Pirate

by Duncan Falconer

  Downs couldn’t remember ever seeing Stratton that upset about something. He decided to leave it alone. He also decided to keep an eye on his friend. He wasn’t himself and they were about to step into a very hostile location.

  Stratton stepped off the edge of the plateau and began down the slope that had turned into sludge in the rain.

  Downs looked back for the rest of his men. ‘Come on, you lot!’ he shouted. ‘There’s a war on, you know!’

  The men hurried over to the team leader as another glider burst into flames.

  ‘We’ll see you in the wood, Smudge,’ Downs shouted.

  ‘Roger that,’ Smudge called back, dumping an incendiary into another glider and hurrying off to the next one.

  The rain continued to fall in buckets. Stratton felt soaked to the skin but it meant nothing to him. He carried his Colt at the ready as he passed the redoubt he and the girl had hidden behind only two days before.

  When he walked into the clearing on the edge of the wood, he stopped to look down at the spot where Hopper had knelt when he shot him. The ground was muddy with water pooling everywhere.

  He heard Downs and the others coming up behind him. They spread out as they approached the trees. Fires still burned within the wood. They could see no movement. It was like all who had survived had scattered.

  Milton, one of the non-pilots, stepped beside Downs with a video camera attached to a head cage that allowed him to look through the lens but keep his hands on his weapon.

  ‘Oscar Zero, that’s Tango One Foxtrot at Sierra Two,’ Downs said into his radio.

  ‘Roger, that’s Tango One at Sierra Two,’ came a reply.

  Downs looked at the others either side of him to see if they were ready to move in but Stratton set off without waiting for the command.

  ‘So used to working on your own, ain’t you,’ Downs quipped as he walked off after him.

  They didn’t have to walk far into the wood before they came across the first dead fighter. A fresh depression in the ground a few metres away and his missing leg suggested he had been killed by a mortar.

  Milton stood over the body to film it for a few seconds. Downs and the others set off deeper into the trees.

  By the time they reached a group of huts that appeared to be the centre of the camp, they had seen only a dozen or so dead. If there was a similar ratio throughout, Stratton estimated there could be no more than forty all told. Which was a small portion of the total numbers encamped in the location. It reminded all of them that they needed to do what they had come to do quickly and get out of there. If the jihadists regrouped and pressed a counter-attack, things could quickly go wrong for the teams.

  They heard a moan from within a clump of bushes. A fighter lay on the wet ground, the rain dropping on to him from the branches above, his leg badly mangled. He stared pathetically at the faces looking down on him, as much in shock to see them as from his wound. He had no weapons and looked harmless enough. The operatives walked away, just left him. They didn’t have the time or the equipment to be humane. The truth was, after so many years fighting the jihadists, the men didn’t have much humanity left either. It wasn’t something to be proud of, and if asked, most would have admitted that. But it was an easy fault to live with, or at least justify to a degree. If the jihadists caught a Western soldier, they wouldn’t give him the finest medical treatment available and three square meals a day or leave him with the hope of one day seeing his family again.

  The men understood why they had to be humane but they couldn’t always maintain it.

  Stratton walked to one of the wooden huts and pushed in the door. A fighter lay inside on the floor, killed by a piece of shrapnel that had blown through the thin plywood wall and hit him in the chest. A ceiling-high stack of long green boxes took up half the room.

  Stratton knew instantly what they were. He unclipped the lid of one and opened it up. Inside he saw a brand-new HN series Chinese ground-to-air missile.

  Downs stepped in behind him. ‘Are these what it’s all been about?’ he asked.

  ‘Most of them,’ Stratton replied. ‘Not all.’

  ‘I wonder how many of the ones they’ve already shipped have been offloaded.’

  ‘I expect London is trying to figure that out right now.’

  Downs exhaled heavily. ‘Right. Milton! In here. Film this lot before we burn it.’

  The cameraman stepped inside along with a couple of other men.

  ‘Make sure you get as many serial numbers as you can,’ Downs ordered. ‘Smudge, when he’s done I want this lot done to a crisp.’

