by Andy McNab
Latimer had made his position clear. He had said he would do what he could but Jamal had to understand that, without Emma, he had no witnesses, no one at all to corroborate his story. He had said he would look into having the film analysed, but he worried that even if he could demonstrate that it had been doctored, he doubted it would convince a jury that he was innocent since he had gone to Syria to fight and had apparently willingly joined an extremist group, who didn’t exactly fit the description ‘freedom fighters’.
‘The fact is, the Home Office seems determined to make an example of you. Their publicity machine has gone into overdrive.’
Jamal had thanked him profusely for whatever help he could give him but he could see that there wasn’t much fight in him. The way Latimer looked at him, Jamal knew the lawyer blamed him for Emma’s disappearance. He pressed his forehead hard against the mat as if to force God back into his soul.
‘Brother, I know you.’
For a mad moment he thought the voice was from God, but then he heard the words repeated. He opened his eyes. The prisoner praying next to him was white, and bald, with a fringe of sandy-coloured beard running round his chin.
‘My name is Isham. We applaud your work. You should not suffer in jail for this.’
Jamal didn’t answer. He closed his eyes and tried to resume his prayer but the man repeated the words: ‘Brother, you are not alone. There are many like you here, trust me.’
He didn’t want to cause trouble or seem uncivil. He turned his head towards the man.
His eyes were pale blue. He grinned. ‘Brother, there will be a way out. It is coming. I have been told to make room for you in our plans.’
Jamal decided to pay no attention, but his moment’s reflection, his attempt to reach out for guidance, had been thwarted. He stood up, moved to the door and asked to go back to his cell. He had not sought trouble but it had found him all the same.
36
23.30
Lakeview House, near Keswick, Cumbria
Tom left the Range Rover in a ramblers’ car park. The journey north had given it a thick film of brown road grime. Parked hard up against a huge copper beech with long, overhanging branches, it was almost invisible.
There were no distractions. His phone was off, the battery and SIM card separated so no one could pinpoint him, and he had bought a cheap pay-as-you-go from a service station should he need help, though where that help might come from was another matter. The Range Rover’s GPS was also disabled and the numberplates covered with extra grime. No one knew he was there, not even Phoebe or Woolf. He felt unencumbered and free. He was going to do this his way, alone. He had made ready his pistol and shoved it into the front of his belt. The two spare mags he put in his left-hand jacket pocket, making them easier to get at for a reload.
He trekked up to the top of the ridge and surveyed the valley. It was long and narrow, shaded by the surrounding peaks. In the moonless dark, it had an eerie beauty. Patchwork fields curved up towards rocky outcrops too steep for the snow to settle. Clusters of trees dotted the landscape. A single-track road threaded its way up to the house, dry stone walls on either side. The only passing place was at a gate with a cattle grid. The snow had coated everything, gleaming white in the night-vision goggles and blotting out detail. He was better off using his own eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the dark.
An owl hooted, and a few moments later, its mate. Tom felt in good company. He dropped down to a half-demolished stone croft, presumably the remains of a shepherd’s dwelling, with a decent view of the house and approach. The roof was gone but he had enough cover. He decided to wait there a while to see who else, if anyone, was there, and who might be coming and going.
In the yard in front of the house were two ex-Army Land Rovers with canvas tilts, presumably used on Invicta training exercises. They had a heavy coating of snow and looked as though they hadn’t moved in a while. Next to them, under an awning, there was an elderly Vauxhall Astra with no snow on it but the same even film of grime from a long motorway journey, like the one he had just made.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw more: a single set of recent car-size tyre tracks on the drive, a dull light in one of the upstairs rooms, an orangey glow from the one beneath. Since he was alone he needed to know exactly how many were in there before he made any kind of move. He helped himself to a few swigs of coffee from his Thermos and demolished the roast beef sandwich he had bought at the service station on the M6.
Keeping at least a hundred metres between himself and the building, he made a complete circumnavigation to get a sense of its size, familiarize himself with all the exits and windows, and construct in his mind the likely layout inside.
