Black Ops

by Chris Ryan

  A wave of disappointed muttering passed through the crowd. The woman said something to Bethany, but she didn’t hear it. The alarm bells were too loud. Was there really a technical problem with the plane? She hadn’t seen any mechanics down on the airfield when she was looking through the window. Was this just a ruse to keep her in place? Were the authorities – British, Russian, Lebanese – on to her? Or was this a genuine, innocent delay? She tried to rationalise her situation. If they’d wanted to confine her, surely they’d have let everybody board, and then keep them in situ. And she told herself again there was no way anybody could know where she was.

  ‘I said, do you think they’ll put us up in a hotel?’

  Bethany blinked at her neighbour. ‘I’m . . . I’m not sure.’

  Her panic was replaced with frustration. This delay was a problem for her. She had work to do in the UK. A job to finish. She had, it was true, arranged her affairs in Room 35 of the Hotel Faisal in such a way that she might buy herself some time in the event that Danny Black had failed to keep her location secret. But still, she needed this flight to leave, and soon.

  The Russian airport officials were looking at her again. She tried hard not to catch their gaze, to look normal and unconcerned. A woman was approaching with a trolley of hot drinks. Bethany turned to her neighbour. ‘Let me get you a cup of tea,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve exited Syrian airspace!’ the loadie shouted at Danny. His relief was evident. Danny looked out of the window of the Merlin. He could see the chopper’s shadow, cast by the moon, black against the blurry terrain beneath. They were gaining height now they were in what Danny assumed was Lebanese airspace. He inferred that the head shed had cleared this part of their flight path with the Lebanese authorities.

  And then, in an instant, they were over the Med. The sea looked surprisingly rough given the clarity of the night, the curling foam of the waves illuminated by the bright moon. The ride was suddenly turbulent, so turbulent that Danny found himself picking out the location of the chopper’s EPIRB emergency locator beacon in the event of a landing on water. But the Merlin was skilfully and safely piloted. Thirty minutes later they were over ground again, flying over the island of Cyprus. The British airbase glowed warmly in the distance. The chopper circled it to the north, then touched down.

  The loadie opened up the side door. Danny exited immediately. A beige Land Rover was waiting for him thirty metres from the landing zone, a green army guy standing by it. As Danny ran up to the vehicle and climbed into the passenger seat, the green army guy did a double take at the state of him, then took the wheel. ‘There’s a C-17 on standby, ready to transport you back to Brize,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to put you on a secure line to Hereford first.’

  ‘Do it quickly,’ Danny said.

  The Land Rover sped away from the LZ, past two well-lit aircraft hangars, towards a collection of Portakabins that had been cordoned off by a roughly built breeze-block perimeter wall. Danny knew this to be the area reserved for special forces operations. A soldier in camouflage gear stood guard by the entrance. He recognised Danny’s chauffeur and waved them through. The lights were off in all the Portakabins bar one. Danny jumped out of the vehicle, ran up to it and entered.

  There was one man in here. Danny recognised him vaguely, but knew he wasn’t Regiment. SBS, maybe? ‘Danny Black?’ he said. Danny nodded. ‘Jesus, mate, you look like shit.’ He pointed to a telephone at one of the desks in the room. ‘It’s a secure line,’ he said. Without another word, he left the Portakabin, closing the door behind him. Danny perched on the edge of the desk and dialled his access number into Hereford.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Get me the boss.’

  ‘Wait out.’

  There was a ten-second pause before the CO’s voice came on the line. ‘She’s dead,’ he said.

  Danny blinked heavily. ‘Who?’

  ‘Bethany White.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Of course she’s not dead.’

  ‘Room thirty-five, Hotel Faisal. MI6 passed your intel on to the Beirut police force with a request for them to apprehend the occupant. They found Bethany White’s body. The working theory is that Ibrahim Khan got to her before the police did.’

