Black Ops

by Chris Ryan

  ‘Give me a moment.’ She flicked through her notes, muttering under her breath and occasionally referring back to a previous page. Finally she nodded and closed the book. ‘I kept pretty detailed surveillance notes. If anything happened to Ibrahim, Al-Farouk would have been our first port of call, so I needed to know his daily movements and any weaknesses that would have given us opportunities to blackmail him. He’s a man of habit, which is good for us. He’s also pretty clean-living, which gives us less leverage.’

  ‘But there are regular payments to IS,’ Danny said.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘As far as his daily schedule goes, he attends the first call to prayer at the Al-Omari Grand Mosque in the central district every day. Without fail. He has a chauffeur, who drives him there from home each morning and picks him up when morning prayers are over.’

  ‘Do you have pictures?’

  Bethany nodded. She opened a second notebook, the pages of which were interleaved with photographs.

  ‘Old-school,’ Danny observed.

  ‘I told you. We keep everything to do with the MISFIT operation analogue, and in hard copy.’ She flicked through the notebook and handed a particular photograph to Danny. It showed a black SUV with blacked-out windows, the image too blurred to tell what make, from which a Lebanese-looking man in a grey suit was emerging.

  ‘That him?’ Danny asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Danny sized him up. Broad shoulders, but small, and he looked out of shape. He wouldn’t present a problem if it came to it.

  ‘Always the same car?’

  She consulted her notes again. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve got the reg number. From the mosque he heads to the office. It’s overlooking the harbour on the northern edge of the central district. Once he’s in there, we’ve lost him until evening. He never comes out. People come to him.’

  ‘People like Ibrahim Khan.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘He goes home at night, though?’

  ‘Seven p.m., on the nose. The chauffeur takes him back.’

  ‘Family?’

  ‘Wife, three children, all girls. They’re kept pretty well under wraps. He’s that kind of hardliner.’ She looked up from her notebook. ‘I want to make something clear,’ she said. ‘I won’t countenance any threat to the wife and daughters. There’s no evidence that they share our man’s extremist tendencies. They’re innocents.’

  ‘They’re the best leverage we have,’ Danny said. ‘Threaten the kids, he’ll tell us everything we want.’

  ‘That’s not how I want to do things.’

  ‘It’s not up to you.’

  ‘Then count me out.’ Bethany stood up.

  ‘Sit down,’ Danny said wearily. ‘Fine, we’ll leave the family. But it means we’ll have to use other methods on the target, you understand that?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Do we know anything about his chauffeur?’

  ‘Glad you asked,’ Bethany said. ‘His name is Abdullah Dimitri. I’ve reason to believe he’s an IS plant. He took the chauffeuring job about eighteen months ago. My suspicion is that he’s in place to keep tabs on our target and report back on him to his IS handlers.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  Bethany removed two more photos. One was of the same vehicle, the black SUV. The chauffeur was opening the rear door. The image was taken with a telephoto lens, and the chauffeur’s face was very clear. She handed him a second picture. It was taken in the desert. Three men in orange jumpsuits were kneeling in a line. Behind them, carrying a vicious-looking scimitar and wearing all black, was the same man. There was no doubt about it. Their faces were identical.

  ‘Our target’s chauffeur is an IS executioner? Seriously?’

  ‘It’s not so surprising. Lots of them try their hand at it. It’s a rite of passage, almost, a way for them to prove their loyalty. Then they get moved on to other roles.’

  ‘Does anybody else know about this?’

  ‘The colonel. It’s the kind of operational information we keep under wraps. It wouldn’t play well if anybody found out we’d identified one of these guys and done nothing. I’m not saying it doesn’t leave a bad taste in the mouth, mind you.’

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Danny said, ‘but in my book, cutting off people’s heads makes our chauffeur kind of expendable.’

  ‘Expendable?’

  ‘Yeah. Permanently.’

  ‘I’m not comfortable with that kind of talk,’ Bethany said.

