by Chris Ryan
‘Sorry, buddy,’ he breathed. ‘This will be bad.’
With a single, firm movement, he pushed.
The needle slid easily through the skin and into the centre of Spud’s left lung. Spud’s back arched slightly and his limbs shook with the sudden pain. No shouts, though. Spud just didn’t have the breath for it. Danny felt sweat dripping into his eyes. He wiped it away, then turned his attention back to the cannula. Slowly, carefully, he eased the needle out of Spud’s abdomen, leaving only a couple of inches of the plastic coating sticking out of the body.
Spud’s face was pale and screwed-up with agony, but his breathing eased slightly, which told Danny he had stopped the bad lung from collapsing completely. But there was still a .762 in there, and the lung cavity could fill with blood any moment. This was a serious wound. It needed proper medical care. But there was no one around to give it. Except Danny.
Danny realised his hands were covered with Spud’s blood. He looked over towards the smoking wreckage of the training camp, then back down at his injured mate. He tried to assess his options. Spud was in a shit state. He needed a medic. But Danny couldn’t call for one because their radios would have been destroyed in the drone strike.
The drone strike. Even if they could call in their position, it would simply invite another attack. Because someone had just used the GPS signal beaming from their radios as a marker for a Hellfire missile. Someone had just tried to kill Danny and Spud after they’d confirmed Abu Ra’id was dead. Then a drone had hovered over the impact site to make sure nobody was escaping. But Danny and Spud had managed to hide from the drone. Which meant that whoever had just tried to kill them most likely thought that they’d succeeded.
Danny looked at his blood-soaked hands again. For someone supposedly dead in the hostile wilds of the Yemeni desert, he at least was very much alive.
Unlike Spud. Danny felt his blood temperature rising. Thanks to Hammerstone, they were stuck in the middle of nowhere, and his mate was on the brink.
Nineteen
MI5 Headquarters. 22.00hrs GMT
There were five of them in the room.
Tessa Gorman, Home Secretary, looked at each of the other four in turn. With the exception of Hugo Buckingham, who was as well presented as always, they looked tired. Victoria Atkinson had dark bags under her eyes and, unless Gorman was mistaken, dried milk on the lapel of her tweed jacket. Piers Chamberlain’s usually immaculate comb-over was ruffled. Harrison Maddox wasn’t even wearing a suit, but had arrived in a plum-coloured jumper with leather elbow pads, almost as though he was making a point about the lateness of the hour.
‘Well?’ Gorman asked briskly. ‘Let’s hear it.’
Atkinson cleared her throat. ‘Abu Ra’id is dead, Home Secretary,’ she said.
Silence. Gorman closed her eyes and inhaled slowly.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Where?’ she asked.
‘Yemen, Home Secretary. Two operatives from 22SAS were in-country.’
‘You’ve had confirmation from them?’
Atkinson nodded. ‘Yes, but they unfortunately didn’t make it out alive. Abu Ra’id was hiding in an Al-Shabaab training camp. The Yemeni administration clearly got wind of it at the same time as us. They launched a drone strike while our people were on the ground.’
The Home Secretary looked at Harrison Maddox. ‘Your people should never have sold them those things.’
‘Impossible to predict an event like this, Home Secretary,’ Maddox said.
‘We can keep those details from the press, of course, depending on how you want to present it,’ Atkinson said.
Keep it from the press? And let Yemen take the credit? Out of the question. She was sick of opening up the newspapers and reading a barrage of criticism regarding her failure to extradite this hate-spouting cleric. If she could intimate that the British government was involved, it could be worth another term in office, and all thanks to her. You never know, she might even get a crack at the Exchequer. ‘I think the public deserves to know when a soldier dies defending our liberty,’ she said.
‘Can’t mention 22, of course,’ Chamberlain said. ‘We can name-check their parent regiments. That’s the way we do things.’
Gorman was barely listening. She felt as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. ‘This is excellent news,’ she said. ‘Excellent news. There’s no doubt that he was behind the bombings?’
