by Dawson, Mark
Faik stared. In front of the three of them, just a few paces away, was a wooden construction that had not been in place the last time that he had been given his hour of exercise in the yard. It was a raised wooden platform with a thick vertical pillar and a horizontal post forming a cross-braced T. A noose dangled from the post, turning gently in the breeze. There was a trapdoor beneath the noose.
As Faik watched, the trapdoor was tested: it suddenly gaped open, slamming up against the underside of the platform, revealing a long drop to the ground below.
The sky overhead was as black as pitch. There was a flicker of light in the distance and then, a second later, a monstrous blare of thunder.
Donkey took him under the arm.
“You first.”
“Please!”
The guard dragged Faik upright and heaved him over to the steps that led up to the gallows.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
They slept in the canteen. Beatrix managed only a few hours, and those were fitful, assailed by her worries and fears: Isabella, the task she had set for herself and the need to complete it before her time ran out. When she eventually abandoned the pretence of rest, it was three in the morning. Her body spasmed with pain; it felt like she had an inch of water in her lungs, and she ached with the fatigue. She took a Zomorph, and then when that only dulled the edges of the pain, she took another. She dared not take more.
It all started now.
None of what she was planning was going to be easy, and she needed to be on her game.
Faulkner awoke a little after her. He found her outside, staring into the darkness.
“Still want to do this?” he said.
She nodded. “You know what you’re doing?”
“Yes.”
“As soon as I get him, you need to get down and get the car started. We’ll have a minute or two when they’re working out what’s hit them. It won’t last, though. As soon as someone gets them organised, we’ll be outgunned. We won’t want to be anywhere near there then.”
“I’ve got it.”
“Good.”
“Synchronise watches.” She pulled back her sleeve. “I’ve got four-fifteen.”
Faulkner adjusted his watch accordingly. “Four-fifteen, check.”
“I’ll see you in an hour and three-quarters.”
Beatrix sat in the driver’s seat of the Audi. She was parked five hundred feet away from the entrance to the prison. She dared not wait any closer than that. She watched through her binoculars as activity increased in the yard. Everything was as she remembered it from yesterday: the high fence, the gimcrack walls.
She narrowed her focus. The office block was between her and the prison. The Freelander should have been parked in a side street, out of direct sight of the prison but close enough to be started quickly when they needed it.
She had clipped the walkie-talkie onto her jacket. She thumbed the channel.
“One, Twelve. Comms check.”
There was a crackle of static, and for a moment she doubted that they were going to work.
“Twelve, One,” Faulkner said. “Copy that. I can hear you.”
“What can you see?”
“They’re getting ready. The gallows are up. There’s a small crowd. At least three hundred. Maybe four.”
“The guards?”
“Two in the watchtower with rifles. I can see fifteen in the yard. Eight of them are armed. Automatics and semi-automatics.”
“Anything else I need to know?”
“No. You still sure about this?”
“Just tell me when they bring them out.”
Beatrix had the bullpup F2000 Tactical TR on the seat next to her. She rested her hands on the steering wheel and slowly squeezed it tighter and tighter. This was the worst kind of jerry-rigged plan, thrown together too quickly with too little research. She would never have agreed to it if it had been presented to her. There were so many things that could go wrong.
The sun was rising into the sky, but it was invisible behind the thick blanket of black clouds.
“Twelve, One,” the walkie-talkie crackled. “Here we go. They’re bringing them out.”
She reached down and started the engine. “You ready?”
“On your mark.”
“You better be able to shoot straight, Faulkner. I’m going to need you.” She fed the engine revs and let off the handbrake. The car started towards the prison gates. “Here we go.”
Faulkner was pleased.
Beatrix knew what she was doing.
The unfinished office was an excellent overlook position. He would have liked to run a laser range to gauge things properly, but they hadn’t been able to get the equipment for that, and besides, he was already pretty close to the targets. He worked out a crude firing solution on the watchtower and then on the yard beyond it, and noted the details in the logbook by his side. Satisfied, he glassed the entire area, fixing the landmarks in his mind’s eye.
The rain had started to fall, and it had quickly fallen faster and faster until it was a deluge, sheeting down, a virtual torrent that made sighting much more difficult than it would have been if they had been conducting this operation yesterday.
But that was an excuse, and Faulkner dismissed it. He didn’t need excuses.
The prisoners were arranged in front of the gallows, with armed guards to the rear. They were dressed in orange prison-issue jumpsuits and had been dragged out into the rain to watch three of their number shuffled off this mortal coil. It had been planned as an instructive lesson for them. A reminder of what happened when you went up against the will of the government.
He watched the sentries in the watchtower for a moment. Two of them, both with Zastava M70 rifles, a little miserable from the rain by the looks of things, their attention distracted by the people in the yard behind their tower.
He laid the crosshairs of the rifle on one of the sentries.
