Dead Men

by Leather, Stephen

Shepherd’s jaw dropped. It was the last thing he’d expected to hear. ‘You can’t,’ he said.

  ‘I can do what the hell I want,’ she said flatly. ‘My husband’s dead and my daughter’s going to need all the support she can get.’

  ‘You’re good at what you do,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not true,’ she said. ‘I don’t have what it takes. I’m not hard enough.’

  ‘It’s not about being hard,’said Shepherd. ‘It’s about caring. It’s about giving a damn.’ The man knocked on the door again but Shepherd ignored him. ‘I might not know much, Charlie, but I know one thing for sure. The world would be a much kinder and safer place if it was run by women.’

  Button smiled tightly. ‘Not the sort of women I know,’ she said.

  ‘You know what I mean. There’s too much testosterone around at the moment, too much chest-beating and men trying to prove how hard they are. Don’t let the bastards beat you. You’re better than they are.’

  She smiled, this time with warmth. ‘You should go, Spider.’ Shepherd stood up. Button reached for his hand and squeezed it gently. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Shepherd winked at her, then opened the door. ‘She’s all yours,’ he said, and walked past the two visitors. The nurse glared at him with undisguised loathing as he passed her on the way to the lifts. He gave her a friendly wave and blew her a kiss.

  Othman bin Mahmuud al-Ahmed smiled as the hawk slammed into the dove and ripped off the bird’s head. What was left of it tumbled to the ground, its white feathers spattered with blood. The smile was for his host’s benefit. The Kuwaiti prince who had arranged the trip into the desert was proud of his hawks. Othman did not want to offend him, but they were of poor quality and the prince thought it acceptable to have them hunt caged birds. The prince’s falconer was also incompetent. The hawks were not hungry enough and two had refused to fly. Othman’s manservant stood behind him, shading the old man with an umbrella. The two American bodyguards stood by the cars that had been provided by the prince, their eyes, as always, hidden behind wraparound sunglasses. The prince’s bodyguards were Gurkhas, wiry men with leathered faces. Othman didn’t like the way they whispered to each other in their own language. He hadn’t enjoyed his three-day trip to Kuwait and was looking forward to returning to Saudi Arabia.

  The trip had been forced on him by one of his longest-standing Saudi patrons, who had set his heart on acquiring a top New York hotel owned by the Kuwaiti prince. Money was no object but the Kuwaiti had been reluctant to sell, mainly because one of his favourite mistresses was ensconced in a penthouse suite there. Othman knew the prince well so he had been sent to broker a deal. It had been hard work. The Kuwaiti was a renowned womaniser and, on the second night, had invited Othman to a party at his palace where there had been more than fifty girls, all young and pretty. There had been blondes, brunettes, Africans, Asians, Orientals, though noticeably no Arabs. The Kuwaiti had kept asking Othman to choose, but he had politely declined, citing his inflamed prostate. The truth was that the old man had long since lost interest in sex as anything other than a means of procreation and had no intention of allowing a prostitute to bear his child. At one point during the party one of the prince’s servants had walked round with a huge silver tray piled high with Rolex and Cartier watches. The squealing girls had been told to help themselves. Othman had smiled serenely, privately disgusted by the ostentatious display. As far as he was concerned, money should be treated with respect. Like power and love, it was not to be squandered.

  Othman’s host walked over, clearly elated by the kill. He was accompanied by two of his fifteen sons, both toddlers. Othman smiled his appreciation and made small-talk as they walked together to the waiting cars. The prince was driving in the second car with his fourth wife, who was barely twenty and the mother of the toddlers. There were four of the prince’s bodyguards in the first car, Othman was in the third Mercedes with his bodyguards and a driver provided by the prince. Bringing up the rear a white Toyota Landcruiser contained four more Gurkha bodyguards. The vehicles sat low on reinforced suspension, weighed down by armour plating and bulletproof glass.

  One of Othman’s bodyguards opened the rear door to the third Mercedes and the old man climbed in. One bodyguard sat next to him as the second got into the front passenger seat.

  Othman settled back and closed his eyes as the convoy drove off. He had much on his mind. Muhammad Aslam had come to see him in Riyadh two days before Othman had flown to Kuwait. The assassin had failed. He had been killed by the infidels before he had been able to exact revenge on either the American man or the English woman. The one small piece of good news was that the woman’s husband had been killed, so at least she would know some of the pain Othman had felt when he had learnt of his sons’ deaths.

  Muhammad Aslam had been profuse in his apologies but Othman had put him at ease. It wasn’t Aslam’s fault that the assassin had failed. And Othman had more than enough money to try again. And again. He would keep sending assassins until they were both dead. He would not rest until he had avenged his sons. It was the Bedouin way.

  He sighed and opened his eyes. It was half an hour’s drive to the palace. The prince had arranged a dinner with his three brothers, all of whom Othman knew and had done business with in the past. He wasn’t looking forward to it. The prince had already agreed to sell the hotel for double what he had paid for it three years earlier, so his business was concluded, but the Kuwaiti had insisted that Othman accept his hospitality. The brothers, like the prince, enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh, and Othman had no doubt that the palace would again be filled with prostitutes. He shuddered.

  Off in the distance he saw something streak through the sky. His eyesight was perfect but whatever it was moved so quickly that it was hard to focus on it. It was metallic, glinting in the sun, and left behind it a trail of white vapour. As Othman watched, it curved through the air as if guided by an unseen hand.

