Osama

by Chris Ryan

  Having brought in the third and fourth cans, he placed them in the middle of the hallway, uncapped them both and knocked them over in the direction of the stairs. Petrol coughed out, and the floor in the hallway became a puddle. Ashkani returned to the fuel-sodden front room, taking care not to tread in the soaked areas. Mrs Jones’s electric heater sat in the fireplace. He unplugged it and carried it back into the hallway.

  He looked up again. Still no sound from the bedroom. The woman and child clearly had no idea what was about to happen.

  By the front door there was an old, yellowed double wall socket. Ashkani plugged in the electric heater and ensured that both bars were on. They soon turned orange. He stepped swiftly outside. It would not take more than thirty seconds, he figured, for the petrol fumes to ignite. Hurrying to the Peugeot, he climbed in and started the engine.

  Ashkani was five metres from the road when the explosion happened. It was loud and brutal enough to give the car a jolt as it moved away; he looked in the mirror just in time to see a flash of orange and black from the doorway he had purposefully left open to ensure a flow of oxygen.

  By the time he was ten seconds away from the house, he could see smoke billowing from the windows; from the brow of the hill two kilometres away, he could still make out flickers of orange as flames licked up the building’s exterior.

  And as the house disappeared from view, he found himself thinking deeply – so deeply that he failed to notice, high above him, a black Agusta, flying in the opposite direction, towards the coast.

  He was thinking not of the woman and child who were even now suffocating and burning to death; nor even of how his plan had been frustrated; but of the Lion. The Director. The Sheikh al-Mujahid. He was thinking about a thin old man who had once been great, no doubt, but whose time was over and whose head had been filled with incorrect intelligence the better to confound the Americans.

  The Americans.

  He thought of Delaney, and wondered just what his people would be doing with bin Laden right now.

  ‘There!’ Joe bellowed. ‘There!’

  ‘Roger that.’ The pilot’s voice was unflappable. But the sight of smoke billowing from the isolated house was like a knife in Joe’s guts. ‘Get down there!’

  The armed unit that had apprehended him at Bristol Airport could not have looked less sure of themselves. Twenty minutes ago this man had been public enemy number one. A communication from GCHQ and another from MI5 and their instructions had been turned on their head: take him where he tells you. He’d roared a grid reference number at the pilot, who had immediately diverted the Agusta and headed north-west.

  The chopper started to lose height and, now that they were no more than twenty metres above ground, the extent of the inferno became clearer. The house and gardens were covered in a shimmering heat haze and shrouded in black smoke. Joe scanned the surrounding area, desperately looking for the figures of a woman and a young boy, but he saw nothing. And the sight of the black Range Rover, parked in front of the house, was enough to make dread seep into his marrow.

  Thirty metres east of the house, they touched down. The chopper had barely hit the grass before Joe jumped out and, hunched against the downdraft, raced towards it. The front of the house was engulfed in flames – the front door had fallen forward and flames were licking around the frame. It looked like the entrance to hell. The crackling of the fire was deafening and the heat was immense – by the time he was ten metres away he had to place one hand in front of his face to protect it. He could hear voices behind him – ‘Get back from the house . . . it’s not safe!’ – but he ignored them and skirted round to the left side, looking up to find the window of the bedroom where he’d left Conor and Eva. It was open, but the interior was obscured by a film of smoke.

  The heat was not quite so intense here as it was at the front of the house. He managed to get within five metres of the wall, then screamed at the top of his voice: ‘The window! Get to the window!’

  He saw nothing but smoke wafting from the opening.

  ‘Conor! Eva! It’s me!’

  Panic surged through him. He couldn’t bear it . . . he couldn’t bear to lose them . . .

  ‘The window!’ he shouted. ‘Get to the—’

  He stopped.

  The outline of a child’s face appeared in the smoke.

  ‘Conor, I’m here!’ Joe roared. ‘Jump – I’ll catch you. Don’t be scared, champ, I’m here!’

  There was a devastating crash from somewhere inside the house. The sound impacted through Joe like a bullet. He looked over his shoulder. Three members of the armed unit had joined him, but they were standing a good ten metres further back. Joe looked up to the window again. ‘Conor!’ he screamed. ‘Conor!’

  But the boy wasn’t there. The face had disappeared.

  Smoke billowed into the bedroom through the gap between the door and its frame. It hurt Conor’s eyes and made it difficult to breathe. The nice lady had moved the boxes away and stuffed clothes from the wardrobe along the bottom, where the gap was largest, but it was seeping through the material and filling the room. She was on her knees by the bed, bent double and coughing her guts out. Together they had tried to fold the mattress in half and squeeze it through the window to give them something to jump onto, but she was in pain and it was too heavy for them. He had tried to get her to the window, where she could breathe more easily, but she couldn’t move and he couldn’t lift her.

  Conor coughed. It hurt, and it felt like he was choking and unable to breathe as his throat and mouth filled with warm phlegm. But he struggled into the centre of the room, where the smoke was thickest. Because the laptop was there, and the black book he had seen the man use. They were important. His dad would need them.

  After everything that had happened, he wanted his dad to be pleased with him.

