Black Ops

by Chris Ryan

  ‘Did you tell him?’

  ‘We did not. Communications with Agent MISFIT were difficult and intermittent. He presented us with his plan as a fait accompli, and we were unable to warn him of our change in strategy. Moreover . . .’

  ‘Moreover what?’

  ‘Ibrahim Khan was an idealist. Our assessment was that there was a very real risk he would arrange for the school to be evacuated if he thought the children were in danger. We couldn’t allow that to happen. The opportunity was too great to hit IS where it hurt.’

  ‘So Khan was in the vicinity when the Russians hit the school?’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘And there was a high chance he’d be taken out in the strike as well as the enemy targets.’

  A beat.

  ‘It was discussed at the highest level.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the DSF, unable to hide the disgust in his voice, ‘I bet it was.’

  ‘But Khan wasn’t hurt,’ Sturrock said. ‘At least not physically. The strike was a success. All fifteen Daesh targets were eliminated.’

  ‘And how many kids?’

  ‘Between twenty-five and thirty. Estimates vary.’

  ‘When did you next have contact from Ibrahim Khan?’ the DSF asked.

  ‘Two days later,’ said Sturrock. ‘He . . . he wasn’t happy.’

  Wearing nothing but his socks, his underpants and his vest, the colonel burst through the door that led from the drawing room to the hallway.

  He stopped.

  One of his close-protection men was lying on the floor, face up. The colonel couldn’t even remember the fellow’s name. Not that it mattered now. He lay in a pool of his own blood, which was still seeping from his neck. The cause of the wound was a long-bladed filleting knife which was still embedded in his neck, the handle sticking up into the air. The colonel stood over him, his legs paralysed with shock. He looked over his shoulder. She was there in the doorway, and she had a gun in her hand.

  She looked at the body. ‘Whoops,’ she said.

  He found the movement in his legs and started to run towards the front door, but he stepped in the pool of blood and it was more slippery than he expected. He fell, then staggered to his feet again, his hands and knees smeared with blood. He was aware of her shadow, cast by the overhead light, approaching him. He ran towards the door again but before he reached it there was the sound of gunshot. It was shockingly loud and for a moment he thought he’d been hit, but then plaster fell from the ceiling, showering him with a mixture of powder and lumps. He looked back to see her pointing the gun in his direction. ‘Put your hands on your head,’ she said, and he had no option but to obey.

  He could hear the rain falling outside, and a crack of thunder boomed over the house. She kept the gun pointing in his direction as she walked over to the dead body. She put one foot on the corpse’s chest and, with her free hand, tugged at the knife. It looked like she had to pull hard, as if the tip was firmly embedded in the CP man’s throat. But it came free after a few seconds and the colonel saw that about an inch and a half of the tip was smeared red.

  She pointed with the knife towards the drawing room. ‘Get back in there,’ she said.

  ‘When you say he wasn’t happy,’ the DSF insisted, ‘what exactly do you mean?’

  ‘I wasn’t party to the conversation. Agent MISFIT took the unusual step of going over the head of his regular handler . . .’

  ‘That’s Bethany White?’

  ‘Yes. As I say, he went over her head and directly contacted the ultimate head of the MISFIT operation. The person who identified Khan as an asset in the first place and who persuaded him to infiltrate Daesh.’

  ‘The colonel?’

  ‘The colonel. He was furious with Bishop. He was raving. He was . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was threatening to go public. He’d worked out that we’d leaked the intel to the Russians and he said he’d go straight to the UK press and reveal everything: not only that we’d duped the Russians, but also that in doing so we’d given tacit approval to a strike that killed thirty innocent children.’ He pinched his forehead, as though suffering a tremendous headache. ‘Can you imagine it? He’d been undercover with Daesh for years. He’d have absolute credibility. The story would run and run. There’d be books . . .’ He spat the last word as if it represented the very worst possible outcome.

  ‘What did he want?’ the DSF asked.

  ‘Want? He didn’t want anything. That was the whole problem. He was going to do it.’ He hesitated for a moment, staring into the middle distance. ‘We couldn’t let it happen,’ he said.

