Murder Team (Kindle Single)

by Chris Ryan

  The Israeli knew the drill. Very slowly, his hands appeared. He rested them on his head.

  ‘How many militants in that settlement?’

  ‘Hard to say. Fifteen, twenty. More than you’d want to fight single-handed, if that’s what you’re asking . . .’

  Friedman was cut short by the crackling sound of a radio communication. The Israeli was clearly wearing a comms unit. A voice came over the radio.

  ‘Delta three, this is Alpha. Confirm you’re ready to mark the target.’

  Silence.

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ Friedman said slowly, ‘but if you don’t let me mark that target, you’re going to let a real bad guy get away.’

  ‘With my friend,’ Danny said in a thin, tense voice.

  ‘Ah,’ Friedman replied. ‘So you’ve come for the Brit. Sorry, my friend. He’s toast either way. We take out the settlement and he dies instantly. We don’t take out the settlement, he ends up on the wrong side of some jihadist’s execution sword. I know which way I’d want to go.’

  ‘You’ll go with a bullet in the back of your skull unless you do and say precisely what I tell you. Get on your radio. Say exactly these words – any deviation, I’ll know you’re sending a distress call and I’ll nail you. The message is: “Roger that. Expect target to be marked in figures three.” Do it now.’

  ‘I’ll have to move my hands off my head.’

  ‘Slowly. Any sudden movements, you know what happens.’

  The Israeli lowered his hands. Danny could no longer see them as he activated his radio.

  ‘Roger that,’ he said. ‘Expect target to be marked in figures three.’

  Five seconds silence. Then a hiss and a crackle. ‘Understood.’

  Silence.

  ‘Drone or fast air?’ Danny demanded.

  ‘Drone,’ said the Israeli. ‘But there’s other assets standing by. Trust me, my friend, you’re not getting out of here without my help.’

  ‘I want to see your hands again. Slowly.’

  There was a pause before Friedman moved. Just a fraction of a second. But when the actual movement came, it was sudden and fast. The Israeli rolled over on to his back. Danny instantly saw that he had his weapon drawn, his forefinger curled round the trigger.

  The Regiment man fired.

  The retort of the handgun echoed between the two ridge tops and over the valley. But there was no sound from the Israeli. Danny’s round entered the left-hand side of his forehead before his adversary could shoot. His limbs collapsed and fell flat. The gun fell from his grasp and toppled to his side.

  There was no time for Danny to feel any sense of relief at having outdrawn him. Spud was just a kilometre away, but it felt like he was on the other side of the world. Danny now understood why Friedman had been here. His final job had been to mark a target – undoubtedly using a laser target designator – so the Israelis could effect a deadly accurate drone strike in order to take out their terrorist target.

  Danny realised he had two options. He could try to get the Israelis to call off the strike.

  Or he could try to use it to his own advantage.

  Option one would put Spud in the hands of the terrorists.

  Option two gave him a chance. A small chance, but that was better than nothing.

  Decision made.

  The Israelis were expecting to get those coordinates in the next three minutes. If they didn’t, Danny could only guess at their next move. But he predicted that if they thought their man had been compromised, they’d be moving in. And they’d unleash hell, because they wouldn’t want anyone finding out what they were up to.

  Danny had less than three minutes to stop that happening right on top of him.

  11

  Danny hit the ground again and crawled past Friedman’s bleeding body to the ridge top. He peered over. Sure enough, about a klick in the distance and down a hill that ran at a gradient of about ten degrees, there was a settlement. It glowed only faintly: the kind of glow that came from firelight, rather than electric light. But that glow wasn’t the only light he saw in the distance. Beyond the settlement itself he saw a line of vehicle headlamps – five sets – glowing in the darkness as they travelled toward it.

  He gave a low hiss. Abu Bakr and his Somalians were coming for Spud.

  Two minutes thirty seconds. Danny looked along the ridge line, carefully scanning for the piece of equipment he knew Friedman had to have set up here somewhere.

