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‘Fuck off,’ said George, good-naturedly.
A slightly taller, slightly skinnier version of his old man, he was in the kind of shape you’d expect of a twenty-four-year-old Para Reg full-screw who was scheduled to undergo Selection later that year.
This holiday being his last blow-out before he got down to training proper, ahead of his journey to Hereford, Pen-y-Fan, and the jungle.
He looked down, and nudged his girlfriend with his toe.
‘We’re off up into town for a bit, Chloe,’ he said. ‘The old bastard’s shit drills have left him dehydrated. You coming?’
She groaned. It had been a heavy night the night before.
‘No,’ she said, sitting up. ‘I think I’ll go for a swim instead.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said George. Then he looked at his dad. ‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘I’m in the chair. Again.’
‘Too right,’ said Carr, with a grin, poking his son in the ribs. ‘Tips on passing Selection don’t come cheap, fatty.’
‘Fuck me,’ said George, shaking his head. ‘Don’t you ever give it a rest?’
‘No way,’ said Carr. ‘Being this irritating takes a lot of practice.’
He laughed and looked at his boy, and felt an enormous surge of pride – a feeling that he knew was mutual.
The two men turned and started trudging up the beach.
18. (#ulink_303b1aa3-0e9d-587b-964f-095738383cc6)
A LITTLE OVER ONE hundred metres away, in the calfskin and mohair interior of the gleaming white Lucky Lady, four men sat in silence.
Tense, but focused.
One or two knees bouncing up and down on the deep-pile beige carpet with nervous energy.
They were all dressed like everyone else nearby, in shorts and T-shirts or vests, though they were wearing trainers rather than flip-flops.
The better for movement.
Each had at his feet a beach bag, and each bag contained an AKS-74U ‘Krinkov’, a lightweight, shortened version of the AK47, with a folding skeleton stock.
Each Krinkov had a magazine in place, and each man had five spare mags – a total of 720 rounds of 5.45mm-short death and destruction.
The dark-eyed Chechen called Argun Shishani sat on the steps to the upper deck.
He had a phone to his left ear, and a police radio, stolen three nights earlier, in his right hand.
He was talking to the young man in the cut-off denim shorts and the Manchester United shirt, who had moved down the beach a way but still had a good view.
‘I don’t care if two have left as long as the main target is still there,’ said Shishani. ‘She is? Good. Right, sixty seconds.’
He ended the call and looked at the four men. ‘Okay, boys,’ he said. ‘It’s on.’
He refreshed an iPad, on which was a single image – a woman, wearing a bikini, on the beach outside.
He tapped the tablet, and the four men took a final long look at the photograph.
‘You have seven minutes,’ said Shishani, ‘and no longer. Kill as many as you can, and bring me back my prize. And may Allah go with you.’
As they left, he followed them up and stood on the deck.
He watched the four men melt into the crowd, and briefly turned to look behind himself.
From his vantage point he could see clear out to sea.
It was a thin ribbon of serenity between the decadence of Europe and the very different lands of North Africa, lurking just over the blue horizon, with their violence, and turmoil, and poverty.
At least, that was how it appeared to the Westerners.
Argun Shishani’s lip curled in disgust.
These trivial, shallow people, splashing and playing in the shallows, and drinking themselves insensible in the nearby bars – they thought that that narrow, tranquil strip of water protected them from the rage.
But today it was an angry sea, and it had brought God’s wrath to these shores, and after the wrath was spent the sea would carry away His servants to safety.
Shishani smiled, and waited.
19. (#ulink_0cc7038c-96aa-59f2-b755-b578cd502afa)
THE FOUR MEN left the Lucky Lady, beach bags over shoulders or in hands.
Walked onto the road leading from the marina to the beach, laughing and joking.
People passing the other way – lucky people, as it turned out – didn’t give them a second’s thought.
The four walked to the top of the beach, where they linked up with Mr Manchester United, who was standing on the other side of a parked car, a pistol jammed down the front of his cut-off shorts.
One of the men – a tall, slender individual in a faded Hooters New York City T-shirt – looked about himself casually, and then said something.
Hooters was carrying two bags, and now he handed one of them to Man U.
Then – with final nods and smiles – they split into two groups.
Three of them stayed where they were, to act as a cut-off team – their job was to intercept any police officers who might try to get to the beach, and to cut down holidaymakers fleeing the main assault.
