Then she saw him. A diver materializing from behind an outcrop of rock.
His knife glinted like lost treasure in the gloom as he dug the blade into her captor’s lifeline, the pump that connected the register to his tank. Compressed air leaked into the sea water, releasing a trail of useless oxygen.
Paralysed, she watched the surreal display, absorbing the slow motion into her body as her captor pushed her away. The taller of the two men, he spun around to face his assailant, first grabbing and then hanging fast to his tank and weight belt. The struggle was a slow dance, keeping time with the swaying vegetation below.
Alexa kicked at the water, frantically mimicking the moves she’d learned moments before, going against her instincts, towards the two grappling men.
The taller one thrashed, choking as his attacker grabbed his dive mask and refused to let go.
Her consciousness began to flicker and she wondered whether she was running out of oxygen. She kicked down towards the blurred images, towards the taller, leaner man. He was weakening, his head sinking to his chest, losing awareness. Seconds, maybe a minute passed. His assailant was feeling confident, peering into the taller man’s mask ready to leave him for dead.
The body slackened, the head bobbed, the precious bubbles of oxygen subsiding.
The lone diver turned towards her.
A quick jerk of his flippers and he was there. She kicked hard against him, against the water, anything to propel herself away from this creature and to the surface. She was no match for either his experience or his strength but could only grab hold of the slick rubber covering his face. From someplace deep inside, waves of anger replaced terror and she wrenched away, clawing at his mask like an animal in a cage.
Then the air bubbles, a halo around his head.
Resurrected, emerging from the gloom, her captor floated behind the other diver. His knife twisted and slashed into the smaller man’s oxygen hose, ripping his mask from his head. Dark spots flickered before Alexa’s eyes and she thought she saw the shorter man reach for the knife at his belt. Without thinking, she grabbed the weapon with cold, stiff hands – only to have it wrenched from her grasp a second later.
A fresh wave of horror. Her captor – without precious air – worked the knife she’d held moments before and slashed efficiently at the chest of the diver. Blood poured from the wound, a sinuous plume discolouring the murky water. It didn’t take long. The smaller man convulsed like a wind-up toy, jerking fitfully in a macabre ballet. He stilled and then descended into the aqueous shadows.
Less than two minutes had passed. How long could her captor survive without oxygen? She watched as he struggled to cut loose the weight belts dangling from his waist. Maybe because he was her only hope right now, she wanted to see this man breathe, to see him suck sweet oxygen into his deprived lungs. To live.
She wasn’t thinking clearly. Her hand shaking, she removed the register from her mouth and offered it to him.
Instead of the panicked breaths she expected, he took short gasps, inhaling rhythmically for a few seconds before handing her back the register. With frozen fingers, her lungs already bursting, she followed suit.
When she’d had her fill of the precious elixir, she motioned to him with the register but he shook his head and grabbed her tank again. He kicked powerfully and they ascended a few feet towards a dark shadow in the water above them.
A cylinder, maybe twenty feet in length and eight feet in height, emerged from the green shadows. It looked like a small plane with a tether attached and a miniature, silent propeller spinning in the rear.
A small enclosed space, fathoms deep beneath the ocean. Despite the oxygen flowing to her lungs, her throat constricted.
He must have seen the change in her expression because he was ready when she began shoving away from him. He slipped under her and pushed her towards the submersible, remaining below her body, solid, unshakeable as a dam.
She twisted wildly, churning the water, a heavy blanket of disorientation beginning to take over.
The ocean floor beckoned, anything, anything to get away from the suffocation of the enclosed space, the box, the coffin in front of her. Hands grabbed her waist, pushing her on to a solid platform. Her head thrashed back and forth, her eyes closed in denial.
All she saw was Danni’s face.
Four
Ripe opium buds smell fresh, like wet grass. Not unlike the wet grass of the perfectly manicured lawns on his estate in Kent.
