by Chris Ryan
The house occupied a corner plot and Sam turned into the small road that went alongside it. On this side of the house there were first floor windows, three of them, but he could not see any further down because of the high external wall. At the back of the house was a smaller street, on the opposite side of which was another dwelling place. This house was much less grand; indeed it looked deserted, as if it had been the scene of fighting in recent days or weeks. Sam slipped into the house and up the stairs onto the roof. The fierce sun beat down on him as he kept his head low and approached the front wall. Here there was a lattice of holes in the brickwork, allowing him to look through and onto the roof of the other house.
It didn’t take him long to see movement. Two people keeping guard over the back of the house; no doubt there were at least two more on the other side. Below them was a garden of sorts – palm trees and even a patch of rough grass and some flowers, a strange sight in the middle of a war-torn city. The back wall had a wooden door. It was flimsier than the one at the front, easier to break down; but he wouldn’t want to do that while it was overlooked. Still, that was their most likely point of entry. All they had to do was make sure there wouldn’t be a welcoming party when they came knocking.
Sam looked at his watch. Nine minutes had passed; RV in six. He slipped back downstairs, out into the street and round the other side of the house. As he walked back to the car he could see Mac up ahead. He controlled his natural urge to catch up with his friend; keeping his head down, he wove his way through the people in the street and a minute or so later was back at the RV point. The Toyota had gone – no doubt Sadiq had picked up his car and got the hell out of there – but Jacob and Mac stood where it had been. The three of them took shelter in the doorway of a closed-down shop.
‘Front gate covered from the roof,’ Jacob stated, his voice brisk and businesslike. ‘Three of them at least, maybe four. Two snipers in the front yard.’
‘I clocked two more on the roof at the back. Good point of entry. Wooden door. Flimsy.’
The two brothers looked at Mac. ‘No obvious lookouts in the street,’ he said.
‘Good,’ Jacob replied. ‘We need that chopper to extract us the moment we’ve apprehended the target.’ His eyes flashed. ‘It’ll be Yankee scran for our man tonight.’
‘Fuck of a sight better than the filthy Iraqi stuff he’s used to,’ Mac observed. ‘We’re practically doing the bastard a favour…’
‘Shut up!’ Sam barked.
The other two looked at him in surprise. Sam was holding his palm out towards them, indicating that they should keep quiet. He had dialled HQ on the sat phone and there was a noise of confusion at the other end. Panic at the Farm. Clearly something was going wrong.
And then the instruction came. ‘Yankee Delta Three, hold your mission! Repeat, hold your mission! Do you read?
‘Yeah,’ Sam snapped, ‘I fucking heard you. What’s the problem?’
‘Black Hawk down,’ came the curt reply. ‘Small arms fire. Fucking Iraqis. All helicrews diverted to assist. Sorry, Sam. This is going to have to wait for another day. You’re ordered back to base.’
A crackle and then silence.
‘Shit!’ Sam hissed, thumping his hand against the wall.
‘What is it?’
‘Chopper down. We’ve got no support. They’re scrubbing us.’
‘How many we lose?’ Jacob demanded.
‘Didn’t stay. Still, they’re not going to be queuing up for sticking plasters, are they?’
Jacob and Mac both turned away, silently cursing. Sam felt himself sneering as a hot surge of anger ran through his veins. The Regiment had taken a hit. He was damned if they were going to return to the Farm with nothing to show for it.
‘Let’s do it,’ he said.
The others looked round at him.
‘What do you mean?’ Mac demanded. ‘If we can’t…’
‘Listen – the moment the Yanks know we’ve got this bastard, you can bet your boots they’ll have someone along to extract him. And if they don’t… fuck it, he’s only one guy. We just have to make sure everyone surrounding him goes down.’ Somewhere deep inside, Sam knew he was being reckless. But he also knew they had a chance. He looked at Jacob. His brother’s dark eyes were unreadable. ‘We just need a distraction, J. Something to draw everyone out.’
The two brothers stared at each other. Jacob’s eyes narrowed as he considered the suggestion. ‘We’ve got our own distraction,’ he said finally. He inclined his head slightly before dipping once more into his bag. He fished out a small device, about the size of a mobile phone. Just a black box with a small switch. ‘I gave the Coke can a bit of extra sugar.’
