“This way.” Dick opened a door and revealed a steep set of stairs.
Connor peered down into the darkness, unsure, but Dick’s impatient grunt kept him from lingering long.
Downstairs he found John, Tom, and a group of Marines congregated by what appeared to be a hole in the ground. It took him a few seconds to see the thick, reinforced trapdoor lying flat beside it. “Jesus Christ.”
“Yep,” John said. “It’s like fucking Jumanji down there.”
“And I’ll tell you something else,” Tom put in. “They didn’t build this in a week. This shit has been here a long time.”
“So the other mosque was a ruse?” Connor asked.
Tom shrugged. “Might be. Or it could be a coincidence that it fell out of favour with the locals just at the moment we began taking notice. Either way, we’ll know for sure when Nat calls in.”
The mention of Nat brought heat to Connor’s cheeks. He crouched by the open trapdoor to hide his flush. “Can I go down and have a look?”
“No chance—” Tom began, but John cut him off.
“It’s all right, mate. I told him he could have a quick gander.”
Tom raised an eyebrow and glanced at Dick, who shrugged. “Come on, then,” he said. “Let’s get down there. You coming, boss?”
John nodded, but a Marine interrupted him.
“Satellite call for you. Charlie-3 checking in.”
“Ah, Aunty Nat’s early as ever. Don’t wait for me, boys. You know he likes to gossip.” John sauntered away, chuckling at his own joke.
Part of Connor wanted to go with him, to eavesdrop on each and every word of the conversation, anything to feel close to Nat again, but the rational side of him didn’t even look John’s way as he disappeared.
Instead, he focussed on the six-foot drop into the tunnel. Christ, it was like going to climb out of the attic and realising your bastard older brother had nicked the ladder. The bastard older brother you suddenly felt all around you.
Connor shivered. Tom clapped his arm. “Just follow me. The landing’s flat, no drama. Don’t fret.”
Tom dropped into the hole. In the murky darkness, Connor could just about make out his face.
“Come on,” Tom called. “Get your arse down here.”
Hardly the most motivational speech Connor had ever heard, but with five blokes lined up behind him, he had little choice but to follow Tom’s lead.
The tunnel floor rushed up to meet him. He expected it to be damp and dirty, but as his eyes adjusted to the light, it became clear the tunnel was far from the ratlike burrows his imagination had pictured. The wide, concrete passage was clean and airy, and supported by several pillars. There were even electrical wires dangling from the ceiling, not that they seemed to be connected to anything.
“Wow,” Connor said. “This is incredible.”
Dick landed like a cat beside him. “Beggars belief, doesn’t it? I reckon these have been here for donkey’s years.”
It made sense. The remaining men descended into the tunnel, making seven in all, including Connor. It was telling that the tunnel didn’t feel cramped.
Connor glanced around again. “What have you seen so far?”
“See for yourself,” Dick retorted. “Come over here.”
Connor followed him around the corner to a stack of crates. Inside were the unmistakable RPG shells that littered the palace compound. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Connor sucked in a breath. “Bingo.”
“I’ll say,” Dick said. “There’s guns and ammo over there too, and some Russian antipersonnel mines and tasers. Whoever ordered this lot was planning a hell of a party.”
“Or a wake,” Connor muttered. He didn’t have to look to know Dick was rolling his eyes. “What are you going to do now?”
“Get more blokes down here and have a proper scout. See where this fucker goes and cut it off at the source. Might even get to snatch who’s supplying it, but that’s unlikely. Bad news travels fast. We’re already too late for whatever fucktard cell was using—”
A gun shot rang out in the tunnel, a short, sharp crack that splintered Connor’s consciousness. Dick lurched forward, raising his weapon, but he hit the ground before he could aim, blood spurting from the back of his head. Another bullet tore into his temple. Connor gasped, horror slamming into him like a freight train. He opened his mouth to cry out, but an arm around his neck cut him dead, squeezing the air from his lungs. A weapon caught his eye as his legs were kicked from beneath him, an AK-47. The butt was too close to his head and getting closer.
