by Andy McNab
He was doing what all soldiers do after an incident — reprocessing it into an action movie, with all the dark stuff left out. That was for the chaplain or the psych. ‘Found the sniper who got Chaffin — had a fat boulder right where his dick used to be and a big look of surprise on his face. Gonna give him a big fucking problem with the virgins upstairs.’
Black looked like he was listening, but other scenes were playing in his head. He wanted the beheaded man ID’d. Montes quit talking. ‘Your turn.’
Black tapped his head. ‘All fuzzed up.’ If only.
When he exited the shower, he noticed things were already changing on the base. Frontloaders were filling a fresh set of Hesco bastions with sand and a truck-mounted jib was hefting them into place, doubling the height of the fortifications. A new guard tower was going up. The base, which had been all about peacekeeping and nation-building, was being put on a war footing.
Blackburn and Lieutenant Cole faced each other across a folding table strewn with maps. Not the familiar ones of their patch along the border, all dog-eared and stained with coffee, but fresh ones of another country — Iran. Cole had his laptop open. He was hunched over it, arms folded, peering at the screen, typing rapidly while he listened to Black’s report. Blackburn recounted the scene as it played in his head, as it would again and again for years to come, whether he wanted it to or not, the star exhibit in his gallery of unwelcome memories.
Only Cole seemed to be typing far more words than Blackburn was speaking. ‘Back up a second. How far away were you at the moment of the execution?’
‘Like I said, hundred yards, maybe more.’
‘Behind a slab of masonry.’
‘Yessir.’
‘You didn’t move.’
‘That’s what I said, Sir.’
Cole looked up from the screen.
What the fuck else could I do? Blackburn wanted to say.
‘I had no choice, Sir.’
Eventually Cole stopped typing. Read over his words and closed the document.
‘We got an ID. Private James Harker from Cody, Wyoming. Nineteen years old.’
A name.
‘Want to see how we ID’d him?’
A cold weight deep seemed to grow inside Black. ‘Let me look.’
‘You up to it?’
‘I was there.’
Cole turned the laptop towards him, clicked ‘Play’. The camera was a few feet from Harker’s face as his expression moved through relief at being discovered, to dismay, then fear, as he realised what was about to happen. Then it crumpled into helpless outrage.
‘Turn up the sound.’
‘That’s as high as it goes.’
Harker was getting a lecture, or more of a rant, of which only a few words and phrases were audible. ‘American pigs. . enter uninvited. . suffer the fate. .’ On the screen ran a separate statement rather than a translation. Invaders who dare to conquer in time of national emergency will suffer a righteous fate. Be warned. He slammed the laptop shut. He had seen all he wanted. What happened next he would never need reminding of. Blackburn handed him the photographs he had found near the body. Cole glanced at them and put them in a file. Then he breathed out.
For a few seconds neither of them spoke. Then Cole broke the silence.
‘Nothing you could do, right?’
Black stared, a surge of indignation rising, but then Cole nodded. It wasn’t a question there was an answer to. Cole put the laptop aside and shuffled the maps. Moving on. He smoothed his hand across northeast Iran. Blackburn became conscious again of the sound of the base. A convoy of trucks thundered past outside the tent. The air crackled with choppers stacked for landing.
Cole slapped the map. ‘We have one big fucking situation across the border.’
‘How bad?’
‘Bad-bad. Bashir’s taking full advantage of the chaos caused by the quake to consolidate his position. Parts of the south and east have been declared PLR territory. And in Tehran, no one’s in charge.’
‘You’re kidding.’
He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘No definitive confirmation yet, but there’s shit flying around that Al Bashir has a nuclear capability. If it’s true, we’re in a whole ’nother game now.’
Cole fixed Blackburn with another glare. Blackburn had been there before. He respected his commanding officer. Beyond that, he wasn’t sure. There was a coldness in him that meant he was either just that — cold — or he kept his inner self well-defended.
