by Zoe Sharp
“I wasn’t planning to get into a fistfight with anyone.”
He flashed a wry smile. “Since when did that ever stop you?”
“I’m right-handed. So it won’t stop me shooting anyone, either.”
“You’re not going to talk me round on this. I’m telling you now because you have the right to know. Doesn’t mean I’m prepared to sanction you going in after him.”
“You think I need your sanction to go after him?”
“You’re not up to it.” He caught my expression as I started to rise, held up a hand. “And before you tear me a new one, just hear me out first.”
I subsided, not without effort, gestured for him to go on.
He met my eyes. “I know, better than most, what you’re capable of, Charlie, injured or no. You think I’d say something like that lightly?”
His words stung enough that I said nothing.
He sighed. “Look at the facts. Sean has gone off the grid in a war zone. A man he has very good reason to hate is dead—killed in a way that suggests there was something real personal about it. What conclusions would you draw?”
“Sean knew the names of those guys—what they’d done—long before he was shot in the head,” I said, which was both answer and avoidance. “If he’d wanted to go after them, he had plenty of opportunity back then.” When he still knew me for who I am. When he still loved me.
“Exactly. And he didn’t,” Parker said, as if that proved a point. “So something’s unbalanced him, set him off on this course. Care to shed any light on what that might be?”
I hesitated for a moment, then shook my head. I counted Parker as one of my closest friends, but I’d lied to him about what had happened in the aftermath of Sean’s injury, about the real circumstances surrounding the death of the man who’d put him in his coma.
I might have told myself I’d done it to protect Parker, but that was a lie in itself. I’d done it so he wouldn’t think less of me, of what I’d done.
“So, if there was no precipitating event,” he said, gaze steady as if daring me to come clean, “then he’s gone clean off the rails.”
“You’ve nothing more than circumstantial evidence that he is in any way responsible for Clay’s death. I thought you, of all people, would give him a fair trial, Parker.”
“That’s just it, I can’t afford to. You know as well as I do that in our line of business we succeed or fail on reputation alone. The whispers have already begun about Sean. Hell, I’ve been hearing them for months. Ever since he went back into the field.”
“You mean since we lost a principal—since I lost him.”
“Yeah, since then.” Parker scrubbed his palms up and down his face as if to clear the grit of weariness. “Either way, if it gets out that Sean’s gone on some kind of murderous rampage—regardless of the truth of it—it could well be enough to finish us. I just . . . can’t let that happen.”
“All the more reason for me to go after him as soon as possible. Find him, find out what really happened and—”
“And what? Talk him in? That’s just it, Charlie. If Sean has gone after this guy for revenge, it’s a one-way deal. You know as well as I do he can’t come back.”
“You’d turn him in?” I demanded, aware that the kick in my chest was not only for Sean but for me, too.
“I couldn’t do that to him. Prison would kill him. Better to give him another way out.”
“One round in the chamber and tell him to do the honorable thing, you mean?” The acid in my stomach leached out in my voice.
“If he’ll take that option.”
“And if he won’t?” I demanded. “After all, this is a man you think has gone ‘clean off the rails.’”
“If he can’t be reasoned with, then he has to be stopped. Like you said—Iraq’s a dangerous place.”
“Jesus, Parker. You’re talking . . . assassination.”
A pause, then he nodded, his face bleaker than I ever remembered it. “And that, Charlie, is the part I don’t think you’re up to.”
THREE
GARTON-JONES SHOVED OPEN THE DOOR TO HELL AND GESTURED me in.
I paused a moment before complying. Not least because the three of them climbed out of the SUV with weapons drawn. It might have been standard operating procedure for this area of Basra, but I couldn’t ignore the possibility they were planning to use them on someone a little closer to home. Bailey, in particular, looked desperate for the excuse.
We were to the west of the city, in the sprawling outskirts. The building we were about to enter was constructed of bricks sloppily laid in no discernible pattern. Between each one mortar had squidged out and set like worm castings. The gothic-arched windows on the ground floor were boarded from the inside. Above, an intricately carved and decorated Ottoman balcony appeared ready at any moment to slide down the front façade.
