Black Ops

by Chris Ryan

  She was bound to the chair with lengths of sturdy rope. The knots were wet from the rain and difficult to undo. It took Danny a full minute to release her, by which time Bethany’s vehicle had disappeared. Still fighting the wooziness in his head, he pulled Christina to her feet. ‘Can you run?’ he shouted at her through the rain.

  She stared at him, then nodded.

  Danny grabbed her hand and pulled her with him as he started running up the hill towards his vehicle. Her pace was surprisingly good, or maybe his was unusually slow. As they ran over the brow of the hill, he experienced blurred trails in his vision. He closed his eyes and shook his head to clear it, then pressed on towards the car. He had to suppress a surge of nausea as he used his sleeve to swipe the shattered glass from the passenger window off the seat, before manoeuvring Christina into the car and taking the wheel. Rain pounded into the car through the broken window, but Christina barely seemed to notice. She was still shaking badly. She was also trying to speak, but at first could only manage disconnected words. ‘Danny . . . Ibrahim . . . Dead . . .’

  ‘I know,’ Danny said. He started the engine and put the heat on high.

  ‘She . . . she . . . tried to kill me . . .’

  ‘Yeah,’ Danny said. ‘Me too.’

  She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. ‘You look like shit,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Is . . . is Danny okay?’

  ‘He’s alive,’ Danny said, ‘if that’s what you mean.’ He found the CO’s phone and gave it to her. ‘Watch the bars,’ he said. ‘The moment we get any service, tell me.’

  She looked at him, then at the phone, then back at him again.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she whispered.

  Danny looked straight ahead. ‘We’re going to catch her,’ he said, and hit the gas.

  23

  Bethany White had expected to feel many things. Relief. Exhilaration. Contentment that Ibrahim had finally – finally – been avenged.

  She felt none of these.

  Her son was crying uncontrollably in the back of the car and it made her feel guilty. From time to time he attempted to open the back door, but it was centrally locked and he couldn’t get out. She’d always known it would be difficult. How could little Danny possibly understand what he’d just seen, or what was happening to him now? But one day, soon, she would explain to him about his father, and he would understand, and respect what she had done.

  She felt angry too. Angry with herself for listening to her son and sparing Danny Black’s life. How the hell had Black got there? How the hell was he still alive in the first place? Two minutes after leaving, she saw a brief flash in her rear-view mirror of a burning building. Was Danny in there? She doubted it. The man was relentless. He never gave up. She should have hit him harder at the very least, because she was coldly certain he’d be following her as soon as he regained consciousness.

  Which led to the other emotion that burned in her veins: fear.

  She wasn’t scared for herself. That sensation had been drawn from her over the past six months. She was scared for her little boy. Bethany was a target now. As long as Danny was with her, he was a target too. Because if she’d learned one thing about her former employer it was this: they didn’t care who they killed to save their embarrassment and cover up their misdeeds. Bethany knew how to make herself and her son disappear. She had more fake passports stashed away, and covert routes out of the UK. But she needed twelve hours, and with Danny Black on her tail, those twelve hours were slipping from her grasp.

  The windscreen wipers creaked on full speed. Although her visibility was poor and the road narrow and winding, her speedometer tipped fifty. Danny started crying more loudly and she felt the tension rising within her. Couldn’t he just keep quiet? Couldn’t he be his father’s son? She was about to snap at him when she caught him looking at her in the mirror. That look made something burn inside her. Her little boy’s expression was so like his father’s that Ibrahim could have been sitting there behind her, urging her on.

  She suddenly felt doubly resolute. She kept her eyes on the road and increased her speed.

  20.00 hrs.

  At first, Christina had not been strapped in to the CO’s car. When she noticed the rate at which Danny was accelerating, it cut through her other troubles and she scrambled to plug in her seatbelt.

  ‘Keep watching that phone!’ Danny shouted. The roar of the elements through the open window was almost deafening.

  They ploughed through the rain, speeding past the house. The flames had already reached the first floor. Black smoke was billowing from the conflagration. The rain made no difference.