  ‘We’ll certainly take care of that,’ Smudge said.

  Stratton walked outside and looked around, unsatisfied. He stepped to the next hut. Nothing but dead bodies. The same with the one after. He stalked through the camp inspecting any dead he saw. The odds were against any being the Saudi but he had to check. He couldn’t bear the thought of that low-life escaping. If the man did manage to get out of Somalia, London had only a slim chance of ever finding him. You only had to look at bin Laden. If that guy could stay hidden, then Sabarak surely could for a fraction of the price.

  Stratton walked to another pair of huts, built out of wood just like the last. One had been partially destroyed but the other appeared untouched apart from a few shrapnel holes in it. The door stood open and he could hear movement inside. Voices.

  Then two SBS operatives stepped outside and looked around like they were deciding where to go next. Stratton immediately recognised the bigger of the two. It was Matt.

  Matt saw Stratton at the same time and stared at him.

  Stratton had no interest in the man and turned away from the hut since it had obviously been cleared.

  ‘Just another wounded in there,’ Matt said to Stratton.

  ‘No guns,’ Matt’s partner said. ‘He speaks English. Asked if he could light a lamp. I told ’im ’e could set fire to ’imself if ’e liked.’

  Stratton looked back at the hut. The only Somali he had heard speaking English during his visit was Lotto.

  And Sabarak.

  He walked up to the door and pushed it open. Sitting on the floor in the darkness next to a desk was a man holding a kerosene lamp. He struck a match along the side of a box and when it lit he touched it to the wick of the lamp. The flame glowed to expose his face.

  It was the Saudi.

  He sat with his legs outstretched, one of them bloody, disfigured by a gruesome wound on the thigh.

  Sabarak raised his head to look at the new visitor. When he saw who it was his expression turned grey. When the glider attack had first begun and a mortar had struck the shed next door, sending a piece of shrapnel through the wall and into his leg, he had thought his end had come and had sat on the floor waiting for his executioners to arrive. When the two SBS operatives walked into the hut, Sabarak had fully expected them to shoot him. But they had simply looked around and checked him for a weapon. Sabarak had decided to risk communicating with them. It hadn’t surprised him that the men spoke English. He knew the attack had to have been carried out by either the British or the Americans. When they left him on his own, Sabarak realised he was going to survive. The British were not bloody executioners. They had come for the missiles.

  But as he stared into the cold eyes of the man standing in the doorway, his confidence in that last analysis withered. He swallowed, his throat dry, hoping there was a chance the man, whom the other one had called Stratton, had come to arrest him as he had in Yemen.

  Stratton allowed the end of the barrel of his Colt to drift in Sabarak’s direction.

  The Saudi read the message clear enough. He had killed Stratton’s friend. He knew Westerners weren’t generally savage without a cause, not like his own people. He regarded it as a weakness in their race and a strength among his own kind. But he was well aware of the Westerner’s appetite for revenge. This one had braved hundreds of fighters and risked his life in an attempt to rescue his friend. And he had failed. He then had
tried to kill Sabarak. He wouldn’t fail this time. Sabarak could see it in the eyes. There was no doubt there, just a cold hard reality.

  ‘I have something for you,’ Sabarak said.

  He reached under the desk. Stratton applied a little pressure to the Colt’s trigger as a warning.

  Sabarak froze. ‘You can shoot me after. But allow me the pleasure of seeing your face when I present you with my gift.’

  Stratton didn’t move, suddenly curious about Sabarak’s ‘gift’.

  Sabarak took hold of a heavy bundle covered in a towel. The effort caused him some pain, which he fought. He tossed the bundle towards Stratton while keeping a hold of the corner of the towel.

  A human head rolled out and came to rest on the floor between the two men.

  Hopper’s head.

  20

  Stratton looked down at the head, Hopper’s eyes half open, teeth visible and all of him, especially his hair, matted in dried blood, his neck in tatters where it had been hacked at. So the replacement executioner had his own problems cutting through it cleanly.