The detritus of modern man littered the roadside—tattered plastic flapping languidly, rubble and crap. The heat was overwhelming and the smell almost as bad. Even the usual begging children were absent.
Further out I could see the roiling dirty-orange smoke from the gas burn-off at the West Qurna oil field. Oil was being sucked out of the ground as fast as the derricks could handle it.
There was an air of hurry and fear as Western eyes looked to the trouble in the north, scared that control of southern production might be lost to militants, as it had in the supergiant field of Kirkuk. Greed saturated the place like a layer of grease.
Lucifer, I reckoned, would feel very much at home here.
“After you,” I said to Bailey.
He thought about arguing. I fixed my eyes meaningfully on his throat. Garton-Jones jerked his head, and Bailey scowled but went in. He moved light on his feet, passing through the doorway at an oblique angle to reduce his exposure to a minimum.
Dawson followed suit. One automatically went left, the other right. Two people who’d operated together for a long time. Who knew what was needed without asking or being asked. I was suddenly, sharply, reminded of working with Sean.
Inside, the building was dim and marginally cooler. It was difficult to tell its original purpose. The walls of the structure had once been decorated with care, but the days when it commanded any pride were long past. The only furniture was a foldout plastic table and a metal chair. I guessed they had survived only because they could not be burned.
I stepped through debris and fallen plaster to the archway leading to a larger, darker space at the rear, which I peered into but did not enter. The smell of old meat and dried blood was rank. I could hear the buzz of flies echoing against the bare walls. Their whine rose in pitch and volume at the disturbance, intensifying the darkness there.
I turned, found the Streetwise crew watching my reaction. If they were hoping for shock, or disgust, they were disappointed. There was nothing here I hadn’t seen before.
“So, you want to talk me through it?”
Both looked to their boss as if for permission. Garton-Jones stood near the doorway, his attention apparently on the street. Nothing seemed to pass between them, but after a moment Dawson said, “We found Clay still tied to the chair. He’d been dead about four hours. Meyer was long gone.”
“How do you know Sean had been with him at all?”
“He came to the hotel before we shipped in-country, got into it with Clay there.”
“Oh?”
“No idea what it was about, but whatever it was, Clay didn’t like it much. He was pissy the whole day, wouldn’t spill what Meyer had to say, or what was bugging him.”
I could imagine most of what Sean had to say. And why Clay would not have liked it. It was not something I felt inclined to share.
“If they met at the hotel, why would they need to meet again here?”
“Look around you,” Dawson said. “You could scream forever in a place like this and nobody would bat an eyelid.”
“I agree that as somewhere for an interrogation it’s sound,” I said. “But Sea
n could hardly have found such a location within forty-eight hours of arriving. More likely it was Clay’s choice. So, if he’d already met with Sean, and they’d had . . . words, why on earth would he agree to meet with him a second time—alone—somewhere like this?”
There were further exchanged glances I couldn’t read—beyond a reluctance to see the logic in anything I had to say. Dawson shrugged.
“Clay’s last incoming call was from a burner phone—a new number. His regular contacts don’t use ’em. And he wouldn’t have agreed to come out here to meet with someone he didn’t know.”
“All I’m getting from you is hearsay. To describe it as thin is putting it mildly.” I paused. “I’m assuming Clay was armed?”
It was Garton-Jones who nodded. “Standard issue M4 carbine and .40-cal sidearm. Clay carried a Glock. His choice.”
“Were they taken?”
A fractional pause, then a shake of the head. “No.”
“Sean’s unarmed.” As far as we know. “If he shook Clay down for information, why not take his weapons, too? Got to be easier to grab what’s on offer right in front of you than trying to source it in a hostile environment.”
I turned away, but not before I caught the frown from Garton-Jones. At last, a bit of doubt.
I crouched, looked at the dusty floor. It was a mess of boot prints.
