from the frame of the car by repeated impacts. An AK-round thumps into the seat behind me like the blow of a sledgehammer