Bad Soldier: Danny Black Thriller 4 (26 page)

Fifteen seconds later, the group of men split up. Danny could tell now that there were eight of them. Three disappeared out of sight beyond the Hilux. They were obviously going to comb the riverbank in that direction.

Two stayed by the Hilux. The remaining three were heading the unit’s way.

Each man had a torch fitted to their rifle. They moved slowly and carefully, scanning the area ahead of them, paying particular attention to the reed beds. Distance: fifty metres, and closing.

‘Do we engage them?’ Spud hissed.

Danny paused. A firefight was the last thing they wanted. It put them at risk, and a noise could alert other people to their presence. Much better to stay hidden here in the tall reeds if possible.

But that might
not
be possible. The three armed men were doing a thorough job. If they got too close, the unit might not have any alternative. Sometimes, the only option was to shoot first.

And they were now only forty metres away.

Thirty.

They were walking in a flat line, about three metres apart. Danny directed his sights to the guy on his right. He knew, without having to ask, that as Spud was on his left, he’d have the guy on the left lined up.

‘Hold your fire,’ Danny breathed.

There was a sudden surge of more powerful rain. The three guys looked up, and for a hopeful moment Danny thought it would make them retreat. It didn’t. They just started moving more quickly, as if they wanted to get the job done sooner.

Twenty metres.

What if these were the Kurds? Danny cursed himself for not thinking of that before. He spoke very quietly into his radio. ‘Caitlin, do you copy?’

‘
Roger that.
’

‘Can Naza identify them?’

A pause. Then Caitlin said: ‘
Negative. She says they’re not our contacts.
’

That was all Danny needed to know.

Fifteen metres.

He squinted suddenly. One of the torch beams had shone directly into his sight, dazzling him. When he regained his vision a few seconds later, he knew immediately that something was wrong. The three men had stopped, and one of them was shining his torch directly at Spud. Even if he couldn’t see Spud himself, he had surely noticed the impression he was making on the reed bed.

Which meant there was only one call to make.

‘Take the shot,’ Danny said.

Chances were that the two guys on either side of the trio never even knew what happened. Danny and Spud fired at exactly the same moment – the two reports of their weapons sounded like one – and the rounds found their targets in the men’s chests with deadly, unswerving accuracy. They collapsed immediately, but Danny had already turned his attention to the third man. At the sound of the weapons, he had dropped to the ground, so quickly that Danny had insufficient time to engage him. Alarm bells rang immediately – whoever this was, his reflexes were instant and he wasn’t panicking. This was not some IS shitkicker. This was a pro.

It wouldn’t save him though. Danny and Spud both knew where he had fallen. Danny altered the trajectory of his weapon just a few degrees. He clicked the safety switch to semi-automatic. Then he fired a substantial burst of rounds towards where the target lay. Spud did the same. The resulting thunder of gunfire lasted only a few seconds, but it was deafening. There was no doubt that it could be heard from a substantial distance. The other gunmen – whose vehicle was by the blazing Hilux, 150 metres away – now surely knew they were there.

As their weapons fell silent, Danny heard screaming from the guy they’d just hit. It didn’t last long, fading seconds later into a long, gurgling sigh. Danny’s attention was already elsewhere. Five enemy remaining. Well trained, well armed. He could see, through his sights, the silhouettes of the other three men running back up to their vehicle next to the burning Hilux. For a split second, he considered trying to take one of them out, but he knew it was a risky shot, and there was a chance of giving away their position, if they hadn’t already done so.

And then the moment was gone. Their enemy had taken cover behind their vehicle.

‘These are trained soldiers.’ Spud confirmed Danny’s intuition. There was a tense edge to his voice. ‘They had white skin. Not Iraqi or Turkish. Who the hell are they?’

