Carter's Recourse - 16. Chapter 16

Will wasn't in the mood for them, and the dark look on his face as he walked purposefully through the crowd, fixing anyone that got in his way with a withering look, intimidated them into backing out of his way as he continued to walk down Elgin street.

It was sometime in the early afternoon; Will could have looked at his watch if he really had been bothered to find out the time. There was just too much weighing down on his mind, worry and regret.

The reporters peeled off when they realized he wasn't about to give them anything and returned to their vigil on the police station leaving him to rationalize why he had reacted to the situation he was in. It had been a reaction so characteristic of his father. The blind rage, the cold emotionless demands, and that bothered Will. His father had always been so cold, a hard man who had treated everyone like they were a part of his own personal army.

"Carter." West's voice made Will turn his head as Captain Harding jogged up beside him. The young soldier smiled tightly as he squinted about him, his eyes sweeping the rooftops, as he settled in to walk with the MP.

"Captain," Will inclined his head formally, continuing to walk down the road, the passers-by sparing an odd glance to the strangely dressed soldier before they kept on their way.

"West," Harding replied, matching Will's steps. He squinted around him at the warm Saturday afternoon in the Canadian capital.

"West, then," Will returned, as they walked. "I should thank you for all your help."

"Don't," West said, shaking his head causing the cord of the boonie hat to bounce from side to side. "Peter means a lot to me, and I'm just paying back a debt."

Will sighed heavily, "So you mentioned the last time we talked; you didn't get to how you owed my father this debt." He looked at those haunted dark eyes that avoided looking back at him.

Harding was obviously uncomfortable; he licked dry lips and spared a brief glance to the man that he had tracked halfway around the world, "It was in Basra..."

Will looked at the British officer, setting his jaw. "Come on," he said firmly, throwing open the door to a bar about halfway down the road. He found a quiet table and ordered a couple of pints, sitting across from Harding and gesturing, "You have my undivided attention..." It was a lie and they both knew it; Will's mind was in a hundred different places, but it was the best he could do, time didn't allow more.

Harding tasted the lager, aware that he had to be breaking regulations by drinking in uniform, but since his luggage still hadn't arrived from its own extended vacation he had little choice.

"I..." Once he had the chance, he again faltered, looking for a way to explain it all that did it some level of justice. He scrubbed his face with his hand and looked up at the ceiling and decided to just get to the point.

* * *

Deployment had sent the mobile recon element to Kuwait, ready for the long push through Umm Qasr and up to the primary British target, Basra.

Basra was a city born out of war; founded in the seventh Centaury as a military stronghold, the city served as a strategic sentinel over the Shatt el Arab waterway until its destruction by Mongol invaders in the fourteenth centaury. Shattered and broken, the people had crawled from the ashes to rebuild, moving the city up the waterway and expanded into a modern port city. It suffered again at the hands of the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war in the mid-eighties, and again the city was hammered in the first Gulf War. Both times the center of commerce was rebuilt again. It's people true survivors.

Ten years later Basra burned.

The opening days of the war hadn't progressed as well as the politicians sending their troops out to die had hoped. The Iraqis had learned the lessons of the first Gulf war well, discipline was stronger and they gave fierce opposition to the invasion from small pockets of resistance. The propaganda had promised Iraqi soldiers surrendering by the droves, that lie was quickly proven false to the troops in the field.

West had heard the news reports, how the war was going exactly as planned, everything was going well. However anyone on the ground could tell that it wasn't. They'd trained against specific tactics, expecting to be treated as liberators. They were received instead by suspicious locals and well-trained soldiers.

Basra had been steadily bombed over the two weeks of conflict for the city. The British expeditionary force had limited control of the city. The urban areas were plagued by water and power shortages, looting and rebellion were everywhere and the British found themselves in control of a city that teetered on the edge of rising up against them.

The British commanders weren't about to forget lessons learned in Belfast. And Lieutenant Harding had heard some of the men whispering about Colonel Carter, the company commander. He'd served in Northern Ireland, experienced first hand an occupation, and the rumours were strong that he wasn't about to tolerate any nonsense from the locals. It was good for morale and the Colonel played up on it, West recognized that; the man was in control and showed it, directing his mobile patrols to ensure the oil refineries he was responsible for protecting remained safe.

