by Chris Ryan
Thirty metres to the target. Luke tapped one of the goats, and the men walked side by side past the oil drums and towards the building where they hoped to find Abu Famir.
From the corner of his eye, Luke sensed movement.
Somebody had appeared from one of the houses at their ten o’clock, no more than twenty metres away. Luke looked closely at the figure. It was a boy, no more than twelve years old, though his face already bore the ravages of a hard life. His body did too. The bottom half of his left leg was missing and he was able to stand only with the aid of a sturdy stick nestled under his left armpit. He wore a heavy cloth robe and a brightly coloured hat, and in his right hand he was carrying a metal bucket. He stared at the two strangers with wide eyes full of mistrust.
‘You clocked the kid?’ Luke murmured.
‘Roger that,’ replied Finn.
As he spoke, there was more movement. The door of the target house – distance, twenty-five metres – was opening.
Then – fuck! Four figures emerged from the house. They were all wearing plain Arabic dress, though one was a lot older than the others. He had a short white beard and little round glasses, and Luke immediately recognised him from pictures he’d seen: Abu Famir. The man’s eyes darted around.
As they exited the building, the younger men surrounded the Iraqi academic. They were not quite so dark of skin, and they each carried an MP5 Kurz. They made no attempt to hide their weapons and held them like they knew how to use them. Abu Famir had good reason to seem on edge: it looked like Saddam’s men had already caught up with him.
Luke and Finn stopped dead in their tracks. Abu Famir’s entourage did the same.
The two groups of men stared at each other, nothing but three old oil drums and two goats between them.
And then there was a shout.
It came from the lame boy. He had dropped his bucket and was pointing furiously at Luke and Finn. His words were a little garbled, but Luke had enough Arabic to work out what he was saying.
‘They have stolen the goats!’
Abu Famir’s guards quickly looked at each other, as if deciding what to do; but the two goats had already made their decision. Clearly startled by the boy’s shouts, they turned and bolted. One of them collided with Finn, who was momentarily knocked back. His dishdash twisted, revealing the bottom couple of inches of his carbine’s barrel.
One of the men shouted. He had seen the weapon, and was raising his.
‘Get down!’ Luke yelled, and both men hit the ground just soon enough to avoid a burst from the MP5 thundering into them. It hit the oil drums in the middle of the courtyard, causing a harsh, metallic sound to ring out across the air, and puncturing entry and exit holes in the metal. By now, though, the SAS men had accessed their own weapons. And that was bad news for the ragheads.
The guy who’d just fired his MP5 was the first to get it: two rounds, one from Finn, one from Luke, both full in the face. His features seemed to explode, and he was thrown back violently against the front wall of the house, his blood soiling Abu Famir’s grey robe as he fell. The boy was stumbling back into his house, but Luke’s attention was already on their target’s remaining companions. One of them – the taller of the two – was taking aim at Finn; the other was just behind Abu Famir.
The taller man fired a burst in Finn’s direction, just as one of the goats bolted between them. The animal’s squealing was cut short as rounds from the MP5 hacked into its flesh, ripping a seam along its side and spewing its entrails. Finn wasn’t hit, but Luke knew his mate wouldn’t get a second chance. He fired, and delivered another headshot to this trigger-happy Arab, who spun down into the dust.
The man behind Abu Famir was short and stocky, with rumpled dark hair and sharp dark eyes. He raised his weapon to fire over the academic’s shoulder, but as he did so Abu Famir – his face full of fright and his glasses skewiff on his face – began to run.
‘Get him!’ Finn roared at Luke as he fired at the remaining companion, catching him not in his face, but at the top of his left shoulder. The guy went down like a sack of shit, and the two SAS men scrambled to their feet. Luke headed right, following Abu Famir the way he had run – fast for an old man – round the back of the house; Finn went in the opposite direction.
