by Chris Ryan
If it wasn’t for your brother, God knows where you’d have ended up.
*
20.15 hrs.
Jamie Spillane had put his hooded top on fifteen minutes ago and spent the intervening time looking at himself in the cloudy mirror. The hood hung over the top of his face by a good couple of inches. In the dark, he satisfied himself, it would be almost impossible to make out his features.
Keep your face hidden. CCTV cameras are hard to spot.
He walked over to his bed. From under the mattress he pulled one of the boxes that had been supplied to him. Inside was the small, black handgun. He placed it in the pocket of his hooded top. Back in front of the mirror, he noticed that it bulged slightly; but no one would know what it was. He smiled to himself. It felt good carrying a weapon. He liked it.
20.19. Forty-one minutes to go. It would only take him ten to get there, but he didn’t want to be late. He tugged the hood one final time down over his face, then left his tiny bedsit, making very sure to lock the door behind him as he went.
*
Sam paced.
He’d lost count of the times he had walked through the darkness of the safe house, checking each observation point and receiving nothing but curt responses from the watchful guys. They could sense he was on edge. That much was clear.
Back in the main room, the two Georgians were arguing. About what, Sam didn’t know. Their voices sounded harsh and guttural. Davenport was looking at them like they were mad; when they saw Sam, however, they quietened down.
‘Anything?’ Davenport asked.
Sam shook his head. ‘Not yet.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ the ambassador announced. ‘Nobody knows where we are. How can anybody find us?’
Neither of the SAS men replied. But Sam could tell from the look Davenport gave him that he was thinking a similar thing.
And maybe he was right.
Sam looked at his watch. 20.36. Damn it, he didn’t even know what he was waiting for.
Thoughts collided in his brain. He tried to organise them. Jacob had told him to stay away. You can’t stop it. It’s in motion.
Think, Sam, he told himself. Just think.
Davenport was looking at him again. So were the Georgians.
His brother wouldn’t let this fail. Sam knew him too well. He was clever. Just because he was dead – and the very thought twisted inside him – it didn’t mean he hadn’t trained his red-light runners to think like him.
You can’t stop it. It’s in motion.
Sam tried to think what he himself would do. But as he stood in that room, his mind was suddenly flooded with other things: images of his brother. As a kid, playing. As a young man, joining up and persuading Sam to do the same.
A fizzing sound. Davenport had opened a can of Coke. He downed it, looking at Sam over the can as he did so.
Sam blinked. Then he stared. Not at Davenport, but at the can of Coke.
The shadow on the edge of his memory had suddenly grown more distinct.
He saw Jacob again; but this time it was in Iraq, six years ago. The day when it all went wrong.
Suddenly Sam was in the Al-Mansour district of Baghdad again. He, Jacob and Mac were preparing to storm a house, to apprehend a wanted Ba’athist. Their tout had dropped a tracking device outside the house in question, hidden in an old fizzy drink can, so they knew where it was. But they needed a diversion. Something to distract the guards while they raided the building.
Standing in that room, with Davenport and the Georgians, Sam heard his dead brother’s voice as clearly as if he was right there with them. Tense. A bit self-satisfied. The very words he had spoken that day so long ago.
I gave the Coke can a bit of extra sugar.
They’d needed a diversion outside the house. Thanks to Jacob’s forward planning, there was an improvised explosive device already there.
An IED, already there.
‘Jesus,’ he breathed. ‘We’re fucking sitting on it.’
Davenport looked alarmed. ‘What’s wrong, Sam?’ But Sam didn’t answer. His eyes had fallen on Beridze’s assistant, Gigo. Jacob had mentioned him, but why? Bland’s analyst had assumed he was a target, like the ambassador. But he was a nobody. Why would they target him?
Like a balloon being burst, the shadow on the edge of his vision disappeared and Sam saw clearly. His assistant. Jacob had been trying to tell Sam something. At the moment of his death, he’d been trying to warn him. The assistant was the shooter. He strode over to the younger of the two Georgians and with one tug of his clothes yanked him to his feet before pressing him against the wall.
