State of Fear

by Tim Ayliffe

  Bailey could see a woman in a pink dressing-gown looking down at the street from her flat above a hairdresser, woken by the loud bang that’d shaken the dust off her walls. The gunshots. Sirens. Screams. Her pale face illuminated by a street lamp detailing an expression of horror. Confusion. Fear. Wondering what had become of her street. Her city. Her home.

  ‘How do you want to do this, Ronnie?’ Dorset said.

  They had all agreed that the house was most likely rigged with explosives, so they shouldn’t attempt to go through any doors or windows. Front or back.

  ‘Up there.’ Ronnie was pointing at the skylight at the back of the house. ‘We’ll go in through the roof.’

  ‘Dorset. Kim. You come with me,’ Ronnie said. ‘Ben, you head around the front of the house on Harrow Road in case anyone tries to make it out the front door. Rules of engagement, Dorset?’

  ‘One warning, then shoot to kill.’

  ‘Good,’ Ronnie said, without hesitating.

  Bailey felt the metal of the gun digging into the small of his back, pressing into his crusting burn. He wondered whether he could follow through on those rules. He doubted it. ‘What do I do?’

  ‘You’ll be our eyes on the back of the house.’

  Bailey nodded his head. ‘I can do that.’

  Ronnie wasn’t finished. ‘Anyone comes out that doesn’t look like Sharon, or any of us – shoot them.’

  CHAPTER 54

  Dexter

  The explosion had felt like an earthquake, rattling windows, shaking floorboards, smashing plates and glasses in the kitchen.

  Dexter knew it was a bomb because she’d seen the guy slip his arms through a suicide vest.

  She’d also been forced to listen to him explain why he was happy to die. A one-way conversation because Dexter had been gagged so tightly that the cloth was stretching the corners of her mouth, slicing her skin.

  All she could do was listen.

  ‘We’re under attack,’ he’d said. ‘The West is the root cause of all suffering in the Muslim world. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen . . . these are defensive wars. We’re not instigating these battles. Our jihad is a response to the ongoing assault on Islam.’

  Dexter had been raised by her father to question everything, but she had no way of trying to reach inside this young man’s head to change his mind. Cleanly shaven and dressed to fit in, he spoke with such certainty about something so finite. Brainwash complete. The only way he was going to find out the truth was by dying. The jihadi’s curse. No way back if you’re wrong.

  Dexter had counted three men in the house. Most of the time they spoke to each other in Arabic. When they spoke in English, they didn’t care about using names in front of her. Thomas. Aydin. Qasim. Probably because she’d been kidnapped to die.

  Dexter had no idea where she was. All she knew was that she was in some kind of split-level townhouse with white, crumbling walls, cracked floorboards, stained carpet and the type of furniture you’d find in a charity shop. She was being kept in a lounge room that adjoined a kitchen on the first floor. There was a television, a small wooden table and five chairs, including the one that she was sitting in. Otherwise, nothing. No pictures on walls. No coffee table. No books. No sound system. No family photographs. Nothing indicating that this place was anything more than a halfway house for terrorists.

  They had untied her arms and legs only twice so that she could use the toilet on the lower floor, where she’d managed to see two suicide vests on a table in another room, as well as several bricks of C4 explosives, wire cables and too many rifles and pistols to count.

  She had no idea what time it was when they took the photograph of her and uploaded it to the internet. But she knew that the second the image went live, something had been set in motion.

  The men had knelt and prayed together, before hugging one another, like they were saying their last goodbyes.

  Next came the weapons.

  The two other men helped Aydin dress like it was his wedding day. The suicide vest was strapped to his torso, a black hoodie slipped over the top. A handgun in one pocket and the trigger for the bomb in the other. Then Aydin went out the door. A walking weapon.

  Within minutes of the explosion up the street, Qasim came back up the stairs and sat in the same armchair opposite Dexter that Aydin had been preaching from earlier. He had a Kalashnikov rifle lying across his knees and a bomb strapped to his chest.

