by Chris Ryan
Connor had his phone out. As he pumped, Barker could hear the ringing tone, even though the handset was pressed to his mate’s ear. He pinched McCaffrey’s nose and leaned over to give him a couple of rescue breaths.
‘Boss, it’s me, Connor,’ he heard his mate say. There was a panicked edge to his voice. ‘We’ve got a problem. You’ve got to get a medic here . . . you’ve got to get a medic here now.’
Trouble was, Barker had been around enough dead bodies to know he was wasting his time.
It hadn’t taken Joe long to come to the conclusion that he didn’t want to stay in this place, with these people. They’d called it a safe house, but he didn’t feel safe at all.
If he was going to do what he needed to do, he had to get away.
He wondered how long they would leave him alone. At least an hour, he thought, if they were trying to play mind games with him. He stood up and walked to the window, where he pulled back the curtains. As he’d expected, there were bars on the other side of the pane. He couldn’t get out that way.
He walked into the kitchenette, where he went through the drawers. Maybe he could find a knife. The drawers were empty. So were the cupboards, apart from a few stained mugs. He felt relieved. He wasn’t a violent person. He didn’t really want to hurt anyone. Except one person, who wasn’t here.
Joe looked around the room again. His eyes fell on the dusty standard lamp in the corner of the room. He walked up to it, his head inclined slightly. It was about as tall as Joe himself. An idea formed in his mind. He made some calculations. Voltages. Current. He believed it would work.
He unplugged the lamp. Then he removed the bulb, twisted off the top half of the housing and removed the shade. The dust made him sneeze. Inside what remained of the housing were two small brass screws. He needed something to unscrew them. He cast around the room again and his eyes settled on the first aid kit. He walked over and opened it up. Inside there were sterile bandages, plasters, antiseptic wipes. He stuffed them all in his pocket. Then he found what he was really looking for: a pair of tweezers, and a small pair of scissors for cutting bandages.
It was a moment’s work to unscrew the two brass screws and remove the cable from inside the pole of the lamp. Joe was left with a length of cable about two metres long, a plug at one end and two exposed wires at the other. He took it to the other side of the room, and plugged it into the socket nearest the door, taking care not to flick the switch to the ‘on’ position.
Problem. With the cable fully stretched out, he was still more than a metre from the doorway. He needed to be closer, if he was to get the effect he wanted.
He took the first aid scissors over to the TV and snipped the power cable as close to the unit as possible. He used the tweezers to remove the plug, then carried it over to the new cable. He used the sharp edge of the scissors to strip away the wire at the cut end of the cable. He connected the two cables by twisting together the bare wires at either end. Now he had one cable, long enough to stretch from the plug to the metal handle of the door. He opened up one of the strips of sterile bandage, and used it to wrap the free end of the cable around the door handle, ensuring that the bare wires were in contact with the metal.
He brought one of the hard-backed chairs closer to the door. Then he crouched down by the plug socket, his finger on the switch, and waited.
Joe understood what the men were doing. One of them was being friendly, the other unfriendly. They were trying to confuse him. The more confused he was, the more he would trip up over any lies he was telling them. But their strategy told him something else. They were likely to join him in the room one by one. Alone. Which made Joe’s job a little easier.
And if they didn’t? At least he would have tried. After everything he’d been through, he was no longer the kind of kid who allowed people to slap him around.
Joe had grown used to measuring the passage of time in his head. All those hours spent stowed away in the backs of trucks. So he knew it was almost exactly thirty minutes later that he heard the footsteps approaching the door.
He held his breath, one finger on the plug switch, the other on the lever door handle.
He heard a key in the lock. Then he saw the handle move.
He flicked the switch.
There was no sound. At first, Joe thought his set-up hadn’t worked. But after a couple of seconds, there was a thump in the corridor. The light in the room flickered and faded as he expected it would. He’d blown the fuse board. Jumping to his feet, he grabbed the chair he’d placed near the door and quickly opened the door, holding the chair, legs outward, in case either of the guys tried to rush him.
