by Andy McNab
Standing on the ridge, he took one last look into the northern valley. By now Dima and his men were just specks. Were they still watching him? He couldn’t tell. Then he turned to the south where Tehran, the ruined city, stretched out in the distance. And much nearer, the chalet and his comrades — what was left of them.
He was fantastically tired, hungry and thirsty, the afternoon sun sucking up all his moisture and energy. He kept moving, one foot in front of the other, until he eventually dropped down off the mountain and what was visible of the front of the chalet. Which wasn’t much at all. As he approached, he felt as though he was going back to the beginning of the day, to when he was a different man. Would they be able to tell?
‘Well, will you look at that!’ Montes ran forward.
Blackburn looked at him as an alien might look on his first human. He embraced his old buddy, but it was as if their entire shared past had been erased by what had happened in the bunker. All their reminiscing about home, the banter and the horseplay, their sharing of their plans for the future when they got out, all gone — vanished under the rubble and the secret buried beneath. He could tell no one about Cole.
Looking at Montes, Blackburn knew then that he would never be the same. He had enlisted in a bid to get closer to understanding his father and the great weight he carried around with him after Vietnam. But Blackburn had got something else he never bargained for: his own terrible burden.
Matkovic came towards them.
‘Man, we so thought you were gone.’
‘So did I,’ said Blackburn.
‘You know what happened to Cole?’
Just like that. This would be the question that would haunt him from now onwards. He knew it would be put to him a hundred times more to come. Eyes watching him as he gave his response. He knew then that the idea that they would take him at his word and that somehow it would never be investigated, was hopeless.
The site around the chalet was being cleared. The casualties from the crash-landed Osprey had all been Medevac’d. The place was crawling with recovery crew. A requisitioned excavator was clawing at the rubble.
‘Over here, Blackburn! We need your help.’
Over the hood of a Humvee, Major Johnson, Cole’s CO, spread out a copy of the chalet plans Blackburn had seen at Firefly. ‘Got to figure out where Lieutenant Cole could be.’
Blackburn hadn’t expected this.
‘Sir, he’s dead.’
The Major looked up and frowned.
‘How do you know that Sergeant? He could be in an air pocket for all we know.’
Johnson smoothed out the plans. Blackburn knew exactly where Cole was, in the area between the pool and the room with the screens.
‘Sir, the collapse was comprehensive.’
He drew a circle with his finger all round the area of the pool.
The Major stared at the plans.
‘How come you got out then, soldier?’
He pointed at the two narrow lines that ran from the back of the bunker.
‘Seeing that my entry point had collapsed, Sir, I had already made my way to the rear, to this escape tunnel.’
‘And where was Lieutenant Cole?’
This is it, thought Blackburn. The answer that decides the rest of my life. Before, he had thought of himself as an honourable man. What, now, did that mean?
‘I don’t know, Sir. The whole thing was coming down, so I just got out.’
The Major rubbed his chin.
‘Well, I’m not gonna be writing his mother saying we left him there.’
He stared at the plans for a few more moments then looked back up at Blackburn.
‘I’m shipping you back to Spartacus. You’re pretty banged up, kid. They’ll take your report there.’
It was a long time since anyone had called him kid. It certainly hadn’t been in Cole’s vocabulary. He wanted to say out loud right then. Know what, Sir? Cole was a bastard and a bully and he was going to die one way or another. He was glad he didn’t. It wouldn’t have come out right.
He saw Campo coming towards them. Blackburn detached himself from the group forming around the Major. Campo just stared. No greeting, no brotherly thump on the back: just standing, looking at Blackburn like he’d seen a ghost.
‘Oh, man. This is too weird.’ Campo nodded at the remains of the chalet. ‘It was a real mess in there. And you walk right out.’
Blackburn felt he deserved an explanation, or part of one.
‘The tunnel out the back of the bunker. We saw it on the plan, remember?’
Campo shook his head.
‘Man you’re something else. Your radio goes dead. We hear some big rock fall. Cole goes in. You come out. .’
