Those in Peril

by Smith, Wilbur

  ‘Infidel whore!’ he shouted at her. ‘How dare you gaze upon my countenance with your devil’s eyes? I am proof to your evil spells.’ Cayla covered with both hands the raised crimson weal which the whip had left across her face, and she sobbed out an apology.

  ‘I am sorry. Please forgive me. I did not mean to give offence.’ But Sheikh Khan had turned away to command Adam.

  ‘Bring her through to my sanctuary.’ He strode back through the doorway, and Adam seized Cayla’s arm and pulled her after him.

  ‘You fool,’ he hissed at her, ‘I warned you.’

  In the room beyond the doorway a grim tableau had been laid out. The far wall was draped with a large flag. The central emblem was the black silhouette of an AK-47 automatic rifle on a green field. Above this was written in Arabic script: ‘The Flowers of Islam. Death to the infidel. Death to all the enemies of Allah. God is great.’

  A wooden stool had been placed in front of the flag. On each side of the stool was a uniformed warrior in camouflage battledress. Their faces were hidden behind black headscarves. Only their eyes were visible. The men were armed with assault rifles and their masks gave them an ominous satanic appearance.

  Adam led Cayla to the stool and made her sit facing the photographer who had been waiting for them. His camera was mounted on a tripod and he focused it on the scene. One of his assistants brought Adam a rolled sheet of heavy white paper, which Adam unrolled and took to Cayla.

  ‘Hold this so we can read the date on it,’ he told her.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the front page of today’s International Herald Tribune newspaper, downloaded from the internet. It is merely to establish the date on which your portrait was taken.’ He stepped back and gave a curt order to the men on each side of the stool. They raised their clenched fists in a warlike gesture. Adam nodded to the cameraman. The photographic flash lit the scene briefly. It caught Cayla staring into the camera lens with an expression of utter despair.

  Hector and four of his senior field operatives were gathered around the central desk in the situation room of the Sidi el Razig terminal. They were in deep discussion. Hazel Bannock sat to one side. She was trying to follow their discourse but a great deal of it was in Arabic. She gave up and occupied herself with studying the men Hector had chosen to work for him. These were some of those who would attempt to rescue Cayla for her. She prided herself on being a good judge of character and ability and she had discussed each of them with Hector, and finally admitted that he had chosen well.

  Two of his men were of European extraction. The first of these was David Imbiss. He was young, fresh-faced and gave the illusion of plumpness. However, this was not fat but muscle. Hector had introduced him to her as an ex-captain of US infantry who had done his time in Afghanistan as a liaison officer seconded to the brigade that Hector commanded. At the end of his tour he left the army with a Bronze Star and a few scars. Hector had told Hazel that when David returned home to California he found that his wife had taken the baby and gone off with an orange grower she had known at college. David’s boyish and ingenuous countenance was deceptive, for behind it he was tough, bright and savvy. With his training in the military he was a computer and electronics expert, a skill that Hector valued highly.

  Leaning over the desk on Hector’s righthand side was Paddy O’Quinn. He was much younger than Hector, and had served under him in the SAS. He was tall, lean and muscled with a quick temper and even quicker mind. He had been a career soldier until he had made one small error of judgement. On the battlefield he had struck a junior officer with sufficient force to break his jaw.

  ‘The man was a prick,’ was how he had explained this lapse of judgement to Hector. ‘He had just had half his platoon mown down thanks to his stupidity, and then he started to argue with me.’ Paddy would probably have been a senior officer by now, without that single mistimed punch. The army’s loss was Hector’s and Cross Bow’s gain. The other two men facing Hector across the desk were both Arabs. This had at first surprised Hazel; after all, Hector Cross was a renowned racist, was he not?

  ‘I would rather have one of those gentlemen covering my backside in a hard fight than most other men I know,’ Hector had told her when she remarked on his choice. ‘Like most of their race they are hard warriors and cunning as hell. Of course, they are able to think like thugs, talk like thugs and pass as thugs. Set a fox to catch a fox, as someone once said. Together we make a good team; when things get really tough I can pray to Jesus Christ while they can pray to Allah. That way we have all our bets covered.’

