Killing for the Company

He took it from the Egyptian, gripping it with both hands.

The shorter of the two men made a hissing sound between his teeth. ‘Fucking Gazans,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s soap for you to wash your mother’s filthy arse.’

The young man stood perfectly still. ‘My mother,’ he said, his quiet voice disguising a world of emotion, ‘is dead.’

The smaller Egyptian shone his torch directly in the face of the young man, who wanted to look away from the bright light but refused to. ‘Good,’ said the Egyptian. ‘One less for me to waste my spit on.’ And he spat a mouthful of saliva on to the young man’s left cheek.

The two Egyptians laughed; but they fell silent when they heard an ominous creaking sound. For a few seconds, all three men froze.

More creaking. Impossible to say where it came from. It sounded like the whole tunnel was groaning.

The young man held the box a bit tighter to his body. ‘If you knew what was in here,’ he said, his voice trembling slightly, ‘you wouldn’t stick around.’

He raised his torch to light up their faces.

All of a sudden they looked a little less sure of themselves. As they glanced at each other, they shot the young man a hateful look. Then they turned and hurried back down the tunnel. They were careful to be quiet now. He had the impression that they wanted to get away quickly.

Wise decision, he thought to himself.

The journey back along the tunnel was even more scary than before. In those places where he could stand, the young man held the wooden box tightly. When he had to crawl, he placed it on the floor and pushed it ahead of him. He had been told that the contents were not especially volatile, that they needed a special kind of detonator. He didn’t find that especially reassuring. It would only take a small mishap for him to be not only crushed, but burned.

Fifty metres to go. The tunnel creaked again. Again he froze, not knowing whether to keep moving so as to get out of there quickly, or to stay still and avoid disturbing the structures down here. But he knew he couldn’t remain immobile forever, so he started crawling once more, pushing the box along and muttering his constant prayers.

Minutes passed like hours. With, he estimated, twenty-five metres to go, he realised he was heading uphill. The end of the tunnel was close and he wanted to speed up, to get out as quickly as possible. But he tried to stay calm. To stay slow. Whatever was in the box would not become any less dangerous just because he was nearly on home soil.

He could hear voices now. And suddenly, perhaps fifteen metres ahead, he could see a light. He whispered a few words of profound thanks and finally allowed himself a little more speed. A minute later he was standing underneath a trapdoor in the cellar of the house, carefully passing the box up into an outstretched pair of hands. Once the box was dealt with, he allowed himself to be pulled up into the cellar.

It was tiny and cramped, with a low ceiling and barely enough room for the three others who were waiting for him.

‘How did it go?’ one of them asked.

The young man shrugged. ‘Fine. No problem.’

‘Any trouble with the Egyptians?’

‘Only when I told them their mothers were stinking whores.’

The others laughed.

‘You’ve done well. That little box…’ He pointed to where it was lying on the ground. ‘That little box has a big job to do.’

The young man looked at it. Down in the tunnel it had seemed huge and ungainly. Up here, it appeared much smaller. He had questions. He reached out and brushed his thumb over the ‘G’ on the box. ‘Where do we get this from?’ he asked. ‘Normally we have to make do with Mother of Satan. Who’s sending us this stuff?’

‘Ah,’ his comrade waved one hand in the air. ‘Who cares, so long as we have it. Come on. Shut the trapdoor. We have to get it out of here. There isn’t much time.’

The young man did as he was told. The trapdoor echoed slightly as it shut. He followed his friends as they left the cellar, then the house, and stashed the box of C4 plastic explosive among some blankets in the boot of a very old, very rusty car. They drove away from the separation barrier with Egypt and further north, into the young man’s tiny, war-torn homeland.

The convoy containing Stratton’s Merc, the police outriders and the Regiment’s Land Cruiser came to a halt.