Sam could sense Mac tensing up next to him. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? I thought it was just the tracker.’
Jacob nodded. ‘The tracker, yes. And a bit of plastic explosive, just in case. Enough to get our friends running to the front of the house when it blows to see what’s going on.’ His demeanour became instantly more serious. ‘Sam, you and Mac take the back. I’ll fire a few rounds to disperse the civilians, then explode the device and start picking the guards off when they come to check out the fireworks. Reckon it’ll give you enough time to gain entry?’
Sam gazed at his brother. Mac was right to be pissed: if Jacob had this planned, he should have shared it with them. But his brother always did like to pull the cat out of the bag. Or in this case, the C-4 military-grade explosive out of the tin.
‘Yeah,’ Sam replied grimly. ‘It’ll give us time.’ He looked at Mac. ‘You good with that?’
Mac clenched his jaw – a momentary expression of his disapproval – before tugging at his half ear again.
Jacob flashed him a smile. ‘You’re a long time looking at the lid, mate,’ he said.
It didn’t take long for professionalism to overcome Mac’s irritation.
‘Bring it on,’ he said.
*
Sweat trickled down the side of Sam’s face next to the unfurled bit of carpet he had used to conceal his weapon. The midday sun scorched the back of his neck as he lay flat on the roof facing the back of their target’s house. Mac lay five metres away, his Diemaco C8 loaded and at the ready. Through the brickwork lattice they could see the guards on the opposite roof – a distance, Sam estimated, of thirty metres. One of them was smoking a cigarette; the other was fiddling with his weapon.
Sam checked his watch.
‘Contact in sixty seconds,’ Jacob’s voice came over their comms earpiece.
‘Roger that.’
They waited.
The hard, angular contents of his ops waistcoat dug into his ribcage.
Thirty seconds.
Fifteen.
The distinctive crack of rounds being fired. The smoker dropped his cigarette and sprang to his feet, immediately rushing to the front and out of sight. Sam and Mac waited for the second man to disappear. Moments later he did.
Sam steeled himself for the noise of the explosion.
When it came, it sent a brief shock through his body. Sam’s experience had taught him to judge the size of any explosion he heard, and it sounded big. It didn’t stop him from moving, though. He got to his feet while Mac stayed in the firing position, ready to cover him. Instantly, however, there was a shout. ‘Sam! Get down!’
He immediately fell back to the ground. The second sniper had reappeared, ten metres to the right of the first. His AK-47 was ready to fire and he had noticed Sam. Two rounds hit the top of the roof in quick succession.
They were the last two rounds the Iraqi guard would ever fire.
Mac’s aim was unerring. As he pressed down on the trigger, Sam could tell that his friend was totally in the zone. He could almost visualise the cartridge stirring to life in the chamber, the propellant gases expanding and exerting pressure on the bolt, creating a calculated delay that permits the projectile to exit the barrel, the gas pressure dropping again once the projectile has been released.
T
he MP5 round hit the guard straight in the face. There was a flash of red before the sniper fell to the ground and out of sight.
‘Go!’ Mac urged.
Sam sprinted, knowing he was covered. It took him no more than fifteen seconds to hurtle down the stairs and across the ten-metre-wide street before firing several rounds at the handle of the door. The wood splintered and broke – one good kick and it was open. He scanned the back garden for hostiles, his eye zeroed in on the sights and his finger resting lightly on the trigger. Convinced that it was clear, he looked up at the roof where Mac was covering him. ‘I’m in,’ he stated over the comms, giving his friend the thumbs-up sign, then directing his gun once more into the back garden of the house.
Mac was there within seconds. They nodded at each other as Mac covered the entrance, allowing Sam to push on inside. There was no one here – it looked like Jacob’s strategy was working.
It was less than a minute after the initial explosion that the two of them gained entry into the house. Out front they could hear the sound of shots, a distinctive loud, sharp crack, then the rounds nicking against the walls and ricocheting into the ground. Sam steeled himself against the image of his brother being fired at. His instinct wanted him to join in the firefight, but Jacob was a big boy. Older than Sam and more experienced. He could take care of himself. But just to reassure himself he asked the question. ‘You okay, J.?’