He needn’t have worried. Galbraith was there. He was on the floor, his black hair as crumpled as his suit and tie. The thumping sound must have been him falling. He was clutching his podgy right hand. His eyes were open, but he was clearly dazed. He seemed to be struggling for breath. Joe put the chair down, then hurried up to Galbraith. He ripped his jacket open to reveal the gun in its holster, which he grabbed. Galbraith barely seemed to know what was happening.
He heard shouting from a room off the corridor towards the main entrance. Sharples. ‘What the hell’s going on? Who turned the fucking lights out?’
Clutching the handgun, Joe felt for Galbraith’s wallet. He hastily pulled out a few notes, then ran past the door. He heard a lavatory flushing, and knew what Sharples must have been doing. He’d be out any second. Joe kept moving towards the main door. He reached it.
‘Galbraith? What the hell’s happening?’
Joe looked over his shoulder. The bathroom door was opening. He fumbled at the latch of the main door. His hands were sweating and he couldn’t make it work.
‘What the . . .’
He glanced over his shoulder again. Sharples looked up from Galbraith towards Joe. His right hand was moving towards his gun . . .
Joe knew his best chance of getting out of here was to raise the weapon he’d stolen from Galbraith. But somehow, he couldn’t. His sweaty hand, still slipping on the latch, got the door open. He slipped breathlessly outside. He ran across the hallway to the main entrance of the residential block. Although he was pumping his legs hard, he seemed to move very slowly. By the time he reached the entrance, he could see Sharples’ reflection in the door glass, running out of the apartment, ten metres behind him.
Joe slammed the door open and burst out of the block and into the street. Then he ran. Harder, faster than he’d ever run before. He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. He knew Sharples would be following. He’d either catch Joe, or he wouldn’t. Joe kept Galbraith’s gun hidden under his jumper. He prayed it wouldn’t go off.
The main road. Traffic flew by in either direction. Joe hesitated at the kerbside only momentarily, before sprinting across the road. There was a cacophony of car horns, but he made it to the other side, took a left and continued running. Only then did he look back.
Sharples was still on the far side of the road. His lanky frame was leaning over slightly, clearly out of breath. His eyes were tracking Joe. But he wasn’t following.
Joe looked straight ahead. He continued to run.
Fifteen
Danny was driving. His face prickled with sweat. His head was wrapped in a black and white shemagh. It was moist inside from the condensation of his breath. Spud and Caitlin were dressed the same. They hadn’t seen any locals yet, but if they did, their white skin would make them stick out like a turd in a swimming pool. So they had covered it.
The terrain was hard going. Their way was strewn with boulders and bushes. Twice they’d had to force their vehicles across shallow waterways, and throughout the morning they’d had to slowly manoeuvre the vehicles up and over stony hillsides, where the ground slipped away beneath them if they attempted anything other than a dead crawl. Occasionally, as they crested a hill, they would see, somewhere off to the east and many tens of miles in the distance, dark smoke billowing up into the otherwise clear blue sky. The oilfields of northern Ir
aq. Their view of the smoke would disappear as quickly as it had come when their path took them back down into the desolate valleys of the Kurds’ back route. Danny knew, from his constant monitoring of the position of the sun, that they were heading relentlessly south.
Now it was mid-afternoon. The air reeked with the stench of goat dung. In the distance, Danny could see a meagre flock of goats on a parched hillside. He knew they ran a risk of being spotted by a goatherd. But Spud, who was in the passenger seat and staring hard at the ridge lines of the hills, was not looking for goatherds. Their little convoy was an easy target, and the hills provided good cover for potential shooters. Danny was as tense as if they were driving through a minefield.
‘This is fucking madness,’ Spud said for about the fifth time that day. ‘Russians, Iraqis, IS, and we’re moving cross-country in broad daylight.’ He was flapping badly. Danny didn’t fully blame him. He too was barely keeping a lid on his tension. You don’t eliminate a Spetznaz crew in the field and not expect there to be some comeback. And moving during the day was a serious breach of SOPs. Every time they turned a corner, he half-expected to be driving straight into a contact. But so far, nothing . . .