  It took twenty seconds to locate it. About seven metres from his position there was a narrow patch of vegetation, about two metres wide and half a metre deep. The centre of the bush looked like it had been hacked away. Danny crawled toward it. Sure enough, set up in the gap in the bush was a short tripod, about a foot high. A grey box was resting on the top. It was about 25 by 30 by 10 cm, and on the far side had a circular optic pointing in the general direction of the settlement, and a second lens protruding on the near side. It was the Israeli’s laser target designator, set up to direct a beam, invisible to the naked eye, directly at the settlement. A beam that would enable the imminent drone strike to come in directly on target: when the ordnance arrived, it would follow the beam from this LTD.

  He put his eyes to the lens. The LTD was already switched on. Through it, Danny saw a red LED display, a set of fine crosshairs and, in sharp focus, close up and with a much narrower field of view than the naked eye, the centre of the settlement. He could see several figures crossing in front of a low hut with a conical roof. Beyond that, the outlines of other low buildings, which he couldn’t make out clearly. The whole settlement was about 150 metres across, and roughly circular in shape. Surrounding the settlement, at distances of about 20 metres, fire pits glow in the night. They gave the settlement a weirdly medieval appearance, though this was compromised by a little nest of signalling aerials emerging from the centre of the settlement. He wondered for a moment how a bunch of thugs like this had acquired such gear, and his mind turned darkly to Mossad.

  The door of the hut opened. Two figures emerged side by side. Danny wasn’t sure, but they seemed to be laughing. He had no time to examine the scene further. He grabbed the sides of the unit and angled it upwards on his tripod. As the unit moved, a blurred strip of dark desert rushed past in the viewfinder.

  The image came to rest on a featureless patch of desert between the settlement and the approaching convoy. He fixed the crosshairs on a solitary tree. Looking up from the viewfinder, Danny tried to judge the distance of his new target area from the edge of the settlement with his naked eye. Somewhere between 750 metres and 1 klick. Far enough to stop the drone strike killing everyone in the village, not so far that the Israelis would get suspicious. The approaching convoy was between 4 and 5 kilometres out, but moving slowly, maybe 20kph. He reckoned they’d hit that empty patch of desert behind the settlement in about 15 minutes.

  With any luck, the strike would hit the approaching convoy and also act as a distraction to the militants in the village. Two birds, one missile.

  He flicked a switch on top of the LTD. Target lit.

  Danny was sweating heavily. He crawled away from the LTD, careful not to disturb it in any way, just as Friedman’s radio crackled into life again.

  ‘Delta three, this is Alpha, we have a fix on the target, repeat we have a fix on the target. Report situation on the ground, over.’

  Danny stared at the dead body, lying five metres from his position. He had to respond, but it was far too risky to speak and pretend to be who he wasn’t. The Israelis could have any kind of sophisticated voice recognition software filtering the line. But neither was silence an option: it would make them suspicious.

  He hesitated for a moment, then quickly crawled toward the corpse.

  Friedman’s head was a fucking mess. A third of it wasn’t even there any more. The remainder was spattered in blood and shards of bone. Danny ripped open the body’s khaki shirt to reveal an ops waistcoat hidden beneath. Protruding from one of the black pouches was Frie
dman’s radio handset. Danny pulled it out. There were two pressels – one for opening up the line of communication, the other for signalling purposes.

  Danny could communicate in Morse code like it was a second language, and he knew that an ex-IDF soldier like Friedman would also have that skill. His fingers were a blur as he started to tap out a message.

  ‘Delta three to Alpha. Armed personnel in vicinity. Voice comms unsafe. Tangos ETA at target, fifteen minutes. Conduct strike at —’ he checked his watch ‘– 21.45 hrs precisely. Over and out.’

  Danny knew there would be no response, not now he’d warned the Israelis off voice comms. He scrambled down the hill back toward where the vehicles were parked, and headed straight for Friedman’s grey Land Rover. He needed a vehicle, and he figured that Friedman must have used this one to deliver Spud. That meant that the bastards down at the settlement would at least recognise it. Hopefully, it would give him a chance of getting close without them firing on him.

  Once he got close enough to the settlement for them to see who was driving, he was going to need all the help he could get. He stormed round to the back of the vehicle and opened it up. The faintest hint of a smile touched his face when he saw what was inside.