  Tariq Hakam had been attached to Hector’s unit in Iraq as his interpreter and local guide. He and Hector had taken to each other from the first day when they ran into an ambush and had to fight their way out. He had been at Hector’s side on the dreadful day of the roadside bomb. When Hector had opened up on the three Arab insurgents who had laid the bomb and seemed to be about to deploy a suicide device, Tariq had backed Hector’s fire and taken down one of the enemy. When Hector had resigned his commission Tariq had come to him and said, ‘You are my father. Where you go I will go also.’

  ‘Can’t argue with that,’ Hector had agreed. ‘Not sure where I’m headed, but pack your kit and come along.’

  The other Arab facing Hector across the desk was Uthmann Waddah. ‘Uthmann is Uthmann,’ Hector had told Hazel. ‘No one can replace him. I trust him as I trust myself.’

  Hazel smiled at the memory of Hector’s simple explanations of his relationship with the four men. She had taken much of it as gross hyperbole at the time, but watching them now as they debated their options around the situation room desk she was revising that opinion.

  We few, we happy few! she thought and in a strange way she felt envious of Hector. It must be wonderful to belong to such a tight-knit band; to spend your days in the company of brothers with whom you could trust your life. Never to know loneliness. Henry had been gone many years now. Even in the midst of the throng loneliness was her austere and constant companion.

  Her laptop beeped, alerting her to an incoming message. It would be Agatha. Hazel quickly turned to it. She stared at the screen in disbelief, and then let out a choking cry.

  ‘Oh, my dear God! This cannot be happening!’

  ‘What is it?’ Hector demanded.

  ‘Cayla has sent me a message!’

  ‘Don’t open it! It’s not Cayla,’ Hector shouted, but he was on the opposite side of the desk and couldn’t reach her in time to stop her. Her fingers flew over the keys. There was an alert that there was an attachment. She pressed the ‘Download’ button and then stared at the screen. The blood drained from her face. She opened her mouth as if to speak but the sound that burst past her lips was a high keening cry of mourning. Hector thought she might fall for she reeled in her chair. He caught her shoulders and shook her.

  ‘What is it? Pull yourself together! For God’s sake, woman. What is it?’ She closed her mouth and stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she straightened in the chair and drew a deep breath, fighting for control of her emotions. She still could not speak, but handed him the laptop. He looked down at the image on the screen. It was of a pretty young white girl in Muslim dress, but with her face and hair exposed. Her expression was haunted and forlorn. She held a copy of a newspaper so he could read the date under the headline. On each side of the girl stood armed and masked men. On the wall behind her was a banner with messages of militant and radical religious cant printed over it in black Arabic script.

  ‘Is it her?’ he asked, and when she could not reply he shook her gently. ‘Is this Cayla?’

  She gasped to catch her breath and then she whispered, ‘Yes, it’s Cayla. It’s my baby.’ She shivered. ‘But why should she send me this terrifying picture of herself?’

  ‘She did not send that,’ Hector said harshly. ‘It was sent by her captors. They are opening a line of contact with us. The picture was just to intimidate you, but they are ready to negotiate at
last.’

  ‘But it’s from Cayla’s mobile phone.’

  ‘They have taken it from her, or at least they have taken the Sim card out of her phone.’ He turned her to face him. ‘Listen to me. This is to the good. We know now with certainty that Cayla was alive three days ago. That is the date on the newspaper she is holding.’ Hazel nodded. ‘Now we have a direct line to her captors. We can negotiate with them. We might even be able to trace the origin of the message by the network that sent it.’ He handed the laptop across the desk to David Imbiss. ‘You’re the geek, Dave. Tell us what you can about this transmission. Can we tell which country it was sent from?’

  ‘Sure, Heck.’ Imbiss examined the laptop. ‘Might take time, but with a court order the company which is the server might be forced to tell us which of their networks sent it.’ He handed the computer back to Hector. ‘But it would be a sweet waste of time.’

  ‘How’s that, Dave?’

  ‘The photograph was taken three days ago. Suppose it was taken in Cairo. There was plenty of time to courier the Sim card to an accomplice in, say, Rome. He or she transmits the message to us and then returns the Sim card to the main man by the same route that it came.’

