by Chris Ryan
The man moved his attention to the area south-west of the band of forest. ‘You’re aiming to HALO into this area here,’ he said. ‘The trees should give you some cover from which to make your assault. We expect most of the targets to be in the southernmost building, but we can’t guarantee that. All the buildings need to be cleared before you call in air to pick you up. We don’t expect there to be any resistance and there’s no intelligence of anything in the way of an armed guard. Once the targets have been taken out, we’ll need photographs for identification purposes.’
‘Aye, well,’ Craven piped up. ‘ Tyler can do that. Fucking takes enough pictures of the showers, don’t he?’ He accompanied his joke with a wanking motion to make sure everyone got the message.
‘All right, all right,’ the spook interrupted. ‘Estimated time of insertion: 03.00 hrs. Daylight at 04.27. You need to be well out of there by then. No more than an hour on the ground. Have you got any questions?’
Silence.
‘Good.’ The spook looked solemnly at them. ‘For gentleman of your abilities, it should be a walk in the park.’
Cullen snorted. ‘If it’s going to be so damn easy,’ he muttered in his thick Scottish brogue, ‘maybe you’d like to come along?’
The spook made some reply, but Sam didn’t hear it. He was too busy staring at the maps for a final time, recording the lie of the land, committing it to memory as he knew his patrol mates would be doing. It was a simple set-up, on the face of it. Their unit would be inside the buildings before anyone even knew they were there. The fact that there were only four buildings to clear made it even more straightforward.
Unless, of course, your objective wasn’t what it appeared to be.
As Sam examined the plans, he tried to work out where his brother might be; but it was impossible to tell. Any of these buildings could house him, and when they hit the compound he would be as much at a disadvantage as any of them. If Jacob was going to get away, he needed to be warned of their approach; but Sam couldn’t think of any way to do that without making it clear to his unit that he had compromised the mission.
Nor did he have time to give it much more thought. ‘You’ve got half an hour,’ the spook told them. ‘The aircraft are waiting. Flight time to your insertion point, about two hours.’ He looked them all individually in the eye. ‘Good luck, gentlemen,’ he said briskly. ‘I’ll be here when you get back.’
*
Three and a half thousand miles away, night was falling over London. The windows of the MI6 building on the Albert Embankment started to twinkle in the half-light and workers started to spill from its main entrance and hurry towards the Tube station.
Inside the building, though, plenty of people remained. Their jobs involved parts of the world in very different time zones to London, after all, so the usual boundaries of the average working day meant nothing to them. Among those offices that were still inhabited was one, high up, that overlooked the river. It was a spectacular view, with the bridges all lit up, and the occupant of that office knew he would never tire of it. He stood at the window in a well-cut suit, his tie an immaculate Windsor knot and his hands behind his back, gazing out. He was an elderly man – older, at least, than most of the people who worked for the Firm and were happy to take their retirement at sixty-five and forget all about the complexities of their working lives. Not so Gabriel Bland. Some of the younger members of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service joked that the only way he’d leave was in a box. Bland had heard the jibes and didn’t mind them. They were probably true. Others joked that he had the kind of icy demeanour that indicated he was – that he absolutely had to be – some kind of sexual pervert. These rumours were not true, but again Bland ignored them, remaining perfectly polite even to those members of the service that he knew to be the most enthusiastic champions of such gossip.
On the desk behind him there was a computer – something Bland really could not get used to – and a small pile of files. There was work to be done on them, but really he knew he would be unable to concentrate on such things. Not tonight. He looked at his watch. Nearly seven o’clock. That would make it almost midnight in Afghanistan where a covert unit were preparing to undergo a mission on his orders. Godwilling they would be successful. If not, things could become exceedingly uncomfortable…
A knock on the door. ‘Come!’ Bland called without turning.
He watched the door open in the reflection of the window. A much younger man walked in. He too wore a suit and had hair that was neatly parted to one side and flattened down with some shiny product. It was a curiously old-fashioned look for someone only in their mid-thirties. ‘Yes, Toby?’ Bland intoned.
