Mitchell was focused on the one man they had seen; the commander. “Let’s go!” Biagio and Stein hesitated, reluctant to follow his lead. But they both knew Mitchell had done a sniper course. They ran forward, firing. Mitchell by contrast deliberately lay down on the sandy ground, extended the two legs that folded out from the barrel of his Barrett M107 and, instead of trying to locate the man through his sights, waited for the man to come into his view. Even though he’d been trained to aim for the head, Mitchell preferred to target the chest simply because it was a bigger target. And it always brought a man down.
Biagio saw that Mitchell was ready. “Flush him out!” he said to Stein pointing at where he had last seen the commander. The two men started firing to left of where they had last seen him take cover and within a few seconds the commander was up and running again. “Take him!” Biagio ordered just before he heard a burst of three shots. As the fighter tumbled to the ground Mitchell was hollering and the noise pierced Biagio’s and Stein’s eardrums.
“Cut it out!” Biagio ordered as Stein, running towards the body, grappled with the iris scanner trying to remove it from the Velcro-sealed container attached to his belt.
Above them Enriquez was circling, flicking his eyes between the Grims, the Marines and Fort Sandeman. Biagio was peeling back the fighters’ eyelids when the first shot rang out from the direction of Fort Sandeman. It was met by a barrage of fire from the Marines.
“I say we’re out of here,” Biagio said to Enriquez “Come and get us.”
“Shall we take the body?” Stein asked. In reply Biagio moved his hands from side to side. “No. Just go!”
Within 30 seconds they were in the helicopter watching Mitchell repeatedly punch the air in front of him. “Clean kill.” he boasted. “At 500 yards.”
“300.” Stein replied.
Down on the ground Jaz and the major stayed tight to the earth in the shed. The last of the Marines were getting on board now and with all their attention focused on their escape. The major, fearing that they might be spotted from the air as the Chinook left pressed himself further into the ground
Only when the helicopter was airborne and moving away from them did the major and Jaz move to open air.
“What about the Taliban?” Jaz asked.
“Don’t worry. They won’t be coming back in a hurry. And I think the Yanks got one,” the major said.
“They did,” Jaz confirmed, “Look!” He pointed at the commander’s body
The major took out his mobile phone and pressed the SMS function. After typing just three words, the major pressed send. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s be out of here before the Pakistan army turns up.”
They were already skirting around Fort Sandeman by the time the sheikh, sitting in his garden in Dera Chamak, pressed receive and read the major’s message. “He is ready.”
The sheikh smiled and looked at one of the servants nearby. “Tea and biscuits. As quick as you like,” he said.
Chapter Nine
“The rules of the game have changed ... if you come to our country from abroad, don’t meddle in extremism.” -- Tony Blair, August 2005
07:00, 20th December, Chelsea Harbour, London
“Steady on. You’ll bloody break it!” It was the gym’s personal fitness trainer, arriving for the day’s work.
Pulled back to reality, Monty’s legs slowed down and the whirr of the bike lowered in tone. He’d been there 45 minutes.
“Blimey. Sorry. Was running away from my old life.”
“Well she must have been a right bitch.”
Monty laughed. “A job, actually.”
“Ah and what sort of job was that?” He’d often wondered.
“In the city.”
“And now?”
“What do I do now?” Monty looked the trainer in the eyes. “Why you asking?”
“Just curiosity.”
“It killed the cat you know.”
As Monty slipped off the bike, he took the towel the trainer was handing out to him and headed for the showers.
Ten minutes later he emerged with his iPhone vibrating in his pocket. He went to the window that, like his Chelsea Harbour flat just five minutes’ walk away, had a view of the River Thames. There were no boats on the murky brown water.
“Hallo,” Monty said. The trainer tried to listen but Monty’s conversation was sparse to the point of being non-existent. “40–45 minutes,” he said and then hung up.
The trainer watched from the window as Monty, with no briefcase, walked briskly towards the pontoon and waited for the ferry. It took him down river – to the Houses of Parliament, the trainer guessed. Not an MP. Not a Lord either. A back-room type. A fixer of some sort. A machinations man. Well, whatever he was, he was bloody fit.