His finger rested on the trigger housing.
He gauged the distance again.
Smoke was drifting out of a chimney in the prison’s roof. He used it to judge the wind: two minutes left.
He held the target in the sights, aiming for the centre mass.
He heard Beatrix’s voice over the radio.
“One, Twelve. Fire when ready.”
He waited for another deep roll of thunder, louder than his rifle. It came, rolling over the rooftops, and Faulkner exhaled and gently pulled straight back on the trigger. The rifle fired, the 7.62mm bullet punching into the sentry just right of centre. He staggered back and slumped down in the corner of the enclosed platform. The second sentry gawked at his fallen colleague, realising, too late, that he would have been better served dropping to the floor himself. Faulkner turned the rifle on him, jacked in a new round, and hammered the guard with a second chest shot.
“Twelve, One. Two hits. Both sentries down.”
“Anyone notice?”
“Negative.”
“I’m going in. Give them something to think about when I get close.”
Faulkner fed a fresh round into his rifle and looked for a new target. He found one, a guard near the gallows, and held him nice and steady in the middle of the sight.
He heard the engine of the Audi as Beatrix roared down the road.
There was no need to mask this shot.
He wanted them to know.
He exhaled a half breath and pulled the trigger.
Slow and smooth.
Straight and steady.
Squeeze.
The rifle bucked against his shoulder, and the boom rang around the neighbourhood. In the scope, Faulkner watched the bullet slam into the chest of the target. He dropped to his knees and then fell to one side, his organs pulped where the bullet had exploded inside him. Faulkner used his thumb and two fingers to
jack a fresh round into the chamber and swept the scope around the yard.
Chaos.
The Audi rushed at the gates, gathering pace, the engine screaming.
He fed another round into the rifle and sighted again.
The car smashed through the gate.
Beatrix pulled down on the handle and kicked the door open. There was pandemonium outside. One of the guards brought up his rifle and aimed it at her. The rifle cracked, but the shot went wide, missing by a fraction and thudding into one of the watchtower’s wooden struts.
Faulkner’s rifle boomed out again, and the shooter’s head splattered in a pink mist.
Another rifle fired, the shot caroming into the car’s windscreen. It shattered in a bright cascade of glass.
Two guards appeared in the doorway of the main building. Beatrix hit the ground and rolled, bringing up the F2000 and squeezing off two 3-round bursts. The guards tottered as they were drilled, both stumbling back into the building.
She assessed. The yard was full of yellow dust that had been thrown up by her entrance, and there was a clamour of alarms, confused shouts from the prisoners and the panic of the guards. She focussed on the three men in orange prison jumpsuits who were restrained with shackles around their wrists and ankles.
She had anticipated that.
The walkie-talkie crackled. “Two police cars incoming,” Faulkner said. “Half a mile away, coming in fast. You need to be quick.”
“I’ve got it,” she said as she hurried around to the trunk of the Audi.
She took a pair of long-handled bolt cutters from the trunk and ran to the prisoners.
“I’m here to help you,” she called out in Arabic.
She had memorised Faik’s face, and she found him quickly. He was dazed and fearful, and he shied away as she reached out and took him by the elbow.
“What do you want?”
“I’m getting you out.”
She could see that she was confusing him: her perfect Arabic, her blonde hair, the fact that she was so obviously a Westerner. His hands were shaking as she slid the teeth of the cutters around the chain that connected the shackles at the ankles and, grunting with effort, closed the handles and sheared through it.
“Help us too!” said one of the others.
“They are killing us!”
Beatrix knew that she didn’t have time, but she couldn’t leave them. The Iraqis would shoot them as soon as they had reinforcements in place. She took the cutters and cleaved through their ankle shackles. It took fifteen seconds that she didn’t have, and when she was done, she was sweating from the effort, and the sirens from the police cars were almost upon them.
One of the guards had crawled behind a collection of oil drums. Beatrix hadn’t seen him. He crouched and took aim with his rifle.
She caught him in the corner of her eye.
Damn it.
The M40 boomed again and the guard was drilled in the chest. He crumpled out of sight.
“Thank you,” Beatrix said.
Faulkner’s voice crackled back to her. “You need to get out of there.”
She had taken her eye off the prisoners for a moment. They scattered. Some of them ran towards the gate, and before Beatrix could do anything to intervene, a guard who had been waiting just outside it swung out of cover and sprayed them with automatic gunfire. One of the prisoners was cut down, crumpling into the dust of the yard.
Beatrix aimed the bullpup and fired.
Her rounds went wide, peppering the concrete post and forcing the guard back into cover.
“Faulkner . . .”
The rifle boomed.
“Got him.”
Faik watched in abject terror. He ran away from her and the gate, instinctively sprinting for cover in the only place he knew he would find it.
He ran back inside the prison.
“Faik!”
Two police cars skidded to a stop outside the gate.
