Crossfire

by Andy McNab

  The four pigeonholes held nothing but flyers for pizzas and taxis.

  I headed up. The building had been gutted and rebuilt. New deep-pile carpet was laid on York stone. I reached the top floor, where the smell and gleam of fresh white gloss nearly overpowered me.

  The head turned out to belong to the older of two guys. His overalls looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. Not much of an ad for his decorating skills. I followed him through the open door. Dustsheets covered the floor. A third guy clutched the top of a very tall ladder and worked his brush over an elaborate ceiling rose.

  'This Finbar lad is very popular. You're the second one to come looking for him in as many days.'

  'Who was the first?'

  'His mum. Well, she said she was. She took his post.'

  'We were supposed to meet up today.'

  He winked. 'Who? You and his mum?'

  'Finbar. Young lad – twentyish?'

  'Never seen him.'

  'Who gave you the job – his mum?'

  'No. All the places we do belong to one of these fancy London property companies. We finished this building a few months ago. Got the call to come and redo this flat before the whole thing's sold.'

  'Oh . . . I thought he owned it.'

  He shook his head. 'Like I said, it's a developer.'

  'So you never saw Finbar . . . You don't know where he's gone?'

  'Not a clue. I didn't even know anyone was living here until his mum came round.'

  'Thanks anyway. If he turns up, can you tell him Chris called?'

  My mobile rang as I headed down the stairs. I knew the Yes Man had been wrong not to go down this route. I tried not to crow. 'The house is going cheap and the stepson lived in a flat that—'

  'Stop wasting time. We know this. Once you do your job we can do ours. We traced the email.'

  'Afghanistan?'

  For once, the Yes Man was silent.

  'It's the only place I know that's four and a half ahead.'

  'Quite so. The email was sent from Kabul.'

  'Is it Dom?'

  'Possibly. They claim to be from him, and there have been a number of exchanges. If so, they're using him to negotiate with his wife.'

  'I want to see them.'

  I hit the street and headed for the main. 'Any idea why he went to Afghanistan?'

  'Heroin? Looking after his interests? He was probably lifted by the local Islamafia or one of the bounty-hunter groups – they know he has cash. I'm trying to discover which group may have him.'

  'OK, I need you to make sure this mobile works over there. I need a visa, a cover story, and a laptop with Internet access. I want to be able to read any more emails coming through while I'm there. Also, as much mapping and photography as you can lay your hands on.'

  I waved down a cab. 'I can't talk. I'll be coming into City airport. I'll call to confirm.'

  I threw my Bergen on to the back seat and jumped in.

  40

  Arrivals buzzed with City boys and girls flying in from Europe with a few more zeroes on their annual bonuses. Most were being met by men in grey suits who held up name cards. It made the Yes Man easy to spot. He'd taken off his jacket and tie, and was in a checked business shirt with gold cufflinks, suit trousers and shiny black shoes.

  I aimed for the coffee shop. 'I've been up all night. You want one?'

  'No, thank you.'

  I asked for the large latte-and-muffin deal, and was just about to organize a mortgage to pay for it when he got his money out.

  We didn't exchange another word until we were through the automatic doors and walking past the lines of cabs and buses. The airport was slap in the middle of Docklands. Blocks of new million-pound apartments stood uncomfortably alongside estates built to house dockers after the Blitz.

  'You get all the gear I asked for?'

  The Yes Man clenched his jaw. Maybe he wasn't used to meeting in public. He certainly wasn't happy taking orders from his underlings. 'Yes, and I have the emails. You're right, by the by. He launders money via a property company here in the City. We knew that. We had it covered.' The Yes Man pulled an A4 sheet from his pocket. 'There have been three emails from Dominik, starting last Sunday. All originate from the same location in Kabul. The ransom is eight million US.'

  I gave him a frown. 'If he's the big-time drugs baron, why the need to sell the house?'

  He was getting annoyed now. 'He has the cash, believe me. He probably wants it to look as if they're giving up everything, just to keep the price down. Back to the matter in hand . . .'

  I read the page. Dom's emails were basically messages of love and hope. Siobhan's were about progress in raising funds.

  We've got a buyer at 6.5 [she wrote]. Please beg

  them to hold on, I will get the rest. It will take

  time.

  She'd spoken to Patrick, she said. I presumed he was their money man. Patrick was trying his best to liquidate their portfolio.

  I've told him we've gone broke. I will get the

  money, Dommy, I will. Please tell them I need

  time. I don't know how long. Explain to them it

  might have to be in instalments. The house

  money very soon, they can have that, then the

  rest. Please show me again that it's you. Please

  tell me what colour the sofas are in the living

  room.

