Masters of War

by Chris Ryan

  ‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’

  Carrington removed his glasses, inspected them at a distance of a few inches, then wiped them on his tie before putting them back on and continuing. ‘I was hoping not to have this conversation with you, Black. Now it seems it’s unavoidable. You’re quite alone?’

  Danny nodded.

  ‘When Sorgen and Asu’s father was killed in Paris three weeks ago, the family of the suicide bomber, an Algerian national, were also found dead. The working theory was that the bomber dealt with them before the hit, but there was a curious anomaly. French investigators found DNA traces that matched a former French Foreign Legion member called Liam Skinner. Does the name mean anything to you?’

  ‘You know it does,’ Danny said. ‘If you want to speak to him, tough – he’s fertilising the desert.’

  ‘I think, on balance, that I’m pleased to hear it. His file doesn’t make edifying reading. I’ll spare you the details of how the Algerian’s children died.’

  Danny shrugged. There was nothing Carrington could say about Skinner that would surprise him.

  ‘When we learned that one of Taff Davies’ team may have been involved, certain alarm bells started ringing. It’s not that we knew for sure that he was batting for the other side. We didn’t even particularly suspect it, as these private military chaps go from one contract to another all the time. But we did feel the need for an insurance policy. And that insurance policy, of course, is you.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Really, Black. You’re meant to be the Regiment’s finest. Are you telling me you didn’t wonder why we plucked you straight from the battlefield to lead this patrol?’

  Danny had no answer to that.

  ‘Davies is a damn good soldier,’ Carrington continued. ‘Too good to be allowed to roam free if he’s taken it upon himself to make a monkey of the British government. And it looks like he’s done exactly that, so now it’s time for us to cash in on our insurance. You know Davies better than anyone. You know his methods and his tradecraft. You’re to locate him immediately, and eliminate him and the remainder of his team. When that’s done, we’ll get you out of there.’

  Danny clenched his jaw and looked straight into the webcam.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a direct order, Black.’

  An image flashed in Danny’s mind: Taff, standing outside Sorgen’s tent. He could have stopped Danny, but he’d let him go.

  ‘I won’t do it.’

  There was a silence, but despite the pixelation Danny could read a calculating look on the spook’s face. Finally, after about ten seconds, Carrington spoke again.

  ‘Remarkable thing, DNA,’ he said. ‘Imagine. Seven billion people on the earth, and we could identify Skinner’s beyond any doubt whatsoever. It’s certainly changed the way we do things. Not that you’d remember. You were still a child when profiling became routine. Shame really. It could have helped a lot when the RUC were investigating who shot your old man. And your mother, of course, God rest her soul.’ Another pause. ‘I take it Buckingham slipped that little nugget of information into the conversation at some point?’

  Danny just stared.

  ‘What did Taff Davies tell you when you asked him, Black? That an unknown IRA gunman entered the hospital where you were born and escaped after killing your mother and wounding your father? That the only evidence they ever found was the scrubs the gunman was wearing bundled up under a bush in the hospital’s grounds?’ Carrington nodded. ‘That’s all true,’ he said. ‘But there’s something he didn’t tell you, because he didn’t know himself. A year or so after the shooting, Special Branch found themselves in a position to analyse those scrubs. They still contained DNA from your parents’ blood, of course, but also an overwhelming amount from the man who’d worn them.’

  A pause.

  ‘We know who killed your parents, Danny. We’ve known since you were a child. I wouldn’t be surprised if, somewhere deep down, you know too.’

  Danny found himself holding his breath. Surely he wasn’t about to be told what he thought he was about to be told.

  Numbness. And then a strange kind of anticipated grief, reduced to a single point in his chest.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it, Black. Davies was the gunman. He killed your mother. He tried to kill your father. If you had a mind to, you could blame your brother’s – how can we put it? – difficulties on him too. There’s no doubt they stem from the trauma of what he witnessed that day.’ Another smile. ‘Listen to me. Quite the psychiatrist, eh?’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Danny.