The back of the house was like a junkyard: rolls of barbed wire lay beside old tyres and metal troughs. There was a vehicle parked here – a modern black 4 x 4. They found the old Iraqi pinned against the far side of the vehicle, his eyes wild and his body shaking. He had the expression of a man who was sure he was about to die. He shook his head as he saw Finn and Luke advancing on him; and although he had opened his mouth to say something, no words came.
Finn grabbed Abu Famir by the collar of his robe while Luke checked the vehicle. The key was hanging in the ignition. ‘Get him in!’ he barked.
Finn opened up the back seat and bundled Abu Famir inside, then took a seat next to him, rolled down the window and propped his weapon through the opening while Luke took the driver’s seat and started the engine. As he put his foot down, Abu Famir started jabbering in Arabic. ‘Shut the fuck up!’ said Luke as the vehicle started to move.
But the Iraqi wouldn’t quieten down. ‘British?’ he asked anxiously in English.
‘Bullseye,’ Luke growled as the car accelerated round the corner of the house.
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Jordan. All expenses paid.’
‘Jordan? But . . .’
He didn’t finish what he was saying. As Luke drove into the main courtyard, he checked over his shoulder. The two corpses hadn’t moved, of course, but the stocky third man – the one Finn had caught in his shoulder – was up on his knees, one hand pressed against his badly bleeding wound.
‘Down him!’ Luke shouted at Finn.
‘NO!’ Abu Famir’s voice was strangely high-pitched, and as Finn prepared to take the shot, the Iraqi threw his thin body against him. Finn fired, but the shot went awry and by the time he had pushed Abu Famir away, the vehicle was halfway across the courtyard: the angles were wrong and Finn’s face was stormy.
‘You must go back for him,’ Abu Famir shouted.
‘You’ve got a fucking death wish, mate,’ Luke said as he continued to burn the 4 x 4 across the courtyard.
‘They weren’t here to kill me. They are my brothers – Jordanians – here to help me. We were preparing to leave together and you killed them . . .’
Luke hit the brakes. ‘What are you talking about?’
Abu Famir’s frightened eyes darted from one man to the other. ‘They were here to help me.’ He twisted round to look out of the rear window. ‘But he . . . he is not Jordanian. He is Iraqi . . . my colleague, in hiding with me. You cannot leave him there to die . . .’
‘Fucking try me,’ Finn muttered. He turned to Luke. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ he said.
But something stopped Luke from hitting the gas. Their orders were clear: get Abu Famir out of Iraq. Nothing more, nothing less. Even so, sometimes on the ground you had to adapt.
Abu Famir started up again. ‘If Saddam goes, my friend will be an important man. Yes, a very important man . . . my deputy . . . he must be saved . . .’
‘Finn,’ Luke instructed. ‘Shut him up.’
His mate held his weapon against Abu Famir’s body. ‘You heard him,’ he said. And then: ‘Jesus, Luke – what are you doing?’
Luke had gone into reverse and was now speeding back towards the house. He didn’t answer his friend, but when he was ten metres from where the wounded man was lying, he hit the brakes and the 4 x 4 screeched to a halt. He jumped out and ran round to where the guy was lying, keenly aware that seven or eight Bedouin men had come out of their homes and were looking towards the site of the firefight, though they kept their distance.
It was immediately obvious that the guy was in a mess. The blood from his wound had almost fully saturated the robe he was wearing; his face was pale, his lips slightly blue; his right hand wa
s pressed against his left shoulder where the bullet had entered, and blood was oozing between his fingers.
Luke got out of the vehicle and strode towards him. The man, trembling violently, whispered, ‘Harah, harah, harah . . .’ Then he reached for his MP5, which was lying on the ground about three metres from where he had fallen, but Luke got there first, grabbed the weapon and stood over him.
The man’s eyes widened and he stopped muttering. He stared at the weapon in Luke’s hand. ‘Lo . . .’ he whispered. ‘Lo . . .’
Luke bent over, grabbed the injured man just under his good shoulder and pulled him roughly to his feet. He gasped in pain and it took all Luke’s strength to keep him upright. He yanked him towards the 4 x 4 and bundled him into the passenger seat, ignoring his hollers of pain. In the process the man’s blood smeared Luke’s own robe.
