by Chris Ryan
‘Welcome to the Baghdad Hilton, shit-for-brains,’ an American voice called out. A few others laughed as their hostage stared at the US troops in bewilderment. Word of his arrival had evidently preceded him.
‘Looks like you got Delta Force showing you to your room,’ someone else shouted. ‘Don’t forget to tip them!’
Sam, Jacob and Mac remained stony faced. Typical of the Yanks to assume it was their boys who brought this guy in, Sam thought, but none of the unit were about to correct them. That wasn’t the Regiment style. Sam pulled their hostage by his upper arm towards the main entrance. The fat Iraqi was sweating like a pig and he’d gone limp. In fact Sam almost had the impression that he wanted to stay close to the unit and away from these scornful American soldiers. Better the devil you know, he supposed, even if they have just eliminated your thirteen guards in under two minutes.
They crossed the threshold into the processing centre. There was a dark reception room, mercifully cool thanks to the stark concrete walls. On the far side were a series of three arches looking on to a courtyard about the size of a large swimming pool. There the resemblance ended, however: the courtyard was parched and dry, a layer of dust covering it. The high building cast sharp black shadows over it from the blazing afternoon sun. Soldiers milled around the shaded areas, but those parts of the courtyard that were in full sun were deserted. No one wanted to be in this kind of heat unless they had to.
Two men awaited them. They too wore American combats, but no body armour. Sam could tell instantly that there would be no banter from these two.
‘Hand him over,’ the taller of the two men said, addressing the unit like they were little more than servants. ‘You’ll have to wait here for a debrief.’
‘How long?’ Jacob demanded.
The tall man raised an eyebrow as though he were speaking to a kid who had just answered back. ‘As long as it takes, soldier. Why? You got something better to do?’
Jacob gave him a dark look, but said nothing. Beyond him, from the corner of his eye, Sam noticed a couple of soldiers escorting a young Iraqi lad – no more than a teenager – across the courtyard. The kid looked frightened.
‘You,’ the tall one continued, nodding at their hostage. ‘Come with us.’ There was no attempt to speak to him in his native language, but the Iraqi understood what was being said to him well enough. He followed the two soldiers across the courtyard, disappearing with them through another archway on the opposite side.
‘Have a nice day,’ Mac muttered in a sarcastic American accent.
The three of them stood there in silence – a rare moment of rest. It was good to be out of the heat just for a few minutes. ‘Won’t be long before he’s crying for his mummy,’ Mac observed, breaking the silence. ‘Those CIA boys won’t fuck around.’
Jacob and Sam nodded curtly in unison. Sam’s blood was boiling at the way they’d been spoken to and he could sense the annoyance radiating from Jacob too.
Whenever Sam Redman looked back at the events of the next few minutes, they would always have the hazy, detached quality of a dream. There was something hazy about them as they happened, too. Perhaps it was because his ears were still numb from the flashbangs; perhaps it was the heat. Whatever the truth, he felt like an outsider looking in as the main entrance door slammed open. He squinted slightly at the sudden influx of light, then saw three soldiers enter. They had a kind of swagger that instantly set Sam’s teeth on edge. If they noticed the three of them dressed in blood-spattered dishdash, they made no attempt to acknowledge them; their attention was firmly fixed on the people they were bringing in.
There were three of them: a grey-haired man, a woman and a young boy. A family? Sam didn’t know, but they could well have been. What was obvious from the first glance, however, was that they were scared. With good reason. The soldiers had them at gunpoint and were manhandling them roughly into the courtyard. One of the uniformed men even elbowed into Sam. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ the newcomer muttered without even looking at him. ‘Get out the way. We got hostages.’
‘Yeah,’ Sam murmured. ‘They look like a dangerous bunch, too.’
Only then did the solder pay any attention to Sam. He looked him up and down, clearly unimpressed by his dirty dishdash, then spat at his feet before joining his mates. Sam caught Mac’s glance. It said it all.
As the troops spilled out into the courtyard, the three SAS men closed ranks, like a thick curtain being drawn. They stood in the shadow of the arches and watched in silence. The Iraqi man had been thrown to the floor. He was a pitiful figure as he sat in the dust looking up and watching one of the soldiers grab his wife by the face and squeeze his fingers into the hollow of her cheeks.
‘Easy, mate,’ one of the soldiers called. Sam was surprised to discern a Birmingham accent – this lot were British army. ‘I don’t think you’re in there!’
The others laughed, just as the young boy hurled himself at them. His arms and legs were bony; they flailed inexpertly and inefficiently as he tried to attack the soldiers. Of course, he was no match for them. One solid blow to the stomach and he was bent double in pain, gasping for breath. The soldier who had hit him grabbed a clump of his hair and dragged him across the courtyard, dropping him in the dust just as one of the others landed a brutal and quite gratuitous kick in the stomach of the older man.
The soldiers turned their attention back to the woman. She had started to sob, but that only seemed to amuse them more. ‘Please…’ she said in faltering English. ‘Please…’
‘Look at that,’ one of the soldiers announced brutishly. ‘She’s begging for it. You’ve got her fucking begging for it, mate!’