  The speedometer hit fifty. Sixty. Higher.

  Danny was in the zone. He held the steering wheel lightly and handled every twist and turn of the road ahead with the skill that had been ingrained in him over years of training. He was driving dangerously but effectively. The terrain was hilly on either side, so she’d have to keep to the road. He knew there were no side roads off this one for at least ten miles. If he kept his speed high enough, and the vehicle on the road, he would catch her, eventually.

  And then what? Where was she even heading right now? A port, maybe? Somewhere she could easily leave the country? Did she have contacts who could help her?

  His face pounded with pain and a wave of dizziness crashed over him. He had to force himself back to full consciousness, and he realised Christina was saying something. ‘Service! We’ve got service!’

  ‘Give me that,’ Danny said. He grabbed the phone and, with one hand on the wheel, dialled in to Hereford. ‘Get me the CO!’ he roared as soon as a voice answered. ‘Now!’

  Williamson was clearly waiting for the call. He answered in seconds. ‘Go ahead!’

  ‘I’m on her tail!’ Danny bellowed over the noise of the engine and the wind and the rain. ‘Do you have my location?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s got her kid in the car. Christina’s with me, but the two CP guys are dead.’

  ‘Same goes for the colonel and his guys. Stay on her and keep this line open if you can. We’ll use it to keep tracking you.’

  ‘Roger that!’ Danny shouted. He gave the phone back to Christina. ‘Put it on speaker and don’t hang up,’ he told her as he nudged the vehicle a fraction faster.

  Of all parts of the MI6 building in Vauxhall, the operations room in the basement was the most secure. Even Sturrock had to undergo three biometric identity checks before gaining access with the Director Special Forces. The ops room itself was an open-plan space with lines of workstations, comms desks and large screens against one wall displaying live footage from different parts of the world. Sturrock and the DSF marched straight through this part of the room, ignoring the surprised stares from the analysts and operators working down there, and into a private room on the far side. It was like the main ops room in miniature: a single operator, five laptops, and one screen on the wall.

  ‘What have we got?’ the DSF asked the operator.

  ‘Hereford, sir,’ the operator said. He pointed at one of the laptops. Mike Williamson, CO of 22, was visible on-screen. The operator tapped at his keyboards and some further imagery appeared on the wall screen. The screen was divided into three: a half, and two quarters. The picture on each section was dark and slightly grainy. One quarter showed the flight deck of an airborne chopper, clipping the side of the pilot’s face and displaying most of the control panel. The second quarter showed the view in the main body of the chopper: heavily armed men, black-clad with balaclavas, helmets and helmet cams. Every five seconds the POV changed and the DSF realised he was looking at the helmet-cam footage from each individual member of the team. The half screen was an external camera. All it showed was the beam of the chopper’s lights illuminating the driving rain in mid-air. The footage was eerily silent.

  The DSF moved in front of the Hereford video link. ‘What you got for us, Mike?’

  ‘Bishop’s dead. So
are both CP teams.’

  ‘Pictures uploading now, sir,’ said the operator. Images appeared on the next laptop. The DSF only gave them a cursory glance. Five corpses on the ground and one brutal image of a man tied to a chair, blinded and excoriated. He noticed, however, that Sturrock couldn’t take his eyes from that image.

  ‘Bethany White?’ the DSF demanded.

  ‘Danny Black and Christina Somers are on her tail now. She’s in a vehicle and she has her son with her.’

  ‘Do we have her location?’

  ‘We’re tracking Black via a mobile signal, but we think there’s only one road she could be on. The chopper’s moving to cut her off from the opposite direction.’

  Sturrock was still staring at the horrific picture on the laptop. ‘Is the helicopter armed?’ he said, and there was something in his voice that chilled even the DSF.

  It was the operator who replied. ‘Miniguns, sir,’ he said.

  Sturrock turned to the DSF. ‘If they fire on the car, will there be any survivors?’

  ‘No chance,’ the DSF said. ‘We have other options, Sturrock. The chopper can put down on the road in front of them. We have a team inside. We can take both of them alive.’