  I was right: it hadn't been the flu making her sniffy and red-eyed in the kitchen last night. Maybe she didn't normally drink or smoke. Whatever her state of mind, she was on the ball enough to ask for proof of life each time. Last time, she must have asked him about a suit, because Dom's email started:

  My Paul Smith is grey and it came back from

  the cleaners with double creases in the trousers.

  I was upset because I was going to wear it for

  dinner at the Mermaid the night before I left.

  It ended:

  I love you darling, but they need to know how

  long.

  One thing we knew for sure, then: up to the point he wrote those words, he was alive. They could only have come from Dom.

  Proof-of-life statements are an important part of any hostage deal. A trained negotiator would also be looking for clues that Dom was either bullshitting or under duress. Prone-to-capture troops and business people working in hostile zones have a ready-prepared under-duress sign, and maybe even a coded means of identifying locations. All Dom's had been sent at around eighty thirty, local. That was why she had been up, online and waiting.

  We'd reached a bank of pay stations for the short-stay. I handed him back the sheet. 'Any idea yet who's lifted him?'

  Criminals would demand a ransom and hold out for it. Only if it didn't eventually materialize would they offload him in a fire sale to another gang – or, in Afghanistan, the Taliban. That was when things usually turned nasty. Each gang would sell him on to the next like a girl passed between sex-traffickers; he'd spiral down a chain of extremist groups with life getting worse and worse until he ended up with one who didn't want anything except to hack off his head in front of a camera.

  The Yes Man shook his head. 'It could be freelancers, it could be another drug cartel. I don't know and don't care.' He put the sheet into his pocket and paid for his ticket. 'I just want him back and in a fit state to talk.'

  We stalled as four guys walked past with suit-carriers over their arms and overnight bags trundling on wheels behind them.

  'Is he emailing anybody else?'

  'No.'

  The Yes Man had phenomenal electronic firepower at his beck and call. Using the Echelon system, GCHQ could capture radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, faxes, emails and other data streams nearly anywhere in the world.

  'This could all be bullshit to get the cash from the house and fuck his wife off.' He gave me a strange look and I wondered if he thought I'd lost my marbles. 'Why not?' I raised my palms. 'We don't know what the fuck is happening.'

  He
did it again. I suddenly realized it was the profanity and not the idea he didn't like.

  'There's no other traffic from that or any other email address while the user is logged on. But his emails have all been sent from the same location.'

  He'd stopped by the boot of a navy Audi A4 and produced a key fob from his trouser pocket. He pressed it and the boot unlocked. A laptop bag was sitting on top of picnic blankets and wellington boots.

  'Everything you need is loaded in here. New ACA, the lot. The Read Me file will start you off. If you have information, you send it directly to me the moment it happens.'

  He handed me the case. 'The password is your old army number. You know how to work Schubert?'

  I nodded. GCHQ had developed the secure hard drive and email system so not even the Americans could suck it up. There wasn't anything to know about it. It just, like, worked.

  'Good. The mobile will still be secure there.'

  He unzipped the front pocket of the bag to show me the airline tickets.

  He took a step closer, as if airport car parks had ears. I could see inside his collar. He'd been squeezing that boil.

  'I want to keep foremost in your mind the sensitivity of this operation. There are people in the FCO in Kabul, embassy officials, who may well be part of the problem. We need him back without anyone knowing.'

  He held out a hand, but shaking wasn't what he had in mind. 'Why don't you let me have your own documents, for security? I'll hold them until you get back.'

  I zipped up the laptop and put it over my shoulder. I smiled, shook my head and walked away.

  PART THREE

  41

  Thursday, 8 March

  1305 hrs

  Well over an hour behind schedule, and six security checks and X-rays later – including one right at the door of the aircraft – the Indian Airlines Airbus 320 took off into the hot blue sky over Delhi and pointed north-west for the two-hour flight to Kabul.

  Departures had been a nightmare. We'd even been segregated in our own little holding area. It reminded me of the Belfast to London flights during that war, except that here the whole terminal, including our Kabul leper colony, was plastered with flat screens showing non-stop Bollywood. No matter which film it was, they all seemed to star the same tall guy with a grey beard; he even popped up in the commercial breaks, advertising mobile phones and aftershave. Then one of the channels ran a documentary about his waxwork in Madame Tussaud's.

  The aircraft could have carried 150 passengers but was only half full. Kabul was hardly competing with Amsterdam or Prague for the city-break crowd. The Gurkhas and Filipinos in economy, paid to guard compounds, were proud big-time of what they did, and didn't care who knew it. They toted US Army camouflage print or Brit DMP day sacks, and their T-shirts were emblazoned with eagles wrapped in the Stars and Stripes and messages about Operation Enduring Freedom.