  Carrying the two items, he clambered over the bed towards the window. He was still coughing and retching, but he could hardly hear the sound he was making because the fire in the rest of the house was so fierce.

  Conor could hear his dad shouting. There was no way he could shout back – his throat and eyes were too full of smoke – so he didn’t even try. He just balanced the contents of his arms on the window ledge, then pushed them over, as if he was posting a letter.

  ‘Conor – jump!’

  Conor knew his dad would catch him if he did. But he didn’t want to leave the nice lady here. He didn’t know who she was, but she had come back to help him and he wanted to help her too. That was what his mum would have expected, and his dad. He retreated back into the room, feeling his way to the end of the bed and down onto the floor where she had collapsed and was now choking. He pulled at her arm and tried to say, ‘Come on,’ but he just started coughing even more. Maybe if he pulled his T-shirt over his nose, he thought, that would help. As he did so, he gulped down a mouthful of air that was slightly less thick with smoke. The coughing eased for a moment.

  ‘Dad’s here!’ His mouth formed the words, but no sound came from his dry throat. ‘He says we should jump!’

  The lady didn’t move. Not at first. But Conor continued to tug her arm, and after ten seconds she rose from her crouching position. She turned, and peered through the smoke at him. Her face was black, with wet streaks around her eyes, beneath her nose and around her mouth.

  ‘Dad’s here!’ He tried to say it again. He was kneeling now. The lady’s eyes lingered on his lips and he thought that perhaps what he’d said had made her feel a bit better.

  That look didn’t last long.

  The sudden creaking sound was louder even than the roar of the flames. Conor had seen a programme on TV once all about earthquakes and how they could make whole houses move and tumble into rubble. It was like that now. The floor suddenly seemed to slant. At the far side of the room a gap appeared between the wall and the floor. Beyond it he could see flames.

  The lady grabbed hold of him. Together they tried to push themselves to their feet. But there was another
great creaking, cracking sound as the floor gave way. The two of them collapsed with it, holding each other tight as they fell into a cloud of smoke, dust and flames.

  Joe’s throat was raw from shouting. He had heard the noise, and now he saw an ominous crack along the exterior wall, at the height of the first floor and extending along its entire width. It could only have been caused by a collapse of the ceiling joists.

  The laptop was on the ground in front of him, broken and smashed. Next to it, a leather-bound book, face down and open, its pages crumpled. Joe grabbed them and ran round to the front of the house, where he dropped them again. He could hear the scream of fire engines not far off, but he knew he couldn’t wait for them, and he ignored the shouts from the ARU.

  He was five metres from the main door and the heat was almost unbearable. But he didn’t stop. With his head bowed and his right forearm covering his eyes, he strode forward, vaguely aware that someone had tried to pull him back – he’d shrugged them off without even looking back.

  Joe burst through the burning doorframe and into the oven of a house.

  He crouched low, almost crawling, because he knew that the floor of a burning building could be at least 100 degrees less hot than the ceiling, and the toxic CO2 levels much lower. The closer he kept to the floor, the longer he had. Even so, the heat was overpowering. It hurt just to breathe – like pumping fire into his nostrils – and it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. The staircase had completely collapsed and there was a great hole in the ceiling that seemed to be dripping flames. The wall two metres to his left was a crumbled mound of smouldering rubble; he could see through it to what remained of the bedroom on the first floor – the burning wardrobe, boxes ablaze. But a section of the floor had collapsed into the room below, and it was here that he saw the sight that ripped his heart out.

  He could see a mattress, seven metres away to his left, upended against the exterior wall and burning; smouldering cardboard boxes that had also fallen through the floor were bursting into flame. And he could see, through the poisonous smoke, a small boy lying on the ground. To Conor’s right, through a screen of flames, a second figure was pushing itself up to its knees.

  Joe didn’t have time to think, only to force himself further into the oven, through the smoke towards his son. He wanted to crawl more quickly, but the hot air pushed him back. His clothes, his hair, everything scalded, as though he too would ignite any moment. He shouted his boy’s name, but the shout was only in his head because his lips were clamped shut.

  It took ten seconds to reach him; ten seconds that felt like an hour. Conor’s eyes were open and he was coughing. He was alive, so Joe turned to Eva.

  They had not fallen in the same place. She was five metres away, but it might as well have been five miles. Two burning rafters had fallen in front of her and the wall of flame that burst from them had closed her into a corner. She was kneeling, and Joe could see her face through the flames and the heat haze. Half her hair had already been singed away, revealing her scalp; what remained had curled with the heat. The skin on her face and neck was blistering. She clearly wanted to break through the flames, but the heat was holding her back.

  Half of Joe wanted to run – not for himself, but to get Conor out of there. The other half told him he couldn’t. Eva needed him. If he could just break through that barrier of flame, grab her and pull her back. He had to try – she would die if he didn’t.

  Joe was steeling himself to burst through the wall of flame when he saw her lips move. No sound came from them, and he wouldn’t have heard anything over the roar of the blaze even if it had. But he could understand the exaggerated form of her mouth, carefully shaping two single words, her lips continuing to blister gruesomely even as she did so.