  ‘Shit!’ Hector said.

  ‘Shit indeed,’ Dave agreed. ‘If we are going to have ongoing correspondence with these people you can be certain every message from them will be sent from a different country. Today Italy, next week Venezuela.’ Hector thought about this and then turned back to Hazel.

  ‘What is the balance on Cayla’s BlackBerry account, do you have any idea? The Beast will not top up the account if it goes dry, it would be too dangerous for them. We don’t want the trail to break off for lack of a few dollars.’

  ‘I put two thousand dollars into Cayla’s account while we were in Cape Town.’

  ‘You could talk for a year on that,’ Hector opined. With this lady nothing is ever done by halves, he thought and smiled inwardly.

  ‘I didn’t want her to have any excuse not to call me,’ said Hazel, justifying herself.

  ‘Excellent! So we want to make sure that they keep on using this number.’ He told her, ‘What you must do right away is reply to them. Make sure that they know we will be listening in for them. Do it now, please, Mrs Bannock.’ She nodded and then typed in a message on the keyboard. When she had finished she turned it towards him to read.

  Gentlemen, I will be waiting to receive

  your further messages. In the meantime

  please do not hurt her.

  ‘No!’ Hector said sharply. ‘Leave out the salutation. Gentlemen they are not, and it serves no purpose. Then cut out the appeal not to hurt her. Just leave the bare bones. I am waiting. That’s all.’ She nodded, made the amendment and showed Hector the result.

  ‘Good. Send it!’ he said. Then he looked up at his men. ‘Everyone out, please. From now on it’s “need to know” only.’ They understood. If one of them were to be captured and tortured they could not divulge information they did not have. They began to file out of the room.

  ‘Tariq. Uthmann. Stay behind, please.’ The two Arabs turned back to their chairs at the table. Hazel could contain herself no longer.

  ‘Cross,’ she blurted, ‘is there nothing more we can do? Oh God, how do we find where they are holding her?’

  ‘That’s what we have been discussing for the past hour,’ Hector reminded her. ‘If there is one weakness the Beast has it is that it loves to talk, it loves to boast of its victories.’

  Hazel shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘If you know where to listen you may be able to pick up the echoes of its gloating.’

  ‘Do you know where to listen?’ she asked.

  ‘No, but Uthmann and Tariq do,’ he replied. ‘I’m sending them into deep cover. I’m putting them into the countries in which they were born and where their links to the local populace will be strongest. Tariq will go to Puntland and Uthmann to Iraq. They will sniff around until they pick up the scent. Even if they are holding Cayla somewhere else, these two will find out where she is.’

  ‘That will be terribly dangerous for them, won’t it? They’ll be on their own entirely and you won’t be able to protect them.’

  ‘You are greatly understating the case, Mrs Bannock. They will be at deadly risk. But they are hard to kill. They have survived so far against all odds.’ Hazel looked across at the two Arabs.

  ‘I can never thank you enough. You are risking your life for my daughter. You are very, very brave men.’

  ‘Not too much praise!’ Hector protested. ‘They already have highly inflated opinions of their own worth. Next thing they will be asking me for a raise, or something equally ridiculous.’ Everyone, except Hazel, laughed and it eased the tension a little.

  ‘Until they come up with a definite lead we will keep the ball in play here. At the same time we will make every possible preparation for the moment when we are certain where they are holding Cayla, and we can go in to bring her out.’

  There was a daily flight on Zara Airlines’ Fokker F-27 Friendship twin turbojet passenger plane from the airstrip at Sidi el Razig to Ash-Alman, the capital of Abu Zara. The next morning Tariq and Uthmann quietly joined the crowd of oil rig workers and labourers in the small airline check-in area. Dressed in traditional garb, with their faces half-covered by their shumag, they blended into the crowd. Once they reached the capital they separated. Tariq boarded the aircraft to Mogadishu in Somalia and an hour later Uthmann took the flight to Baghdad. They had vanished amongst the faceless Arab multitudes.