  ‘That’s why you do your job and I do mine,’ Danny replied. He fixed her with a steady stare. ‘This is a black op, not a vicar’s tea party. You need to get used to the idea that Ibrahim and the people he’s fallen in with don’t share your sense of fair play.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ she said. ‘I understand the situation. You realise the Lebanese authorities won’t countenance any foul play on their territory by a foreign agent? They’ve got enough difficulty keeping Hezbollah in line.’

  ‘Then I’ll make sure I don’t get caught,’ Danny said. He had another look at the pictures of the chauffeur. He was a different proposition from Al-Farouk. Lean, young, tall. Danny could handle him, but he’d take a bit more force. ‘Where’s our target’s home?’ he said.

  Bethany hesitated. ‘I said we’re not hitting the family.’

  ‘And I said I wouldn’t. Just tell me where he lives.’

  She consulted her notes. ‘There’s a residential area to the south-east of the city centre. It’s as plush as you’d expect. Gardens, staff quarters, the works.’

  ‘Security?’

  ‘Of course. Extensive.’

  ‘Then the easiest time to hit him is when he’s in transit. Early morning’s too risky. If his staff expect him at work, they’re going to start asking questions if he doesn’t turn up. If we get him to call them, it’s still going to look suspicious if he instructs them to cancel a day’s worth of meetings. So that leaves the evening journey from the office back home. From what you’ve said, the wife and kids are submissive. They’re less likely to act on their own initiative.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Then that’s decided. We’ll target him on the journey home.’

  ‘When?’ Bethany said.

  Danny gave that a few seconds’ thought. They should probably wait twenty-four hours. It would give them time to put in one round of surveillance on the target as he headed home that evening. If Danny was following SOPs, that would be the routine call. But something didn’t feel right about waiting. Ibrahim Khan was out there somewhere, planning his next hit. Perhaps it would be the colonel? Even worse, perhaps his next stop would be the little safe house in Brecon. He found himself thinking of Bethany’s little boy. Khan had shown himself to be ruthless and sick. And clever. MI6 thought Christina and Danny Jr were under the radar, but it really wasn’t so difficult for information to leak. The longer Danny waited, the closer his target would be to his next strike. If that strike harmed the kid, Danny wouldn’t forgive himself.

  Decision made. ‘We do it tonight,’ he said.

  8

  According to Bethany, the target’s chauffeur was likely to pick him up at 19.00 hrs. It was now 14.00. They had five hours to make their preparations.

  Danny examined carefully every photograph Bethany had of the target’s vehicle. It was a black BMW X5. Five doors and heavily blacked-out rear and side windows. Registration number

  B 759375, and the equivalent written on the plates in Arabic. Bethany had three pictures of it. In the first, it was leaving Al-Farouk’s home, through a set of secure gates flung wide open. In the second, it was waiting outside the Grand Mosque, the blue minarets just visible in the out-of-focus background. It was the third picture that interested him. Here, the X5 had parked up in a dedicated parking spot outside Al-Farouk’s office. A time code stamped on the image stated that the photograph had been taken at 18.57 hrs. ‘That’s the regular pick-up spot?’ Danny asked.

  ‘As far as I know.�
�

  ‘We need to go and look at it. How long does it take to walk there?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes, if that.’

  He stood up and moved over to the satellite picture of Lebanon on the wall. Beirut was a massive urban sprawl halfway down the Mediterranean coast. To the east, the city boundary merged with a vast forested area. There were few main roads. Danny identified a river running north–south. Beyond that, to the east, a mountain ridge. Danny pointed at the forested area and the river. ‘Do you know this terrain here?’ he asked.

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I know it a bit, okay?’ She sighed and pointed to an area on the western bank of the river. ‘There’s a disused farmstead here. You can’t see it on this map because the trees have overgrown it. It often gets flooded in the winter so it’s no longer any use to anybody. Ibrahim and I identified it as a place we could meet if he ever felt his cover was blown. It’s deserted. Nobody ever goes there.’

  ‘Are the roads that lead to it busy?’

  ‘No.’ She pointed at a main road heading east to west, across the mountain ridge. ‘Once you get off this main supply route that leads to the Syrian border, you’re pretty much on your own.’

