and he'd blow [Masoud's head apart.
And then a faint, rhythmic pulsing at the horizon I was suddenly everywhere around them and the scene [ was flooded with light.
'Drop your weapons,' came a disembodied voice. 'I |repeat: drop your weapons.'
Dead leaves and frost particles whirled in the police | helicopter's rotor-wash. Opposite Slater, Masoud slid to the ground and the Cherokee's driver, a young lAsian in a track suit who couldn't have been more than |eighteen, slowly raised his hands. There had been no m.
Releasing the hammer with his thumb, Slater ipped the Smith and Wesson to the frozen verge. Placed his hands on his head.
Waited.
41
TWO
The custody suite at Henley-on-Thames police station, Neil Slater mused, was not designed with comfort in mind. The bedding was thin, a drunk in the next cell had alternately howled and sobbed all night, and there was an all-pervasive smell of vomit overlaid with disinfectant. Slater had been tempted to sit up replaying the events of the evening in his mind, but had opted instead to try to sleep and clear his head.
The shakes had come soon after midnight, as Slater had known that they would, along with the fatigue and depression that invariably follows the adrenaline rush of violent action. He'd ridden them out as best he was able and had finally nodded off at about 2.30. His drift into unconsciousness had been eased by the certainty that his actions, given the circumstances, had been the correct ones.
In a counter-terrorist engagement, it had been drummed into him, you didn't leave wounded members of the opposition lying around where they could reach for a concealed grenade or detonator. If he'd had some armed assistance, perhaps the men's lives might have been spared. As it was, he'd had no
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Chris Ryan
choice.
For the terrorists themselves he felt not a gram of sympathy. They'd knifed Gary Ripley in the guts when he threatened to hold them up and they'd shot the unarmed security guards without a thought. Had ..they encountered Jean Burney and Christopher BoydFarquharson after kidnapping Masoud rather than | before, the nurse and the boy would probably be dead too. No, by the time Slater had reached them, the two , men had sacrificed any right to mercy or to any benefit r of the doubt, and they'd known it.
But there was still, Slater was well aware, a price to |be paid. A couple of hours' lost sleep was not going to Ibe the end of it. There would be the flashbacks and the pnood-swings that invariably follow a face-to-face Ikilling. Alcohol took the edge off the process, but giucked you up in other ways. And there was no one, |ever, that you could talk to about any of it.
Once, as a newly badged trooper, he'd gone into a |Wine bar in Hereford in search of others from his lintake. There had been a tight knot of NCOs standing {around the bar, and a staff sergeant had called him over, Istood him a bottle of Michelob, and introduced him to |the others. Among them was a corporal with con Mcuously long hair who had just returned from a tour duty in Belfast. The group had been welcoming, |*sking how he was settling in, but then an inoffensive Joking civilian in a windcheater had brushed past the pong-haired corporal, nudging the arm that held his 5ttled beer.
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The Hit List
The reaction was instantaneous. Grabbing the man by the lapels, the corporal had slammed him against the bar. 'Who the fuck do you think you're pushing around?' he'd whispered, his face an inch from the terrified civilian's. The others had pulled the corporal back, pinioning his arms, and Slater had seen that he was quivering with rage, his eyes narrowed and his teeth bared like a dog's.
The incident was swiftly over. While the senior NCO apologised profusely to the shaken civilian, the others calmed down the corporal. Two men were deputed to walk him back to Sterling Lines but the corporal shook them off, insisting that he was fine, that it had been a mistake, that there would be no more trouble.
He