Charlie Johnson in the Flames Read Online Free PDF

not exactly inspiring confidence, but they had face camouflage which made them look like semi-serious killers and in the forest gloom Charlie could see RPGs, Zastavas and some armour-piercing shells on a clip. Jacek was happy because he could turn over and Charlie did a breathless stand-up, in the dug-out, trying to project enough sound volume to get picked up on the camera mike, but not enough to get them caught, with the red-rimmed eyes of the fighters just visible at the rear of the shot. Looks real, Jacek said, after he had checked the gate, except that Charlie knew it wasn’t especially real. The camera always had a way of flattening things out, leaching the danger out of any moment. Danger or not, it was a good career move. Charlie had a report proving that the guerrillas were still active in villages within four miles of the border. And the twenty-somethings were still dozing in the American Bar. Now all they had to do was get it up the hillside when the dark ness came, reach the sat phone in the Jeep and beam it back.
    â€˜So Shandler could pass you in the hall and give you his significant nod,’ Etta said.
    â€˜Fuck Shandler. And his significant nod,’ Charlie said.
    He slowly slipped down so that he was lying with his head in her lap. She did not play with his hair; she did not stroke his chin or rub her hand along his eyebrows. She let him use her lap: that was all. And she would stick a cigarette between his lips from time to time. His palms hurt and when he went to scratch them against each other, she stopped him. ‘You were lucky,’ the surgeon said. ‘All you needed to lose was another fraction of an inch, and you’d have been in trouble.’ A half-second more. The terrifying unworthiness of good luck.
    Etta asked if he had seen Jacek’s footage, but he shook his head. There was a television in the room, but he didn’t even want to watch the competition. Santini was probably down there right now. The blood would draw the flies.
    They thought it was going to be all right, the three of them sitting there in the dug-out with the village boys, waiting for another half-hour more of darkness to cover their escape back up the track to safety. It was amazing to him now, this foolish hopefulness. After almost thirty years in the business, how many times had he been shot at? How many times had he and Jacek put their noses above some wall and made a calculation: Do we run? Do we stay? Which way is the story moving? How far to that wall over there? Everything turned on decisions like that. It was not addictive. That was what people said, who didn’t know anything about it. Addiction was not what it felt like, because it didn’t feel crazy or out of control. It was about the conviction that a certain kind of experience gave you, or at least what he felt when he and Jacek were assessing the same risk. They just knew. If there was any intoxication in what they did, it was this knowledge, the accumulated experience of two old dogs who had done all their hunting together. Jacek looked the part: the gait, the long nose, the watchfulness, the way he cocked his head when he listened. But all this self-confident knowledge had just evaporated. From now on Charlie wasn’t sure of anything. His hands weren’t shaking. But they would. He had picked up a tremor, he was sure of it. All the old bastards got it sooner or later. Now it was his turn.
    They started out from the dug-out just as the sun set. It was two hours back to the top, more or less, but they only went a hundred yards before they had to take cover. The firing started and they thought it was aimed at them. You always do. But it wasn’t. Nothing was coming through the trees. They were perfectly safe. It was down in the village.
    The half-tracks, four of them, had returned and the squads were smashing down the doors, pulling the men out into the road, while others were tossing lighted brands inside. Jacek and