The soldiers laughed again.
It could have been any of them who stepped in to stop it happening. Sam had no doubt that they all felt equally sickened by what was unfolding before their eyes. It just happened to be Jacob. He strode out into the sunlight and grabbed the wrist of the soldier who was still clutching the woman’s face.
‘Enough,’ he said, his voice perfectly calm, but braced with authority.
Sam felt himself tensing up like a tightly coiled spring, ready to pounce; he could sense Mac breathing steadily, meaningfully beside him.
The soldier who was dragging the boy stopped and turned. Everyone else was like a statue. Jacob pulled his man’s wrist away from the woman’s face. There was clearly some resistance, but Jacob was the stronger of the two.
‘I said, enough,’ he repeated.
A brief pause. A flurry of movement as the three Iraqis ran to each other and huddled up, while the two other soldiers went to the defence of their mate.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ one of them called. He was broad shouldered and his lip curled in derision. ‘Robin fucking Hood?’ As he walked forcefully towards Jacob he stretched out his arms, his palms flat outwards, ready to push him away.
He never got the chance.
Jacob’s reactions were cheetah-like. He yanked the wrist of the man he was holding, pulling it behind his back in a nelson hold that made his the soldier cry out in pain, before throwing him at the advancing man. The two of them tumbled to the floor. Sam and Mac stepped forward, ready to help him if necessary. At the same time, the third soldier who had been kicking the older Iraqi man advanced. He swung his big fist in the direction of Jacob’s jaw.
He missed. Jacob grabbed him and, with a sudden, brutal force, swung him round in the direction of Sam and Mac.
The soldier almost flew through the air. Sam had to step sideways to avoid a collision, but he was still the closest to the soldier when it happened. The man’s head cracked against the corner of the concrete archway – a vicious, sickening slam that made everyone in the vicinity freeze.
He crumpled.
As he fell, his head landed against the corner of the concrete step that separated the room from the courtyard. This time there was blood. A lot. The guy was hurt. Badly.
After the sudden burst of violence, everyone was silent – even Jac
ob, who looked uncharacteristically worried at what had just happened. Sam hurried to the fallen man, who was lying face-downwards in the dust, a small trickle of blood seeping from his ear and forming a dark, dry puddle next to him. He rolled the guy over, then briefly closed his eyes.
The soldier didn’t look good. Not good at all.
Then Jacob and Mac were there, towering above him. Sam looked up at his brother. Neither of them spoke.
From behind Jacob came a voice – it was one of the soldiers, the one with the Brummie accent. ‘You fucking psycho…’ he said.
None of them acknowledged him. Sam placed two fingers on the fallen soldier’s neck then pressed lightly.
Nothing.
He looked up at his brother.
‘What?’ Jacob demanded, his face red. ‘Fucking what?’
Sam drew a deep breath. ‘He’s dead,’ he replied.
Jacob stared at him, his lips receding in anger. Sam tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing. His brother had just killed a British army soldier. He didn’t need Sam to point out to him the implications of that…
A hunted look passed over Jacob’s face. He spun round to stare at the other soldiers, all of whom took a wary step backwards. Then he turned again and looked desperately at Mac and then Sam, both of whom were struck into silence.
And then he looked at the corpse of his victim. His eyes flashed and in a sudden outburst he kicked the dead man in the stomach before stepping over him and disappearing into the shadow of the reception room. Sam heard the door slamming, then exchanged a glance with Mac. Their look said one thing and it was Mac who articulated it.
‘Jesus, Sam,’ he whispered. ‘What’s he done?’ And then, shaking his head in disbelief at the sight of the British army soldier lying dead at his feet, he repeated himself quite unnecessarily.
‘What the hell has he done?’
PART ONE
ONE
Shepherd’s Bush, London. Six years later.
It was a cold May evening – no longer winter but not yet summer – and the traffic along the eastern end of the Uxbridge Road was sluggish. The many pedestrians on either side of the street moved more quickly than the cars and buses whose headlights illuminated them as they trudged home from work. The air was filled with traffic noises, fumes and the smell of food being cooked in Middle Eastern fast-food joints.
One man moved more slowly than the others, partly because he felt no need to hurry, but also because he was not built for speed. He wore a large woollen overcoat that went some way to disguising his generous stomach. His head was covered with an old-fashioned Trilby hat which, although seldom seen in this – or any – part of London, did not look out of place. In one of his gloved hands he carried a briefcase, the sort a doctor might have, its leather worn and soft; and he surveyed the world through a pair of glasses – square, thick rimmed and outmoded.
He found this part of London rather distasteful. In the past he had listened to his students assure him that it was vibrant and colourful, but to him it always looked dirty and ramshackle. He passed a bus stop where a teenage girl listened to something appalling over the speaker of her mobile phone; the people around her either didn’t mind or were too timid to ask her to turn it off. Further along the street there was a grocery stall. The vegetables – some of which he did not recognise – were neatly and abundantly displayed. As he passed, however, he felt the hostile eyes of the shopkeeper – arms crossed as he stood in the doorway – on him. It still did not make him hurry, but it did nothing to change his opinion about this part of town.
