Killing for the Company

by Chris Ryan

  ‘But . . . but if you knew all this, why did you . . . ?’

  ‘I want them to think we’re heading east out of London, OK?’ Chet explained himself more to keep her quiet than anything else. ‘At least that was the idea.’

  ‘Well, the idea’s not working . . .’

  ‘Thanks. Next time I need someone to state the fucking obvious, I’ll know where to come.’

  ‘We need another car,’ Suze continued as if he hadn’t said anything. ‘We could hire one, maybe . . .’

  Chet shook his head. ‘Too easy to trace.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  Chet checked his mirror. No sign of the patrol car. He took the exit on to the A13. He knew he was on the money – that to beg, borrow or steal another vehicle would be a beacon to anyone trying to locate them. But they could do the next best thing . . .

  As he drove along the A13, he looked left and right. He knew what he was searching for. It wouldn’t be too long before he found one.

  Ten minutes later he saw it: a retail park just off the main road, with all the usual shops and a monstrous concrete car park, six or seven storeys high. A minute later he was pulling a ticket from the automated entry gate and slowly crawling along the parking bays of the ground floor.

  ‘What are we doing?’ Suze asked.

  ‘Looking for something.’

  ‘What?’

  But Chet didn’t answer. He was too busy concentrating on the other cars in the multi-storey. Nothing on the ground floor, so he climbed the ramp to the first. Still nothing. He cursed under his breath and headed higher.

  They were four floors up before he found what he was looking for: another Ford Mondeo, black. Two years newer than his, but it would do. He selected a parking spot in a corner of the car park, boxed in by a bulky Range Rover, then rummaged in his rucksack and pulled out the screwdriver from his debugging kit. Seconds later he was bending down in front of the car, prising off the plastic screw covers of his number plate and removing it. In under a minute he had both plates off.

  ‘Get out of the car,’ he told Suze.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just get out and come with me.’

  Suze looked wary as she followed him across the deserted car park towards the other black Mondeo. ‘You see anyone coming, distract them,’ he said under his breath. ‘I’m going to switch the plates.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You’re a clever girl. You’ll think of something.’

  ‘I can’t . . . I mean, I . . .’

  One look from Chet, though, and she fell silent.

  They approached the car together. Chet crouched down and removed the front number plate quickly enough, but he was just preparing to swap it for his when the banging of a door echoed around the car park.

  He gave Suze a sudden, urgent look.

  ‘Right . . .’ she said. ‘OK.’ She dug the remains of her fingernails into her palms and started walking towards the stairwell. ‘Um . . . excuse me . . . excuse me . . . could you tell me where the nearest . . . ?’

  Chet blotted out the sound and concentrated on the plates. A couple of minutes later they were swapped, and he was striding back to his own car, with Suze trotting along behind him. Elsewhere they heard an engine start and a vehicle move away. Then silence again. Chet fixed the new plates to his vehicle, and moments later they were driving out of the car park.

  ‘This’ll buy us a bit of time,’ he said. ‘Until the owner of the other car realises what’s happened. Or the police catch up with them.’ He paused. ‘Or anyone else does. But we still have to be careful.’

  ‘Careful how?’

  ‘We stay off the motorways until we get where we’re headed. The cameras tend to be on the main arteries. It’ll keep us under the radar. Hopefully.’

  Suze stared at him. ‘And where are we headed?’ She stared some more, then clutched her red hair in her hands. ‘Christ, you haven’t even told me your name . . . and how do you . . . how do you know all this stuff?’

  He glanced at her as he drove. She looked exhausted. Terrified. He didn’t blame her. He felt the same. The only difference was that Suze was physically shaking. Chet wasn’t.

  ‘You did well back there,’ he said, and he meant it.

  Suze didn’t reply.

  ‘My name’s Chet Freeman,’ he said quietly. ‘I know all this stuff because it’s my job to. At least, it used to be. We’re going somewhere out of the way that I know pretty well. And when we get there, you and me are going to have a little talk. You’re going to tell me everything you know, and you’re not going to leave out a single fucking thing. Right?’

  Suze looked straight ahead and returned her thumbnail to her teeth.

