by Chris Ryan
Karim was shaking uncontrollably, clearly torn between his need to ask the question and his fear of Abu Ra’id.
‘Why . . .’
He closed his eyes, bowed his head and took a deep breath.
‘Forgive me, Abu Ra’id, but why don’t you want to do it yourself?’
There was a sudden silence in the room. Sarim was shocked that Karim had even dared to ask this question, but Abu Ra’id’s face showed no expression. For a moment, the cleric didn’t even move. But then he stepped towards the teenager, extended both arms and placed his hands on the kid’s shoulders. Sarim saw his fingers massaging Karim’s muscles. ‘Believe me, my young friend,’ he whispered in a scarcely audible voice, ‘I would do it in an instant. But God has told me that it is not my time.’
Abu Ra’id lowered his arms and nodded at Sarim, who approached the young boy and took him gently by the arm. ‘Come and sit,’ he said.
The kid was shaking now. Gulping short gasps of breath. ‘I . . . I don’t think it’s my time either,’ he said. His voice wavered. ‘I’ve changed my mind . . . I don’t want to do it . . .’
‘Karim!’ Abu Ra’id said sharply. ‘Do not forget yourself. When you came to me you had nothing. No family. No God. I have been like your father. Sarim and Jamal have been your brothers. Together we have shown you the path. Will you cast all that back in our faces now?’
The teenager appeared unable to speak. Jamal had to force him towards the plastic sheeting. His eyes were drawn to the Arabic symbol draped behind the stool.
‘Sit,’ Sarim repeated, a bit firmer this time.
The kid’s knees buckled as he walked up to the stool and sat down. His eyes were closed now, and he was muttering to himself. Tears stained his cheeks. Sarim sensed his tension. He knew that the kid would try to bolt, if fear hadn’t drained all the energy from his limbs.
‘Let us prepare ourselves,’ Abu Ra’id said. From the table, he removed a plastic bag and a long wooden box. He handed the plastic bag to Sarim, who removed from it two black balaclavas, one for him, one for Jamal. They donned their masks. The scratchy wool irritated Sarim’s skin and he bizarrely remembered that he had not yet moisturised, as he did every day. He rubbed his palms against his face to relieve the itching, then took his place to Karim’s right. Jamal stood on his left.
Abu Ra’id was behind the camera, holding the wooden box. He opened it with a certain ceremony to reveal a long, bone-handled knife. The blade was seven inches long and Sarim knew it to be viciously sharp. Abu Ra’id stepped towards Karim and offered him the box. With trembling fingers Karim removed the knife, grasping the ornate bone handle lightly. He stared at the blade as Abu Ra’id retreated behind the camera again.
‘You know what to say?’ Abu Ra’id asked. His voice was calm and kind again.
Karim nodded. He couldn’t take his eyes off the blade. Abu Ra’id looked meaningfully at Sarim. A look that said: Be careful, my son.
‘I shall start the camera now,’ said the cleric. ‘You understand, Karim, that you must be the only one to speak?’ He bent down, pressed a button, and then nodded.
Karim licked his lips again. His voice cracked slightly as he started talking, but now the camera was rolling, Sarim had the impression he did not want to appear cowardly. But his words were quiet and stilted. A child, reciting his lines by rote.
‘My name is Karim Dahlamal. I was born in Hatfield. My parents are Raniyah and Yussuf Dahlamal. They will not understand what I am about to do. They do not understand the world.’
He wavered slightly on the stool. For a moment Sarim thought he was going to fall, but he kept his balance, raised his head again and continued to speak.
‘Four days ago, my friends struck a glorious blow in the holy Jihad.’ He looked left and right to the masked figures of Sarim and Jamal. ‘It is the first of many. We will not stop until the sins of the infidel are washed clean by their own blood.’
He paused again and breathed deeply.
‘The bombs will continue until all your sons and daughters have died. You think you can stop us, but I tell you that you cannot. Because unlike you, we are willing to die. We welcome death. We embrace it.’
Another pause. And then, in scarcely a whisper: ‘I embrace it.’
Karim’s eyes were wide, now, and more than a little wild. He raised the knife to his throat. It wavered in his trembling hand. Abu Ra’id said nothing, but gave a slow, encouraging nod from behind the camera.