It was a well-built, early-Victorian brick house of classic proportions, probably the sort of place he might have dreamed of owning one day. But under Invicta’s ownership it had been turned into a hostel, its good looks disfigured by the institutional necessities of a wheelchair ramp and an ugly metal fire escape.
He took out the pay-as-you-go phone, put in the battery and called Phoebe. It was a gamble that she would take a call from an unknown number at three in the morning but you had to hope.
‘Who is it?’ She answered almost immediately, her voice tense and alert. Was she already awake?
‘It’s okay, it’s me, Tom.’
A sigh of relief. ‘Where are you? There’s a big flap on. Woolf says you’ve done a runner.’
‘Well, sort of. I need a favour: ID of a Vauxhall Astra owner.’ He gave her the plate number. ‘And if it’s an Invicta staffer, can you look in the database for any more details on them?’
‘You do know what the time is?’
‘I know, I know.’
‘It’s not that I mind, just that if I do it remotely it’ll show up that I logged in at this unusual time.’
‘I can’t worry about that. I need the information now.’
‘All right. Call me back in ten.’
He called her back in five.
‘The Astra belongs to Alan Evans, the early joiner with the low number. Are you thinking he’s the shooter?’
‘I don’t know yet. I might wake him up and ask him.’
‘He was a corporal in 2 Para at Colchester. Dishonourably discharged and sentenced to three years for nearly killing two other lads in a bar fight.’
‘Good start. You got an image?’
‘Looks like he’s been in one fight too many.’
‘Send it. Can you see this number?’
‘Got it. And there’s some kind of ongoing issue with his expenses. Seems he owes them over a thousand pounds. Plus there’s a note on file that he had a “red lapse”. What’s that?’
‘Means he fell off the wagon at some time, had to go back through detox.’
‘Tom, I can hear the wind. I know you’re outside and up to something.’
‘What’s happening with Rolt?’
‘I didn’t see him all day. He came back to HQ at seven, had a meeting with the editor of Newsday, then went off to dinner with him.’
‘Bill McCloud. Did you get an introduction?’
‘If you can call having my tits stared at an introduction.’
‘Why the meeting?’
‘The “Butcher of Aleppo”. The man who killed those schoolgirls. They’ve caught him – he’s in Belmarsh. Tom, what are you doing?’
‘I’ll check in later. Leave Woolf out of the loop for now, okay?’
He killed the call. The image of Evans came through: an angry face, the sort that went looking for trouble. He removed the SIM from the phone, moved silently down the field, vaulted a stone wall and gave himself a minute for a fresh recce.
He closed in on the house, climbing over the wall to bypass the bolted metal gate. He wasn’t worried about leaving any ground sign. By the time it was noticed he should be gone. There were a couple of large wheelie bins next to an outbuilding, probably the former dairy or cold store. He stepped inside. It was empty, save for some
planks and old tins of paint, a pair of wellingtons and an old, very crumpled porn mag: Luscious Lolitas. Nice. He lifted the lids of the bins. Among the Red Bull and Coke cans were numerous Newcastle Brown Ale empties and a couple of quart-sized Scotch bottles. Invicta was dry, absolutely no exceptions. Separating the members from their chief weakness was one of its founding principles. And there were far too many empties for one person, even a serious drinker. On the plus side it was fair to assume that Evans would have had a few, giving Tom the advantage.
He approached the main building, keeping to the other side of the dry stone wall so his tracks wouldn’t be too obvious now he was close to the target. The orangey glow from the ground-floor window he had observed earlier was coming from a TV: a football match. With a bit of luck, whoever was in there would have all their attention on the game. As he approached the window to take a closer look a shout went up: a near miss.
There were three of them round the table, their silhouettes outlined by the light from the TV. There was no other light on in the room. Also just visible on the table were more bottles and cans.
One of the three said something and got to his feet. Perhaps he was going to take a leak.
Not quite.