‘Where is it?’ he shouted. ‘Where’s your fucking weapon?’ He pressed the gun up against the man’s head.
Gigo’s eyes bulged. He tried to speak, but was mute with fear.
From behind him, Davenport’s voice. ‘For fuck’s sake, Sam, what are you doing?’
Sam hurled the assistant into the middle of the room. ‘Take your clothes off,’ he said. Then, over his shoulder at the boss, ‘Tell him to take his fucking clothes off!’
Davenport started to say something, but Sam waved his handgun in his colleague’s direction. ‘Shut up,’ he said.
Commotion over the comms. ‘What’s going on?’ Sam didn’t answer.
Gigo was stripping, slowly because of his shaking body. ‘Hurry up,’ Sam barked at him. He went a bit faster, then stood wearing nothing but his underpants, a pair of gartered socks and a humiliated, incensed expression. He was fat, with a hairy stomach. But there was no concealed weapon.
‘What the hell’s going on, Sam?’ Davenport demanded. Sam’s breath came in short, nervous gasps. He looked around. He was missing something. Damn it, he was missing something.
And then his eyes fell upon the briefcase, still on the floor where Gigo had been using it as a seat. He felt a cold sickness oozing through his body. ‘Open it,’ he told the stunned assistant. ‘Open it!’
Gigo walked over to the briefcase, unable to keep his eyes from Sam’s gun. He bent down and fumbled with the clasps. When it was open, he stood back.
Sam approached. It looked perfectly ordinary: a few papers inside, nothing more. Gingerly, he picked it up and upturned it. The papers wafted to the floor like autumn leaves, leaving him with nothing more than an empty box.
‘You need to calm down, Sam.’ Davenport’s voice. Tense. Urgent.
Sam looked back at the assistant. His expression was still horrified. But confused too. Gigo obviously didn’t know what the hell was going on.
‘You sure this is his briefcase?’ he demanded of the ambassador.
‘Of course it is his briefcase,’ the ambassador replied. ‘For God’s sake, what is…?’
He didn’t finish his sentence. He just watched as Sam ran to the weapons cache, pulled out a knife, then cut into the lining of the briefcase. Two slashes, then he dropped the knife and started using his hands.
I gave the Coke can some extra sugar.
Moments later, the extra sugar was revealed.
A thick penetrating silence. Sam held the briefcase in his hands. He stared at it.
Taped to the inside shell of the case was a mobile phone. It was on, but it had been tampered with. From the back of the handset led a wire, connected to several blocks of plastic explosive. A bomb, and a remote detonator.
The world slowed down. He turned to Davenport, whose wide eyes showed that he quite clearly knew what he was looking at. Davenport’s voice: ‘Jesus, it could blow at any second!’
And then Sam yelled.
‘GET OUT! GET OUT OF THE FUCKING HOUSE! EVERYONE… NOW… GET OUT!’
*
20.59 hrs.
Jamie Spillane waited outside the phone booth, his head bowed and his features obscured by his hooded top. Booths like this were scarce in these days of mobile phones and he had scouted out this one days before. And he had been here earlier. Twice. To check it was operational and that nobody had vandalised it.
He l
ooked at his watch. It was time.
Stepping into the booth, he pulled from one pocket his fifty-pence piece and from another a slip of paper. On it, he had scrawled the number of the mobile phone which he had used to create the detonator. The one inside the replica briefcase he had swapped over just a couple of nights before. Vaguely he wondered where it was now. Near? Far? He shrugged. It didn’t matter to him. He just kept thinking of his instructions. This is an important job for the British government. Don’t get clever. Don’t start improvising. Just do what I’ve told you and everything will run smoothly.
He felt a little tremor of excitement as he stepped into the booth. He thought of Kelly, and how she hadn’t believed him. He thought of his mum and dad, and how little they thought of him. It brought a small sneer to his lips and a heat to his blood.
He picked up the handset, waited for the dialling tone, then pressed the fifty pence into the slot.
