by Chris Ryan
Then Bowman saw the other girl.
Marie.
She lay limp on the floor, blood oozing out of her belly and head. Her dead hands clutching her blood-splashed toy bear.
In the same frozen moment, Elvis spotted Bowman crashing into the room. He turned towards the new threat and fired. The AK-47 barked. Bowman tucked into a roll and shifted to the right as the rebel let off a three-round burst, shooting from the hip. The rounds thudded into the wall six or seven inches above Bowman, putting holes in the president’s personal photo collection. Bowman came up from the roll in a rapid blur, then angled his weapon at the rebel. No time to properly aim. He just centred the barrel on Elvis’s mass and pulled the trigger twice.
The rounds smacked into Elvis in a quick one-two. The first nailed him in the crotch, shredding his balls. The second bullet plugged him in the chest. His vital plumbing. The rebel let out a pained grunt as he toppled backwards. He crashed against the door and landed on his back, his weapon clattering to the floor beside him.
Bowman stood rooted to the spot, unable to move, staring helplessly at the girl. He heard voices in the corridor.
A moment later, Loader charged into the room ahead of Mallet. Casey, Webb, Gregory and Lubowa ran in after them, weapons drawn. They caught sight of the two bodies and froze. The president’s sister-in-law ran over to her dead daughter, howling in grief and anguish. The two boys hugged their mother, tears streaming down their terror-stricken faces. The other girl screamed for her dead father.
Loader dropped down beside the bodies and checked them for pulses. Shook his head slowly.
‘What the fuck happened?’ he demanded.
‘Bastard snuck in from the terrace,’ Bowman said. He felt sick, had to force the words out. ‘There was nothing I could do . . . ’
‘Just the one?’
Bowman nodded.
‘Must have been a lone raider,’ Webb said.
‘Or a scout for the Machete Boys,’ said Mallet. ‘Sent here by his mates to see if the place was worth looting. He would have spotted the lights.’
‘How the fuck did he get in?’ Loader said.
‘This place is surrounded by a chain-link fence,’ said Gregory. ‘It’s not in the best condition. There are gaps in it. He must have snuck through one of them.’
‘He left us!’ the sister-in-law shouted between her pained sobs. She pointed an accusatory finger at Bowman. ‘He wasn’t here! He should have stopped that man!’
Mallet stared at him, the blood draining from his face. ‘Where the fuck were you, Josh?’
‘The bathroom,’ Bowman replied falteringly. ‘I . . . I was gone for a minute. Not even that.’
‘I don’t give a fuck if it was ten seconds. You shouldn’t have left them alone.’
‘I didn’t know . . . ’ Bowman choked up. ‘I thought it was safe.’
‘You thought fucking wrong.’
‘I thought you men are supposed to be professional,’ Lubowa said.
‘We are,’ Mallet snapped back. He glowered at Bowman. ‘Most of us.’
Bowman gripped the rifle so hard he thought it might break apart in his hands. A father and his young daughter had been killed. His own fault. He’d fucked up once before, fifteen years ago. Back then, his mistake had cost the lives of his own family. Sophie. Amy. Now he had the blood of two more innocents on his hands.
You should have been protecting them, the voice at the back of his head told him. Watching for threats.
Instead, you were shoving drugs up your nose.
And now two people are dead.
‘Get some men out there,’ Mallet ordered Colonel Lubowa. He gestured towards the grounds overlooked by the terrace at the rear of the estate. ‘Cover the treeline before any other fucker gets the same idea. If they see anything moving that’s not friendly, drop it.’
Lubowa shot Bowman a scolding look before he hastened back down the corridor.
‘You two.’ Mallet addressed Casey and Webb. ‘Back to work. Get those defences in shape.’
Once they had left the room, he swivelled his gaze round to Loader.
‘Did you find a safe room for the rest of the family?’
He nodded quickly. ‘The wine cellar. They’ll be safe down there, John. Only one way in or out. Strongest point of the house.’