Cole nodded. ‘You did good yesterday, neutralising that IED. We got the casualties from Carter’s unit out and had your guys cleared. That wouldn’t have happened if it had blown.’
‘Just doing my job, Sir.’
‘Yeah, well, doing it that well means it doesn’t let up for you. It’s business as usual.’
‘I wasn’t expecting it to, Sir.’
Black felt stung. The last thing on his mind was some kind of reward. That was Cole all over. Pat on the back with one hand, slap on the face with the other. Cole stood up and grabbed the laptop.
‘Stick around. Briefing at 1300.’
They sat in two rows of folding chairs. The makeshift briefing room, fashioned out of a pair of refrigerated containers and inevitably nicknamed ‘the cooler’, was very far from cool. Cole stood, legs apart, beside a wall map of Tehran, tapping it with a pointer.
‘We got intel that Al Bashir is in the north sector of the city. His people have seized the Interior Ministry; that’s now effectively their HQ in the capital. Gentlemen, this one is ours. Our information is that the quake has downed their radar and entire sections of the country are without power. We are going in and we’re going to cut this thing off at the head and finish it before he gets dug in. But Al Bashir must, repeat must, be taken alive. The mission will go down as follows. .’
Cole tapped the map emphatically with his stick. The tension rose in the room.
‘PLR forces concentrated in the north will be kept occupied by ongoing air strikes. Assault element, call sign Misfit 2–1, will be flown in by Osprey to this location. They will have a sniper element consisting of Blackburn and Campo, call sign Misfit 3–1 as overwatch security. Designated LZ is a quarter mile from the Ministry. Once on the ground the assault team will proceed to the target building.’
Cole turned to another more detailed map of the area surrounding the bank. ‘Along the way, Black’s team will provide overwatch from these positions. Extraction will be by Osprey. Roger?’
The audience responded. ‘Roger.’
Campo grinned at Black. ‘This is cool shit, man. Like we Navy Seals all of a sudden.’
Cole slapped the map where the Ministry was. ‘I consider it our privilege to be handed this mission. So let’s make it good.’
16
Bazargan, Northern Iran
They all stared at the carnage. Vladimir spoke first, to Gregorin.
‘Well at least you downed the hangmen.’
‘And it didn’t rain.’
No situation had ever been too bad for Vladimir to extract some sliver of humour from, however grim. But it failed to raise so much as a smile. Eventually all eyes settled on Dima. He was rigid with silent rage.
‘Do what you can. Let’s get down there. I’m going after Shenk’s scanner.’
The smoke swirled around them, an acrid mixture of burnt fuel, rubber and flesh. The high walls had trapped the inferno, containing and concentrating the heat like a coffee pot. For several seconds, as the flames found the ammunition that hadn’t erupted, there were smaller explosions and blasts of flame.
Dima’s first thought, one that came to him all too often, was: How can it ever be claimed that these men did not die in vain? Those who died defending Moscow from Hitler, they did not die in vain, nor did those who fell in the battle for Berlin. The Soviet troops in Afghanistan? When he was too old to do this any more, he promised himself he would write a book analysing Russian military disasters great and small. Better get on with it, Kroll ha
d said. It could take you some time to get through them all.
What had gone wrong here? Everything: starting with Dima having allowed himself to be blackmailed into taking it on and letting Paliov interfere with the design and the execution. Paliov, terrified of failure, had brought about exactly that, by failing to give Dima control of the whole operation. Dima wouldn’t have had Shenk anywhere near the site, a man no doubt competent at dealing with nuclear devices of all kinds in all places — except in the heat of battle. And because time was not on their side, they had only minimum surveillance. It contained a lot of data which appeared to tell them everything but told them almost nothing, especially not the key fact, which was that the compound, far from being a barely populated hideout, was in fact a major PLR base.
He glanced at Gregorin and Zirak, both ashen as they went from corpse to corpse, looking in vain for survivors. They knew most of these men, had taught them all they had learned. They would have good reason to be furious with him for letting this happen.
