Firefight

by Chris Ryan

  Will looked up at the DG's blurry face. 'Why the hell not?' he asked, suddenly desperate for the morphine now he knew it was there.

  Pankhurst took a couple of steps backwards.

  'Because you need to get out of here as quickly as possible. We managed to scrape you up from Priestley's house without the CIA knowing where we were taking you, but we're not going to be able to keep them in the dark for long. They'll track you down any moment and I can promise you that they're going to want some answers.'

  'About what?'Will asked. His throat was desperately dry and his mouth had an unpleasant taste in it.

  'About Priestley, Will,' Pankhurst replied, like a patient teacher explaining something to a child. 'About how he died.'

  'Ahmed shot him,' Will said.

  'We know that, Will. And you shot Ahmed. But things don't stack up at the scene. For example, why did Ahmed have two guns - one in his hand and one on the floor?'

  'I—' Will hesitated as he desperately tried to kick his slow-moving brain into gear.

  But Pankhurst interrupted him. 'Be quiet, Will, and listen to me. You've got what you wanted. You've played it out as far as it can go. But the game stops here. I don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that there's more to Priestley's death than meets the eye. Nor do the Americans. They've just lost one of their top men and they're going to want to get to the bottom of it. That means coming after you. I can help you, Will, but not until you tell me what the hell this is all about.'

  Will breathed in sharply through his teeth. The pain in his shoulder was agonising, but he tried to put it from his mind. Pankhurst was right. If the Americans suspected something, they'd be coming after him. He didn't know if he could trust the DG of MI5, but right now he was the lesser of two evils.

  'Have you ever heard of Operation Firefight?' he asked.

  Pankhurst stared at him blankly.

  'Then you'd better listen carefully.'

  And then he told him.

  Pankhurst's face was expressionless as the extent of Priestley's deceit unfolded. He said nothing, simply letting Will explain, in detail, what he knew. When he had finished, Pankhurst remained silent for a while. He stepped over to the window of the room, pulled back the curtain an inch or two and glanced outside.

  When he turned around again he had the air of a man who had made a decision.

  'A lot of things suddenly make more sense than they did ten minutes ago,' he said, quietly.

  'I'm glad you think so,' Will commented.

  'Trouble is, with Faisal dead, there's no way you can prove what you just told me.'

  'For fuck's sake,' Will whispered. 'Why would I make it up?'

  'Oh, don't worry, Will. I believe you - for what it's worth.

  But you've got to see that this is too politically sensitive to go any further up the chain. You understand that, don't you?'

  Will said nothing.

  'Everyone's going to deny it, Will. Everyone's going to pretend it never happened. You're going to be the wild card, though. You're going to be the one they'll want to silence. And they're going to come to me, Will, sooner than you think - put pressure on me to hand you over. If they do that, I'm not going to be able to say no. Not if you're still around. You need to get out of here. You need to disappear. And soon.'

  There was a silence as Pankhurst's words sunk in.

  'How long have I been out?'

  'Forty-eight hours.'

  'And where are we?'

  'Just off Great Portland Street. We kept you out of the public hospitals as a safety measure. I have to go now, Will. They can't know you've tipped me off. I'll keep them off your tracks for as long as I can, but they won't be relying on me in order to learn your location.' He approached the bed again and looked down at Will, whose eyesight was clearing now. The DG's face appeared sharper. 'You've done a good job, Will, but now you're on your own. If the Americans think I'm involved in what went on there it could have repercussions that nobody wants, so I can't have any more face-to-face contact with you. I hope you understand. But if you need anything - any help from Five - get in touch discreetly and we'll see what we can do.'

  Will nodded his head, weakly. 'Thank you, sir.'

  'Thank you,Will,' the DG said quietly. Will watched as he turned and swiftly left the room.

  Will lay in silence for a few minutes, trying to make sense of what Pankhurst had just said. He knew nobody could nail Priestley's death on him, but Pankhurst was right - the Americans would put two and two together about him killing Priestley and they'd want some answers. Answers he didn't want to give. He pushed himself on to his elbows once more, this time managing to stay up, even though it felt as though it took up all his energy. Slowly he heaved his legs over the side of the bed, then sat still for a moment while he allowed a moment of nausea to pass.

  The intravenous needles were taped on to his skin. He fumbled at the sticking plaster and managed to pull it off before pulling out the needles as slowly as his shaking hands could manage. A small amount of blood seeped from the punctures in his flesh, but he barely noticed it against the altogether more overwhelming pain of the bullet wound. Will pushed himself up on to his feet and took a couple of shaky steps before being forced to stop and hold on tight to the foot of the bed, his legs like jelly.