*****
The sheikh said it should happen in the ruins of Mahmud’s home at sunset. The debris from the drone attack was still lying around. For Jaz, just as the sheikh intended, the wreckage was a reminder of his brother: a symbol of his death.
They came in two pickups. In the first, behind darkened windows, were the sheikh and Jaz. The colonel and the major followed in the second; Ravi and the mullah arrived just after them on foot. Two of the sheikh’s servants were already there digging a small hole in the ground. Two more, by the compound wall, were binding the front legs of a black goat, first tying the ankles with a knot and then passing the rope round and round until the animal was trussed right up to its haunches.
The mullah took in the scene. Everything was in order.
With a flick of his gown the sheikh indicated that he would speak. And that everybody should listen.
“There is no need to discuss here exactly what challenges Jaz will face in the coming days,” he said, his eyes darting towards the mullah.
Interesting, thought the colonel, doesn’t trust him. He glanced at the major to see whether he shared his interpretation of what the sheikh had just said. But the major’s face remained blank and impassive.
“But he has important work,” the sheikh went on “and we ask for Allah’s blessing.” As the sheikh nodded the mullah reached into his gown and produced a small knife in a worn, light brown, leather scabbard. He took it out and wiped the blade on a cloth provided by one the sheikh’s servants.
The two men who had tied the goat’s legs lifted the animal and laid it on the ground so that its neck was over the hole that had been dug in the earth. The mullah knelt down, dirtying his long white gown, touched the goat and started saying prayers in a low monotone. Jaz looked on, serious now and focused.
The goat, somehow aware of its impending fate, started urinating and defacating in terror. But the men held it still and the mullah, his prayers complete, adjusted his turban so it would not come loose as he bent over. He thrust the knife along the side of the animal’s neck and deep into its throat. For a few seconds there was a snoring sound as the goat, still alive, tried to take in air through the flapping ends of its severed windpipe.
As it twitched with the last spasms of life, the goat’s tongue lolled out by the side of its mouth. Blood, post-box red, gushed into the hole. The mullah, having performed his part, looked up at the servants and, as he dusted off his gown, they started the butchery, removing the hide and slicing into the muscle, their hands smeared red. Within minutes all that was left was the dark skin, the eyeless head and the hole filled with dark, thick blood.
“Give one third to the villagers,” the sheikh ordered the servants. “Keep one third for yourselves. And prepare the last third for us. And be quick. Jaz will leave in three hours.”
*****
As Monty entered the room shortly after eight, Keane, following regulations, laboriously cleared his desk and put all his papers into a small dark green safe beneath a table to the left of his desk. Pompous old fool Monty thought.
“Good to see you!” he said.
Keane remained silent until his desk was empty. “So what have we got?” he eventually said. All the freshness that Mon
ty had won on the exercise bike deserted him. In an attempt to conceal his feelings, he focused on the slightly inflamed red ridge on the top of Keane’s nose, caused by the glasses, he supposed, that were now being brandished with heavy theatricality. It irritated him that the likes of Keane worked at MI6. He himself had applied for a job there and been offered instead a post at MI5. Much as they told him that after the 7/7 bombing MI5 had become the higher priority, it still rankled.
The grey sky filled the office window. As he looked down Monty could see the new water defences that MI5 had recommended for the Houses of Parliament. They jutted above the surface and, had they not been painted fluorescent yellow, would have looked like Second World War contraptions to deter mines. In the office, on the wall behind Keane’s desk, was a Constable print of rural England, incongruous amidst the cheap, modern office furniture.
“We have the London connection: ‘Yasir is going to London’,” Keane said. “We have the Afghan connection: 40 minutes spent near Jalalabad. And we have the Pakistan connection: a retired ISI officer in Chamak doing God knows what. Maybe nothing to it at all of course. Can’t say I know what to make of it all.”
He handed Natasha’s telegram to Monty who started reading.