‘I was lucky. Guess you were too.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Campo, doubtfully.
They walked further away from the Major. Campo pulled out a flattened pack of cigarettes, shook one out, lit it, drew heavily and blew out a long plume of smoke.
‘And you didn’t see him at all?’
‘In the bunker? No, why?’
Campo shrugged.
‘Just askin’.’
Blackburn shook his head.
‘What?’
‘Because after Cole went in, I called for a sitrep and couldn’t raise him on the radio. .’
‘And? It was all coming down in there, you know, like a landslide.’
‘Well there was this thud, like a muffled shot, not like some shit falling or anything.’
‘I didn’t hear anything like that,’ said Blackburn.
Campo said nothing, but just kicked at the dirt with his boot.
So this is how it’s going to be, thought Blackburn. He had never felt so alone.
57
Tehran — Tabriz Highway, Northern Iran
‘We have a problem.’
‘Wow. What could that be like?’ Kroll’s cynicism was working overtime.
‘Darwish’s tone, the arrangement. Plus he called her Anara. Twice.’
‘He’s under a lot of stress.’
They both knew it was something else altogether. That he wasn’t the sort of man to make a careless mistake, let alone about a member of his own family. Maybe he was being watched so closely that all he could do was mispronounce his own daughter’s name — a slip so small that whoever was in the room with him wouldn’t notice, but which he knew Dima would pick up straight away. He hoped the bleariness was nerves, nothing worse. Had he put the phone down so he could receive instructions from his captors? It sounded like a trap — unsubtle, inelegant and typical of the way certain people operated. Exactly which people they couldn’t say, yet.
‘He said he’s taking her away — from an airstrip? Where to?’
‘Maybe to his family.’
‘They’re all either dead or still here. This doesn’t smell right.’’
‘Great,’ said Kroll as they pulled back on to the road. ‘And you’re going to want to rescue him.’
Amara stirred from her deep sleep. Her eyes opened, closed and opened again, suddenly widening as she focused on Dima’s face. Lit by nothing more than the car’s interior light he did look a bit like a ghost.
‘I thought you were dead.’
‘I’m indestructible.’
She frowned, puzzled, then flinched with pain.
‘Where are we?’
‘Not far from home. I spoke to your father. He’s expecting us.’
Now she was upright he nodded at the space beside her. Kroll came to a stop so Dima could climb into the back. For several minutes they drove on in silence. He glanced at Amara, her whole life turned upside down by them.
‘I’m sorry about Gazul. After all, he was your—.’
She held up a hand, took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, then shook her head.
‘It was a mistake. Don’t ever tell my father I said this: he was right about him.’
‘You helped us so much — taking us to the chalet.’
She looked down.
‘Kristen’s dead, isn’t she?’
‘Sorry. Along with my two comrades.’
‘Such a strange job you have. I bet you don’t have a wife or family.’
There was a pause before he answered that one. ‘It’s better that way,’ he said, thinking of the life he had once imagined with Camille.
‘You know, in Iran for a young widow, it’s not good. Do you think I could find work in Moscow? I heard there’s plenty of work in Moscow for young women.’
‘Not the sort your father would approve of.’
‘You’re as bad as him. Now you see why I had to get away.’
58
Outside Tabriz
They stopped about half a kilometre away from the airstrip and parked behind a storage shed.
‘You stay with Amara in the vehicle,’ Dima said to Kroll. ‘While we check this out.’
Dima and Vladimir crossed a field of aubergines to the perimeter fence.
‘What do you reckon?’ Vladimir gave Dima the binoculars.
‘Can’t see Darwish — or anyone.’
There was a single hangar, a few sheds and amast with a windsock at the top, hanging limp in the static night air. Parked in front of a makeshift terminal were a couple of Fokker F-27s belonging to a small regional airline and a very clean Kamov Ka-266 helicopter with no markings.
‘Look at that. No ID of any kind.’
‘Nice people always have numbers on their choppers.’
‘Whoever they are they knew we were coming all right,’ said Vladimir. ‘But who told them? Darwish?’
