Samarkand Hijack

by David Monnery

  But Zhakidov had never been invited.

  ‘What’s been decided?’ Nurhan interjected. Zhakidov had let them know what the terrorists were demanding during the return helicopter flight, and she had assumed that Bakalev’s answer would be a cross between outright refusal and delaying tactics. Then it would be up to her to dream up a workable rescue attempt while the terrorists were stalled in negotiations.

  Zhakidov punctured the balloon.

  ‘What!?’ she exclaimed angrily. ‘We’re just going to let them get away with it? Why?’

  Zhakidov simply shrugged, which infuriated her even more.

  ‘What’s the point of setting up an anti-terrorist unit and then not using it the first time it’s needed?’ she demanded to know.

  ‘You won’t be idle,’ Zhakidov told her calmly. ‘The agreement may break down, the terrorists may change their minds, who knows? Make contingency plans. Get your people in position and ready to go if the need arises. And be prepared for visitors.’ He told her about the embassy official and the experts flying out from Britain.

  She exploded a second time. ‘You mean I’m going to have two Englishmen leaning over my shoulder?’

  ‘Maximum co-operation,’ Zhakidov said.

  Marat remembered reading about the Iranian Embassy siege in London. ‘Are they from the SAS?’ he asked.

  ‘I wasn’t told,’ Zhakidov said.

  ‘What difference does it make?’ Nurhan said automatically, though a small voice at the back of her mind admitted to an interest in meeting them if they were. Several of the hostage-release operations she had studied had involved the SAS.

  ‘There’s one other thing,’ Zhakidov told her. ‘You have been given command of the situation on the ground. From now on you will report directly to Colonel Muratov in Tashkent. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Nurhan said. She felt elation at the implicit promotion, but it was tinged with annoyance at the emptiness of the context – she was being placed in command of a surrender to terrorism, after all – and sorry for the implied slight to her immediate boss. She didn’t exactly like Zhakidov, but she had always respected his professionalism.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Marat said drily. ‘Who am I supposed to take orders from?’

  ‘You’re still mine,’ Zhakidov said. ‘And I want you to track down any contacts Nasruddin Salih has in the city. His tours have been coming here for several months, and he must have been here before that to set things up. He may even have relations here. Find out. I’m assuming,’ he added to Nurhan, with an air of slightly mocking deference, ‘that the more we know about these people the better.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she agreed.

  It was almost two o’clock when the three men gathered again in the lodge’s living-room. Talib had taken his first few hours of sleep since their arrival, and was still rubbing the tiredness out of his eyes.

  ‘Any sign of the enemy?’ he asked the others.

  ‘None,’ Akbar said, almost smugly.

  ‘If they’re not out there now they soon will be,’ Talib said. ‘If Bakalev rejects our demands we shall have to start making it more difficult for any watchers. I told you what happened at Djibouti.’

  They remembered. All four terrorists had been taken out simultaneously by accurate long-range fire. It was a sobering thought.

  ‘And they may have thermal imaging,’ Talib went on remorselessly. ‘We must keep at least some of our men close enough to the hostages to confuse the picture.’

  Nasruddin glanced across at Akbar and realized why Talib was bringing this up now. The Tajik was getting overconfident, and needed reminding that some of the futures beckoning them were decidedly less rosy than others.

  ‘If we have calculated correctly,’ Akbar said, ‘then our demands will be accepted…’

  ‘God willing,’ Talib murmured.

  ‘But we have to consider rejection,’ Nasruddin insisted reluctantly. What with Akbar’s optimism and his cousin’s fatalism he sometimes felt compelled to shoulder the burden of all their doubts.

  ‘We will have a simple choice,’ Talib said. ‘To abandon the game or to up the stakes.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Nasruddin asked softly. In their discussions and arguments prior to setting this operation in motion they had always skirted around this point. All three men had voiced their theoretical willingness to face a martyr’s death, but on the subject of killing there had been a unanimous silence.

