The Kill Zone

by Chris Ryan

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  The man shrugged again. ‘You’re not a journalist,’ he said. ‘If you were, you’d be taking the UN flight in. And you’re not a pro, otherwise I wouldn’t have to tell you this stuff. So whatever it is you’re going to Mogadishu for, you need to ask yourself whether it’s worth risking your life for. You’d be much safer coming back to my hotel with me.’ He had reverted to his former self.

  They stared at each other. Siobhan thought about O’Callaghan and Khan. Most of all, she thought about Lily.

  ‘I don’t want to keep the plane waiting,’ she said.

  Siobhan grabbed her passport and ticket, then turned her back on the others and started walking towards the aircraft. When she glanced over her shoulders, Bibi and the South African had gone.

  15

  Nairobi. Flight time from London, eight hours. An eight-hour journey to a different world.

  From his cramped window seat on the 747, Jack saw the hazy Nairobi skyline shimmer in the late-afternoon sun and the city dust. As the plane circled in a holding pattern above the city, the captain announced that the passengers would be able to see Mount Kenya to the north, and Kilimanjaro to the south-east. Jack could also see the green, wooded districts that surrounded Nairobi. It was an impressive sight, but he knew from experience that those mountain regions and those woods hid more sinister backwaters. Nairobi presented to the world a face of prosperity and democracy, but that face hid the reality. Political corruption, widespread crime – Kenya wasn’t the worst place in Africa, not by a mile, but like everywhere on the continent it had its problems. Step away from the comfortable tourist spots and you needed to be on your guard.

  Jack wasn’t heading to the tourist spots of Nairobi. In fact he wasn’t heading to any spots. Once he’d touched down and gone through security, he went straight to the departures area of the airport. It was busy and hot. Long queues snaked round the concourse; men and women gathered chaotically around the bureau de change; almost everyone seemed to have a cigarette in their mouth. Jack stood by a billboard that showed a giraffe with the skyline of Nairobi in the distance, and which announced in jolly red letters ‘Kenya! Safari capital of the world!’ He scanned the crowds, his eyes searching something out.

  ‘My friend!’

  A young black boy – he couldn’t have been more than sixteen – was suddenly standing by him, grinning with a mouthful of large, yellow teeth. He held out a small wooden figure.

  ‘My friend, this is for you. A gift for you, my friend!’

  Jack ignored him. The boy took it in good spirit. He put one palm to his chest and grinned even wider. ‘Oh!’ he announced, like a ham actor on the stage. ‘In Kenya, we are all friends. You must not turn your head away. Do not be hard like a coconut, my friend!’

  Jack didn’t listen to any more. He grabbed the kid by the front of his shirt and gave him a hard stare. The smile dropped from the boy’s face.

  ‘Go away,’ Jack told him, before throwing him backwards. The boy managed to keep his balance, but scrambled away from Jack, all arms and legs, to where a small crowd of his peers were waiting. They gave him some unpleasant stares, but none of them looked like they were going to start tapping Jack for any cash.

  He continued to scan over the heads of the crowds on the concourse. Along the far wall he saw a line of booths, each with glowing signs advertising safaris in various parts of the country. Jack strode towards them and as he grew closer he examined each one. Most of them had two or three people standing by them, some of them white. One, at the end, attracted no one’s interest. The sign above the booth read ‘Rainbow Safaris. Discover the hidden beauty of Kenya at the Arawale Nature Reserve’. It was illustrated with indistinct pictures of lions, elephants and buffalo. Below the sign, sitting at the booth, was a bored-looking Kenyan. He didn’t look much more animated when Jack approached him.

  ‘Rainbow Safaris?’

  The Kenyan nodded almost imperceptibly.

  ‘When does the next excursion leave?’

  ‘Full,’ the Kenyan said.

  ‘I didn’t ask if it was full. I asked when it leaves. My name’s Jack Harker.’

  The name meant something to him. Markus had done his work. The man made a sucking sound with his teeth, then started writing out a ticket. ‘One hour and a half, Mr Jack,’ he said as he handed it over with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. ‘Have an enjoyable safari. I hope you find what you are looking for.’

