by Mark Dawson
He pressed his cheek against the stock and aimed the sight into the body mass of the man next to Salim. No point in making it more difficult with a head shot. A round to the gut would be fine for now. It would put the target down, and Pope would be able to clean up when he was closer.
He curled his finger around the trigger and started to squeeze.
There came a howl of pain.
He pulled away from the sight and widened his focus so that he could take it all in.
The guard who had been with Isabella was on his knees. He was the one who had screamed out. Isabella must have struck him. He had managed to grab her around the ankle and he was holding on tight. She pulled as hard as she could, but it was a wasted effort. The man yanked back, pulling her leg out from beneath her and dropping her to the ground. He heard the other men call out abuse and laugh at the man’s misfortune. Pope put his eye back to the sight and swivelled the barrel so that he could focus on Isabella.
He saw Isabella draw her knees up to try to protect herself.
Pope saw the man kick her, hard enough so that she was raised up a little from the ground. He saw her look up.
He saw the man take his Kalashnikov and aim it down at her.
Pope put his eye back to the sight and changed his aim. He exhaled, emptying his lungs, and reached for the trigger.
Isabella was looking up at the man when she heard the crack of the gunshot. It came a fraction of a second before the man was struck, a splash of blood escaping from a freshly dug hole in his gut. He folded over himself and then dropped to his knees like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Isabella was looking around the clearing, trying to work out what had happened and who had fired the shot, when she saw a flash of light from the gloomy spaces between the trunks of the trees that hemmed them in. The sound of the shot echoed, just like the first, and she heard the sound of something falling to the ground behind her.
She turned. Usman was on his back, his hands pressed around his middle. She saw blood between his fingers.
“Run!”
She heard the shout and thought she recognised the voice.
“Run, Isabella!”
Pope?
Had he come for her?
If it was Pope, and if he spoke again, then she didn’t hear him. The deafening clatter of automatic gunfire swamped everything. The two men who had not been shot fired wildly. She had no idea whether they had seen the muzzle flash from Pope’s gun, but they were spraying enough rounds to make him stay in cover.
The Kalashnikovs were horribly loud, but even they were subsumed by what came next. The helicopter was equipped with a big 7.62mm machine gun in its open door. It fired, making a thunderous noise that sounded like the tearing of the sky. Whoever was firing the weapon must have seen the flash of Pope’s weapon, for the tracer lanced into the woods and then the big rounds followed, pulverising the trees.
Isabella pressed herself to the ground, covering her head with her arms.
“Get up.”
She felt a firm pressure on her shoulder.
“Get into the helicopter.”
She looked up and saw a man she did not recognise. He must have been on the helicopter. He was older, in his forties, and there was a cruelty in his face that suggested that she would be wise to do as she was told. She was pulled to her feet and then manhandled to the open door. She stepped onto the sill and allowed herself to be pushed inside.
The engine cycled up, the rotors started to turn and yet more noise poured down on them. It was hopelessly disorientating. Isabella concentrated on her breathing, on staying as calm as she could. There was no reason for her to be taken with the others. They might conclude that she was more trouble than she was worth, put a bullet in her and push her out the open door. She stood a better chance of staying alive if they forgot that she was there.
Jasmin and Khalil clambered aboard, their eyes wide with terror. Salim followed.
The machine gun was fed by a belt of ammunition and it was still firing. The man using it was not as indiscriminate as the others. He was laying down covering fire, regular bursts that preserved his ammunition yet made it impossible for Pope, or whoever it was who had fired on the party, to risk another shot. The man who had collected her from the ground, and the two jihadis who had survived the attack, pulled themselves aboard.
“Take off!”
Pope lay flat on the ground as the big rounds from the machine gun rendered the trunks of the trees around him into chippings. He had taken out two of the men, and were it not for the escalation that the M60D had provided, he would have been able to put down the other two. But now he was trapped. The rifle was laid out on the ground ahead of him. He put his eye to the sight and drew a bead on the gunner inside the cabin. He was about to fire when the Black Hawk’s engines whined and the chopper lifted off.
The Black Hawk rotated away from him, meaning that the M60D could no longer pin him down. Pope rose from his cover, shouldered the M4 and fired a burst at the Black Hawk. It was a large target and he was still relatively close; he couldn’t miss. His rounds sparked off the fuselage, but the chopper continued regardless. Pope watched as it lifted higher into the air. The pilot dipped the nose and it gathered speed, the rotors clattering as it drew farther and farther away.
Pope took out his satphone and called Bloom again.
“It’s Archangel.”
“Report.”
“They’re airborne. It’s a UH-60 Black Hawk. They’re heading east into Syria.”
“A Black Hawk?”
“Definitely.”
“There was a rumour that the Iraqis lost a squadron at Mosul. It’s not impossible that ISIS have pilots. Fuck. What happened?”
“I took out two of them, but I was outgunned.”
“And Salim?”
“He’s on board. The others, too.”
“Unhurt?”
“I think so.”
“Dammit, Pope. We need him dead.”
The Black Hawk gained altitude, following the line of a small hill, passed over the crest and disappeared on the other side.
