Synopsis
The blue-on-blue attack is a commonplace mishap on the modern battlefield. It only takes the smallest miscalculation for troops to end up being bombed by their own side.
Mike Simmons was a career soldier, a high-flyer with Army Intelligence, seconded to Special Forces in Afghanistan. That career came to an end the day his unit encountered stronger than expected resistance and called for air support. They got a lot more of it than they wanted.
Invalided out of the service, Simmons offers his considerable skills to the private security sector. A shady outfit called Cerberus Security Systems takes him on. His remit is odd-job man, a general-purpose hireling. He goes where he is told to go and does what he is told to do. No questions asked.
This is the new Home Front in the Global War on Terror and the alert status is high. The leafy suburbs have become as deadly as anything Simmons has ever faced overseas. He is sent on the most ludicrous and vicious assignments, to seemingly nonsensical ends.
Then Simmons is ordered to liquidate a young Muslim extremist lately returned from Pakistan. Things are about to get very dirty indeed.
1.
The elder of the two men sitting in the back seat of the stolen Volkswagen Golf hatchback was an American called John Ryan. He was fifty-two years old and had the kind of complexion that some might describe as weather-beaten. His neatly clipped, jet-black hair had quite obviously been dyed, but he was otherwise as incongruous as any other middle-aged American travelling in Europe. Ryan s clothes were deliberately nondescript; khaki chinos, suede Hush Puppies and a check-patterned sports jacket with leather patches on the sleeves. Ryan always tried to dress in a style that was casual, but conventional. He would be the first to admit that he was probably a bit overdressed for the kind of business he was about tonight.
It was a dark, moonless night. At that late hour, on that lonely road in Leon province north of Madrid, they could reasonably expect to have the highway to themselves. In fact they had not seen any other traffic for at least the last twenty minutes.
Ryan sat on the right-hand side. Next to him was Hendrix, the South African explosives expert. Hendrix wore a long droopy mustache and had such bad breath that Ryan did his best not to give him any reason to start a conversation within the confines of the small car. That might have been more than his stomach could bear. Hendrix wore his hair shoulder-length, Ryan thought, in an attempt to hide his over-sized, permanently red ears. In Ryan’s opinion the effect was quite ridiculous. Still, there was some comfort in being in the company of such a man. Apart from always making their companions look better, funny-looking blokes tended to put people off their guard. When combined with his bad breath you had someone that no border guard was ever going to detain for very long without good reason.
Up front were the two young Basques, the driver and his girlfriend. They were local talent hired in just for this job. To Ryan they just looked like a couple of kids, not yet out of school. Ryan had been unhappy right from the start about the kid bringing along his girlfriend, because in his experience that kind of arrangement had a tendency to end badly. He had seen guys sold out and ending up as cold meat on a slab, just for looking at another woman the wrong way. Ryan had been outvoted on this one though. The girl was part of the package. Take it or leave it.
In the boot of the car, its weight forcing the chassis to ride low on its springs, was the 220 lb of industrial dynamite that Hendrix and his Basque helpers had lifted from a coal mine at Aviles in northern Spain a couple of weeks previously. In that respect too, Ryan was glad to have Hendrix sitting next to him. The guy had been around explosives all his adult life and Ryan knew he would not be there if there was any chance of it going off all of a sudden.
The driver gave a slight start, stiffening in his seat to adjust the rear-view mirror. Ryan had noticed it too and twisted around to check the source of the light behind them. He caught a whiff of Hendrix's sour breath as the South African turned to look as well. There was a pair of headlights about half a mile back. The lights vanished for a few seconds as the vehicle dropped into a dip in the road, then reappeared again, already visibly closer. The car was gaining on them fast.
"Policia," said the driver. "Guardia Civil."
"Are you sure?"
The words were hardly out of Ryan's mouth before he saw the blue lights start to flash. This was not supposed to happen. He speed-dialled Cunningham on his mobile.
"We've got cops on our tail."
"You sure?"
Ryan felt his blood pressure go up a notch. He took a breath and resisted the urge to shout and swear. Long experience had taught him that the key to getting out of these situations was to remain calm.
"I'm very sure," he said. The police car was close now, almost up to their bumper.
"What's the registration number of your car?" asked Cunningham.
"What's the registration number of this car?" Ryan relayed to his driver.
The kid read it back from the registration disc in the windshield.
"I'm on it,” said Cunningham. “Just sit tight."
He hung up.
“Just sit tight. Right.”
The driver was slowing now, acting like a good citizen should when a police car lights up behind him.
"Maybe he just wants to pass," the young driver said. “Maybe it’s not for us.”
"Yeah," said Ryan. "Maybe."
He reached down for the laptop bag at his feet and lifted it up onto his lap. He reached inside with both hands, closing them around the heavy Browning 9mm automatic. The soft double click of a weapon being cocked told him that Hendrix had done the same.
The police car drew past them, the cop riding shotgun giving them a long hard, unblinking stare. Then the police car cut across in front of them and braked. The Basque driver pulled off the road behind them.
For one long minute they waited. Nobody moved or spoke. Ryan could just make out the silhouettes of the two guardsmen in their headlights. They're checking us out, he thought, and calling for backup. He and Hendrix were trapped in the back of the three-door Volkswagen, so if they were to have any kind of a chance they needed to get out now.
If Oblomov had been here, he thought, those two cops could have been dead already. Just the same though, for all sorts of other reasons, Ryan was glad that Oblovmov wasn’t there. Call it professional rivalry, but he liked to handle these situations himself. They would just have to make the best of what they had, which was nothing new. Hendrix was the best there was with things that exploded, although maybe nothing special in a gunfight.
Ryan touched Hendrix on the shoulder, but before he could give the signal to move, the doors of the police car opened and both cops got out. The driver sauntered over towards their driver’s side while his buddy stayed back. He acted casual, but kept close to cover behind their car. His hand rested carelessly on his holstered pistol. The young Basque driver wound down his window and smiled with that ‘naughty-boy-caught-with-jam-on-his-fingers’ expression that cops always love to see.
Ryan caught a whiff of Hendrix's breath, so he knew which way the South African was facing, without having to look. He only gave a slight nod towards the approaching cop, indicating that he would be the one Hendrix should take down. That left Ryan free to worry about how to get to the other guy from inside a closed car.
The girl in front of him was slight, bordering on scrawny with a Body Mass Index that was probably in single figures. Ryan reckoned he could just release her seat, shove her up against the dashboard and use her as a human shield until he could get into a position to fire back.
The girl was so small that he did not expect she would slow a bullet down very much, but she would do to hide behind. He would just have to hope that a cop bullet didn’t go into the trunk. If it did then all that would remain as a monument to their heroic attempt to influence Spanish foreign policy would be a big black smoking crater in the middle of the road.
“Buenos noches, senor,” said the Basque.
By way of reply the cop thumbed on his torch and shone it in the driver’s face...