  It took her a moment to reply, and when she did, her voice was quiet. Not meek-quiet, but determined-quiet.

  ‘Right,’ she said.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Zero, this is Tango 17.’

  The red Toyota had its boot up and Luke and Finn were sheltering behind it. That way they wouldn’t stick out on the horizon as the sun rose to the east, and they could operate the patrol radio stashed in the back with the rest of their kit. Their hostages were still in the car, Abu Famir in the front and the second man, now unconscious, in the back.

  A couple of miles to the south was the main road that ran from the Jordanian border all the way to Baghdad. Everywhere else was desert. When they’d stopped it had been light enough for them to see the traffic on the road with the naked eye. Busier than last night. Plenty of small cars, indistinguishable at this distance from their own, but plenty of military vehicles too. Luke couldn’t tell from up here if they were moving men, munitions or other supplies. But he could tell there were enough of them for that road to be a very dangerous place for two members of the British Army and two dissident Iraqi hostages, one of them with blood pissing from a gun wound.

  The radio crackled, and then was silent.

  ‘Zero, this is Tango 17.’

  A pause.

  ‘Tango 17, this is Zero. Send.’

  ‘We have the target, but we got into contact. Two men down, one wounded. We have the casualty in tow. Target claims he’s a fellow dissident. Request further instructions.’

  ‘Tango 17, wait out, figures 5.’

  The line went quiet. Luke looked around. A desert falcon was circling up above. Apart from that, no movement in the immediate vicinity.

  After five minutes that felt like a lot longer, the radio came to life again.

  ‘Tango 17, this is Zero. Proceed to RV with both captives.’

  Luke glanced at Finn. He was shaking his head.

  ‘Zero, we’re in a bad spot here. We need medical assistance. Request pick-up.’

  A brief pause, then: ‘Tango 17, pick-up cancelled. No heli assets.’

  He heard Finn cursing under his breath. ‘What about Fozzie and the others?’

  A pause.

  ‘Back-up unit compromised. Enemy aircraft in border area airspace. Return via vehicle or foot. Repeat, return via vehicle or foot.’

  Luke nodded grimly. ‘Roger that, Zero.’ He replaced the handset of the patrol radio.

  ‘Fuck’s sake.’ Finn looked towards the main road. ‘I’m telling you, with that guy in the car it’s fucking suicide down there. We should just nail him now, say he died of his wounds.’

  For a moment Luke didn’t reply. He walked round and glanced into the vehicle. The wounded man was pale and sweating, despite Finn’s on-the-hoof medical attention. He had a large swab bandaged to his wound, but it was already saturated with blood. He needed serious attention and this wasn’t the place to go looking for it. Maybe Finn was right. Maybe they should just ditch him.

  ‘You given him a shot?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Not the kind I’d like to.’

  ‘Have you given him a shot?’

  ‘Of course I’ve given him a fucking shot. But he needs more than morphine.’

  Luke continued to weigh things up. He didn’t like the
sound of the situation at the border. With Fozzie and the others compromised, getting over into Jordan was going to be tough. Maybe they should ditch the car and head across the desert on foot. But it was 100 miles to the border, and that was a big ask even for the two Regiment men. For an old boy like Abu Famir it was an impossibility. And as for the wounded man . . .

  In any case, they had their orders. Luke looked over at Finn. ‘We need to get him into the burka,’ he said. If nothing else it would cover up the guy’s wounds.

  ‘We need to waste the fucker.’

  Luke gave Finn a dangerous look before opening up the front passenger door to talk to Abu Famir.

  ‘What’s his name?’ he demanded.

  The Iraqi academic avoided his gaze.

  ‘What’s his fucking name?’

  ‘He needs a doctor,’ Abu Famir mumbled. It was clear he was avoiding the question.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Luke sighed, before opening the rear door and moving his attention to the casualty. Their companion stank of sweat and was shaking. ‘Hey, buddy,’ Luke said – speaking English because he didn’t know what else to speak. ‘How you doing?’

  The wounded man opened his eyes, but there didn’t seem to be much understanding behind them.

  ‘You got a name, buddy?’

  When the man answered, it was in a hoarse almost-whisper. ‘Amit,’ he said.