“Before you ask, no, we didn’t take casts of that lot,” Bailey sneered. “We’re not CSIs.”
I twisted, glanced up at him. “You don’t need to be in order to glean information from these. The fact they’re clear prints, for a start.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning they were left by people walking about in here.”
“So?”
“Jesus H. Christ, do you really need me to spell it out? OK, they were walking and standing. Not fighting, not scuffling, not grappling and pushing and shoving and beating seven bells out of each other. No, Clay walked in, and—at least to begin with—everything was hunky-dory. These are full prints, sole and heel. If anyone had been moving fast, they’d be toe prints, scuffs, scrapes. It also means that whoever he met with, they weren’t alone.”
“Oh c’mon! How do you work that one out?”
“Clay was a big guy, and he was fast on his feet. He must have a couple of inches and thirty pounds on Sean. Even if Sean had pulled a gun on Clay, as soon as things went south, Clay would have chanced his arm.”
I didn’t add that the last time Clay tried going hand-to-hand with Sean, Sean had taken him apart without breaking sweat. Garton-Jones didn’t need to know that, and besides, there still would have been physical evidence. “And yet they were able to subdue him without leaving any signs of a struggle. I assume your guys ran a tox screen on Clay?”
“Of course.”
“Any barbiturates, tranquilizers? Midazolam or ketamine, perhaps? Rohypnol even?”
“Not those, no,” Garton-Jones said. “But he was positive for Dexedrine—in his bloodstream rather than his stomach, so it was injected, not ingested.”
“You’re sure he didn’t take it himself? Using Dexies is common among squaddies. The go-to pill for combat fatigue.”
Garton-Jones skimmed his gaze across Dawson and Bailey. Bailey shuffled his feet and wouldn’t meet his boss’s eye, which I took as an answer in itself.
“Unlikely he would have gone to the trouble of distilling and injecting it, even so.”
“Unless whoever gave it to him didn’t want to wait for it to take effect,” I suggested. “It would have helped keep him conscious while they worked him over, made him more inclined to be talkative.”
“Oh, I think he would have been talkative, looking at what was done to him. Whatever they wanted to know, I’m sure he told them.”
I noted the “they” rather than “he” without comment. Progress, of a sort. And once I had them on the back foot, I pressed home the advantage.
“Are you sure that was the sole point of the exercise—getting information out of Clay, I mean?”
“Hardly a fucking exercise!” Bailey snapped. “You know what they did to—”
“That’s enough.” Garton-Jones had sufficient control over his people that he didn’t have to raise his voice. He swung his attention back to me, and his voice was icy calm. “As opposed to . . . ?”
“I’ve read the postmortem examination report, as Mr. Bailey points out.” I matched his tone. “Clay was a tough bastard, but he wasn’t a martyr. They yanked his teeth out, sliced him to pieces, cut off half his fingers, and scooped out his eyes, for God’s sake. Whatever they wanted, if he had it, he would have given it to them way before then. This doesn’t look like interrogation to me, it looks more like punishment—or a message.” I skimmed my gaze across the three of them. “So, what have you guys been doing since you got here to warrant that?”
FOUR
WE CLIMBED BACK INTO THE STREETWISE SUV IN SILENCE. BAILEY and Dawson had swapped places—Bailey behind the wheel and Dawson alongside me in the rear. From the look on her face I guessed she’d lost some kind of toss. Even behind those expensive sunglasses, I could tell she was keeping a watchful eye on me.
I ignored her, tilted my head so I could check out the dusty street through the front screen as we retraced our route. It had been a long couple of days, and I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes for the return journey to the hotel back in Kuwait. Once we get over the border, I promised myself. The landscape there was dull and flat and largely featureless anyway.
Staying awake now meant trying hard not to scratch at the sweaty dressings on my arm and stomach. At the same time, I didn’t fancy any more surprises over our destination.
