Carver

33

They lay in bed, their bodies still slick and glowing, grinning in postcoital smugness. Alix felt as though she had been defined anew by the experience of being with Carver again. ‘This is who I am,’ she thought, ‘and where I’m meant to be.’ No one else had ever been able to make her feel this way. And yet the fear still gnawed at her that they had not been able to make their relationship last before: why should this time be any different? She should be wise, and get out now, and yet she could not help wanting him more than anything she had ever wanted in her life. Having him next to her only reminded her of the emptiness of her life without him.

She began to say something, trying to express how she felt, but then stopped herself.

‘What is it?’ Carver asked.

‘Oh… nothing,’ she said.

He looked at her again, and then kissed her face with infinite tenderness. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I know.’

They kissed again. He stroked her cheek, then ran his fingers through her hair. ‘I’ve got to go soon,’ he said.

‘More business?’ This time there was only understanding in her voice.

Carver gave a rueful grimace. ‘Afraid so… It’s nothing too serious. I have to go to some ridiculous anti-terrorism summit.’

‘Is this anything to do with that woman — the one you were asking me about?’

‘Not directly, but there is a connection.’

Alix propped herself up on one elbow, a serious look in her eyes. ‘What kind of connection?’

Carver wondered what he should tell her. He trusted her implicitly. Yet she was supposed to be living with one of Zorn’s investors. She might have divided loyalties. On the other hand, she might also know something about Zorn, something that would help unravel the mystery of the American’s true intentions.

‘She works for a guy called Ahmad Razzaq. He’s Malachi Zorn’s security chief, but it’s not clear where his real loyalties lie. There’s a lot that’s not clear about Zorn.’

‘I agree,’ she said, surprising him. ‘I assume you know I’ve been living with Dmytryk Azarov.’

‘Sure… but it really wasn’t any of my business-’

‘It’s OK, you don’t need to be defensive. That’s over, anyway. I don’t think I’d be here if it wasn’t.’

‘So what ended it?’

‘That’s what I was coming to. We argued about Zorn. And I agree with you. There’s something wrong about that guy. Did you know that none of his fancy offices have leases longer than three months?’

‘Maybe he’s worried his business won’t pan out?’

‘Ha! Have you met Malachi Zorn? That man isn’t worried about anything. Every cent he earned he got by backing his judgement against the world. So if he’s only got short leases-’

‘It’s because he’s not planning to stick around. He’s only renting his house here, too.’

Alix nodded, relieved that Carver had taken her point. His trust in her judgement was an affirmation of the bond between them.

‘You and me,’ he said, shaking his head in wonder as if reading her mind. And then again, ‘You and me.’

‘Mmm…’

‘You think it can work this time?’

She smiled, thrilled that he, too, was thinking about their future. ‘I don’t know, Sammy… maybe we can be smarter this time.’

‘You know I don’t let anyone call me Sammy.’

‘You let me.’

‘Yeah… I do… but then, you’re not just anyone, are you?’

He kissed her again, and then, before she could stop him, got up out of the bed.

‘I really do have to go,’ he said.

Waygal Valley, Afghanistan: two months earlier

Corporal Chico Morales, a section leader in C Company of the 502nd Infantry Regiment, did not claim to be any kind of expert on theology. But he knew one thing: if God had been on the side of the Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan, he would sure as shit have taught them to shoot straight. Since he’d begun his tour of duty in the Waygal Valley in eastern Afghanistan, Morales had lost count of the number of contacts with the enemy when the men of ‘the Deuce’, as the 502nd was known, had been outnumbered, outgunned and in serious danger of defeat. And in every case, the single biggest factor in his getting out alive had been the Afghans’ obsession with ‘spraying’n’praying’. They didn’t fight as coordinated units, concentrating their fire on specific targets. They just blasted away in every direction, each man for himself, and hoped to Allah that some of their bullets actually hit an enemy.

Even so, they could still make a damn nuisance of themselves. Give a handful of insurgents a bunch of AK-47s, throw in some rocket-propelled grenades or a. 50 calibre rifle, and give them a wall or a boulder to hide behind, or a gully to lie in, and they could, at the very least, pin you down for fifteen to twenty minutes.

Then the ‘Punisher’ arrived in Afghanistan. And that changed everything.

Punisher was the nickname that its first awestruck users had given to a device the US Army categorized as the XM-25 Individual Airburst Weapons System. Simply put, the XM-25 was a semi-automatic grenade launcher rifle. But that was like saying that, simply put, a Bugatti Veyron was a car. The truth was, the XM-25 was unlike any other hand-held weapon on earth. It simply removed the concept of cover from the battlefield. And as Morales and his buddies all agreed, it looked frigging cool while it did it, like some kind of mean, black sci-fi ray gun.