The Bedouin men watched impotently as this scene unfolded in front of them. Maybe they were used to such horrors; maybe they were just scared to get involved. Either way, Luke floored it out of the place, acutely aware that Finn didn’t agree with what he’d just done. Tough shit. He was calling the shots and he’d made his decision.
Within a couple of minutes they had reached the Toyota and come to a halt. As the two SAS men climbed out of the 4 x 4, Finn yelled, ‘For fuck’s sake, look at him. He’s going to compromise us.’
Luke opened the boot of the Toyota, took out a med pack and handed it to Finn. ‘Let’s get them into our vehicle. You can treat him on the go.’
‘Treat him? You’re fucking losing it, Luke. Let’s just nail the bastard now and get out of here.’
Luke ignored him. ‘We’re going to get right away from the village, then get on the radio to base, tell them what’s happening. If the order comes through to extract him too, that’s what we’ll do. If not, we waste him. Now stop fucking arguing and let’s move.’
He walked round to the other side of the 4 x 4, opened the door and dragged the wounded man back towards the Toyota.
NINE
Two and a half thousand miles away, in a poky top-floor studio flat just off Edgware Road in London, Suze McArthur was half asleep on the sofa.
The sofa was covered with an embroidered ethnic throw that Suze had bought on a shopping trip with friends to Camden Market. The friends had long since deserted her for jobs and husbands and kids, no longer content with the world of student marches and protests. Suze would be thirty in just two months. The throw had adorned the sofas in the various bedsits she’d rented ever since college, her job as a midwife never allowing her to afford anything bigger.
In front of the sofa was a small wooden chest that doubled as a table, on which a patchouli joss stick had almost burned down to the end. Next to the joss stick was a Dictaphone loaded with a C90 cassette. There was only one picture on the wall – a slightly crumpled old X-Files poster showing Mulder and Scully, arms folded and back to back, looking down into the room. A TV was on in the corner and on top of the set there was a photograph: a picture of Suze with her arm around a much older lady sitting in a wheelchair, a pink hyacinth blooming in the background. The floor was covered with newspaper cuttings, and in one corner a lava lamp shone dimly.
Dramatic music from the TV, and Suze came to. Her last memory was of watching 100 Worst Serial Killers, some crap American rubbish. She looked at her watch. Half past eleven. The big-haired female presenter was standing outside a forbidding Victorian building. Slowly Suze tuned in to what she was saying.
‘It is here, in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital in Berkshire, England, that the man known as the Yorkshire Ripper lives, and it is here that he will most probably die.’
A familiar orange-backed picture of a black-haired man appeared on the screen.
‘In 1981 Stuart Sutcliffe was convicted of the murder of thirteen women. The Ripper claimed during his trial that a voice in his head had instructed him to kill prostitutes, and that this was the voice of God. The Yorkshire Ripper is not the only serial killer to have made such claims. A significant number have made similar assertions that God . . .’
Suze fumbled for the remote control and turned the TV off. She shivered. Some things were better not watched alone and in the dark. That included tales of serial killers and religious nuts. She remembered something she’d read a long time ago: the world is divided into good people and bad people. Good people will do good things, bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things takes religion.
Good people. Bad people. Sometimes, she thought to herself, it was difficult to tell the difference.
She got down on her knees and starting collecting the clippings. A jumble of headlines that she’d read a hundred times before filled her mind. ‘profits soar . . . aerospace industry on upward trajectory . . . management buyout boosts stocks’. When she had them in a pile, she placed them all back in the box file where they lived, and on the spine of which she had written two words in clear black marker pen: ‘grosvenor group’. She carried it to the other side of the room, where she slotted it into its place on a rickety Ikea bookshelf, next to an identical box file with a single word written on the side: ‘stratton’.
Her pretty face curled into an expression of dislike.
She went over to look out of the room’s one small window. From here she could see the street below – Wimbourne Terrace – and, above the opposite roofs, the A40 flyover, with plenty of cars travelling in either direction even at this time of night. She turned and looked back into the room, and her eyes fell on the Dictaphone.