  Sturrock wasn’t listening. He turned to the operator. ‘Get me the PM,’ he said, and he grabbed a headset from next to one of the laptops.

  ‘We’re talking about a five-year-old kid,’ the DSF said.

  ‘Get me the PM!’

  The DSF and the CO exchanged a long look over the video-conferencing screen. In the background, the operator was on the line to Number Ten. The images on the big screen barely changed: the pilot, the team, the rain.

  ‘Give me the room, everybody,’ Sturrock said. ‘All of you.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ the DSF said.

  ‘It’s a direct order from the PM. Give me the room.’

  The DSF and the operator filed out. They waited in silence in the main ops room, the focus of intense scrutiny from all the MI6 personnel at work down there. The DSF found himself remembering Sturrock’s self-serving refrain. It was discussed at the highest level. Another of those discussions was taking place right now, and the DSF had a pretty good idea how it was going to pan out.

  One minute later, Sturrock called them back in. ‘The PM is in agreement,’ he said. ‘Instruct the chopper to fire on Bethany White’s vehicle. Collateral damage is acceptable, given the circumstances.’

  The DSF gave him a cold look. ‘He’s five,’ he said.

  ‘Just do it,’ Sturrock replied.

  ‘Black? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Go ahead!’ Danny shouted. The CO’s voice was scratchy over the phone’s speaker, but he could just make him out over the noise.

  ‘We have our orders from London. The chopper’s going to make an intercept.’ A pause. ‘Their orders are to fire at will.’

  ‘No!’ Christina shouted. ‘She’s got a child with her!’

  ‘Danny, do you copy? Keep her hemmed in. Let the team deal with it . . . DO YOU COPY?’

  Danny didn’t reply. He was remembering the little boy, tugging at his mother’s arm while Bethany was preparing to nail him. He heard the kid’s voice in his head. ‘Stop it, Mummy . . . Don’t hurt him . . . He’s my friend . . .’

  Christina was looking at him in horror. ‘They can’t do this,’ she whispered. ‘He hasn’t done anything. He’s innocent.’

  Innocent. Like his father.

  ‘Black! Do you copy?’

  ‘Kill the line,’ he told Christina.

  Her hands were shaking and the screen of the phone was wet. It took her a few seconds to hang up. ‘What are we going to do?’ she shouted.

  Danny kept quiet. One hand was on the steering wheel, one on the gear stick. The vehicle felt slick on the wet road, but he was in control. He gave it a little more throttle and the car accelerated into the night.

  Little Danny had cried himself into silence, though he was still distraught. And frightened. Bethany could feel the fear coming from her child in waves. She felt the urge to gather him in her arms and tell him it would be all right. But she couldn’t lie to him. Not any more. And she was by no means certain that everything would be all right.

  She was sweating into her semi-damp clothes. The car felt like it was slipping from her control. The engine was complaining, the suspension juddering heavily. Each time she turned a sharp corner, she felt every muscle in her body tensing up.

  ‘Mummy . . .’

  ‘Quiet!’

  As she spoke, she saw two sets of lights. One set was in the rear-view mirror. A car, its headlights blurry and distorted in the rain, was gaining on her. Distance: seventy-five metres, maybe less. The second set was in the air, up ahead. Its lights cut through the rain. It was hovering, thirty metres high, a couple of hundred metres distant, its nose somewhat dipped.

  She looked in the mirror again. She knew it was Danny Black, and she’d seen what he could do. The memory of his cold, efficient execution of Al-Farouk suddenly returned. Danny Black would kill her and her son, without hesitation. She had to get away from him.

  Was the helicopter armed? She didn’t know. But she was sure Danny Black was. She had to get away from him. She drove hard towards the helicopter. If she could get past it, she had a chance . . .

  ‘She’s accelerating!’ Christina yelled. She was gripping the sides of her seat.

  ‘Yeah.’ Danny increased his own speed. His foot was on the floor. The gap started closing again.

  ‘They’re going to open fire on her. They’ll kill them both!’

  ‘She doesn’t know that. She thinks I’m going to do that.’

