State Of Honour

He checked behind a pile of bricks, and noticed the curved iron handrails of a fire escape on the rear wall about four metres away. He sprinted over, saw a man descending three-quarters of the way down, the Stinger strapped to his back. The ground-to-air weapon weighed a mere sixteen kilograms, but it could hit anything flying below four-thousand metres. The helicopter had been hovering at less than thirty and hadn’t stood a chance.

The fire escape was rusted and unstable, the steps grating against the concrete under the weight of the black-clad terrorist. But at least it reached all the way to the side road beneath, which was the reason the access door was locked, Tom guessed.

If the man had a handgun, Tom knew he would be ridiculously vulnerable. But if he used his SIG to shoot him from above, he wouldn’t be any further forward. Unless he just winged him, and the man didn’t die from the fall. Concluding that that was far too risky, Tom spoke into his mic and asked for back-up again, said that the area should be cordoned off. The short reply crackled over the radio: “With what?” He figured all the nearby local resources were still dealing with the devastation outside the hospital.

He eased over the ledge, his right foot hitting the third step. He saw the man look up, a tinted gas mask and woollen skullcap covering his face and head. The man half slid down the remainder of the steps, hitting the ground with a crunch of his boots. Tom hurtled after him, almost losing his balance twice, the fire escape threatening to bust loose from the wall and either swing under his weight or collapse backwards. Conscious that the man could escape, he placed his feet outside the steps. He plummeted the last five metres, crouching into a parachute roll at the bottom.

He heard a motorcycle engine and saw the man hobbling along, his left leg dragging behind him. He was heading towards a teenage boy sitting astride the bike. The boy, twisted around on the two-man saddle and wearing only thin white cotton and sandals, was calling out and beckoning with his hand. The man released the clip on the canvas bag, and the Stinger fell to the floor. In his condition, the dead weight was slowing him to a crawl.

The side street was narrow, bordered by open-fronted stores, a smattering of people running about or pointing at the flames and smoke rising above the buildings opposite. A motorcycle was undoubtedly the best option. Tom broke into a run behind the shooter, saw him cock his leg over the back of the motorcycle and grab the saddle bars. He realized he had to act decisively. He stopped, bent down onto one knee, his lungs heaving. He raised his SIG, steadying his aim with his left hand, the tear gas still forming a milky sheen on his eyes. The motorcycle sped away, the engine screeching like a kicked cat as the back tyre skidded and threw up dust and grit.

You got one shot, Tom thought. Make it your best.

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The SIG bucked and the spent case skipped out. Tom didn’t move. The motorcycle was doing maybe thirty when it lurched to the left at a ninety-degree angle, smashing into a stack of wooden cages full of chickens. The few people in the street ran for cover, the women pulling at their hijabs. Tom stood up just as the owner of the store stormed out, a rotund middle-aged man wearing a long white shirt. He dragged the boy up by his arm, and cuffed him over the head. But when he saw Tom running towards him, gun in hand, he rushed back into the store.

Tom pointed the SIG at the boy, gestured to him to stand still. The shooter was strewn on the ground, the motorcycle’s battered fuel tank lying on his right thigh. He lifted his gas mask, clearly struggling to breathe. Gasping, he held it out for a second before letting it drop back. Tom didn’t see his face, just the sunlight glinting off a gold necklace, half lost among the curling black hairs, damp with sweat. He was a tall man, Tom estimated, perhaps six-four, his limbs beneath his dark fatigues appearing well-muscled. But he wasn’t strapped.

Holstering his SIG, Tom bent over, about to jerk the man up, put an arm lock on him and half drag him back to … what? he thought. The Pakistani police would get him talking soon enough, but that kind of harsh treatment made a man say anything to save his ass. He thought briefly if he should get the CIA to pick him up and take him to a remote, classified detention centre. Maybe he should ask him some questions of his own.

Halfway down, Tom saw the boy, who looked about seventeen years old, pull out a handgun from his waistband. He pointed it at Tom, who recognized it as a Kel-Tec P11 semi-auto; a little over thirteen centimetres long, with rounded edges designed for concealment. But it was chambered in 9mm Lugar and could stop a gorilla in its tracks. They were rare in this part of the world, so Tom figured it was a gift from the kidnappers; an inducement, perhaps.

