Masters of War

by Chris Ryan

  The man turned and opened the door, locking it firmly behind him.

  09.00 hrs.

  To Danny’s left, the rising sun had streamed into the car that the boy had led him to – a light-grey Peugeot with battered bodywork and torn upholstery. It was old – the windows had manual winders – and the kid had even looked a little apologetic about the state of it. It was fine by Danny. Old models were a lot easier to hot-wire. Beneath the steering wheel, the wires spilled out like spaghetti. The engine was noisy as it turned over, but it worked.

  There was not much traffic. Danny doubted he’d seen more than a hundred vehicles in the fifty-odd klicks between Homs and his current location. But about a quarter of them had been military, and each of those made him tense up. He couldn’t get to Damascus quickly and stealthily. If anyone stopped him, his only possible response was violence. His M4 was on the passenger seat beside him, his Sig on his lap. The first soldier to tap on his window and ask him to wind it down wouldn’t have time to regret it.

  Danny couldn’t decipher the Arabic road signs. He’d studied his mapping, however. Homs to Damascus: 160 kilometres. If nobody hindered him, he’d be there by midday.

  But that was too much to hope for.

  Thirty klicks from the Syrian capital, he saw a roadblock fifty metres ahead: barriers across the road, and a low concrete hut on the left-hand side. Three vehicles queuing to head north, four on Danny’s side of the road heading south. Four armed guards, two at each barrier. And more inside the hut, Danny reckoned. Another two, maybe three.

  One thing was certain: he couldn’t talk his way through. The soldiers would search him as soon as they realised he was a foreign national. And when they found his assault rifle, pistol and ammo, he’d have no chance.

  It only left him one option.

  He checked his rear-view mirror. Two vehicles behind him, the first five metres away, the second about ten behind that. Then nothing for as far back as he could see, perhaps two kilometres. Current speed: 50 kph. He slammed on the brakes and the driver behind him sounded his horn before overtaking. Then he reduced his speed until the second car was forced to overtake, leaving him at the back of the little convoy as they approached the checkpoint, now only twenty metres away.

  Ten metres. Five.

  All three cars came to a halt.

  There was only one car on the opposite side of the road now, and as the barrier rose for it, Danny briefly considered swinging over to the other side and breaking through. If he did that, he’d have half the Syrian army on his tail. No. If he was going to force his way through this checkpoint, he needed to make sure there were no witnesses left behind. He leaned over the passenger seat and wound down the window, before propping his M4 barrel downwards, the butt resting against the door just below the glass.

  The barrier in front of him rose, and the first car moved through. Danny and the next car edged forwards.

  Of the two guards on Danny’s side of the road, one walked over to the driver’s window of the car in front and rapped on it with the butt of his AK-47. The second walked round to the back of the car, eyeing it suspiciously. Fifteen metres to Danny’s ten-thirty, the soldiers on the opposite side stood on the edge of the road, talking together.

  The driver in front lowered his window. The guard bent down to talk to him. Forty-five seconds later the barrier opened and the car passed through.

  Which left just Danny and the guards. He looked in the rear-view mirror. A vehicle was approaching about a klick back, shimmering in the heat. He’d have to work fast.

  He edged forwards and stopped in front of the barrier.

  The guards’ routine was the same. One of them walked to the rear of the Peugeot. The other knocked on the window with his AK. Danny raised the Sig and lowered the window.

  The guard bent down. His face appeared.

  Danny fired.

  There was blood, of course. But the force of the round as it pierced the guard’s forehead knocked him backwards before Danny could see the full damage. He thrust the door open – its bottom edge scraped across the dead soldier – pushed the man’s body aside and climbed out. It had all happened so quickly that the second guard, just two metres away, barely had time to register what was going on. Danny nailed him with a single chest shot, and the man slumped to the ground.