And then he punched in the number…
*
‘GET OUT! GET OUT OF THE FUCKING HOUSE! EVERYONE… NOW… GET OUT!’
Davenport was already moving, but the two Georgians were frozen with shock. Sam suppressed his urge to hurl the briefcase away, instead laying it softly on the floor. Then he put the gun to Beridze’s head. ‘Get out!’ he repeated and pushed the ambassador to the door. His alarmed assistant tried to start putting his clothes back on, but Davenport grabbed the semi-naked man, lifted him from his feet and threw him towards the door.
Chaos over the comms. The rest of the unit were talking over each other. ‘Just get the fuck out of here!’ Sam bellowed over the top. ‘This whole fucking place is going to blow!’
They were on the landing, then the stairs. Beridze tripped; he fell headlong down the steps, ending up in heap on the hallway. Sam launched himself down, covering the entire staircase in two big jumps. At the bottom he didn’t bother to stop and see if the Georgian ambassador was injured; he just picked the heavy man up, his strength increased by adrenaline, and dragged him to the door. It was locked. Sam fired at the lock, emptying the chamber of his Sig with a succession of blasts that tore the air in two as they splintered and split the door open. It was a fucking hair-raising manoeuvre, because if the round hit the lock at the wrong angle it could ricochet off the metal and back into the discharger’s face, and Sam would be properly fucked. But he had only a split second to act. Then two solid kicks and he was out, the bruised and terrified Beridze was with him.
Gigo came next, rushed out by Davenport and his M16. Sam was briefly aware of Tyler’s features, but he didn’t stop to count the rest of the unit into the street. There were pedestrians in the road – only a few, but too many. ‘Run!’ he yelled at Beridze. ‘Fucking run!’ And then he waved his Sig in the direction of the pedestrians. ‘Get away from this house. Now!’
The terrified members of the public didn’t need telling twice: they joined the waddling ambassador and ran away from Sam.
More shouting over the comms before a voice shouted, ‘Clear!’ He turned round to see the rest of the unit sprinting the opposite way down the road. ‘We’re clear!’
Sam jumped over the bonnet of a parked car and hurled himself onto the other side, landing heavily on the tarmac, but protected by the metal shell of the vehicle.
He felt the force of the blast almost before he heard it, like a hot, dry wind that scorched his hair and made him grind his face into the ground. And then the sound of the explosion, a flat, deep thump that blew out the windows of the safe house and rocked the car.
A wave of cordite-bleached fog followed, like a giant, thick burnt cloud passing over them. Sam held his breath and closed his eyes, but thick, hot dust filled his nostrils and singed his eyes. He accidentally inhaled and coughed till he was red in the face. It was like he’d smoked fifty tabs in a row.
Shrapnel showered onto the ground.
Then silence.
It didn’t last long. From either end of the street, the sound of shouting. Panicked members of the public. Doors opposite the safe house opened. Alarmed residents spilled into the streets. In the distance, sirens.
Sam pushed himself to his feet. His whole body ached. Squinting, he looked down the road and saw Beridze. The Georgian ambassador to London was open-mouthed and shocked. But he was alive, and that was all that mattered.
Then, over the comms, a voice. One of the unit, he didn’t know who. ‘Mission accomplished,’ it said. ‘Mission fucking accomplished. Christ, Sam. Try and make it a bit closer next time, will you?’
Sam drew a deep breath. ‘Yeah,’ he replied. His voice was dry and croaking. ‘Yeah. I’ll see what I can do.’
And with that, he ripped the comms earpiece from his head and threw it to the ground. He didn’t give the safe house a second look. He just walked down the road, gun in hand, and as he walked he had the unnerving sensation that two ghosts were walking alongside.
Sam Redman didn’t try to shake that feeling. He didn’t try to run from those spectres. He knew they would be with him for a long time to come.
He carried on walking, past Beridze, past the curious, alarmed members of the public: a brooding, solitary figure.
A man who knew how lucky he was not to be a ghost himself.
Barely a mile away, Jamie Spillane replaced the handset. He had only heard a single ringing tone before the line had been cut off. And he knew what that meant.