The carcass of Shenk’s Mil was surrounded by flames, its tail pointing straight in the air. Through the open door he could see Shenk in his seat, hanging from the straps, head on his chest, as if he’d nodded off in the midst of it all. Just the impact would have been enough to end his life. He could see the scanner in its housing on the bulkhead in front of him. A sheet of fresh flames erupted between them. Dima lunged forward through the flames, clambered into the fuselage and grabbed the scanner. It was jammed. He got closer, got both hands round it.
‘Dima, for fuck sake!’ Kroll’s shrill yell was just audible over the roar of the blaze. He gave it one last yank and it was out, sending him spilling out into the flames. He rolled through them and got clear just as the whole machine erupted, cremating Shenk and what was left of his crew.
Dima heard himself addressing his team. ‘Find the guy they were hanging — we need confirmation if he’s Kaffarov. If not, I want it confirmed he was being held against his will. I want it confirmed there are — or were — nuclear devices here. We need this information fast: I don’t care how you get it. Go.’ He passed the scanner to Kroll. ‘Get it working.’
Gregorin and Vladimir had isolated a wounded man. He had rolled off into a space between the structure and the wall, where he had been shielded from both the shooting and the inferno. Lying there bleeding, with three armed Russians standing over him, he had every incentive to talk, but a volley of Farsi invective indicated that his pride was going to be an obstacle.
‘Colourful.’
‘Did your whore of a mother teach you those words?’
Zirak raised a hand, stepped forward and produced a knife. He sliced through the man’s coat and trousers and then his underwear. There was no indication that he was going to stop. The man began to writhe, just like the prisoner he had been dragging to the noose only minutes ago. Zirak took the man’s testicles in his hands and pressed the blade against them.
‘Hungry?’
The man wet himself, pissing all over Zirak’s hands. Zirak squeezed his balls, not quite hard enough to make him pass out. ‘Okay so you can have them with gravy.’
The rage and indignation melted from the man’s face. It was still contorted but he was whimpering now, whispering something to Zirak.
Dima, moving towards them, felt something against his boot. A hand reaching out. He looked down. Whoever he was, he was unrecognisable, his features melted. With his other hand the wounded man found the barrel of Dima’s AK. Wrapping a single remaining finger round the tip, he pulled it towards his head. Dima obliged. One bullet and the man’s agony was over.
Zirak wiped his knife on the man’s sleeve and sheathed it. He turned to Dima. ‘Okay, it’s his version so take it with a pinch of salt, but he says that as of tomorrow this was supposed to be the PLR regional base for the northeast. He reckons the PLR is now in control of the whole country and Al Bashir has been sworn in as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The man they were about to hang was the district commander, who had been mobilising a resistance, and the guys on the trucks were his supporters.’
‘What about Kaffarov?’
‘Didn’t mean anything to him.’
This couldn’t be right.
‘Ask if he saw the Mercedes SUV.’
Dima caught a glint of recognition on the man’s face. He took out his knife, leaned down, placed the tip of the blade just under the man’s left eye. He responded in anxious broken Russian. ‘I no know the name, I never heard, please on the head of my daughter.’ He started nodding frantically. ‘I seen Merc Jeep.’
‘You should be worrying about more than your daughter’s head. Get up.’
Vladimir lifted him.
‘Show me your operations centre.’
The man looked confused. Zirak translated and the man pointed at a doorway, behind which rose a flight of steps.
‘Keep him with us.’
With Dima in the lead they dragged him across the courtyard, through the charred remains of men and machines. The stairwell was in darkness. They had never got as far as cutting the power to the compound, so the conflagration must have knocked it out. Dima waved Gregorin forward, who jogged silently up the steps. He beckoned Dima, who followed. A steel door, no handle or spyhole. Gregorin removed his helmet, pressed his ear against the door, signalled with his fingers — five, and five again.
