Masters of War

by Chris Ryan

  All in all, on the ground floor of the house, there were about thirty people and although they were quiet, Danny didn’t sense that they were all despondent. It was more like they were waiting for something to happen. The first floor was more sparsely occupied. Danny found himself in some kind of antechamber, where two armed men stood guard by a closed door. There were a couple of chairs against one wall and a barred window looking out on to the compound. Danny glanced through it to see the kids still sitting round the fire. It nauseated him that children so young should be sent into battle, but he supposed Taff was right: that was the way the world worked. Deal with it. He dragged his attention back to the two armed guards. MP5s. Body armour. These guys were better equipped than half the British Army. They clearly recognised Taff. One of them nodded a reluctant greeting at him. ‘Been keeping that weapon in shape, boyo?’ Taff asked.

  The soldier frowned. He clearly didn’t like the implication that he needed any help.

  ‘Your man hadn’t zeroed his rifle,’ Taff explained to Danny. ‘No wonder he kept missing.’ He turned back to the guard. ‘He’s expecting us,’ he said.

  The guard nodded and opened the door. Taff led them through it. They found themselves in a larger room, ten metres by fifteen, occupied by just three men. One of them, dressed in camouflage trousers and a black T-shirt, stood by a barred window looking down on to the street. The second, similarly dressed, was examining a map of the city stuck to the wall with strips of gaffer tape. The third, sitting on a wooden chair at the far end of the room, to his side a table with three mobiles and a sat phone on it, was Asu.

  Danny recognised the rebel leader’s features from the briefing back at Hereford, but the photo he’d seen then failed fully to capture just what an unpleasant-looking man Asu was. He had a sallow face like candle wax, sunken eyes and a thin, ratty moustache. His greasy hair had a centre parting and was flecked with grey. In addition to the rifle slung over the back of the chair, he wore two pearl-handled Colt M1911s on his belt. He sat with one leg hooked over the arm of his chair, picking at his teeth with a tiny sliver of wood. Was this really the basket in which the British government was putting all its eggs?

  The door closed behind them. Danny immediately checked the room for other exits. With the exception of a hatch in the roof, there were none. The windows were all barred and there were no other doors. For a high-value target, Asu had installed himself in a shoddy hideout that would be almost impossible to escape from if government troops came calling. Taff was clearly aware of this. His first move was to step over to the barred windows and look carefully out, alert for any signs of imminent danger.

  ‘He thinks I am a stupid fool, this Mr Taff,’ Asu said in a thin, reedy voice to no one in particular. His accent was curiously posh, and Danny remembered that he’d spent a lot of time in London. ‘But show me a safe house in this city.’

  ‘I’ll show you plenty of safer ones than this, pal,’ Taff said.

  Asu ignored him. His attention was all on Buckingham, who now walked towards him.

  ‘Let me guess,’ Asu said. ‘The British government sends me its very best wishes?’ His glistening lips quivered with barely concealed amusement. He oozed the confidence of a soldier who thought he was close to victory.

  Buckingham stopped a couple of metres in front of him and spoke a greeting in Arabic. Asu’s expression changed – he was clearly impressed by this newcomer’s facility with the language – and he responded in kind before reverting to English. ‘Mr Taff and his men, they teach us wonderful new ways to kill people!’ He said it with a smile. ‘I have tanks and even helicopters at my disposal, but nothing helps us like men with guns.’

  Every inch the diplomat, Buckingham inclined his head and spoke quietly but clearly. ‘Her Majesty’s government hopes the gentlemen from International Solutions are of some help in your endeavours.’

  For some reason Asu found this uproariously funny. ‘Yes!’ he roared. ‘Yes! They are of some help in my endeavours! I have children here who are better shots than most of the government soldiers. They pretend to be begging for bread and then . . .’ He mimed firing a rifle, before dissolving into laughter again. Either he didn’t notice or he didn’t care that nobody else seemed to find this as funny as he did. He gave a long belly laugh while Buckingham stood patiently in front of him. He allowed his mirth to subside before speaking again. ‘You’ve brought me another soldier?’ he asked, pointing at Danny.

