It took him ten minutes to read the rambling notes, first in Arabic, and then in English. Though he could read Arabic, much of it was nonsensical, and his concentration was shot. He stumbled over the words, imploring whoever was listening that the Western forces in Iraq were wasting their time, that Behrouz and his fellow brothers-in-arms would, with Allah on their side, prevail.
The sermon ended with a plea to Tony Blair and George Bush, stating that his life lay in their hands.
“Unless Western forces pull out of Iraq, radically and quickly, I await my fate.”
As the camera was turned off, it occurred to Connor that it was a particularly pointless statement. It was clear Behrouz planned to kill him anyway.
Behrouz appeared in front of him and put the shackles back on Connor’s wrists. The pain was excruciating. Connor bit his lip, but a low moan escaped him. Behrouz grinned. “There, there, Connor. You did very well. I’m very impressed with your language skills. It is a great shame you didn’t put them to better use.”
“What would you have had me do with them?”
“That’s not for me to say now.” Behrouz pulled an ornate knife from somewhere and drew it lightly across Connor’s throat. “Our time together is almost at an end. Watch the sun, Connor. When it sets, you will go down with it.”
Twenty
They came at dawn on a Sunday morning, and by the time they left, my brother was gone, and I’d never see him again. They told me where and when, but despite an inquest, details were thin. The final brutal moments of my brother’s life remained mysteriously inexplicable for three years, and, by then, the details almost felt superfluous. James’s death haunted me because I missed him, not because of the way he’d died, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t put my grief to bed. Couldn’t silence the nagging in my heart that I needed to show him, even though he was long dead, that there was more to me than the pop-culture hack he’d left behind.
How that landed me on a plane to the most volatile region in the Middle East, I’ll probably never know, but as the aircraft took off at Brize Norton, something in my bones told me I was on a path that would change my life forever.
* * *
Nat counted the minutes as daylight faded. The decision had been taken to launch the raid at dusk. Charlie-3 and the taskforce they’d rallied to assist them had been in place for more than an hour, but Nat’s mind was elsewhere, in bits . . . blown apart by a revelation he’d never seen coming.
Connor Regan . . . C.R. Regan to his readers. Fucking hell. Nat had worked with Pogo for six years, and never taken the time to read the Telegraph articles Pogo’d been so impressed by, the articles written by the baby brother he’d affectionately called “our kid.” The baby brother who had written the poignant journal, documenting Pogo’s death from the point of view of a civilian life Nat had almost forgotten.
Connor’s shock, devastation, and then a lingering sadness, a pain he and his loved ones would never escape. Nat’s heart ached for them, but what hurt the most was the bewilderment that laced every word Connor had written about James’s death, because it was clear, that even three years after the event, Connor had no idea how his brother had died.
* * *
I see James everywhere, hear his voice every time a soldier rips the piss out of me, or moans about the weather. But it feels hollow. I’ll never know if the affinity I feel with these men is real. Are they living as he lived? Dying as he died? I see young men torn apart by IEDs, or riddled with bullets from a firefight gone badly wrong, and now more than ever, I just wish I bloody knew.
* * *
Jesus Christ. Nat squeezed his eyes shut. It was a dream—a fatigue-induced hallucination—it had to be. Shit like this didn’t happen in real life.
“Nat?”
Nat opened his eyes. Marc stood in front of him. “I’m worried about you, mate. You don’t look fit.”
“I’m fine,” Nat said for what felt like the thousandth time that day. “I wouldn’t lead you out there if I wasn’t. You know that.”
Marc did know that of course—he had to by now—but his frown remained. “You can’t blame yourself if this doesn’t go well. This isn’t your fault. None of it is, and it never was. Nothing that’s happened in this shithole country is down to you. Not Connor, not Pogo, nothing.”
Nat rubbed his temples. His team rarely mentioned Pogo, avoiding their own grief and frightened of Nat’s. It was hideously ironic that Marc wanted to talk about him now. “Don’t lecture me,” Nat said. “Just get yourself ready. We’re rolling out in ten minutes.”