They were travelling in the stolen grey Russian Hilux, along with Naza. She’d joined them without being told, and without asking. Now she sat in the back with Caitlin. The young girl was obviously numb from the death of her brother, and she’d found someone to look up to. Caitlin had worked that to her advantage. She was as quiet as the girl, though. Occasionally, she glanced down at her, and Danny saw conflict in her eyes. She might be prepared to drag the kid into a battle zone, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
Moreover, Danny sensed that the wound on Caitlin’s arm was giving her trouble. He had watched in the rear-view mirror as she had removed her ops waistcoat and peeled back the sleeve of her camouflage jacket to reveal the bite wound on her upper arm. She had carefully swabbed the bite with antiseptic wipes, which soaked up the blood like a sponge. She had chucked them out of the window when she was done with them. Her face impassive, she had then bound the torn skin with Steri-Strips, before binding the whole upper arm in a fresh white bandage. Finally, she had removed an antibiotic jab from her med pack and injected it into the skin just above the wound. She winced a lot as she treated herself. And Danny observed that Naza was watching her with rapt attention. Like a kid watching her big sister.
The other Kurds were in their own vehicle. Pallav was driving, his mate with the shades was in the passenger seat and the third guy was manning the gun. He too had his whole head covered in a black and white shemagh. The three Kurds had said it would be slow going. They were right. Since leaving the chaos of the border crossing, Danny’s speedometer hadn’t edged above 20. He was following their vehicle at a distance of twenty metres, but half the time they weren’t even on actual tracks.
‘This is too slow,’ Caitlin said. ‘We’ll never make it by nightfall.’
Danny just kept his eyes on the rough terrain ahead.
‘Stop,’ Spud said suddenly. Danny hit the brakes. Spud peered towards the hill line to their right. ‘Nothing,’ he muttered. And then: ‘This is fucking madness. How do we know these Kurds are taking us the right way?’
‘We’re still moving south,’ Danny said as he moved off again. ‘We’re heading in the right direction.’
‘Yeah, but how long’s it going to take us?’
They fell silent again. Danny found himself repeatedly going over their objectives in his head. Approach the IS stronghold. Get eyes on and put in surveillance. Wait for the oil middlemen to arrive at midnight. Work out a strategy to take them out. Then storm the stronghold and lift the IS commander Dhul Faqar. Find out what the fucker knew about the hit on London. And then get the hell out of Dodge.
A long evening’s work, even by Regiment standards.
He had to hand it to the Kurds. Their back route was exactly that. They avoided all villages and populations. They only saw their first person at 1630 hours as they were trundling along a rough, dirty path. Sure enough, it was an old guy in dirty grey robes, surrounded by goats, a wooden staff in his hands. He had very dark skin, and a deeply lined, even gnarled face. His piercing blue eyes followed them closely as they passed.
‘Should we slot him?’ Spud said.
‘No. With a bit of luck he’ll just assume we’re IS. But if we start leaving a trail of dead bodies, someone might take an interest.’
Spud sniffed. ‘We should start displaying the IS flags now,’ he said. ‘We can’t be far off.’ He frowned. ‘But the Russians . . .’ he reminded himself.
Maybe he was right. Danny waited until they’d left the goatherd in the distance, then he double flashed his headlamps and came to a halt. The Kurds’ Hilux trundled on for a further ten metres, then stopped. Danny and Spud exited their vehicle and walked up to the Kurds. ‘How far?’ he said.
Pallav looked in the direction they were travelling, then held up two weather-beaten fingers. ‘Two kilometres,’ he said. ‘Uphill. From there, you will be able to see the place.’
‘Then we take it from here on foot.’
‘A little further by car,’ the Kurd countered. ‘There is a track that will take you to the main highway if you need it.’
Danny and Spud exchanged a look, nodded, then returned to their vehicle.