Toby Brookes. Of late, MI6 had taken to encouraging all manner of people into the service. Brookes, however, reminded Bland of himself as a younger man. A little too eager to please, perhaps. But a good worker. Conscientious. Able to see the bigger picture. Heaven knows, Bland thought to himself, in these troubled times that was an important attribute.
‘Something’s been flagged up, sir,’ Brookes said efficiently. ‘Clare Corbett. I thought you’d want to see it.’
Bland sniffed. He allowed himself one final glance at the river, then turned to face his young assistant. ‘Be so good,’ he asked mildly, ‘as to shut the door, would you Toby?’
Brookes did as he was asked before speaking again. ‘It might be nothing,’ he said in his slightly nasal tone of voice. ‘But I thought I’d bring it to your attention.’
‘That’s most kind of you, Toby,’ Bland murmured.
‘The Met carried out a search,’ Brookes continued. ‘A billing address for a mobile phone number registered in her name.’
Bland remained silent.
‘Like I say,’ Brookes continued, suddenly sounding a little less sure of himself. ‘It’s probably nothing.’
‘When was this request processed, Toby?’
The younger man examined a piece of paper in his hand. ‘Tuesday night,’ he said. ‘Forty-eight hours ago. I guess it took a while to come through the system.’
Bland turned once more to look out of the window. ‘Do you know who the police officer in question is who requested this information?’ He watched Brookes’s reflection as he once more looked at his sheet.
‘A DI Nicola Ledbury.’
‘I see.’ Bland furrowed his hairy, eagle-like eyebrows. ‘I wonder, Toby, if I might ask you to invite Miss Ledbury to come and have a brief word with us.’
‘Of course.’
He turned again and allowed a friendly smile to spread across his lips. ‘Tonight, Toby. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.’
Brookes nodded and gave his superior a look that showed he understood.
‘Thank you, Toby,’ he said quietly. And as the young man slipped out of the room, he returned to his place at the window, surveying the splendour of that scene as he calmly slotted this new piece of information into the jigsaw of his mind. It worried him that he could not yet see the whole picture.
*
Bagram airbase. Midnight.
Before the off, the unit spent every spare moment checking and rechecking their rigs. There was no banter; there was hardly any conversation at all as they went about the business of getting kitted out. Sam approached the runway knowing that his freefall rig was firmly strapped to his body. He had checked the chute several times and strapped his weapon to his side. As he carried his rucksack and helmet away from the aircraft hangar in the company of the rest of the unit, he couldn’t help but feel the familiar sense of tension that always preceded a HALO jump.
It was the little things that could go wrong. At thirty thousand feet there was very little oxygen and the temperature was freezing. Any slight malfunction of the rig and you’d pass out. Problems like that you could predict and prepare for; others you couldn’t. During a high-altitude jump over the Syrian Desert, his mate had hit Sam’s rucksack from one side as they dived from the aircraft. The rucksack had shifted, changing Sam’s cent
re of balance. He’d started to spin; and once the spinning started, it didn’t stop. Freefalling at one hundred and fifty miles per hour it hadn’t taken him long to black out. He’d have been a goner if it weren’t for the HALO rig’s automatic opening device that kicked in at four thousand feet. When he regained consciousness, the capillaries in the whites of his eyes had burst, his inner ears were fucked and he was too dizzy even to walk, let alone continue the operation. He put that thought from his mind. Burst capillaries or not, nothing was going to stop him from completing what he had to do on this op. Nothing at all.
‘We need to talk.’
Mac had started walking alongside him. His friend put a firm hand on Sam’s arm and forced him to a halt, while the others carried on walking. Sam’s body tensed up.
‘What do you mean?’
Mac stared straight into his eyes. ‘You think I didn’t recognise him?’ he murmured.
Sam felt suddenly trapped.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he spat. But even as he spoke, he felt his hand move almost involuntarily to his weapon.