Dick’s wide, unseeing gaze kept him company as the inevitable blow took him under.
Sixteen
Nat sat on the bottom step of the barber’s shop staircase. It felt like no one had been right about anything on this goddamned operation, but Wedge’s assessment of the acrid Iraqi tobacco was spot on. It tasted like shit.
He flicked the half-smoked roll-up away and drummed on his knee. He’d been waiting for John to come back on the line for ten minutes, and it was starting to get on his tits.
Beside him, Wedge got up with an exasperated grunt and retrieved the spent cigarette to squirrel away with any other sign of their three-day camp. “Fuck’s sake. Why do I always end up being your mother on stakeouts?”
Nat gave him the finger, listening for any sign of John’s return. Thirty minutes passed before he lost patience and hung up. Bloody idiot had probably forgotten, caught in the excitement of discovering the tunnels Charlie-3 had been chasing all this time. He considered breaking radio silence to call him a wanker, but common sense intervened.
Wedge sighed, like he’d heard Nat’s disgruntled thoughts. “Can we go yet?”
Nat rolled his eyes. “Who needs a mother now? You know we can’t chip off till nightfall.”
And the night seemed to take a lifetime to come. It was gone midnight before Nat could sensibly deem it safe to pack up and creep out of the city.
They tabbed through the darkness to the rendezvous point with the extraction aircraft. The helicopter appeared a few minutes later. Nat ordered his men to fan out, covering the chopper as it came in to land. The doors opened. Wedge boarded first, then called for the others, one by one, counting them in.
Nat was last. He scanned the ground, checking for dropped equipment, then took Wedge’s extended hand and hauled himself on board.
He found a space and sat down. It took a moment till he realised every man on his crew was staring at him like his dog had just been run over . . . and they’d been driving the car.
Nat automatically turned to Wedge. “What have you done now?” Silence. Nat frowned. “What’s the matter?”
“Aircrew are saying something went wrong at the tunnel site.”
“Went wrong?” An uneasy burn bloomed in Nat’s gut. “What happened?”
“There was some kind of ambush underground. Echo-4 got flanked and shot to shit. Dick and Tom are dead.”
“John?”
“Alive,” Wedge said. “He was on the phone to you and missed the party.”
Nat nodded as the news sunk in, waiting for the shock and sadness to overcome the dread in his veins. It didn’t happen. He was missing something. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Wedge’s eyes darted sideways to Marc. Nat followed his gaze. “Tell me.”
“It’s Connor, mate,” Marc said. “He was with Dick when he got hit, and now they can’t find him.”
“Can’t find him? Did he get lost?” No. That didn’t make any sense. Dick had been killed underground during a dangerous patrol. Even if Connor had accompanied Echo-4, they’d have left him safely above ground, right?
Marc shook his head. Wrong. “Nat, they think he’s been snatched.”
Nat was first off the chopper when it touched down in the palace compound. He left his kit behind, taking only his weapon, and was unsurprised to see Marc and Wedge do the same, leaving Chris and Bobs to square it all away.
They headed straight for the OC’s office.
Inside, they found the OC, Rogers, and a broken version of the man who used to be John.
“What the fuck happened?” Nat demanded.
The OC raised an eyebrow, but John spoke up before Nat could be reprimanded for speaking out of turn.
“I’m so sorry, mate. He wanted to see the tunnels. My lot were going back under anyway, and we’d secured the area. I thought it was safe. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Who took him? How? Where?”
“In the tunnel, by the weapons stash we found. We secured the tunnel and blocked off the route beneath the building, but there was another hatch concealed in the wall. They came through there and up behind Dick, put two bullets in his head, and grabbed Connor. They slit Tom’s throat when he tried to reach him. Killed all the Iraqis too.” John slumped back in his chair and exhaled a shuddering breath, the breath of a man who’d just scraped two of his men from the ground and put them in body bags.
But Nat felt nothing for him. He didn’t have time . . . for John’s grief, or his own. A cool metal curtain closed around his heart, and his world narrowed to the operation at hand. “What do we know so far?”
