Inés had watched as they set upon their prize like dogs, pulling, dragging, kicking her back towards the vehicle. She remembered how viciously the woman had fought, lashing out with the skewer she had been holding and jabbing it straight into the neck of the first assailant. There was a bright spray of blood, before the man made a horrible gurgling sound and collapsed on to his knees. As the others in the gang tried to pin her down, the woman had scratched, bitten and screamed like a wild animal.
In the last few seconds, Inés had seen the woman desperately search for help. Her eyes had switched from side to side along the alleyway, but nobody was about to risk their own skin by intervening. In the end, they had bundled her into the waiting taxi, leaving only the mobile phone she had been using, lying in the mud.
Inés looked up, but this time a cocky smile edged at the corner of her lips.
‘Give me another thousand and I’ll tell you where she is.’
Bates didn’t appear to have heard. Then, with a sudden crack, he smashed his elbow into the top of her chest. The blow drove all the wind out of Inés’ lungs and she reeled forward, gasping in shock. He waited without speaking while the other agents in the car simply stared ahead impassively, the stick and carrot routine all too familiar.
Checking his watch, Bates waited for the prisoner to recover enough to be able to hear him. Then he addressed her again.
‘You were going to tell me where she’d been taken.’
Inés nodded hesitantly, her whole body curling in on itself.
‘Just up ahead,’ she stammered, still wheezing for air. ‘There’s a . . . big house on the edge of the square. Everyone knows it. That’s where . . . the gang keep the women before shipping them on.’
Bates nodded, signalling to the driver of the Range Rover to continue. Just as they were about to move off, the Mamba drew level and the sergeant poked his head out of the window.
‘Delta team reports a crowd gathering in the north-east corner, sir,’ he said.
Bates turned in his seat. Not too far away he could see trails of acrid smoke rising into the air. The inhabitants were starting to burn tyres, sealing them in with a ring of fire and smoke.
‘Check our exits and get Delta and Alpha teams to hold them off until we’re ready to move,’ he ordered. ‘We’ve got one more call to make.’
Chapter 22
THICK, CHOKING SMOKE wafted across Nyanga’s market square. Through the gaps in it, Bates could see movement as hundreds of people prepared themselves for battle. There was chanting and weapons were brandished high in the air. These ranged from simple pangas and gardening knives to fully automatic AK-47s.
Behind the seething ebb and flow of people, taxicabs arrived from the neighbouring townships. As the news had spread that the military were out in force on the streets, they had raced across town, packed with an assortment of pistols and ammunition. As the vehicles drew to a halt, the contents were quickly handed out to the children, who in turn ferried them to their elder siblings and fathers on the front line.
The chanting grew louder, becoming more unified and coherent. For the briefest of moments, the various tribes inhabiting Nyanga had put aside their festering animosities and now stood side by side in the face of this sudden attack. Excitement grew, stoked to fever pitch by the elders. Already rocks were being hurled through the wall of smoke in the vague direction of the soldiers. They rolled out across no-man’s-land, as if preparing the ground for the onset of blood.
Bates watched as Alpha and Delta teams took up positions on the opposite side to the crowd. He needed them to hold off the mob for at least another twenty minutes while he focused on finding Bear. But with each minute that passed, he could see the crowd’s confidence growing. Already they vastly outnumbered the soldiers and now they edged closer, step by step.
Turning his attention to his own men, Bates watched them shuffle along the road using the Mamba’s rear cabin for cover. As they came within fifty metres of the house that Inés had mentioned, a long, raking burst of machine-gun fire suddenly rose to greet them. The bullets thudded into the muddy street before tracing left and finding their target. They ricocheted off the high bull bars of the Mamba before smacking into the front windscreen and splintering the toughened glass.
‘Contact front!’ shouted the sergeant. Instantly the lead soldiers widened their stance and opened up with their R4 rifles in response.