  For a moment, Danny doubted himself. Could he have got all this wrong? He shook his head quietly to himself. ‘Ibrahim Khan’s dead, boss. Very fucking dead. I’ve seen video footage of his murder. They tortured him first, took off his ears and his bollocks and his fingers. All the things that happened to Bullock, Armitage and Moorhouse. It’s not Khan that’s been on the rampage, it’s somebody avenging his death. I think it’s Bethany White. She’d married him secretly. Khan’s the father of her kid. She’s behind the killings.’

  ‘You’re not hearing me, Black. Bethany White’s dead. It’s textbook Khan – he disfigured her after he killed her.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We’re not sure yet. Acid, probably.’

  ‘So they can’t make a positive ID of her face?’

  ‘It’s her, Black. Blonde hair, same height. I’ve seen the photos. It’s definitely her.’

  ‘Have they run her DNA?’

  ‘It’s in progress, but it’ll take some time.’

  ‘Boss, you’ve got to believe me, it’s not Bethany White.’

  ‘They found her passport, Black. The Tomlinson one. It was in her pocket. It’s her.’

  ‘She’s played us all like a fucking instrument . . .’

  ‘That’s enough.’ A beat. ‘Danny, you need to get back home. There’s a plane waiting for you. Board it now.’

  It was the use of his Christian name that alerted Danny. That, and the sudden tightness in the CO’s voice as he issued his order. It wasn’t just that Williamson didn’t believe Danny. He didn’t quite trust him, either. Danny kept his voice level. ‘Roger that, boss,’ he said, and he put the phone down.

  Danny hesitated for a moment. He tried to see the situation from the CO’s perspective. MI6 thought Bethany was dead. They thought Khan had killed her. And they thought Danny was the only person who knew her location. That put him under suspicion. He looked at the door. It was closed, but he knew that when he opened it, the SBS guy wouldn’t be alone. The CO was insistent that Danny board the C-17. He wouldn’t be leaving it to chance.

  It occurred to Danny that, right now, he had the advantage. If he struck quickly, he could overcome whoever was waiting for him outside the Portakabin. But where would that leave him? Alone in a British military base, and under even greater suspicion than before. No. If he had any chance of stopping Bethany White’s killing spree, he needed to be where he had no doubt she was headed next: the UK, where the colonel was under armed guard and Christina Somers was looking after Bethany’s son in a supposedly anonymous safe house.

  He stood up, walked to the door and opened it. He was right: four guys were there, two on either side. They looked uncomfortable, as if they’d been given an order they didn’t much like. But it was clear to Danny they intended to obey it. ‘No need for any aggro, lads,’ Danny said. ‘I’m getting straight on the plane.’

  He stepped down from the Portakabin, flanked by two guys on either side, and marched back to the Land Rover.

  Twenty minutes later, he was airborne again.

  At Moscow airport, midnight came and went. The passengers waiting for the flight to Manchester became fractious. Several of them surrounded the stewardesses at the gate, demanding more information, but there was none to be had. Bethany quietly kept her head down. She had no desire to draw attention to herself. The enthusiasm of the more belligerent passengers for an argument soon waned, and they joined the others, some of them sleeping in awkward positions on the hard airport chairs, some looking at their phones, some staring into the middle distance. Bethany occasionally got up to stretch her legs and to check on any progress down on the airfield. There were two maintenance vehicles at the far end of the aircraft, each with a flashing orange light.

  She walked up to the two stew
ardesses, who were quietly talking to each other. ‘Is there any news?’ she asked.

  One of them gave her a thin-lipped smile. ‘As soon as there is, Madam, we’ll make an announcement.’ She wasn’t masking her irritation very well, and Bethany had a sudden surge of her own. She had a series of momentary flashbacks. She was applying acid to the face of her one-night stand in Beirut. She was unmanning an ex-soldier in his house in Florida. She was dismembering the fingers of another military man in the best hotel in Accra. She was cutting the ears from a third in Dubai. It was strange how, when you’d done it once, you had a recurring taste for it.

  Something must have shown on her expression. The stewardess recoiled. ‘Is everything alright, Madam?’ her companion asked.

  Bethany forced her facial muscles to relax into a smile. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Everything’s fine. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to hassle you . . .’

