Exit wound

Tattoo was in mid-bend. As he picked up a tray, his heavily inked biceps slid out of his short-sleeved white shirt. He stood with his back to the window, treating me to a grandstand view of the artwork on his neck as he talked in the direction of the dead ground on the other side of the room. His body language was respectful. He was almost standing to attention, tray held out in front of him. He nodded, turned and disappeared.

Whoever was also in there would move at some stage. I didn’t know if I’d get a picture from here in this light but, fuck it, I’d try. Why not? I had the kit.

As I straightened up with the Nikon, I spotted another freshly cleared patch of window, directly under mine. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before.

I put the camera down slowly on the day-sack and stood up, my full attention still on the window. Then I turned and launched myself into the dead ground behind the building shit on the other side of the room.

83

The shadowy figure shifted on its hands and knees, trying to scuttle for cover. I kicked hard into the centre of the mass. There was a dull scream. The figure surged towards me, arms straight out like battering rams, and thrust me back against the wall. Then it kicked and punched like a mad thing before breaking away and running for the stairs.

I followed and jabbed my Timberland against a running leg. The body crashed to the floor. There was a moan, and hands started to flail. I pinned an arm to the ground with one foot then kicked hard with the other, two, three times into the centre mass, then reached down and found the back of a neck. I jammed my hand around a throat, squeezing the windpipe, and rammed the head against the concrete blocks. Fingers scrabbled their way upwards and gripped my wrist. I heard lungs fighting for air. I ran my free hand down the body for a weapon and brushed against a woman’s breast.

Keeping a firm grip on the girl’s throat, I shifted my free hand to the base of her skull, raised both my arms and started to lift her back across the chamber. She was level with me, but facing away. All she could do was stumble backwards, trying to keep up with me, trying to keep on tiptoe to minimize the pressure on her throat.

I reached my porthole and jammed her face against the wall to its right. I still had a job to do. I still had to keep trigger on the target.

Nothing was happening. Light but no movement.

I scanned down, trying to see into the kitchen. Again, nothing.

Then I turned my attention back to the girl. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

Her blonde hair hung limply over her face as she begged for oxygen. She didn’t look too much like Agnetha from Abba right now.

84

The call to prayer kicked off big-time in the mega-mosque over the way. I checked the drivers, hoping that Ronaldo and his mates would have covered any noise that might have worked its way down there. But they were otherwise engaged. The TV had been turned off and they were shifting their blankets to face east.

I kept my hand tight around her windpipe.

I couldn’t see her face clearly in the gloom but I knew it would be bright red by now. She’d be dizzy soon from lack of oxygen and that was good. It would control her.

I looked back towards the target. A man had begun to pray below the fan. He was on his knees, pointing in the same direction as the truckers. His forehead was pressed against the floor.

Agnetha’s hands worked their way up to my wrist again, but she didn’t struggle. She couldn’t: she was starting to die.

I let go of her throat, pushed her to the floor and kicked her up against the wall. She gave a gut-wrenching gasp. ‘Get your face down! Face down!’ I stuck my boot on the back of her neck. She could breathe, but she wasn’t going anywhere fast. I picked up the camera and fired it up, checked the flash wasn’t on, pointed and shot. I clicked the shutter three times in quick succession and checked the screen. All I’d got was a burst of light from the window that turned everything around it dark.

There was a choke and a mumble from under my boot. ‘There’s not enough light… I’ve already tried…’

I rotated the ball of my foot, like I was stubbing out a cigarette. ‘Shut it!’

A sermon of some kind was being banged out over the speakers at the top of the uni mosque. Using my camera zoom, I watched the body beneath the fan continue to pray. He was in his early thirties with neatly cut, side-parted hair and a well-trimmed beard, and dressed in a plain dark suit, white buttoned-up shirt, no collar. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a Bollywood movie poster.

I put the camera down on my day-sack and grabbed a serious handful of hair. ‘Get up! Up!’ I needed her to know who was in control here. That way she had no choice, no power, no voice. I slid her up the wall, my knee pressed between her shoulder-blades, until her face was level with the bit of window she’d cleaned. I rammed her face against the glass. ‘Can you see him? Who is he?’

‘Taliban,’ she rasped.

‘He got a name?’