  Gilad Friedman had not come here empty-handed. The back of his Land Rover was like a miniature arsenal. An assault rifle, wrapped in a dark blanket, lay across the back. Danny unwrapped the blanket to find an old Diemaco C7, complete with optics and a sturdy tactical sling for hanging it across his body. He grabbed the weapon and unclipped the magazine. It was full. Danny wondered grimly if he’d find the head stamp of the Bangladesh Ordnance Factory printed on the 5.56 cases, but there was no time examine them now.

  Another box contained a single fragmentation grenade. The armoury back at Hereford was stuffed full of these things, but Danny figured that to someone like Friedman they were extremely precious backup. Not as precious as it was to Danny now. He hurried back over to where Friedman was lying, ripped off his gore-spattered shirt and unfastened his ops waistcoat. It was sticky with blood, but he ignored that as he unbuttoned his own shirt and fitted the waistcoat. He ran back to the Land Rover and stuffed the frags into a pouch, along with his handgun and Triggs’s scope. Then he clipped the Diemaco to his body, closed one eye and gave a preliminary stare through the sights. The weapon wasn’t zeroed in for his use, of course, and he had no time to do that. But it gave him a lot more options than the Browning.

  Time check. 21.40. Five minutes till the Israeli ordnance hit. Danny located the keys for the Land Rover: they were hanging in the vehicle’s ignition. Then he ran up to the brow of the hill again, crouched down and took another look at the settlement. At a steady rate of about 30mph, he reckoned he’d reach it in three minutes.

  Time check. 21.41. The ordnance was four minutes from target. He crossed back over to the Land Rover, laid his Diemaco lengthwise between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat. A khaki hat was lying on the seat. Friedman’s? Danny put it on, then turned the engine over and switched on the headlamps. He knew he couldn’t approach the settlement covertly. His only option was to approach in such a way that the inhabitants didn’t feel threatened. That meant slowly, calmly and with his lights on.

  The words of an old RSM from his days in the Paras echoed in his head. Winning a battle is straightforward. Just make sure you have greater numbers, bigger weapons and better tactics than the enemy. The rest is easy.

  Danny was outnumbered. He had a rifle, a handgun and a single fragmentation grenade. So it was all going to come down to tactics. He’d better hope his were best.

  He knocked the vehicle into gear. At 21.42 hrs exactly, he crossed over the brow of the hill.

  Things were about to go noisy.

  12

  The Land Rover trundled over the rough desert road. It stank of fuel and a dead man’s sweat. Danny kept his eyes firmly on the target. He fervently hoped that his information was correct and Spud really was somewhere down there. Otherwise, he was about to pick a bad fight with bad people, and for no good reason.

  His was not the only vehicle advancing on the settlement. While he still had the advantage of height, Danny carefully observed the convoy approaching from the opposite direction. The five sets of headlamps were a lot closer now. Maybe 500 metres from the other side of the settlement. They’d reach it at exactly the same time as Danny himself.

  Two minutes out. Danny was ten metres from the bottom of the slope. He could no longer see the convoy approaching from the other direction. There was 400 metres of flat, open ground between him and the settlement. He knew, without question, that whoever had Spud would have clocked him approaching by now. He just hoped that he was right and they were mistaking him for Gilad Friedman, their Israeli business partner, and thought that he was returning to the settlement for some unsuspicious reason. His fingers touched Friedman’s hat. In silhouette, maybe it would help Danny look like him.

  It was a big hope. Sweat trickled down his brow at the thought of what was to come.

  Ninety seconds out. Two hundred metres. Several figures had gathered outside the nearest building. They were moving around. Swarming. Hard to tell how many. Ten, perhaps? He could see they were armed. Their body language suggested they were arguing. Not a good combo.