They reached the track, which bore to the left, ten minutes later. Danny didn’t like it. There was a cliff face to their left, but open ground on the other three sides. Nowhere to hide the vehicles.
They parked up alongside each other and congregated around the pickups. ‘Me and Spud are going to do a recce on the stronghold,’ Danny said. ‘The rest of you stay here, defend the vehicles.’ He caught a sharp flash from what was visible of Caitlin’s eyes behind her shemagh, but she made no comment. Pallav and his mate with the sunglasses instantly moved into defensive positions at either end of the convoy – down on one knee, weapons engaged, pointing either way down the rough path. The guy at the machine gun spun it round on his tripod so he had his back to the cliff face and was covering the remainder of the open ground. Danny was impressed. These guys knew what they were doing. With Caitlin alongside them, they were a strong force. He felt confident that they had his back.
Danny and Spud jogged straight up the hill. It took them five minutes to reach the brow, where they hit the ground and crawled forward. Danny removed his scope and carefully surveyed the terrain ahead.
They were looking out on to a wide, flat basin. The hill was a good hundred metres above it. The level terrain stretched at least six or seven klicks in every other direction. To their nine o’clock was a long, straight supply route. Beyond that, on the horizon, he could make out the smoke curling up into the sky from another oilfield. The sky itself was filled with rolling, boiling clouds. Rain was on its way.
A much narrower road came off the main supply route at right angles. It extended horizontally in front of them, three klicks distant, until it reached a perimeter fence to their two o’clock. The fence was roughly semicircular. Both ends terminated at the edge of a large body of water: the reservoir they had already identified on the satellite mapping. In the centre of the area delineated by the fence and the water’s edge was a large compound of squat, whitewashed, single-storey buildings. Dull and functional. Decades old. Like a tiny desert hamlet of plain, squat structures. They looked a bit out of place there, stuck in the middle of the plain. Danny had the impression that they had once been some kind of water utility. It struck him as odd that an IS kingpin would want to hole himself up here. But then he realised that with that high fence and the open ground across the plain, it was a decent defensive position.
Danny counted six individual rectangular buildings. They were arranged in an L-shape at the water’s edge, the short base of the L lying closest to Danny and Spud, its long stem stretching away from them. In his head, Danny numbered the buildings from the furthest to the closest, moving left to right: blocks 1 to 6. He tried t
o identify which one was most likely to house their target, Dhul Faqar. He immediately settled on block 3. It was the largest, and was situated in the middle of the L’s stem. That put it closest to the water’s edge, but also meant it was the best protected from the road. If Danny wanted comfort and security, he would definitely choose that position.
Between the L and the water’s edge was an open area. Two observation towers, like something from a concentration camp, stood about twenty metres apart by the water’s edge. Black-clad figures were milling around the open ground. Outside of the L, there was at least 200 metres of open ground surrounding the buildings and the perimeter fence. The open ground was littered with the burned-out chassis of vehicles, some of them quite large. By the part of the perimeter that faced the main supply route, there were three old cherry picker trucks, set about ten metres apart from each other. Their cranes were extended. Each one had a corpse hanging from it by a rope. They were clearly intended as a warning to keep away. Danny reckoned they were doing their job well.
Danny could also see that there were plenty of undamaged vehicles dotted around the compound. Hilux trucks mostly, like the ones the unit was using. Seven that he could see, perhaps more that were obscured by the buildings. They were a good indication that the compound was heavily occupied.
‘This is not a three-man job,’ he heard Spud whisper.
‘It is now,’ Danny said. He sniffed. ‘When we get back, keep an eye on Caitlin. That wound on her arm is worse than she’s letting on. If she’s going downhill, we need to know.’
‘Roger that.’
Danny panned left again, along the line of the road leading to the compound. He picked out two vehicle checkpoints. One was at the point where the road met the perimeter fence. The second was about 500 metres from the main supply route. Each checkpoint consisted of a small building constructed from unrendered concrete blocks. Probably just a single room, though Danny couldn’t be sure about that. Vehicles at each. Distance between them: approximately 300 metres.