Dima beckoned to the others and motioned for Gregorin to fall in behind him. When they were all lined up, Dima blasted the door frame with the Dragunov, then jammed the weapon right into the hinges and fired again. When the frame splintered, he fired upwards into the room and waited. No response. He peered round the aperture. Gregorin was right. At least ten men had taken refuge, most in some sort of uniform, but three in underwear. They must have been asleep when the choppers arrived.
‘On the ground, face down!’ he barked in Farsi. ‘Arms, legs stretched where I can see them. There are a hundred men dead out there. Full cooperation or you die too.’
He touched the hot end of the Dragunov against the temple of one of the men in underwear. The man flinched.
‘Kaffarov. Where?’
‘Gone.’
‘Nuclear device?’
There was no response to this. What a waste. All that effort, all that planning, for this. Dima felt what little residual patience he had ebb away.
‘No, no, please!’
He aimed at the man’s head, squeezed the trigger and twisted the barrel a fraction left as he fired. The man collapsed sideways, the remains of his ear running down the side of his face.
‘Right. Are you listening, you worthless pieces of shit? I will shoot everyone in this room unless and until I have all questions answered. Whoever’s in charge raise your hand. Now!’
A grey-haired man looked up at him. Dima’s eyes locked on to his. He reached down, grabbed the man by the collar and hauled him to his feet.
‘The rest of you, get out and do what you can for those poor bastards out there. Go. Now!’
They got to their feet and Kroll herded them out.
Dima turned to the grey-haired man, who smiled weakly.
‘Comrade Mayakovsky?’
17
Rajah Amirasani, former Colonel in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and one-time cadet under Dima’s instruction, stood in front of him. The room was small, yet his old protégé seemed dwarfed by the space around him. Leaving Gregorin on guard outside, he closed the door. They were alone. Rajah came towards him to attempt an embrace, but Dima shoved him away. After such a debacle, the once-familiar face brought no comfort. Rage, frustration, suspicion and the worst feeling of all — impotence — simmered inside him. How had he let himself become part of this?
Rajah slumped on to a chair where he sat legs apart, elbows propped on his knees, the tears flowing freely down his cheeks and on to the floor. He had been the finest in his year, a natural leader who skilfully managed to impress his political masters with his devotion to the cause, without l
osing all sense of humanity. Now he looked battered and defeated.
‘Kaffarov left.’
So he had been there. At least that part was right.
‘You let him go?’
Rajah looked up, bewildered.
‘He was here. You were holding him here, yes?’
Rajah’s brow furrowed. ‘Holding him? Why would we do that? He was here to meet Al Bashir.’
‘He came here voluntarily?’
‘Of course.’
Something was seriously wrong with Paliov’s intelligence.
‘And Al Bashir is still coming here?’
‘Was. But there was a change of plan.’
‘A missile from somewhere south took out the chopper. Someone knew we were coming, didn’t they?’
‘As God is my witness, I have no knowledge of that. Kaffarov took off three hours ago in a big hurry. No explanation. We called Al Bashir’s people. One of his staff said the meeting location was changed. No one told us.’
‘To where?’
He shrugged, then sighed.
‘We had all these —.’ He gestured towards where the dead men lay. ‘We were instructed to put on a show of solidarity from the local population. The regional governor — we had orders. .’
‘To execute him in public.’
Rajah sighed and shook his head.
‘The things I’ve seen happen in my country. . Through the seventies we yearned for liberation from the Shah; after the Revolution, when it got even worse, we hoped again for freedom. But this. .’
‘What about Kaffarov’s armaments, a nuclear device?’
He shrugged. ‘Of that I know nothing.’
Dima reached down, grabbed his chin and forced him to look into his eyes. Once he had counted him as a friend. Not now. ‘You say you know nothing about the nuclear device Kaffarov had with him? Fuck with me and I swear I will find you and kill you.’
Rajah looked back into his eyes and Dima saw there was no deception. ‘Please understand, Al Bashir gives nothing away. Only those closest to him know his plans. Before, he was — I thought he was — the solution. Now. .’ He let out a long despairing sigh.