The side door opened and a dark shape emerged near the ground. The door shut again and the shape travelled a few paces out into the yard before cocking a leg, the pit-bull, squat and obviously muscular even in silhouette, sniffing the air as it pissed. Tom kept frozen to the spot behind the wall. It was too late to duck and there was no point in doing anything else. There was nothing to be gained by moving or trying to hide behind the wall that was between them because scent can’t hide. It was certainly pointless running. They might have crap eyesight but Tom knew only too well from years growing up with dogs that to start running would only trigger its prey drive. It would pursue and, if it had been trained to, attack. But for Tom, that wasn’t the immediate challenge. He needed to bring the dog to him and keep the chance of compromise under control. Shooting the thing would be easy but the sound would give him away immediately. The pit-bull could out-hear, out-smell and outrun Tom. But he could out-think it. He would have to stand his ground and see what happened.
37
It wasn’t long before Tom realized what was going to happen. His eyes were glued to the target but his ears had never left the dog. The pit-bull’s panting stopped and no doubt its ears were going into overdrive too. For about three seconds nothing happened. Then came a growl, and a succession of rapid snarling barks as the animal hurtled towards him.
Tom prepared for the inevitable. It was pointless to try to evade an attacking dog so close. If he wasn’t going to use his weapon he couldn’t do anything about immobilizing the beast until it committed itself to an attack. The grim fact was he had to let it sink its teeth into him and take it from there. He presented his left arm, twisting it so that his knuckles pointed towards the oncoming attack to protect the veins in his hand and wrist. When the dog bit down, it would hit bone rather than vital blood vessels.
The animal moved at startling speed, a succession of blood-curdling snarls erupting across the night air as it thundered towards him. As it closed in, he made sure his footing was good to take the force he was about to have to absorb, if he was going to stay upright and win this fight.
The pit-bull leaped up, its jaws opening with a deep growl, lips pulled back to bare its teeth so it got a good bite first time.
He braced himself for the hit as the dog covered the last couple of metres before jumping up onto the wall. Tom saw its eyes roll back as it launched itself at him. He stood his ground and braced himself. He felt its saliva fly onto his face.
If there were other things going on, they were lost on Tom now. He couldn’t hear anything but the snarling of his attacker. He felt the weight of the dog hit him, then its jaws closed on his arm. Its teeth sank through the thick sleeve of his leather jacket into the skin. There was blinding pain as its teeth drove into him but Tom didn’t pull away. That’s how most damage is done. Tom had to tell himself to let it happen. He had to make sure the animal had confidence in itself, that it sensed an easy victory. If Tom went with the flow, it would keep its teeth in one place, thinking it had him, and wouldn’t thrash around. Forget the Boy’s Own tales of grabbing a foreleg in each hand and splitting them apart: that only worked on Chihuahuas, and only then if you could get hold of the thing in the first place. In real life dogs were like apes: much, much stronger than they looked.
The dog thrashed, its hind legs scrabbling against Tom’s legs and waist, trying to get him to the ground, engulfing him in the sickly meat breath that came blasting out of its nostrils and jaws. It got a deeper grip on his arm and he felt flesh being mangled.
Tom pushed into the jaws with his left arm. The animal was almost dangling now, suspended because it wasn’t going to let go. Its growl changed tone as it shook its head from side to side, like a mad thing, trying to get a deeper grip, still striving to clamp its jaws together, but through Tom’s arm.
Tom bent down and grabbed one of its back legs with his free right hand, twisting it backwards and to the side, trying to snap the bone. The limb twitched as it tried to kick away. The dog bucked its head, trying to rip at Tom’s arm by jerking rapidly left and right. Tom started to pull the back leg up towards him. The dog was confused and very pissed off now, biting harder and frantically twisting its head as Tom struggled to keep hold of its leg.