‘Walk in the park,’ came the reply, followed by another round of fire.
Sam and Mac swept the ground floor in under a minute. Empty. Mac took the lead up the stairs. These were pressed up against one wall with a solid banister on the other side. They led up to a balcony-style landing with a metre-high wall looking over the ground floor. Sam covered Mac from below. His friend disappeared from sight. There was the sudden, brutal sound of two rounds in quick succession: Mac had double-tapped someone. Sam sprinted up the stairs in time to see an Iraqi with half his head missing slide down the whitewashed wall, leaving a brushstroke of red where the fatal wound scraped against it.
They were in a corridor-cum-landing. To Sam’s right the low wall overlooking the ground floor. There was a door at either end and one in the middle. It was this door that the Iraqi had been guarding, so they immediately took their positions on either side of it. Sam plunged one hand down the top of his dishdash and pulled a flashbang from his ops waistcoat, then nodded at Mac who held up three fingers, then two, then one. Mac kicked the door in, before aiming his weapon into the room and allowing Sam to rip the pin from the tennis-ball sized grenade and hurl it inside. As soon as it was in, Sam braced himself, clenching his eyes slightly and waiting for the explosion.
One second.
Two seconds.
Impact.
The moment the sonic boom arrived, Sam and Mac appeared in the doorway to take stock of the situation.
It was smoky and dusty, but not so much that they couldn’t see to work. There were four men inside. They were all suffering temporary blindness from the grenade; one of them had a thin streak of blood seeping from his ear. Three men were clutching their AK-47s, waving them dangerously around the room despite the fact that they were totally disorientated. The fourth, an older man with a face Sam thought he recognised, cowered in the corner. That was him, he thought to himself. The target. It had to be. And even if it wasn’t, their next move was clear. The Iraqis carrying the weapons needed to be plugged before they blindly opened fire and got lucky.
Three shots. Three direct hits. Each round produced a satisfying whump as it crashed into human flesh, hot lead burning a neat, perfectly round hole into the body, the round then ricocheting off bone and muscle, ripping through organs and severely fucking up the target. The men fell dead to the floor, with bits of bone and thick clumps of brain around them.
Sam entered the room. The fourth man – massively fat and with a scraggly beard – was groping blindly. As Sam grabbed him he started shouting, his voice harsh and full of authority. What he was saying, Sam had no idea. He just used one hand to pull his Iraqi hostage out of the room, his other hand outstretched and pointing the Diemaco in front of him. The man stumbled as Sam dragged him into the corridor. He continued to bark harshly in Arabic.
‘Target attained,’ he said curtly into the comms. No reply. ‘Repeat, target attained. I’ve got him. Over.’ Still nothing. He cursed. The fucking comms were down. Sam looked up at Mac whose nod told him he was experiencing the same problem.
They needed to get this guy out of the house as quickly as possible. A quick look at the stairs, however, told him that getting out was going to be a problem.
There were four of them, positioned at intervals along the staircase. Their AK-47s were raised and although Sam could tell at a glance from the way they held their weapons that they were not well trained, he also knew that he and Mac were in a world of trouble. In an instant he grabbed his hostage and used his body as a shield before aiming the Diemaco directly at his head. From the corner of his eye he saw Mac hit the floor. His friend was shielded now by the low internal wall that looked over the ground floor. Sam followed suit, pulling his hostage with him.
The two SAS men were breathing heavily. Mac took up position, crouched down on one knee, the butt of his gun pressed hard into his shoulder as he aimed towards the top of the stairs.
Stalemate. The Iraqis knew they couldn’t advance; neither could Sam and Mac leave the protection of the wall while the enemy were on the stairs. The first person to put their head above the parapet would get it. There was a tense silence.
‘What the fuck now?’ Mac asked under his breath.
Sam sensed that his hostage’s sight was returning. He was looking at Mac with an animal snarl and had started to struggle. Sam dug his weapon into the fleshy part of the man’s neck and felt his muscles freeze.
A figure suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs. He was stepping sideways, facing Mac and Sam, his gun already pointing in their direction. Mac didn’t hesitate. His first bullet hit the guard in the chest, knocking him backwards.