  That didn’t sound like an Iraqi name to Luke. He glanced in Abu Famir’s direction, then turned back to the wounded man.

  ‘OK, Amit, you need to stand up by the car so we can put something over you. Stop anyone paying us too much atten . . .’

  ‘Where’s Abu Famir?’ Amit asked. His accent had a strange tinge to it. ‘I need to get Abu Famir out . . .’ A moment of breathlessness. ‘I need to get him out of . . .’

  ‘Abu Famir’s here. We’re taking care of it.’ Luke felt a moment of respect for Amit, if that was really his name. ‘Now come on, buddy. I’m going to help you out . . .’

  Luke could do nothing other than place two strong hands under Amit’s armpits to lug him from the vehicle. The wounded man gasped in pain, but he didn’t resist and moments later he was leaning against the car, his body crooked but his face a little more alert than it had been – even though the dressing of his wound was like a sodden sponge.

  ‘Your friend wants to kill me?’ he whispered.

  Luke gave him a long look. ‘You want to give him a reason not to?’

  Amit closed his eyes. ‘What do I need to wear?’ he whispered.

  All of a sudden Finn pulled his Sig from under his robe and held the barrel of the gun hard against the man’s forehead. ‘Answer the fucking question,’ he instructed. But as soon as Finn had spoken, Luke knocked his gun away from Amit, and the two Regiment men found themselves staring each other down.

  ‘Leave it,’ Luke said. ‘That’s an order.’

  ‘This is insane,’ Finn spat. ‘We hit a roadblock and it goes noisy, half the Republican Guard are going to be on our tail. It’s daylight. They’ll be able to see us from fucking Syria.’

  Luke looked back at Amit. The guy was leaning, exhausted, against the car.

  ‘We’ll find a lying-up point,’ Luke decided. ‘Wait till nightfall and work out what to do. Let’s get him covered up.’

  With obvious reluctance Finn fished the burka and headdress out of the boot. Amit didn’t really seem to register what they were doing as the two SAS men struggled to get the robe over him and the headdress on, before Luke helped him into the back of the car again. By the time Amit was sitting down, his head lolling at a slight angle and his face obscured behind the veil of the headdress, it was impossible to tell if he was awake or asleep. Hell, it was impossible to tell if he was even still alive.

  Luke put the bonnet down, got back into the car and turned to Abu Famir, who was still in the front passenger seat. The Iraqi had calmed down and was looking defiantly at Luke over the top of his little round spectacles.

  ‘I will have great influence in the new Iraq,’ he announced with great self-importance. ‘I will see to it that you are well rewarded . . .’

  ‘Fuck your rewards,’ Luke replied. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘My deputy,’ Abu Famir stated flatly. ‘And I will not see him killed. ’

  Luke glanced at Finn. You might not get a fucking choice, he thought to himself as he started the engine. Abu Famir was still talking. ‘I know your Prime Minister Stratton well. We have spoken on the telephone. He has great respect for my judgement . . .’

  They set off again. They’d been travelling for five minutes when Luke became aware of a sound from the back seat. He looked over his shoulder. Amit was moving – shaking his head – and muttering to himself. ‘What’s he saying?’ he asked Finn.

  ‘Fuck knows. Delirious.’

  ‘He must see a doctor,’ Abu Famir declared.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll phone for a fucking appointment.’

  A couple of minutes later Luke hit the brakes. Something had caught his attention. He and Finn got out of the car. The terrain to the right was rough and undulating, and 500 metres away there was an outcrop of bare rock, about the size of a small house. A thin wadi ran towards it, alongside which was a rough dirt track that fed off the road on which they were travelling about thirty metres forward of their position.

  Luke took the wheel again. They trundled slowly towards the track, turned right along the wadi and made their way to the rocks. The closer they drew, the higher the rocks loomed. He stopped ten metres from them.

  ‘Let’s recce,’ he said to Finn. The two soldiers grabbed their carbines and started walking round the rocks. The sides were smooth and weathered; to start with, they looked like they offered little in the way of protection, but on the far edge, out of sight of the car, they found a crevice about three metres wide and ten high. It was dark inside – from the opening Luke and Finn could only see a couple of metres in.