  The DSF didn’t say anything. He could see where this was going. He waited for Sturrock to continue talking.

  ‘In that one communication with the colonel, Agent MISFIT went from being our most valuable source to our greatest menace. If he made good on his threat, the possible repercussions were too immense to consider. There was a very real chance of the UK being dragged into direct conflict with Syria and the Russian Federation, not to mention the irreparable damage that would be done to the service. The PM would have to go, of course, and she wasn’t keen on that idea.’

  ‘And so would you,’ the DSF said.

  Sturrock sniffed. ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘None of us liked the call we had to make, but it was . . .’

  ‘Discussed at the highest level?’

  Sturrock nodded. ‘Conversations took place,’ he said. ‘We were on the point of bringing you in to arrange a special forces operation to eliminate Agent MISFIT, when an alternative proposal was mooted.’

  ‘Go on,’ the DSF said. He felt slightly nauseous.

  Sturrock closed his eyes. ‘We leaked the fact that Agent MISFIT was a double to Daesh,’ he said. ‘We knew they’d take the appropriate action. The end result would be the same as if we’d eliminated him.’

  ‘The end result would not have been the same, and you know it,’ the DSF said.

  ‘It was approved at the highest level.’ Sturrock barely whispered his refrain. As soon as the information was leaked, we received no more communications from Agent MISFIT. We assumed he had been eliminated.’ He frowned. ‘But then the killings started, and Khan’s DNA turned up in Palm Beach, Florida. We knew then that something had gone very wrong. We drew the only conclusion we could: that Khan was still alive, that he’d found out what we had done and that he was eliminating everybody who had been indoctrinated into MISFIT.’

  ‘But you were wrong. Khan was dead.’

  ‘When I heard Danny Black’s story earlier today, it sounded like cock and bull. For Bethany White to have had a child by one of her agents would have been the grossest dereliction of duty. And that one of our own agents – and a female agent at that – should have been responsible for killing three former Hereford men.’ He shook his head. ‘Highly improbable.’

  ‘But true,’ said the DSF.

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘How did Daesh find out about Bethany and the kid?’

  ‘By torturing Khan, I imagine. You know as well as I do that everyone breaks eventually, if you apply the correct pressure.’

  ‘When we first met Danny Black in Hereford, you said you were personally unaware of Agent MISFIT’s true identity until the third killing.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘So who leaked the information to Daesh? Who made the call? Who grassed him up?’

  ‘I’d have thought that was obvious.’

  ‘The colonel?’ asked the DSF.

  ‘The colonel,’ Sturrock replied.

  The colonel was back in the drawing room.

  He was naked now – she had forced him to remove the rest of his clothes – and was sitting on a high-backed dining chair. The twine that bound him to the chair was thin but very strong. She had wrapped it about thirty times round his arms, torso, and the back of his chair. Strain as he might, it was impossible for him to break free of it. He had his back to the fire and it was uncomfortably hot. The woman was standin
g directly in front of him. She had the gun in one hand and the knife in the other. It was the knife that terrified him the most. He couldn’t take his eyes from it as she stood there in terrible silence, staring at him. When she laid the gun on the side of his armchair – well out of reach – and approached him holding just the knife, his bladder weakened. Warm liquid spread over his inner thighs and dripped noisily from the chair on to the hearth rug.

  ‘Have we had a little accident?’ said Bethany White.

  ‘Please . . .’ the colonel whimpered.

  She put one finger to her mouth and hushed him. ‘I’m going to ask you some questions,’ she said. ‘You know what will happen, don’t you, if you lie?’ For emphasis, she placed the tip of her knife against his Adam’s apple, at exactly the point from which he had seen it protruding on the corpse outside.

  He nodded.

  She stepped back. ‘Was it you,’ she asked, ‘who betrayed Ibrahim to IS?’

  The colonel couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Was it you?’

  ‘It was discussed at the highest . . .’

  ‘Was . . . it . . . you?’

  A beat.

  ‘Yes.’ He stared at her. ‘How did you know?’ he repeated.