Bailey drove bullishly, not stopping at intersections. Speed had both advantages and disadvantages. Made us a faster moving target, more difficult to hit, but gave him less time to check out the terrain.
“What’s that?” I pointed between the seats at a lump by the nearside of the road.
“Just a dead dog or a goat,” Garton-Jones said. “These are not a sentimental people.”
“Neither am I,” I said. “But it wasn’t there when we came past on the way in.”
Bailey had been ignoring me, determined not to be distracted again. But, give him credit, as the import of what I’d said sank in, he stamped on the accelerator. There was a moment’s pause while the transmission kicked down, then the SUV’s V8 engine delivered a surge of power and the heavy vehicle lurched forward.
It was almost enough.
There was an almighty crump of sound that shoved into my back, my kidneys, like a punch from a massive fist. The same giant’s hand grabbed the back corner of the SUV and flipped it into the air. The vehicle slewed, Bailey grappling uselessly with the wheel.
We slammed down onto the driver’s side, accompanied by the splinter of glass and the graunch of buckling metal. The engine was revving to the limiter.
For maybe a second I hung suspended on my seat belt. Then I braced hard against the center armrest and unclipped. Above me, my door was stuck. I swiveled, gripped both headrest supports, and jacked my legs up, kicking the door open. Immediately, rounds thudded into the outside of the panel, coming from dead ahead of our position. The armor held.
Below me, Dawson was groaning. I glanced down, saw blood in her hairline. One arm was crumpled under her. Concussion and a busted collarbone—she was out of the fight.
I reached down, pulled her M4 carbine loose, checked the mag, and charged a round into the chamber. In front, Garton-Jones was fighting his way free. He and Bailey jammed the muzzles of their own weapons through the crazed screen and fired in coordinated short bursts. Ejected brass pinged around the interior.
My ears still pulsed from the initial explosion, leaving a dull, muffled clanging inside my skull. I took a deep breath and launched upward through the door aperture, leading with the gun.
As soon as I had eyes on the scene, I caught a figure working his way to our rear, trying to flank us. He was twenty meters awa
y on the other side of the street, a keffiyeh headscarf concealing his face, a long gun in his hands. I didn’t stop to consider, couldn’t afford to hesitate. I fired a three-round burst. He returned fire and ducked into the nearest doorway. I held my nerve, rolled my shoulder into the stock. Half a second later he dodged back into view, square into my sights.
I squeezed off another three rounds, aiming center mass. He fell back inside the building. Right at that moment he was no more to me than a targeting problem.
I covered my arc of exposure, both eyes open, looking for movement, for muzzle flash. Waiting for the zing of incoming rounds. Nothing showed.
To our front, Garton-Jones and Bailey were still laying down fire. I hoped they’d brought plenty of spare clips.
“Fox—you hurt?” Garton-Jones’s voice shouted up.
“No, but Dawson is out. Shoulder.”
“Damn,” came the calm response. “I’ve radioed for backup. My blokes are less than a klick away.”
I risked a quick glance under the curved edge of the rear door, saw a dirt-covered Nissan Patrol. It must have bowled out of a side street the moment the IED exploded—they probably remote-detonated it from there.
Two guys were using the Patrol for cover. All I could see of them were bobbing glimpses of their keffiyeh-wrapped heads above the open doors and their booted feet below. They were firing sporadically.
I ignored them, sprayed the Patrol’s front grille with two quick bursts. It made a large static target. I hardly had to aim.
Whatever their original plan, the two X-rays decided on a tactical retreat as soon as their getaway vehicle came under specific attack. They jumped into the Patrol and reversed back into the side street. I vaulted out of the SUV and ran to the corner just in time to see them execute a professional J-turn. I had the satisfaction of putting half a dozen rounds through the rear screen before they swerved from sight.
By the time I’d turned back, the Streetwise men were out of the SUV and had taken up defensive positions, front and rear. There was no movement at all along the street. It was eerily quiet, but that wouldn’t last long. The news of hostage-ready sitting-duck Westerners was no doubt already being relayed.