‘Take that, you cunt.’
The Iraqi’s AK-47 discharged a round harmlessly into the air above them before Mac’s second shot hit him in the head. He slumped heavily to the ground. Sam’s hostage looked in horror at the sight of the shattered bone and brain matter that had burst from the dead man’s head. His limbs started to tremble.
Another silence.
And then it was broken. Not by the guards this time, but by something quite different. A voice, down below. Urgent and bellowing.
Jacob.
Sam pictured him on the ground floor below, just by the back entrance with his weapon pointed across the hallway up towards the stairs.
‘Sam!’ he shouted. ‘Mac! Flashbang!’
Sam braced himself – and just in time.
The bang from Jacob’s grenade was close by and deafening. Even with his eyes shut Sam could see the flash illuminating the red of his clamped-shut eyelids. In the confusion, he heard three shots and then his brother shouted out again.
‘Clear!’
Sam opened his eyes. Mac was crawling forwards. He carefully peered round the corner at the top of the stairs, then slowly got to his feet, his weapon still at the ready. Having taken stock of the situation, he turned round and nodded to Sam.
The terrified hostage was like a dead weight as Sam pulled him to his feet. When he saw the sight that greeted them, he started trembling even more than before. It was a bloodbath. The three remaining guards had slumped to the bottom of the pale stone stairs, leaving trails of blood along the steps. Their bodies were in a crumpled pile, their limbs distorted. The only sign of life was the blood still pumping from their wounds. Sam forced his hostage down the stairs and over the pile of bodies. And while Mac covered the entrances to the hallway where they stood, Jacob directed his gaze towards the Iraqi. He then pulled something out of his ops waistcoat.
It was a playing card, one of the ones issued by the Americans. Printed on the front was
a man in military uniform. He wore a black beret, sported a bushy moustache and had an aloof smile of self-satisfaction. He didn’t look a whole lot different to Saddam Hussein himself.
Their hostage looked a good deal less smug in real life than he did in the picture. His beard had several days’ growth, his hair was dishevelled and there were dark rings under his eyes.
There was no doubting, however, that it was the same man.
Jacob held the playing card up to the hostage’s face.
‘Snap,’ he said.
The processing centre was not far away. Before the invasion it had been an interrogation centre for Al-Mukhabarat, the Iraqi Intelligence Service – not a place you wanted to end up. Sam wasn’t so green not to realise, however, that little had changed in that respect since the Americans had taken over the facility. Al-Mukhabarat were not known for the gentleness of their interrogation techniques; but then, neither were the CIA.
They drove in a three-vehicle convoy, one truck containing the SAS unit, their hostage, and a driver, the other two flanking them on either side. Their driver, a beefy American in shades and a combat helmet, had a bad case of the verbal runs and wasn’t put off by the fact that Sam, Jacob and Mac were sitting in stony silence. ‘Processing centre’s overrun,’ he observed loudly. ‘They’re pulling every last fuckin’ Iraqi in they can lay their hands on, Ba’ath Party or not. Course, a lot of them get sent home again, but not before they get interrogated.’ The driver barked, a brutish, ugly sound. ‘Interrogated? Jeez, they’re getting medieval on them in there. Good thing too if you want my opinion.’
He glanced in the mirror, perhaps waiting for some kind of agreement. When it wasn’t forthcoming he carried on. ‘Reckon they’ll find a cell for this one, though. High up on the list. How d’you boys find him?’
It was only the fact that they were arriving at their destination that stopped the driver asking again.
From outside it would be impossible to guess what went on behind the concrete façade of this bland building. Only the military presence – unusually heavy even for Baghdad – gave any outward sign that this place was anything more than a standard administrative building. There were ten men, perhaps more, wearing US combats, Interceptor body armour and brandishing standard service rifles. As the military convoy pulled up it aroused a good deal of interest in the soldiers standing guard outside the facility. And when Jacob, Sam and Mac emerged into the sweltering heat with their bedraggled, terrified hostage, there was a palpable sense of excitement. Since the invasion, people had been dragged into this place from all over Baghdad, but they didn’t usually have this kind of escort.