  Yeah, Jack thought as he walked away from the booth. Me too.

  The aircraft was a twin prop. Jack didn’t know how many flight hours the thing was built to manage in its lifetime, but he felt sure it had exceeded them a long time ago. Half the seats had been ripped out to make room for cargo, and that space was now filled with sealed wooden boxes containing God knew what.

  The Kenyan who’d told him the plane was full hadn’t been exaggerating. Jack was forced to use a spare cabin-crew seat, which didn’t go down well with the crew themselves, who treated his lack of luggage and his sudden addition to the passenger list with suspicion. There were no other white faces on the plane, which made Jack suspect that not many of the passengers were heading off on safari. That made sense. There were other, more popular safari destinations in Kenya, and in any case not many foreigners would be keen to take an internal flight scheduled to land, as this one was, after dark.

  They took off at 18.30 hrs, and the light was already beginning to fade as the old plane bumped its way through the air, heading east out of Nairobi and travelling a little more than an hour before it started to lose height in sudden, unprofessional lurches. The pilot, Jack decided, wasn’t an expert. There were no trays of plastic food and complimentary coffee on this kind of flight. You just felt thankful to touch down in one piece.

  Jack took his mind off it by thinking about Markus Heller. They went back a long way. Over the years, the Regiment and Delta Force had shared both personnel and information. Jack and Heller had been passing acquaintances on account of that, but it was in the aftermath of the invasion of Baghdad in 2003 that they really got to know each other. Both Heller and Jack had been seconded to Gray Fox – code name for the US’s Intelligence Support Activity operations to locate Saddam Hussein. Iraqi militants had opened fire on them as they were closing in on a suspected hideaway on the outskirts of Samara and Heller had taken a round in the leg, straight through an artery on the inside of his thigh. He’d bled like a motherfucker and if Jack – or someone like him – hadn’t been by his side, he’d have died there and then. But Jack had reacted quickly, fixing a tourniquet on Heller’s leg while keeping the enemy at bay with covering fire. They’d got him out of there and into hospital in time for both his life and his leg to be saved, even though the long-term effects of his wound were enough to buy him a ticket out of the military that he didn’t really want.

  Jack would have done the same for anyone on his team, and they’d have done it for him. He neither asked for nor needed thanks for his actions. But Heller believed he owed him one. Big time. Trouble was, he was an unpredictable bastard – clever, ruthless, but also a Bible-basher who never seemed to have a problem resolving his religious beliefs with the fact that he killed people for a living. Maybe he was sanguine about sending them to meet their Maker; maybe it was more complicated than that. Didn’t make him a bad soldier; it just meant he lived by a different code to the rest of them. Quite why Markus Heller had been filled with the desire to sell safaris in eastern Kenya, Jack didn’t know. But with his background and his skills, he could hazard a pretty good guess . . .

  It was fully dark now, and even though they were flying over land, Jack could see only the occasional lights from settlements dotted around that part of the country – parched terrain punctuated by forested areas. They came in to land after a ninety-minute flight. Jack had been on ops in Africa often enough to know what to expect of the airfield: a strip of hardened earth, some corrupt officials and little in the way of facilities.

  He w
asn’t wrong. When the plane hit the ground it bumped and jolted against the potholed runway, causing both the passengers and the cargo to shake like a box of rattling bones. The engines screamed as the aircraft slowed down and stopped, abruptly, in the middle of nowhere.

  The passengers filed out. A couple of old Land Rovers drove up, but they were for cargo and luggage, not people. The passengers were obliged to walk about 150 metres across the airfield towards a couple of low, shabby huts that passed as terminal buildings. The air here was humid and heavy, like a storm was coming. Jack felt himself sweating as he walked, a little separate from the others, away from the plane.

  He was about twenty metres from the building when two men approached. They were broad-shouldered and flat-faced and Jack could instantly tell from the bulges under their shirts that they were tooled up. They didn’t look like officials, but they blocked his way and stood menacingly close.

  ‘Jack Harker?’ one of them asked in a low voice.

  Jack nodded.

  ‘Mr Markus sent us. Our vehicle is this way.’ He glanced to his right. In the darkness, Jack saw a Land Rover parked up just by the runway.