A few doors down there was a newsagent’s. He entered. It was almost empty, just a middle-aged woman buying cigarettes. His eyes wandered to the top shelf of the magazine rack and he selected three pornographic magazines at random. With a bit of luck he wouldn’t need them, but they were a necessary insurance policy. He paid for them without embarrassment, slipped them into his briefcase and left the shop.
He had examined the map carefully, so he knew when to turn left. There was a pub on the street corner, an unfashionable place only half full. By the time he had passed it, the noise of the main road was already receding. There were far fewer people in this side road, which made him feel more conspicuous. It was easy to get lost in a crowd, but in a less populated residential road where everyone was familiar with the sight of their neighbours, one was more likely to stand out. He pulled the brim of his hat further down and bowed his head as he walked.
He found the house he was looking for soon enough. He didn’t stop, though. Instead he kept walking a few metres, crossed the road and examined the place from a short distance. It was one of a row of terraced houses – a couple of storeys high and mostly, he assumed, divided into flats. The flat with which he was concerned was in the basement. There was a metal gate at street level and a small garden, unkempt and overgrown. That was good. It obscured the front window from the gaze of passers-by. Parked outside was an ancient Ford Escort – nothing expensive, but it had been souped up with a spoiler and go-faster stripes.
The man looked at his watch. A quarter past seven. He felt inside the jacket of his overcoat. It was there, he reassured himself. Ready to be used. He crossed the road again and approached his destination. The metal gate creaked slightly as he opened it, but that was okay. He descended the steps inelegantly on account of his girth, stopped at the front door and used his free hand to ring the bell.
It took almost a minute for the door to be answered by a tall young man. He had cropped brown hair, a slightly hooked nose and a protruding Adam’s apple. He wore a tracksuit and no shoes, and he exuded a certain shiftiness as his eyes moved up and down, sizing up the newcomer.
‘Yeah?’ he demanded, one hand still clutching the half-open door, the other pressed flat against the wall.
The newcomer took care not to let any expression show on his face. ‘Good evening,’ he said quietly. His voice bore the trace of a foreign accent. He had been in the UK for many years, however, and was sure that nobody would be able to place his nationality with any confidence.
The young man continued to look surly and impatient. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m here on…’ He cleared his throat and allowed himself a small, nasty smile. ‘I’m here on agency business.’
That certainly grabbed the young man’s attention. His eyes narrowed slightly, as though he were judging whether or not to believe the newcomer, then he licked his lips and looked briefly up towards the street. Nervousness? The newcomer thought so. A little excitement? Possibly.
The young man opened the door a bit further, allowing him to enter. He nodded as he did so, muttering a brief ‘Thank you’. The older man noticed with satisfaction that the younger man’s tracksuit trousers were made of a thin, flowing material. Ahead of him was a narrow kitchen; to his right a door that led into the main room of this small flat. It was about what he expected. A large television screen hung on the wall. The sound was down, but it was filled with images – extreme skiing of some kind. Just the sort of thing he would be interested in. On the floor in front of it was a tangled mesh of wires connected to a video console. In the middle of the room was a coffee table, covered with the accumulated debris of more than one day’s worth of ready-meal packaging. There were, he noticed, no books on the shelves. That didn’t surprise him. He knew enough about this young man – and others like him – to realise that the slow pleasures of reading would be unlikely to appear high on the list of his priorities.
He stood in the middle of the room, placed his briefcase on the floor and slowly slid his leather gloves off his hands.
‘Thought you lot had forgotten me,’ the young man’s voice said from behind him. He made no attempt to hide the dissatisfaction in his voice.
‘Oh no,’ the newcomer replied mildly. ‘We haven’t forgotten you.’ He placed his bare hand back into the pocket of his coat just as the young man walked past him to turn off the television.
In all his years of doing th
is kind of thing, he had learned that it is best to grab your opportunities when they arise. For that reason, as the young man faced the television with his back to him, the newcomer moved swiftly. From his pocket he pulled a hypodermic syringe and instantly removed the plastic cap that covered the protruding needle.
He stepped forward.
The area around the centre of the buttocks was, he knew, the best location. It was fleshier for a start. Easier to puncture. And the mark that the needle would undoubtedly leave would be somewhat hidden around that area of the body.
He jabbed his arm forward and his aim was true. He squeezed the syringe.
‘What the f…?’ the young man started to say. By the time he had turned to look at the newcomer, however, the needle had been removed.
The two men stared at each other, one of them holding the needle and making no attempt now to hide it, the other gazing at it in a mixture of confusion and horror.
The young man took a step forward. His attacker did not flinch. He knew it would only be seconds before his victim was completely incapacitated.
Sure enough, as the young man tried to take a second step, he appeared to have difficulty moving his leg, as though he had suddenly been frozen. The young man looked down at the ground, then up again at the newcomer.