‘Never.’
‘He was trying to warn us though.’
‘Well, who then?’
Dima had a ghost of a suspicion, buried at the back of his mind, which he kept to himself. He was still burying it when they were suddenly dazzled by an enormous spotlight from inside the hangar.
‘Shit!’
They sprinted back across the field towards the Land Cruiser. They were almost on it when they realised it was surrounded.
‘Drop your weapons. On the ground!’
Dima couldn’t think of a better idea so they first dropped the guns and then themselves. The road smelled faintly of oil and animal shit. He tried to get a glimpse of the two armed figures running towards them but they had face masks on.
‘Face down.’
One of them swung his boot against Dima’s temple as he rolled over trying to see the Land Cruiser. They pulled his hands behind his back and bound his wrists with zip cuffs.
‘Face down!’
‘I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding,’ said Dima. ‘If you’d just let me explain—.’
Another boot in his ribs put paid to the rest of the sentence. A GAZ jeep zoomed towards them from the airstrip and slewed to a halt beside them. Two more men got out and grabbed Dima and Vladimir while the boot man jumped round the Land Cruiser, shoved Kroll on to the passenger seat and got behind the wheel.
‘Someone really, really doesn’t like us,’ said Vladimir.
They drove in convoy to the small terminal. Two more men who had been lounging against the chopper now came towards them: black pants and T-shirts under black jackets, PP-2000 submachine guns dangling from their hands — and a look of triumph on their faces.
Vladimir turned to Dima.
‘Do you think we should tell them they look like James Bond extras?’
‘Depressing isn’t it? So unoriginal.’
‘I’m bored with Russians being the bad guys all the time. But hey, if they are the bad guys, doesn’t that make us the good guys?’
‘Good point.’
‘Shut the fuck up, you stupid prick,’ said the shorter of the two. His cheeks were pockmarked from bad adolescent acne and his eyes were red-rimmed from too many late nights. He was the marginally less hideous looking of the two, which wasn’t saying much, with an ‘all the girls want to fuck me’ smirk.
In your dreams, thought Dima.
‘Are we going for a ride in the helicopter? I can’t wait to see the hollowed-out volcano,’ said Vladimir.
The taller one, who reminded Dima of a weasel he’d seen in a cartoon film, pulled out his brand new Grach police issue pistol and smashed the grip against Vladimir’s cheek.
‘They also fire bullets through the pointy end,’ said Vladimir. ‘Want me to show you?’
‘Shut it,’ said Weasel, ‘before I smash every bone in your body.’
The two men in masks pulled Kroll from the Land Cruiser. Where the fuck was Amara? The three of them were marched into the terminal building, where they watched as the jeep men eviscerated the Land Cruiser. One took out the spare wheel, slashed the lining of the rear compartment and peered into the corners. The other one looked under the hood, then tore off the door trim and even ripped out the headlining.
‘I get it,’ said Vladimir. ‘It’s a drug bust!’
‘Unless it’s the ultra portable WMDs they’re hoping for,’ Dima replied.
‘What, the ones I swallowed?’ said Kroll.
‘Seriously, they don’t really think we have them?’
The search seemed not to be producing results. Weasel waved the search party back to the jeep and took several determined steps towards Dima, finishing with his face almost touching his.
‘Suppose you stop trying to be clever, and just tell us what you’ve done with them.’
‘The snacks? We finished them on the way. Is the airport café not open yet?’
Dima looked at Kroll: his expression was now unreadable. Where was Amara?
Dima heard a door open behind them: two more men in black. Beside him, head bowed and bloody was Darwish. He was half frogmarched, half dragged to a table and dropped into a chair.
Darwish’s face was almost unrecognisable. The flesh around his eyes was so battered and swollen his eyelids were just bloody slits. His nose had been broken and his lips were split and oozing. A clotted icicle of blood and saliva hung from his chin.
‘Hold up your hand: splay your fingers.’
Darwish, utterly defeated, complied.