“And we have ANPR for God’s sake,” Monty said after just a few seconds. “Hardly a regular talking point in outer Baluchistan I’d have thought. But isn’t ANPR classified?”
“Well it was at first but with so many police using it ...” Reluctant to criticise any other branch of government, Keane let the sentence trail away.
“Not famous for keeping secrets, the plods,” Monty offered.
“As you say ...”
“Well it suggests an active plot. Nothing less. You can’t ignore it,” Monty said handing the paper back.
Keane pondered the dilemma. He measured the risk. The main danger was that Monty could later point to the telegram and to their conversation and accuse him of failing to act on a possible threat. The plot would probably just go away. Most often that’s what happened. But that was hardly the point. He would have to be seen to do something.
“Sounds like one for you boys,” he suggested. “Yasir is on the way to London after all. MI5 territory I’d have thought.”
It was Monty’s turn to think. He’d never met her face to face, but from what he’d heard Natasha Knight quite something. All things bright and beautiful. Not to mention it would help him get a foot in the door of MI6.
“Fair enough, but I will need to deal with Peshawar direct. Cut out the middleman.”
“Alright,” Keane said, “as long as you copy me in. Do a memo making that request and I’ll sign off on it.” Bureaucracy personified, thought Monty. Never initiate. Only react. Keane placed his glasses back on his nose and opened the top drawer waiting until Monty turned around before taking out any of the papers and putting them back on his desk.
“Right we are then,” Monty said, moving towards the door. “There can’t be that many Yasirs on this earth can there?”
*****
It was still night when Jasir Khan approached Lahore’s railway station. He looked up at the British-built red-brick towers. The structures were lined with white bulbs creating high, curved lines in the dark sky. Inside hawkers yelled from food stalls offering sugar cane and roasted sweet corn, bright yellow flecked with carbon black. Boys with piles of the first editions of the newspapers draped across their arms sold them to passengers through train windows.
As soon as the last supper, as the colonel had called it, had been completed Jaz had travelled by minibus with good luck wishes and last minute advice running through his head. He was alone now, but he did not feel isolated. Not yet anyway. Maybe it was the sheikh’s driver chattering away about his family and playing music on his cassette. Or maybe it was because his journey had scarcely begun. Too soon for nerves.
Platform 1, the major had told him: the Samjhauta Express. Non-stop to Delhi. Following the major’s advice about single tickets being red-flagged by the ISI and so, presumably, by the Indians too, he bought a return and, walking past an incongruous McDonalds, headed for the train.
******
“So what have you done?”
Monty was standing in front of the desk of his boss, Oliver Craig, Head of Counter Terrorism. An MI5 lifer, he was just a year older than Monty. He lounged back in his office chair with his legs stretched straight and his feet on the desk.
Monty kept finding his eyes drawn to the man’s cheap rubber soles.
“I have alerted all ports, airports, harbours, marinas and private airfields that we are looking for a Yasir travelling from Pakistan.”
“Could be a nickname?.” Question not a statement.
“I have consulted,” he paused. “Well I asked Shami ...”
“Your secretary Shami?”
“Yes, I thought ...”
“Well fair enough I suppose. And what did she say?”
“It’s a first name. Quite common.”
“So, an All Ports Warning. What else?” As he spoke Oliver Craig tried to emphasise how tedious he considered the meeting by using his remote control to flick through the channels on his TV. It was on silent and Monty could only guess what he was looking for. Motors 4 Men, he imagined.
“I’ve asked to see if there is a trace on our database and have given the name to GCHQ and the police. So far nothing has come back. By the way I thought I should deal with Peshawar directly. Keane is OK with it.”
Craig shrugged his shoulders. “Me too. That it?”
“Unless you have ...”
“All Ports Warnings are bloody useless. Call the Border Agency in Heathrow and in Manchester personally and tell them to stop any Asian individual young men travelling from Pakistan until further notice. There are no other direct flights are there?”
“I’ll check.”
“Search their bags, but look for sweaty foreheads. They know the drill. Got it?”