  ‘Ah, but I think you do, Danny. I really think you do. MI6 has sat on the knowledge all these years because it suited our purposes having Davies as a gun for hire, doing our dirty work through the agency of private military contracts. But I rather think he’s past his sell-by date, don’t you?’

  Danny was shaking his head. It didn’t make sense. Taff loved his mother. It was obvious. He’d always been there for his dad. And for him too. Jesus, Kyle had been right. He had been more like a father than a friend. ‘Why would he do it?’ he whispered, more to himself than to Carrington.

  ‘Jolly good question,’ Carrington said. ‘Perhaps when you catch up with him, you can ask. We have a good idea where you can find him. It seems Buckingham’s infinity device didn’t end up quite where we expected it to.’

  ‘I put it in Hector’s weapon.’

  ‘Ah,’ Carrington replied, as if a mystery had been solved. ‘We did wonder. Jolly useful, I must say. Kept us abreast of the situation. Would you care to hear the result of your efforts?’

  Without waiting for a reply, Carrington looked like he was pressing a button on the table. A sound came over the line. It was muffled – that was to be expected from a listening device hidden in the magazine of an assault rifle – but it was clearly the noise of a vehicle in motion.

  Then voices. Indistinct – Danny had to strain to pick up every word.

  ‘Nothing happens until we see the money.’ Taff’s voice.

  ‘Hugo Buckingham is dead?’ Sorgen.

  ‘As a dodo. No bullets. If anyone finds his body, they’ll just put it down to an explosion. One of the many.’

  A click. A gap. The recording played on.

  ‘Damn it! You don’t understand what the hell’s going on. You’re still just a fucking kid.’

  ‘Not any more, Taff.’ Danny heard his own voice. ‘But then I guess we all have to grow up some day, don’t we?’

  A gap.

  Gunfire.

  A gap.

  A vehicle’s engine.

  A gap.

  Taff’s voice. He sounded angry. ‘Fuck you, Saunders. When you’re out on the ground, then you can start criticising my decisions.’

  A pause.

  ‘I’m not a fucking delivery boy. Get someone else to do it.’ Danny realised that he was listening to a phone conversation. ‘Hold back my money, Saunders, and you might get an unexpected visitor in the middle of the night. Got it?’

  Silence.

  ‘You’re a piece of shit, you know that? . . . Yes, I’ve got the fucking address, 157 Al Kamada Street, Damascus, midnight. You’d better hope your new Syrian mates haven’t flattened the place . . .’

  Another pause. And then a clattering sound. Danny pictured Taff throwing his phone against the dashboard in rage. He carried on listening.

  For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Danny heard Hector’s voice.

  ‘What does he want us to do?’

  ‘Shut the fuck up and drive.’

  The engine, however, slowed down. Then the sound disappeared entirely. Danny realised that the vehicle had come to a halt.

  ‘What does he want us to do, Taff ?’ Hector’s voice sounded dangerous. ‘If you think me and De Fries are going to follow you without knowing what’s happening, think again. You already fucked up once not killing that Regiment kid.’

  ‘That �
��Regiment kid”,’ Taff spat, ‘is a weak-arsed little cunt. If you’re worried about him, you’re in the wrong fucking game.’

  ‘Just tell us the plan, Taff.’

  ‘Fine. Saunders made a deal with the Syrians. He gave them Asu’s location. They’ve bombed the shit out of him. He wants us to collect his payment from a contact in Damascus. Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in cash. He doesn’t want to leave a money trail. Happy?’

  ‘Not really, mucker. You said it yourself. What are we, fucking FedEx?’

  ‘Just shut up and drive.’

  The recording ended.

  ‘Charming,’ said Carrington, staring directly into the webcam. ‘Sixteen kilometres south of Damascus there is a crossroads where the M5 highway meets a road heading east–west along the brow of the hill. An Israeli helicopter with an Apache chaperone will be there to airlift you out of Syria at 01.30 hrs, by which time I expect Davies and his team to be dead. We’ll do what we can to get Buckingham and the woman there in time, but don’t hold your breath.’

  ‘What about Spud and Greg? Have you done anything about them?’

  ‘I would forget about your friends, Black. They won’t be coming home. The most important thing is that Davies is eliminated. Is that understood?’