  ‘Do you know how to get there? To the farmstead, I mean.’

  ‘I was Ibrahim’s handler. Of course I know how to get there.’

  Danny nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and check out Al-Farouk’s office.’

  ‘I need to change first,’ Bethany said. She went into her bedroom. When she emerged again, she was dressed similarly to Danny. In jeans, a white T-shirt and a leather jacket. Danny found himself wondering which was the real Bethany: the Sloane Ranger with the Alice band, or the altogether more sophisticated woman standing in front of him. He reminded himself that she was an MI6 trained agent. She was clearly adept at presenting to the world whatever version of herself most suited her circumstances.

  They stowed their embassy ID cards in their jeans. Danny gave his Sig a once-over and placed it, cocked and locked, in his jacket. Bethany eyed the weapon anxiously but didn’t say anything. They left the accommodation block, before walking across the central square and into the main embassy building. Bethany led them confidently across the bustling reception area, where embassy staff were dealing with British nationals’ passport problems and other queries. Nobody seemed to pay them any attention as they exited the building from the front and took an immediate right.

  It was clear that Bethany knew the back streets of Beirut well. She avoided the main thoroughfares, and led Danny through a network of tiny winding streets, packed with artisan stores, tiny workshops, hip restaurants and coffee shops, and more than a few tourist traps. Arabic pop music blared out from various quarters, and a smell of grilled meat hung in the air, making Danny hungry. These little cobbled streets were run-down, but thronged with Lebanese and tourists alike. Danny sensed that he was blending in okay, although Bethany’s striking features and blonde hair drew more than a few glances from some of the men.

  Then, suddenly, they were out of the network of tiny streets and facing a busy main road. On the other side was an enormous concrete building. Glass was missing from its many windows, its fascia was bullet-riddled and scarred. At the very top of the tower were the remnants of a sign: Holiday Inn. The building looked like it had been removed from a war zone and plonked here in the middle of the city. But then, Danny reminded himself, Beirut had been a war zone not so long ago. Bethany saw him staring up at the building. ‘The locals see it as a monument to the war,’ she said. ‘It was the scene of a great deal of fighting back in the seventies. They say a thousand people died in that building. A lot of them were thrown from the top. It was looted and scavenged after that. I quite like that it’s still there. You know, to remind everyone.’

  Danny’s attention had already moved on. ‘Which way to Al-Farouk’s office?’

  She pointed along the main road. They headed north. Danny could smell sea air amid the exhaust fumes. A forest of modern tower blocks gleamed up ahead. The road led to the port. Expensive yachts. Glamorous pedestrians strolling the boardwalk that followed the seafront. The afternoon sun shimmered on the Med. Danny had operated all across the Middle East, in brutal deserts and war-torn towns. This part of Beirut couldn’t have been less like those barren, unwelcoming environments.

  They crossed over to the boardwalk, heading west towards the office blocks that looked out to sea. After five minutes, Bethany stopped. She nodded towards a tall, mirrored block on the other side of the road. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Al-Farouk has the thirteenth floor. That’s where Ibrahim used to meet him to collect the money.’

  Danny checked the area in front of the block. There was a neatly kept garden with palm trees swaying gently in the breeze coming in off the Med. He immediately identified the parking space in front of the main entrance, which he recognised from Bethany’s surveillance photo. ‘Have you ever been inside the building?’ he asked.

  ‘Once. The first time Ibrahim met with Al-Farouk. I wanted to be on site in case there was a problem.’

  ‘What’s behind the main entrance?’

  ‘Big foyer. Marble floor. Sofas. Reception desk. You have to report there if you want to get through a security barrier to reach the upper floors.’

  ‘Toilets?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are there toilets you can use without approaching reception?’

  Bethany closed her eyes, clearly picturing the layout. ‘Yes,’ she said finally.

  ‘Okay,’ Danny said. ‘Way I see it, we have two options. Option one: we get ourselves a vehicle, follow Al-Farouk as his driver takes him home, drive into the back of him, and when the driver gets out to deal with it, we carjack them.’