  The next morning Hector sought out Hazel and found her at breakfast in the tiny company mess. As he stood over her he glanced down at the bowl of cereal and the cup of black coffee on the table in front of her. No wonder she is in this kind of shape, he thought.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Bannock. I hope you slept well.’

  ‘An attempt at a light witticism is it, Cross? Of course I did not sleep well.’

  ‘It’s going to be a long day. Nothing is likely to break just yet. I’m taking a few of my lads out for some parachute practice prior to the big show. Some of them have not jumped for over a year. They need polishing.’

  ‘Have you got a chute for me?’ she asked. He blinked. He had thought that she might want to watch them to distract herself from her own worries. He hadn’t contemplated that she would want to join in. He wondered what experience she had.

  ‘You have done some para before?’ he asked tactfully.

  ‘My husband loved it, and he used to drag me along. We did quite a bit of base jumping together in the Norwegian fjords at Trollstigen.’ Hector gaped at her for a moment before he found his voice again.

  ‘That’s the end of the road,’ he conceded. ‘They don’t come more extreme than jumping off a mountain into a two-thousand-foot abyss.’

  ‘Oh! Have you done the fjords?’ she asked with quick interest.

  ‘I am brave, but not crazy.’ He shook his head. ‘Mrs Bannock you have my admiration and I would be honoured to have you jump with us this morning.’

  Hector had assembled fifteen of his best men, including Dave Imbiss and Paddy O’Quinn. They made three jumps from the helicopter. The first was from 10,000 feet and the third and last was low level from 400 feet; just enough air left for the parachute to flare before their feet hit the ground. This technique would give an enemy firing from below little chance of hitting them while they were dropping and vulnerable. After the third jump all the men were in obvious awe of Hazel. Even Paddy O’Quinn could barely conceal his admiration.

  They ate their ham and cheese sandwiches and drank black coffee from a flask while sitting on the side of a sand dune. Afterwards Hector rolled an old truck tyre from the top of the dune, and as it bounced and bounded down the steep slope they took turns firing their Beretta SC 70/90 automatic assault rifles at the cardboard target that Hector had fixed inside the tyre. Hazel was the last to shoot. She borrowed Hector’s weapon and checked the loading an
d balance with a quick and competent air. Then she stepped up to the firing mark and took on the target in elegant style, swinging smoothly out ahead of the tyre like a 12-bore shooter lining up on a high-flying pheasant. Dave retrieved the tyre from the bottom of the dune, they all gathered around it and regarded the bullet holes punched through the cardboard target. Nobody said much.

  ‘Why are we all so surprised?’ Hector mused. ‘She is a world-class athlete. Of course she is as competitive as hell, and has the hand-to-eye coordination of a leopard.’ Then he said ingenuously, ‘Let me guess, Mrs Bannock. Your husband liked to shoot and he dragged you along with him. That’s it, isn’t it?’ The laughter was spontaneous and infectious, and after a few moments Hazel was forced to join in. It was the first time she had laughed since she had lost Cayla. It was cathartic. She felt some of the debilitating grief being purged from her soul.

  Before the laughter ceased Hector clapped his hands and called out, ‘Righty-oh, boys and girls! It’s just under seven miles back to the terminal. Last one home buys the drinks.’

  The sandy soil made heavy going. When they streamed in through the gate in the barbed-wire perimeter fencing of the terminal Hector was a few paces behind Hazel. She was running strongly and smoothly but the back of her shirt was dark with sweat. Hector grinned.

  I doubt that Madam will have too much trouble getting to sleep tonight, he thought.

  Uthmann heard the explosion and saw the pillar of black smoke rising above the roofs of the buildings ahead of him. He knew at once that it was a car bomb and he burst into a swift run to his brother’s house, which was somewhere close to the explosion. He turned the corner and looked down the narrow winding street. Even for a hardened veteran like Uthmann the carnage was horrific. One man was running towards him with a child’s blood-soaked body clutched to his chest. His blank staring eyes did not even focus on Uthmann as he ran on past. The front had been blown off three buildings. The rooms inside were opened up like a doll’s house. Furniture and personal possessions hung out of the open rooms or cascaded down into the street. In the middle of the roadway stood the blackened and twisted wreckage of the car that had carried the bomb.