The way it worked was this: on top of the rifle there was what looked like a regular telescopic sight, but was actually a computerized fire-control system, accurate up to seven hundred metres. If the insurgents were hiding behind a wall, you just pointed the gun in that direction. The Punisher calculated precisely how far away the target was, and then transmitted that information down the barrel of the gun to a high-explosive 25 mm grenade. But of course, the wall wasn’t the actual target; the insurgents hiding behind it were. So you, the soldier, used a button by the trigger to add a metre or two to the range, and the grenade adjusted itself to that, too. Then you fired, aiming just above the wall, and the grenade shot away, went over the wall, and then exploded in the air behind it, blowing the enemy away. Use an armour-piercing round and you didn’t have to go over a wall or an enemy vehicle; you could go straight through it. Man, it was a beautiful thing to behold.

So far the Punisher was still in its field-trial phase of development. There hadn’t been more than a couple of dozen in the entire Afghanistan theatre of operations. But those guns had been game changers. There were four grenades in a Punisher’s magazine. Fire them all, and the fight just ended. Engagements that used to last twenty minutes were over in less than five. US casualties dropped to zero. Soldiers in the units that had been selected to test the XM-25 would beg to be allowed to use it, like kids fighting over a new toy. Today it was Morales’s turn and he hated to admit it, but damn he was excited.

Morales belonged to a platoon that had recently arrived at COP (Combat Outpost) Wanda, a brand-new installation near the village of Aranas. It was situated on a bluff, looking down the valley to the Waygal River. The only way in or out was by helicopter. All their supplies came in by air. The first day there, as Morales looked at the hills all around him, knowing that the insurgents were out there somewhere, just waiting to attack, he’d felt like he was living in a twenty-first-century version of Fort Apache. But today he had the Punisher. Today his motto was, ‘Bring it on.’

Morales woke shortly after 4.00 a.m. and took up his post at Observation Post Highpoint, a lookout a short way from the main body of the COP. Morales and the other men in his eight-man section had built Highpoint themselves. With their trenching tools they’d dug up what meagre quantities of dirt could be prised from the rocky terrain, and used them to fill, or in some cases part-fill, the collapsible steel and nylon HESCO containers that acted as their fortifications. The observation post’s location provided superb views across the Waygal Valley for miles around. But as Morales was about to discover, this long-range visibility came at a price. A ravine ran down the side of the hill and came within thirty metres of the HESCO barricades, passing so close that the HESCOs created a blind spot for the men behind them, who were unable to see down into the bottom of the ravine. Not that they were aware of that just yet.

Shortly after dawn, the observation post came under small-arms fire from an insurgent position behind an outcrop of boulders atop a ridge about three hundred metres away. This was no big deal. The insurgents always preferred to move at night and attack with the first light of day. Morales ordered his men to return suppressing fire. They didn’t have to take anyone out just yet. They just had to keep them in one place long enough for the Punisher to do its thing.

‘ Say hello to my leetle frien,’ Morales joked as he pressed the control that charged up the XM-25 and made it ready for use. Like his men, he had focused all his attention on the hostile position on the ridge. He had no idea that a dozen insurgents had made their way up the ravine during the night; not until the first grenade exploded inside the observation post, killing two of his men and wounding a third. Another grenade took out a fourth soldier. Morales himself was not targeted by the blasts. He and his remaining three troops were left for the Afghan fighters, inheritors of a guerrilla warfare tradition that dated back to the days of Alexander the Great and beyond, who scrambled over the HESCOs like pirates boarding a ship, armed with rifles, pistols and razor-sharp knives.

Morales had no means of protecting himself. The XM-25 was a fantastic weapon so long as its grenades exploded far enough away not to harm the soldier who had launched them. But at this kind of hand-to-hand range it was pointless: just a high-tech way of committing suicide. So Chico Morales never even fired a single round before he died, his throat sliced open by a curved steel blade. But in his last few seconds two thoughts crossed his mind. The first was that the insurgents had attacked in a way he’d never seen before: like trained professional soldiers. The second was that he could have sworn he heard someone shouting orders to them. And those orders had been given in English.

One of the insurgents stood over Morales’s body, even as the last few spurts of blood from his carotid artery were soaking into the earth around his corpse. He reached down and prised the XM-25 from Morales’s fingers.

‘ Cheers, mate,’ the insurgent said. ‘I’ll be having that.’