Recoil

9

He’d been gone no more than five minutes when I heard the rattle of small-arms fire and the distant sound of two RPGs cracking off. Seconds later they smashed into the side of the house.

The pressure waves hurled me to the ground. My ears were still ringing as I staggered to my feet in a cloud of sand and mortar dust.

It was impossible to tell where they’d hit.

There was silence for the next two or three seconds while everyone came to their senses, then Davy screamed, ‘Man down! Man down!’ from above us.

I grabbed a torch and a bag of field dressings from the footwell of the wagon and ran back into the house. The dust was just settling. I flicked the beam round the room. The royal sisters, and what looked like four of the soldiers, lay motionless on the floor, their shattered limbs at crazy angles. The walls were splattered with blood. Margaret had a neat hole in her chest where the shaped charge from one of the grenades had punched its way through her, on its way to fucking up everyone else.

I barged through the confusion and screams. I was sweating big-time as I climbed the spiral staircase on to the roof.

Gary was lying on his back, his blood-drenched face pale and shiny in the moonlight. He wasn’t moving and his eyes were wide open. I leaned over him, knowing immediately that there was nothing I could do. He was totalled. A round had hit him in the throat and smashed its way out through his neck, taking the vertebrae and his spinal column with it. He must have dropped like liquid.

I caught a glimpse of Standish: he wasn’t trying too hard to conceal his delight at being the only one left alive.

‘What the fuck?’ Davy shoved him backwards. ‘You think that’s funny, yeah?’

Standish lost his smirk and his eyes blazed. ‘What do you think you’re doing? I’m in command here.’

Davy was about to give him the good news with his fist and size nines when Sam jumped between them. ‘Stop! Save it for that lot out there.’

A loud metallic scrape announced the opening of the main gates. The general screamed at the backs of his remaining soldiers as they legged it into the darkness.

I grabbed my AK and got into a fire position, aiming at the shadows as they melted into the darkness. If these guys were changing sides, they needed to be stopped now. I readied myself to shoot, but my blood-soaked hands slipped on the stock. ‘We dropping them?’

Standish sparked up from behind. His time had come. ‘Yes, do it. Take them.’

I might have been the new boy, but I knew who was now the real boss around here. ‘Sam?’

By now everybody had their weapon ready to go, and everybody waited.

Standish wasn’t impressed. I’d just been crossed off his Christmas-card list. ‘I’m giving an order. I want bodies out there. Get some rounds down!’

‘No – leave ’em.’ Sam took control. ‘We won’t get them all now, anyway. Hold fire.’

The last of the bodies disappeared into the darkness, heading towards the wagon lights that were scattered around the building, just out of our range, and the fires that flickered near them.

As Standish stomped off towards the stairs, a couple of shots cracked off here and there but they weren’t aimed at us or the mutineers. The rebels out there had probably chewed so much ghat, they were shooting each other to see if it hurt or not.