  As she spoke, a man appeared from the air stair leading to the plane. He nodded at the stewardesses, who visibly relaxed. One of them moved to the intercom. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please accept our apologies for the delay. Flight RK235, destination Manchester via Paris Charles de Gaulle, is now ready to depart . . .’

  She repeated her announcement in Russian as the passengers roused themselves and formed a queue.

  Bethany was the first person to board. Twenty minutes later she was staring blankly out of the window as her transport back to the UK accelerated down the runway and launched itself into the air.

  19

  06.00, Brize Norton.

  The C-17 Globemaster, whose sole purpose on this flight was to transport a single SAS soldier from Cyprus to the UK, thundered along the runway, its wheels bouncing twice before it decelerated to taxiing speed. It came to a halt a hundred metres from the terminal building itself, where three ground vehicles awaited it: an unmarked white Transit van and two police cars. Danny Black was half expecting them, but their presence was still a blow. They confirmed that he was under suspicion.

  He had no option but to approach the Transit. His heart sank when the side door slid open and he saw who had been dispatched from Hereford to accompany him back to base, his breath steaming in the early-morning air. It was Roscoe, the lad who first told him about Bullock’s death, and who was a constant source of questions that Danny never wanted to answer about his time in the Regiment. Like an eager puppy, he couldn’t hide his pleasure at seeing Danny as he walked up to greet him. But there was wariness, too. He felt obliged to take Danny lightly by the arm and guide him in the direction of the Transit. The C-17’s engines were still powering down, so it was too noisy to speak. A single look sufficed, however. Roscoe gave him his space, and Danny climbed into the van with no more misplaced encouragement.

  There was a bench along either side of the van. Danny and Roscoe sat opposite each other as the vehicle sped across the airfield. There were no windows and the driver’s cab was blocked off. They could only see each other by a dim yellow light, and Danny had to depend on his sense of the vehicle’s movement to judge what was happening. They didn’t slow down for any passport control procedures, though their speed varied as they exited Brize Norton. A minute later they were travelling at a constant velocity, clearly on a regular main road.

  ‘The boys in blue taking us all the way?’ Danny asked.

  ‘’Fraid so, mate,’ Roscoe said. ‘MI6’s instructions. CO didn’t like it, but the spooks pulled rank.’ He licked his lips with anticipation. ‘So where you been? Word back at base is that you . . .’

  ‘Here and there,’ Danny said.

  As usual, Roscoe did not appear remotely disheartened that Danny had shut him down like that. A wild idea crossed Danny’s mind. Perhaps Roscoe would help him get away from this little convoy transporting him back to base. But what would Danny do then? Make his way to the colonel’s house and warn him that Bethany White was on her way and that she had plans to do things that would sicken him just to imagine? He could well imagine how badly that conversation would go. Perhaps he could head to the safe house, where Christina was looking after Bethany’s son. MI6 thought Christina was on Khan’s hit list. Did that mean that she was on Bethany’s? Would Bethany really leave her son with the woman she intended to murder? Danny didn’t know. She was surely unhinged, driven to the extreme by grief and the horror of what had happened to Khan. Danny didn’t feel confident predicting her next movement, but he was sure of one thing: at some point, she would collect her child. He’d seen the way she embraced the little boy. Bethany White had feigned many emotions over the past few days, but she hadn’t feigned that.

  ‘Can’t do it, buddy,’ Roscoe said. He must have noticed Danny eyeing the mechanism on the side door. He sounded regretful.

  Danny smiled. ‘Wouldn’t ask you to, mate,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not thinking of doing anything stupid, then?’

  ‘Mate, I spent yesterday lying in a ditch in Syria. Whatever they’ve got waiting for me in Hereford will be a fucking vacation.’ He sniffed. ‘You said MI6 were on site. Any idea who?’

  ‘Pale fella. Thinning hair. Weasley little cunt.’

  ‘Sturrock,’ Danny said. ‘He’s the chief.’ Danny wished he hadn’t said it. Roscoe’s face lit up at this titbit: the presence of the head of MI6 at a debrief for Danny Black, escorted straight off a C-17 with a police guard, was as juicy a piece of gossip as Hereford had heard in months. Danny reflected that Sturrock waiting for him at Hereford didn’t bode well. Danny was being recalled under a cloud. He knew the CO hadn’t believed his reading of events, but the presence of the chief of MI6 at his debrief suggested there was more to it than that. There would be no police convoy or SAS chaperone if he wasn’t under suspicion in some way.