  The vehicle was caked in dust and stank of diesel. Jack sat in the back. It was a silent journey. The roads were bad, and although the moon was full and bright it did little to penetrate the darkness all around. Jack could just make out some kind of vegetation on either side, but the road itself was baked hard. Nobody spoke. Jack saw the driver continually glancing in the rear-view mirror, the whites of his eyes glowing in the gloom as he looked at him with suspicion.

  After about twenty slow, juddering minutes, Jack saw lights up ahead. A settlement of some kind. The headlamps from the truck lit up a small collection of wooden huts with thatched roofs. Jack knew these must be for tourists, because most Africans in this part of Kenya would be living in shacks. He saw a large sign that looked very similar to the one over the booth back in Nairobi. ‘Rainbow Safaris’. In the centre of the huts there was a campfire, and Jack thought he could make out the silhouettes of people sitting around it.

  The Land Rover came to a halt.

  ‘Who are those people?’ Jack asked

  It was the driver who answered. ‘Visitors to the safari,’ he said in his deep, African accent.

  ‘Is Markus with them?’

  ‘No. There are buildings beyond the huts. That is where he stays. We must walk there.’

  The people around the fire spoke in low voices. They appeared to be mostly white and male, and Jack thought he heard snatches of German in their conversation. But they didn’t appear to notice the three of them walking round the huts until they came to an open space, beyond which there was a collection of uglier buildings with concrete walls, gently slanting corrugated iron roofs and an impressive network of aerials – including a small satellite – protruding from the top. The air was filled with the low hum of a generator, and from one of the buildings a light was shining.

  ‘Is Markus in there?’

  The men nodded.

  They stepped across the open ground. The driver entered the building first, followed by his colleague. Jack heard them speak. ‘Mr Markus? Mr Markus? Mr Markus, where are you?’

  Footsteps behind him. Immediately Jack felt something hard and cold pressed against the back of his skull.

  And then a voice. As southern as fried chicken.

  ‘Here I am, boys,’ it said. ‘Now Jack, I don’t want you to think it ain’t a delight to see you. But I can’t help thinking you’ve probably seen as much of this goddamn country as you want to. Now, this is just a wild stab in the dark, but I’m thinking you ain’t here to be overwhelmed by the wonders of nature in all their glory. Would I be close to the mark?’

  Jack turned around just as the man behind him was lowering his gun.

  Markus Heller had changed. Back in Iraq he’d had short, steel-grey hair and a few days’ growth on his tanned face. Now he had a grey beard and his hair, which was down to his shoulders, was held back by a red bandana. He wore khaki safari gear that suited him, but otherwise – with the exception of the matt-black Glock in his hand – he had the appearance of a hobo. It looked like he took a lot better care of his weapon than he did of himself.

  A grin spread across his face. He raised a big hand and clasped Jack’s left shoulder. ‘Well you know what I say? Fuck the wonders of nature. Welcome to Africa, old friend.’ His grin became broader. ‘Welcome to Africa.’

  16

  ‘Do all your guests get the same kind of welcome?’ Jack asked, looking meaningfully at the Glock.

  Markus looked mildly surprised. ‘Sure hope not,’ he replied. ‘Rainbow Safaris prides itself on offering a first-class safari experience. Do I sound kinda like an advertisement? But then . . .’ Here he smiled almost apologetically. ‘But then not all our guests are currently serving in the British SAS. You are currently serving, right, Jack?’

  Jack didn’t answer and Markus nodded slowly. ‘Absent without leave, huh? Hope you ain’t trying to get me into trouble.’

  ‘I need help.’

  ‘Unfortunately for you, Jack, these are not the offices of the Kenyan Tourist Board.’ He stepped back a few paces, and Jack noticed that he still had a pronounced limp.

  ‘Not the sort of thing they can help me with,’ he said.

  ‘And what makes you think I can, Jack?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘Regiment gossip. You know what it is. You don’t think you’d be able to set up shop fifty miles from the Somali border without tongues wagging in Hereford.’ He glanced over his shoulder and looked at the signalling aerials jutting out from the top of the building. ‘Impressive set-up,’ he continued. ‘A bit more than I’d expect from, what is it you call yourself? Rainbow Safaris?’