The operation had been a success. He had been a success. His limbs were trembling with the thrill of it all. Now that he had shown what he was capable of, maybe he would be asked to do it again. Maybe his country would call on him once more. The idea made him shiver with excitement.
Jamie Spillane turned, walked out of the phone booth and made for home, smiling broadly as he went.
EPILOGUE
Two days later.
Gabriel Bland had slept well for the first time in weeks.
When word had come that there had been an explosion in the safe house, he had been paralysed with an icy sickness. Toby Brookes, newly demoted from field work, had been the unfortunate messenger and he had been shot down by an alarmed Bland. ‘Find out what’s happened. Now!’
Gradually, though, more information had filtered in. No casualties. Beridze alive. All of the SAS team accounted for, except one.
‘Who?’ Bland had demanded of his timid subordinate.
‘Redman, sir. The unit said he made it out alive, but there’s no sign of him. I’ve got eyes ready to search for him, sir. I can put out the word.’
Bland considered this for a moment. ‘No,’ he said. He looked out of the window of his office. ‘No. Let him be, for now.’
Toby had seemed wrong-footed, but he knew not to argue.
‘Claire Corbett. Is she still in custody?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Release her.’
Toby looked confused. ‘But sir, we haven’t questioned…’
‘Release her.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And I want a representative of the service to visit Mac Howden’s wife. She’s to be told her husband died as a result of enemy fire in the service of his country. No more, no less. Understood?’
‘Understood, sir.’
‘Then get on with it.’
Toby had nodded and slipped away, leaving Bland with his own to-do list. The reinstatement of Mark Porteus at SAS HQ would take some clever talking, but Bland was certain he would be able to manage it.
Which left Sam Redman.
Even now, two days later, Bland didn’t know what to do with him. The SAS man’s face – with its lacerated skin and flat, hard eyes – rose in Bland’s mind. He experienced a rare moment of empathy. Redman had endured more in the last few days than most men would ever be able to cope with, and Bland included himself in that. What would he be feeling? What would he be doing? Where was he? Bland was momentarily tempted to call Toby in to the office, to get him to set the eyes out on Sam after all, just to satisfy his own curiosity. But he didn’t. After all, he to
ld himself, if anyone had earned a bit of slack, it was Sam Redman.
Bland sighed. The world, he thought to himself, seemed to be getting more and more complicated. Maybe he was growing too old for the game; he didn’t know. In front of him was a document: a DA notice restricting the story of a fatal shooting in a Hereford churchyard some days previously. Bland took a fountain pen, signed it, then stood up and left the room.
He might have slept well, but he was tired. The sort of tiredness that mere sleep would not ease. He needed some time away from all this.
A holiday, Gabriel Bland thought to himself, would do him some good.
Max Redman stared at the television set. He hadn’t seemed to notice that his son had entered the room. The news programme he was watching blared breathlessly about an explosion the previous night in North London. A terrorist attack, government sources were saying. No casualties, they were pleased to announce. One look at Max, though, and Sam could tell none of this meant anything to him. He was having, as the doctors called it, a ‘bad day’.
Not that Sam had seen the doctors. After what had happened last time he was here he felt quite sure his continued presence on the premises would not be tolerated. Bland might have been able to smooth things over with Hereford police, but it didn’t mean he’d be welcome back here. That was why he had slipped in the back way; and that was why Max was going to have to get used to seeing an awful lot less of him.
‘Dad,’ he said. Then a bit louder. ‘Dad.’
Max turned. There was a look of momentary confusion on his face, as though he didn’t know who was talking to him. But then the synapses seemed to click.
‘Didn’t think you’d be coming back here,’ Max said.
Sam shrugged. He walked to his father’s bedside and looked at the television. The screen was filled with images of the destroyed safe house, cordoned off and surrounded by armed police.
‘Fucking ragheads,’ Max muttered. ‘They’re everywhere. Look at this shit.’ He wheezed and then coughed, as if in protest against what he was watching on the screen.