  The head shed was making a mistake. Danny had to be free if he was to have any chance of catching Bethany. And if Roscoe wasn’t going to help him, he’d have to do it on his own.

  Which meant putting his chaperone at his ease. He smiled again. ‘Shame we’ve never found ourselves on ops,’ he said. ‘You and me. You’ve got more about you than some of the halfwits they’ve put me with.’

  Roscoe visibly preened at the compliment. ‘That’d be awesome, mate,’ he said, more like an enthusiastic puppy than an SAS man. ‘Maybe when all this is ironed out . . .’

  ‘Right,’ Danny said. ‘Look, do you mind if I put my head down? It’s been a long couple of days. I’ll tell you about it some time, as long as you promise to keep it quiet.’

  ‘Course,’ Roscoe said. ‘Go ahead.’

  Danny closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. But he listened hard. He was hyperaware of the sound of the Transit’s engine as the vehicle shifted through the gears, sped up and slowed down. He breathed slowly. He stayed still.

  And then, then minutes later, when the vehicle came to a halt, he struck.

  Roscoe barely knew what had hit him. Danny launched himself across the Transit van and cracked his left elbow into Roscoe’s right cheek. He had no desire to cause the guy any permanent damage, but he needed to stun him. The force of the blow knocked Roscoe on to his side. Danny lurched to the side door of the van, unlocked it and slid it open. Daylight flooded in, making Danny wince. He saw they’d stopped – presumably at lights or in a traffic jam – by a forested area, and he felt a surge of optimism: it was good terrain to get lost in. He launched himself from the Transit, ready to sprint into the trees. But the instant his feet touched the ground, he was pushed forward. Roscoe was on his back, and the momentum knocked him to the ground. He felt one strong arm round his throat, and immediately the lights and sirens from the two police cars burst into life.

  Danny struggled, but he knew his reckless escape attempt was over. Roscoe’s weight, heavy on the small of his back, was too much to overcome, and Roscoe knew what he was doing. He kept the pressure on Danny’s throat while two police officers ran towards them from their vehicles. A moment later his hands were being cuffed behind his back and Roscoe was pulling him to his feet. A bruise was alr
eady emerging on Roscoe’s face and there was blood dripping from his nose. ‘Get in the fucking van,’ he said, and he pushed Danny roughly in the direction of the door. A second push forced Danny back inside. He was aware of a brief conversation happening on the side of the road, then he was joined not only by Roscoe but also by one of the two police officers, who slid the door shut with a resounding bang. ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ Roscoe asked, wiping blood away from his lip as he spoke.

  Danny didn’t answer. He just stared into the middle distance, silently cursing himself for making such a stupid move, for failing to execute it properly and for underestimating his chaperone.

  ‘Fucking psycho,’ Roscoe muttered as the Transit van moved off again.

  09.00.

  Flight RK235 from Moscow to Manchester via Paris Charles de Gaulle touched down, several hours late, to the sarcastic cheers of several passengers who thought they’d never make it home. Bethany White kept her relief to herself. It was tinged, in any case, with the anxiety of having to make it past another passport control official. A British one this time. She reassured herself as she de-planed and walked with the other passengers to the immigration booths. So far as the British authorities were concerned, her location was either unknown somewhere in Beirut, or she was dead. Certainly they wouldn’t yet have had time to realise that the body in Room 35 of the Hotel Faisal was not hers. She estimated that for another twelve hours at least, her anonymity remained.

  Which meant that her work had to be completed today.

  The official who examined her passport was male, but Bethany didn’t attempt to flirt with him. She waited calmly as he scanned her document and checked her photograph. And she made very sure not to look relieved when he handed it back and allowed her into the UK.

  The Transit van came to a halt and there was a tap from the driver in the cab. ‘We’re here,’ Roscoe said. ‘Wait there.’