Maybe she should take the tape to the press. Make it all public. But did she trust them? And would they believe her anyway, even with the evidence?
Suze shook her head. The truth was, she didn’t trust anybody. She had gone to such lengths to acquire the contents of that tape on the table – it made her feel sick, the memory of the danger in which she’d put herself – and now she wasn’t only afraid of its contents, she was afraid to do anything with it!
You’re fucking crazy. The words of the man with the limp who had caught her on the rooftop earlier that day rang in her head. She winced as she thought of the things she’d threatened him with. Shameful things.
Maybe he was right.
Maybe she was crazy.
Maybe these bastards had dragged her down with them.
Perhaps she should throw the tape away? Burn it. Forget she’d ever heard its contents and just get on with her life. Get herself a husband and some kids, like all her friends had. Like her mum had tried to persuade her to do for so many years, until her mind had started to wander.
But she knew she wasn’t going to do that. She knew what she’d heard. And even if she didn’t yet know the full story, she knew she had to do something to stop it.
Suze put the Dictaphone on the bookshelf alongside her research files, then found herself a blanket and snuggled up on the sofa again. She needed a clear head, and for a clear head she needed sleep.
Whether sleep would come, with all these thoughts spinning around in her mind, was a different matter entirely.
Chet drove.
His mind was racing. What the fuck had happened? Who was the intruder? Who had tried to kill him?
You’re going to tell me the name of the woman you spoke to outside the meeting room today. If you do that, you might live to see morning.
Suze McArthur. That pale-faced redhead with a stud in her nose and the smell of incense in her clothes had someone running scared. But who? And why?
He remembered what he’d overheard on the rooftop. Trust me, Prime Minister Stratton. This war is good to go . . . the Americans are all on board. The question is, how are you going to get it through . . . ?
Was that enough to persuade someone to make an attempt on his life? No way. Chet knew the decision to take out an individual like that was never made lightly – especially if the hit had to be carried out on home turf. Too many things could go wrong. Killing someone was easy; covering it up was more difficult. The conspiracy theorists loved
the idea that the intelligence agencies would think nothing of assassinating suspected terrorists or troublesome members of the royal family, but that was bullshit.
And in any case, the woman in his flat had not been British. As he drove, Chet desperately tried to place her accent. ‘Harah!’ she had said. Chet was a first-class Regiment linguist, and he thought the word seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.
It was just past midnight when he turned off Euston Road to drive down Gower Street and into the West End. He parked his car in the NCP on Wardour Street, hid his rucksack underneath the passenger seat and limped through the maze of red neon, pubs and sex shops. A woman, comfortably in her forties and with too much make-up on, called to him from a doorway. ‘Looking for a bit of business, love?’
He put his head down.
‘Beggars can’t be choosers, darling!’ The woman’s voice had turned angry when she realised she was being ignored.
Chet carried on towards Trafalgar Square, and from there to Whitehall. He walked down the opposite side to number 132 and stood for a moment observing the entrance. He didn’t really know what he was looking for – maybe an unmarked van parked suspiciously nearby; individuals carrying out surveillance in the street. He knew the signs to look for and right now he saw none of them, so he crossed the road and made his way into the building.
The big, marble-floored atrium was entirely empty, with the exception of a solitary security guard on reception – different to the guy Chet had spoken to that morning. He had black skin and dreadlocks and was reading a copy of the Sun. He glanced up when Chet was a couple of metres from the reception.
Chet smiled at him. ‘Graveyard shift, mate?’
The guard put down his newspaper and Chet noticed that he’d been examining page 3. ‘You said it, brother,’ he sighed.
Chet looked around, then leaned in a bit closer. ‘I wondered if you could help me out with something.’
‘Ain’t no one here this time of night,’ the guard replied. ‘Except me, of course.’ He prodded the newspaper. ‘And Delightful Debs from Dagenham.’ He laughed, and Chet joined in.