Masters of War

by Chris Ryan

  Something was burning. It was just beyond the enormous bomb crater that had stopped them from continuing along the road. With a sickening twist in her stomach she realised it was their vehicle. It was surrounded by figures – five, maybe more – who were hazy in the heat and through Clara’s tears. She had no doubt that they were unfriendly.

  She stopped, breathless, exhaustion burning in her chest, her limbs cold with fear. She looked around. There was a street leading off to her left. A telegraph pole, damaged at the root, was swaying dangerously across the start of the street, and two of the cables it once supported were snaked messily on the ground. This street had taken the brunt of the recent bombing – the houses on either side were ruins, and it was deserted. Almost without thinking, Clara ran down it. She heard more gunfire near the hospital and, with a desperate sob, upped her pace. She was barely aware of her surroundings now, and only knew that she had to get away from the government forces who had taken Bradley’s life and nearly killed her.

  She ran for ten minutes, maybe more, before the build-up of lactic acid in her limbs forced her to stop. She doubled over to catch her breath, her hands shaking and her skin moist with sweat. As the burning in her legs and lungs subsided, she straightened up and looked around. She was in a narrow street. It had not been quite so heavily bombarded as the area around the hospital, but it bore the scars of war nonetheless. She saw a first-floor window with a sniper-fire hole the size of her fist, and the pavements were crammed with overflowing bags of stinking uncollected rubbish that rustled worryingly, no doubt overrun with feasting rodents.

  She counted three shopfronts. Two of them had had their display windows smashed in and their contents looted. Somebody had taken the precaution of applying gaffer tape to the splintered window of the third to stop it falling in. Fifteen metres away, another car was still smouldering. Its features were burned away, with the exception of a skew-whiff Mercedes symbol that had miraculously remained fixed to the bonnet. A reek of burned fuel mingled with the stench of rotting debris. Apart from a stray dog sitting patiently in front of one of the smashed shop windows, the street was deserted – or so Clara thought. As she regained her breath, a pair of eyes peered out from behind the car.

  Dark. Frightened. They belonged to a child. A little girl with a nasty cut across one cheek.

  Clara couldn’t stop a sob escaping her lips. She stepped towards the child, one hand outstretched. It was the worst thing she could have done. The terrified kid turned and fled, running away as fast as her little legs would go, not looking back. Clara would have run after her, but she had no energy. And in any case, her attention was suddenly elsewhere.

  Two noises started at once. The first was the dog. Half a yap, half a howl. The second was the sound of machinery somewhere overhead. Clara assumed it was a helicopter. She didn’t quite know why, but it filled her with fear. If the chopper was about to fly over this street, she didn’t want it to spot her. That single thought was enough to urge her legs back into action. She ran to the nearest of the three looted shops and climbed over what remained of the window’s jagged glass. Shards crunched underfoot as she stepped into the shop.

  Just in time.

  She turned and looked back through the broken window. The helicopter thundered overhead. She knew nothing about the machinery of war, but the glimpse of a man sitting at the open side of the aircraft with some kind of machine gun was enough to make her feel sick with fear all over again.

  The chopper hovered above her for a full minute, low and threatening. Clara felt the thunder of its rotors vibrating. By the time it had moved on, she could barely move through exhaustion.

  And distress. All-consuming.

  It wasn’t just the image of Brad’s dead body, viciously seared on her mind.

  It wasn’t just the memory of her bruising escape from the government forces who had killed her tiny patient without a thought, and who, she was quite sure, would now want to do the same to her.

  It was this. She was alone. And lost. Her only option was to try to make it back to the MSF base. She had no idea how to get there, no means of calling for help and no wish to leave the dubious protection of the abandoned shop. She didn’t know what to do.

  Her knees buckled underneath her and she fell to the floor, her face in her hands, overcome with the kind of desperate, racking sobs that are only ever caused by fear.

  NINE

  Larnaca, Cyprus. 20.00 hrs.

  For the second time in forty-eight hours, Danny felt the warm, dry air of the Mediterranean hit his face. The light was failing, and the endless blue sky was turning indigo, with faint streaks of pink on the horizon.