  Bethany gave him an ‘are you insane?’ look.

  ‘Yeah, I agree,’ Danny said. ‘We might not find the right moment to make the hit, our car could be identified. Too many things can go wrong. So I guess it’s option two.’

  ‘Which is what?’ Bethany spoke carefully, clearly worried that option two would be even riskier.

  ‘You saw how the side and rear windows of Al-Farouk’s car were blacked-out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Big mistake that, if you think someone might target you.’

  ‘Why? It keeps him anonymous, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Sure, but sometimes you don’t want to be anonymous, if the threat’s already in the vehicle.’ Danny looked her up and down. ‘That two-piece suit you were wearing in your office yesterday. Did you bring it with you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said carefully. ‘Why?’

  ‘Are you comfortable with a handgun?’

  ‘I’ve had firearms training. Look, Danny, I don’t like the . . .’

  ‘How’s your Arabic?’ he interrupted.

  ‘Fluent. I had Christina as a teacher.’

  ‘Good. That’s sorted then. Let’s get back to the embassy and change. I’ll explain what we’re going to do while we walk.’

  He turned and headed back along the boardwalk. He heard Bethany give a little shout of impatience, and couldn’t swear that she hadn’t stamped her foot. But then she was beside him again, walking fast to keep up with his pace. She listened wordlessly as he explained his strategy to her. And fair play to her, Danny thought. She let him finish what he was saying before she told him he was completely crazy.

  But Danny wasn’t crazy, and by the time they reached the embassy, Bethany had come round to his way of thinking. He was confident in his plan, because he knew how men’s minds worked. They seldom saw women as a threat. Beautiful blonde women like Bethany White even less so. And if the man in question was an IS operative, whose belief system had at its very core the idea that women were inferior? That was a strategic advantage just waiting to be exploited.

  Back in their embassy apartment, Danny waited in the sitting room while Bethany changed into her two-piece suit. She emerged with her hair tied back and a little make
-up on her face, soberly applied. ‘It’ll do,’ Danny said.

  ‘Flatterer,’ Bethany replied.

  Danny held up his handgun. ‘This is a Sig Pthirty-eight nine millimetre,’ he said. ‘It’s important you look like you know how to handle it, if you’re going to appear a genuine threat. The first thing you need to know . . .’

  ‘Just give it me,’ Bethany said. She took the Sig from Danny’s grasp, expelled the magazine, checked the lip, reloaded it and cocked the weapon, all in about five seconds. Then she smiled at Danny. ‘Anything else you’d like to mansplain to me?’ she said.

  Danny shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. He took off his jacket, removed his holster and threw it to Bethany, who caught it one-handed. She removed her jacket, donned the holster and stowed the pistol. When her jacket was back on, Danny could just make out a slight bulge where the weapon was, but only because he was trained to see it and he knew it was there in the first place. To a passing glance, Bethany was just a Western woman in a business suit. Danny checked the time: 18.03 hrs. ‘Let’s get moving,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget your dark glasses.’ Bethany lifted them from the breast pocket of her jacket to indicate she had them.

  It took fifteen minutes to return to the seafront. The sun was setting and there was a chill in the air, but still enough of a glare for Bethany to warrant wearing sunglasses. The seafront boardwalk was still busy, and several yachts had moored close to land. Danny walked twenty metres behind Bethany. They looked too peculiar a couple, with Bethany in her business suit and Danny in his jeans and leather jacket, to be seen side by side. Not that Bethany went unnoticed. Heads turned as she passed. Not ideal, but at least it meant Danny himself was as good as invisible.

  Danny had to hand it to Bethany. She had a certain flair. As she approached the section of the boardwalk opposite Al-Farouk’s office, she showed no hint of nerves. Nobody would have thought that two hours previously she’d been telling Danny he was insane and refusing to go through with his plan. It had taken some fast talking from Danny just to get her to consider it. He’d already told her once today she was a good actor. Right now she was owning the part.