2016 - Takedown

by Stephen Leather

  McGovan waited for five more minutes, then continued to creep forward, belly-crawling across the outer compound, the two ISIS fighters at his heels. They paused again in the deeper shadow cast by a Portakabin while McGovan studied the ground ahead. Two American soldiers were patrolling the inner fence, but their body language showed their boredom and disinterest. They clearly thought their sentry duty was a pointless waste of time and stayed close to the warm yellow light from the guard post at the entrance gates to the inner compound, patrolling no more than ten or twenty yards away from it before turning back towards their shelter.

  The two ISIS fighters who had slipped under the wire with him now remained by the Portakabin, covering the American guards, while McGovan crawled forward alone. The steel mesh of the inner fence was tight to the ground and there were no animal tracks leading beneath it to aid him, but he pulled a pair of wire clippers from his belt and began cutting through the wire next to one of the stanchions supporting the fence. Each strand snapped with a faint click, but it was virtually inaudible even to the two ISIS men watching from close behind him, let alone to the Americans near the gates.

  He eased the clippers into his belt, folded back the section of wire he had cut, then wriggled through the gap. He paused to rearrange the wire so that, to a casual glance, it appeared to be untouched, then crept across the compound to the vehicle park. It was the work of a moment to identify his target’s Land Rover and he went to work at once. He fixed one of the IEDs, activated by a pressure-release switch, under the driver’s seat, then coupled it to another IED, which he installed on the underside of the petrol tank. As an insurance policy, it would guarantee that anyone travelling in the Land Rover when the IEDs were detonated would be killed. If anyone now put weight on the switch or lifted the seat away from it, the IED would activate with devastating effect.

  He took one last look around, making sure he had left no visible traces that would trigger an alarm, then crept back into the shadows. He made his way back through the inner fence, once more carefully replacing the cut wire behind him. With the ISIS fighters again at his heels, he wriggled under the outer fence. They linked up with the other two fighters, who were waiting in cover a few yards outside the compound. They stole into the darkness, and within half an hour, they were back in the 4x4 and driving fast across the desert towards the Syrian border.

  The four-hour return drive meant that the sun was already climbing the sky well before they reached the border. They followed a track up a rough incline, and emerged onto the plateau of rock, gravel and coarse, gritty sand that stretched all the way to the border. As they scanned the plateau, they saw a plume of dust to the south-west ahead of them: a vehicle driving a course that would intersect with theirs. McGovan’s escort exchanged worried looks and a few words of muttered Arabic, but they could see no option other than to carry on. To turn back would place them in greater danger from Iraqi patrols. The driver changed direction, taking a side-track running further to the north of their previous route, but almost at once they saw the other vehicle change its course too.

  As the minutes ticked by, the outline of the other vehicle became clearer. It was a squat, broad-based vehicle with a jagged black outline projecting above its roof. ‘It’s a Humvee,’ McGovan said, ‘an American armoured vehicle, though the chances are that it’s being driven by an Iraqi Army patrol, not the Yanks.’ He pointed. ‘Drive to that low ridge ahead of us and stop,’ he said to the driver. ‘It’ll give us the advantage of the ground overlooking them, if nothing else.’ The man scowled at him but did as McGovan had suggested. McGovan had spotted a shallow dip just to the right of the place on the ridge-line he had indicated, which would provide enough cover to protect a man lying prone. The 4x4 came to a halt and they waited in an atmosphere of rising tension as the other vehicle closed with them. They could now see it clearly and, as McGovan had said, it was indeed a Humvee, with Iraqi Army insignia. The jagged shape mounted on the back had resolved itself into an M-2 Browning .50 calibre heavy machine-gun, the operator sitting behind it, keeping its barrel pointing straight at them.