‘Shit!’ Bates screamed, grabbing the radio from the dashboard of the car. ‘Sergeant, do not return fire! Repeat: do not return fire. I want the suspect alive. Only fire once inside the building and in line of sight.’
There was a silence, the sergeant clearly bemused by such a command.
‘Do you copy, Sergeant?’ Bates barked. It was the first time the others inside the car had seen him so animated. They watched as he craned his whole body through the gap between the front seats, fighting against the restrictive padding of his bulletproof vest.
‘Drive the Mamba through the front wall of the house,’ he ordered. ‘Then go room by room.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He watched as the order was relayed and a plume of diesel smoke belched out from the Mamba’s exhausts as it changed gear and sped forward. Behind it the soldiers broke into a full sprint as they tried to keep under cover and follow in its wake. There was another burst of gunfire from inside the house, but this time it was panicked and sporadic. The occupants had already guessed the vehicle’s intent and were running for cover as it surged towards them like the prow of a mighty ship.
The Mamba ploughed into the rickety wall of the house, reducing the doorway to rubble and dragging down the entire front section of the roof. Bates cursed again, the driver having come in too hard, and wondered whether they would soon be digging Bear’s body out from the wreckage. There was a brief lull while the sergeant ordered two-man fire teams to take position on either side of the house in case anyone tried to escape.
Towards the rear of the building a chair was tossed through a window, sending fragments of glass bursting into the sunlight. Two skinny men followed, but only managed to get two or three paces clear before they were cut down in a storm of gunfire. At such close range, their bodies jerked and twitched as chunks of flesh were ripped from their torsos. The macabre dance continued for several seconds before they collapsed lifeless to the ground in a pile of broken limbs.
The Mamba then reversed, allowing the rest of the unit to swarm inside the house.
‘I want her alive!’ Bates screamed into the radio, but there was no response. They heard the muffled clatter of gunfire, then an interminable silence. The seconds dragged on and on, with Bates trying to see through the sweat running into his eyes. Finally, the sergeant’s voice drifted over the radio signalling the all clear.
Bates leapt out of the Range Rover, so close behind the grab team he was almost tripping on their heels. They stepped through the gaping hole in the front wall to find the inner rooms clogged with masonry dust and the smell of cordite. Moving further, Bates could see a television in the far corner of the room. It was still on, with a half-drunk can of Coke lying spilt to one side.
They were funnelled upstairs and on to a narrow landing where a figure was sitting upright, slumped against the wall and clutching its stomach. It took Bates several seconds to realise that the man was already dead. He then noticed the sergeant gesticulating towards one of the rear bedrooms. As Bates moved past him he stared into the man’s face, desperately hoping for a hint of what he would find, but the layer of dust had made the sergeant’s expression entirely unreadable.
Bates stumbled on, his momentum bringing him deep inside the room. Rubbish bags had been taped against the single window, blotting out all but a thin sliver of light, but still he could see a woman lying naked on a bed. Her wrists had been bound to the metal bedposts with cheap gardening wire which had cut deep into her skin, leaving small circular stains of blood on the filthy mattress underneath. She was lying twisted to one side with her short-cut ha
ir clinging to her face.
Bates inched closer but, from the woman’s short hair, realised almost immediately that this wasn’t Bear.
‘Found her like that,’ the sergeant said, hovering just behind him. ‘God knows what those bastards did to her before she died. Fucking animals.’
Bates stared into the lifeless brown eyes of the woman on the bed. She was young, little more than a teenager.
‘Shit,’ he whispered, shaking his head. He stood up and moved towards the door. ‘Cut her free and get her out of here.’
The sergeant nodded grimly, when from somewhere further along the corridor, they heard a shout.
‘Got another one!’
Bates stumbled forward, barely daring to hope. He pressed down the corridor towards the front of the house, where the soldier was clearing bricks away from a door. As soon as Bates entered the room, he recognised Bear. Again the gang had used wire, this time to tie her to a chair. Her body was hunched over in the seat, with her hair spilling into her eyes.