“They’re here.”
“He’s gone inside,” she called back.
“Rose . . .”
“I’ve got to go and get him.”
“It’s too late. Get out.”
“I’m going after him.”
The prison was a hellhole. It was badly constructed, and even though it was new, corners had been cut and it was already falling to pieces. There was a reception area and then a series of corridors that led away like the threads of a spider’s web. One of the gates was standing open, and she saw the flash of Faik’s orange jumpsuit as he rushed through it.
“Faik!” she called. “Stop!”
He didn’t stop.
Not good.
“I’m here to help you.”
She heard his bare feet slapping away on the concrete floor.
Not good at all.
She cradled the F2000 and sprinted after him. There were no windows, and the light soon faded away, leaving her to make her way through a crepuscular gloom that was ameliorated only by a handful of overhead striplights, many of them flickering unhealthily. The occasional overhead light well admitted slanting shafts of daylight that served no useful purpose, save, perhaps, as cruel reminders of the world outside.
Faik hadn’t gotten very far. She found him cowering against the wall in a long corridor that ended with a locked metal gate. The corridor beyond the gate had cells on both sides.
She let the F2000 hang on its sling and approached him cautiously. His hair was matted, clotted with dried blood, and his face bore the unmistakeable signs of a heavy beating. There was a bruise across his cheekbone that was striated with the markings from the sole of a boot.
He spoke in Arabic. “Leave me alone.”
“I’m here to get you out.”
“Leave me!”
“You’re Faik al-Kaysi?”
He shrunk away.
“I met your sister. She told me what had happened to you.”
“But what . . .” He was pitifully confused. “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend. And we need to get out of here.”
“Why do you do this? What do you want from me?”
“Just to take you home. Mysha would like to see you again.”
The mention of her name seemed to penetrate the fear clouding his mind. “Mysha?”
“Yes,” she said. She held out a hand. Every second made it less likely they would be able to leave in one piece. She had to fight the temptation to yank him upright.
He took her hand and got to his feet.
“Stay behind me,” she commanded.
This might get a little hot.
Michael Pope moved to the edge of the building and took a quick glimpse down onto the prison yard fifty yards below. He had watched as Rose and Faulkner had commenced their operation. It was an unsophisticated plan, reliant on the fear that would be wrought by an accurate sniper against a crowd of easy targets and then the shock of a frontal assault. A blunt cudgel of a plan, but as Faulkner had explained to him last night, there was no time to arrange anything more subtle.
It might have worked, too, for all its flaws.
Faulkner had taken a well-scouted firing position, and for a soldier with aim as good as his, hitting the guards from that kind of range was like shooting fish in a barrel. Pope had counted eight accurate shots before Faulkner’s position had been exposed.
Beatrix had cut through the confused guards with ease. She would have been able to escape again, too, if the prisoner she was so determined to release had not turned tail and disappeared back into the building again.
Now, though, Beatrix was in a very dangerous position.
Faulkner had abandoned his eyrie and was no longer able to provide covering fire. The surviving guards were beginning to pull themselves together. And the police reinforcements were well organised. They ha
d sealed the breached entrance with two cars and then had fallen back into cover where they could safely concentrate their fire.
Pope heard the rumble of the big engine through the radio and then from the street below. He looked back over the edge of the roof at the big Manage Risk APC and watched grimly as it rolled up to the two police cars. It had its forward searchlights lit, powerful beams that traced blinding streaks through the gloom.
Shit.
Rose was trapped inside a prison.
A dangerous position? No, he corrected himself. It wasn’t dangerous.
It was hopeless.
Or it would have been hopeless.
Pope had followed Beatrix to Iraq. It was in direct contravention of Stone’s explicit orders, but he wanted to be on the ground. He had been a soldier for all of his adult life, and he had always known that he would find the transition to riding a desk difficult.
It had been impossible in this instance.
Rose was a brilliant operative, even now, even after all this time, but she was impulsive. She was bordering on rash. He had guessed, correctly as it turned out, that she was liable to go off the reservation, and when that happened, he wanted the added flexibility that being on the ground would afford him.
He needed Mackenzie West taken out of the country in one piece. He had only just assumed his new role. This should have been an easy enough job, even given the fact that he had been asked to use an agent who was no longer on the books of the Group. Go in, get the target, exfiltrate him. The business with Duffy should have been simple enough, too. Duffy must have guessed that he was on Rose’s shit list, but he wouldn’t have expected her to find him so quickly after she had taken out Joshua Joyce.
But Rose had complicated things. He didn’t know her well, but he knew her well enough to know that there would have been no point in trying change her mind about this excursion. Faulkner could have tried, but he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. Pope could have tried, too, but he would have had no greater success, and he would have had to reveal his presence to speak to her properly. There was no point.
No.
This farrago was a complication, but it shouldn’t have been insurmountable.
