Conspiracy

by Adrian Wills

  ‘That all makes perfect sense,’ said Fletcher. ‘Except for one thing. Why on earth would Kyle Hopkins want to threaten me?’

  ‘I was hoping you’d tell me.’

  ‘It might help if I showed you something.’ Fletcher opened a drawer in his desk.

  Blake realised the danger too late. Before he could reach for his Browning, Fletcher had pulled out his service issue Glock and had it pointed at Blake’s chest. ‘But first I’ll take your weapon, please,’ Fletcher said, holding out a hand.

  Blake hesitated, considering lying. Fletcher was only speculating that he was armed.

  ‘Please, don’t mess me around,’ said Fletcher, standing. ‘You don’t know what I’m capable of.’

  No point pushing the guy. Blake leaned forward and removed the Browning from the small of his back, teasing it out with his fingertips. He laid it on the desk and pushed it towards Fletcher, who locked it in his desk and pocketed the key. ‘Now get up. There’s somewhere we need to be.’

  The parade ground was deserted. Fletcher marched Blake towards one of the olive-green Land Rovers parked in a neat row by the chain-link fence and tossed him a set of keys. ‘You drive,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You’ll see when we get there.’

  They swung out of the main gate, saluted by the two young guards, and hit the main road. Fletcher gave directions for a meandering route up onto the moor along the now familiar tree-lined lanes.

  ‘I think you’re also covering for someone else,’ said Blake, as he changed gear to negotiate a steep incline. ‘You didn’t give the kill order, did you? You’re not the bad guy here.’

  ‘You really don’t want to go there.’

  ‘So I’m right?’

  ‘Shut up and drive.’

  ‘I only want —’

  ‘Another word and I’ll put a bullet through your leg.’ Fletcher pressed the barrel of the Glock against Blake’s thigh and they drove the next ten miles in silence, over rolling roads that cut across the bleak landscape like a ribbon of tar under a pigeon-breast grey sky.

  ‘Take a right here,’ said Fletcher eventually, pointing to a narrow, rutted track off the main road.

  It took them past a derelict-looking farmhouse behind a five-bar gate hanging off its hinges and a tall moss-covered pile of granite rocks. Fletcher ordered Blake to stop in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere and snatched the keys from the ignition.

  Blake’s blood ran through his veins like threads of ice. If Fletcher was intending to kill him, he’d picked the perfect spot. They were in a valley screened by steep grassy banks, far from prying eyes. The only witnesses would likely be a scraggy moorland sheep or a wandering Dartmoor pony.

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘Are you going to kill me, like you killed Kyle Hopkins?’ asked Blake, climbing out of the car and watching Fletcher closely. It would be a pitiful way to die after a life lived in the shadow of danger. He’d escaped scraps far worse than this, but right now he couldn’t see any way out of it. Fletcher was holding all the cards, and Blake was fresh out of ideas. ‘The police know I was on my way to see you,’ he said. ‘If I disappear, they’ll know where to come looking.’

  Fletcher laughed. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Are you prepared to take the risk?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Let’s talk about it.’

  ‘Enough talking. Get over there,’ Fletcher ordered, waving the Glock in the direction of a dark hole at the base of a heap of granite boulders.

  As Blake crabbed closer, keeping a wary eye on Fletcher, he saw the dark hole was actually an entrance to a cave, sealed closed by a metal grille welded into the rock.

  ‘You wanted answers,’ said Fletcher. ‘You’ll find everything you’re looking for inside there.’

  Chapter Forty

  Fletcher tossed Blake a heavy-duty Maglite torch. ‘You’ll need that,’ he said.

  Blake caught the torch one-handed and shone a cone of light into the cave through the grille across the entrance. A rough carpet of damp mud and rock formed an uneven floor and the ceiling was pitted and scraped where it had been carved out with primitive tools.

  ‘Go on in,’ said Fletcher.

  When Blake inspected the grille more closely, he noticed it had been roughly cut through at the points where it looked to be cemented into two upright granite columns. With a little brute force, Blake was able to shift it to one side far enough to squeeze through the gap. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘An old potato cave.’

