The Kill Zone

by Chris Ryan

  The men around the table nodded.

  ‘We are failing, gentlemen.’

  A murmur of disagreement, but Khan spoke over it. ‘I do not say,’ he announced, ‘that what we have set out to do is not worth doing. Far from it. Our struggle to encourage the Muslims of Britain to integrate peacefully into society, and for society to accept them and their beliefs for what they are, is the foremost struggle of our times. But we have not achieved enough. All over the country, young Muslims are being swayed, converted to a violent fundamentalism that has nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with hatred. We all know, in our hearts, that the situation is becoming worse, not better.’

  An awkward silence around the room. But no dissent, because they all knew he was right.

  ‘What, then, are we to do? Should we give up our struggle? Should we allow our peaceful religion to be hijacked by the forces of evil?’

  One of the men – the oldest one there – spoke up. ‘Of course not, Habib. But what more can we do? We are not a wealthy organisation. Perhaps if we had more funds—’

  Khan raised one hand. ‘Funds,’ he said, ‘will not be necessary. I have decided that we have a different weapon with which to fight.’

  Looks of confusion around the table. ‘What weapon?’ asked the older man.

  Khan smiled. ‘The truth,’ he said.

  The others blinked at him as he continued. ‘Those Muslims in this country who are seduced by fundamentalism believe they are fighting in a holy war. But what if we were to show them that they are getting involved with people who are no more than common criminals? What if we were to show them how wrong they are?’

  Khan stepped up to the table, poured himself a glass of water, then took a small sip. ‘There are parts of the world where terrorists are allowed to operate without concern for the rule of law. We know where these places are – the western borders of Pakistan, Yemen, those parts of Afghanistan under Taliban control. And yet there are too many moderate Muslims in this country who remain unaware of these terrorist breeding grounds. If we can draw the attention of our communities to the fact that these overseas terrorist factions are having a direct influence on our impressionable youngsters, perhaps they will be further spurred on to do what is necessary to counter that influence.’

  He looked around the room. All eyes were on him. ‘There is one country,’ he continued, ‘that is worse than the others. Where Islamist rebel groups have aligned themselves with Al Qaeda. A safe haven for the most wanted terrorists in the world, where they are given sanctuary. A place where their operations are of only the slightest interest to what passes as authority. That country is the Republic of Somalia, and as leader of this council I have decided to make a trip there.’

  He took another sip of water and watched the others over the brim of his glass. A hubbub of conversation had suddenly started up; the men were staring at him and at each other in anxiety; Mariam looked as though she might cry.

  The old man who had previously spoken stood up. ‘Habib,’ he said above the conversation. ‘Nobody admires your dedication to our cause more than I. But to travel there – that is madness! You do not need me to tell you that they have no government and no laws. You do not need me to tell you that it is nothing but a—’

  ‘A hideaway for terrorists, murderers and scoundrels. A safe location for Al Qaeda and any number of other fundamentalist networks from around the world.’ Khan smiled again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not need you to tell me that. You do not need to tell me that it is ravaged by war, that it has no police force, nor that it is unsafe even to walk the streets. It is for these reasons that it has become a magnet for the very criminals who would divert our young people from the path of peace. I will walk into the terrorists’ backyard. I will talk to them. I will tell them that they have no business with our peaceful Islamic communities, no business turning our youngsters towards the path of evil. It is not enough that Western politicians deplore the existence of these terrorist networks in troubled parts of the world. It takes one of us to put the spotlight upon them. To stand up to them publicly. To denounce them.’

  ‘But Habib, if you go there to bring the world’s attention to these people, you will be putting your life in great danger.’

  Khan nodded. ‘And it is for that reason that I will raise publicity for everything we are striving towards. We will let the news outlets know that I am travelling to Mogadishu, and we will let them know why. Though I doubt any of them will come with me, danger is always newsworthy. We will have more coverage than we have ever had before.’

  ‘But Mr Khan.’ It was Mariam who had spoken, and she looked embarrassed as all the men turned to look at her.