  Up in business class, Indian men in pressed, short-sleeved shirts scribbled furiously on notepads, arranging the shipment of another twenty tonnes of Fairy Liquid and marmalade into the war zone.

  Some of the Westerners looked like seasoned contractors, the sort who supplied the armies with everyone from cooks to radar operators. They were the ones in black polo shirts with embroidered company logos. There were also a few of the bigger-buck contractors. They wore Gucci safari vests, and their hair was longer to show they weren't military. One had a Mohican. They didn't want a sergeant major shouting at them by mistake. Me, I was in my normal shit state, but at least I had brand-new boxers and socks on. When I pulled off my boots the stink wasn't half as bad as usual.

  The seat-belt light pinged off and the attendants started serving our pre-ordered drinks. I'd gone for Pepsi to wash down the antibiotics. I gazed out of the window. I'd thought I'd never get shot again, and I had been. Afghanistan was one place I'd thought I'd never come back to, and here I was. Whatever happened, I didn't want to be running up and down those fucking hills again.

  When the Russians invaded in 1979, it had been for much the same reasons as we did in 2001. They were 'liberating' the country. The West didn't see it that way. Soviet troops weren't welcome so close to the Gulf oilfields.

  As a young Green Jacket squaddy running round Tidworth garrison in Wiltshire, the invasion had about as much impact on my life as coastal erosion in Northumberland. It didn't directly hit my pay packet or interrupt the supply of curry sauce to the local chippie, so why should I give a shit? In any case, I didn't even know where Afghanistan was.

  To start with, the invasion was a breeze. The Russians thought they'd cracked it. Their problem was, none of them had a clue about mountain warfare or counter-insurgency, and their weaponry and military equipment – particularly their armoured vehicles and tanks – were crap. Their other problem was the mujahideen.

  The Dad's Army in cowpat hats finally started to get their act together and kick ass – until the Russians brought in the Hind gunships. Basically an airborne artillery park, the Hind was the most formidable helicopter in existence. It turned the tide. By the mid-eighties, the Americans were flapping big-time. It was still the Cold War. The Kremlin needed to be taught a lesson.

  Ronald Reagan was suddenly hailing the muj as freedom-fighters. A wealthy Saudi, Osama bin Laden, called on Muslim fighters round the world to come and do their bit. Weapons poured in from all over, and they didn't have a clue how to use them. Dickheads like me, by then a lance corporal in the SAS, were told to get cracking and give them a hand.

  The only way the muj could win that war was by making the Russians pay such an unacceptable manpower cost for the occupation that public opinion back home turned against them and the army rebelled. Simply put, that meant killing and wounding as many Soviets as possible, and fucking up their infrastructure any way we could. Just about anything was a legitimate target.

  Before that could happen, the Hinds had to be eliminated.

  The American Stinger ground-to-air heat-seeking missile was the best in the business at knocking things out of the sky. The trouble was, it was so good the Americans were reluctant to let go of them. The risk of them falling into the wrong hands was just too high.

  Instead, the Brits were tasked with teaching the locals how to use Blowpipe, our equivalent to the Stinger. We'd round up about thirty at a time and get them out to Pakistan. Then we'd throw them on a C-130, and have a two-day trip to one of the little islands off the west coast of Scotland. We ran our own field-firing exercises, teaching the boys everything from how to use Blowpipe to how to drop electricity pylons. At the end of their couple of weeks of rain and cold, we'd put them back on the C-130 with a packed lunch and a can of Fanta, get them into Pakistan, then over the border to put theory into practice.

  The trouble was, Blowpipe was a heap of shit. Not even the Brits used it any more: you had to be a PlayStation wizard to operate the thing, and that was before PlayStation even existed. It was soon clear it wasn't working. The sky was still full of Hinds. The Americans had to relent. They opened the toy cupboard and broke out the Stingers.

  The muj had to be trained all over again. The west coast of Scotland reopened for mujahideen short-breaks and the C-130s resumed their shuttle.

  The kit was filtering into Afghanistan via covert convoys, but the shifty fuckers weren't using it. Stingers were far too nice and shiny, and the muj were saving them for a rainy day.

  It was then that we had to go over there ourselves and get our hands dirty. We were running all over the snow-peaked mountains and harsh rock valleys I was now seeing below us. We ambushed, attacked, blew up and killed anything that carried a hammer and sickle. Every time a Hind retaliated, one of us would loose off a Stinger and blow it out of the sky. All my Christmases had come at once.