  One minute. A hundred metres. Danny’s eyes picked out more details of the settlement. His trajectory would take him exactly between two of the fire pits that surrounded the settlement. They were about twenty metres apart and beyond them, set back perhaps another twenty metres, were what looked like four ramshackle sheds. Flat roofs – they appeared to be corrugated iron – and open frontages. Like nativity stables, gone very wrong. In the middle of these four buildings was a circular hut with a conical roof and a green door. Three armed personnel were guarding it. Armed guards meant something valuable was behind that door. Was it Spud? Danny couldn’t be sure, but he reckoned the probability was high.

  Beyond the circular hut, Danny couldn’t see, but he knew from his observations from the ridge line that the settlement extended no more than 150 metres from the two firepits.

  Thirty seconds. Fifty metres.

  The figures up ahead were clearer. He readjusted his estimate: approximately twelve to fifteen men. Definitely armed. ‘Shit!’ Danny hissed. One of them had raised their rifle. He was aiming in Danny’s direction. Danny hit the brakes sharply. The vehicle skidded on the dry, loose ground. As it came to a halt, he threw himself down so he was lying across the front seats.

  Not a moment too soon.

  The retort of a single round rang out, and there was a sudden, earsplitting crack as the bullet slammed into the Land Rover’s windscreen. Danny looked up. The round had hit squarely in front of the driver’s seat, and a cobweb of splinters had spread out from that central point.

  He’d obviously made a grave error in thinking Friedman would be warmly received here.

  He checked his watch. Twenty seconds. Should he shoot back, or wait for the ordnance to hit?

  A burst of fire from the settlement. Danny started as a single round ricocheted off the chassis somewhere to the front, grating his ears, the impact sending a sudden shock through his body. He couldn’t show himself. Not under heavy fire. He had no option but to wait for his diversion.

  Fifteen seconds. He could hear voices. Shouting. Getting closer. The enemy targets were advancing on the Land Rover. He had insufficient room to manoeuvre the Diemaco from underneath him, so he pulled the Browning instead and lay with it pointing out toward the driver’s side window.

  Ten seconds. Another burst. Louder and closer. He estimated that the shooter was no more than twenty metres away. And this time the aim was better. The windscreen shattered completely. Thousands of tiny shards rained over him. He managed to close his eyes just in time to stop the glass getting in his eye, but as it hit his face it felt like a hundred pinpricks all at once. He was sure he was bleeding badly.

  Five seconds. The voices were very close. A handful of metres.


  Impact.

  Danny steeled himself for the explosion, knowing it would be close enough to send very strong shockwaves in his direction.

  It didn’t happen.

  What the fuck . . .

  The pit of his stomach became leaden. His strategy hadn’t worked.

  A second later, a figure appeared alongside the vehicle. Danny could see the militant’s head through the side window.

  He didn’t hesitate. Two rounds in quick succession. The first successfully shattered the window. The second slammed into the militant’s head. A flash of red in the darkness, and he hit the ground.

  Where was the fucking drone strike?

  The shouting outside grew more frenzied. Danny couldn’t stay in this position. He had to take the fight to them, and that meant showing himself.

  He took a deep breath, then stretched out his arm and, twisting his hand at a right angle, fired two rounds through the shattered windscreen. The shouting stopped momentarily. Danny hurled himself up, opened the side door and grabbed his Diemaco. In a single, sudden move, he hurled himself and his weapon out of the car and threw himself behind the protection of the open door. As he moved, he briefly caught sight of the situation outside the vehicle. Six or seven armed militants, about ten metres from the car, spread apart at two-metre intervals, all of them one knee down in the firing position. Impossible to take out with a single burst. But if he presented himself as a target for longer than that, he was fucked.

  There was a dead, ominous silence all around. Danny’s breath was shaking, the sweat pouring off him. He cursed himself for thinking he’d been able to trick the Israelis into launching their strike off-target. He must have unwittingly alerted them to the fact that something wasn’t right. Perhaps he’d failed to transmit some kind of security code. Maybe they just didn’t like that he’d marked a location other than the one they were expecting.

  Whatever, everything was turning south.

  His fingers felt for the stolen fragmentation grenade. He yanked it out of his ops waistcoat, squeezed the detonation lever and ripped the pin. With a swift swing of his right arm, he lobbed it toward the enemy targets. Alarmed shouts from the militants as he hunkered down and waited for the explosion.