Private London

Chapter 8

I felt as if I had been put in a sack and kicked around the locker room by the full linebacker defensive of the Miami Rangers.

I could feel the harsh sand clogging my nostrils, the flayed skin of my cheeks hot. My head throbbed like the worst hangover imaginable.

My eyes were screwed shut and I couldn’t bring myself to open them. I didn’t dare. I was terrified of what I might see. I could hear a low moaning sound like that of a whimpering animal and it took me a moment or two to realise that it was me who was making the noise.

I blew out a deep, ragged breath and finally opened my eyes.

The sunlight skewered them. Searing needles of pain stabbing into them. I closed them again till the pain receded.

I waited a few moments, breathing deeply, and then, shielding my eyes with my hand, I opened them again.

I was lying on my side by a burnt-out old Volvo estate that I remembered passing before the road bomb had exploded underneath us. I put my arm across my forehead to shield my eyes further from the blinding light. My whole body protested against the slightest movement. Nothing felt broken, though, as I rolled onto my hip and looked across the street.

Some fifteen feet away the hulk of our jeep was pouring thick black smoke into the blue sky like a distress signal being sent way too late.

Certainly far too late for the young driver. His right hand stretched towards me as though begging for help. His eyes lifeless as a fly crawled across his face.

Further out in the road lay Sergeant Jones. Only moments ago she had been celebrating the downfall of Saddam Hussein. Now she was as motionless as the toppled dictator’s statue. Her neck twisted at an impossible angle. Dead on the streets, killed by the same regime she herself had played a part in overthrowing. Dead before the new era she had wanted for the troubled country had even begun.

I dragged the back of my sleeve across my eyes and squinted into the sun again as I scanned back and forth around the jeep. There was no sign of my CO.

I levered myself clumsily up on one knee, wincing as the pain spiked through me again. My body was going to be black and blue with bruises, I guessed. But at least I was alive. Miraculously – I was still alive.

I took a breath and stood up. I regretted it immediately. Gasping in agony as my ankle gave way. I fell sideways – part instinct, part simply collapsing – at the same time as the shot rang out. A single sharp crack.

A fraction of a second later the bullet slapped into my left arm, hitting it just below the shoulder. Spinning me round and dropping me back to the ground like a tenpin nicked on a split.

I winced and clamped a hand to the wound. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Standard procedure to keep a man behind to pick off the loose pieces the bomb hadn’t dealt with, and to take pleasure in their explosive handiwork.

‘Keep down, Carter!’ shouted my CO from somewhere behind the ruined jeep. ‘The shooter’s in the building behind that Volvo,’ he added somewhat unnecessarily. I held my hand to my wounded arm – I already had that particular intel. I snapped open the holster on my belt and drew out my service revolver.

‘Just stay where you are,’ Richard Smith called out again. ‘He’s got you in his sights.’

‘Sir!’ I shouted back and craned my head up to see over the top of the vehicle.

Another bullet thudded heavily into the metal of the car and I dropped down to the ground again. Captain Smith fired a shot back at the sniper – he was in a covered position in a burnt-out shell of a house.

Always listen to your commanding officer – don’t think about it, just do what he says. Pretty much summed up what they’d drummed into us at boot camp before I’d specialised with the RMP. Stay where you are, he’d said. Certainly seemed like good advice just then.

Until Sergeant Anne Jones moved her head.