  The second vest was for him.

  And then Thomas appeared. A pistol in one hand and a laptop in the other. He knelt down in front of Dexter, opening the computer so that the screen was facing her. Seconds later the screen came to life and a man was staring back at her.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’

  Dexter froze. She knew exactly who he was. She’d seen enough photographs of this face to know that the person staring at her through a computer screen was Mustafa al-Baghdadi.

  ‘Just nod.’

  Dexter slowly nodded her head, unable to speak because of the gag in her mouth.

  Mustafa looked nothing like the terrorist leader she’d seen in videos and grainy photographs. His beard was gone, his head shaven and he was wearing a hoodie.

  ‘I can see you judging me.’ He was stroking the stubble on his cheek, leaning closer to the camera. ‘I’m freeing you, don’t you see?’

  Dexter felt the bile stinging her throat. She wanted to reach through the screen and slam his head against the table in front of him.

  ‘Let me show you something.’

  Mustafa clicked a button on his keyboard and the screen split into four video streams, the terrorist leader top right. The three other feeds showed different camera angles of burning vehicles, at least two of them flipped onto their sides.

  ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

  Dexter could see people staggering on the road in the darkness, the flames occasionally flickering light on their faces.

  ‘Can you see him?’ Mustafa squinted, looking away from the camera lens, studying his screen. ‘I think I see him. Can you?’

  Dexter looked harder and glimpsed Bailey, his unmistakable mop of hair, square shoulders. That crappy old leather jacket he always wore. He was standing beside two other men. One of them was tall. Ronnie Johnson. Maybe.

  And then she saw the bodies. One. Two. Four. There must have been more. A convoy of police vehicles. The rescue mission. Aydin’s target.

  Dexter bit down hard on the gag, rocking against her restraints in the chair.

  ‘You know, where you’re sitting now is just how it was with your friend, John Bailey. He was stubborn, like you. He didn’t want to listen. He didn’t want to know. Has he told you much about his time with my men in Iraq?’

  She didn’t flinch. She didn’t want to give Mustafa the satisfaction of discovering that she knew all about Bailey’s ten months in captivity. The torture.

  ‘You think you’re winning.’ Mustafa was shaking his head, an unhinged smile on his face. ‘No. No, you’re not winning. We’re at war, don’t you see? Islam existed without any warring doctrine for more than a decade until the Prophet’s hijrah from Mecca to Medina to escape persecution. From that day, we’ve always been at war. We always will be at war. The Prophet made it so. People being attacked are expected to fight back in defence. Are they not? We’re not the aggressor.’

  Dexter had already been forced to listen to the guy with the bomb strapped to his chest, now she was copping a sermon from the man who’d planted the sickness in his head.

  ‘The United Nations, the World Bank . . . they’re just tools of modern colonialism. Western governments are trying to destroy us. You stand for nothing. You know no God. Jihad only requires soldiers. There are one billion Muslims. The soldiers are many.’

  Dexter was staring at the video feeds of the bomb attack up the street, knowing that it must have been close. The blast had happened only minutes after Aydin had left the house.

  The split-screen disappeared again and all she could see wa
s Mustafa.

  ‘My soldiers are ready to die for their beliefs, are you?’

  The screen went black.

  Thomas calmly picked up the laptop from the carpet and went downstairs, leaving Qasim sitting in the chair in front of her.

  His English wasn’t as good as the others. He just sat there, beads of sweat forming on his brow. His eyes were empty and cold. He must have been barely twenty years old.

  You don’t have to do this, Dexter wanted to tell him. You’re just a kid. Kids make mistakes. There’s still time.

  The other guy was probably rigging the C4 to every entry point he could think of, preparing for when the cops stormed the house.

  Dexter couldn’t stand the thought of what was about to unfold, wondering how many people had died up the street. How many more would die trying to save her.

  Hope was all she had left.

  Click.

  Qasim sat up, startled by the foreign sound, trying to figure out where it had come from.

  Click.