  Blake shot Fletcher a quizzical glance over his shoulder.

  ‘Farmers dug them out for winter storage,’ Fletcher said, as if that explained everything. ‘Come on, we don’t have all day.’

  Inside the cave, it was a degree or two cooler. The light from the torch cast eerie shadows over the floor, walls and ceiling.

  ‘There’s nothing in here,’ said Blake, turning on his heel and shining the light into Fletcher’s eyes, hoping maybe to momentarily blind him.

  But Fletcher was ready for it and knocked the torch away with his gun. ‘Do that again and I’ll put a bullet in your face.’

  ‘You said all my questions would be answered in here.’

  ‘You’re not looking properly.’

  Blake stepped farther into the darkness, probing the deepest reaches with the torch. The body was tucked up at the back where the roof curled down to meet the floor. It was lying face down, its head angled away from the entrance. ‘Hopkins?’ he asked, fearing he already knew the answer. He inched closer, dropped to his knees and rolled the body over with his foot.

  Kyle Hopkins’ face was waxy and pale, his mouth and eyes wide open, frozen in the shock of his final moments while a bruised hole in the middle of his forehead revealed at least how he’d died. ‘He’s been shot,’ said Blake, inspecting the injury.

  ‘All he had to do was keep his head down and his mouth shut. He’d been warned, but he wouldn’t listen.’ Fletcher held the gun at arm’s length, aiming at Blake’s central mass.

  Blake closed Hopkins’ eyes with his fingers and clamped his mouth shut. The guy deserved at least some dignity in his ignominious death. ‘You killed him.’ As Blake stood and turned to confront Fletcher, the soldier’s outline was silhouetted in the doorway.

  ‘He left me with little choice.’

  ‘And now you’re going to kill me?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘That would be a mistake,’ said Blake, squinting to pick out Fletcher’s face in the low light. ‘If I disappear, the police will be crawling all over you.’

  ‘It would be a mistake to let you live.’

  ‘When did killing start coming so easily?’

  ‘I’m not a monster. I never wanted to get involved in any of this.’

  ‘And yet you killed Kyle Hopkins and now you’re prepared to kill me. At least tell me what happened in Iraq.’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘I’d like to know, and it might do you some good to talk about it. I know it’s eating you up.’ Blake put his free hand in his pocket trying to look nonthreatening.

  ‘I don’t need therapy, least of all from you.’

  ‘Tell me about Basra.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Fletcher.

  ‘I know plenty of guys who were there. None of them had an easy time.’

  That was an understatement. The foot patrols put their lives on the line every time they set out from camp with nothing but a scrap of body armour, a helmet and a rifle. They were supposed to be there to keep the peace after the fall of Saddam Hussein, but were quickly seen as greedy invaders, hungry to lay their hands on the country’s rich oil reserves and ended up in a guerrilla war fighting a rag-tag army of insurgents armed with Russian-made Kalashnikov's and homemade bombs. Blake had heard of plenty of guys who’d lost feet, legs, arms and worse stumbling across improvised explosives hidden in abandoned cars, gutters and in several cases, packed in
to an empty tissue box left on the street. The IEDs were the biggest threat to the troops and struck fear into them above all else.

  ‘We were sent to win hearts and minds, but they hated us,’ said Fletcher. ‘Even after everything Saddam had done, we were the enemy in their eyes. We should have left them to it. There was no place for us. I had five men under my command. Good soldiers. Loyal. And I promised myself from the outset I’d bring them home alive. We never took unnecessary risks and played everything by the book.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  ‘Bad luck.’

  ‘I don’t believe in luck,’ said Blake.

  ‘I don’t know how else to explain it. We were teamed up with a new guy. They wanted him to get a taste of the city and sent him out of patrol with us. And that was the day everything went to shit.’

  Chapter Forty-One

  Basra, Iraq.

