A Hostile State by Adrian Magson (reading eggs books txt) 📗

sound was alien, an intrusion that had no place here. There followed several seconds of silence, during which I guessed the shooter was cursing his clumsiness, freezing where he stood but desperate to move. His problem now was that he was probably exposed; he’d come out from where he’d been lying in wait and was standing out there somewhere trying to locate me. I couldn’t see him over the lip of the gulley, but sticking my head up was asking to get it blown off. I needed to get him to move again. But how?

Simple plays best. It always works in films, anyway. I grabbed a small rock and twisted my body enough to wind up and snap it down the slope and away to the side. It hit and bounced, disappearing from view, the sound carrying clearly in the warm air and sounding surprisingly to me like someone making a fast exit down the hill.

The shooter must have thought so, too.

The first shot was loud, and closer than I’d expected. Much closer. He must have followed me down the slope by chance, the sounds of his movements muffled by my ass-sliding progress across the ground to this gulley. Another shot followed, neither of them coming near me. He was tracking the sound of the rock’s progress down the slope. And he was nervous.

I drew in a deep breath and got to my knees and peered over the lip of the gulley. The guy was standing no more than thirty feet away, his head turning to follow the barrel of his gun as he tracked the direction of the rock. He was tall, dressed in a camo jacket and tan pants, and looked fit and capable. The weapon, an M16, and the way he held himself told me he was military or ex-military. It still didn’t tell me who he was and why he was trying to kill me, but it gave me an indication of what I was up against.

He must have heard me move. He froze for a split second, before trying to turn and react all in the same moment. It made conflicting demands on an already tense mind and body and slowed him down. Swinging a rifle barrel away from where you’ve convinced yourself there is a target and onto another one isn’t as simple as it looks. It involves a combination of several motor skills, requiring balance, speed and fluidity, and quickness of the eye. This guy was quick, but he was off-balance, one foot lower than the other, his body leaning back to counter the angle of the slope. He also wasn’t sure exactly where I was, only that I was somewhere close.

There was no time to say anything, no time to see if he had any kind of back-up, although I doubted that was the case, otherwise I’d have heard something. Shooters in pairs have to be able to communicate silently even if they’re in close line-of-sight. Even then it’s almost impossible to remain totally quiet in a hostile situation because each man is relying on knowing what the other is going to do, yet keyed up to ensure they don’t make a mistake that could be fatal to either of them.

I squeezed the trigger three times in quick succession. Accuracy at thirty feet with a pistol is a tough call, and although I’d had a test-firing session in the gun-dealer’s underground range before coming here, it hadn’t been sufficient to get to know how well the weapon would handle in a stress situation. But I got lucky.

The shooter stumbled, whether from a hit or not I couldn’t tell yet. I was already moving sideways away from his rifle barrel, lining him up for another three-round volley and making him work harder to pull it round. Then the barrel dropped. He looked confused and shook his head and his body seemed to shake. I clambered out of the gulley and gestured at him with the pistol to drop his weapon. He didn’t respond so I repeated the signal. Then he simply let go of the gun and sank to the ground.

I circled round to come at him from above. If he was still viable he’d find it tough to grab his rifle, locate me and shoot from a prone position. I could hear his breathing, which sounded hoarse and laboured, but I wasn’t taking anything for granted. Wounded humans are no different to wounded animals, and are often at their most unpredictable and dangerous.

His rifle had fallen to one side and I stepped over and nudged it away with my foot, watching his hands to check he wasn’t holding a stand-by weapon. The rifle looked surprisingly clean with a just trace of grease on the stock and no dents or dings from battlefield use. That didn’t mean he was a new army recruit but pointed towards it being a recent acquisition from God knew where. Maybe a Lebanese or Syrian armoury.

I wondered who he was. He looked local enough in colour and build, although he could have come from further afield. Maybe he was a hunter who’d caught a glimpse of me and mistaken me for something else. Or maybe he’d decided to upgrade his life’s experience and go man-hunting instead. Whatever he was and why he’d shot at me, he’d paid a serious price.

I squatted down beside him and moved his head until he was looking at me. His eyes were flickering and unfocussed and he was trembling with shock. I pulled his camo jacket open to expose his chest and saw he had blood seeping freely from a hole just below the throat. It bubbled and popped, which wasn’t a good sign.

I checked his pockets for ID and found a pack of cheap cigarettes and a plastic lighter, a few coins and some dried fruit wrapped in greaseproof paper. A hip holster beneath his jacket held a Browning Hi-Power nine millimetre, also clean and in good condition. I tossed that aside