Resurrection Day Read Free Page A

manoeuvre it free.
    Then it happened.
    Fawzi heard the angry roar of engines. Looking to his right, he saw three vehicles race towards the blazing convoy from below some hills two hundred metres away, kicking up trails of dust in their wake.
    As they came closer, Fawzi saw they were half-top Japanese four-wheel-drives, groups of men standing up in the back. When they were a hundred metres away the occupants opened fire. Weapons stuttered, sparks flew off torn metal, and the front windscreen of the bus was raked with gunshot. It shattered into a thousand fragments, and a slash of crimson was stitched across the driver's chest, his body convulsing behind the wheel.
    Then Fawzi saw his car punctured by rapid volleys of machinegun fire.
    The surge of adrenalin left him as quickly as it had come, replaced by fear. There was nothing he could do to save anyone. 'Get back to the car!' he roared at the driver. 'Run!'
    Fawzi ran. The men in the vehicles continued firing. A round struck his driver in the back. The man yelped like an injured animal, spun to the ground and was struck again. A round punched Fawzi in the right arm, like a hammer blow, but he kept running.
    'Please, God ... Please ... save me.'
    Reaching the car, he clambered into the driver's seat, started the engine. As the car jerked forward, a burst of machinegun fire raked the bodywork. Fawzi was struck in the right shoulder. He lost his grip on the steering wheel and skidded off the road's edge. The car bounced down into the gully in an avalanche of dirt, rock, torn brush and shredded metal, crashed into a boulder with a sickening thud, and flipped over. Fawzi's head bounced hard off the roof, knocking him unconscious.
    When he came to seconds later he was upside down in the driver's seat, in excruciating pain from his wounds, astonished still to be alive and that the petrol tank hadn't ignited. He cried out in agony, tried to crawl out of the wreckage but froze when he heard rocks tumbling down. He tried to see back up the gully. What he saw struck fear in his heart. Four tough-looking men with Kalashnikovs were clambering down, dressed in camouflaged army fatigues and menacing black woollen balaclavas, only their eyes visible through the slits. The men halted halfway down, studied the crashed, bullet-punctured wreck until Fawzi heard one of them say, 'Forget it. He's dead. Get back to the bus.'
    The men climbed back up to the road. Fawzi's relief didn't last. Seconds later he heard the deafening crackle of sustained gunfire, the terrifying screams of men being executed. Fawzi's blood turned to ice and he wanted to throw up. Moments later he heard engines start up and a convoy of vehicles drive away. Fawzi was still in shock, the gunshot wounds in his arm and shoulder throbbing mercilessly. His shirt was drenched in blood and his mind tortured by questions. What had happened up on the road? Had the Americans been executed along with his injured men? And why? Why had his convoy been attacked and massacred? And who were the attackers?
    A swarm of flies buzzed around him, scenting blood. Fawzi closed his eyes, cried with pain, cursed the day he had become a policeman. His mother had been gone fifteen years, buried in the chalk hills above Baku, but he called for her now, called her name as he lay there in the bullet-ridden car, praying to God that someone would find him soon before he bled to death.
     
    Montreal, Canada 9 November 9 p.m.
     
    A ghostly flurry of icy sleet drifted across the bridge of the Estonian freighter Tartu. Captain Viktor Kalugin, smoking a half-finished cigarette, snug behind the warmth of the ship's plate-glass window, lifted his binoculars and scanned Montreal harbour, looming less than a mile away in the freezing darkness of the St Lawrence river.
    The metal plates of the rusting, sixteen-thousand-tonne vessel he mastered shuddered and creaked beneath his feet as he stared at the blaze of lights from the towering skyscrapers filling the city