“Not much,” the OC said. “The tunnels are a maze, and there’s several hatches we’ve yet to break through. Whoever took Regan covered their tracks well.”
“His name’s Connor,” Nat snapped.
“Indeed,” the OC said. “Anyway, we need to put a team together. Nat, your crew have experience in hostage recovery, so you have command. We’ve got four SBS boys on their way to help out. Take them, and anything else you need, and get this hack back before they kill him. The Regiment doesn’t need another civilian death behind it.”
The OC’s words should’ve chilled Nat to the bone, but he felt very little as he strode out of the office with Wedge and Marc hot on his heels. He went straight to the briefing room and retrieved the copy of the plans Echo-4 had made before leaving the palace that morning—maps, equipment, and personnel lists. Seeing Connor’s name in print rattled his hard-fought composure, but he sealed the crack with a steely resolve, and passed the plans to Wedge. “Find everyone on this list who’s still alive and bring them here. I want to know every damn detail of this clusterfuck before we head out.”
Wedge nodded. “When are we going?”
Nat checked his watch. 0200. “We leave at dawn.”
Three hours later, a rescue patrol of twenty men assembled outside the palace with the vehicles that would take them into Basra city. Among them was Harry, the only member of Echo-4 who hadn’t been on the ill-fated tunnel raid.
Nat greeted him with a curt nod, distracted by aerial photographs the Americans had sent over just a few moments ago, captured by unmanned drones.
Marc was a little more sympathetic. “How’s the missus?”
“Alive,” Harry said. “Which is better than can be said for the boys I left behind.”
“Sorry, mate,” Marc said.
Harry shrugged. “Appreciate that. Reckon I’ll deal with it later, though. Heard you lot need all hands on deck.”
“True that.” Wedge joined them. “Nat, what are we doing with the Mujahedeen? Leaving them here?”
Nat tore his gaze from the photographs that had proved as much use as a porcelain drum kit. He glanced at the surviving band of Iraqi recruits, who had sensibly kept their distance since news of the tunnel carnage had reached Charlie-3, despite losing five of their own friends. Friends they might want to avenge. “Leave them here.”
No one argued, not even the OC who had joined the send-off party outside.
A helicopter came in to land in the palace compound. Four men jumped out: the SBS lads Nat had been expecting. He knew their faces, though not their names, but introductions were brief. Time was escaping them, and the longer Connor was in the hands of whoever had taken him, the higher chance there was of him coming to harm.
If he isn’t already dead.
And that possibility was far more real than Nat wanted to contemplate. Behrouz’s cell had developed a fearsome reputation, built on terror and ruthless brutality. No hostage taken in the past six months had survived longer than twenty-four hours before a grainy video of their execution had appeared on Al Jazeera.
Don’t puke, don’t puke, don’t puke.
Nat jammed his helmet on. “Let’s roll.”
It took the convoy an hour to reach the tunnel site, which was now sealed off and heavily guarded.
Nat skipped the pleasantries with the commanding officer on the ground. “Anyone been through that hidden door yet?”
“Nope. We had orders to wait for you.”
“Well, we’re here now,” Wedge said. “Lead on.”
The officer took them past the roadblocks and into the mosque. Inside was crowded with personnel, but Nat paid little attention to them until they came to the trapdoor. He shouted a warning to the soldiers below, then dropped down and got his first glimpse of a scene that had clearly been nothing short of slaughter.
He stepped around a patch of barely dried blood as the rest of Charlie-3 trailed him underground. Common sense told him it belonged to Tom or Dick, or one of the dead Iraqi recruits, but the devil on his shoulder whispered that it might be Connor’s. A bullet or knife to the gut. A rifle butt to the head . . .
Stop it.
“They came through here, mate.”
Nat blinked and focussed on the officer, following his gaze to a blood-stained steam grate in the wall, which, on closer inspection, revealed itself to be a hinged hatch. “Are we sure they went back the way they came?”
“As we can be,” the officer said. “From what I can tell, it all happened in the blink of an eye. One of my lads, Brownlea, was close by. He saw Tom get slotted.”