The blade touched Karim’s Adam’s apple. As soon as it made contact, a trickle of blood seeped down his throat and collected at the hem of the dishdash. But then he moved his trembling hand away again. Sarim saw a dab of blood on the knife. He looked over at Abu Ra’id whose face was, for a moment, expressionless. But then the cleric’s eyes narrowed. He looked directly at Sarim and nodded sharply.
Sarim understood what he meant.
If the teenager couldn’t do it by himself, he would need some help.
Sarim grabbed the hand with which Karim held the knife. The teenager panicked. He tried to throw himself off the stool, but Jamal had already gripped his left arm and held him fast. Sarim forced the blade towards the kid’s throat. Karim leaned back and tried to push Sarim’s arm away. But Sarim was the stronger of the two, and the blade eased inexorably towards the already bleeding throat.
The scream, when it finally came, was ear-piercing. Karim roared for his mother. ‘Mum! Mum! Help me! I don’t mean it! I don’t want to do it! I DON’T WANT TO DO IT!’ At the same time, a foul smell wafted towards Sarim’s nose, and he heard urine dripping on to the plastic sheeting. Sarim felt himself sneer under his balaclava and found that, all of a sudden, his fear had turned to anger. He wanted to dispatch this cowardly, so-called jihadi – as much for pissing near him as for anything else. He strained harder to get the knife to Karim’s throat, but as he did so, the kid fell backwards off the stool.
Sarim fell heavily to the floor with him, as did Jamal. The stool toppled. To Sarim’s revulsion, he felt moisture on his skin as the kid’s urine ran along the sheet and soaked his trouser leg. The camera was still filming, but he couldn’t help that. With his free hand he grabbed Karim’s hair and yanked the head back. His other hand was still wrapped around Karim’s. He gripped it tighter and, with one final effort, forced the blade back down onto the fleshy part at the side of the kid’s throat.
The blade was sharp enough that he didn’t have to swipe. It slid easily into the skin and didn’t stop until it was a good inch into the flesh. Karim eyes widened with shock, and he opened his mouth to scream. But no sound came.
Only blood.
Sarim realised he must have cut an artery. The blood didn’t merely seep out of Karim’s throat. It pumped out, with the sturdy regularity of a heartbeat. There was so much of it. Sarim hadn’t expected such a quantity. It washed over his hand and gushed on to the plastic sheeting, which became slippery with the mixture of fluids. Karim’s body writhed, his limbs flailed. Sarim kept the pressure on, pushing even harder so that the knife remained embedded in the throat. Karim’s body slid over the sheeting. His hands flapped against puddles of blood, which spattered over Sarim’s balaclava. Sarim was reminded of a fish flapping on the side of a river bank.
It seemed to take a long time for Karim to die, though in reality it was probably less than a minute. A grotesque gurgling came from his throat, like the noise a child makes when he’s sucking up the last drops of lemonade through a straw. The flailing limbs fell still. Sarim realised he was out of breath from his exertions. He let go of the knife, leaving the blade embedded in his victim’s throat, then stood up.
Jamal was standing on the other side of the sheeting, staring at Sarim. Only his eyes were visible through the balaclava, but they were full of fear. Abu Ra’id was still behind the camera. His arms were folded and he was quite expressionless, as though he were watching something boring on TV. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Move him in front of the stool.’
Sarim nodded at Jamal,
who walked over towards him. Silently, they bent over and each of them took one of the dead boy’s legs. They dragged him across the sheeting, leaving a line of blood in his wake, until he was centre stage. Jamal picked up the stool and placed it back in its upright position. Instinctively, the two masked men stood on either side of the corpse, their arms folded like Abu Ra’id’s.
They remained like that for about 30 seconds. Then the cleric leaned over the camera and switched it off.
‘Allahu Akbar,’ he announced.
‘Allahu Akbar,’ Sarim and Jamal replied in response.
‘I did not expect him to be so weak when the moment came,’ Abu Ra’id said.