  Christina stared at him. ‘You’re not, are you?’

  ‘No,’ Danny replied. And then he added: ‘Not both of them.’

  The gap was closing quickly. Twenty metres. Ten. But they were approaching the chopper fast. A hundred metres. Fifty. ‘They’re firing!’ Christina screamed.

  And she was right. Bright orange muzzle flashes burst from the guns on either side of the chopper. Danny was five metres behind Bethany’s car and the gunfire was ripping up the road almost directly ahead of her. She was heading straight into the line of fire.

  The engine of his vehicle screamed, and so did Christina, as he manoeuvred to the right-hand side of Bethany’s car and sharply yanked his steering wheel to the left. The two vehicles connected with a brutal jolt and immediately swerved off-road and away from the chopper’s line of fire. They hit a rough field and Danny saw Bethany’s car roll a full 360, before coming to a sudden halt at ninety degrees to the road. He felt the axles going on his own vehicle and hit the brakes as sharply as he could, drawing to a stop barely five metres from Bethany’s car.

  ‘GET OUT OF THE VEHICLE!’ Danny roared at Christina. He opened his own door and stumbled out. Christina did the same, and she ran further into the field, because she could see the chopper was turning in their direction and slowly approaching. Its guns opened up again. The muzzle flash returned and the rounds followed a trajectory leading up to Danny’s car. They smashed into his vehicle, ripping it to shreds.

  And Danny was directly in their path, standing between his vehicle and Bethany’s, both arms raised.

  ‘What the hell’s happening?’

  Sturrock was staring ashen-faced at the screen. The chopper’s external camera showed minigun fire tearing through the rain and into the half-demolished vehicle. A man was standing beyond it, rain-soaked, face bruised and bleeding, arms in the air. ‘Black,’ he whispered.

  ‘Hold your fire!’ the DSF roared. He strode over to the operator, grabbed his headset and bellowed into the mike. ‘HOLD YOUR FIRE!’

  The miniguns stopped. Danny Black seemed to stare directly into the camera. The men in the ops room stared back in silence.

  Then the SAS man turned his back on the chopper and walked towards Bethany White’s vehicle.

  The rain drummed hard on the chassis. A clap of thunder rolled overhead. The rotor blades of the
chopper beat loudly behind him.

  But as Danny opened the driver’s door of Bethany’s car, it was strangely silent inside.

  For a moment he thought Bethany was dead. Her arms were by her side, and though her eyes were open, her expression was listless. But then she turned to look at him.

  ‘Get out of the car,’ Danny said.

  She looked over her shoulder at Danny Jr. The poor kid had the thousand-yard stare, but he was alive. ‘It’s going to be okay, sweetheart,’ she said. Her voice was monotone.

  ‘Get out of the car,’ Danny repeated.

  Behind him, he could sense the chopper landing. He leaned into the vehicle, undid the seatbelt, and forcibly pulled her out. In his peripheral vision he saw figures: Regiment men from the chopper in their black gear, weapons at the ready, swarming around the car. He pushed Bethany up against the side of the vehicle.

  ‘Look but don’t touch, Danny,’ she said.

  He gestured to one of the guys to approach. Danny had no idea who it was – he wore a black balaclava – but that didn’t matter. He was properly tooled up: a fully stashed ops vest, a helmet cam, an assault rifle and a pistol. ‘Give me your sidearm,’ he said. The guy handed over a Sig 9mm. ‘Get me Hereford.’

  While the guy arranged comms, Danny was aware of one of the other SAS men roughly manhandling the kid out of the car and hustling him over to the chopper. Pistol in hand, he turned his attention back to Bethany. Rain streamed down her face and her blonde hair was matted to her skin. ‘He remembered you,

  you know,’ she said. Her voice was hoarse.

  Danny raised the pistol to her head.

  ‘He was going to walk out,’ she told him. ‘Out of training, out of the army. The way they treated him, it almost forced him out. Then you turned up, and he realised not everyone was like that.’ She stared directly into his eyes. ‘He was a good man. He didn’t deserve what he got.’