  Buckingham was by his side as he exited the Hercules that had transported them to Cyprus, just as he had stuck close to him for the whole journey. Danny had taken him in hand. The guys had brought their weapons and other hardware in a sturdy flight case from Hereford. Now, however, they transferred all this gear, along with their packs and the clothes they had prepared for their insertion, into two huge rubber waterproof bags. Danny had told Buckingham to open his suitcase, and had rummaged through it to find anything worth bringing along. ‘Leave it here,’ he’d told the MI6 man before nodding at the waterproof bags. ‘We packed for you anyway.’

  Since fronting up to Spud back at Brize Norton, Buckingham had barely said a word. Danny could tell it was more than a fear of flying. The guy was genuinely anxious about what they were about to do. Danny was fine with that. A bit of fear sharpened the mind. Kept you on the mark. It was the moment you started to get blasé that led to fuck-ups. And in this line of work, fuck-ups meant going home in a box, if you were lucky. He didn’t mind Buckingham’s puppy-dog eyes, either. If the spook felt reliant on him, he was more likely to do as he was told. Buckingham might be the boss, but on the ground Danny would be the one calling the shots. And firing them too, if necessary. Syria was enemy territory. Increasingly lawless, increasingly dangerous. Being blasé was not an option.

  As the ops officer back in Hereford had briefed them, a thin-lipped sergeant by the name of Wilkinson was waiting to lead them on to the tarmac to escort them to the docks. They moved swiftly. The RV with their Syrian fixer who was to supply them with vehicles and fuel was to take place at 01.00 hrs on the Syrian coast. If they were late, he wouldn’t hang around. That would leave them stuck in-country with no onward transport. And there was a lot of ground – or rather, water – to cover yet. Wilkinson didn’t say a word as he drove the unit and their gear out of the airport, although Danny did notice the way he kept glancing at them in the van’s rear-view mirror. It was clear he was wondering what they were about to embark upon. It was just as clear that none of the special forces guys were going to tell him. Perhaps Buckingham was following their lead. Perhaps he was just too nervous to speak. Whatever the truth, he sat in the back, staring through the glass in absolute silence. The van stopped and Wilkinson switched off the engine. The guys alighted. Danny held back. ‘You OK, pal?’ he asked.

  Buckingham nodded. He looked grateful that Danny had taken the trouble to ask.

  The docks were crowded. A Royal Navy frigate had just docked and swarms of Navy guys were milling around the waterfront. There was a buzz about the place. The sailors were clearly looking forward to some down time, and despite everyone in the vicinity being in uniform, and the huge outline of the frigate docked just thirty metres from where Wilkinson had pulled up, there was an almost civilian atmosphere. The bars of Cyprus would be doing some good business tonight.

  Two Marines were waiting for them. Danny shook hands with them, Buckingham as ever by his side, while the other lads took their waterproof holdalls from the back of Wilkinson’s van. ‘You need to do anything here?’ one of the Marines asked.

  Danny shook his head. ‘Let’s get moving,’ he said. ‘We can’t hang around.’

  The Marines led them to a small brick building fifty metres away, on the very edge of the dock. It was about the size of a large double garage. Inside, Danny saw
that it had been constructed around a small, man-made inlet, just big enough to house the Mk1 Rigid Raider that would transport them off shore. The assault boat was about five metres long, big enough for eight troops plus coxswain. Glass-reinforced plastic hull, 115 hp outboard motor. Simple. Utilitarian. Nothing to write home about. With the unit and their gear it would achieve about forty knots. Perfect for the job. But Buckingham looked puzzled. ‘It’s rather small, isn’t it?’ He sounded anxious. ‘To get all the way to Syria, I mean?’

  Danny allowed himself a smile. ‘Don’t worry about it, pal,’ he said. ‘We’ve got something a bit better lined up.’

  To the left of the inlet, there was a rack of drysuits. The guys loaded their gear into the Rigid Raider, then got out of their civvies and into the dry suits.