  As he stood there, the door opened and a nurse walked in. She was young, with pretty blonde hair and grey-blue eyes that looked aghast at Will when she saw him out of bed. 'What are you doing?' she gasped, stepping forward and putting her small hands against Will's naked arms. They felt warm on his skin. 'You have to get back into bed,' she urged him. 'You're not well enough to be up and about.'

  Will gritted his teeth against the pain, then brushed her aside. 'I'm discharging myself,' he growled. Looking around, he saw some clothes draped over a chair. He staggered towards it and started to dress, wincing painfully as he pulled a shirt over his wound.

  'But the doctors—'

  'Fuck the doctors,' Will growled, impatiently, before immediately regretting it. The poor girl was only doing her job. He turned round to look at her and saw an expression of thin-lipped disapproval on her attractive face.

  'I'm going to find one,' she stated, sternly. 'You need a clean dressing. Now stay there.' She spun on her heel and left the room.

  Will continued to dress, the adrenaline surge created by the sudden urgency doing a great deal to clear his head.

  Once he was dressed, he looked around. By his bedside there was a clear plastic bag with his personal belongings - a wallet, a watch and Faisal Ahmed's mobile phone. It was the sight of the phone that brought everything flooding back to him. Ahmed's final minutes. His plea to Will to take care of his sister. His last, reckless moment of madness. Will had expected to feel elated that Ahmed was dead, but he didn't. He didn't really feel anything. Just a pain in the shoulder and an urgent need to get the hell out of there before anyone else caught up with him.

  He opened the door and looked both ways down the corridor. There was a glass-fronted nurse's station opposite, but it was empty, and about halfway down the corridor was a trolley full of clean linen. To Will's relief there were no people. He didn't know which way was the exit, so at random he turned right into the corridor and followed his nose. He hadn't got far, however, when he heard voices approaching, so he opened the nearest door and hid.

  The room in which he found himself was a medical store cupboard, neatly packed with hundreds of small boxes and bottles of medicine. It had a clean, antiseptic smell - the smell of fresh bandages - and Will thanked his good luck. He found a stash of sterilised swabs and antiseptic lotion; then he scanned through the drugs until he located the one thing he was sure he was going to need. Orally administered morphine would make it possible to cope with the pain when he was out of there. Finally, he found a set of freshly laundered doctor's overalls. Putting them on was painful and difficult, but they meant that he would have a better chance of walking along the hospital's corridors unchallenged.

  He re
mained in the store cupboard for several minutes before quietly pushing the door open a few inches. He listened carefully. Nothing, so he slipped out.

  Minutes later he was walking past the reception. It took every ounce of energy he had to walk normally, but it paid off. Ignoring the excruciating pain in his shoulder, he walked out into the street.

  Nobody even raised an eyebrow.

  *

  Zack Levinson looked around his new London office - bland, featureless shit hole that it was - with bleary eyes.

  Levinson was tired. Damned tired. He'd caught the redeye from Washington just the night before and the DCIA was already on his case. Donald Priestley's body had barely been cold when Levinson had been drafted in to replace him and for a few blissful hours he thought he was on to a soft option - an extended vacation in London. He'd soon been disabused of that stupid idea.

  The DCIA was in a panic - that much was clear. Levinson didn't know why he wanted former SAS soldier Will Jackson, but he really wanted him, and the full force of the CIA's London resources were given over to finding the guy.

  Levinson's mobile rang and he answered it immediately. 'Give me good news,' he said.

  'We think we've found him.'

  'Alle-fuckin'-luia. Where?'

  'Central London. Private hospital. We're going in now.'

  Levinson breathed a sigh of relief. 'OK,' he said. 'Go get him and bring him straight to me.'

  He hung up and leaned back in his chair. Zack Levinson's day had just taken a turn for the better.

  *

  The moment he walked out of the hospital, Will hailed a taxi. He slumped heavily into the back seat. 'Holiday Inn,' he told the driver. 'Nearest one.'

  'You all right, mate?' the driver asked, genuinely worried.

  'Fine,' Will breathed. 'Just drive.'

  The taxi slid away.

  Half an hour later he was in a reassuringly bland room of the hotel, having checked in under an assumed name. He sat on the side of the bed, swallowed a couple of morphine tablets, and then set about attending to his wound. He winced as the dressing peeled away from the skin, the flimsy gauze sticking slightly to the still wet blood around the stitched-up entry point. He staggered to the bathroom, splashed cold water over the sticky wound, then dabbed it dry with a clean, white hotel towel which immediately became stained with patches of scarlet. Back in the bedroom he unwrapped the packaging of the fresh dressing with shaking fingers, pressed it to the wound and stuck it to his skin with sticking plaster. It looked a lot less professional than the previous job, but at least it was clean.