  Talib broke it. ‘We will have to kill one of the hostages.’ He looked at each man in turn. ‘I have questioned myself on this matter, and prayed for clear guidance. None has been given to me. But if, on balance, it seems that we can only achieve our goals by doing so, then I do not see how we can shrink from it. In the end, God will decide if we were clear-sighted or blind.’

  ‘How would we choose which hostage to kill?’ Akbar wanted to know.

  ‘We can worry about that if and when it becomes necessary,’ Nasruddin told him bluntly. He had struggled with his own conscience, and, like his cousin, had found it hard to reach a clear decision. Being with the tour party for almost a week, getting to know them as people, had, as expected, strengthened his doubts. But seventeen hours had passed since he had last set eyes on them, and already their reality as human beings was fading. ‘I think we have no choice but to countenance such a step,’ Nasruddin said slowly, ‘but until…’

  ‘We all hope it will not be necessary,’ Talib interrupted. ‘There is no joy in killing.’

  ‘“You shall not kill any man whom God has forbidden you to kill, except for a just cause,”’ Akbar quoted from the Koran. ‘And ours is a just cause.’

  ‘That is for God to decide,’ Talib reminded him.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Barney Davies, Commanding Officer 22 SAS, had rarely been more surprised. He had met the Foreign Minister before – several times in fact – but had never expected to have the man stride into his own office at the Regiment’s Stirling Lines barracks on the outskirts of Hereford. Nor, in all their previous meetings, had he ever thought of Alan Holcroft as anything other than utterly certain of himself. An arrogant bastard, through and through.

  But not today. The Foreign Minister looked almost shell-shocked. Maybe the man had found God. Or caught AIDS off a rent boy, like that politician in Prime Suspect, which Davies had watched on video a few evenings before.

  Or maybe not. Holcroft sat down, looked round the office, abruptly stood up again, and asked if the CO would take a walk outside with him.

  ‘Across the parade ground?’ Davies asked.

  ‘Anywhere where we won’t be heard,’ Holcroft said.

  Davies raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He led the way out of the building, noting in passing Holcroft’s chauffeur leaning against the ministerial limousine. His opinion of politicians, never high, had not really recovered from his first run-in with Holcroft five years earlier, during and after the Colombian mission. The man had not only personally intervened to make sure that no public recognition was given to the two SAS troopers whose lives had been lost, but neither had he offered any private recognition of their sacrifice. Like countless soldiers before them, those two men had deserved better of their political masters.

  Davies smiled to himself, remembering Trooper Eddie Wilshaw’s utterly insubordinate face.

  ‘This is a delicate matter, Lieutenant-Colonel,’ Holcroft began. He stopped, as if collecting his thoughts. ‘I will be as concise as I can. A British tourist party has been hijacked, kidnapped – whatever the right word is – in Uzbekistan. That’s one of the successor states of the Soviet Union…’

  ‘I know where it is,’ Davies said coldly, keeping to himself that this knowledge was a fairly recent thing, stemming as it did from the secret mission to Kazakhstan undertaken by the SAS the previous year. They had lost three men on that one. He hoped to God this was not going to be a rerun.

  ‘Good,’ Holcroft was saying. ‘Well…’ He quickly went through what was known of the events
of the past twenty-four hours, concluding with a mostly uncensored blow-by-blow account of the Prime Minister’s conversation with President Bakalev.

  ‘I see,’ Davies said when he was finished, though he still didn’t understand why they were discussing it all in the middle of a parade ground on a decidedly cool summer day. So the government was leaning on the Uzbeks to give the local opposition some breathing space, and getting some hostages released in the process. He had no argument with that.

  Holcroft took a deep breath. ‘There’s one other thing,’ he said. ‘My daughter is one of the hostages.’

  ‘Oh.’ Suddenly the whole business made more sense. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ Davies murmured.

  ‘But the kidnappers don’t know who she is,’ Holcroft went on. ‘And of course it’s important that they don’t find out. Which is why I’m here in person. At this moment only the Prime Minister, myself and Christopher Hanson are aware of the full situation. And now yourself, of course. I’m relying utterly on your discretion – and those of the two men who are chosen to go.’

  ‘You can take that for granted,’ Davies said coolly.