Bates stood still, feeling as though his feet were rooted to the floor. He finally understood what it was about the image of Bear that had so unsettled him on the flight over. It was that hair. The long black hair spilling over her face looked exactly the same as an operative he had lost in the Yemen all those years ago. Bear and she had been different in almost every other way, but each of them had long jet black hair that always seemed to fall in strands across their cheeks. He had been the one to find his agent in a backstreet in Sana’a, a single bullet through her throat.
He shook his head, trying to drive the terrible image from his mind. A second passed before he managed to regain his breath enough to speak.
‘Out,’ he said. Still coughing from the hanging dust, the soldier stepped outside the room. Bates crouched lower, moving slowly so as not to startle her.
‘Bear,’ he whispered, ‘it’s over. We’ve come to get you out.’
She didn’t respond. Only her eyes moved as they scanned his face. She looked wired from adrenalin and fear, and it took several seconds before a spark of recognition passed across her face. ‘Kieran?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, reaching past the pistol on his belt to a small leather pouch. Taking a Leatherman multi-tool inside and jamming the pliers over the wire coiled into her wrists, he freed her arms. The wounds looked to be weeping and sore, but there was nothing else to be done until they got safely back to the military base.
As he helped Bear to her feet, a strange sense of relief washed over him. Although her clothes were ripped and dusty, they hadn’t been stripped from her. There was a chance the gang hadn’t got that far with her.
With him gently leading her across the loose bricks and broken timbers of the house, they reached what remained of the front room. A halo of light poured in from outside. As they drew closer, he felt Bear’s head lift from his chest and her eyes fix on the light as if it were some kind of epiphany. Tears streamed down her face, the prospect of being released from the nightmare almost too much for her to take.
Together they walked the last few steps out into the open and got in the back of the Mamba. Bates could see the other members of the grab team eyeing her suspiciously. They had cable ties, Tasers and syringe pens at the ready, and were obviously confused by Bates’ sudden break from protocol.
‘Leave it,’ he warned, raising a finger towards the nearest of them. He sat Bear down, feeling her whole body tremble. She immediately pulled her feet up to her chest and began gently rocking back and forwards, eyes darting from one thing to the next in the cabin as she tried to piece together everything that was happening.
‘Please,’ she whispered, turning to face him, ‘get me out of here.’
‘Two more minutes,’ Bates replied. ‘Then we’ll be out of this hellhole for good.’
But just as the words left his mouth, gunfire erupted like a roll of thunder across the market square. They both turned towards a gap in the far row of houses to see a mass of screaming people suddenly burst through the wall of smoke.
The battle for Nyanga had begun.
The first wave of the attack ran into a hail of machine-gun fire. The soldiers of Alpha and Delta teams were dug in and ready. They fired at knee-height into the sea of advancing people and soon a mass of men and teenagers lay twisted and writhing on the ground. They clutched splintered bone and shattered kneecaps while behind them their comrades tripped over the tangle of limbs, only adding to the carnage and confusion.
The soldiers reloaded, clipping in new magazines and steadying their grip, but just as they were about to recommence firing men suddenly appeared on either side of their position, leaping down from rooftops or bounding over the low, corrugated fences. Concealed by smoke, they had crept up through the maze of alleyways and now ran out into the open, firing wildly. But what they lacked in accuracy they made up for in numbers. Soon the soldiers found themselves turning from one side to the next, desperately trying to fend off attacks from every direction.
From deep within the crowd a bottle was suddenly hurled through the air; then another, and another. As the glass smashed on the ground it ignited the petrol within, sending a pool of yellow and blue flames licking into the air. The last was a direct hit, landing in the midst of three soldiers taking cover behind an abandoned car. They leapt up, running heedlessly as their clothes went up in sheets of flame. Two of them managed to stumble towards their neighbouring unit and as they dived to the ground, their comrades frantically tried to pat out the flames, even burning the palms of their own hands in the process.