  It sounded like a door creaking on its hinges.

  Qasim got out of his chair and walked across the room behind Dexter. She couldn’t turn around, but she could hear him pushing back the blind so that he could peer out the window at the street. When he reappeared, he raised his index finger to his lips. A warning for her to keep quiet. Not that she could make much noise, gagged and strapped to a chair.

  Click.

  The sound was coming from the kitchen.

  Qasim raised his Kalashnikov and walked, slowly, towards the open door. The kitchen was only five metres away, but it was taking him forever. He was moving slowly to prevent his shoes from squeaking on the frayed and flattened carpet.

  The kitchen light had been switched off. It was still dark outside, so the only light was from the dust-stained yellow globe hanging above Dexter’s head in the lounge room.

  Qasim was at the door now, pointing his rifle at the dirty dishes piled in the sink and the microwave that had heated up their dinner. He switched on the light.

  Dexter saw the shadow before Qasim did – a flicker of movement from the skylight in the kitchen roof. Qasim looked up, his Kalashnikov travelling slower than his eyes.

  Bang! Bang!

  He fell to the floor, his weapon clunking onto the lino beside him.

  Lying flat on his back, his right hand was still moving, feeling for the detonator that had slipped from his palm and was dangling at the end of a wire inches from his fingers.

  He’s got a bomb! Shoot him again! Again! Dexter was trying to scream, bouncing up and down in her chair.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Qasim went limp after three more bullets were embedded in his body – two in his chest, one in his head. Whoever was up there had killed people before.

  Ronnie Johnson dropped through the skylight, landing on the floor with a loud thud. He had his Glock in both hands, swinging it around the room, searching for another target.

  He kicked away the rifle from beside Qasim and, briefly, got down on one knee so that he could feel for a pulse in his neck.

  ‘Any others?’

  Dexter nodded, gesturing with her head towards the staircase to her left.

  ‘How many? One? Two?’

  Dexter nodded, then shook her head.

  ‘One?’

  She nodded again.

  Ronnie was pointing his gun at the top of the staircase.

  ‘We got one more in here!’ He yelled.

  A woman that Dexter didn’t recognise dropped onto the floor beside Ronnie. He tapped the air with his fingers and within seconds she’d fanned across the other side of the room, giving them two positions to take down anyone who came up the staircase.

  The woman was standing beside Dexter. With her gun in one hand pointed at the stairs, she withdrew a knife from her belt and sliced through the gag wrapped around Dexter’s head.

  Dexter coughed, spitting a ball of cloth onto the floor.

  ‘There’s . . . there’s . . .’ She swallowed to help with her speech. ‘There’s another guy, heavily armed. And they’ve got enough C4 to take down the entire block.’

  A few more seconds and the woman had cut through the rest of Dexter’s restraints.

  Dexter had been in that position for so many hours that it took her two goes to get up out of the chair. The woman handed her the Glock she had been using and then knelt, grabbing the compact Sig Sauer she’d strapped to her ankle.

  ‘I’ve fired six rounds, which means you’ve got nine left. Take this.’ She handed Dexter a spare magazine. ‘In case you need it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Dexter took the weapon and the extra bullets, and followed the woman closer to the staircase, waiting for Ronnie’s call.

  ‘You good?’ Ronnie whispered.

  Dexter nodded.

  Ronnie turned his head back to the kitchen. ‘Stay up there, Dorset! Weapons and explosives in here, keep an eye on the back door.’

  There was a noise on the stairs and Dexter could just make out the top of Thomas’s blond head, the flashes from his gun.

  Bang! Bang!

  One of the bullets hit Dexter in the shoulder and she fell back against the wall.

  ‘Get down!’

  Kim pushed Dexter further out of the way and started firing.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Next they heard the sounds of footsteps racing down the stairs and a window being smashed.

  ‘Kim, stay with Dexter.’ Ronnie moved towards the top of the stairs, the gun in his hand leading the way. There was a splash of blood on the wall. Kim had hit him. A flesh wound. Bad enough to make him run for it, not enough to kill him.