  For a moment Holcroft looked decidedly human. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But…this is hard for me. And my wife, of course.’ He managed a smile. ‘Look, I won’t take up any more of your valuable time. Hanson has all the information about the hijack you will need…he already has a man out there. And Special Branch is covering the Bradford end.’

  They had retraced their steps almost to the limousine. ‘Ah, by the way,’ Holcroft said suddenly. ‘I forgot – one of your old boys is one of the hostages. James Docherty? Does that name ring a bell?’

  ‘He led the team we sent into Bosnia last year,’ Davies said dully. He couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Ah yes, a good man,’ Holcroft said. They had reached the limousine. ‘Keep me informed,’ he added as he climbed inside.

  ‘Of course.’ Davies watched the car glide out of sight. Docherty! The man seemed destined for adventures, even when he no longer wanted them. Only eighteen months earlier Davies had coaxed him out of retirement to undertake the mission in Bosnia, and the Scot had come back with the bitterness woven a little more tightly through his smile. Davies knew all too well that you could send a soldier to war once too often, particularly a soldier who refused to close his conscience down for the duration.

  In any case, Docherty had retired for good after that one, and Davies had heard nothing of what he was doing until now. The card he had received the previous Christmas from Glasgow, though very welcome, had been lamentably devoid of information.

  Davies wondered whether Docherty’s wife and children were also among the hostages. He walked back towards his office, stopping to ask his aide to find and summon Major Jimmy Bourne, the long-time commander of the Regiment’s Counter Revolutionary Warfare Wing. Once behind his desk he called a number in Whitehall, and asked to be called back on a secure line. Then he ordered tea and a rock cake from the mess.

  The call came first. Hanson gave him a brief verbal update, faxed the relevant information, and said he would call again in half an hour to see if there were any questions. The tea arrived when Davies was still on the first page. In his relief at finding that Docherty’s children weren’t on the list of hostages he bit with inadvisable vigour on the rock cake, causing a chain reaction of vibrating fillings.

  A rap on the door was followed by Bourne, who was carrying his own mug of tea. ‘Good morning, boss,’ he said, eyeing the rock cake with distrust.

  ‘Trouble,’ Davies began, and went through what Holcroft had told him from start to finish, before handing over the reports from Hanson.

  ‘Two men,’ Bourne murmured to himself when he had finished reading. ‘May I?’ he asked, reaching for Davies’s computer keyboard.

  ‘Be my guest,’ Davies said. He hated the damn thing. ‘I think they should be relatively senior men,’ he decided. ‘We need to pull out all the stops on this one. No,’ he said, seeing Bourne’s expression, ‘I don’t like thinking that way either, but the bastards have us by the throat these days. And I don’t mean the hijackers,’ he added, somewhat superfluously.

  ‘Well, I don’t think there’ll be a wide choice anyway,’ Bourne said. ‘They’ll have to be Russian-speakers…’

  ‘We’re not out of Uzbek-speakers, are we?’

  ‘Surprisingly, yes.’ Bourne had the personnel of G Squadron on screen – this was the squadron currently on twenty-four-hour standby in case of terrorist incidents. He shook his head. ‘I think we should send a couple of my lads,’ he said.

  ‘No objection from me,’ Davies said, watching Bourne’s two index fingers flashing to and fro on the keyboard.

  ‘OK, then. Rob Brierley for one. He teaches the “Hostage Situation” course, and he’s one of the three Russian-speakers. The other two are Terry Stoneham and Nick Houghton.’ He paused a moment. ‘I’d go with Stoneham, mostly because he gets on well with Brierley.’

  ‘Fine. Brief ’em and kit ’em up. I’ll get started on the transport arrangements.’

  Terry Stoneham couldn’t believe it. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’ he asked his brother.

  ‘Wish I was,’ Mike Stoneham said. He was phoning from the cinema he managed in the West End.

  ‘Tell me again,’ Terry demanded.

  ‘We’ve been fined half a million quid, banned from the FA Cup, and had twelve points deducted before we start next season in the League.’

  ‘We start with minus twelve points!?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘We’d be better off relegated. At least there’d be something to play for.’

