and swung the Minimi machine-gun swiftly round on its mount, aiming upwards at the chipped and flaking waist-high balcony wall.
Instantly a string of white puffs of plaster powder erupted along the length of it and the man dropped down out of sight.
‘Ah smeg, tha’s really gonna wake ’em all up now!’ shouted Westley.
Amal, meanwhile, was reversing their Cruiser following the other vehicles backing up along the narrow road.
They had passed a right-hand turn fifty yards up, just a few moments earlier, which would take them more or less in the direction they wanted to go. It was another narrow street, overlooked by tall buildings with balconies, but maybe it wasn’t blocked.
Andy spotted movement now in the windows of several other buildings: the fleeting faces of some children and their mother, in another an old man wearing a white dishdash staring out curiously from the darkened interior of his home.
The rear of Lieutenant Carter’s vehicle now appeared, reversing around the corner, the young officer and the soldier beside him double-tapping - firing two or three-round bursts - at the balcony to keep the man up there down on the ground and out of trouble.
The convoy moved backwards slowly, with no further rounds being fired at them. That single shot seemed to have been all there was; and even then, Andy wasn’t sure it had been a gunshot. It could well have been a vehicle misfiring in a nearby street for all he knew.
Still, the damage was done. The Minimi burst, and the subsequent bursts from Lieutenant Carter’s Land Rover must surely have roused the locals.
They pulled past the right-hand turning, going back several dozen more yards to allow the two vehicles in front to back up past it. Then, with a squeal of tyres and a shower of gravel spat out from beneath it, Carter’s Rover spun right into the narrow street, and the rest of the convoy swiftly followed suit.
‘Let’s go!’ Mike urged Amal, banging repeatedly with his fist on the back of the driver’s seat.
The short exchange of gunfire had definitely stirred the townsfolk. They spotted many more faces peering from darkened windows and doorways down the narrow street and on the balconies above them. Andy, looking up, could only see a narrow strip of blue sky criss-crossed with electrical cables and dangling laundry. This street was even narrower than the one they had just backed out of.
We’re going to get trapped.
To him that seemed bloody obvious; a foregone conclusion the way things seemed to be going already. They were getting tightly boxed in here. If there was an obstruction this way, things could get hairy.
Up ahead, the convoy approached another corner, this time turning left. The lead Rover spun round it quickly dislodging a cloud of dust in its wake, and the others followed swiftly.
To everyone’s relief, the street widened out, and opened on to a much wider stretch of road; a dual lane, with some semblance of paving on either side and a grass-tufted island running down the middle. There were only one or two vehicles parked on either side, and along the central, weed-encrusted island, several withered old date palms were dotted, giving the street the notional appearance of a once pleasant boulevard gone to seed. Andy noticed, though, that there were quite a few pedestrians out and about, gathered in clusters. Whether they were about their normal business, or roused by the short burst of gunfire and curious, he wasn’t sure.
Lieutenant Carter’s Rover came to a halt, and the rest of them followed his lead.
‘Why’s he stopping?’ asked Mike.
Andy leaned his head out to get a better look at what was happening ahead, and saw that the far end of the boulevard was packed with a gathering of men; some kind of town meeting in a building that had spilled out on to the road. The people were blocking the way ahead.
‘Shit, we can’t get through, the road’s blocked. That’s why he’s stopped.’
Westley cursed under his breath. ‘Shit. We could just push through, like. You know?’
Farid cast a glance over his shoulder at the soldier in the back seat. ‘You want we run over them?’
‘Yeah, smeg it. If they won’t move out of the way.’
‘I agree,’ Mike said to the young squaddie, ‘anyway, if we fire off some warning shots first, they’ll move aside. And if they don’t . . . well that’s their look out.’
‘I am thinking they will not move,’ Farid countered sternly.
‘So what? We just sit here and let them swarm us?’