But for the third man it was too late. He staggered out into the centre of no-man’s-land, visible to both sides through the haze of drifting smoke. There was a strange hiatus, the shouting suddenly fading to near-silence as hundreds of people took in the terrifying spectacle. The flames rose higher, consuming hair, skin and flesh as he stood, swaying slightly, as if caught in a current. Finally, almost to their relief, he dropped to his knees and fell face-first into the dust.
The sense of horror turned to one of victory and the crowd roared in triumph, screaming with wide eyes and even wider mouths. As the soldiers smelt the stench of burning flesh mingled with the smoke from the mob’s tyres, they realised the dead man’s fate could easily be theirs.
They fired again, but no longer in the controlled bursts of trained professionals. This firing was panicked and random. The first few rounds would hit their targets, but then the soldiers would keep their fingers locked down on full automatic, spraying wildly into the sky. Magazines ran dry in just a few seconds, leaving them to stumble through the process of re-loading, every movement dogged by fear. Above the din of the crowd, the sergeant’s voice could be heard as he barked orders and tried to instil some discipline in them, but to little avail. Fear gripped them all.
By the time the second wave of the attack struck, Delta team was already running. They sprinted with arms wide, some firing wildly over their shoulders as they made a desperate bid to reach the safety of the vehicles. The rout continued, soldier following soldier without order or sequence. They piled into the waiting vehicles, some clutching wounded colleagues while others did nothing more than throw themselves behind the seating and implore the driver to leave.
As the first of the Mambas lurched forward, its rear door still swinging back on its hinges, Bates watched the crowd surge towards it like a tide. They were almost on top of the vehicle, their victory now beyond doubt.
Bates cursed. He had been caught unawares, expecting the teams to be able to hold off the crowd for at least another five minutes. But if he didn’t act now, there would be a full-scale massacre.
‘For Christ’s sake, get closer!’ he shouted to the sergeant of his own Mamba. ‘They need covering fire.’
The sergeant turned back in his seat, eyes wide.
‘But, sir, shouldn’t we set up a defensive perimeter here and wait?’
‘We do that, there’ll be no one left to wait for. Now move!’
As t
heir own vehicle trundled towards the fray the soldiers within nervously checked their weapons, eyes continuously switching back to the chaos unfolding only a few hundred yards away.
‘I want a quick deployment,’ Bates shouted, struggling to be heard above the clamour. ‘Lay down covering fire. Controlled bursts. We stay until the others get clear.’
None of the men made eye contact, desperate to conceal their own fear. The sickening prospect of being out in the open was almost too much for them to bear. Around the cabin soldiers could be seen trying to remember fragments of their training, while others recited prayers and openly crossed themselves.
Turning back towards Bear, Bates whispered, ‘Stay down,’ just as the first of the escaping Mambas passed in the opposite direction, accelerating hard. He caught a flash image of the confusion and blood inside the rear cabin and felt a familiar sense of dread wash over him. It was the same on every mission. But through experience, he had learnt that the only way to deal with it was by taking action. Pulling his own Glock 17 pistol from his belt, he chambered the first round and tried to slow his own breathing.
The stricken profile of the second Mamba was just ahead. People from the crowd clung to its bonnet and roof, while others smashed stones into the side windows. The rear door had been entirely wrenched off its hinges and, as he watched, one of the soldiers was dragged feet first from within. Bates saw him kick and twist, but arm after arm rose up from the crowd, yanking him clear of the machine. He appeared briefly once more, transported over the heads of the crowd as if floating on a heaving wave, before he suddenly disappeared, lost to a fate that was as frenzied as it was short-lived.
As their own Mamba drew to a halt, Bates screamed at the soldiers to get out. They rose to their feet but hesitated. For a brief moment there was a bottleneck of men and rifles. Ramming his shoulder into the man in front, Bates pushed them forward until they spilled out on to the street. They stood in an unsteady group, staring in bewildered awe at the sheer rage and hostility of the crowd.
Beneath the Ice Page 23