  He had to keep up the momentum if he was going to retain the element of surprise. Using the Peugeot to shield him, he turned and rested his gun arm on its roof, the two soldiers on the other side of the road firmly in his sights. One of them was looking around for somewhere to run, the other was raising his rifle. Danny took out the potential gunman first, sending a round from the Sig straight in his stomach. The second guy was now sprinting away from the checkpoint. Danny aimed his shot fractionally in front of the fleeing guard. By the time bullet met flesh, it was on target. The soldier hit the ground.

  The oncoming vehicle – Danny could now see it was a car – was 500 metres away. He looked over to the concrete hut. Were there more targets in there? Did they know what was happening? Reholstering his Sig, he hurried round the back of the Peugeot and then along its length, grabbing his M4 from the open passenger window as he passed. He released the safety switch as he strode towards the hut.

  Distance to the door: fifteen metres. It began to open inwards. Danny didn’t wait for an enemy target to show himself. He simply fired at the door itself – two short bursts that kicked up a flurry of splintered wood. Distance: ten metres. Despite the ferocity of the burst from the M4, the door was still only a few inches ajar. That told Danny something was blocking it on the other side. A corpse. Nobody was going to risk exiting from that direction now. He swerved to the left and upped his pace, dashing round to the back of the hut. Sure enough, he saw two figures emerging. Five seconds later they lay dead on the ground.

  The approaching car was 250 metres from the checkpoint. Whoever was driving, Danny didn’t want him to be able to give a detailed description of himself or the Peugeot. He hit the ground and trained the rifle to a position twenty metres in front of the car. He fired a final burst and the car headed straight into the stream of rounds. Its tyres exploded and it skidded round 180 degrees before coming to a noisy halt. By that time Danny was already running back to the Peugeot. Seconds later he was pressing down on the counterweight that raised the barrier. And seconds after that, he was away.

  The door of Clara’s prison opened again. In one way this was good: it allowed a small breath of less putrid air to circulate in the dark room. In another way it was bad: the short silhouette of her tormentor reappeared in the door frame.

  ‘Mr Buckingham,’ said the voice, ‘is a gentleman.’

  A pause.

  ‘Yes, we know his name. He told us immediately. And yours too, Clara. Touchingly, he insists on sticking to the fiction that you and he have agreed. It won’t last, of course – self-interest always prevails over honour – but I thought it might be instructive for you to watch how we do it.’

  ‘He’s telling the truth,’ said Clara, sobbing.

  The man didn’t reply. He stepped aside to allow two others, much taller and broader than him, to enter the room. Clara cried out as they crossed the room, stepping around the corpses hanging from the ceiling before dragging her out into the corridor. Through her tears she could see that these men were Syrian. As for her tormentor, she saw him only from the back. He was a dumpy little man, wearing plain chinos and a beige shirt. He opened a door on the right. Clara was forced to follow.

  She found herself in a room measuring about six metres by three. In the far wall was a large window, about three metres wide and two high, that looked on to another room roughly three times as big as this one. On the wall to the right of the window was a grey box with a speaker grille and a switch. The second room was brightly lit by ceiling-mounted spotlights that stung Clara’s eyes as they had become used to constant darkness. A lean, naked man was hanging by his arms from a rope attached to a hook in the ceiling. It took perhaps th
irty seconds for Clara’s eyesight to adjust and confirm what she already suspected: it was Buckingham.

  Her tormentor stood inches from the window, next to the grille, his back still to her. She could just make out the reflection of his face. Jowly. Sweaty. The eyes bright with expectation.

  Buckingham was shouting. Clara knew this because his mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear his voice.

  Another man entered the room beyond the glass. He was in his late thirties and had straggly, shoulder-length hair and thick-rimmed glasses. He was holding something that looked like a riding whip but consisted of several thin strips of leather about half a metre long. In his other hand he had a small, white plastic spray bottle, the sort of thing an old lady might use to water her houseplants.