  The Marines and Regiment guys had changed into the tight-fitting suits long before Buckingham had even managed to ease his right leg into his. He sat on the floor, dressed in boxer shorts, his thin arms awkward as he tried to squeeze himself into the drysuit. It took him a full ten minutes, by which time all the other guys, with the exception of Danny, were sitting in the Raider, waiting for him to embark. Danny led Buckingham to the edge of the inlet and held his right arm as he gingerly stepped into the bobbing vessel. Then he embarked himself and nodded at the Marine at the helm. Within seconds the engine was purring and the boat was emerging from the end of the brick building and out into the port.

  The eight-man vessel was tiny against the huge silhouette of the frigate. Even smaller against the dark night sky as the noise of its engine dissolved into the open air. The Marine navigated it expertly out into open water, then increased speed. The stern raised slightly and the Raider bounced and plunged through the inky sea, away from the safe, twinkling lights of land and into the utter blackness of the Mediterranean night. As the spray splashed Danny’s face and the salt air filled his lungs, he felt a surge of exhilaration. Buckingham, sitting next to him, clearly didn’t share it. He was gripping the edge of the vessel so hard that even in the darkness Danny could faintly see the whiteness of his knuckles.

  The Raider continued at full pelt for ten minutes, the Marines navigating by the dim light of a small GPS unit. As the sound of the motor wound down and the vessel started to bob on the gentle swell of the Med, Danny looked back towards Cyprus. The lights of the shoreline were barely visible now.

  From somewhere there came a low, rumbling sound. It seemed to be all around them. Above them, below them, coming from everywhere.

  ‘What’s that?’ Buckingham whispered.

  Nobody answered.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Buckingham’s voice had become fearful.

  ‘We hitch a lift,’ Danny said. ‘I told you we had something bigger laid on.’

  Even as he spoke, the surface of the water suddenly started to tremble.

  ‘Shit!’ Buckingham hissed. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Wait,’ Danny said calmly. He looked around, peering into the darkness, while the coxswain spoke on his hand-held radio. ‘Coming in now.’ He turned to the rest of them. ‘OK, lads, hold on.’

  ‘Over there,’ said one of the Marines, pointing in a direction that Danny estimated as north-west.

  The sea-state grew considerably rougher. And although it was difficult to judge distances in the darkness, Danny estimated that the shape emerging from the depths was about 100 metres away. A dark shadow against the horizon, the tip of HMS Vanguard’s conning tower broke through the surface of the water with a resounding crash. He sensed Buckingham’s breathing get faster as the tower rose higher and higher above the waves.

  They were looking at it side on. As the stern of the sub appeared, twenty metres in front of the conning tower, the vast size of the vessel became clear. It was strangely whale-like in shape and perhaps one and a half football pitches long. This wasn’t the first time Danny had seen a sub break water, but it never failed to astonish him how something so big could travel so silently beneath the surface of the sea.

  Danny’s eyes followed the sub’s outline. The top of the vessel tapered down towards the stern to allow boarding by vessels such as the Rigid Raider. The coxswain started the outboard motor again, then swung the attack boat through 270 degrees so that they were travelling parallel to the sub, but towards its aft, which was still submerged. The slope of the sub’s roof, however, meant that a small deck area had appeared to the rear of the conning tower. The Raider swept clockwise in a broad, 180-degree arc so that it was aligned with the sub, then headed straight for the tower. Lateral waves, caused by the emergence of the submarine, slammed against the stern of the boat, spraying its passengers and momentarily blinding them as they ploughed through them. After about five seconds there was a scraping sound beneath the Raider as it came into contact with the sub’s deck. It ground to a halt five metres from the conning tower. There was a steel door in the tower, its edge defined by a series of studded rivets. As the Marines stood up in the boat, the door opened and a dull yellow light lit the deck.

  Four submariners appeared. They wore heavy waterproof jackets and sturdy boots and started yelling instructions over the deafening noise of the sub’s engines. Without ceremony, one of the Marines grabbed Buckingham by the arm and manhandled him over the side of the Raider into the care of a waiting submariner, who, holding him firmly, escorted him off the deck and into the conning tower. Danny, Spud, Jack and Greg unloaded their waterproof holdalls and hauled them across the deck and into the sub. There was no time to say goodbye to the Marines. The hydraulic doors immediately hissed closed, shutting out the sound of the sea and leaving the Raider out on the deck. It would start floating again as the submarine submerged, and the Marines would be back in dock fifteen minutes after that.