  Buckingham glanced in his direction. Danny sensed in him a flicker of annoyance that he’d been brought into the conversation.

  ‘Looks to me like you’ve got plenty of soldiers already, mate,’ Danny said. ‘Little ones.’

  Moving very slowly, Asu got to his feet. He unhooked his rifle from the back of his chair, slung it over his shoulder and walked towards Danny. It felt like everyone in the room was holding their breath. Now the rebel leader’s mouth was just a few inches from Danny’s right ear. He carried with him a putrid stench of body odour and tobacco.

  ‘You’ve seen the pretty children?’ he breathed, so only Danny could hear him. ‘Perhaps you would like to take a couple home with you?’

  Danny turned to face Asu square on. ‘Last lot I came across using kids to do their dirty work were called the Taliban,’ he said equally softly, but making no effort to hide his disgust. ‘Want to know what happened to them when we bumped into each other?’

  But before Asu could reply, Buckingham was there. His eyes flashed nervously, and he cleared his throat to interrupt the whispered exchange. ‘I’ve brought my own close protection, as you can see,’ he said, nodding in Danny’s direction. ‘Please pretend he’s not here.’

  Asu inclined his head. ‘Did you hear that?’ he said to Danny. ‘You’re not here.’ When he looked back at Buckingham, all the humour had left his face. ‘Mr Buckingham, you do not really expect me to believe that you have been sent all the way here to keep an eye on our four mercenaries – I hope the word does not offend you, Mr Taff . . .’

  ‘Takes a lot more than that to offend me,’ Taff murmured. He too was looking intently at Danny.

  ‘To check that our four mercenaries are doing their work properly?’

  ‘You are even more insightful than I’ve been led to believe.’ Buckingham’s flattery was outrageous, but it hit the mark. Asu spread his palms out in a show of false modesty. Danny had to hand it to Buckingham: he had the measure of this twat. ‘I wonder if we might talk in private?’ the MI6 man suggested.

  Asu clapped his hands together, the revolvers swinging on his belt as he did so. ‘Of course,’ he announced. He nodded curtly at the two other Syrians, who immediately understood the instruction and silently left the room. Buckingham turned and made a similar gesture to Danny, who had the impression he was pathetically trying to mimic Asu’s authority. Reluctantly, Danny stepped backwards towards the door. Taff stayed where he was. Danny shot him an enquiring glance, but Taff simply winked at him the way he used to when he was a kid. Clearly he was to be party to this private conversation, and Buckingham seemed to have no problem with that.

  Danny closed the door as he left the room. The two guards who had shown them in were still in the antechamber, but now they were sitting on the seats by the wall, smoking roll-up cigarettes. Danny took up position by the door, which gave him a clear view through the window that looked out on to the compound. The armed kids were no longer sitting around the fire. They were standing in a line, as if on parade. Skinner was facing them, a couple of metres away, surveying them like some sergeant fucking major. Dickhead. In another time and another place, Danny would have given him a piece of his mind, not to mention a piece of his fist.

  One of the guards stood up. Danny made a show of gripping his firearm. The guard threw his cigarette to the floor, stubbed it out with his right foot, then glared at Danny. Danny glared back.

  Ten tense seconds passed.

  The second guard stood up. Danny jutted his chin in his direction. The guard stepped over to
his mate and muttered something in Arabic. The first guard sneered but seemed to take it on board. He sat down again, removed a pouch of tobacco from his ammo vest and started rolling another cigarette. Good decision. He didn’t take his unfriendly gaze from Danny, but that was fine by him. They could stare all they wanted. Just so long as they didn’t twig that Danny’s mind was as much on eavesdropping as it was on close protection. He couldn’t work out why Taff was still in there. He strained his ears, cursing silently that the moment of bravado had caused him to miss the opening gambits of Buckingham and Asu’s private discussion. He carefully tuned in to the muted voices on the other side of the door.

  Buckingham was speaking. He sounded like someone reciting a rehearsed speech. ‘There’s no doubt, sir,’ he said, ‘that Sorgen will understand you are stronger united than divided.’

  ‘Sorgen is a stupid fool,’ Asu retorted.

  ‘Sorgen is a politician, if I may say so, to the tips of his toes. I know him well . . .’