The sun was almost unbearable, heat sending a trickle of sweat down the lieutenant's neck as he sat in the passenger seat of the armoured Land Rover as it toured through the streets. The SA-80 assault rifle was balanced across his lap, ready for anything. There were still scattered elements of the Iraqi army in the city ready to take a pot shot at a roving British patrol that was unaware of their presence. And of course there was always the threat of suicide bombers; droves of them had flocked to Iraq during the war, eager for a chance to kill some corrupt westerners.

He was riding with the sergeant; the grim man had weathered the past few weeks of war without complaint. On the contrary, if the man could smile, he would have. The chaos of conflict was addictive; it allowed men freedom from the sterile life of civilization, to embrace a baser set of instincts. West had come to know his men, he knew there were some born to do the job they did, there were others that did not belong in uniform, and still others, like the Colonel that the uniform suited all too well.

He gripped the rifle tightly as he tried with the other hand to get the Kevlar helmet to sit properly on his head. The equipment was bulky, but it was designed to save his life. He could tolerate the discomfort of sweating profusely from every pore in his body if it meant he didn't have to have a bullet through it.

It was a ping, a simple sound that reminded West of a small stone being tossed into an empty metal bucket. Nothing that really seemed all that threatening, at least not to his ears. He stared at the hole in the bonnet of the Land Rover and wondered at it, what the hell?

The Sergeant wasn't so inexperienced, cutting the wheel of the Rover so that they swerved he began to yell at the soldier manning the rear fifty caliber. There was the distinctive sound of the heavy weapon being cocked before the repeated pounding of machine gun fire cut a swathe of death across the windows of a squat two-story building across the street from them.

The sarge was out of his seat as well, his SA-80 lending cover fire to the machine gunner as he tried to find the sniper.

In his seat, West reached out a hand to touch the bullet hole, still shocked at it.

"Sir!" the Sarge bellowed, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him out of his seat to use the Rover for cover.

The second bullet tore the stuffing out of the seat seconds after the surprised lieutenant was out of it.

West's instincts kicked in at that moment; scanning the building for sign of the sniper he caught sight of the glint of sunlight reflecting off of something. He gestured to the sarge, who craned his head upwards and gestured to the machine gunner who reduced the façade of the window to rubble as he squeezed off a belt of ammunition.

As the shooting abated, West carefully peered his head out again, checking the street that was now blessedly empty of people for any sign of further shooters. He counted and stood up slowly, keeping his rifle ready. The sarge was already up and assessing the damage to the Rover.

"We can't stay here," West said, coming around to look at where the sarge was squinting.

"On that we agree at least," the sarge replied, glaring at the officer, "sir," he threw in for good measure.

West lifted the radio and called in the incident noting that the sarge had the bonnet of the car open now and was grunting in dismay. The sarge came around the front of the vehicle, slamming the bonnet closed and shaking his head.

"Fucking lucky shot," he commented angrily. "Clipped the god dammed battery, leaking like a sieve all over the insides of the engine."

West looked up at the darkening sky and the lengthening shadows; it was somewhere in the early evening, and he didn't like the idea of them being stranded out in the street at night. He reported their condition in as well as he rested an arm on the side of the Rover.

All this way, all to wind up the victims of one lone gunman's lucky shot. It was aggravating. He stood and waited for the radio operator back at headquarters to give him his orders. Around them people were beginning to poke their heads out of the holes they had found once the shooting had began. At first it was just the men, staring in wonder at the British Land Rover and the soldiers standing around it. Soon after the women and children began to come out, standing and staring at them.

The arrival of the second British Land Rover took them all by surprise as they cleared the way for the vehicle to pull up, the Colonel himself stepping out of it to inspect the damage done to Harding's.

West delivered his report again, handing the radio over to the sergeant as he walked around to the front of the Land Rover and showed the Colonel the damage. Colonel Carter surveyed the scene with a critical eye, staring up at the shattered windows where the sniper's nest had been.

"Sergeant, take a man with you and confirm the bastard's dead," he said, gesturing up to the building.

The grim-faced sarge nodded and gestured for one of the soldiers to follow him, the two skulking off, mindful of an ambush as they followed the Colonel's orders. The Colonel took the radio and began to call in their position, ordering additional units to make their way to reinforce them while they waited for a salvage vehicle to tow the crippled Land Rover back to base.

Their first warning was a gunshot somewhere in the building, causing all the trained soldiers to raise their weapons and look at the shattered building. The Soviet-made antitank weapon was unmistakable, and all it took was a second for the weapon to fire. The projectile streaked down the street leaving its telltale trail causing panic in the Iraqi civilians as they scattered.