Marc stared at him a moment longer before moving on. Nat let his eyes fall closed again. Pogo filled his mind, alive and laughing, and then Connor came too, behind him, smirking with that wry smile that felt like he was taking the piss out of Nat and Pogo both. Nat let their faces come together, Pogo with his fuzzy red hair and green eyes, Connor and his molten brown gaze. The two men who meant the world to him in such different ways looked nothing alike. It didn’t make any sense. They didn’t even share the same name.
“Nat?” Nat raised his head. Wedge stood in front of him, rocking on his heels the way he always did before a loaded mission. “It’s time.”
Nat blinked. The sun had faded, bringing with it an eerie twilight that gave him the perspective he so desperately needed. Pogo’s face melted away, leaving Nat alone with Connor, and a resolve that hardened his heart and silenced the questions he didn’t have answers for.
Piecing the puzzle together would have to wait. If this mission failed, or had come too late, the final picture would mean nothing. Pogo and Connor would both be dead, and Nat would be caught between ghosts forever.
The taskforce moved out on foot, leaving behind a convoy of vehicles that were on alert to follow the moment Nat gave the order.
They crossed the mile-wide stretch of desert sand between their hideaway and the hamlet, entering the abandoned town from the east, creeping in on the suspect building the long way, weaving in and out of the derelict shacks until their target was in sight.
Fifty metres away from the building, Wedge amassed half the force and positioned them at the front of the grey house with Chris and Marc for company. Nat, Bobs, and Harry directed the rest of them around the back, leaving a few behind to flank the sides.
Nat ducked down and took stock, trying to ignore the anxiety burning a hole in his gut. The Land Cruiser was still in place and there were no fresh tyre tracks. As far as they could tell, no one had moved in or out.
That meant four men against twenty, good odds if you hadn’t seen far simpler missions go horribly wrong.
Nat signalled to the five men closest to him to follow him forward. The sound of their boots on the dust seemed deafening to Nat’s hypersensitive ears, but there was no sign of life from the hut. In fact, there was no sign of life anywhere at all. Even the birds had deserted the hamlet.
Bobs reached the steps. Nat caught up and shadowed him as they skulked up to the door. Bobs laid a charge to obliterate whatever locks and bolts were holding it in place. He met Nat’s gaze and nodded.
They backed away to a safe distance and ducked. The explosives detonated, and the door splintered open in a cloud of smoke and wood chips.
Nat leaped over the debris and heard the men behind do the same. They stormed the first room, and then the second, sweeping every corner, weapons raised. Both were empty.
“Fuck!” Nat kicked a blood-stained mattress aside. Beneath it lay a tangle of rusty shackles. He pictured Connor bound and chained to the filthy mattress. The room tilted. Nat crouched down and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. His chest was tight, and he couldn’t breathe. Connor was dead, he had to be.
A commotion at the front of the building pulled him back. He dashed outside as a flurry of AK-47 fire pierced the air. Minimis and M16s answered it as Nat emerged into the dusk to find Wedge’s team in a fearsome firefight with three men who’d fought their way to the Land Cruiser.
Nat aimed at the neares
t insurgent and fired off a blast of rounds, punching holes in the side of the Land Cruiser and missing his target by an inch. The insurgent returned fire. A bullet whizzed past Nat’s head. He ducked down and loaded another link of ammo into his Minimi. Bobs joined him, hosing the Land Cruiser with a hail of M16 rounds.
One insurgent went down. Somehow, the other remained upright. In his peripheral vision, Nat spied Wedge creeping closer, grenade launcher in hand. Their eyes met. Nat nodded. That’s it, mate. Smash the fuckers.
Wedge fired.
The Land Cruiser exploded. Body parts rained down from the sky, and smoke obscured Nat’s vision as he searched for any sign of the fourth man and Connor. As it cleared, a flash of blue caught his eye.
Blue—like the faded Ramones T-shirt Connor had been wearing when he’d been snatched? It was gone so fast Nat thought he’d perhaps imagined it, but desperation and a faint glimmer of hope drove him forward, back around the hut, and into a side alley, without waiting for backup.
A streak of blood stained the dust, and then another and another further up. Nat moved as fast as he dared, gun ready. Behind him, Chris shouted his name, but he didn’t look around.