  The short man flicked the switch beneath the grille. Buckingham’s voice flooded into the observation room, screaming and hoarse. ‘Let me down . . . let me down!’ He was clearly in great pain. Another flick of the switch and his voice was silenced, though Clara could tell he was still shrieking.

  And then his new companion got to work.

  He was clearly well practised with the whip. He flicked lightly, and the leather strips licked against Buckingham’s flat belly and his genitals. A number of thin red welts immediately appeared where the leather had struck, vertically up his belly and on his penis, as though the leather had been doused in red paint.

  ‘I’ve always found this a very effective way of loosening a man’s tongue,’ the short man said quietly as Buckingham’s jaw stretched open in a silent scream.

  ‘I swear he’s telling you the truth,’ said Clara. ‘I am a doctor. Médecins Sans Frontières will confirm it.’

  Inside the room, Buckingham’s torturer had raised the spray bottle.

  ‘Salt water,’ said the small man. ‘Nothing more. I’ve found that the simplest methods are often the best. I think this might be worth listening to, don’t you?’

  He flicked the switch again as the torturer sprayed Buckingham’s wounds. The sound that came from the grille was almost inhuman. More like an animal in pain. Clara felt her knees buckle. She wanted to beg this dreadful man beside her to make it stop, but she found that her terror had robbed her of the power even to speak.

  Her tormentor turned, and for the first time she saw his face in the light. Piggy little eyes. Flared nostrils. Moist, sensuous lips.

  ‘And now, my dear, I think it’s time for us to start on you. Unless you’d like to stop your fiction and start telling us the truth?’

  11.37 hrs.

  Damascus. The capital city and nerve centre of the Syrian administration.

  Danny had been briefed that there was no British embassy here. Like most states, the Brits had abandoned Damascus. But his intel was that the Czech Embassy was still active. As an EU member it was obliged to offer assistance to other member nations. Danny had noted its location on his map before leaving the UK.

  The Czech Embassy was a plain, dark-brown building, situated at the intersection of two roads in a quiet part of the Abou Roumaneh district. It was surrounded by two-metre-high green metal railings, the top quarter bent outwards to make them more difficult to scale. Each of the three floors had a balcony – these were also protected by railings – and all the windows were barred. Danny hadn’t spotted a trail in the time it had taken to get here, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one, and he had no intention of staying out in the open any longer than was necessary. Two wheels of his vehicle were on the pavement as he jumped out. He fully expected there to be an armed presence in the building. Embassy protection in a war zone was bread and butter work for any country’s special forces. Danny had done it himself, escorting the British ambassador in Kabul to shuras with warlords in the Afghan badlands. He let his rifle hang around his neck before entering, and walked through the main door with his hands clasped above his head.

  The embassy’s reception area looked deserted. There was a time when it would have been thronging with foreign nationals seeking visas or other consular assistance, but anyone in their right mind had now taken their government’s advice and left Syria. It was a large room, some fifteen metres by twelve, and had seating areas along the two long sides and dog-eared posters of Prague and other Czech beauty spots on the walls. At one end of the room was a long reception desk, and it was only as he was stepping into the building that he noticed two armed guards lounging casually behind it. When they saw an armed man entering the building, they sprang up, raised their rifles and started barking at Danny in Czech. Within seconds he was face down on the floor and his hands were being plasticuffed behind his back. He didn’t resist – not even when they pulled him back up to his feet and confiscated his M4 and his Sig, along with the wad of dollars Taff had given him. They then escorted him at gunpoint to a windowless, unfurnished basement room and locked him inside.

  Danny knew the Czech ambassador would see him soon. A heavily armed Brit rocking up on his doorstep would have all the hallmarks of a potential diplomatic incident. This wasn’t something he’d want to delegate.