  ‘He is my brother!’

  ‘But he is not your friend. We were close, years ago. I know I can persuade him.’

  There was a pause. Danny heard footsteps and pictured Asu pacing the room. From the corner of his eye he was aware of movement outside. The kids weren’t in a line any more. Two of them had gone. Skinner was talking to the other two. One of them was the kid with the amputated arm – Asu’s grandson. He was holding something. Cylindrical. Perhaps a metre long. It looked like an RPG launcher. Jesus! Skinner was a wanker, but was he really going to teach these kids to mess around with weapons like that, in an enclosed space like this?

  ‘The festival of Eid al-Fitr is tomorrow night,’ Buckingham said, his tone now more urgent. ‘A time for Muslims to present a show of unity. Sorgen is devout. He will accept this olive branch, if only to respect the memory of your father.’

  More pacing in the room. Outside, Skinner had handed the rocket launcher to the able-bodied child and was showing him how to position it over his right shoulder. Danny squinted. The kid’s right hand was forward on the launcher. It was resting on the fucking rocket. If he fired it like that, he’d lose his hand.

  Danny was still focused on the conversation in the next room. ‘I will tell Sorgen that the British government will match any offer the French have made him,’ Buckingham said. ‘Money, weapons, anything. Asylum, if things go badly for you, sir. He can’t fail to see the advantages. And then, when we have him on side, we’ll be in a position to . . . to do what we discussed.’

  ‘What we discussed?’ What had they discussed?

  ‘What the fuck?’ Danny hissed. He’d been listening hard for Asu’s response, but his concentration was divided by what he saw outside. Hector had come into view. While Skinner continued to position the rocket launcher, Hector had taken the amputee kid with the green Adidas T-shirt by the shoulders and placed him no more than a metre behind his friend. What were they playing at? The back-blast from one of those things would kill the kid in seconds. Cursing under his breath, Danny abandoned his post. He ran from the antechamber and hurtled down the stairs. Seconds later he burst into the compound and sprinted towards where Hector and Skinner were giving their half-arsed lesson. They’d stepped back a couple of metres from the kids now, and wore the ugly grin of the playground bully. ‘Nice one, Abdul,’ Hector barked. ‘You make very good soldier! Next time you fire it, stand like that!’ He burst into laughter.

  Danny was still running when the kid with the launcher turned around. The boy looked confused. He obviously knew that the two Brits were laughing at him, but he didn’t know why. His face – pale for a Syrian – reddened and he looked like he was about to cry. As for his amputee friend, he seemed completely bewildered.

  And then Danny was there. Barging past Hector, he shouldered the stocky mercenary out of the way, before marching up to the kid with the launcher and removing it from his shoulder. The two boys clearly had no idea what was happening. They scurried away to a corner, and Danny turned to face the two men.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ he shouted.

  ‘Training,’ Skinner said, his voice emotionless, his eyes dead. ‘So be a good boy and get back to your babysitting.’

  ‘Why’s his hand on the fucking grenade?’ Danny turned to Hector. ‘And what are you playing at, sticking the kid in the back-blast zone?’

  ‘Fuckin’ Ada, mate,’ Hector said. ‘Lighten up. We were just having a laugh.’

  ‘They didn’t fucking know that. What if they’d followed your instructions in a combat situation?’

  Skinner stepped up to Danny. ‘Then we’d have a raghead without a hand and one without a face,’ he said. ‘Who gives a shit?’

  ‘Feels good, does it, Skinner? Killing kids?’

  ‘Dead’s dead. I told you that before.’

  Danny moved even closer to Skinner, so that their faces were less than a hand’s breadth apart. ‘Do that again, sunshine,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you a chance to find out what dead feels like.’

  Skinner didn’t even flinch. ‘You’d better make sure you do it right first time. You wouldn’t get a second chance.’

  ‘I wouldn’t fucking need one, pal.’