  But the thing that struck Stratton most was something he couldn’t see. Stratton had last looked at Hopper’s face above the sights of the AK-47. It was not an accurate weapon and he could easily have been off by several inches. But he could see no damage to any part of Hopper’s head. A bullet would have created a neat entry hole and a larger exit hole. So they had carried out the ritual. They had cut off the head because Hopper had been alive.

  Stratton needed to confirm that. ‘Why did you kill him?’ he said.

  ‘What else should we have done with him?’ Sabarak asked, like the question was a stupid one.

  It was all Stratton wanted to know. He hadn’t killed Hopper, despite his efforts. Matt had been right in part. Stratton had decided Hopper’s fate, like he had been God. If these bastards had only waited a couple of days longer, Hopper would most likely be alive and thanking the lads for rescuing him. But only because Stratton had missed the shot. Hopper might even have forgiven Stratton for leaving him in the prison hut. But he couldn’t, because he was dead. And it was still Stratton’s fault.

  Downs stepped into the hut. He saw the Saudi first and then Hopper’s head on the floor. ‘Dear God,’ he muttered.

  Milton walked in with the recorder strapped to his head.

  ‘Get out of here,’ Stratton said coldly.

  The cameraman either didn’t hear or chose to ignore him. Milton reached for his recorder to unpause it. Stratton grabbed him by the neck and threw him outside and to the ground.

  ‘Easy man,’ Downs said.

  ‘Leave us, please,’ Stratton said softly. ‘He’s the one I’ve come for.’

  Downs considered what to do. If he did his job, he should restrain Stratton and take him back to the town and then on to the ship. But that was easier said than done. He knew Stratton well enough to see the state he was in. He would need tying up and all sorts to get him back to the beach. So the wiser course of action would be to let him be. Downs looked at Stratton and the Saudi. Then he looked at the head on the mud floor between them. The man sitting beside it was surely responsible otherwise Stratton would not be looking at him like that.

  ‘He was driving my guards crazy talking about his wife and children all the time,’ Sabarak said, a smile on his face.

  Downs’s eyes narrowed, darkened, like a shadow had passed across them.

  Sabarak seemed to see it and his smirk faded.

  ‘Did you hear that, me old fellah?’ Downs said to Sabarak. ‘That was the sound of your own God turning his back on you.’

  Downs walked out of the hut, closing the door behind him and leaving Stratton inside. He joined his men who looked between him and the hut. Some seemed to accept it, for whatever private reason they had. Some looked unsure, like they considered it to be wrong.

  ‘What’s going on in there, Downsy?’ one of the men asked.

  ‘Well, there’s two men inside. One filled with uncontrollable hate, the other half mad with revenge. Thing is, I don’t know which is which.’

  Then they heard a shot. Then a crash. They saw the inside of the hut light up. The door opened and Stratton stepped out. The inside of the hut became engulfed in flames. Within seconds the entire room had turned into an inferno.

  ‘Still playing God, are we, Stratton?’ Matt said.

  ‘We should’ve at least buried him,’ Milton said. ‘We should’ve taken Hopper home and buried him.’

  Stratton walked right through them like they weren’t there.

  ‘He’s mad,’ Milton said to Downs. ‘He’s lost it, hasn’t he?’

  ‘We all live on the frontline,’ Downs said. ‘He just lives a little closer to it than we do.’

  The hut that contained the missiles abruptly burst into a massive blaze, one enhanced by several incendiary devices. Smudge came running through the trees towards the group, pausing to look back at his work. ‘I suggest we’re not anywhere near that lot when it goes up,’ he said.

  They all heeded his advice and started to walk away down the slope.

  Downs brought his radio up to his lips. ‘This is Downs. We’re finished here. Call in the perimeter. We’re headed towards Tango Charlie.’

  ‘This is Harvey, roger that,’ came the reply. ‘All stations muster on the track towards Tango Charlie.’

  As Downs and the others set off in the direction taken by Stratton, the hut with the missiles inside exploded with a tremendous thud. The rain seemed to fall harder then, like the blast had ruptured the clouds above. The downpour was temporarily joined by small pieces of timber and shrapnel returning to earth.