Although looking at the landscape from inside the Jeep, Daoud knew the scene was as far away from the United Kingdom as heaven from hell. These denuded hills were brick red, not a scrub brush marring the harsh contours that folded into flat planes of brightly nodding flowers.
The Jeep turned a corner sharply. Impossible to avoid the ruts in the roads pockmarked with mortar shells. NATO forces climbed like rats all over these provinces. He swallowed a curse.
Opium jihad. Smack, china white, horse, black tar – he knew all the names that were used for heroin in the West. And he also knew how the by-product of a simple flower was converted into one of the most addictive drugs known to man. Inhaled, ingested or injected, heroin created an instantaneous rush that lasted only a few seconds. Then the heavy drowsiness, followed by a sense of contentment and detachment from the world.
And then the addiction, since tolerance was inevitable, leading the user to increase the dose to create a high. Sometimes four times a day.
The most powerful weapon in the universe. A gift from Allah.
He looked out the window, the scene of Afghanistan’s endless war. In a playing field in the centre of what was left of a neighbourhood, rested a Soviet tank, an abandoned relic captured by the mujahideen years ago.
The Jeep ascended to craggy, barren mountains, negotiating steep climbs, descents and hairpin curves along a narrow road. The terrain was familiar, etched by his childhood, with its cluster of small red hills, smooth mushroom-shaped rocks fusing into neat concentric lines. Rugged, unwelcoming, another range of grey, forbidding stone hills came into view.
The Jeep slowed to a halt in front of a small granite building in the middle of a field sheltered by two walls of rock. Daoud signalled his driver to wait and watched his bodyguards emerge from two trucks, one in front and one behind. They quickly secured the building.
Daoud stepped into the bright morning air, breathing deeply, letting down his guard. The Taliban controlled this part of Helmand province in western Afghanistan, the population of poppy farmers thriving in a chaos that funded the jihad. Every poppy lanced for its opium unleashed a flow of black-market dollars conveniently taxed by the virtual government of the Taliban.
Beautiful, just beautiful. Daoud smiled, imaging the thousands of tons of opium from this year’s harvest being processed, heroin that was about to flood the streets of the West, all the while stuffing the pockets of drug lords like himself.
It would be forever so. He would see to it. With the help of Rafael Hunter.
After the bright light of day, the interior of the small building was dark. All he could smell was earth until his eyes adjusted and he saw the two men in the corner.
“Salaam.”
Daoud approached and knelt down on to the cushion on the dirt floor. To his right was Nazir Ghalib, a local farmer with thousands of acres under his operation. In between his flowing robes, on his lap, he held a clay pot.
Just before reaching maturity, the poppy plant produces a flower. After a week, the petals fall off, leaving a capsule. Raw opium gum is harvested from this capsule, about a hundred of which nestled in the earthenware container Ghalib cradled between his hands.
Ibrahim Azhar, with a full beard and flowing robes, nodded approvingly. His dark eyes glistened as he listened to Ghalib with the attention he would have given the prophet Mohammed.
How close was Azhar to Mullah Omar, Emir of Afghanistan and head of the Taliban? Daoud knew it was useless to speculate. Instead, he made sure to demonstrate his obeisan
ce by focusing on Ghalib’s words.
He nodded gravely. Nothing he didn’t already know. But the success of the jihad rested in the hands of these poor farmers who used opium as their currency, selling or trading it for the basics like food, clothing and tools.
Azhar stroked his beard, leaning forwards to invite the Ghalib’s further confidence.
“We need help, money, supplies to refine . . .” He ran his fingers carefully through the buds like they were the finest jewels.
Daoud knew first-hand how raw opium could clear out an airport terminal with its strong odour. All the more reason it had to be converted into a morphine base before it could leave Afghanistan.
“So what do you need – more money?” he asked, shifting from the cushion to the hard dirt floor. “Chand afghaniy?” How much?
Ghalib raised his eyes expectantly. “Qimat ast.” It’s expensive.