  She gave him a bleak smile. ‘He told me,’ she said.

  ‘What are you talking about? That’s impossible.’

  ‘Not in person, of course,’ Bethany said. She cocked her head. ‘How long do you suppose they tortured him before he told them everything? I think a week. It looked to me like his beard had about a week’s growth, when I saw him on the video footage.’

  ‘What . . . what video footage?’

  ‘The video footage of him being tortured and killed. The one his killers sent me. He’d told them all about me, you see. And all about our son. Do you know, I think they were almost more angry that he’d married a Western woman than they were about his betrayal of them.’

  She took a step forward and the colonel shrank back in his chair.

  ‘He told me all about the strike on the school, of course. About the children we killed. And that MI6 had betrayed him to Daesh. He didn’t know exactly who made the call, so he didn’t mention you by name. But I imagine he had a fairly good idea who was responsible. Don’t you?’

  The colonel nodded mutely.

  Bethany nodded along sarcastically. ‘Men like you,’ she said, ‘are everything that’s bad about the world.’

  ‘You . . . you don’t even know me properly,’ the colonel stuttered.

  ‘I know enough. You and my father were cut from the same cloth. Pillars of the establishment, and as dirty beneath the skin as the terrorists you pretend to fight. There’s not an authentic bone in your body. Ibrahim was worth a hundred of you. A thousand of you.’ Her eyes flashed, then she smiled again. ‘I don’t want you to think it’s all bad news, Henry. The good news is that we don’t have a week for torturing. I can’t stay for much longer. But I do want you to understand the reason for what is about to happen. Are you sitting comfortably? Are you listening?’ She spoke as if to a child. The colonel found himself unable to reply. ‘At the beginning of the tape they sent me,’ Bethany continued, ‘they made him explain in advance what they were going to do to him. First, they removed his ears, so he could no longer hear the words of his infidel masters. I inflicted that part of his punishment on Ben Bullock. Ibrahim often talked about how that man had offended and humiliated him. Next, they removed his fingers, so he was no longer able to fight for the infidel. That punishment became Liam Armitage’s. After that, they removed his genitals, to unman him and punish him for lying with a Western woman. It wasn’t easy to inflict that punishment on Ollie Moorhouse. He really did put up a struggle. But I managed it.’ She paused. ‘Would you like to know what they did next?’ she asked.

  The colonel shook his head.

  ‘They took out his eyes,’ she said. ‘They did that before they burned him alive, because they wanted him to witness his other punishments.’ She stepped closer. ‘In a way, you’re lucky, Henry. I’m going to take out your eyes before I kill you, so you won’t have to watch me do it.’

  The colonel, suddenly unable even to beg for his life, made a pathetic, strangled sound at the back of his throat. As Bethany reached forward and put the tip of her knife under the lid of his right eye, he leaned his head back to recede from the knife. Bethany merely followed the path of the eye. Now that his head was all the way back, there was nothing for him to do: if he moved it forwards, he would puncture the eyeball of his own accord.

  ‘Goodnight, Henry,’ Bethany said. ‘This is for Ibrahim.’

  She inserted the knife through the lower eyelid quite slowly. The colonel felt it slide easily through the skin, but it encountered some resistance as it touched the eyeball itself. Bethany pushed a little harder. The tip of the knife found purchase, and entered.

  The colonel screamed. The pain was like nothing he had ever known: profound and infinitely sharp. The vision on his right-hand side flashed with an electric white light, then turned muddy as a warm flow of viscous liquid dribbled over his cheek. He felt the knife twisting in his eyeball and he screamed for a second time.

  The process of removing the knife hurt even more than its insertion. The pain was so intense that he couldn’t scream. He shook his head from side to side in a desperate attempt to stop her piercing the other eye, but she just grabbed his hair, held him still, thrust the knife into his left eye and twisted it again.

  The agony was unspeakable. He gasped noisily for air and involuntarily sucked in some of the fluid that had dripped from his eyes. He choked as he felt the knife leaving his left eye.