  Still as stone, McGovan watched it approach, willing it to move closer and closer before stopping. Their training required SAS men to know the range and capabilities of every weapon they were likely to encounter, whether in the hands of their allies or their enemies. He knew that the M-2 had an effective range of 1800 metres, over twice the range of the M-16s that the ISIS fighters were carrying, and more than eight times the range of the M-203 grenade-launcher fitted to one of the M-16s. Had the Humvee been driven by an American patrol, they would have stopped no closer than 800 metres away and used a loud-hailer to order the occupants to get out of the 4x4 and flatten themselves in the dirt, or be cut apart by machine-gun fire. The Iraqi patrol in it, though, were less circumspect, and whether through overconfidence or incompetence, they did not pull up until they were just a couple of hundred metres from the 4x4.

  McGovan’s keen gaze missed no detail. He saw that the machine-gunner manning the M-2 was only partly hidden by the armoured shield in front of him, which covered his body from the breastbone downwards, but left his upper chest and his face below his steel helmet exposed. The Iraqi commander had climbed out but remained standing close to the side of the Humvee, shielded behind its open armoured door, with only his lower legs exposed. The rest of his team were still inside the Humvee.

  ‘Let me handle this,’ McGovan said, turning to the ISIS fighter sitting next to him. ‘Give me your rifle.’

  The ISIS fighter glared at him. ‘Why should I give you my weapon?’

  ‘Because if you don’t, we’ll all die. That heavy machine-gun you see on the back can fire over five hundred rounds a minute and each one will slice through this vehicle’s soft metal skin like a knife through paper. It will shred everyone inside it to pieces, whereas your rifle rounds won’t even penetrate the Humvee’s armour. So I’ll get out and talk to them. When they see I’m a Westerner, they’ll hesitate, thinking I might be special forces on a secret op. That hesitation is all I’ll need to take out the machine-gunner. But if you keep me arguing any longer, they’re likely to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. Then we’re all finished. Okay?’

  The fighter hesitated a fraction of a second longer, then handed over his weapon. McGovan clambered past him, opened the door and jumped out, holding his rifle at the vertical in one hand, wide of his body. At once, the Iraqi commander shouted in Arabic, ‘Drop your weapon! Get down on the ground!’

  ‘We are British special forces,’ McGovan shouted, lowering his arm to bring the rifle down by his side. ‘SAS! We’re on the same side! Don’t shoot!’ He stepped away from the vehicle into the open, and saw the barrel of the machine-gun move to cover him again.

  ‘Drop your weapon! Get down on the ground or we fire!’

  McGovan spread his arms wide in a what-the-hell gesture, then fell to his knees at the edge of the shallow dip in the ground. He saw the machine-gun barrel swing back momentarily to cover the occupants of the 4x4. At that moment, he dived forward, bringing up the rifle in one fluid movement and fired a short, unaimed burst at the machine-gunner. As the man swung the barrel round and his weapon began to erupt in rapid fire, the deafening rattle was echoed by the thwock-thwock sound as some of its rounds buried themselves in the sand, and the crack and whine as others ricocheted from the rocks to howl away.

  McGovan barrel-rolled sideways, then brought up the rifle again, firing from a point several metres away and this time stilling his breathing with a slow exhale and squeezing off two carefully aimed shots. The first hit the machine-gunner dead centre in the chest, an inch or so above the armoured shield, and the next struck him under the chin as he was thrown backwards by the first. He was stone dead even before his body had tumbled from the back of the Humvee to the ground. His fingers, clamped to the trigger in his death agony, caused his weapon to stitch a tracer line of rounds across the sky before it jammed and fell silent.

  McGovan had alrea
dy rolled and fired again. The Iraqi Army commander’s body was still protected by the armoured door of the Humvee, but his legs from the knee down were visible beneath it. McGovan again inhaled deeply as he took up the first pressure on the trigger, squinting down the sight, then released the breath in a slow exhale and squeezed the trigger home. He felt the recoil into his shoulder and saw the man’s right knee blown apart by the impact of the round. He slumped to the ground at the side of the Humvee, lying fully exposed in the open. He was now disabled, incapable of walking and in agonising pain, but McGovan knew that none of that could be guaranteed to prevent him firing his weapon. He squinted through the sight again, aiming at the bridge of the man’s nose, and drilled a single shot through his brain.