  Heller’s face remained expressionless.

  ‘The thing I can’t work out is who’s paying you to stay in this shithole. Delta? Their man on the ground in case they need to send a team over the border?’

  Still no expression.

  ‘CIA?’

  A slight tightening around the eyes, and Jack gave an understanding nod. ‘We’ve all got to earn a living,’ he said, before slowly – so as not to make anyone nervy – putting his hand in his inside pocket and pulling out a bundle of O’Callaghan notes. Heller inclined his head. ‘I need to get over the border,’ Jack told him. ‘Immediately. I need vehicles, I need weapons and I need them tonight.’

  Heller seemed momentarily wrong-footed. ‘Seems to me, Jack old buddy, that the Regiment are better placed to do that than I am.’

  ‘Fuck the Regiment,’ Jack said. ‘This is personal. I don’t want them finding out. Same goes for the Firm and the Cousins. Can you do it?’

  Markus stared at him, then at the money, and behind those grey eyes Jack could see a world of suspicion. Finally, though, he seemed to come to a decision.

  ‘Of course,’ Markus said. And then, for the first time, he smiled. ‘For the right price, and as long as the Lord wishes it, I can do anything. Let’s go inside, Jack. Sounds like we have a few things to talk about.’

  Markus’s office was basic: a table, a telephone, a fridge full of local Tusker beer and a big metal cabinet along one wall. Markus cracked open a couple of cold beers while his flat-faced men stood guard outside.

  ‘So the safari business is just a front,’ Jack said.

  ‘I guess you could say that,’ Heller drawled. ‘I earn a few dimes from the business, keeps me outta trouble, but the real money’s to be made from fixin’. You should consider getting into the game yourself. I could always use good men.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll think about it,’ Jack lied. ‘I could be in the market for a job soon.’

  Heller raised an eyebrow, but didn’t enquire further. He took another pull on his beer. ‘Fuckin’ Somalia!’ he said suddenly. ‘Eighteen years of civil war, no functioning government, thirty-six thousand IDPs and the aid agencies can’t even deliver food aid because the fuckers shoot them if they try to step off their ships. You k
now, Jack, I got a pretty easy life out here. Now and then the CIA send a couple of scouts in-country, sniff around before reporting back that the place is still fucked up. But I got to tell you, it’s not often I get someone wantin’ to go into that piece-of-shit country off their own back. I don’t suppose you want to share the reasons with an old friend.’

  ‘Let’s just call it woman trouble,’ Jack replied.

  Markus laughed. ‘Hell, that’s the worst kind. Say, whatever happened to that daughter of yours?’

  Jack’s face hardened and he downed his beer. ‘Nothing to report,’ he said.

  Markus eyed him warily, but clearly got the hint. ‘Whatever you say, Jack. So what’s on your shopping list?’

  ‘I need to get into Mogadishu, pull someone out and get them back.’

  ‘You need a team on the ground?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jack said. ‘You got anyone you can trust?’

  Heller laughed for second time. ‘In Mogadishu? Hell no.’

  ‘Sounds like I’ll be going solo. What about weapons?’

  ‘Weapons, my friend, we can do. He turned round and limped up to the metal cabinet. He unlocked it with a key kept round his neck, before opening the door and standing back like conjurer who had just performed a trick. The cabinet contained almost all the personal weaponry Jack could imagine. Assault rifles and submachine guns were neatly racked along the wall; beneath them were boxes of ammo, fragmentation grenades, flashbangs, night sights – the works. Credenhill wasn’t much better kitted out than this Kenyan backwater.

  ‘A lot of hardware for a safari operation,’ Jack commented.

  ‘It’s very important,’ Keller said piously, ‘that we keep our customers safe.’

  ‘With flashbangs?’

  Keller laughed and took another pull on his beer. ‘We’ve got a light aircraft,’ he said. ‘There’s a storm comin’ tonight. I’d say you’d be best leaving here just before dawn. There’s a small airfield we use just outside the capital. We should be able to put you down there in about three hours.’