Yesterday's Enemy: A James Bond Story

Ten

The first burst of fire raked a plywood storage crate inches above Bond's head, and showered him with splinters as he threw himself to the hard cement and rolled violently away from the carte. Akaad wasn't patient, and blithely gave away his advantage by firing a poorly-aimed burst from his position atop a rough ziggurat of packing containers. The muzzle-flash from the ignition of 7.62x39mm cartridges acted like a mini-strobe light.

Bond aimed at up at Akaad's intermittent visage, maybe seven meters above him, and fired a controlled-pair of shots. His own muzzle-flash illuminated Akaad's frantic retreat. Bond scrambled to a crouch, and followed the base of the ziggurat to its corner. Taking a step back, so he could keep his gun at high-ready, Bond pivoted his body out beyond the cover of the corner and looked over the glowing Trijicon sights of the P99 at a dim warren of crates stacked haphazardly.  The workers had quit for the day before stacking them into any semblance or order—one still dangled from a portable crane—creating a cubist honeycomb of hiding spots.

Bloody hell, he thought, then noticed a dark smudge on the side of the crate. Blood. Akaad had come down this side and bolted for the cover of the honeycombs, Bond thought. He wondered if it was his shot that injured him or Samiyah's. Probably hers, Bond reflected. The PPK's relatively light 7.65mm round wouldn't have penetrated either the kevlar of his vest or the steel plate it concealed. Maybe she'd clipped him in the arm. Maybe his aim was affected.

As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Bond could see the warren of boxes more pronouncedly. There was a small gap between sheet-metal shipping containers about 15 meters from his position. Bond took a deep breath and sprinted into the darkness. 

The warehouse lit up with lightning and thunder. A vicious sleet-storm of splinters and shrapnel pelted him as metal and wood containers vaporized under Akaad's raking fire. Bond gritted his teeth past the sting and leapt into the gap. Bullets passed over him, buzzing like hornets. 

He hit the cement hard, lost his wind and gasped. The firing stopped for a blissful moment, and Bond scrabbled into something close to a decent firing position. He almost had it when the shooting started again. 

The containers around him hummed and reverberated like gongs as Akaad's bullets tore into them. Bond flattened against the shrapnel and noise, tried to get a fix on Akaad, but the muzzle flash was muted.

Silence. Darkness. Bond reloaded.

Another burst tore through the metal around Bond. Now he heard the angry hornets again, and clouds of concrete dust rose from tiny explosions in the floor just feet from his head. Akaad's muzzle-flash was muted again, but this time Bond understood why. It was funneled down a gap between boxes, only a few inches wide. A perfect firing position. Akaad could fire with near impunity. The flash lit up the sides of the boxes and the bottom of the suspended crate.

Bond raised the P99 and emptied his magazine, fought the bucking gun, and was rewarded by the howl of high-tension cables snapping. The crate fell to one side, hanging lopsided now and twisting as the contents shifted with gravity. The cheap lock gave way first, and the hinges were no match for the weight of the contents, and the side of the crate tore loose beneath the weight of the accumulated cargo. Bond heard a scream amid the clatter of detritus hitting the ground.

He reloaded, released the slide, but kept the gun in single-action mode. Propping himself up, he steeled himself, then bolted out of his chewed-up warren to the edge of the mass of crates Akaad had chosen as his firing position. He pulled  small torch out of his pocket with his left hand and peered around the corner, gave a quick flash with the red light.

Akaad was splayed beneath a chunk of crate, pinned by auto parts, fancy tires, rims, spoilers. He was twisted unnaturally, and his hands clawed uselessly at the concrete. The light found the AKMSU about a foot from his left hand. Bond lunged, kicked it into darkness.

"You should have looked up," Bond said breathlessly. Adrenaline had blasted his system, and now his nerves were jangling like an electrical current had run through him.

Akaad hacked, twisted his torso feebly until he could face Bond. "Piker mistake."

"Happens."

"Please...make it fast. The pain is..."

"It was a good try," Bond said conversationally. "A good plan. Your mistake was sending the girl. She wanted me to kill you."

Akaad took a rattling breath. "A risk...but I thought her loyalty to her movement would...when she discovered who you really were."

"You should have just let the guns come in. It wouldn't have been as sensational a case, but Gaddafi would have had exactly what he wanted."

"Arrogant girl. Acted like any other Western whore. So I treated her like a whore. And it's known that British agent Double-Oh Seven enjoys fornication."

"True," Bond conceded. "But there's something else rather well-known about me." He holstered the P99 and pulled the PPK out of his jacket pocket. "This is a rather outdated weapon, but it's served me well over the years. The service just forced me to replace it, but I imagine most intelligence services still associate it with me."

"I'm dying, Bond. Why are you telling me this?"

"You may be dying, but I suspect you'll survive long enough for the ESO to find you. And they'll find this. It put a hole in you. It killed Abdul. Musa Kusa wanted me to flush out a radical terrorist cell. He will have proof that I did. Right down to the radical terrorist."

"We...we had an agreement, he and I," Akaad whispered, panicked.

"I suspect you'll find it null and void. And no one will ever hear your side of it. Except maybe whomever shares the pit he puts you in." 

"They'll find the other bullets. The other gun."

"They won't care. Their operation collapsed. They'll need to cover it up, and they're not going to let a few nine millimeter bullets that could have come from anywhere, been fired by anyone, imperil Libya's new dawn of wealth and prosperity." Bond locked the slide back and dropped the gun. "We're done here." He turned and limped toward the exit.

Akaad called after him weakly, "Bond! You have to get me out! Make them turn me over to the English! Bond, you know you want what I know."

Bond stopped and turned. "I don't care what you know. I did the job."