  2004

  At first, they all thought they’d lucked out when they discovered the regiment was barracked in one of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces. From the outside it was all sandstone walls, spiralling pillars and stunning views across the Shatt Al-Arab river. Inside, it was a picture of tasteless opulence; marble floors, ornate carvings and gold taps. But the novelty for the regular soldiers of the Duke of Yorks Royal Regiment had long since worn off after realising everything they needed to survive had to be convoyed in. Food, fuel and even water had to be transported in on long lines of trucks that had to run a dangerous gauntlet through the city. That was to say nothing of the oppressive heat of the summer, so intense it sucked the breath from your lungs. Or the night-time shelling that made it almost impossible to sleep.

  The captain, who’d arrived fresh into theatre less than 48 hours earlier, was still in the honeymoon period, wide-eyed with wonder and not yet worn down by the stress and the heat. As he emerged into the searing afternoon sun, his SA18 rifle in one hand and his helmet swinging from its chin strap in the other, his hair was already drenched with sweat and his eyes rimmed red from the desert dust that found its way into everything.

  Sergeant Ryan Fletcher snapped to attention. ‘The men are ready to leave when you are, Sir.’

  The captain cast a disdainful eye over a pair of ‘snatch’ armoured Land Rovers, prepped and ready to go.

  ‘Right,’ he said, scratching his chin. ‘What’s the drill?’

  ‘We’re heading for the Ashar police station,’ said Fletcher. ‘They’ve arrested an imam for questioning and the locals are protesting for his release. The local station chief has asked for back-up to disperse a crowd.’

  The captain nodded. ‘Ok, what are we waiting for?’

  Fletcher bit his tongue. They’d been waiting almost ten minutes for the captain to show and the men were getting anxious. It was always the same when they left the relative safety of the camp. You never knew what you were going to face with the local population growing increasingly hostile to anyone in a British army uniform.

  ‘Christ, it’s like an inferno in here,’ the captain said as he hauled himself into the rear of the lead vehicle.

  ‘You’ve come at the worst time,’ said Fletcher, his pointed remark about the captain’s late arrival into Iraq seemingly lost on him.

  The mid-afternoon temperature had spiked at well over forty degrees, but it felt twice that inside the vehicle. Two flies buzzed against the windscreen and the only flow of air, like a blast from a hand drier, came through the hatch in the roof where Private Anthony Okeke stood manning a Minimi light machine gun for their protection.

  ‘It’s about a ten-minute drive,’ Fletcher shouted over the noise of the engine as a pair of gates opened and the two Land Rovers rolled out, the tyres humming over cracked asphalt. ‘We should be back within the hour, but it’ll at least give you a flavour of the city.’

  The captain said nothing as the sun-bleached landscape unfolded around them, his eyes scanning left and right as he soaked it all in.

  ‘How was your flight, Sir?’ Fletcher asked, feeling the need to attempt polite conversation.

  ‘Tiring.’

  ‘But pleased to be back with the regiment?’

  ‘Sure. I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing.’

  Pompous twat. The guy had wangled extended leave while the rest of them had been hauling their arses around in the heat and the dust. None of them wanted to be there, but he could have sounded a little more enthusiastic, especially in front of the men. Okay, so his kid had had a rough time of it. Apparently she’d weighed less than a bag of sugar when she was born three-and-a-half months early. But they all had stuff going on at home. Soldiering was what they were paid to do.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear about your daughter,’ said Fletcher. ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘Better now.’

  ‘Is it your first?’

  ‘Yes. Do you have children, Sergeant?’

  ‘No, Sir,’ said Fletcher. He’d always imagined that he and Gemma might have had kids, and often pictured what their cosy life might have been like with two little ones running around, tearing up the place. But that was before his surprise visit home when he’d found her in bed with his brother.

  Stuart had been lucky Fletcher hadn’t killed him, although he’d come close. And now the rest of the family disowned him. Well, screw them. The army was all the family he needed.

  ‘In which case, let’s stick to what you know, shall we? Have you had much trouble with the locals?’

  ‘Most of them tolerate us, but a small minority do their best to make life uncomfortable.’