  Minutes later, to his overwhelming relief, the morphine started to kick in. Will stood up and looked at himself in a mirror. Jesus, he thought. You look like death warmed up. His skin was pallid, his eyes bloodshot and tired. He wished, more than anything, that he could just lie down and sleep - for days, if necessary. But that wasn't going to be possible. His mind was suddenly ablaze with plans, with things he had to do. Pankhurst's warning had been stark, and for the first time ever Will felt an absolute confidence that the DG of Five was on his side. And Pankhurst was right. Will might have done enough to stop the law coming after him, but the CIA would be slightly more tenacious, especially if they suspected that he knew anything about Operation Firefight.

  He had to make arrangements. Set things in motion. He cursed the debilitating wound in his shoulder, but he couldn't let it get in his way. Will could only stay anonymous for so long; the Americans would catch up with him eventually. Unless . . .

  Unless . . . He sat again on the side of his bed, a slideshow of images flickering through his brain. He saw Latifa Ahmed, brutalised and only days from death in the hut in Afghanistan. He saw the bodies of his fellow SAS men, dead and cold. He saw the flat, emotionless eyes of Faisal Ahmed as they stood together by Priestley's bleeding corpse. And he saw his family's grave, silent and still.

  So much violence.

  So much death.

  And it seemed to Will Jackson as he sat in that bland hotel room that there was only one way to put an end to it. He looked out of the window as a strategy began to form in his head.

  By his side was the clear bag of his personal possessions he had taken from the hospital. He opened it up and pulled out the phone he had removed from Ahmed's body. There were still bloodstains on it, though who the blood belonged to he couldn't tell. He flicked through the memory until he found what he was looking for.

  Then, with a deep breath, he shuffled up the bed towards the hotel phone. First he called directory enquiries; then, when he had the number he needed, he dialled it.

  The phone rang twice before it was answered. 'Good morning, Thames House.'

  'Put me through to the Director General,' he said. 'Tell him it's Will Jackson on the line.'

  *

  Lowther Pankhurst put the phone down, then pressed his fingertips together and closed his eyes. Jackson was asking a lot. An awful lot. It could cost Pankhurst his job if it ever came out.

  But by God, if anyone had earned a break it was Jackson. He thought back to the interrogation Latifa Ahmed had undergone. Nasty. He and Jackson might have had their differences, but the guy didn't deserve anything like that. In an official capacity, Pankhurst had to keep his nose clean; as a man, he owed Will Jackson a helping hand.

  He buzzed through to his secretary. 'Get Ashley Jones up here, would you?' he requested.

  Minutes later, Jones was being ushered into the DG's office. He was a good man. Unassuming, with his mousy brown hair and short stature, but reliable. Discreet. He stood respectfully on the other side of the desk and for a moment Pankhurst couldn't help noticing the difference in attitude between Jones and Jackson. A rueful smile flickered over his face, but he quickly checked it.

  'What I'm about to tell you goes no further than the two of us,' he said.

  'No, sir.'

  'I need you to arrange two passports, then deliver them to a contact in forty-eight hours. 11.30 a.m., Friday. St Pancras Station.'

  'The contact's name, sir?'

  'You don't need to know that. He'll find you.'

  Jones nodded, without asking any further questions.

  'You have a pen and paper?' Pankhurst continued. 'Good. Take this down. These are the details you'll need . . .'

  *

  It was a busy forty-eight hours, but slow, and it passed in a haze of morphine. Will travelled twice out of London - both of them difficult, traumatic trips, but necessary. When he wasn't travelling, he stayed in his hotel room - out of sight, recuperating as best he could, and hoping that Five would come through for him.

  As he lay alone in the room, he had time to reflect. He didn't need any more regrets in his life, that was for sure. Killing people had been his job for a long time, after all. But while he was unable to mourn the passing of Donald Priestley, in his moments of honesty he had started to feel a grudging respect for the man who had killed his wife, his daughter and his military colleagues.

  Maybe that was why he was doing what he was doing.

  Friday morning arrived and Will was up at eight o'clock. It was a bright, clear day, not a cloud in the sky. The wound was still painful, but bearable now and he felt he could face the day without any morphine, avoiding the lethargy that it brought on. He still cleaned the wound well, however, and applied a new dressing before putting on the same clothes he had been wearing for the past few days, which were now beginning to smell.

  He looked at his watch. Ten to nine. The meet was at 11.30. He'd stay in the room till eleven before making his move. He lay down on the bed and switched the television on in the hope that it would distract him. It didn't.