  Danny gave him a dead look. The bastard clearly had no intention of seeing Clara and Buckingham released.

  But Danny had other plans.

  ‘Understood,’ he said.

  They had stripped Clara naked, groping her painfully as they did so. But that was by no means the end of her indignity.

  She was in a third bland, concrete room, strapped to something that looked like a hospital bed. On the wall opposite there was a bright yellow hosepipe coiled round a couple of pegs, one end fitted to a tap. She couldn’t imagine what it was for. There was a sheet beneath her. It was vile-smelling and covered in blood. Her arms were tied to her side and her legs had been forced apart and then secured that way, leaving her open and exposed. More groping. One of them had forcibly inserted a dry finger. Its fingernail had scraped her internally and she’d screamed. That had just made the two brutes manhandling her laugh as they left her on her own, a bright light dazzling her eyes from above, the only sounds she could hear the occasional scream from elsewhere in this awful place. She shivered with cold, but tears were burning her eyeballs.

  What was to come? It didn’t bear thinking about. She lay in terrified silence, dreading the moment when the door opened again.

  TWENTY-SIX

  ‘Do you know Al Kamada Street?’

  Danny was back in the ambassador’s temporary office. ‘Of course,’ the ambassador said. He pulled out a map from his desk and laid it out in front of him. ‘It’s in the Christian quarter, near Bab Touma. I suggest you avoid it.’

  ‘Why?’

  The ambassador shrugged. ‘The government is paranoid about Western spies. They keep a close eye on it.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘But if you want a drink, it’s the place to go.’

  Danny looked the ambassador up and down. He decided that this was a man on the take. The guy had plundered his cash without even pretending to be embarrassed about it.

  ‘I’ve got an offer for you,’ Danny said. ‘Do as I ask and you’ll be several hundred thousand pounds sterling richer by tomorrow morning.’

  The ambassador’s eyes narrowed. ‘Go on,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You have contacts inside the Mukhabarat?’ It wasn’t really a question.

  The ambassador shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘They have two British captives. If your contact gets them out of there to a safe RV at 01.00 hrs tonight, I’ll pay you 100,000 for each of them. There are also two British SAS soldiers who were captured on the west coast a week ago. If they’re still alive, same deal: 100 K apiece.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said the ambassador, ‘but you don’t look like you have that sort of money to spare.’

  ‘I know a man who does. I’ll have it before the deadline. Do we have a deal?’

  The ambassador nodded slowly. ‘We have a deal.’

  The door to Clara’s room opened. The short man appeared, flanked by two of his goons.

  Nobody spoke. Not even Clara, who wouldn’t have known what to say even if her throat hadn’t been constricted with fear at their sudden arrival. The short man issued an instruction in Arabic – the first time Clara had heard him speak the language – then closed the door behind him and stood in the corner of the room. The two Syrian guards approached Clara’s bed. She felt herself trying to close her bound legs, but the straps held them firmly apart. But, to her momentary relief, the men didn’t seem interested in that side of things. Instead they stood one on each side of her and adjusted the bed so she was lying at an incline of about twenty degrees, her feet higher than her head. That in itself made her feel dizzy. She heard the short man’s footsteps. His face appeared above her, upside down. His nostrils flared slightly, then he stepped away.

  Another instruction in Arabic. Clara heard the sound of water. She felt sick all over again. She’d heard of waterboarding, of course. She’d heard that most people lasted only a matter of seconds before crumpling utterly, the horrific sensation of drowning being more than anyone can bear. As the sound of the hose spurting on to the floor grew nearer, she let out an uncontrollable sob. It was the worst thing she could have done. It forced her to inhale deeply, and at that precise moment, the guard carrying the hose lifted it and allowed water to pour over her face.

  It was icy cold as it gushed down her throat and nostrils, and although she was lying back, she felt it hit her oesophagus like an internal punch. Her gag reflex instantly kicked in, but fresh water was still flowing over her face, forcing the previous lot back down into her system. It didn’t hurt, but the panic it induced was a hundred times worse than any pain the torturers could have inflicted. She wanted to cry out, but she couldn’t. Her body arched. Her limbs strained against their bonds. Seconds felt like minutes. She would do anything, anything, to make it stop.