“Pope?”
“I’ve lost my visual. Please tell me you have it.”
There was a pause, and perhaps the suggestion of a whispered conversation that Pope could not distinguish. Bloom came back on the line. “Yes. We have it.”
Pope didn’t need to know how. He just needed to know that they knew where Isabella was, where she was going.
“Track it. Tell me where they go.”
Pope heard a cough from the clearing. One of the men he had shot was still alive.
“What are you going to do?”
“They’re heading east. I’m going to go after it.”
“Good luck, Archangel.”
“Pope out.”
Chapter Sixteen
The flight was far from comfortable. The cabin was equipped with only three seats—just simple strips of fabric webbing that were suspended between metal joists—and those were taken by their captors. Isabella and the others were forced to sit on the floor with their backs against the fuselage. The big engine was terribly loud and they had nothing to protect their ears. It was hot, too, and the temperature was slowly ticking up the longer they were aloft. Isabella felt the sweat on her brow and the drips that ran down her back.
The others were suffering, too. Salim and Khalil stared at their feet, saying nothing. Jasmin looked bilious, and it was no surprise to Isabella when she bent to one side and vomited. The man who had been manning the machine gun had pulled the door closed as soon as they had taken to the air, so the acrid stench of the vomit had nowhere to go. The heat inside the cabin made it worse, and soon Isabella was struggling to manage her own queasiness.
There had been no conversation. The al-Khawaris had learned that it was pointless as they had been driven through the mountains, and nothing had changed now. If anything, the man who had assumed command since Usman’s death was even more severe. Isabella watched him. H
e had taken one of the seats in the cabin, anchoring himself against the occasional sway of the chopper. He watched them with a vigilance that she hadn’t seen in any of the others. He had a pistol in a holster that was fastened to his belt, his right hand resting on the butt. He looked grizzled, more seasoned than the rest, with a beard that reached halfway down his chest.
There came a shout from the cockpit, and the man unclipped his belts and went forward. Isabella watched: the pilot turned to the man, presenting his face in profile, lit up by the greenish glow of the instrumentation. She saw from his expression and the way that he punctuated his sentences with short little jabs of his hand that he was concerned about something. The noise in the cabin was too loud for her to hear what was being said.
The man came back again.
“We’ve come from Raqqa,” he said. “We were going to return there, but it appears that whoever was shooting at us has punctured the fuel tank. We need to land now.”
“Where?” Salim said.
“Al-Bab,” the man said. “We will continue to Raqqa by road.”
The man went over to the door. He unlatched it and pushed it back, allowing a gust of warm air to blow around the cabin. Isabella looked outside. To begin with, they were too high to see anything other than the night sky, but as the pilot banked to port, the angle changed and she could see a city beneath them. It was set out across a flat expanse of desert, fringed on all sides by the encroaching sand. To the west were the foothills of a small mountain range, and to the south she could see the banks of a river. The city itself was composed of low buildings, few of them more than six storeys tall, with trees fringing the streets. There was little evidence of life. She could see only a few vehicles, the lights tracking around wide roads.
They flew on for another five minutes, gradually descending until they were over an empty, sandy plain. It looked like a makeshift military facility, with a broad expanse of asphalt laid down in the centre and a collection of hangars and other buildings. The pilot flared the nose of the Black Hawk to bleed away what was left of their speed and reduce their altitude, bringing them down to rest on the apron. The engine cycled down and the noise gradually dissipated.
There was a line of vehicles against a wire-mesh fence. Isabella saw technicals, pickup trucks that had been fitted with anti-aircraft guns, but it was an old yellow bus that rolled out of the queue and rumbled toward the landing strip.
The man unclipped himself from his seat and turned to address his captives.
“If you do as I say, you will not be harmed.”
“Where are we going?”
“You will be kept overnight. Tomorrow, we talk.”
Chapter Seventeen
Pope came out from the underbrush. The two men he had shot were separated by a distance of twenty feet. One of them was face down and unmoving; he certainly looked as if he was dead, but Pope wasn’t in the business of taking chances. He took out his pistol and fired a single round into the man’s body. He didn’t move. He was dead.
The second man was still groaning. Pope trained the pistol on him as he approached. His AK had been discarded a safe distance from his body, but there was a chance that he might have a pistol that Pope hadn’t seen. The man was wearing the same sand-coloured combats with part of a black balaclava visible from where it had been stuffed into a pocket.
The man raised himself up onto his elbows and started to drag himself toward the Kalashnikov. Pope intercepted him long before he could get to it, and with the gun aimed down, he inserted the tip of his boot underneath the man’s body and flipped him onto his back.
The man looked up at him fearfully. Pope frisked him. He was unarmed.
Pope holstered his pistol, took out his knife and crouched down next to the man. He laid the edge of the knife across the man’s throat.
“You speak English?”
“Yes,” the man said, his larynx bobbing up and down as he swallowed. “I am English.”
“Really?”
“London.”
“Isn’t that fortunate? My Arabic is a little rusty. What’s your name?”