The boy shouted at him to step back. Tom straightened up, told the boy in Urdu to relax. The boy’s eyes were glazed, he noticed, his face unusually gaunt, the skin sallow and spot-ridden. There was something in those oyster-flesh eyes that told Tom the boy was both unstable and fearless.

The man managed to ease out from under the motorcycle and, grunting, struggled up. Tom stretched towards him, but the boy shot at the dirt between them and he stepped back. The man remained silent, turned and limped off. The boy smiled at Tom, his teeth stained a dull yellow. An opiate addict, Tom thought. He knew that, despite being a Muslim country, Pakistan was awash with drugs. The kid was high or coming down. Either way, he was capable of putting a bullet in his chest.

Tom offered him his watch and wallet. The boy just grinned. Seven metres, he thought, the takedown zone. The kid was less than two metres away, but the gun was pointing at Tom’s head now, and making a grab at it would be suicidal.

He watched the man slink into an alley and cursed himself. But even if he hadn’t holstered his SIG, he knew he wouldn’t have shot the boy. He’d joined the DS to protect people, and that meant he might have to kill. But not like this. Not a kid on drugs with no immediate and direct danger to his charge.

Tom said he should put the gun down, that he’d done his job and that he would vouch for him. Truth was, he needed him alive. With the man gone, he was a potential link to those who had abducted the secretary. Although he knew that meant probable brutality at the hands of the Pakistanis, there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

He could see that the boy was wavering, that, despite the drugs, he didn’t have it in him to kill a man without cause. He would wait. The boy would succumb to his prompting, and if he didn’t drop the weapon he would risk disarming him as he lowered it, just in case he changed his mind. He kept talking, his tone sober and sympathetic. The boy’s head began to bow, his eyes blinking frantically, his mouth forming words he couldn’t speak.

He’s going to drop it, Tom thought.

A shot rang out. The boy buckled. Instinctively, Tom reached out to him, but he knew he was dead as soon as he slumped to the ground. A fountain of blood had spurted out from his left temple as the round impacted. A split second later, another round pinged through the air just centimetres from Tom’s head. He drew his SIG, and, spinning around and ducking down, he heard rapid fire.

He saw Steve Coombs about six metres away, his gun raised towards the flat roof of an adjacent store. His face was creased, his body relaxed. He had both hands on his SIG and was leaning forward a little from the waist, as if he were on a range doing target practice. But the roof was empty.

Tom turned back around, holstering his SIG. He took off his jacket and, bending down, placed it over the kid’s upper body and head. He heard Steve come up behind him, sniffing and clearing his throat. Tom figured the unknown assassin had killed the boy to prevent him from talking. He glanced over his shoulder just as his friend jerked out the silver crucifix he always wore around his neck. Placing it to his lips, Steve kissed the crucified Christ.

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Linda lay face down in the rear footwell of a car that was now travelling at a sensible speed. She had a boot on her neck and another on her ankles. Her hands and feet had been secured with flex-cuffs. She was gagged with grey masking tape and a hessian sack had been placed over her head. The car radio blared out what sounded like a string of Pakistani pop songs. She hadn’t seen her captors’ faces. They hadn’t spoken. She’d travelled in the footwell before, after a nut had fired what turned out to be a starting pistol at her. An agent had covered her whole body with his and hadn’t let her up for what seemed like miles. This time it was different.

She felt sweat bead on her forehead, and dug a fingernail into her thumb to stop herself from weeping. She thought about her husband, John, and her two girls. She cursed herself for agreeing to visit the hospital and for not heeding the advice of the deputy director and Tom Dupree. But she still had the presence of mind to know that that wouldn’t help her now, so she did her best to concentrate on counting her breaths.

Two minutes later, she decided to survive by whatever means and fought to focus on something more positive to assuage her escalating fear. She told herself that her people would be looking for her, that roadblocks had been set up. They could follow her, after all, at US Air Force bases, via drones, or whatever else they had that even she didn’t know about.