‘Take this lot down there now,’ Mallet said, indicating the family. ‘Tell the colonel to stick one of his guards in the cellar with them. Make sure he understands not to leave them under any circumstances. Tell him not to answer the door until the fighting is over.’
‘What about the girl? The president’s brother?’
‘Get them out of this room. I don’t care where. Just get them out of here.’
‘This means trouble.’ Loader sucked in a deep breath. ‘The Machete Boys will know where to find us now. They’ll figure it out, once they realise their mate ain’t coming back.’
‘Not just them,’ said Gregory.
Casey looked up at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The Boys and the KUF are allies,’ Gregory explained. ‘The Boys will alert General Kakuba’s men as soon as they know where we are. They’ll want to pass on the message.’
‘Bloody great,’ Loader muttered.
Mallet’s hard blue eyes lingered on Bowman. ‘You. Sort your fucking head out. Give Tiny a hand. Then get outside and help the others.’
He marched out of the room, rifle at his side. Gregory followed him. Loader gently pulled the sister-in-law back from her dead daughter, Bowman ushered the boys and the other twin girl to their feet. Seguma’s wife gathered her belongings, and then Bowman and Loader ushered the family down the hallway. The children wept softly, the sister-in-law made a deep keening noise in her throat.
They reached a door off to one side of the central atrium and descended a spiral staircase to the basement. Loader led them down a cobwebbed corridor, past a plain metal door, into a spacious wine cellar with a vaulted ceiling. Rows of wine bottles were arranged in timber racks, the necks coated in a patina of dust. Boxes of wine yet to be unpacked had been stacked against the walls. In one of them Bowman glimpsed a set of electric cattle prods. He wondered what they were doing in the cellar. A mistake, probably. One of the household staff putting the wrong package in the wrong place.
The family sat around the oak table in the tasting area. Bowman jogged back upstairs, and left Loader to watch over the family while he fetched the staff. The two maids, the chef. The gardener. He led them down to the basement. Left them with the family, hurried back up to the ground floor and ran outside. He beckoned over one of the presidential guards, led him into the cellar. Loader told the guard not to leave the room, no matter what. He made sure the guard understood his job, demonstrated the knocking code they would use when it was safe to emerge. Then he stepped out into the corridor with Bowman, closing the door behind them.
‘What the fuck was that all about?’ Loader hissed.
Bowman kept on walking. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, mate.’
‘Yeah, you do. Upstairs. Leaving the family alone. What were you thinking?’
Bowman stopped and rounded on his mucker.
‘Have you got something you want to say to me, Tiny?’
Loader gritted his teeth. His face seethed with rage. ‘You’ve lost your edge. You’re a joke. That girl’s dead because of you.’
Bowman half-closed his eyes. ‘It was a mistake. I didn’t know that shooter was out there. No one did.’
‘Don’t take the piss. I’ve heard the stories doing the rounds at Hereford.’
Bowman tensed. ‘What stories?’
‘Everyone knows you ain’t the soldier you used to be. All the lads at camp have been saying the same thing. They reckon you’ve got sloppy. Turning up late for briefings, losing bits of kit, getting the basics wrong. I didn’t believe them at the time, but now I’m beginning to see what they meant.’ He wrinkled his nose at Bowman, as if he carried a bad smell. ‘J
ohn should never have recruited you to the Cell.’
‘Those lads should mind their own business. And so should you, Tiny.’
‘Fuck off, Josh. We’re about to get hit by a swarm of rebels. This is no place for a washed-up Blade. Christ, we can’t even rely on you to guard a few civvies.’
‘I’ve got what it takes,’ Bowman insisted.
‘Bollocks. This ain’t the first mistake you’ve made on this op. Is it?’
Bowman said nothing.
‘Patrick told us about what happened in Monte Carlo,’ Loader went on. ‘Raiding Lang’s medicine cabinet when you should have been doing a bog-standard room clearance. Almost blowing your cover story with the concierge. And to top it off, you’re bang out of shape. You’ve been sweating non-stop since we left London. I’ve seen slop jockeys on Selection in better condition than you.’