Weasel turned to Vladimir. ‘You want to see how accurate the Grach is? Watch.’ He fired. Darwish’s hand flew back, knocking him off the chair.
‘Not really much of a challenge,’ said Dima. ‘A real man gives his opponent a fair chance.’
‘Get up you fuck,’ ordered the third man. He was bigger than Weasel and very bald.
‘Any more jokes?’ he demanded. ‘Or shall we just get to the bombs?’
‘Sure. They’re on their way to Paris and New York, with a former Spetsnaz non-national, codename Solomon or Suleiman, depending which side he chooses to be on. They came from the late Amir Kaffarov, purveyor of Russian arms to the highest bidder. How do I know he’s dead? Because he died in my arms. Of a heart attack, oddly enough.’
‘Can’t you do better than that? You sold them on obviously. Oh, did I forget to say? You’re under arrest for illegal arms trading.’
Dima, surging with rage, could feel the zip cuff cutting into his wrists.
‘Then I have the right to remain silent.’
‘You have the right to fuck all.’
He turned to Darwish who was clutching the bloody stump of what was left of his thumb.
‘Your pal Mayakovsky’s not playing ball. Put your other hand up.’
Darwish was shaking, tears running from his blood-rimmed eye slits, as the shot rang out.
They all looked round. The left half of Weasel’s head had dissolved into a sticky shower of blood and brain. Dima lunged for the PP-2000 on Weasel’s shoulder and took out Shorty with two short, sharp bursts of fire. Baldy scurried away through the rear of the terminal in a hail of fire from Vladimir, who had grabbed Shorty’s gun as he fell. Vladimir kept on after him while Dima and Kroll raced for positions to take out the GAZ boys, who were leaping out of its four doors. Only then did he catch sight of Amara, gun still frozen in her firing stance. She let the gun fall and ran to her f
ather.
‘Back at the Land Cruiser while we were waiting for you, she went for a pee,’ said Kroll. ‘I gave her the Makarov, just in case.’
The Land Cruiser erupted in a ball of flame, the victim of an unhelpful round from one of the falling GAZ men. A second later the jeep exploded. Dima ran back to Amara, who was gingerly embracing her injured father.
‘The chopper. Just try and get there. Kroll will cover you.’
He yelled to Kroll and pointed at them as he ran back to the chopper, detouring to one of the downed GAZ guys to scoop up his AK. How long since he had piloted a helicopter? Like carrying a tray of water, he’d complained to an instructor. Don’t think about it, just do it. This one looked brand new. Showroom condition. First problem: the doors were locked. No time to figure that out. A carefully aimed shot blew a huge chunk off the door where the handle was. He levered himself in. Jesus, it all looked so unfamiliar. Okay, just concentrate. .
Collective control left of the seat, like a handbrake, the one that made it go up and down. Leave down. Cyclic control, the stick in front, unlocked. Master fuel valve in. Electrics on. Transmission light, check, clutch light, check. Fuel cut-off out — or was it in to start? Try with it in. Throttle twist grip on the end of the collective — half open. Fuel boost on. Starter. Dima pushed the switch forward. Fuck — nothing. He went through the routine again. Fuel cut-off out. Fuel boost off this time. He could see Amara struggling across the apron with her father. Opened the throttle wider. Engine starter again. Another explosion outside. A big ball of flame from the back of the terminal. What the fuck was that? Not Vladimir. Where are you Vladimir? Heard the whine of the rotor shafts — then nothing. Kroll had two AKs, firing both at once from each hip. Good old Kroll.
He tried the starter again. Better hope it’s not flooded. It’s not a car, dickhead! He shut the throttle, tried the starter one more time. Do it, you piece of Russian shit. The engine whistled into life and the rotors started painfully slowly. What are you, a fucking hour hand on a clock? He twisted the throttle wide open and the revs climbed to two thousand. The rotors whipped the air, flapping the broken door. He reached back and slid the rear door open so the rest could climb in more easily. Kroll was working his way towards him, his back to the chopper, still firing, covering Amara and Darwish as they converged under the rotors. No Vladimir.