Mac glanced down at Sam’s gun hand. ‘Christ’s sake, mate,’ he hissed. ‘If I was going to stop you, do you think I’d have waited till now?’
The noise of the airfield around him retreated. In that moment there was only Sam and Mac.
‘I couldn’t tell you before, Sam. Not till we were here.’
‘Why the hell not?’ Sam was suddenly angry with his old friend. He didn’t know why. He just couldn’t control his emotions.
‘Think about it, Sam. Something about this whole operation stinks. The Regiment sent out to kill one of their own? And fuck knows what sort of surveillance we’re all under. You and me start having cosy little confabs, it’s going to send up warning signals for someone, isn’t it?’
Sam thought about that. He realised that of all the people he couldn’t trust, Mac was the most trustworthy.
‘I don’t think Five know he’s there,’ Sam said quietly. And then, in response to Mac’s sharp look, ‘Or whoever it is who’s behind this. If they did, they’d hardly be sending you and me on the op.’ He took a deep breath, quickly wondering whether he should tell Mac everything he’d learned – the letter, Clare, the red-light runners, what they were really being sent to Kazakhstan to do – and just as quickly deciding not to. It didn’t change anything. It didn’t change what he had to do. ‘I’m not going to let anyone kill him, Mac. I don’t care about the other targets, but I’m not going to let anyone kill my brother.’
‘And you think I am? Jesus, Sam, he was my friend. God knows what he’s got himself mixed up in, but…’
A shout from up ahead – Tyler, his Cockney voice rising above the noise of the airfield. ‘Havin’ a mass debate, you two?’ he barked lewdly.
Sam and Mac looked towards him, then started to follow the rest of the unit, but slowly.
‘Maybe we should tell the others?’
Mac shook his head. ‘You can’t, Sam. You’ll only get them all a stretch in the nick for disobeying orders. You know J. better than anyone – you think he’d want us to do that on his account?’
Mac was right. There was one thing Jacob had always insisted on, and that was fighting his own battles. ‘So how we going to play it?’ he demanded.
Mac walked silently for a moment. ‘When we get to the camp,’ he said finally, ‘We’ll need to make some noise, let J. know someone’s coming…’ He let the sentence trail off, clearly aware that it wasn’t much of a plan.
‘What if Jacob comes out shooting?’ Sam asked.
But Mac didn’t answer. They had caught up with the rest of the unit.
‘Nice of you to join us,’ Cullen said darkly.
Mac smiled at him. ‘Well,’ he said, his voice suddenly much brighter than it had been only seconds ago, ‘we didn’t really want to miss the party.’
There were two C-130 Hercules aircraft waiting for them up ahead; a refuelling lorry was just driving away. The two aircraft would fly in convoy over a commercial airline route until they reached the insertion point. Once the unit had jumped, one of the Hercules would refuel the other in midair before returning to base. The remaining plane, its fuel stores replenished, would circle at a high altitude until they received the radio signal from the guys on the ground that they were ready to be picked up.
But the moment when that was to happen, Sam thought – the planes’ engines roaring in his ears as the unit boarded their aircraft – seemed a very, very long way off. Mac’s sudden admission had been a shock; Sam didn’t know whether he felt better or worse.
They sat in the belly of the Hercules, four to a bench, facing each other. For now their rucksacks and helmets were on the floor in front of them, but when the time came to make the jump, that would change. Around them a loadie checked the plane’s apparatus and made it ready for flight. Sam sat opposite Mac. The two of them did their best not to catch each other’s eye, but it was difficult and every time it happened, Sam felt a little surge in his stomach. It wasn’t the usual pre-HALO butterflies. It was something else.
It was deafeningly loud in there, but Craven managed to make his voice heard above the noise. ‘Nothing like a nice quiet evening in,’ he shouted. A light-hearted comment, but delivered in a deadpan way. Craven clearly didn’t expect a response; nor did he get one.
At that moment the tailgate of the Hercules closed and the lights of the airfield disappeared from sight. A sudden lurch as the aircraft juddered into motion. Any minute now and they would be airborne.