‘It’s not what you think,’ Bowman said.
‘How’s that, mate? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re a fucking liability.’
Bowman stared at the floor for a long beat, trying to find the words. Ashamed to look his friend in the eye. Ashamed of himself, his failure to protect the little girl. Then he sighed and looked up at his old Regiment mucker.
‘I’ve got a problem. A habit. A bad one.’
‘What is it? Booze?’
Bowman shook his head.
‘Gambling, then? You spunked all your hard-earned cash down at the bookies, is that it?’
‘No, mate. Nothing like that.’
‘What, then?’
‘Opioids,’ Bowman said. ‘I’m dependent on opioids.’
Loader jerked his head back in surprise. ‘What, like smack?’
‘I’ve never touched heroin. And I don’t inject. It’s just pills.’
‘Like painkillers, you mean? Them ones you get on prescription?’
‘Sometimes. Mostly it’s synthetic tablets. From China. They make them in illegal factories over there. Red Lights, Jumping Jacks, Cookies, Space Dust. That’s what they’re called on the street, anyway, I don’t know their real names. I get a regular supply through a trusted contact. A friend of mine from back home. He’s my connect.’
It was out there at last. His secret. Bowman felt something heavy lift from his chest. Loader looked at him in stunned silence. ‘How long has this been going on for?’
‘Ten years.’
‘You’ve been an addict for a fucking decade?’
‘Not all the time. There are periods when I’ve been clean. Sometimes I’ve been able to get by with the odd pill or two. Other times, it’s worse than that. It gets out of hand. Then the drugs start controlling your life.’
‘Like now.’
‘I guess so.’
‘That’s why you left the family up there? To pop some pills?’
Bowman nodded, burning with shame. He hated himself in that moment. Despised what he had become. ‘Yes.’
Loader stared at him in shock and disbelief. ‘Why’d you do it, mate? Why get hooked on that shit in the first place?’
Bowman exhaled deeply. ‘You know about my family. What happened to them, back when I was in the Met.’ Loader nodded. ‘It was my fault,’ Bowman said. ‘They died because of me, mate.’
Loader’s eyebrows pinched together. ‘I thought they were murdered by the Albanian mob?’
‘Those bastards did the killing. But I was the one who put their lives in danger.’
He looked away, lips trembling, fists shaking with impotent rage. Loader waited for him to go on.
‘I was working undercover at the time, see. A long-term job. We were trying to penetrate a gang of ex-cons based in Essex. But the real target was the Albanian mobsters they were doing business with. The Hoxha clan. The older brother, Agon, was the boss of the outfit. They were involved in a lot of the big cocaine shipments coming in from Europe.
‘I spent months trying to earn their trust. It was hard work, hanging out with a bunch of sick gangsters all day long, sticking to my cover story, making sure I didn’t slip up. But it was worth it. All the int I gleaned I passed back to my handler at the Met. She was the only one who knew my true identity. That was the arrangement. No one else was supposed to know anything about me.
‘Eventually, Agon Hoxha invited me to a high-level meeting with the clan. A major arms-trafficking deal they wanted to discuss. I thought that was the big breakthrough. I’d go to the meeting and get enough intelligence to put the Albanians and their Essex business partners away for life. That was the plan, at least.’
‘What happened?’
‘Someone had tipped off the Albanians about me.’
‘Who?’
‘A bent copper. Agon Hoxha had him on the payroll. He’d managed to uncover my identity, piecing together scraps of information from the file. The Albanians found out and planned to lure me into a trap. Put one in the back of my head and dump my body in the Thames.’
‘How did you get away?’
‘I was on my way to the meeting when I got a message from my handler, telling me to get away immediately. I managed to escape,’ he added, his voice strained with grief. ‘But when the Hoxha clan couldn’t get to me, they took revenge on my family instead.’
Tears welled in Bowman’s eyes at the memory. He struggled to go on.