  ‘Ashkani,’ she mouthed. ‘Alive.’

  A great groan from the old house told him another section of ceiling was falling. Burning timber thundered down on Eva. Joe roared her name, but even as he did so he had to fall back to protect himself and Conor from the collapsing building. He caught a glimpse of a solid wooden joist cracking against Eva’s head and her body bursting into flames as she dropped. He shouted again, and tried to step forward, but it was useless. He knew he couldn’t save her. He could only save his son.

  Joe was still shouting as he ran from the inferno – ten metres, fifteen metres – before falling to the ground, exhausted, with Conor. He was aware of fire engines and neon; of men barking instructions and a bustle of activity; of Conor, groaning weakly on the ground next to him.

  Ricky. Caitlin. And now Eva.

  Joe barely realized he was curled on the ground. He didn’t notice four members of the ARU, their expressions full of shock at the insane howling of this grizzled, battered figure. They approached him with care, preparing to secure him if necessary. He did not notice how Conor, alive against the odds, pushed himself feebly to his feet and, unnoticed by the men going about their emergency work, staggered to where a damaged laptop and a leather-bound book were lying on the grass. He did not notice how the roof of the house suddenly caved in, thrusting smoke and rubble ten metres up into the air and all around.

  The only fire he was aware of now was the fire in his soul. A furnace of hatred, fuelled by images of the dead, and by two words.

  ‘Ashkani. Alive.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  London. The following day, 1100 hours GMT.

  It was most unusual for Mason Delaney not to have slept on a transatlantic flight. But these were most unusual times. His bow tie was not tied with quite its regular precision, and a smear on his horn-rimmed glasses went unwiped. He sat in the rear seat of a black Daimler that swept away from Terminal 5. The windows were dark and a glass screen separated the front of the vehicle from the back. Delaney’s chauffeur glanced repeatedly in the rear-view mirror, but he was sufficiently discreet not to speak into the intercom.

  They had just slipped onto the A4 when Delaney’s phone rang. He answered it immediately.

  ‘It’s me, sir. Scott.’

  Delaney didn’t reply. His eyes did not light up as they normally did when he heard the voice of his young assistant. He looked out of his window. It was raining as if there was no air outside, just pounding sheets of water. A black London cab was overtaking them. Beyond that, an enormous airport hotel slid past.

  ‘Something’s come up, sir.’

  ‘It’ll have to wait, Scott,’ Delaney said, his voice distracted. ‘I’m expected at Thames House in—’

  ‘It’s Ashkani, sir. We’ve heard from him.’

  Silence. Delaney blinked.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘His encryption is good, sir. We’ve been broadcasting the access codes, just in case. He’s requesting a meeting. I can have him apprehended—’

  ‘What?’ Delaney hissed.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You want him talking, you fuckwit?’

  A pause. ‘No, sir,’ Stroman replied, chastened.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘West London, sir. Uh, Hounslow. He communicated a grid reference. I can send it through to your driver.’

  But Delaney was only half listening. ‘Send it through,’ he said. He was looking out of the window again. The rain was coming down even harder. ‘The soldier,’ he said. ‘Mansfield. You know where he is?’

  ‘Secure hospital, sir. Our guys are working on it. Sir? Sir?’

  Delaney had moved the handset away from his ear. Stroman’s voice sounded distant. He disconnected the line, stared into the middle distance for a moment, then knocked on the glass screen.

  ‘Mr Delaney?’ the driver’s voice came over the intercom.

  ‘We’re re-routing?’

  ‘It’s just coming through now, sir.’

  Delaney sat back in his leather seat and did what he could to clear his mind. Perhaps, he reflected, Ashkani did not realize Delaney was on to him. He pulled his attaché case onto his lap and slipped a gloved hand inside to pull out a small, snubnose handgun, which, with h
alf an eye on the driver, he surreptitiously placed in his coat pocket.

  The rain did not let up for the whole journey. When the Daimler pulled over forty-five minutes later, its windscreen wipers were barely up to the job. Delaney removed the handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his misted-up window. They had parked in a small road that ran alongside a children’s playground. On the other side of the playground he could just make out a bandstand and, beyond that, parkland that disappeared into the rainy haze. He squinted. The whole area was deserted, with the exception of the swings in the playground. Despite the rain, there was a boy on one of them, swinging back and forth, wrapped in a navy blue raincoat.

  Back and forth.

  Back and forth.

  Where was Ashkani? Hiding, until Delaney showed himself??

  ‘Umbrella, Mr Delaney, sir?’

  Delaney nodded, unable to take his eyes off this child playing alone in the pouring rain. Moments later his driver had opened the passenger door and was standing holding a large black umbrella. Delaney climbed out. ‘Stay in the car,’ he instructed. The driver nodded and hurried back behind the wheel while Delaney crossed the twenty metres between the Daimler and the bandstand, one hand in his pocket, clutching the gun. The lower halves of his trousers were sodden by the time he reached it, and he was already shivering with the cold. Water was leaking from the bandstand’s neglected roof in several places. Delaney closed the umbrella and stood at one edge, away from the leaks, his eyes still fixed on the child in the rain.