Nat beckoned the young corporal over. “Did you see Connor get taken?”
“Not exactly,” Brownlea said. “I was on the other side of the crates when I heard the drama start. Next thing I knew, Tom was charging past me. After that, it’s all a bit of a blur. I came around with my weapon up, saw Tom go down and fired off a couple of shots. I didn’t realise they had the journo until the grate slammed shut and we couldn’t account for him.”
“How many came through the grate?”
Brownlea shook his head. “I don’t know. I think I saw three, but I’m not sure. All I remember is Tom’s blood. Jesus, it was everywhere.”
And it still was, but Nat remained unmoved. He’d worked with Tom, and Dick, ever since he’d joined the Regiment, but both men were beyond his help now. “Think,” he said. “What weapons did they have? AKs? Grenades? Machetes?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
Nat stifled a growl. He remembered how shit like this went down—how difficult it was to reconcile yourself with how badly things could go wrong in a split second—but he was seething. How the fuck had they not seen the grate when they secured the tunnel? “Open the grate.”
Wedge examined the hatch while Bobs assembled the men who’d follow Charlie-3 inside. Every man underground made ready, and then, at Nat’s signal, Wedge opened the grate.
Bobs threw in a distraction device. The grenade flashed, but instead of piling in, like they might have with a house raid, Nat held back, waiting. As eager as he was to begin the search for Connor, running blind into a tunnel of uncertain depths was plain fucking daft.
There was no reaction from inside the tunnel. Nat crept forward, his heavy boots silent on the dusty floor, and with Wedge and Chris covering him, stepped into the hidden tunnel.
Nothing happened. Nat flipped on Charlie-3’s only set of night-vision goggles and scanned his immediate surroundings. A rudimentary switch on the ceiling caught his eye. He listened hard for a moment until he was as sure as he possibly could be that he was alone, then flicked the switch.
Dim light flooded the tunnel, supplied by a crude wiring system hanging down from the tunnel ceiling. Nat ditched the goggles. Ahead stretched a long tunnel, supported by evenly spaced concrete pillars, with no obvious signs of a w
aiting ambush.
Nat beckoned the men at his back forward, and step by step, they all descended deeper and deeper into the tunnel. With Marc a heartbeat behind, Nat kept his eyes ahead, fixed on the gloom, while Wedge, Bobs, and Chris felt every inch of the walls, floor, and ceiling, searching for hidden doors and hatches . . . any route Connor’s abductors may have taken to escape the tunnel before it led above ground again.
They found nothing for more than a mile. The tunnel stretched on and on with little evidence that anyone had recently passed through.
Three hours in, Marc reminded Nat to stop and let the men behind him take a break. No one spoke, just rammed down water and chocolate while Nat stood alone, staring ahead, trying to pinpoint what lay above them.
Marc appeared at his side. “All right?”
“Nope.”
“Can I do anything for you?”
“Nope.”
Marc was silent for a moment, then he nudged Nat’s arm. “Connor’s a clever bastard. Learns fast. Thinks on his feet. Don’t write him off.”
Don’t write him off. Nat had survived that mantra before, during the palace raid. “I’m not—” he shook his head. “I’m fine, honestly. I’ve just got to find him, you know? Whether he’s—”
Dead or alive. Nat couldn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t need to. Marc nudged his arm again. “I know, mate. I know.”
The patrol moved on, trudging silently through the tunnel. A mile or so passed before they came to another weapons cache. Nat froze and raised his hand. The quiet tread of the men behind cut off as they made ready to defend themselves against anyone lurking behind the stacked crates.
Bobs crouched and threw a flash grenade. Nat and Wedge moved in as the smoke cleared, but as they rounded the cache they found nothing but a blood-stained wallet.
Nat’s heart dropped through the floor. He snatched it from Wedge and opened it. Connor’s ID hit him like a truck. “This is Connor’s.”
Wedge said nothing. He took the wallet back and flipped it over in his hands, staring at the streak of dried blood.
Marc appeared beside them. “We can test the blood when we get back. See if it’s definitely his.”
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