He tracked the blood to the end of the alley until it disappeared into a derelict building with no windows or doors. The stone shack was pitch-dark. Nat edged forward, letting the shadows swallow him. A scrabbling noise came from the left so Nat hunkered down and aimed his weapon. “Come out,” he called in Arabic. “You’re surrounded. You can’t escape.”
Silence, and then the same chilling laughter he’d heard through the walls that morning. The laughter of someone who didn’t give a fuck if they lived or died.
Nat’s blood ran cold. A man with nothing to lose was the most dangerous man of all. “Come out,” he said again. “You’re out of options.”
For a long moment there was nothing, then a lone figure clutching an ornate, bloody dagger stepped into the light. Nat took in the sharp eyes and heavy beard. Yep. That was Abdullah Behrouz. “Where’s Connor?”
Behrouz smiled. “He’s right here.”
“Where?”
“Here.” Behrouz pointed at the ground.
Nat looked down. A puddle of blood had pooled at Behrouz’s feet, spreading from the blackness all the way to a pale, lifeless hand—Connor’s hand.
Nat’s heart stopped. He was too late.
Connor was dead.
Twenty-One
The earsplitting sound of close range gunfire filtered through the white snow clouding Connor’s consciousness. One shot, two, three, and then the thud of a body hitting the floor.
Was that me? Connor thought hard, but the answer eluded him, every sense dulled except, oddly, his hearing. He felt profoundly tired, and the longer he chased the gunfire and tried to place it, the less it seemed to matter.
Another gunshot rattled his bones. And then a voice . . . a voice he knew well. Or did he? The gravelly yell seemed far away, but it seeped into his soul, slowly at first, like he’d swallowed it, until it scorched him from the inside out, getting hotter . . . louder. Let him go. Let who go? There was no one else here. Only Connor and the burning, slicing pain that was beginning to make itself known.
“Connor!” Connor blinked, though his eyes were rolling too much for him to focus. Yep. He definitely knew that voice. “Connor! My gun’s jammed. Get up, damn it. Run!”
Run? Was he bloody joking? Connor couldn’t run. He had no legs, at least none that he could feel. Besides, he was sleeping, or trying to—sleep was the only place it didn’t hurt.
Strong hands grabbed Connor under his arms. The jolting movement was agony. He groaned, and the hands shoved him away, sending him face-first into a dusty surface that clogged his nose and made him choke.
Bastard. Connor’s senses were dulled by exhaustion and pain, but those cruel hands didn’t belong to the voice he recognised. He didn’t know much, but of that he was certain.
“Connor.”
No.
“Connor!”
Connor opened his eyes. For a moment, everything stayed dark, but then grubby army fatigues came into focus, wrapped around a muscular thigh he’d know anywhere.
“Connor.”
Connor looked up. Nat’s face swam in front of him, grimy and bloodied, his eyes that perfect contradiction of adrenaline and fatigue. Reality slammed into Connor like a knife to his gut. Pain and fear gripped him like a vice, but beyond that, the elation of seeing Nat again hit him in a rush of dizzying warmth.
Giddy with joy, Connor smiled. Nat didn’t, and it was only then that the scene around him solidified. Connor was lying facedown in the dust, and in front of him, just metres away, knelt Nat, blood dripping from a bullet hole in his shoulder, and a gun to his head, held by Behrouz.
Nat watched Connor come awake with baited breath. He’d waited so long to see those eyes again, it didn’t feel real, and for long moments, as Connor struggled to stay conscious, it wasn’t real. Connor was badly hurt. Bleeding profusely from a large gash in his abdomen, and his hair and face stained from an ominous wound on his temple, he looked half-dead.
Half-dead. That meant half-alive, though, and a flash of hope burned through Nat, a surge so strong it near knocked him off-balance, if not for Behrouz’s choke hold around his neck. The fucker could fight, Nat gave him that. And he could shoot too. The through-and-through in Nat’s shoulder was testament to that. Perhaps jumping him with little thought of what came next hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
Trouble was, the sight of Connor dead on the ground had robbed Nat of coherent thought. With his weapon jammed, killing Behrouz with his bare hands had seemed the only option. Shame it hadn’t gone to plan. He’d been within seconds of crushing the fucker’s windpipe when Behrouz had pulled a handgun from his boot, shooting Nat, then pointing it at Connor and revealing that he was, in fact, very much alive. With Connor’s life at stake, it hadn’t taken much to persuade Nat to hand over his weapon and put himself in Connor’s place.
