(2005) Rat Run by Gerald Seymour Page B

reached him. 'You all right, Baz?'
    'I'm all right - he isn't. Hear the feckin' ambulance? I slotted one.'
    'Where's the Rupert?'
    'I slotted him well, saw him go down, had an AK, confirmed kill - up ahead.'
    'He's not. Holy cow .. . jesus. Where's the Rupert?'
    'Definite, he wasn't hit. There was an incoming RPG, but way high - by the bread shop - but no small arms incoming. All the small arms was forward.'
    'So where the hell's the Rupert? All I bloody need.'
    'I'm not his bloody nanny. I wasn't pushing him in a goddam pram. I got a kill. He's not hurt, the Rupert, because there were no shots that could have hit him. I tell you what I got. I got a marksman and dropped him . .. How do I feckin' know where he is?'
    Baz heard the corporal on the radio, and the staccato response that the section should work their way back, use the route they'd taken. There was a shortage of manpower at HQ, but they were trying to put together a response, and at the end: For God's sake, how have you lost him?' They left the school and came back round the rear of the mosque, then along the narrow street they'd used to get clear of the ambush and on to the main route into the square. The ambulance came past them, the back door flapping open to show the feet on the stretcher. Baz caught a glimpse of the blood staining the robe. They checked doorways and alleys, behind and under cars. Then the lead Jock yelled out and crouched in a gutter beside a dropped helmet.
    A hundred yards on the flak jacket was lying in a heap of goat shit.
    When they saw him, he was on the embankment.
    He was shambling back towards Bravo's HQ and behind him was a gang of small children. The jeering laughter of the kids came back to them, and Baz saw that some, the boldest, ran to within a few yards of him and threw stones at him, trying to hit his bare head, but missed. And Baz saw the hands, hanging loose, not holding a personal weapon.
    He heard the corporal mutter, 'The idiot, he's lost his gat.'
    They ran to him, heaving for breath, and the feckin'sun beat down on them. Baz's mind worked hard, where he had been and what he had said. He would have died for his section, gone to his Maker for his platoon - not for an outsider. They reached him as a personnel carrier came in a dust storm from the gates of Bravo. He seemed to stare straight ahead and there was no recognition in his eyes for those who gathered round him, and no response to the corporal's repeated and ever more frantic questioning. Was he OK?

    What had happened to him? Where was his weapon? He just walked on.
    Baz took the moment. 'He couldn't feckin' hack it, Corporal. He ran. He dumped us and ran. He chucked his helmet and his jacket, and his gat. That's yellow, Corporal.
    He's a feckin' coward. Couldn't do the business. He legged it. Look, there's not a mark on him . . . A feckin' piece of wet shit - what he is, look at him, is a lurker or a skiver. A bloody coward, that's what he is.'
    If it had been the same van, still the green one, Muhammad Iyad would not have noticed it. They had eaten bread, salad and goat's cheese, and later he would pack, in good time for them to be ready to move as soon as the car pulled up at the street door.
    Before that he would sleep, so that for the journey through the night he would be alert, his senses sharpened by rest. It was not the same van.
    It was smaller, black-painted and newer. When he stood at the far side of the window, under the eaves of the building, he could just see the top of the no-parking sign covered with sacking held by twine. His mind turned on the problem . . . Kostecna, in the oldest part of the city, churned with traffic. It was forbidden to park on Kostecna. Permission might have been given for one vehicle, perhaps, to park while urgent work was done in a building. There was no sign of work. No artisans came with equipment to and from the van. Muhammad Iyad had a mind that bred suspicion. The position of the van was perfect: the view, except that it