  Danny looked around. They were in a room with a painted steel floor, about eight metres square. The walls were covered with pipes and hydraulics. The sub yawed, but only barely. Buckingham looked unsteady on his feet. The four guys who had ushered them off the deck were there, as well as one other. He wore a greying beard, had very piercing blue eyes and looked about forty years of age.

  ‘Welcome aboard HMS Vanguard,’ he said. ‘I’m Commander Flemming.’

  Danny had full-on respect for members of the Silent Service, and particularly for anyone who had passed the rigorous Submarine Command Course. Its failure rate was almost as high as that of SAS selection, hence its nickname ‘the Perisher’. He shook Commander Flemming’s hand. ‘Change here, if you will,’ Flemming said. ‘I’ve asked my men to deal with your equipment and I’ve had rooms set aside for you – unless you’d care to join me on the bridge?’

  Danny glanced at Buckingham, who was miserably trying to peel off his neoprene suit. ‘No, we’ll go to our rooms,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ the captain said. ‘Is there anything we can do for you? Something to eat?’

  ‘Hot food would be good,’ Danny said. With another sidelong glance at Buckingham, he added, ‘And tea. Sweet.’

  Flemming nodded at one of the waiting seamen. ‘Aye-aye, captain,’ the man replied, then headed down a metal staircase.

  ‘Follow me, fellas,’ a second of the submariners said. He led them down below. Danny could sense the vessel submerging again as they left the staircase and passed along a series of narrow corridors.

  ‘I don’t much like enclosed spaces, old sport,’ Buckingham whispered.

  ‘Then you’re in the wrong place, pal,’ Danny said. ‘They have to fit a couple of hundred guys on one of these things. Doesn’t leave much space.’

  ‘No chicks either,’ Spud said. He looked over at the MI6 man. ‘So if you were thinking of joining the mile-low club . . .’ he grinned, ‘you won’t be fuckin’ ’em, Buckingham!’

  To his credit, Buckingham smiled.

  The quarters to which the submariner led them comprised a single room, seven metres by four – though Danny realised this was spacious compared to the tiny berths that the Vanguard’s crew had to put up with. The guys stripped
out of their drysuits and changed into the all-in-one blue overalls that were waiting for them. Ten minutes later food arrived. Subs such as this were designed to be constantly at sea. It required no refuelling on account of its nuclear reactor, and it could be at sea for long stretches without being restocked. Fresh food was rare, but the cooks had a reputation for conjuring decent meals from the dried and tinned supplies at their disposal. The unit tucked into bowls of welcome, warming stew and drank mugs of hot tea in silence. When they’d finished, Danny turned to Buckingham.

  ‘Strip off,’ he told him.

  Buckingham had another go at peeling off the neoprene while Danny opened one of the waterproof bags and removed a set of clothes. They were deliberately nondescript – a pair of jeans and a coarse shirt. You could wear this outfit almost anywhere, from Damascus to Dorking, without anybody batting an eyelid. The clothes smelled unpleasantly musty, and Danny was briefly reminded of his brother’s B&B room. ‘Put these on,’ he told Buckingham once he had stripped down to his boxer shorts, ‘then put the drysuit on again over them.’

  The Regiment guys were stripping down too, but their preparations were a bit more exotic. The clothes they wore were similar to Buckingham’s, but under his shirt each man strapped a shoulder holster and a Sig 9mm. Buckingham’s eyes were wide as he watched them check over their weapons. The room filled with the dull clunk of magazines being inserted, safety switches enabled. Danny noticed how he looked rather apprehensively into the waterproof bag that contained their M4s. He zipped it shut. No point shitting the guy up more than necessary.

  Once they’d put their civvies on, they pulled on the drysuits once more.

  ‘How far down are we?’ Buckingham asked.

  Danny shrugged. ‘Five hundred metres,’ he said. ‘A bit more.’