  McGovan switched targets again as the other Iraqi soldiers jumped from their vehicle and opened fire. Their shooting was nervy and inaccurate, their months of American and British training forgotten in the nervous terror of real combat in which one error might be their last. By now the ISIS fighters had leaped out of the 4x4, and added their own weight of fire to McGovan’s, including rockets from an RPG-7 and grenades from an M-203. One of the ISIS men was hit, gut-shot by return fire, and slumped to the ground, but by then two more Iraqi soldiers already lay dead.

  Their last man, the driver, panic-stricken by the sight of his comrades being wiped out, made a frantic attempt to save himself, flooring the accelerator, slewing his vehicle around in a storm of dust and debris, then roaring off across the desert as a fresh torrent of rounds from the ISIS fighters rattled against the armoured bodywork.

  McGovan was already on his feet and sprinting for the 4x4. ‘After him!’ he shouted at the ISIS driver, as he dived into the back seat. ‘If he escapes, we’re all dead.’

  One of the other fighters, still clutching the RPG-7, threw himself into the 4x4 as the driver hit the accelerator, but his other comrade, tending the wounded man, was left staring after them as they sped away. The Iraqi Humvee had a minute’s start on them. In other types of desert terrain its weight and power would have seen it pull away from them, but the 4x4 was a lighter and faster vehicle over the rocky ground they were traversing and was soon rapidly overhauling it. McGovan snatched the RPG from the ISIS fighter, loaded a high-explosive, dual-purpose round, capable of penetrating five centimetres of steel armour-plating, then snarled at the driver, ‘When I say stop, hit the brakes as hard as you can. Got it?’

  He met the driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror and waited for his nod of agreement, then knelt on the seat and leaned out of the open rear window, bracing his arms against the frame and locking his knee against the back of the driver’s seat, as the 4x4 bounced and jolted over the desert floor.

  The grey shape of the Humvee, half hidden by the dust cloud it was raising as it stormed along the rough desert road, was now no more than a quarter of a mile ahead and the distance between them was still shrinking. It was impossible to shoot accurately from such an unstable, bouncing platform, and McGovan raised his gaze from the sight to scan the terrain ahead, searching for a straight, level section where he would have the best chance of a clean shot. He saw what he was looking for some way ahead and waited, counting down the distance as they approached it.

  ‘Ready … ready … STOP!’ he shouted. The driver hit the brakes hard, sending the 4x4 slithering and sliding to a halt. Even as it was still rocking on its suspension, McGovan was taking aim at the Humvee’s front offside tyre, clearly visible in half-profile as the vehicle swerved around a bend in the track ahead. He wasn’t confident that the RPG round would penetrate the Humvee’s armoured bodywork or bulletproof glass windows unless fired at right angles to them, so the tyre and wheel were the percentage target. He squeezed the trigger and the RPG round launched with a soft pop, a flash of flame and smoke. Despite the size of the projectile he barely felt the recoil against his shoulder.

  The round armed itself automatically after flying for twenty yards or so, then sped to its target. It detonated right on the aiming point, blasting into the front wheel of the Humvee. The explosion ripped the wheel from the vehicle and sent the Humvee careering across the track, where it smashed into a boulder on the far side with a sickening impact. Despite its two-ton weight, it was thrown into the air for a few seconds before it crashed down into a ditch running alongside the track. It hung on its side for a moment, then toppled slowly on to its roof.

  As the 4x4 slewed to a halt alongside, McGovan leaped out and sprinted towards it. The Iraqi Army driver was semi-conscious, hanging upside down from his seatbelt, blood dripping from his head where he had been thrown against the side window. There was no pity in McGovan’s eyes, only an icy determination that there would be no witnesses to tell the tale of what had happened. His expression blank, McGovan jerked open the door on the other side of the cab, slid his rifle barrel in through the opening and put two rounds into the man’s head at point-blank range. He reached into the cab and ripped off the sleeve of the man’s army shirt and walked to the back of the Humvee, where he forced open the fuel cap and soaked the cloth in the diesel spilling from the upside-down fuel tank. He retreated a few yards, held his gas lighter to the sleeve and waited while the flame heated the diesel to its combustion point. When it burst into flame, he tossed the burning sleeve into the spreading pool of spilled diesel and ran back to the 4x4 as the fuel ignited and the Humvee was engulfed in flames.