He yanked hard on the thin calf bone, and this time it finally broke. The dog yelped but its jaws held tight. Tom got a firmer grip on the spindly bit below the break and pulled it up as hard as he could towards his chest, at the same time starting to turn. The dog yelped and Tom pirouetted, as if he was spinning a child in a game. He did three, four, five turns, and the dog rose with the centrifugal force, anchored by its teeth in Tom’s arm and his hand on its leg. The dog had to make a decision, and it did: it let go of Tom’s arm. But Tom didn’t reciprocate by dropping the leg: he kept hold now with both hands and swung it round and round as violently as he could.
Still spinning, he managed to take two steps towards the corner of the wall. The dog was still twisting and bucking, as if it had just had an electric shock.
Once more, Tom spun round with the animal’s front legs pointing outwards with the G force. The dog’s head smashed against the stone. There was a thud, a weak yelp and the body relaxed. Tom’s own momentum carried him another one and a half turns, his head spinning as he tried to get his bearings.
He let the dog drop to the ground, still holding the back legs to keep control. It might have lost the fight or been stunned, but it could still raise the alarm or even attack again. A moment later he let go of the animal, dropped to his knees, picked up a big lump of granite from the wall and brought it down with both hands onto the head. There was no blood, no opening of the skull, just the dull cracking sound of bone breaking under the flesh. He smashed it down twice more to be sure the animal was dead.
Tom dropped the stone, got back to his feet with his hands on his knees and gulped in oxygen, trying to slow his heart rate as the adrenalin dissolved back where it had come from and the puncture wounds started to rage.
He pulled himself up to a crouch, took off his jacket, yanked up his sweater, pulled off a strip of T-shirt and used it to make a temporary binding for the wound. There were gaps between the top stones of the wall – enough to see that one of the men was out already, holding what looked like an assault rifle, the butt into his shoulder. Tom couldn’t see exactly what the weapon was but if it went bang, and something came out of the muzzle, that was a problem.
The man whistled, then listened. ‘Frankie?’
Tom glanced at Frankie, then back at his master. Both he and the canine corpse were still obscured by the wall – but only as long as the man kept his distance. There wasn’t likely to be much of a discussion if they did meet, so he needed to be ready.
A second man emerged from the doorway with a pistol. He slipp
ed on the step, swore, caught his balance, swayed slightly then lifted his weapon vaguely in Tom’s direction. Nothing else for it. Tom aimed through the gap between the stones and double-tapped, centre mass, taking the drunk down first. The first man whirled round as his pal collapsed and Tom dropped him in the same way.
He waited for the third to show. If he wasn’t too pissed, this one would be taking a lot more care. Crouching low, with the stone wall for cover, Tom moved to his left so he had a better arc of fire on the doorway.
There was movement in the darkness just inside. The third man couldn’t see his mates from either the doorway or the windows because they had both fallen in the snow close to the house. A long burst of something heavyish, probably a 7.62, came from the doorway. Chips of wall flew about as the bullets hit before ricocheting into the air with a high-pitched whiz. The man had decided he wasn’t going to take his chances on the outside. Tom didn’t return fire. No point until he could see his target. Let him stew. There was no hurry. Eventually curiosity would get the better of him and he would break cover.
Five minutes passed – a long time when you think you may be about to be shot. The third man was either very patient or shitting himself. You could tell a lot about a man’s character from the way he handled a weapon. Spraying away like that showed nerviness, a failure to absorb training and a probable lack of any real experience of a fire-fight in which conserving ammunition is everything. Curiosity and impatience would override caution. And then the rabbit would emerge from his burrow.
Another five minutes passed. Then the third man stepped out, an HK G3 casually hanging from his right. He slipped on the snow and loosed off another burst, only it went straight down, shattering his left lower leg. Tom dispatched him with a double tap and set off towards the house.
He checked Evans’s photo, which he had saved in the phone: dark hair and eyebrows, a thin nose that had been smashed up so many times it looked like Frankie had chewed it, and a small, thin mouth: undistinguished and unmemorable. He toured the three bodies, turning each of them over. None was Evans. Was this a wasted journey?
