Masters of War by Chris Ryan

Author:Chris Ryan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781444741438
Publisher: Coronet Books
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The remainder of their journey was uneventful, but uncomfortable.

They moved the bloody corpses off the road. Taff pointed to some gorse bushes on the bank twenty metres back and they stashed them there, out of sight. They wouldn’t stay hidden for long – at the very least, wild animals and birds would start feeding on the flesh before long, and as soon as the sun warmed the corpses, the stench would be noticeable from thirty or more metres, depending on the heat and the direction of the wind. But by that time the convoy would be long gone. Buckingham watched them go about their gruesome work with a nauseous look on his face, though Danny noticed that he resolutely forced himself to witness what they were doing.

It was only once the road was clear, and all signs of the roadblock were gone, that Danny gave himself a few seconds to take in some more of his surroundings. The road, he estimated, was about a thousand feet above sea level. It overlooked a city which, Danny knew from his mental geography of the place, was Homs. As the crow flew, it was about twenty kilometres away, but the road itself wound down the hillside in a series of hairpin bends, so by car it was at least twice that distance, maybe three times. Homs glowed in the night, but it was not the intense, illuminated sprawl most cities resembled from the air. Vast areas of it – easily three-quarters – were in darkness. Clearly there were extensive power outages.

There were, however, other illuminations.

To the north of the city, Danny could see the orange glow of a fire. It looked tiny from up here, but that was a trick of the distance. Danny estimated that it covered at least an area of fifty metres by fifty. A lot of houses were burning down tonight. His eyes were drawn to five helicopters. Separated by height – although they were all a good 500 metres lower in altitude than Danny’s position – they circled the city with their spotlights cutting through the night, lighting up even its darkest corners.

And then there was the tracer fire.

Danny counted three bursts in twenty seconds. Four-to-one tracer, he reckoned, covering a distance of about 500 metres. He assumed the firing was from a heavy machine gun, directed by the tracer into a small pocket of the down without electricity. From this distance he couldn’t hear the noise of the weapon, and the tracer looked curiously like fireworks. He had no doubt, though, that down on the ground the effect was brutal.

Buckingham joined him. He was silent for a moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse. ‘Looks bloody grim down there,’ he said weakly.

‘Your choice, pal,’ Danny replied.

‘Was it necessary to kill all those people?’

Danny looked over to where Taff and Skinner were standing by the Land Rover that had carried them here. ‘Buckingham stays with me,’ he called out.

Skinner snorted dismissively. ‘In your fucking dreams,’ he said.

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