Danny didn’t have an answer. Just more questions. ‘And why did they booby-trap the border crossing?’ But they couldn’t waste time figuring these things out. They were still in the heart of a firefight. ‘We need to keep our positions,’ he said. ‘If we show ourselves, they’ll be on to—’

He didn’t finish. There was a sudden burst of automatic fire from the direction of the vehicle: a dull, clunking heavy sound that told Danny this was more than an assault rifle. More like a machine gun. Rounds whizzed over their heads, and exploded on the riverbank all around them. As the ammunition flew, and just before he pressed his body hard into the ground to protect himself from the incoming, he caught sight of two figures heading towards them in a pincer movement, protected by the covering fire.

And then, from the vehicle, another burst of movement.

One of the armed personnel had pulled down the rear panel of the Hilux. Something smaller than a human, and much faster, darted out.

‘
Attack dog!
’ Danny shouted.

The dog was unbelievably quick. It shot towards them, barely visible through the reeds, eating up the 150 metres between them so speedily that it was simply impossible for Danny to track it through the sight of his rifle. With his naked eye, he saw it cross the open ground in seconds and hurtle between the two approaching armed personnel, and when there was a momentary lull in the covering fire, he heard the animal bark twice.

Danny was a dog man. He could hear the aggression in that bark.

He lost sight of the animal, but knew it was less than fifty metres away. He grabbed the handgun holstered in his ops waistcoat as he said into his radio: ‘Put the dog down if you can . . .’

The covering fire started up again. The pincer movement guys continued advancing.

‘
Where the hell is it?
’ Spud hissed.

Another bark. Somehow, the dog was to their left. ‘Caitlin!’ he shouted. ‘It’s going for you and Naza! Put it down! Put it down!’

Seconds later, his warning was met by a scream. Naza.

Danny rolled on to his back so he could see what was happening behind him. Caitlin and Naza were lying on their fronts ten metres away. Just as he turned, Danny saw the dog hit hard and fast. As it leapt through the reeds towards them, he immediately identified the dog as a Malinois. Lean. Hungry. Like a skinny Alsatian, it was all bones and muscle. It was going for Naza, leaping through the air in a perfect trajectory towards the girl.

Caitlin’s reaction was instinctive and lightning-fast. She hurled herself towards Naza, covering the girl’s body with her own to protect her. A fraction of a second later the dog thumped against Caitlin, landing directly on her back.

Naza screamed. Caitlin squirmed and tried to roll over, but the dog instantly clamped its jaws into Caitlin’s upper arm and started shaking its head violently.

The pain had to be bad, because the screams that followed didn’t come from Naza but from Caitlin, who was tussling and rolling with the dog. There was an aggressive, low growling and snarling. Danny aimed his handgun in their direction, trying to line it up with the dog. But it was impossible. The movement was too fierce and frenzied. He risked shooting Caitlin instead.

Suddenly there were three muffled gunshots. The attack dog whimpered momentarily, then fell away from Caitlin. She’d obviously managed to get some rounds into the Malinois’s guts to put it down, but even from this distance Danny could hear her heavy breathing, stuttering and painful, and small, terrified whimpers from Naza. He could tell the girl was frightened but unhurt. The same was not true of Caitlin. An attack dog like that could easily kill a man. Caitlin could be in a very bad way—

‘Danny!’ Spud’s voice was tense. Danny rolled over to his front again. The attack dog was dead, but it had done its job of identifying their position. The enemy personnel knew where they were now. Danny surveyed the open ground between them and the vehicle. The two advancing men had gone to ground. Danny did not doubt that they had their position in their sights. If the unit tried to move, they were dead.

More gunfire, low across the reeds. Assault rifles – 7.62s. It came from the two advancing men. They were covering the remaining three men, enabling them to move forward from the vehicle.
Jesus.
These fuckers were really after them. Danny suppressed a surge of panic in his gut. They were truly pinned down, by professional guys with excellent combat skills. It wouldn’t surprise him if these were special forces soldiers. In a corner of his brain he started cursing himself for going with Rojan’s plan. But he quickly cut off that line of thought. He needed to focus entirely on the present.