  Suddenly water was no longer falling on her face. She continued to gag, aware now of the horrific, gurgling, guttural sound that came from her throat as she tried to force the water up out of her lungs while her body screamed at her to breathe in. Moments later she felt a brutal blow to her abdomen, which forced the water up through her nostrils. Finally she was able to suck in some precious oxygen.

  And then he was there once more, looking down at her. ‘What is your real name, and who are you working for?’

  Clara’s voice shook as she spoke. ‘I promise you . . . please?. . . I’m telling you the truth . . .’

  A flicker of annoyance passed over the man’s face. He soon mastered it and smiled his oily smile.

  ‘It seems to me,’ he said quietly, ‘that we’ll have to do it again.’

  Clara’s screaming only stopped when the water started to flow over her face once more.

  19.45 hrs.

  Danny watched from a first-floor window, waiting for the blue Citroën that had been circling the embassy all day to complete its drive-past. The ambassador had instructed his men to replenish Danny’s ammunition, and had supplied him with a sat phone into which the number of the ambassador’s equivalent handset was programmed. As he watched, his mind turned over. He thought of Taff and the mockery he’d made of his life. Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe Carrington was feeding him a stream of bullshit to force him to do the Firm’s dirty work. That was clearly the way he did things. He thought back to the conversation about his mother’s death he’d had with Taff back in Homs. There’d been no hint that Taff was lying to him then. Danny would only know the truth if he looked his mentor in the eye and asked the question.

  And if he didn’t like the answer? What then?

  He thought of Buckingham and Clara. Of Greg and Spud. All of them suffering at the hands of the Syrian authorities. He’d learned enough about this country over the past week to realise that meant brutal treatment. Were they still alive? Was a hundred gra
nd apiece enough to make some corrupt member of the secret police risk his own skin to get them to Danny’s 01.00 RV? Could he trust the Czech ambassador not to double-cross him? Could he trust anyone? He didn’t know the answer to these questions. All he could do was see where the evening took him. And hope that he was still alive to see the following sunrise.

  The blue Citroën passed. He had four minutes and thirty seconds to get out of here.

  One minute and thirty seconds later he was walking out of the embassy, his clothes covered by one of the ambassador’s grey raincoats. And two minutes after that, he was in the Peugeot, negotiating the streets of night-time Damascus.

  20.50 hrs.

  One fifty-seven Al Kamada Street was a downmarket hotel – a three-storey prefab building with a glass frontage. It had a name, but the Arabic letters meant nothing to Danny. He pulled over about twenty metres from the entrance, and took a moment to recce it from the safety of his vehicle. He counted the windows of twelve rooms, four on each level, looking down on to the street. Opposite the hotel was a bar. This also had a glass frontage, tinted. A neon sign flickered the words ‘Zodiac Lounge’ in English above the entrance. Would Taff be sitting in there? Doubtful. He’d want to keep a low profile.

  Danny turned back to the hotel. Was Taff there, waiting to collect Saunders’ cash? Danny would put money on it. He’d have arrived in very good time for the midnight RV and Danny felt certain he’d have a room overlooking the street. Even now he’d be at the window. Watching carefully. Assessing any threats. Waiting. And were Hector and De Fries with him? Or were they off looking for other amusements?

  Danny looked at his watch. 21.00 hrs. Three hours. He assessed his options. Enter the hotel now and try to locate him? No way. If Taff sensed anything untoward happening before the appointed time, he’d react. If he had Hector and De Fries with him, they’d overpower Danny. Staying in the car wasn’t an option – an occupied vehicle parking in the vicinity for three hours would scream a warning. Maybe he could walk into the hotel and pump the receptionist for info, but he quickly rejected that idea. Even if the receptionist spoke English, Taff would have already turned on the charm and offered them a few dollars to let him know if anyone came asking about him. So Danny turned his attention to the Zodiac Lounge. The tinted-glass window was an effective camouflage. Could he use that as an OP? He decided to try.