  ‘Yes, Mariam?’ Khan’s voice was calm. Kind.

  ‘What if . . . what if you die, Mr Khan?’ Her voice was teetering on the edge of tears.

  A silence. Khan took another sip of water before putting his glass back on the table.

  ‘I sincerely hope I will not die, Mariam. But if I do, we will have made our point more eloquently than we could ever have hoped. Do not worry, my dear. I have prayed, and I know this is the right path. I intend to make my announcement this afternoon. When I do, I expect us all to be busy with interview requests and the like. We must remember that I am not the story. The story is that those who commit violence in the name of our faith seek refuge in the arms of criminals and gangsters. That they are criminals and gangsters and that we, members of the Islamic community, recognise that and condemn them.’

  He removed his glasses and cleaned them, absent-mindedly, on his tie. ‘I do not ask that anyone accompanies me,’ he continued once they were back on his nose. ‘I ask only that you support me in this endeavour. Do you?’

  The members of the council looked at each other. Something unspoken seemed to pass between them, and the old man stood once more.

  ‘Yes, Habib,’ he said quietly. ‘We support you. And may God protect you every step of your way.’

  Jonathan Daniels, Director General of MI5, dreaded trips to Number 10. He hated meeting with politicians, whose smiles were always broadest when they were shafting you the most. And audiences with the PM – he dreaded those most of all. It was his experience that the man in the top job was the most insecure of the lot. He hadn’t met a prime minister yet who didn’t appear to think, somewhere deep down, that MI5 was just a tool to be used in his political machine to help secure his precarious position. This one was no different. He looked across the table at the familiar face, the dapper suit and the blue tie. And as he always did when he was in the Prime Minister’s presence, he reflected that the man looked like a boy, fattened around the jowls from too much chocolate. Of all the leaders Jonathan Daniels had met – and he’d met a few – this one was the least impressive.

  ‘Good of you to make the time to see me, Jonathan,’ the PM said, taking a sip from his cup of coffee.

  ‘My pleasure, Prime Minister,’ Daniels muttered.

  ‘A week to go until the President’s visit,’ the PM noted. ‘I thought it might be beneficial for you and me to have a little sit-down and discuss the arrangements. Make sure we’ve all got our ducks in a row, eh?’

  ‘My people have been keeping the Joint Intelligence Committee up to speed . . .’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ the PM smiled. ‘Of course, of course. Wouldn’t do any harm for us to have a little chat, though. Jolly important event for us, this. Sure I don’t need to tell you that. The President’s approval ratings are sky-high, and not just in the US. No harm in him scattering a little of his stardust. I’m, ah, just a little concerned about the terrorism-threat-level status, Jonathan. Critical, you know. Wondering if there’s something we can do about that, eh?’

  Daniels remained impassive. ‘The terrorism-threat-level status, Prime Minister, reflects the threat of terrorism.’

  A look of annoyance crossed the PM’s face, but he quickly mastered it. ‘Of course. Of course, of course. I’d just like your assurance that everything is being done to m
inimise the possibility of any . . .’ He waved one hand in the air. ‘Any unpleasantness.’

  Daniels took a deep breath. ‘Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘It’s no secret that I’m unhappy with the timing of the President’s visit. I consider it to be ill-judged and provocative. The anniversary of the July seventh attacks generates mayhem. Always does. We have every crank in the country tipping us off to bogus threats; and there isn’t a single genuine terrorist cell that wouldn’t love to pull off a spectacular a week from now.’ He could see the skin around the PM’s eyes tightening. This clearly wasn’t what he wanted to hear. ‘That said, I can assure you that the Security Service is working at full efficiency. I’ve cancelled all leave and we have our eyes firmly on the ball.’

  The DG breathed deeply again. He’d gone a bit further than he’d intended, but perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing. The PM appeared momentarily lost for words, so Daniels continued. ‘As you know, the President’s visit is not yet public knowledge and we will not be announcing it until the sixth. We are in touch with the Secret Service regarding their requirements for the day. In addition, my people are liaising with our special forces to ensure that the security arrangements are as they should be. As regards the threat-level status, we raised it in response to a particular threat, and I expect to hear of some developments about that threat in the next twenty-four hours.’