‘None at all, Home Secretary,’ Buckingham said.
‘So I can tell the PM that we have our man?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Good. Good.’ She looked around the room. ‘There’ll be honours for this, ladies and gentelemen. I’ll see to it myself.’ She stood up and headed briskly for the door. But before exiting, she stopped and turned. She picked out Hugo Buckingham. ‘These two soldiers,’ she said. ‘Friends of yours, weren’t they?’
Buckingham bowed his head slightly. ‘In a manner of speaking, Home Secretary,’ he said.
‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you, Home Secretary,’ said Buckingham. ‘They were good men. I know they’d appreciate the sentiment.’
Gorman nodded. Then she turned and left the room. It had been a hell of a couple of weeks, but things were looking up and she couldn’t wait to get on the phone to the PM and tell him the good news.
00.00hrs GMT
Clara was woken by the wind. It howled bitterly as the rain thudded against her bedroom window. She sat up quickly in the darkness, sweating.
It was a relief to be awake. Her dreams had been troubled. She had seen herself by the bedside of dying children, both here and in a faraway country. She had seen Danny too, his face dirty and his clothes torn. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in some kind of trouble.
She felt for the glass of water by her bed. But before her fingers touched the glass, there was a noise. A single bang. It sounded like a door slamming shut.
She froze, clutching the bedclothes. Her eyes turned towards her bedroom door. Had the sound come from her own flat? The thought made the fine hairs on her arm stand up.
It’s just the wind, she told herself. Nothing more. She reached for her water again and took a sip.
The second bang came as she was settling down on her pillow. She clenched her eyes shut and didn’t move, dread creeping through her limbs. But then the wind howled again. That’s all it was, she reminded herself. The wind.
She forced herself out of bed. She was naked, so she groped in the darkness for the dressing gown on the back of her bedroom door. The cord was missing – she’d used it to hold up her hair while she was having a bath – so she held the front of the dressing gown together with one hand while she crept out of the bedroom to check the rest of her flat.
It was the kitchen door that had been banging, she soon realised. She’d left the kitchen window open after burning the toast she’d grabbed for supper. As she shut the window, she saw her hand was shaking slightly with relief. She poured some milk into a cup and warmed it in the microwave. Then she moved into the front room, cup in one hand, hem of her dressing gown in the other.
She hadn’t closed the curtains before going to bed. Rain was lashing against the window. She stepped up to it, her eyes fixed on the blurred glare of the yellow street lamp on the other side of the road. Her breath misted the window as she looked out, barely able to see across the road for the rain sluicing down the window pane.
She blinked.
At first she thought her eyes were deceiving her. Visibility was poor, and after all, who would be standing out in this weather? But as she stepped to the left, away from the misted area, she saw it clearly: a figure, standing in the rain under the street lamp. He – or she – had on a heavy coat with a hood. Rain dripped from the front of the hood, and the figure’s features were hidden. But he was looking towards Clara’s house. Motionless. Untroubled by the elements.
For ten seconds, neither Clara nor
the watcher moved. Then Clara stepped backwards. She was barely able to control her limbs. The dread had seeped back into them and she found herself short of breath.
She put her milk down on a coffee table, then hurried back into her bedroom. Under the bedclothes, she considered calling the police, but quickly rejected that idea. They’d tell her she was over-reacting. That the person she had seen had every right to be where he was. Don’t be so stupid, she told herself. You’re over-reacting. Look again and he’ll have moved on. He wasn’t watching you. Of course he wasn’t.
Why would he be watching you?
04.00hrs AST
A tight knot of panic hung in Danny’s stomach. Spud was flitting in and out of consciousness. Right now, his eyes were rolling. His breathing sounded a little better, but it was impossible to tell what was going on inside his lung cavity. Danny kept him in the recovery position while he desperately tried to work out his next move.
Moving Spud was almost impossible. A tab across desert terrain on hard rations and scant water was tough enough for an able-bodied soldier. For Spud it was out of the question.