  ‘Ungrateful bastards. You’d think they’d be pleased to have us here.’

  It had been a common misconception among the soldiers before they arrived and faced the hostility head on.

  As they entered the outskirts of the city, white-walled buildings shimmered in the heat haze, but the streets normally so busy with taxis and buses, donkey carts and street vendors were eerily quiet. No children playing football in the dirt or women in their traditional black abayas and veils struggling with bags of groceries. Only the odd stray dog sniffing round in the garbage.

  ‘Something’s not right,’ said Private Stone, his hands tightening on the steering wheel.

  Fletcher glanced at the map in his lap. He was thinking the same, but prayed they were wrong.

  ‘What is it?’ the captain asked, leaning forward from the back.

  ‘It’s probably nothing,’ said Fletcher. ‘It’s just a bit quieter than we’d expect at this time of day. Nothing to worry about.’

  The captain sat back.

  ‘Tony, keep your eyes peeled,’ Fletcher yelled up through the hatch, swatting a fly away from his sweat-drenched face.

  They swung onto a wide palm-lined boulevard, the two lanes separated by concrete dividers. Stone put his foot down, building up speed. The sooner they reached the police station, the sooner they could head back. With luck, they’d make it in time for tea. Fletcher certainly had no intention of being in the city after dark.

  He was watching the second vehicle in his wing mirror when the first rounds pinged off their Land Rover, the sound like frozen peas being fired against a tin tray.

  ‘Contact!’ screamed Okeke at the same time. He rattled off a controlled burst from the Minimi.

  Gunmen appeared in doorways and in windows and on roofs and behind walls. Each man stepped out for a brief moment, emptied half a clip, and took cover. It was as if someone had flicked a switch and unleashed hell. Rifles crackled and bullets strafed the vehicles with an intensity Fletcher had never before experienced.

  He stared wide-eyed through the insect-splattered windscreen, and for a moment was paralysed with indecision. They were sitting ducks, two vehicles in the middle of the street, surrounded by militiamen intent on bloody slaughter.

  Okeke collapsed inside the vehicle, yanking the hatch cover shut with a deadening thud that brought Fletcher back to his senses. ‘Tony?’

  ‘I’m okay, boss,’ Okeke said, panting as if he’d j
ust run a hundred metres, sweat pouring from his brow. ‘Christ, they came from nowhere.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ Stone’s voice wavered. His body was rigid, his knuckles white on the wheel.

  There was nothing they could do but keep driving. If they stopped to fight, they’d be cut down in an instant. Fletcher fumbled the map with shaking hands. It wasn’t the first time they’d been shot at. And they were all accustomed to the constant mortar shelling over the palace walls at night. But nothing had prepared him for this.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, turn around!’ the captain screamed. ‘You’ve got to get us out of here or we’re all going to die!’

  Stone shook his head, eyes focused on the sand-strewn street. ‘They’ve blocked the gaps in the road,’ he said.

  He was right. The spaces between the concrete dividers, which appeared every hundred metres or so, had been blocked by abandoned cars, piles of rubble and stacks of oil drums. Every single one.

  ‘It’s an ambush,’ said Fletcher, blinking sweat from his eyes and his heart racing with a cocktail of fear and excitement. There was nowhere to make a turn safely. Their only choice was to continue on, deeper into the carefully planned killing zone.

  Fletcher stared at the intersecting lines on the map, and focused on the bold red, blue and green routes, identified by the army as the main thoroughfares through the city and from which they weren’t supposed to deviate. But they were no good to him now. He needed an extraction route in a hurry. It would only take a well-aimed bullet to take out a tyre, and they’d really be up shit creek.

  ‘RPG!’ Stone screamed.

  Fletcher looked up to see a man on a roof to their right with a dark tube slung over his shoulder. A second later a rocket speared towards them with its tail fins spinning.

  Stone yanked the wheel hard to the left and the rocket hit the vehicle square on, exploding with an ear-splitting boom that rocked the Land Rover on its axles. A second explosion hit the vehicle from the opposite side.