  He settled one hand on top of the other, and waited for the PM to speak.

  It didn’t take much for the semblance of civility to slip from the Prime Minister’s manner. That made sense, Daniels thought. You didn’t get to a position like that without a ruthless streak – he couldn’t be quite the bumbling idiot he appeared to be.

  ‘Director General,’ the PM said quietly. ‘A strong relationship with the United States is of course crucial to our ongoing security. The last conversation I had with the White House was distinctly frosty, thanks to a monumental cock-up in Helmand Province by our special forces. That’s not something I intend to repeat, and it’s my full intention, a week from now, on the anniversary of 7/7, to show the President that we are fully on top of the terrorism threat, and that we stand shoulder to shoulder with him in strength.’

  He sounded for all the world like he was on the hustings.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that the role of Director General is quite within my gift,’ he continued. ‘I’ll be most disheartened if I am unable to tell the President that this threat you have identified has not been comprehensively dealt with. Am I clear?’

  Daniels sniffed. ‘Quite clear, Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘Will there be anything else?’

  ‘Nothing else, thank you, Jonathan.’ The smile returned to his face. ‘Thanks once again for coming to see me. Now I’m sure you must be terribly busy, so be so good as to close the door on your way out, will you?’

  Daniels stood. The button on his suit jacket had come undone as he was sitting, so he did it up, nodded at the PM, then turned and left.

  In Jack Harker’s dream, his friend Red died a thousand times over. Like a phoenix, he came back from the grave only to burn another time in the furnace of Jack’s mind. And each time he burned, Jack imagined a four-fingered man watching in satisfaction. Smiling as his friend screamed and Jack himself stood by, desperate to help, but unable to do a thing.

  Jack woke suddenly. There was a banging noise. ‘RPG,’ he muttered to himself as he sat up quickly. But then he realised it was nothing of the sort. Just the coughing of a car engine outside. He blinked, confused as to where he was. Not the Stan, that was for sure. After he’d let fly at Willoughby they couldn’t get him off the base quick enough. Fly and Dunc Forsyth, the two cousins from his unit, had been sent along to chaperone him and they had been pretty sheepish about it. The transit to Kandahar had taken forty-five minutes, and a TriStar back to RAF Lyneham had been waiting on the runway, transporting green-army troops back to the UK for their two weeks R & R. Jack’s own R & R, he knew, was going to be substantially longer. A seven-hour flight back to the UK, and a wordless MoD driver had been waiting to take them to Hereford in the small hours, dropping Jack back at the one-bedroom flat he called home. He was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.

  Now it was 3 p.m., and as he lay there quietly for a moment he thought he could still hear Red’s screams. Talk about the sleep of the dead.

  The phone rang. He grabbed the handset from his bedside table immediately. ‘Yeah?’ His voice sounded fucked.

  ‘Jack, it’s Bill Parker.’

  Jack closed his eyes. Bill Parker was the adjutant’s clerk at base – a well-liked, softly spoken man, but he obviously wasn’t calling for a friendly chat.

  ‘What is it, Bill?’

  ‘Look, Jack. This is from the horse’s mouth, not me, all right? You’re to stay away from camp for the time being. The adjutant’s in Washington for meetings but he’ll be back in on the morning of the third and he wants to see you at 10.00 hrs.’

  ‘Roger that,’ Jack said without enthusiasm.

  There was an awkward pause before the adjutant’s clerk spoke again. ‘Listen, Jack. I shouldn’t be saying this so keep it to yourself. This has gone all the way to the top and the CO’s feeling the heat. It’s not looking good. They’re after sacking you.’

  Jack felt like throwing the phone across the room. More than twenty years in the Regiment and now this. He kept his cool though. ‘Thanks for the tip-off, Bill,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at 10.00 hrs on the third.’ With that he hung up and hauled his arse out of bed.