  Danny turned his back on Skinner and Hector and walked over to the corner where the two kids were standing. The able-bodied child was still holding the RPG launcher. It took no more than a gesture from Danny for him to hand it over. ‘Never stand behind it,’ Danny said. The kids looked at him, plainly not understanding. Danny held up the weapon and positioned the amputee child behind it again, before wagging his finger. ‘Don’t stand behind it,’ he repeated slowly. As the light of understanding dawned on their faces, he made another gesture – a clenched fist opening up to indicate an explosion.

  ‘Makes a big bang,’ he said. ‘Very big bang. You understand?’

  The child copied Danny’s charade. ‘Big bang?’ he repeated hesitantly.

  He grinned.

  Danny grinned back.

  They were still smiling when the ground shook, and the air around them seemed to explode.

  SEVENTEEN

  Fast air thundered low over the rebel compound.

  The roar of the jet engines was so extreme that Danny threw the kids to the ground as a matter of reflex. A split second after the aircraft had passed, there was a second explosion as some kind of ordnance hit the neighbourhood. Impossible to say how big the bomb was, or how close, but it was large enough and near enough to make the walls of the compound shudder. Danny heard Hector shout, ‘Fucking air strike!’ and was aware of the two men running towards one of the Land Rovers. His own instinct was to sprint in the opposite direction, back towards the house. If they were coming under attack, he needed to get Buckingham the hell out of here. Right now. First, though, he found himself dealing with the kids. They were crouched in a corner of the compound, covering their heads with their hands. The boys’ instinct was obviously to shelter there, but if the wall collapsed it would crush them in a second. They’d be safer in open ground.

  Danny grabbed each of them by one arm and dragged them five metres from the corner. ‘Stay away from the wall!’ he barked, just as a second explosion ripped through the air. He looked up. One of the tower blocks had been hit. The top three storeys were shrouded in a vast balloon of smoke. Orange flames were just visible halfway up it. As Danny sprinted towards the rebels’ house, his face stung from the impact of the dust and debris. Chunks of rubble slammed into the ground around him. He upped his speed and covered the final ten metres to the entrance without being seriously hit.

  The ground floor was in total confusion. The screams of women. The bark of male voices. The kids looked the most frightened, but that didn’t stop them standing and strapping their weapons to their chests. Danny fought his way through the chaos and stormed up the stairs.

  Taff had already evacuated Asu and Buckingham as far as the antechamber. When the shock waves of a third explosion blasted through the air, Buckingham jolted as though he�
��d been hit. Asu pushed past him and hurried down the stairs. Buckingham stood by the door of the room they’d just left, his eyes wide.

  ‘Get him out!’ Taff roared, not that he needed to. Danny didn’t pussyfoot around. A seam had appeared in the ceiling and fine dust was showering down into the antechamber. Danny grabbed Buckingham by the arm and dragged him across the room and down the stairs, with Taff following close behind. The rooms on the ground floor were empty, although the sound of kitsch Arabic pop still drifted bizarrely around the deserted building.

  ‘Do they know Asu’s here?’ Danny shouted over his shoulder at Taff.

  ‘Who knows? Might just be a random strike. Happens all the time.’ He looked up at the ceiling. ‘Let’s not stick around.’

  ‘Roger that,’ Danny muttered. He turned to Buckingham. ‘When we get outside, head straight for the Land Rover. We’re out of here before we take a direct hit.’

  Buckingham was whispering to himself, ‘Oh my God . . . Oh my God . . .’

  ‘Move!’ Danny roared. They ran along the corridor. The exit was ten metres ahead, and the door was open, but visibility beyond it was poor because the air was thick with a choking cloud of dust from the stricken tower block. Danny thought he could hear the sound of Asu’s voice, shouting words of defiance, but all of a sudden his attention was grabbed by what he saw in a room off to the left. Unlike the other rooms they had passed, this one was not empty. The woman Taff had pointed out – Asu’s daughter-in-law Basheba, with the long, black hair with the single white streak – was in the far corner. Crouched on the floor was the son whose head she had been stroking. The boy was clearly terrified and his mother was trying to persuade him to leave the building. Her other son, the amputee, was by her side. He saw Danny and looked over at him, clearly wanting help to get his brother outside. Danny hesitated, torn between the need to evacuate Buckingham and the kid’s unspoken request. After a couple of seconds he nodded at the boy and stepped inside the room.