  ‘There still is – survival.’

  ‘But the management’s different now, the owner’s different. How can they be blamed for what the fuckers before them did? And why should the fans suffer? Why should I suffer, for fuck’s sake – I didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘Yeah. Anyway, I just thought you’d like to hear the bad news from your brother, and not a total stranger.’

  ‘Ha-bloody-ha.’ He still couldn’t believe it. They’d only escaped relegation by four points last season, and now they’d be starting off with a twelve-point handicap.

  ‘How are you otherwise?’ Mike asked.

  ‘Fuck knows. OK, I suppose…’ He knew it was only football, but somehow he hadn’t needed this.

  ‘Have you seen the baby yet?’

  ‘Yeah, once.’

  There was a few moments’ silence at both ends of the line.

  ‘Why don’t you come up to town for the weekend?’ Mike suggested.

  ‘Maybe. Don’t worry about me, OK? I’m all right. Really.’

  ‘OK, we’re here if you feel like a laugh.’

  ‘I know. Thanks.’ He put down the phone, and slumped back on to the sofa. The clock on the mantelpiece said he had another hour before teaching his ‘Hearts and Minds’ class to the latest bunch of insolent newly badged bastards.

  ‘Only football’ – he could remember Jane aping the words sarcastically. He thought about the baby, their son. The boy didn’t even have a name yet, or at least not as far as he knew. Maybe she and her boyfriend had come up with one.

  Terry thought about the boyfriend. Don his name was, but he would always be ‘the boyfriend’. Was the guy really willing to take on someone else’s kid and be a proper father to it? Jane obviously thought so, but it seemed a lot to ask. Terry wasn’t at all sure he could do it if the situation was reversed.

  Maybe Don could. He didn’t seem such a bad bloke, much as Terry had wanted him to be. And if he was prepared to be the boy’s father then maybe Terry should just back out of the situation, pretend he hadn’t got a son. That was what Jane had asked him to think about. That was obviously what she wanted. It would be easier, no doubt about it. But was it right? He was buggered if he knew. In fact, when it came down to it, he didn’t really know what he felt about it all. When he’d seen the baby, the little face and all the little limbs, he hadn’t really
felt any connection with himself. But maybe men didn’t, at least not straight off.

  He sighed and looked round the one-room flat. It still felt cramped, even after five months. He thought about all the work he’d put into their house, and felt the familiar anger well up inside him. I didn’t deserve this, he thought, and felt instantly ashamed of feeling so sorry for himself.

  It was time to get moving. He got to his feet, walked through into the tiny bathroom, and picked up the reusable razor which Jane had foisted on him as ecologically correct. He studied his face in the mirror, the blue eyes beneath the short, straw-coloured hair. ‘And Tottenham didn’t deserve it either,’ he told his reflection.

  The door broke open with a crash, and the room suddenly filled with smoke. The leading members of the rescue team burst into view, looking like Star Wars rejects in their flame-retardant hoods and respirators.

  The red dots from the aiming-point projectors on their MP5s searched and found the two terrorists standing by the wall to the left. They opened fire, killing them before their guns were even half raised into the firing position.

  The terrorist by the hostages had his arm round one of their necks, and was in the act of pulling the man towards him when the tell-tale red dot appeared just above his waist.

  Good, Brierley thought, very good.

  But there was still the terrorist behind the door. His SMG had reached the firing position, and was spewing bullets around the smoke-filled room. One hostage went down, and another, before one of the rescuers pumped upwards of fifty bullets through his torso.

  ‘OK,’ Brierley shouted, and everything came to a halt. ‘That was better. Far from perfect, but better.’

  But it was a good thing the room on the screen was really two. Ever since an NCO playing hostage had been tragically killed by rescuers in a similar exercise, the Stirling Lines ‘Killing House’ had been a very different place. Now those playing the hostages and terrorists occupied one room while the rescuers attacked another, with cameras and wraparound wall screens giving each group the illusion that they were all in the same room. Both sides were able to riddle the bullet-absorbent walls, while their instructors kept score on film.