Then she did her best to remember what Tom had told her about how to respond if she were ever kidnapped. Do not resist them, she thought. Act upon all reasonable instructions without complaint. Refrain from making retaliatory threats or unrealistic promises. Attempt to build up a rapport, but slowly to avoid it being considered contrived.

But then she began to waver again. For now she was in the hands of men with no humanity, who had snuffed out life as most people sprayed mosquitoes or swatted bugs.

She knew her see-saw emotions were reasonable in the circumstances. But she had to survive. For John. For her girls.

Oh, God, hear my prayer. Help me.

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An hour and a half later, after undergoing an initial debriefing at the temporary command centre, Tom showed his blue and gold DS badge to a cordon of harried-looking policemen dressed in light-khaki pants and maroon shirts, guarding the now-shattered glass doors that led to the hospital lobby. The flanks were occupied by a platoon of US Marines, some of whom were handing out water bottles and the contents of med kits to survivors.

A CIA paramilitary operative stood immediately inside. He held an M6A2 carbine, said he’d just arrived from the embassy with ten colleagues. Edging past him, Tom was hit by the shocking sight of the aftermath of the attack.

The injured lay on gurneys or on blankets on the floor. Every centimetre of the ground-floor corridors seemed to be a mass of writhing bodies, their moans and shrieks reverberating in his ears. At least twenty doctors, nurses and paramedics were doing what they could, although it was obvious that they were overwhelmed by both the number of casualties and the severity of their wounds.

Tom knew for sure that three of his protective detail had been killed in the attack; another two badly injured, he’d been told. Mark Jennings, the youngest agent, a veterinarian’s son from Arkansas, had been shot in the head. He’d been examined by a specialist who’d been flown in by an MH-53 search and rescue helicopter from Islamabad’s Maroof International Hospital.

Tom eased by a woman doctor, her latex gloves soaked in blood. Two orderlies were holding down a young boy as the doctor attempted to give him a shot of morphine. A woman with angular features, whom Tom took for his mother, was hysterical, shaking her hands at the ceiling and wailing. He pushed open a fire door, and took the stairs two at a time to the third floor.

A muscular man in his mid-twenties stood guard outside one of the private rooms. He wore a flak jacket over a short-sleeved shirt, and held a HK sub-machine gun before his chest. He turned as Tom entered the corridor, nodded briefly. Tom figured he was CIA, too.

The door’s glass pane was criss-crossed with wire, although Tom glimpsed a bed beside the far wall, a hastily boarded-up window above it. He strolled in, a closed-mouthed smile slicing across his face. It was all he could muster. The room was a dull white and smelt faintly of mould. But at least the AC was functioning, although it sounded like an antique generator.

As he walked over to the bed Tom saw half a dozen tubes coming out of Jennings, including an IV drip. He guessed the poor guy was lucky to be alive. When he reached him, he was lying flat with an expressionless face, a bloated dull-red-and-yellowish bruise on his left cheek like a piece of ripped plum. The top of his head had been bandaged, his hair shaved.

“Lyric?” he asked, as soon as he registered Tom’s face.

“She’s still missing.”

“Goddamnit!”

“Don’t worry. We’ll find her before the day is out,” Tom said, lying. There was no point in making Jennings feel worse than he already did.

“You think?”

“Sure.”

“Thank God.”

“You’ll be here for a few days,” Tom said. “Then we’ll get you home.”

“You gotta gum? I gave up the smokes five years since. I still get the urge, especially after getting shot in the head. And this pillow’s as lumpy as hell and smells like it’s had guinea pigs nesting in it.”

“I’ll be sure to get you a new one. What’s the diagnosis?” Tom asked, handing Jennings a stick of gum.

“The doc told me that the chances of surviving a head shot are about five per cent. And of those who live, only one in ten escapes suffering permanent disability. A bullet likes to rattle around in the skull, turning the brain into scrambled eggs, according to him. It’s a miracle, Tom, beating those odds. But they can’t operate. It’s too dangerous. Guess I’ll have to carry it around as a souvenir.”