“Expensive” to these poor farmers meant throwing a few more dollars their way.
“You’ll have it,” he said patting the older man on the back under the watchful eyes of Azhar.
“You do the work of Allah, salam aleikom.” Peace be upon you. Azhar was generous in his praise. He leaned closer towards Daoud.
“How soon will you have the money?” he asked in surprisingly good English.
Daoud gritted his teeth. “I have always been faithful, with Allah’s help. And I will not turn away now.”
Ghalib watched the exchange, raisin eyes glinting in his sunburned face.
“Have you developed new ways of getting the material out of Afghanistan? The shipments have been slowed in recent months and we can’t delay with the infidel at our gates.”
Daoud bit back a reply, resenting the simple world view these men lived with. Smuggling heroin wasn’t as effortless as loading it on a donkey’s back and humping it over a few mountain ranges. Customs was becoming smarter and jumpier than a junkie looking for his next fix.
Just a few shipments ago he was having couriers swallow bags of heroin, cross the border and wait for the bags to run their digestive course. He’d also tried hiding bags in gas tanks and tyres of cars or mixed with garbage. He’d even heard of a border patrol unit in Texas finding millions worth of narcotics stuffed in human body parts – the legs, arms and intestines – that had been stolen from a hospital.
“Leave it to me,” he said simply. It was time to assert some control. He rose from the floor and signalled to Ghalib that the meeting was over. The older man shuffled to his feet, still cradling the bowl, bowing to Azhar although there was a set to his shoulders that was anything but respectful.
Desperately poor, ravaged by years of war, these tribes didn’t know loyalty. So as long as the Taliban paid . . .
Azhar watched as Ghalib left, then he motioned Daoud to return to the cushions on the floor. He spat off to the side and wiped the corner of his mouth as though what he had to say was particularly dissatisfying.
“You know how important this is? How without the support of these farmers and their crops we cannot rise up and defeat the infidel?” Azhar didn’t trust him, didn’t trust his loyalty.
“I know better than anyone, Ibrahim.”
Azhar flicked his gaze over Daoud’s robes, knowing full well the European-style trousers and shirt that lay beneath. His gaze held disdain. “It is this woman who will guarantee our future – the only way to preserve our future and fulfil Allah’s will. This is but the first step towards the complete and final devastation of the West.”
Daoud’s spine tingled though not from the cold. “So you have heard from the American.”
Settling his hands on his thighs, Azhar looked to the east, his expression impenetrable. “Ensa allah, God willing, it will all come to pass.”
“And I am to know no more?” In the distance, two explosions. Mines going off. They lay like ticking time bombs across the length and breadth of the country.
Azhar’s answer was simple. “Just bring her.” he paused in acknowledgement of the sin he was about to commit.
Yosuf Daoud knew the meeting was over.
Leaving the darkness of the concrete building, he couldn’t ignore the shrapnel and bullet marks decorating the doorway like some kind of a frieze, courtesy of American-led forces and their B-52s, smart bombs and daisy-cutters.
Would the woman present a problem?
There were ways to ensure the highest levels of cooperation, all the way through Washington, DC. He looked to the horizon, which was enshrouded by the smoke and dust of war, and smiled. No, he didn’t think Alexa Stoppard would present a problem at all.
Five
Life was a crapshoot. And lately all that was coming up were snake eyes.
He watched the woman sleep, lost in the queen-sized bed, her hair a dark-honey cloud spread on the pillow, her breathing shallow.
Alexa Stoppard had been out cold for eight hours now, an improvement from the catatonic state she’d entered just before he’d pulled her aboard the submarine. He didn’t shock easily but a lifetime of experience had still not prepared him for the blind terror in her eyes, a meltdown that kicked the shit out of anything he’d ever seen in the faces of the most desperate men – men belly-down in the jungle, men with electrodes attached to their balls, men forced to kiss the business end of a Glock.
In the green gloom of the Atlantic, Alexa Stoppard had disappeared and shrank into a dark corner of her soul.