  Even though he was blind, he felt the room spinning. Somewhere on the edge of his awareness he could hear the woman talking, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying. The pain was everything. It permeated every part of his body and every ounce of his awareness. He was shuddering with it, and he felt the chair to which he was bound jolting and rocking with the movement. His mind shrieked, and maybe his body did too, he couldn’t tell any more.

  And then, he felt it in his belly: the knife slipping easily through the layers of fat and into his stomach, and the keen torment of the blade’s slow movement up towards his chest.

  In that corner of his conscious brain that was still active, the colonel was glad he couldn’t see, because he knew what he could feel: his innards, spilling out over his genitals and slopping on to the floor.

  After that, it took him a full minute to die. Was she standing there watching him? Did she intend to inflict any more horror on him? He didn’t know. He had the vague sense that the knife was still sticking out of his torso and for a moment he had the sensation of being out of his body, looking down at himself, bound to the chair, wounded eyes bleeding, guts vomiting slowly from inside him like the movement of a giant snake.

  Then he felt his bowels loosen. And then, finally, the pain disappeared, and it was the end.

  22

  The DSF stared at Sturrock. He didn’t bother to hide his contempt.

  ‘That man risked his life for you. Day in, day out. For years. And you betrayed him to IS like that?’ He snapped his fingers.

  ‘We all have to make unpalatable decisions,’ Sturrock said. ‘We didn’t know Bethany White would turn out to be a monster.’

  ‘You made your own monster,’ the DSF said. He pulled out his phone and dialled Hereford. ‘It’s Attwood,’ he said. ‘Get me the CO.’ Seconds later, Mike Williamson was on the line. ‘Update me.’

  ‘We have a four-man team approaching the colonel’s house by car. An airborne team are in transit to the safe house from London.’

  ‘And Danny Black.’

  ‘He’s driving to the safe house.’

  ‘Does he have back-up?’

  ‘No. He’s on his own.’

  ‘Keep me informed.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  The DSF was about to kill the line, but Sturrock said: ‘Wai
t!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘When they find Bethany White, I want her taken out.’

  The DSF didn’t take his eyes from Sturrock. ‘Did you hear him?’ he said into the handset.

  ‘Roger that,’ said the CO, and the line went dead.

  The four-man Regiment unit had been despatched from Hereford with haste and briefed by the CO himself over the radio while they were on the road. ‘You’re to provide support to Colonel Henry Bishop’s three-man close-protection team. You have his coordinates. We’ve reason to believe that an attempt on his life is imminent. Put a ring of steel around the principal and extract him from his location if possible.’

  ‘What do we know about the hitman?’ the driver asked. His name was Matt Bussington, but everyone called him Busby.

  ‘We think he’s a she,’ said the CO.

  Busby glanced left at Billy Forman in the passenger seat, then at Kieran Clark and Joe Cleghorn in the rear-view mirror. They all had the same expression: a raised eyebrow and a faintly sarcastic sneer. Busby knew what they were all thinking. It was Cleghorn, a Geordie lad who never let anything pass unsaid, who vocalised it. ‘Fucking hell boss, you telling us we need plate hangers and Diemacos to stop some chick giving her Rupert boyfriend what for? What did he do, bang his secretary?’

  ‘We think she’s responsible for the deaths of Ben Bullock, Liam Armitage and Ollie Moorhouse, so save me the lip.’

  That silenced Cleghorn immediately. The guys in the SUV sat up a little straighter and Busby gave it more throttle, despite the intense rain. Sheet lightning illuminated the sky and there was a crack of thunder. ‘Her name is Bethany White. If you find her, put her down.’

  ‘Roger that,’ Busby said, and the team settled into a grim silence.

  The elements battered their vehicle as they drove through deserted lanes south of the Brecon Beacons. Each time a flash of lightning lit up the air, Busby became acutely aware of the flinty, square-jawed expressions on the faces of his companions. He wondered if they were thinking the same as him: that the unpleasant prospect of nailing a woman was just about balanced out by the thought that this was someone responsible for the death of three of their brothers. So bring it on.