Which wasn’t looking good.

Silence.

Time seemed to slow down. He heard Spud hiss: ‘Frag?’ He had only half a second to consider whether a grenade would be a good idea – there was a good chance it would wound one of the men, but again the movement involved in throwing it might give away their
exact
position – before the enemy gunfire started up again. Short, coughing barks of automatic fire that told Danny without even having to look that the enemy were advancing again.

He tried to evaluate their options. Should they get back into the river, allow the current to pull them downstream? No. Caitlin was wounded. They’d be dead the moment they emerged from the reeds. There was nowhere else they could take cover here. It meant their only option was to engage the shooters. But that meant three against five, with no cover . . .

The gunfire fell silent again. Danny estimated that the five targets were twenty-five metres away. They had to do something. He slowly felt in his ops waistcoat for a fragmentation grenade. They’d run out of options. ‘Frags on three,’ he whispered to Spud. ‘Ready?’

‘Ready.’

‘One . . . Two . . .’

The enemy fire started up again. Deafening. At least two weapons, their rounds falling even closer . . .

Danny was about to shout ‘three’ and pull the pin on his frag when something stopped him. A new burst of gunfire. Heavy weaponry – at least a fifty-cal, by the sound of it – from a distance of maybe 100 metres. It completely dominated the relatively puny bark of the enemies’ rifles, and it chugged on, relentlessly – ten seconds, fifteen seconds – before stopping as suddenly as it had begun.

When it finished, it was replaced by the sound of agonised screams. Three voices, maybe four. The unmistakeable shrieks of men who would be dead in a matter of seconds.

Danny was breathing heavily, his heart pumping fast. He looked gingerly through the sights of his rifle. Perched on the horizon, 100 metres to his eleven o’clock, just beyond the gap in the border fence, was a second pickup truck, much like the Hilux that was now no longer even smouldering. And like the Hilux it had, mounted on the back, a fifty-cal machine gun, pointing directly at them.

The pickup started moving towards them, trundling slowly. The screaming had stopped. That didn’t mean all the enemy targets were dead, but they were severely weakened. ‘Everyone stay down,’ Danny hissed into his radio. He could see that the fifty-cal was manned by a single gunner, and while he had his suspicions about who these people were, he sure as hell didn’t want them to make a mistake and start firing on the unit.

Twenty seconds passed. For the first time in what seemed like hours, the rain suddenly subsided a little. Danny could hear the low growl of the pickup’s engine now. He found himself holding his breath as the vehicle drew closer. It stopped about thirty metres away. A voice called out. Male. Harsh. Danny didn’t understand it.

A pause. Then Caitlin’s voice came across his radio earpiece. Strained. Tense with pain. But audible. ‘
The girl says it’s the Kurds. They’re telling anyone in the vicinity to show themselves with their hands in the air, or they’ll fire again.
’

Danny hesitated. This went against every instinct he had. They would be putting themselves at the mercy of people they didn’t know, who had substantial firepower.

But they couldn’t fight back, and if these were the Kurds they were supposed to be meeting, they didn’t even want to.

‘Get Naza to shout back. Tell them she’s with three others, one female, two male. If we see any potential threats apart from her friends, we’re going to fire on them.’

A pause. Then Naza’s panicked voice drifted over the reeds towards the pickup. The male Kurdish voice barked again.

‘
He says OK
,’ Caitlin translated. ‘
He recognises Naza’s voice.
’

Danny loosened his pistol in its holster. ‘On three,’ he said. ‘One, two, three . . .’

He pushed himself up from the ground, one hand above his head, the other slightly lower – closer to his pistol – carefully scanning the ground between himself and the pickup.

He saw it immediately – movement in the reeds fifteen metres from his position. He went for his pistol, but Spud, three metres to Danny’s left, was already there, pumping three rounds directly into the enemy target’s body. The movement stopped.