The Colonel's reactions were faster than West's--he grabbed the lieutenant and the two of them barreled to one side of the crippled Land Rover as the rocket impacted with the second Land Rover. The explosion was deafening and pieces of debris scattered down around them.

There were more gunshots in the building, and West found himself being picked up by the Colonel who was half-carrying, half-dragging him towards cover at the side of the street. They came to rest, the Colonel lifting West's rifle and covering the building waiting for the second rocket round.

It never came, but the firefight in the building at the end of the street ended in the distinctive ring of AK-47 gunfire.

"We have to move," the Colonel stated insistently to the younger officer who had drawn his Browning pistol and was visibly shaking.

Up at the building a couple of Iraqi soldiers were poking their heads out of the doorway, carefully trying to see where the rest of the British force was. One of them was clutching an SA-80, no doubt scavenged off of one of the two British soldiers sent in there.

The Colonel stood up and swung the weapon, squeezing off two rounds. Two rounds, two kills. He wielded the weapon with the calm precision the weapon was designed for. He crouched back down as a hail of gunfire splattered into the brickwork around them.

"Are you injured?" the Colonel asked, glancing down at Harding.

"N-no sir..." West managed.

"Then I suggest you start returning fire before you are," the Colonel barked as he lifted the weapon again and squeezed off a couple more rounds.

The Iraqis learned fast, they weren't about to give up their cover. They were unaware that there was only one British officer with an assault rifle alive outside. They didn't realize they had managed to kill the other one when they blew up the Land Rover he was standing on.

West glanced quickly over to where the disabled Rover sat, the .50 caliber machinegun still locked and loaded. He squeezed off a couple of shots at the dark doorway and looked at the Colonel.

The Colonel followed his glance and smiled grimly. "Go, I'll cover you," he stated, standing again and switching the weapon to full auto, sending a hail of slugs at the doorway.

West ran for all he was worth; he wasn't sure how many bullets the Colonel had left in that rifle and he sprinted for safety. The Colonel dropped again when the clip ran empty and the Iraqis already were sending their own volley of gunfire in return. Behind him he heard the telltale impacts of bullets on the road as he dived in behind the Rover. The bullets ricocheted off of the armoured vehicle as they lost sight of him.

The Colonel switched magazines, getting up again to cover him while he scrambled up into the back of the Rover and pressed his shoulders into the stock of the heavy weapon, sighting in as he had practiced and turning the doorway and the wall around it into rubble.

Plaster chips, bullets and broken masonry silenced the attack quickly as the Colonel used the new cover to join him over by the Rover. Flipping the back ammunition locker open and reloading his rifle again he sent a volley into the upper windows to deter a second rocket attack as he slipped up to the front of the Rover and reached for the radio, barking out that he needed support.

The bullet struck him in the chest, sending him staggering backwards, and West stared in shock as the second bullet penetrated from a side angle sending the British officer spinning into the dust. He bellowed in anger as he opened fire again with the machine gun.

* * *

"My god," Will breathed sitting back into his seat. "That's how he died?"

"No," West replied, "he died later that night..."

Will's phone rang and he pulled it out. "Go ahead," he said into it; he listened then sighed as he closed it. "I need to go back to the police station," he said reluctantly, "but I need to know the rest of this."

West nodded, "I know."

He sat there and watched as Will Carter left the small bar, returning to his own struggle, and West tilted the pint glass in his hands as he looked out of the window at the bright sun drenched street. He missed Canada, he missed his parents and he missed Peter. His recall to Catterick would take him away from the war, but he was a soldier and he knew it. But the very fact that he didn't like it was what made him such a good one.

He remembered some of the other men, in the heat of battle, drunk on the power and dizzy from the sweltering heat blurring the line; it was a tight leash the officers had on their men at times. He'd seen the news reports of other men gunning unarmed civilian troops down because they could. The midnight raids where suddenly teenagers were given the power of life and death over people who could do nothing to stop them.

"We have a duty to keep order," Colonel Carter had said one night, watching from a high vantage point over the city of Basra, "over our own men as well as the enemy. Without firm guidance soldiers can easily become the very thing we're here to fight, nothing more than terrorists that rule by fear."

"That's why we go..." West murmured draining his glass. The army needed every man who still had a conscience out on the line, keeping those that had forgotten theirs in line.

He stood and paid for the drinks, setting out to follow Will back to the Police station.