  Struggling for breath, Dexter was slumped on the carpet, back to the wall, using her fingers to find the hole in her shoulder, trying to assess where it had hit. Whether there was an exit wound.

  ‘Just breathe.’ Kim was kneeling beside her. ‘We’ll get you out of here.’

  The bullet was just wide of her heart and Dexter could feel the warm blood rushing across her breast, down her stomach.

  She could feel Kim’s hand on her now, pushing down hard on the wound. ‘You’ve got to breathe.’

  Dexter let her head rest against the wall. The skin of her forehead felt like dead weights on her eyes, so she closed them.

  ‘No. No. Eyes open, Sharon.’ Kim was tapping her on the cheek. ‘Stay with me. Keep breathing. Stay with me.’

  ‘He’s gone!’

  Ronnie came running back up the stairs, yelling at the open skylight in the roof.

  ‘Dorset! Gunman’s on the move!’

  Bailey had counted ten gunshots from inside the house and he was hoping to hell that Dexter hadn’t been hit by any of them.

  He was kneeling behind a car across the road from the house on First Avenue. It was a beaten-up old sedan that reminded him of the Corolla – God rest its soul. Pieces of gravel on the footpath were digging into his knees. He needed to stay low, out of sight, like he’d said he would. Bailey was in the exact spot where Ronnie had told him to position himself before he’d climbed up the high dividing wall of the terraced house and onto the roof with Dorset and Kim.

  Although it was dark, the moonlight and street lamps gave Bailey a good view of everything he needed to see. The back door, windows and the skylight position on the roof, where Tony Dorset was kneeling, looking down into the house, talking to someone.

  Dorset was still looking down when a guy smashed a window on the floor below and leapt out, landing heavily on the corrugated iron roof of the cheap extension at the back of the house. In the dim light it looked like he was carrying a gun. Bailey kept his position at the rear of the car, following him as he moved. The man was limping, but it didn’t stop him from jumping – albeit awkwardly – onto the brick retaining wall.

  ‘Stop! Drop the gun!’ Dorset called out from his position on the roof. He had a rifle pointed at the guy on the wall and he looked like he was about to shoot.

  Bang! Bang!

 
Dorset missed. The guy jumped off the wall and onto the footpath, losing his balance and falling onto one knee. He stood up, his back to the wall, shielding himself from any more bullets from Dorset’s rifle. He was less than fifteen metres from Bailey, nervously looking from side to side, wondering which way to run. Bailey couldn’t let him get away. He’d asked to be involved, and now he needed to do something.

  ‘Mate!’ Bailey called out from his position across the road. ‘Drop your gun, would you!’

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

  The bullets sprayed the car, covering Bailey with shattered glass and making him fall onto his backside.

  ‘Fuck me,’ he said to no one. He really was bad at this.

  The guy started walking towards the car that was shielding Bailey, dragging his left foot along the road, firing his weapon. More bullets pelted into the car, like hailstones hitting a tin roof in a storm. The bloke must have figured that Bailey was a cop, not some washed-up journo who’d never held a gun before, let alone fired one.

  Bailey had no choice but to fire back. He pointed the gun across the boot of the car, squeezing the trigger.

  Bang!

  The metal jolted in his hand and he could feel the recoil in his shoulder joint, tensing his neck.

  He peered over the car. He’d missed and the guy was getting closer.

  Bang! Bang!

  Two more bullet holes punched into the car.

  Bailey flung his arm up onto the paintwork and squeezed the trigger again.

  Bang!

  He kept squeezing until all he could hear was the clicking sounds of an empty chamber. He tossed the gun onto the ground. It was useless now.

  The footsteps were still coming, rounding the back of the car, confirming that Bailey had missed again. What the fuck did he know about firing guns, anyway? This was a bad idea.

  The guy was coming for him.

  Bailey bent down so that he could see which direction the guy’s feet were moving around the car. At least he was travelling slowly, one foot scraping the road.