“Got it.” Monty waited unsure whether there would be more. But Craig was already putting up the volume of the TV. It was on Sky. “Bye, then.” In a high, facetious tone.
“Right. See you later.” Monty turned and left the office. There were times when he longed to be back in the city. They were just as brutal – in fact more so – but at least most of them had a bit of class.
*****
It was four in the morning when Jaz approached the train, winding his way through countless fathers and sons heaving sacks and bags of all shapes and sizes along the platform. Their wives and daughters stood on board holding babies, shepherding yawning toddlers, shouting instructions, pointing and holding onto their veils. For most of the families boarding the Samjhauta Express this was a once in a lifetime journey to see the offspring of families left behind in India in 1947. With his British passport Jaz had obtained a visa easily, but most had waited months for letters of approval and no-objection certificates from various Pakistani ministries. Everyone was laden with gifts. Jaz could see from the parcels that they were taking foods such as walnuts and apricots as well as electronic items, mainly fans and food mixers, which must be cheaper in Pakistan, he guessed, than in India.
A tall bearded man wearing a dark blue uniform, complete with representations of small stream trains and other symbols of rank embroidered on his shirt, approached Jaz, adjusted his thick, black-framed glasses and inspected his ticket. The major had told Jaz to travel first class and in his western clothes.
The inspector lowered his head, pointed to the first class carriage at the front of the train and uttered the single word: “Sir.”
As he settled into the plush red seat, Jaz looked around. The rest of the train was at bursting point, but here there were just three of them. Across the aisle was a young man, a student who, by the look of his books, was revising for an exam. The other was a military officer with a sharp face and thin lips. He was wearing a wedding ring and for some reason Jaz felt a tinge of sympathy for his wife.
No one spoke. Which sui
ted Jaz just fine.
The frontier town of Wagah came within 20 minutes – quicker than he expected and it was still dark when they arrived. And it was then he appreciated the major’s advice. First the Pakistani, and later the Indian, border guards told everyone except the first class passengers to disembark with their entire luggage. The bags, suitcases and parcels, so carefully stowed, were once again lifted, moved and shoved and laid out on the platform. Removed from the chaos, Jaz’s carriage was subjected to nothing more than a polite, peremptory passport check. I guess first class passengers are more law abiding, Jaz found himself thinking. He let out a small involuntary laugh that caught the attention of the student. Jaz smiled, offered no explanation and withdrew back into himself looking through the window.
The border controls took hours and the only diversion came at sunrise shortly after they arrived. From his window Jaz could see Indian Border Security Force personnel and Pakistani Rangers approaching the two sets of huge metal gates that defined the border and a short stretch of no man’s land in between. On one gate there was a huge crescent painted green, symbolising Pakistan. The other simply bore the word INDIA. It was the daily flag-raising ceremony that marked the opening each morning of one of the only two road links between the two countries along thousands of miles of frontier. Only foreigners could use the road, but hundreds of Indians and Pakistanis, day-trippers, had come to watch the ceremony.
It was performed with pantomime theatricality. The Indian and Pakistani soldiers, six-footers to a man, preened their chests and stamped their feet like bullfighters. Absurd outsized turbans topped their immaculate khaki and black uniforms - over a foot high. When they marched, their legs went up past the horizontal; their feet at shoulder level as they tried to outdo each other in their prowess and in the disdain they displayed for each other. Ten minutes earlier, just as they arrived, Jaz had noticed one of the Pakistani soldiers chatting with one of the Indians as they leant against the border fence sharing a cigarette. Now they stared at each other, eyes bulging with anger and contempt. As they posed and postured the crowds, who Jaz figured must have travelled through the night to be there, cheered, waving flags and chanting slogans. “God is Great!” yelled the Pakistanis. “Long Live India!” came the reply. Jaz realised it was ridiculous, but at some level could not help himself feeling a shiver of pride as the resplendent Pakistani soldiers, with their groomed handlebar moustaches and ferocious expressions, faced down their Indian counterparts.
TARGET BRITAIN: a political thriller Page 15