  McGovan got into the 4x4 and they drove back across the desert to pick up the other two fighters. The wounded man was by now grey-faced and probably beyond help as they drove flat-out, aiming to have crossed the Syrian border before the inevitable Iraqi Army sweep for the killers of their comrades began. McGovan was a trained patrol medic and could have treated the ISIS fighter’s wounds, but he ignored his groans and the spreading stain from the blood pulsing out of his stomach wound, keeping his gaze fixed on the terrain around them, searching for any sign of further army patrols. His wounds left untreated, the injured man was continually jolted and thrown around in the back of the 4x4 as it bucketed over the rocky ground that stretched for miles on either side of the frontier. He had bled to death long before they reached the safe-house inside Syria. He was carried off for a martyr’s burial while his comrades were debriefed by their commander.

  When they had given him their account of the firefight with the Iraqi soldiers and McGovan’s role in killing them, the commander embraced him. ‘You have shown yourself a worthy brother to us,’ he said. ‘You shall have everything that it is in my power to give you to help you achieve your own aims.’

  McGovan remained in the safe-house with the ISIS fighters throughout the next day. An hour before sunset, the commander received a radio message. He listened in silence, removed the headphones and smiled. ‘Allahu Akbar,’ he said. ‘The faranji unbeliever, the American officer, is dead. His vehicle blew up while he was climbing into it in the compound this morning. Two of his traitorous Iraqi guards died with him. There will be much fear among the training teams from now on. They will not feel safe anywhere. We move to a different safe-house after dark, and tomorrow we begin planning your attack in Britain.’

  McGovan spent much of the next day with Saif al-Islam, as he laid out his requirements for cash, weapons and equipment. They discussed the potential fighters the ISIS commander could offer him. After hearing Saif al-Islam give details of each man, including how they had come to join ISIS and what skills and experience they had, if any, McGovan rejected most, but eventually he had a list of a dozen names. Some were already based in Britain and others were UK passport holders who, although now fighting as jihadists in Syria, could return to Britain with few questions asked, entering the country through the Channel Tunnel on Eurostar trains where immigration controls and passport checks were likely to be less stringent than at UK airports.

  The following night McGovan began his journey back to Britain through Turkey. As soon as he arrived in London, he booked a room in a military club north of Oxford Street for an indefinite period. As he re
flected to himself, after he had finished checking in and was moving away from the desk towards the stairs, there could be no better cover for what he was planning than to be an ex-military man, staying in a military club, surrounded by other serving and former soldiers. It was the last place that any agency searching for terrorists would be likely to look.

  As soon as he was settled in his room, he searched the internet for news reports of the American soldier’s death in Iraq but, as he had predicted to Saif al-Islam, the incident had made barely a ripple in the British press. There was only a tiny paragraph on an inside page of the Daily Telegraph. The deaths of all four members of an Iraqi Army patrol did not rate a mention.

  CHAPTER 3

  The robbery had been planned to perfection, but not by the men who carried it out. They were hired hands, brought in for the job with no idea of the big picture. They were being paid a flat fee, plus a share of the proceeds, and were all happy with the arrangement. There were four in the initial group. They gained access through the next-door building, easy enough because it was a regular office block with no special security arrangements and deserted at weekends.

  They opened one of the lifts on the ground floor and pressed the button to send it up to the top of the building. One had a key he used to open the doors. Once it was open the lift was automatically locked in place, a safety feature they were using to their advantage. They had ropes and abseiling equipment with them and two of the men lowered themselves to the basement, where they unhitched themselves. The men on the ground floor took an industrial power drill from a large black nylon kit bag and carefully lowered it to the men below. It was a big drill for a big job: they had to bore through half a metre of reinforced concrete.