But they had to move. Whoever had sent that drone in thought they were dead. If they found out otherwise, they’d want to finish the job off, and it wouldn’t take long to locate them, especially with Spud in this state. And the chances of them surviving another hit were zero.
He’d considered going to see if one of the technicals from the training camp was still operational. But a single glance at the burning, twisted hunks of metal dotted around the camp told him that was a no-go, and any fuel down there would have burned up in the strike, no question.
Maybe he should leave Spud. His chances of survival were slim, in any case. But Danny quickly rejected that idea. You stuck by your mates. No matter what.
His mind turned to the abandoned Toyota. It was almost out of juice, but at least he could use it to get them away from the blast site before working out his next move. He didn’t like the idea. Firstly it would mean leaving Spud alone while he went to fetch it. Secondly, if the Toyota wasn’t found in the vicinity, it might suggest to someone that they’d escaped. But it seemed like his only choice.
04.10. The flames had subsided in the burning, devastated camp. Danny prepared to trek towards the Toyota. He took his spotting scope and scanned the surrounding area. As he did so, he saw movement to the north-west. Distance, about a kilometre, maybe slightly less. Headlamps approaching.
Danny re-evaluated. He knew dead bodies always attract parasites. Sometimes those parasites take human form. He re-camouflaged himself and Spud in the OP, and carefully watched this new arrival through his scope. The vehicle stopped 30 metres from the edge of the camp. Two men emerged. They wore traditional Arab robes and headdresses. One of them carried a long-barrelled rifle. From here it looked rather like an old-fashioned musket. The vehicle, so far as Danny could tell from this distance, looked in pretty poor shape – an old Land Rover, dented and rickety.
‘Bedouin,’ he breathed. Here to scavenge over the bomb site.
More options had suddenly opened out. He could nail these two newcomers and nick their vehicle. Head north over the Saudi border, a journey of about 100 kilometres. Danny gave that a moment’s thought. He had mapping of the area and could easily find their route. But he was a stranger in a hostile land. His mate was badly wounded. What if they ran out of fuel, or needed water, or medical supplies? Much better, he decided, to have some locals on the payroll.
Option two: for a price, Danny reckoned these two could be persuaded to offer a taxi service. Maybe they knew somewhere Danny could get medical help. Failing that, perhaps they could find someone with an aircraft. That way Danny could get them out of the area and stand a fighting chance of getting Spud some proper medical attention. He made a quick calculation in his head. They had $2000 each, minus the 500 Danny had given their tout. Hardly a fortune. But enough, perhaps.
Decision made.
He needed to move quickly. It was 15 minutes since the Hellfire had hit. These two were the first on the scene, but there would be others, and soon. Not to mention that two Regiment guys presumed dead in action would raise alarm bells in Hereford and Whitehall. There was a good chance of a unit being airlifted in to destroy any evidence of Danny and Spud ever having been in-country. If they found them here, alive and well, whoever had just tried to kill them would surely be tempted to give it a second shot. No. For now staying ‘dead’ was their best – their only – option.
Spud groaned. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, mucker,’ Danny said.
He emerged slowly from the OP. It was still thickly covered with sand from the explosion. He engaged his rifle, pressing the butt deep into his shoulder and aiming it at the two locals who were now treading carefully towards one of the burning tents. Distance: 60 metres. Danny was clearly unobserved. These two men seemed to have nothing on their minds except looting – though what they thought they could extract from this smouldering wreckage was anyone’s guess. They stood by the gently flapping remnants of a tent, silhouetted against the glowing ash. Even when Danny was ten metres away, his weapon trained directly on the two men, they failed to notice him.
‘Salam,’ Danny called.
The two men spun round instantly. The guy with the musket started to raise his weapon, but instantly lowered it again when he saw that Danny had them at gunpoint. He was an elderly guy with a grizzled beard and hard, suspicious eyes. His companion was younger, but had similar features. They looked like father and son.