Sarim swallowed hard. Now it was over, he found that he was shaking. He was aware that blood was still seeping from the dead body, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at it. He felt nauseous – not that he would ever admit this to Jamal or the cleric. He told himself that it was the smell of Karim’s piss that was making him feel sick, but he knew deep down that this wasn’t true. Sacrificing someone with a bomb was easy. You didn’t have to be there. You didn’t have to witness the grisly reality of what you were doing. Sacrificing someone with a knife was different.
But then he looked back at Abu Ra’id, whose peaceful expression calmed him. Abu Ra’id, who had first set him on this path. Abu Ra’id, who promised him glory that members of Al-Qaeda or Al-Shabaab could only dream of. Abu Ra’id, who had first explained to him, as they sat together in the mosque after evening prayers, the pleasures awaiting him in paradise if he waged the holy Jihad in this world.
Those thoughts consoled him. Sustained him.
‘Jamal,’ said Abu Ra’id. ‘Will you please prepare the footage?’
Jamal nodded. He stepped over to the camera and removed it from the tripod. Jamal was good with computers. Soon he would have cut their little home movie together. Abu Ra’id had made it clear that he wanted it distributed that very day.
‘And Sarim. It will be your job to dispose of the body of this excellent martyr, who at this moment is looking down on us with gratitude. There is acid in the bathroom. Please make sure you clean up after you.’
‘Yes, Abu Ra’id.’
And as Jamal and the cleric left the room he started about his next task, rolling up the surprisingly heavy body of young Karim in the plastic sheeting, then folding up the ends of the resulting tube like gift wrap. Breathless, he stood up.
He was still wearing the balaclava, and his skin was sweating and itchy underneath it. He walked over to the cabinet from which Abu Ra’id had taken the knife. There was an old mirror above it, misty with age. Sarim stood in front of the mirror and slowly peeled off the balaclava. He stared at himself. I look different, he thought to himself. I have grown up in the last ten minutes. I have become closer to God.
God.
He looked over at the sheet draped at the end of the room, with its Arabic symbol. Then he looked at his right hand. Karim’s blood was still wet on his fingertips. He moved his right forefinger up to his forehead, where he smeared the same symbol, clumsily, on his skin.
He stared at himself. Bloodied. Blooded. And in a little corner of his mind, he imagined seeing his face on computer screens and newspapers around the world. The face of terror, they would call it. Western soldiers would hunt the world for him. But away from the lands of the infidel, he would be a hero. Admired and loved by all.
But every hero has to start somewhere. Sarim tore his attention away from the mirror, stepped back to the rolled-up sheeting, and continued his transition from killer to undertaker. It was clever of Abu Rai’d to think of putting down the plastic, he thought. It made it much easier to clear up the mess.
Five
Tuesday, 08.00hrs
The rotor blades of the Regiment’s Augusta Westland were already turning on the Regiment helipad as Danny and Spud ran towards it through the early morning drizzle, wearing civvies but with their heavy Bergens slung over their shoulder. The headsetted pilot gave them a thumbs-up as they secured themselves in the aircraft. Seconds later, they were airborne. Time to target, 45 minutes plus.
There was something disorientating about heading back in to London just hours after they’d left it. Danny stared down at the green patchwork of fields below them. His usual view from a helicopter was the gold and browns of desert terrain, which seemed somehow better suited to the business of war. Neither he nor Spud spoke. The events of the previous night kept spinning through Danny’s mind, but there was something else too. Danny was on edge about the prospect of seeing Hugo Buckingham again. It wasn’t just that he hated the bastard. Somewhere deep down, Danny realised, he associated the MI6 man with his last major op in Syria and all the terrible things that had happened there. Images of that time flashed into his head. Burning buildings. Dead-eyed mercenaries. An old friend, bleeding to death . . .
What was it Clara kept saying to him? Danny, you have to stop remembering the things you want to forget.
Danny and Spud almost never talked about that operation, but Syria had also been a very dark time for Spud. Maybe he was thinking back to those devastating few days too. Or maybe he was just too tired for his usual flow of wisecracks. Whatever the truth, the journey passed silently.