  ‘Cover me,’ Luke said.

  Finn nodded, and aimed his rifle into the crevice while Luke stepped in.

  It smelt musty. The temperature was a couple of degrees lower than outside, but it was dry and the ground was flat. As his eyes grew used to the gloom, he saw that the crevice was about twenty metres deep and – crucially – unoccupied. No doubt the desert dwellers of this area knew of it, but as somewhere to lie up for the day it would do. He walked outside and nodded to Finn. ‘We can get the motor in,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’

  Finn didn’t look happy, and he started to reason with Luke. ‘Look, mate, don’t tell me you can’t see there’s something strange going on here. We can still ditch him. He could still die of his wounds. Abu Famir doesn’t have to realise, nor do the Ruperts back at base.’

  Luke looked back across the bleak expanse of the desert. It looked totally empty, but he knew that danger could appear almost from nowhere: desert patrols, Republican Guard troops investigating the shoot-out back at the village, even innocent Bedouin wanderers stumbling across them. Their situation was dangerous, no doubt about it. Sometimes, though, you just had to go with your gut. This was one of those times, and Luke wasn’t going to waste Amit until he knew exactly who he was.

  ‘We lie up here till dark, then we go,’ he told Finn in a tone of voice that offered no argument, and the two of them hurried back round to the other side of the rocky outcrop to collect their car and their strange pair of passengers.

  Chet and Suze headed west, then north. It was slow going. When Chet first pulled over, Suze looked alarmed. ‘What’s wrong? What are you doing?’

  ‘Checking for tails.’

  He repeated this every twenty minutes. Occasionally he would do a U-turn, retrace his steps and take another route. A good tail, he knew, would drive past him when he pulled over, reduce their speed and then wait for Chet to catch up. He needed to try to scupper any tricks like that. It wasn’t foolproof, but it was the best he could do. Suze only asked him what he was doing once. After that they sat in awkward silence.


  They stayed off the main roads, driving south of Oxford then north up towards Birmingham before bearing west towards the Welsh border. When he saw the first sign for Hereford, Chet had to fight the urge to follow it. He had friends there, of course. If he made a couple of phone calls, there’d be a welcoming committee for him at Credenhill. But a welcoming committee wasn’t what he wanted. Chet was going dark – for how long, he didn’t know.

  The weather started to change around 15.00 hrs. Big black clouds billowed in from the west and the windscreen started to become spotted with rain.

  ‘A storm’s coming,’ Chet murmured. Suze didn’t respond.

  As they crossed the border, thunder boomed across the sky and the rain fell more heavily. Ten minutes later it was a torrent. Every time there was a crack of thunder, Suze jumped in her seat. She was like a timid animal, ready to bolt but not knowing which way to go. Chet had no words of comfort for her. His mind was on other things. With the windscreen wipers going full pelt and everyone’s headlamps on, it had become more difficult for him to keep an eye on anyone following. Not good – but at least it was equally difficult for anyone trying to tail them.

  The light was beginning to fail when he headed south, passing through several grim mid-Wales towns, their streets deserted because of the insistent rain. And it was almost dark when his headlamps lit up a signpost that read: ‘brecon beacons national park’.

  ‘Nearly there,’ he told Suze, like he was talking to a child at the end of a long journey.

  Chet knew the geography of the Beacons better than he knew anywhere. He’d lost count of the number of nights he’d spent there, freezing his nuts off in the months approaching SAS selection, and many times subsequently on exercises. Every peak and valley was familiar to him; every road and every stream. When people are on the run, they return to places they know well. Chet’s pursuer might be expecting him to go back to his little flat off Seven Sisters Road; but in fact the rugged landscape of south-east Wales felt more like home than any shitty little corner of north London ever could.

  The quieter and more winding the roads became, the more relaxed Chet felt. There were no cars now. Nobody following. No risk of vehicle identification cameras or unexpected police patrol cars. Just the Beacons, the heavy rain and a few hardy, bedraggled sheep. When he saw their final destination – the lights of a single, solitary farmstead a couple of hundred metres away, he felt more relieved than at any moment since he’d awoken on his birthday. And that seemed like weeks ago.