  Home, he thought to himself as he looked around. Hardly that. Just a place to keep his answer machine. He saw the little white box blinking at him. Three messages. Not exactly a whole lot, given that he’d been away for five months, but he couldn’t face listening to them anyway. He padded into the tiny kitchen, made a brew, then plonked himself down on the sofa in front of the TV. For a while, there was something pleasurable about allowing the mindless babble of daytime TV wash over him. A hell of a sight less stressful than taking incoming. But after half an hour boredom set in. He flicked the channels from game show to cookery programme, before settling finally on a news bulletin. A dark-skinned man with a neat beard and round glasses spoke to the camera.

  ‘. . . and it is for these reasons that I will be travelling alone to Mogadishu, to speak to the terrorists and to demonstrate to the Islamic community at large that it is only when we ourselves stand up to the rogue elements in our society that . . .’

  ‘Fucking psycho,’ Jack muttered to himself as he switched the TV off. Mogadishu was one of the few war zones he’d managed to avoid during his time in the Regiment and from everything he’d heard he would be perfectly happy to keep it that way. If some do-gooding civvy wanted to risk his life out there, he deserved everything that was coming to him.

  Jack still couldn’t shake the dream. It was like Red was haunting him. Back in Helmand everyone was shook up about the Stingers. But now that he was back home, Jack couldn’t shake the feeling that the weapons were just a distraction.

  Too many things didn’t make sense.

  Red’s death, and the death of the others, had not been an accident. They’d been ambushed, plain and simple. If Jack hadn’t made the call on the ground to send half the unit back to Bastion with Stenton and the flight case, the casualties would have been twice as bad. And you didn’t have to be Napoleon to realise that you couldn’t ambush someone unless you knew where they were going to be. So just how, exactly, did Haq and his Taliban cronies know that they were going to be right there, right then?

  How, unless someone had told them?

  He felt his stomach churning. What if the intention had been for them all to die once they’d completed the raid? It wouldn’t be the first time the Regiment had been privy to secrets someone didn’t want revealing. Wouldn’t be the last, either. But if that was the case, it would mean someone had been feeding information to Farzad Haq.

  Haq. Again he imagined the bastard’s face, crue
lly gloating, telling him how stupid he was.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Jack muttered. Back in his bedroom he rummaged around in his drawers for a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, before putting on running shoes and heading out the door to pound the streets of Hereford.

  He ran further than he intended – the afternoon sun was bright, but without the heat of the Afghan day to sap his energy he felt as though he could have gone on forever. It was good to clear his head and to push his body. To get his thoughts straight. When he did arrive back home, he was covered in sweat, and in a weird way that felt kind of normal.

  Having showered and changed, he returned to his bedroom where the answer machine was still blinking at him. With a sigh he pressed play. The first message was nothing – just somebody hanging up once they realised they’d got an answer machine. Same for the second. But the third message made him turn sharply to the machine. He recognised the voice instantly, of course, even though he hadn’t heard it for months.

  ‘Jack. It’s Siobhan. I don’t know where you are but . . . I just have to speak to you, all right? Just call me . . .’

  Her voice was on the edge. Jack closed his eyes. God knows what she wanted but it sure as hell didn’t sound like she was calling for an affectionate little catch-up. She sounded stressed out, and a stressed-out Siobhan wasn’t what you wanted when it felt like the world and his wife had just given you the mother of all bollockings.

  No, Jack thought. To hell with that. She could wait. For now he had other things on his mind. He wanted to know why Red and the rest of his men had died. The longer he left it, the more difficult it would be to find out. He only had one lead, so he had to follow it.

  The Bergan he’d carried all the way back from Bastion was propped in the corner of his room. He picked it up and a little shower of sand fell to the bedroom floor. Jack ignored that. He opened the bag and upturned the contents on to his bed. Dirty boots, old clothes, a couple of MREs that he’d cadged off some American troops but hadn’t got round to eating. And, of course, more of the thick, dusty sand that got everywhere out there. He rummaged through his stuff until he found what he wanted. It wasn’t much. Just a small card with a name on it – Professor Caroline Stenton – and a number. Moments later he was dialling it.