It took 40 minutes for the outskirts of London to come into view. The chopper followed the line of the Thames, winding into the city past the sights that looked familiar even from the air: Battersea power station, Parliament Square, the MI6 building. Between the Millennium and Southwark bridges, the chopper veered to the left, heading north-east over St Paul’s and the Barbican. Moments later, the wide green open space of the Artillery Garden behind the Honourable Artillery Company came into view. Even from a height, Danny could tell how neatly manicured it was, laid out with the perfect lines of a cricket pitch, even though nobody would be playing cricket in this constant autumnal rain. The pitch had been turned into a landing zone surrounded by the high buildings of the city. It had clearly been given over to the security services: Danny’s eyes picked out five police cars and a number of other unmarked vehicles, as well as police officers and military guys in camouflage gear. A small, open-air operations base in the beating heart of London.
The chopper had barely touched down before Danny and Spud disembarked with their gear and ran from the downdraft towards a soldier with a red beret standing by a black Land Rover Discovery.
‘Hereford?’ he asked as they approached.
Danny and Spud nodded.
‘Heads down,’ he said. ‘We’ve got some cunt from the press sniffing around. MoD gave him access, fuck knows why . . .’
Instantly, Danny and Spud turned their backs on the northern end of the LZ where everyone else was milling around. The soldier handed each of them a set of keys, and they climbed behind the camouflage of the Discovery’s tinted windows. Spud took the wheel, and followed the gesture of the soldier who pointed them across the LZ towards the exit, which was manned by two more soldiers. Moments later they were heading down City Road towards the river.
Danny punched a postcode into the vehicle’s satnav that would take them to their safe house, then quickly checked through the glove box of the Discovery. Here he found the vehicle’s radio, hardwired in, and a magnetic siren that could be thrown on to the top of the vehicle if Danny and Spud needed to cut though the traffic. These were the only modifications that distinguished the vehicle from an ordinary civilian Land Rover. With those exceptions it was anonymous from the inside and out.
At 09.55 they arrived at what was to be their digs for however long this operation lasted. The house itself was on the south side of Battersea Park, a two-storey, redbrick, Victorian end-of-terrace that to the untrained eye looked no different from any others along this street. As they stepped out of the car, however, black rucksacks slung over their shoulders, Danny immediately saw the security cameras pointing down towards the front door. He wondered who was monitoring them. Five? The Firm? GCHQ? Hereford? Could be any of them. Or all of them. He made a
point of looking up into the camera and winking.
He opened up the envelope Cartwright had given him the night before. Among the contents were two house keys – one for each of them – and a six-digit alarm code. Danny gave Spud his key and unlocked the door. A high-pitched beeping sound came from the alarm just inside. Danny punched in the code and it stopped. They quietly closed the door behind them.
Danny and Spud checked over the flat wordlessly. Spud examined the windows on the ground floor – all locked from inside – while Danny moved through to the kitchen and checked the back door. It led out on to a decked area about six metres by five, on the far side of which was a locked gate. The kitchen itself was unmodernised, with plain white units and an old oven. There was a brew kit on the side but no milk, and the fridge wasn’t even on. Danny opened up a tall broom cupboard. Inside was a steel strongbox bolted to the floor. He fished inside the envelope for a third key, which opened up the safe. Inside, he found two Glock 9mm pistols – standard issue for the security services, even though the MoD had spent millions on the Regiment’s preferred Sig P266 in recent years. But the composite, hammerless Glock was light, easy to conceal, and reliable enough. There was a silencer for each handgun, two covert holsters and several boxes of ammunition, which he unloaded on to the kitchen table before returning to the strongbox. There was more stuff in here: two radios, which looked like chunky mobile phones, a couple of spare batteries, and a well-thumbed spiral-bound notebook containing lists of numbers, call signs, frequencies and codes. Tucked at the back was a snap gun, almost exactly the same as the one Spud had used the night before, along with a collection of bits and a small handbook of lock makes and sizes. Also, a small method-of-entry kit, comprising a two-ounce strip of military-grade explosive, about the same size as a packet of chewing gum, a two-inch-long, pencil-thin detonator, a battery pack and a roll of coated wire. A couple of vacuum-packed SOCO kits, no bigger than a paperback book. And, weirdly, some foil-wrapped ration packs, as if they were going to need those in the middle of London.