Which was to be carried out by Man U and a short, stocky man called Khaled.
The two of them now hopped over the low stone wall which separated the road from the heavy, dry sand, and slogged forwards.
When they reached the pre-arranged point, Man U looked at his accomplice and raised his eyebrows.
Ready?
Khaled nodded.
Both men reached into the bags at their feet and took out their loaded Krinkov AKs, locking the stocks in place.
Ten metres to their left, a middle-aged woman in a blue bathing suit and a floppy straw hat saw them do it and froze, hand to her mouth, unable even to scream.
Back at the top of the beach, Hooters NYC and the other two casually picked up their own weapons and slipped off the safety catches.
Twenty feet away from them stood a group of ten or twelve Spaniards in their late teens or early twenties, who were arguing, in a good-natured way, about where to go for lunch.
Hooters bent down and retrieved a hand grenade and pulled the pin.
Whispering a final prayer, he lobbed it into the middle of the group and ducked back below the stone wall as he did so.
The safety lever flew off and armed the weapon as it landed at the feet of a young man, looking for all the world like a ball thrown by a child.
Reflexively, he bent to pick it up, ready to send it back to its owner.
But it was surprisingly heavy.
‘What’s that?’ said one of his friends.
‘Mierda!’ said the man. ‘I think it’s…’
The grenade detonated, killing him and one other man instantly, and wounding every other person in that group.
It was the signal for the shooting to begin.
The panic was instantaneous and total.
Some dived to the ground.
Others stood and stared at the gunmen, their minds temporarily unable to make their legs move.
Still others ran – only to find that they were running towards the other shooters.
The fat German man was one of the first to die, along with his snotty-nosed son – whom he had scooped up into his arms. His wife went down, too, though their five-year-old daughter survived.
The two pretty young Spanish girls whom Carr had been eyeing up – one of them was shot through the temple, and killed outright, the other through the arm and thigh.
She would bleed to death before help arrived.
The cut-off team were making hay with those who were trying to get off the beach.
Men, women, children.
Flip-flops and shorts and bikinis.
Screaming, shouting.
All the time, the remorseless crack-crack of the weapons.
The first police response came within seconds – a marked Guardia Civil Nissan Patrol had by chance been driving down towards the beach.
Three officers – two men and a woman – debussed, drew their pistols, and started moving towards the sand.
They were immediately spotted and engaged by three men some twenty-five metres to their left.
The female officer advanced gamely towards the three, and managed – with one lucky shot – to take out a tall man in a Hooters New York City T-shirt, before a skinny kid in an Adidas vest put her down with three AK rounds in the neck and shoulder.
The two male cops skidded to a halt. One slipped over in his panic, but in a flash he was up and turning and running, and following his partner, who was already five yards ahead of him, head down, weaving.
Dealing with drunken tourists and shoplifters was one thing: this was quite something else.
They were neither physically nor mentally prepared for it.
20. (#ulink_9ac18730-5433-5ff4-a3c1-d5bc8ae5b9b4)
A FEW MINUTES’ walk along from the beach, John and George Carr were standing outside a bar, halfway down their first pints of San Miguel.
The place was as tacky as it got and it stank of stale cooking oil.
The street was busy with holidaymakers and loud with thumping bass from a nearby sound system, and the heat was still oppressive despite the overhead parasol.
John Carr was not impressed. He shook his head and took another deep, frothy swallow of lager – at least that was cold – as a group of fat, drunken Brits swayed towards them.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ he said as they turned for the entrance to the bar.
One of them – a big guy with a skinhead, a Millwall FC tattoo and a beer belly – clipped Carr as he passed.
‘Hey, watch yourself, pal,’ said Carr.
‘Or what?’ said the guy, stopping and staring at the Scotsman.
But when he saw the glint in Carr’s eyes, his tune changed.
‘Sorry, mate,’ he said, before slinking away inside the bar.
Carr watched him go, shaking his head in disgust.
‘Jesus,’ he said, under his breath. ‘You come here to get away from dickheads like that.’
‘Chill out,’ said George, grinning and holding up his beer. ‘You’re on holiday, for fuck’s sake. You need to get on it. Five or six of these and everything’ll look a lot better.’
‘Aye,’ said Carr, lifting his own pint. ‘Well, you’d better enjoy it because you’ll no be drinking once you’re in training.’
‘True,’ said George. He rolled his eyes. ‘Of course, Selection was much harder in your day.’