  He was right. After ten minutes the guards led him from the basement room and up an echoing flight of stairs behind the reception area to a room at the back of the first floor that looked on to an unlovely lightwell. Here a gaunt man with a bushy grey moustache sat behind a wooden desk, a nervous, pensive look on his face. Danny’s weapons were on top of a low cupboard behind the ambassador. His money lay on the desk. The two armed guards stood menacingly by the door.

  ‘You speak English?’ Danny asked the ambassador.

  The ambassador nodded. He made no attempt to stop him as Danny, still handcuffed, picked up his money and flicked through it.

  ‘It’s two thousand light,’ he said.

  The ambassador raised his hands in a gesture of apology, but Danny saw the greed and corruption in his eyes.

  ‘I need a private room and a secure, encrypted connection to MI6 in London. Can you fix that?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ the ambassador said.

  ‘Tell them you have a communication from call sign Kilo Alpha Six Four. And get your men to remove the grey Peugeot out front. The Syrian authorities will be looking for it.’

  The ambassador thought about that for all of five seconds, then issued an instruction to the guards. One of them disappeared. The other uncuffed Danny before following his colleague.

  ‘May I ask,’ said the ambassador in excellent English, ‘the nature of your business in Damascus?’

  ‘No,’ Danny replied.

  ‘Do not misunderstand me, but the sooner you leave, the happier I will be.’

  ‘Trust me, pal. I feel the same.’

  The ambassador stood up. ‘Please wait here. I apologise for the surroundings. My real office is in the front of the building. Less safe, they tell me. I will see to your communications.’ He left the room, returning a couple of minutes later. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  He led Danny to a room directly opposite his temporary office. A young man sat at a laptop, which was connected by a short lead to a mobile sat phone. The noises coming from the computer sounded like an old-fashioned fax machine: the technician was clearly having trouble connecting. Ignoring him and the ambassador, Danny edged towards a barred window that looked down on to the street below, keeping out of sight by staying to one side of it. There were no pedestrians and very little traffic. A blue Citroën drove by. Four minutes and thirty seconds later it passed by again, going in the same direction. Coincidence? Unlikely.

  The laptop fell silent. The young man said something to the ambassador after an image popped up on the screen: an empty room. A face appeared. Danny walked over and recognised it immediately. Carrington, Buckingham’s boss. The spook who had sent them on this job.

  He looked at the ambassador and the technician. ‘I’ll need the room,’ he said.

  The ambassador nodded rather reluctantly. The two men left.

  The connection was poor. Carrington’s face pixelated every few seconds and his voice
had an almost robotic quality through the laptop’s tinny speakers. As he spoke, the first part of his sentence broke up. ‘. . . to see you, Black. We were beginning to worry, and we certainly weren’t expecting you to turn up in Damascus.’

  ‘We’ve got problems.’

  ‘So I understand. Let’s hear it.’

  Danny was used to debriefs. What was relevant, what was not. He recounted the bare bones of the past few days to Carrington in not much more than a minute.

  A pause. Even though the connection was poor, Carrington’s displeasure was unmistakable. ‘This is regrettable,’ he said.

  ‘Might have turned out better if you’d been up front with me from the start.’

  Carrington smiled indulgently, as though Danny was a petulant child. ‘We couldn’t tell you the real reason for the operation, Black,’ he said. ‘If you’d been captured and interrogated, the jolly old entente cordiale with the French would have been well and truly shafted. I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘Not really,’ Danny said. ‘I’d have lasted a lot longer than Buckingham under interrogation.’

  ‘Of course. Think of it as damage limitation. Buckingham is an insincere little toad, as you’ve no doubt observed.’

  At least that was something they could agree upon. ‘I can’t take on the Damascus Mukhabarat,’ Danny said. ‘You have to get on to the Syrians. Put some pressure on to get Buckingham and Clara released.’

  ‘We’ll do what we can, of course,’ Carrington said evasively. He smiled again. ‘This business with Taff Davies is unfortunate.’

  ‘You knew he was part of the private military team?’ Danny said.

  ‘Naturally.’