“And then there were two.” Behrouz twisted the gun, driving the barrel into Nat’s head. “You weren’t supposed to see this night, Connor, but it seems your would-be saviour here had other ideas.”
Connor stared at Behrouz, eyes wide and bewildered, and then it was like a light switched on in his brain, like a fog had lifted.
He rolled over and made a clumsy lunge for Behrouz. Missed by a mile, but Behrouz’s momentary distraction was the split second Nat needed.
Nat drove his elbow into Behrouz’s gut and grabbed the wrist of the hand that held the gun, wrenching it away from his head, and twisting Behrouz’s arm before he could pull the trigger.
Behrouz howled and released the gun. It arched through the air and then hit the ground, skidding along the dust until it disappeared into the shadows of the dark building, close to where Behrouz had tossed Nat’s Minimi.
Desperately, Nat launched Behrouz in the opposite direction. Behrouz held on to Nat with his uninjured arm. Both men went sprawling to the ground. They grappled, fighting for dominance. Nat had the upper hand in skill, but Behrouz was a big man, and Nat struggled beneath his weight as panic set in. If Behrouz killed him, he’d kill Connor too.
Behrouz punched Nat in the face. Black dots danced in his eyes. He got his hands around Behrouz’s throat, but Behrouz fought back, digging his fingers into the bullet wound on Nat’s shoulder.
Pain lanced Nat like a white-hot poker. Adrenaline surged through him. He released his grip on Behrouz’s neck and clenched his fists, but Behrouz struck him first and reached behind him. The blade of a knife glinted in the sun. Behrouz raised it up and aimed it at Nat’s throat, pressing his knees into Nat’s chest and injured shoulder, keeping him still.
“Time for you to die, white man.”
Nat stared at the knife, an ornate dagger that was already coated in blood. Connor’s blood. Somehow, it felt fitting, to die by a weapon stained with Connor’s blood, and despite the agony in his shoulder and the hate in Behrou
z’s gaze, an odd sense of peace crept over Nat. He always thought he’d fight tooth and nail in his final moments, that even the apathy he’d carried in recent years would give way to a primal desire to live. It didn’t. Nat drifted away, searching for Connor in that hazy place they’d always called their own. Connor was half-dead already. Perhaps he’d give in and come along for the ride.
A gunshot shattered the serenity of the moment. Nat lurched up from the ground, gasping in a painful breath as Behrouz slid off him and landed in a heap. Nat gazed down at him, as dark blood, thick like tar, oozed out of his stomach. In the murky light it looked black, like evil.
Behrouz groaned and rolled over, lurching to his feet. Nat scrambled up too. Suddenly dying didn’t seem so important. For a long moment, neither of them moved. The knife, sent flying when Behrouz had so inexplicably fallen from Nat’s chest, lay between them, but Behrouz was closer to the guns.
Nat awaited the inevitable. The agony in his shoulder dulled, eclipsed by his broken heart. He’d spent so long believing he didn’t much care if he lived or died, that going home—to his lonely house and empty bed—meant nothing to him, but staring down the barrel of Behrouz’s gun, the epiphany of being so wrong had been excruciating. Connor was dead, Pogo too, and now him, and what the fuck for? They didn’t deserve this, none of them did.
I don’t want to die.
Behrouz made his move. Nat dove left, bracing himself to take another bullet, but the searing, explosive pain never came. A round of gun fire came from somewhere behind them. Behrouz stumbled, and Connor staggered out of the shadows and emptied Nat’s Minimi into the back of Behrouz’s head.
The last shot seemed to resonate for hours as Nat lay, dazed and almost peaceful. The wind whipped by, and he could almost hear the birds that danced along the wall of his garden back home.
Between Ghosts Page 18