The tightness across his shoulders was like a straitjacket and he flexed his muscles willing the tension to ease. Deliberately facing away from the woman on the bed, he moved to look out the porthole with its expansive horizon of blue. But he still saw her face, the wide grey eyes closed to him like a prison door, the generous mouth, controlling her panic as she fought against him. He allowed himself a grim smile at the memory of the softness of her skin, the taste and feel of her. And that dancer’s body, slender and strong, struggling beneath him.
The rapidly reddening bruise on her taut abdomen. A harbinger of things to come.
Once he got his hands on her, once he got what he wanted, Daoud would kill Alexa Stoppard.
Michael concentrated on a single seagull, alone and free, skimming the water’s surface. Of course like so many before her, Stoppard was ultimately expendable and, if Michael were in Daoud’s situation, he’d do the same thing. It was just good fucking business practice.
The seagull soared, the glint of a fish in its bill, disappearing into the faint line of the horizon.
He didn’t believe in luck, never had, and it raised every godforsaken instinct in his neural system that this scenario was all too convenient. Alexa Stoppard had been choreographed off the yacht with the kind of ostentatious violence that raised the profile of the business in ways it couldn’t afford. Christ, the favours he’d had to call in to clean up the mess.
Something made him turn around, his senses tuned to the tiniest change in the room’s atmosphere. Although her eyes were still closed, he knew that Alexa Stoppard was awake.
“You’re going to have to look at me some time.” Michael remained standing a few feet from the bed when slowly her eyes opened, as clear as a winter sky. He remembered that she had saved his life, hours ago in the cold, green depths of the ocean, sharing her precious oxygen with him.
It must have gone against her every instinct.
“You’re hungry.” The banality of the words was a good defence, heading off his dangerous thoughts. This woman did something to him and he didn’t like it.
Without moving, she stared at him, memorizing every detail of his appearance for later use. A few more awkward seconds, and she shook her head, sitting up tentatively. She clutched the sheet to her chest, her hair a tumble around the fragile bones of her shoulders.
“I was on a boat. You came into my cabin . . .”
Her voice hit him straight in the gut. He remembered she was all but naked under that thin sheet.
To head off the throbbing blood in his groin, he turned his attention to the tray that
had been left by the door. Small sandwiches covered in cellophane and a glass of iced tea. “Eat something before we talk,” he said picking up the tray and setting it by her bed.
Alexa glanced at him warily before eyeing the tea and then carefully reaching to raise the glass to her lips. He watched the vulnerable line of her throat, as she first sipped the liquid and then more thirstily drained the glass.
Maybe she really didn’t want to talk or maybe she was really hungry. He didn’t say anything but just watched, wondering how the hell to begin setting this thing up.
Using people was what he did best, and right now he needed to get a clearer read on Alexa Stoppard. “Something happened down there in the water. Do you remember?”
“That’s what happens when you’re thrown overboard.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Isn’t it?” A strength had returned to her voice, her shoulders above the white sheet straightening.
He dragged a chair to the foot of the bed and sat down so they were at eye level. “I’m talking about the fact that you went into a catatonic state. You’ve been out of it for eight hours.”
She shifted underneath the covers, offering him an outline of slender legs, which he tried to ignore. “I was in shock. I told you that I’ve a terrifying fear of water.”
He knew she was lying. There were people that were far better at interrogation than he was but, Jesus, he didn’t want to think about that now. She’d never last.
A trace of colour had returned to her skin, a soft flush of pink over her high cheekbones. “I’d like to get up, please.”
“So you can try and hit me over the head with a water glass?”
“I learn quickly. It didn’t work the first time,” she said. The wide grey eyes transmitted a sharp acuity as she made to rise, first carefully bundling the sheet under her arms and then sitting at the edge of the bed. She looked as innocent as a woodland nymph though God only knew he wouldn’t recognize one if he’d shot it between the eyes.
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