The gun kicked up, as it always did. Calmly she brought the muzzle down, and re-sighted on the head. She saw that there was no need for a second shot – the man’s head was shattered – but she squeezed the trigger anyway, and her round smashed into a motionless body.
She heard Susan say: ‘Good shooting!’
Tamara thought: Was that me? Did I just kill a man?
The other jihadi appeared farther along the riverbank, running away with his rifle in his hand.
Tamara shifted her position so that she could see the high bridge, but there was no way to tell whether the shooters were still there. She could hear the sounds of trucks and cars continuing to pass. She noticed the throaty roar of a high-powered motorcycle: if there were only two shooters they might have fled on that.
Susan was thinking along the same lines. She spoke into her radio. ‘Before you deploy to the pedestrian bridge, check the road bridge in case any of the shooters are still there.’
Then she spoke to the soldiers under the green car. ‘Stay where you are while we find out whether they’ve all gone.’
Most of the commuters had now exited the pedestrian bridge on the far side. Tamara could see some of them clustered around a scatter of buildings and trees, peeping around corners, waiting to see what would happen next. The two border guards in their bright shirts appeared at that end of the bridge but hesitated to cross back.
Tamara began to think it might be over, but she was willing to lie here all day until she felt sure it was safe to move.
A US army ambulance came racing along the dirt road and pulled up behind the green car.
Susan shouted: ‘All guns take aim at the high-bridge parapet, now!’
The three soldiers who were still unhurt rolled from under their car and took cover behind other vehicles, aiming their rifles at the high bridge.
Two paramedics jumped out of the ambulance. ‘Under the green car!’ Susan yelled. ‘One man with gunshot wounds.’
No shots were fired.
The paramedics brought a stretcher.
Tamara stayed where she was. She watched the remaining jihadi running along the riverbank. He was almost out of sight and she guessed he was not coming back. The two border guards began to walk cautiously back across the bridge. They had their pistols out, too late. Tamara muttered: ‘Thanks for your help, guys.’
Susan’s radio squawked and Tamara heard a distorted voice say: ‘All clear on the road bridge, colonel.’
Tamara hesitated. Was she willing to bet her life on a fuzzy radio message?
Of course I am, she said to herself. I’m a professional.
She rolled out from under the car and got to her feet. She felt weak, and would have liked to sit down, but she didn’t want to look like a wimp in front of the soldiers. She leaned on the fender of the Peugeot for a moment, staring at the bullet holes. She knew that some rifle ammunition could smash all the way through a car. She had been lucky.
She remembered that she was an intelligence agent and she needed to glean any available information from this incident. She said to Susan: ‘Ask if there are any bodies on the high bridge.’
Susan put her radio to her mouth and asked the question.
‘No bodies, but some bloodstains.’
One or more wounded men had been driven away, Tamara concluded.
That left the one she had killed.
Determinedly, she stepped towards the pedestrian bridge. Her legs felt stronger. She walked up to the body. There was no doubt that the jihadi was dead: his head was a mess. She took his gun from his unresisting hands. It was short and surprisingly light, a bullpup rifle with a banana-clip magazine. There was a serial number on the left side of the barrel near the join with the frame. Tamara recognized the gun as having been made by Norinco, the China North Industries Group Corporation, a defence manufacturer owned by the Chinese government.
She pointed the gun at the ground, pulled the magazine release rearward and disengaged the banana clip, then opened the bolt and took out the chambered round. She put the banana clip and the single round into the pockets of her trucker jacket, then she carried the unloaded rifle back to her ruined car.
Susan saw her and said: ‘You carry that like it’s a dead dog.’
‘I just pulled out its teeth,’ said Tamara.
The paramedics were loading the stretcher into the ambulance. Tamara realized she had not even spoken to Pete. She hurried over.
Pete looked ominously still. She stopped and said: ‘Oh, Christ.’
Pete’s face was pale and his eyes stared upwards.
A paramedic said: ‘Sorry, miss.’
‘He asked me for a date once,’ Tamara said. She began to cry. ‘I told him he was too young.’ She wiped her face with her sleeve but the tears kept coming. ‘Oh, Pete,’ she said to his lifeless face. ‘I’m sorry.’