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.
Chapter 9
I ROLLED ONTO my side again and hoisted myself up.
Stretching out my good arm, I pushed the revolver over the top of the wrecked Volvo and fired a shot in the general direction of the insurgent sniper.
For God’s sake, didn’t these people know the war was over?
An immediate hail of bullets rocked the Volvo. I was glad that whoever it was that had me locked in his sights wasn’t carrying a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher.
‘What in the name of holy Christ are you up to, Carter?’ my CO bellowed.
‘Anne, sir,’ I replied. ‘I saw her move.’
‘Shit!’
There was no response for a moment or two. ‘We can’t leave her here, sir.’
‘Yes, thank you, sergeant. He’s at ten o’clock to you, first-storey window, right-hand side. On three I am going to come out shooting. When I get to Sergeant Jones, cover me. One, two, three ?
??’
A quick succession of shots rang out as he burst from around the side of the shattered jeep, pistol held in both hands as he crabbed across towards the fallen sergeant. His shots peppering the wall and windows of the sniper’s building.
I groaned as I stood up, rested my arms on the roof of the Volvo and steadied my aim. Captain Smith reached Sergeant Jones, dropped his pistol and bent down to pick her up.
There was a movement in the window that I was aiming at and I squeezed the trigger. The shot was returned – I squeezed again three or four times and caught sight of some more movement. Had I hit him?
‘Clear,’ Captain Smith shouted behind me.
I was about to lower my gun when the sunlight glinted on the barrel of a weapon that had just appeared in the window again. It jerked upwards and I guessed the shooter was reloading.
Without thinking too much about it, I stumbled round the remains of the Volvo and limped as fast as I could towards the building, ignoring the shouts from my CO behind me.
Counting off in my mind the seconds it would take to reload whatever weapon the sniper had, 1 half-stumbled and fell over the entrance step into the building. I replaced the cartridge clip in my own pistol and held it steady, pointing up the staircase as I rose to one knee and then stood up.
I leaned against the wall, keeping the pistol as steady as I could manage with a wounded arm. A trickle of sweat ran from my forehead and into one eye. I dragged the sleeve of my shirt across my eyes again as quickly as I could.
The house, like most of this area on the outskirts of the city, had been hit by heavy mortar fire. The walls were smoke-damaged, any surviving furniture had long since been looted and the staircase in front of me tilted dangerously.
Moving forward, I kept the gun raised at shoulder level, double-gripped and straight out. I climbed each step slowly, aware of the unsteadiness of my left ankle but not conscious of pain any more.