  Downs’s team exited the wood and were met by the other half of the assault squad that had covered the perimeter in small pockets to mop up any of the fighters who managed to regroup to mount a counter-attack. It had obviously been far from the enemy’s minds or their ability.

  The men broke into an easy jog while spreading out into a defensive pattern. Two of the fitter young men sprinted ahead to act as lead scouts.

  Downs jogged towards Stratton and as he came alongside him the operative broke into an easy run to keep up with his old friend.

  They said nothing as they made their way across country. The rain eased off soon after the teams reached level ground and by the time they arrived at the outskirts of the town, it had practically ceased.

  They kept up the pace as they made their way along the eastern side of the town. They couldn’t see a soul about. Some lights. But the place wasn’t deserted. It was late and most of the population had to be in their beds.

  As the SBS operatives passed one end of a broad street that ran through the town, the team stopped and crouched on one knee in all round defence. Downs stepped into the centre and the other team leaders closed in for a brief confab.

  Stratton remained standing and looking down the street, realising where he was exactly. It was Lotto’s street.

  Downs finished his brief and the team leaders took a moment to confirm the next phase with their own men. Then they got to their feet and continued down towards the bottom of the town and their respective objectives. They divided up, some going into the town while others went towards the brightly lit cargo ships anchored off the shoreline. Everyone knew what they had to do and focused on it like automatons.

  Stratton looked at a porch halfway along the street. Lotto’s porch. With a light on inside.

  The interpreter had joined Downs’s team for this next phase of the operation and they were about to set off when Downs realised Stratton wouldn’t be joining them.

  ‘More unfinished business?’ he asked his friend as he walked over to him.

  Stratton’s bloodlust had ended with Sabarak but he had other things he wanted to know about. ‘Just some loose ends,’ he said.

  ‘Be careful, my friend. And I don’t mean with what you’re about to do, whatever that is.’

  ‘It’s OK. I just have to find out something.’ He looked back at Downs and smiled
at him. ‘I’m not mad. Least I don’t think I am.’

  ‘I hope not. I’ll miss you if you are.’ Downs returned the smile and joined his men and they walked down the side of the town.

  Stratton waited, then headed along the middle of the street, his Colt held easily in his hands.

  Downs led the way to the corner of a street, where his team spread to cover both sides of the entrance. It was the street where the hostages were being held. He wondered if news had reached the pirates that an attack had taken place against the jihadist camp. If so, they had two main scenarios to deal with. The pirates would either take to their heels and run or they would try to defend their stolen property. Since the Somalis had no idea of the size of the force that they might encounter, Downs hoped they would take the wiser option and flee.

  The first two of his men moved forward to probe the possible enemy positions. Downs’s main concern was their safety and it dictated his tactics. If the pirates were determined to defend their town, it could turn out bloody for the hostages, as well as for the pirates. His other fears, if the pirates had chosen to flee, were that they had tried to take the hostages with them or killed them before leaving.

  The team spread out along both sides of the track in a staggered formation and advanced quietly along it. There was little sign of life other than the occasional sound from inside a dwelling. If word had spread that Westerners were coming, the local populace would probably hide in their houses until it was all over.

  Downs’s lead pair stopped a short way along the street. A small Somali boy was standing in a doorway looking at the lead guy. The operative waved. The boy shyly returned it. His mother snatched him inside and closed the door. The lead pair eased forward. They had seen men with rifles up ahead through their night-vision sights. The men didn’t look like jihadists so were probably pirates. It looked like they hadn’t heard about the attack on the camp because they hung around the street, smoking and chatting easily.

  This and any other option had been discussed during the operational brief. The aim was for minimal casualties so the strategy had been adjusted to allow for this. The lead pair had suppressors attached to the barrels of their weapons and they both lifted the carbines, aimed them using the thermal sights and fired in quick succession. Fifty metres away four pirates died where they stood or sat and fell to the ground.