‘Drop the gun,’ Danny said. And then, when it became clear that the old guy hadn’t understood him, he repeated himself slowly. ‘Drop . . . the . . . gun.’
Unsmiling, the old guy laid his weapon at his feet.
‘Bedouin?’ he asked.
The old man nodded without expression.
Good. The Bedouin were wanderers. They travelled across the desert with no respect for boundaries or borders. In the books Danny had read as a kid he had learned that they traditionally travelled on foot or by camel, but times had changed and so had the Bedouin. Some of them had cars now. Danny pointed at the Bedouin’s rickety old vehicle. ‘Medicine,’ he said. ‘My friend needs medicine.’
The Bedouin looked blankly at him.
Danny cursed under his breath, then tried again. ‘Saudi?’ he suggested. ‘You take me and my friend to Saudi?’ He risked lowering his gun, then spread out his arms to indicate an aircraft. ‘I need to find someone with a plane. You understand that? A plane?’ He removed some of the cash he had stashed away and waved a hundred-dollar bill under the old guy’s nose. That got his interest. ‘Saudi,’ he repeated.
The two Bedouin conferred for a moment. But only a moment. The older guy turned back to them, pointed at the note and then held up two fingers.
‘No way, buddy,’ Danny said. Right now, their cash was more valuable to him than his weapons. Much easier to buy their way out of the desert, than shoot their way out. ‘That’s all you get.’
The Bedouin shook his finger. ‘Itneyn,’ he said. Two.
Danny swore again and removed another note. It did the trick. A smile spread across the older guy’s face to reveal a mouthful of missing teeth, hitting Danny with a blast of halitosis that almost knocked him down. ‘Saudi,’ the man said in a croaky, lizardy voice. ‘Asdiqa.’
It was an Arabic word Danny understood. It meant ‘friends’.
The Bedouins’ smiles had quickly disappeared when they saw Spud. Having driven their vehicle up to the OP, they watched uncertainly as Danny pulled his mate up to his feet, taking care not to dislodge the cannula sticking out of his rib cage, then put Spud’s arm round his neck and held him upright. Spud was having a moment of lucidity. ‘Don’t . . . don’t leave me,’ he whispered.
‘You’ve got to walk ten metres. Can you do it?’
It took a full minute, with Danny supporting Spud as he made micro-steps towards the vehicle. It took another two minutes to get him laid out on the back seat, lying on his s
ide. Danny fetched their bags and weapons, shoved them into the Land Rover, then perched uncomfortably on the edge of the seat and held his mate in place.
‘Let’s go,’ he told the Bedouin.
The vehicle stank of animal shit and petrol. The back seats were hard, uncomfortable. The young guy drove. Spud lost consciousness again as they headed north. Danny’s thoughts turned to Abu Ra’id. He checked his pockets for the black data stick. It was still intact, and Danny realised he had to find out what was on it. Then he saw the young Bedouin man eyeing him in the rear-view mirror. He tucked the data stick back in his pocket and gave his new companion a cool look.
They travelled in silence. Danny wished he could discuss their situation with Spud. His thoughts were so half-formed. Could it really be the case that Abu Ra’id was in league with Hammerstone? What would any of the four members of the security services plausibly have to gain from terror hits of such grotesque magnitude in the middle of London?
London. It seemed like half a world away as Danny looked through the window of the bleak, parched, night-time desert terrain. It was half a world away. He found he missed its panicked, rain-hammered streets. A picture popped into his head of himself and Clara, walking down one of those streets a few nights previously.
Clara.
A sickness twisted in his gut, like he’d been punched. He swore at himself for not thinking about her earlier. Because if they – whoever they were – had tried to kill him, Clara’s life was surely in danger too. He knew how these people worked. How they thought. Danny hadn’t mentioned splitting up with Clara to anyone. They would automatically assume that he might have mentioned something to her – spilled the beans about the nature of his trip to Yemen, expressed some kind of suspicion.
And these were suspicions that somebody, somewhere really didn’t want to be common knowledge. They would go to any ends to keep them quiet.