‘I found them at home. I’ll never forget that scene. There’s not a day goes by when I don’t think about it. They took my wife, tied her up and carved a clown’s smile on her face from ear to ear. Then they slit my daughter’s throat and let her bleed out on the kitchen floor. Made my wife watch the life drain out of our beautiful little girl. Then they blew Amy’s brains out. Left them there for me to find, like some sick present.’
‘Christ, mate. I’m sorry.’
‘Not your fault.’
‘I know. But still.’ Loader hesitated. ‘Didn’t they arrest the bastards who did it?’
‘There was a big investigation. We all knew who was responsible. Everyone wanted to nail them. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. But the Crown Prosecution Service felt the case was too weak. Too many flaws, not a reasonable likelihood of a conviction.’
‘Jesus. I didn’t know that part of it.’
Bowman sighed and said, ‘What happened, it messed with my head. Nothing could shut out the pain. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think. Then someone offered me a pill. Said it would make it all go away. That’s how it started. I used the pills for a few months, cleaned up my act and joined the army. Did my time in SFSG, passed Selection. Everything was rosy. I managed to stay off the pills. For a while.’
‘Why’d you get back on it?’
‘Iraq. All that high-intensity warfare. You remember what it was like out there, mate.’
Loader nodded with feeling. ‘Yeah, I do.’
‘I was stressed, exhausted. Burning the candle at both ends. Some of the guys we were working with in Delta Force were using a cocktail of drugs just to get from one day to the next. So I got back on the stuff again. Since then, it’s been on and off. Sometimes I’m clean. Sometimes not.’
‘Iraq was a long time ago,’ Loader countered. ‘You can’t blame it on the war. We were all there. Not all of us turned into fucking junkies.’
‘You don’t understand, Tiny. No one plans on becoming an addict. But once you get hooked, it turns into an obsession. Getting pills, making sure you’ve got enough to last the day, it’s all you care about.’
‘That’s what has been on your mind since we left London?’ The anger in Loader’s voice was so sharp you could cut glass with it. ‘When you can get your next high?’
‘It’s not about that, mate. I’m taking this stuff to feel normal. That’s it.’
‘So kick it. If it ain’t about getting high, stop doing it.’
Bowman shook his head. ‘If I went cold turkey, I’d get the shakes. You don’t know what that feels like. It’s the worst thing in the world. I can’t even begin to describe how much it hurts. Addicts – people like me – we’d
do anything to avoid withdrawal.’
Loader looked closely at him. ‘How bad is it right now?’
‘I’ve been in darker places.’
‘Are you sure you’re up for this?’
Bowman said, ‘I’ve got pills. Enough to last me the rest of the day. As long as I get a regular hit, I’ll be able to function.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘I can handle the firefight. I won’t let anyone down.’
Loader stared at him for a long moment. There was anger in his eyes, but something gentler, too. The concern of an old friend.
‘You can’t go on like this, Josh.’
‘I realise that.’
‘We shouldn’t even be having this discussion. I should go straight to John with this. He’d hit the roof if he found out.’
‘Somehow,’ Bowman said, ‘I think he already knows.’
Loader’s face screwed up. ‘Why would John bring you on to the Cell, if he thought you had a drug problem?’
‘I don’t have a clue. But there’s something about the way he talks to me. Like he sees right through the bullshit.’
‘John don’t miss much,’ Loader agreed. ‘But he might see things differently if he found out you were snorting pills when you should have been protecting the family. He’d boot you off the Cell.’
‘You’re probably right. And I’d deserve it.’ Bowman’s head hung low. ‘I’m sorry as fuck about what happened to that girl and her old man, believe me. I’ll never forgive myself for that. But I’m going to get better. I promise.’
Loader looked at him, tight-lipped, his eyes as narrow as knife slashes.
‘Why should I believe you?’ he asked after a beat.
‘I’ve kicked the pills before,’ Bowman said. ‘I can do it again. As soon as this op is over, I’ll go clean.’
‘You could start now.’
‘I can’t, Tiny. I’d get the shakes if I tried. I’d be no use to anyone in a firefight then. But if you give me a chance, I’ll get my head sorted once we’re out of here.’