  The bodyguard in the front passenger seat of the Mercedes had seen it, too. ‘Incoming!’ he screamed and punched the driver’s shoulder. The driver swung the wheel hard to the right and Othman banged into the man sitting next to him, who put his hand on the back of the seat in front to steady himself. The tyres screeched across the Tarmac and Othman tasted bile at the back of his throat. The driver swung the wheel in the opposite direction and Othman was flung across the car so roughly that his head struck the window hard enough to daze him. Then the missile hit and the car exploded in a ball of flame.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Simon Nichols, twisting around in his seat. ‘They don’t come much better than that.’

  Richard Yokely raised his Coke can in salute. ‘You’re the man, Simon.’ Nichols turned back to study the screens in front of him. One showed an aerial view of the carnage on the road below, transmitted from the unmanned Predator drone some two hundred feet above the ground. The lead Mercedes had pulled round and three Gurkhas in dark suits were racing towards the car that had been hit by the four-hundred-pound Hellfire missile. ‘Bring her back, Phillip,’ said Yokely.

  ‘Your wish is my command,’ said Phillip Howell, who was piloting the Predator. He toyed with a joystick and the aerial view on the LCD screen panned to the left. The Predator’s cameras were so powerful that they could have picked out the numberplates of the cars on the ground from as high as thirty thousand feet. A variable-aperture television camera gave them the live feed and an infra-red camera provided real-time images at night or in low-light conditions.

  Yokely, Howell and Nichols were seven thousand miles away from Kuwait at Nellis air-force base in Las Vegas. The Predator had taken off from Balad air base, forty miles northwest of Baghdad, under the control of the US military, but once it had reached four thousand feet, control had been handed to Yokely and his team in Las Vegas. No flight plan had been filed and the US military kept no record of where the Predator went or what it was doing. The Predator’s hundred gallons of fuel allowed it to stay in the air for a full twenty hours if it was c
ruising or to fly 450 miles at its top speed of eighty miles an hour and was more than enough for it to fly into Kuwait, carry out its mission, and fly back to land at Balad air base. Howell had piloted the drone at just under twenty thousand feet across the Iraqi desert until it had reached Kuwaiti airspace, then taken it down to just a hundred feet above the sand, flying higher only when it got to within five miles of the target. Nichols had fired the Hellfire missile, one of two carried by the twenty-seven-foot long Predator. There had been no need to fire the second.

  As the Predator continued to bank to the left, still flying low, Nichols centred the nose-cone camera on the burning Mercedes. The car was lying on its side and clouds of black smoke were being blown across the road by the desert wind. The Landcruiser had run off the road to avoid the explosion. The Gurkha bodyguards were standing in the sand, their hands on their heads as they stared helplessly at the wreckage.

  Yokely’s face tightened as he watched the car burn. He had known the bodyguard sitting in the front passenger seat of Othman’s car. He had been a former Navy Seal who had served with Delta Force and worked with Yokely on an anti-drugs operation in Colombia during the mid-nineties. Unlike Yokely, Rick Dawson had quit working for the Government and moved into the more lucrative private sector. It was simply bad luck that he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it had been his choice. No one had forced him to work for Othman. There was no way that Yokely could have warned him of what was to happen. The bodyguard would have had to come up with some excuse to get himself off the convoy, which might have tipped off the target.

  ‘Who was he?’ asked Howell, interrupting Yokely’s train of thought.

  ‘Just an angry old man,’ said Yokely. ‘He won’t be missed.’

  The phone rang, dragging Shepherd out of a dreamless sleep. He groped for the receiver, fumbled, and pressed it to his ear. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Daniel Shepherd?’ It was a woman, upper class. Her voice alone could have frozen water.

  ‘Who is this?’ growled Shepherd. The only person who ever called him Daniel was his mother-in-law, but this definitely wasn’t Moira.

  ‘Hold the line, please, Mr Shepherd. I have the Prime Minister for you.’

  ‘What?’ said Shepherd. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Music started to play. Classical, something with lots of violins. ‘Hello?’ said Shepherd.

  He wondered if this was a practical joke, but then a man was on the line and he knew immediately that it wasn’t a prank. He recognised the Prime Minister’s measured tones and the soft Scottish burr he’d heard so many times on news broadcasts.

  ‘Sorry to call you so late, Mr Shepherd, but I’ve been trying to get our Education Bill through and I’m having to grease an awful lot of wheels.’

  Shepherd tried to focus on the digital clock on his bedside table. It was just after one o’clock. ‘That’s all right, sir. Not a problem.’

  ‘I’ve been asked to give you a call to reassure you that we are aware of the approach that has recently been made to you by your American counterparts.’

  ‘Right, sir. Thank you.’

  ‘The fight against terrorism is one we absolutely have to win. There’s no question about that. And sometimes measures have to be taken that fall outside the remit of our law-enforcement agencies.’ The Prime Minister spoke slowly, almost as if he was reading from a script.

  ‘I understand, sir.’

  ‘We’re very grateful for the work you’ve done for us in the past, your exemplary army career and the excellent job you’ve done as a police officer and with SOCA. There’s no pressure on you to accept the offer that has been made. All I’m doing is calling to let you know that if you do accept, you do so with our blessing and that you will be accorded whatever protection we’re able to offer. Subject to total deniability, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘So, that’s it, then. Good night, and God bless.’

  ‘Good night, sir.’

  The line went dead and Shepherd hung up. Richard Yokely had been right. He did have friends in high places.