Free Murder Team by Chris Ryan Page B

right arm, he lobbed it toward the enemy targets. Alarmed shouts from the militants as he hunkered down and waited for the explosion.
    It didn’t come. The grenade was a dud.
    Danny cursed viciously under his breath. The militants were still shouting, but they had clearly realised the grenade wasn’t going to blow. A couple of loose rounds flew over Danny’s head. He gripped the Diemaco firmly, ready to swing round and open up.
    But something stopped him.
    It was a sound. Like a sudden, high-pitched wind, very fast, coming from the skies on the far side of the settlement. Air displacement. It lasted only a couple of seconds, but it was enough time for Danny to brace himself. The Israelis’ ordnance was finally arriving.
    The strike, when it came, seemed to move the whole earth. The Land Rover shifted several inches across the ground, and Danny’s bones seemed to shake within his body. The noise was so thunderous that, for a moment, he worried that he’d marked the target incorrectly and the strike had occurred much closer to the settlement than he wanted. For a few seconds the air lit up, as bright as day, hot and orange. And when the blast subsided, the heat was still there as a cloud of hot, sharp dust saturated the vicinity.
    Danny grabbed his moment. He stood up, assault rifle engaged, its butt pressed hard into his shoulder. He could tell at a glance that the nearby militants were in a state of confusion. Four of them had fallen to the ground. The other three were looking back toward the settlement in sudden anxiety, obviously unsure whether they were under attack. Danny went for these three first. With his weapon switched to semi-automatic, he discharged three quick-fire rounds. Each bullet hit his man square in the back – the broadest target area, and the easiest to hit. Before they’d even finished falling he’d turned to the four men on the ground. Another four rounds and they were down.
    Everything in this remote desert location was suddenly different. A thick, dense cloud hung above it. Dust was still drifting over from the far side of the settlement, and the sound of the debris against the chassis of the Land Rover was like a mess of white noise. There was panicked shouting coming from the settlement – screaming, even.
    Good. The Israelis didn’t know it, but they had just given Danny the mother of all diversions. Whether they’d hit the convoy was a different matter – the strike had been late, so Danny’s speed and distance calculation would be out. He had to assume that Abu Bakr and people were still alive.
    But so, he hoped, was Spud. With one arm he swiped the few shards of shattered windscreen glass from the driver’s seat,  jumped back behind the wheel and hit the throttle. Wind and dust slammed against his sweat-soaked face as he advanced at speed toward his objective.
     

13
     
    The earth shook underneath Spud’s feet. The dog, still chained up close to him, whimpered, then howled. The body of the butchered kid jolted on the ground. And the manacles that bound Spud’s wrists dug harshly into his wrists. The skin there felt damp – Spud knew he was probably bleeding from the contact – and the muscles in his arms shrieked from the unnatural stress position in which they’d positioned him.
    The noise of the nearby explosion was immense. Seconds later, the acrid smell of burning arrived at his nostrils. There were shouts of panic outside the hut, and the ugly barking of instructions. But Spud, the only living human still in the hut, felt a surge of hope. He didn’t know what the explosion was, or how close, or who had caused it. But he knew this: a strike of that magnitude was beyond the capabilities of the militants who were holding him captive at the moment. Which meant someone else know of their position. Eritrean authorities? A foreign power? Hell, could an SAS squadron even be on its way?
    He put that thought from his head. If the Regiment had arrived, the militants would be