His larynx went up and down again, his whiskers catching against the sharp edge. “Usman,” he said. “Who are you?”
“There’s the thing,” Pope said. “I’m going to be honest with you, Usman. I’ve had a pretty shitty couple of days. Two of my friends were killed, I’ve been shot at more times than I care to remember and now I’ve lost the girl I came here to find. All in all, I’m not in a very good mood. So, in answer to your question, I’m bad news.”
He pulled the knife away, changed his grip so that his fist was around the hilt with the blade pointing straight down, and stabbed the man in the fleshy part of his thigh.
Pope let the man scream.
“What’s going on, Usman?”
All the blood had drained from Usman’s face and his skin was slathered with feverish sweat. He gritted his teeth, either unable or unwilling to answer.
“Let me put it another way. Why are you interested in Salim al-Khawari?”
He gasped the words. “I don’t know.”
“Speculate.”
“I don’t—”
Pope twisted the hilt, the blade rotating and tearing through flesh and muscle, widening the wound.
“Speculate, Usman. Have a guess.”
“We were told to come and get him over the border.”
“And his family?”
“All of them.”
“The girl?”
“We didn’t . . . didn’t know about her.”
“So why did you take her?”
“She was there. I don’t make the decisions.”
“Just following orders?”
Usman managed a nod, relieved, perhaps, that they could finally share some common ground.
Pope drew the blade out of the man’s thigh and put the edge against his throat. He pushed down and then slashed up, the blade slicing into the skin and then the trachea, severing it. Usman put his hands to his neck as blood rushed out of the newly opened incision, running between his fingers and down the sides of his throat and then onto the sandy ground of the clearing.
Pope wiped the knife on Usman’s fatigues.
He stood, sheathed the blade, collected his rifle and started the walk back to his bike.
Chapter Eighteen
The bus took Isabella and the al-Khawaris through the streets of al-Bab. The buildings on either side of the road were in a poor state of repair. They drove by several large craters, the apartment blocks slowly collapsing into the spaces where their neighbours had once stood. Whole neighbourhoods had been levelled by enormous explosions. Twisted metal rods poked out of blocks of concrete that had been cleaved in two. Souks and mosques were reduced to rubble, chunks of debris littered the roads and clouds of thick dust hung in the air. They drove through public parks with no trees, everything chopped down for firewood. They passed the hulks of burnt-out vehicles, men and women queuing at bread lines, and long queues of traffic around the fuel stations that still had fuel to sell.
Isabella had read a lot of books during her childhood. They were her main escape from the misery of her life. One of her foster parents had a library of classical literature, and she had taken books from it and read them when she was alone at night. Dante was in the collection, and this scene, she thought, looked very much like he described hell.
The man with the beard pointed to one large building that had been partially flattened. “That used to be a school,” he said. “The regime sent a helicopter with a barrel bomb. Dozens of children were killed. Now the Russians come during the day and the Americans come at night.”
The bus drove on. They passed beneath large black flags, the fabric ruffled by the night’s listless breeze. They passed a row of parked busses waiting to collect passengers. Men in dun-coloured military fatigues manned checkpoints, AK-47s slung across their backs. Young boys in Western football shirts played amid the rubble and debris of demolished buildings. Ther
e were enormous billboards on the other side of the street. The first had a picture of an abaya, together with Arabic script. Isabella could translate most of it. The poster set out ‘Sharia stipulations for abaya.’ The garments had to be made from dense material, there were to be no big brand names and the robe must not ‘resemble the attire of unbelievers.’
The man noticed that Isabella was looking at the billboards. He gestured to the second one. “It says, ‘We want nothing other than God’s law among us,’” he said. Isabella nodded, not letting on that she had been able to read it for herself.
The driver continued to the north. And then, as they waited to turn into a quieter street, Isabella heard the rumble of a louder, more powerful engine. A tank crawled by in the opposite direction, half a dozen bearded jihadis with AK-47s hanging onto the hull.
Finally, the bus came to rest, the brakes hissing. Isabella looked out the window. They had travelled into a ruined industrial zone, the factories and warehouses on either side of them wrecked by fires and explosions. Rubble had been piled up and left, and the wrecks of burnt-out cars and trucks were all around. They had stopped before one building that was more whole than its neighbours. It had not been left unscathed—part of the building had collapsed in on itself, and the courtyard that separated it from the road was littered with debris—but the majority of the structure was whole. The district did not appear to be far from the northern edge of the city, and the sky looked wide and inviting beyond the broken buildings. The sky in the other direction, to the south, was polluted with columns of thick black smoke that rose lazily into the air. It was an apocalyptic vista.
The bearded man stood up and turned back to address them.
“You will be staying here,” he announced, pointing out the window to the building. “It is not to the standard that you expect, no doubt, but I make no apology about that. There are guards inside and outside. Do not do anything stupid. They have orders to shoot you.”
Salim stood, too. “This is unacceptable.”
Isabella turned her head and watched him. Salim was precariously balanced between fearfulness and indignation. He had been like that all the way throughout their journey, but now it appeared that he had found a little courage. Either that, she thought, or he was just desperate to do something.