And then?
Sam kept his breathing steady as he prepared for the ordeal ahead of him.
*
The telephone on Gabriel Bland’s desk rang three times before he picked it up.
‘Bland,’ he answered it shortly but not impolitely.
‘It’s me, sir. Toby. I’ve brought Nicola Ledbury in. Interview room three. Would you like me to start asking questions?’
‘Ah…’ Bland made a pretence of considering the suggestion. ‘Perhaps I’ll come down and lend a hand,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll be with you shortly.’
He replaced the phone on its cradle and left the room with a swiftness that belied his advancing years. He took the lift to the basement of the building and stepped briskly along a corridor until he found the room in question. It was sparse and unfurnished. Just a table and a two chairs. Toby was sitting in one of them, and opposite him a woman. She was pretty, with blonde hair and a long, smooth neck. But she looked frightened.
They always looked frightened.
Toby stood up the moment Bland walked into the room, immediately offering him his chair. ‘Thank you, Toby,’ he murmured before sitting down and smiling impassively at the woman in front of him. ‘Detective Inspecter Ledbury,’ he said calmly. ‘How kind of you to come and see us.’
The woman’s frightened eyes flickered up towards Toby and her lips grew a little thinner.
Bland feigned concern. ‘I do hope Toby wasn’t brusque with you.’
‘He was bloody brusque,’ she replied hotly. ‘I’m a police officer, you know…’
Gabriel Bland continued as if she hadn’t even spoken. ‘I wonder, Miss Ledbury, if I might just ask you a few questions.’ He paused briefly, waiting for a response that was not forthcoming, before continuing. ‘Two nights ago, you requested a billing address for a mobile phone number belonging to a Miss Clare Corbett. Am I right?’
The woman’s expression changed. Wariness. ‘Should I have a solicitor here?’ she asked.
Bland raised an eyebrow. ‘Toby,’ he said, quite calmly, ‘be so good as to lock the door, would you?’
Toby did as he was told; the woman shuffled uncomfortably in her seat.
‘Shall I repeat the question, Miss Ledbury? Or would you just like to answer it now?’
The woman hesitated, but only briefly. ‘It’s common practice,’ she said uncertainly. ‘An easy way to find someone. I’ve done it a lot. Hundreds of times.’
Silence.
‘I want my solicitor.’
Bland suppressed a sudden surge of frustration. ‘Miss Ledbury,’ he intoned, ‘you’re not at Paddington Green now.’ He stared at her. Gabriel Bland knew that not many people could withstand that stare. Nicola Ledbury was no exception.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I asked for the billing address.’
‘I see. Would you care to tell me why?’
The woman glanced at the floor. ‘It was a favour,’ she said. ‘For a friend.’
Instantly the atmosphere in the room grew tense. Bland’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Which friend?’ He pronounced each word slowly and forcefully.
She closed her eyes. ‘His name is Sam Redman.’
‘I see. And what can you tell me about Sam Redman?’
‘He’s…’
‘Yes, Miss Ledbury.’
‘He’s military. SAS.’ She looked up at him, eyes appealing. ‘It was just a favour.’
But Bland no longer appeared interested in her. He did his best to look unmoved, but in truth a sinister knot had just tied its way round his stomach.
Bland got to his feet. ‘Keep her here,’ he instructed Toby. ‘Have somebody watch her. No phone calls. Then I think you and I need to pay Miss Corbett another visit.’
Ten minutes later Bland, Toby and a third man – an Asian by the name of Amir – were in a black cab. At least, it looked like a black cab, but the driver, an employee of the Firm, wouldn’t be stopping to pick up any fares. When, half an hour later, they parked in the quiet residential street in Acton where Clare Corbett lived, the driver pulled out a newspaper and started to read: the perfect image of a cabbie on his break. Bland and Toby approached the front door, while Amir headed round the back alleyway to the rear of the house. Bland looked at his watch: 10 p.m. He stretched out a gloved hand and rang the intercom.
