Masters of War

by Chris Ryan

  And on the vehicle approaching from the opposite direction. Distance: 500 metres.

  It took about forty-five seconds for the vehicles to pass each other. The other car’s headlamps were on full beam. Dazzled, Danny couldn’t quite distinguish its make, but it had the shape of a Land Cruiser and he had a feeling the windows were blacked out. It whizzed past. Impossible to tell how fast it was travelling – 100 kph perhaps? That was suspicious in itself. This was a deserted part of the world and it was going nowhere in a hurry.

  ‘It’s passed,’ Buckingham said.

  ‘Thanks for the commentary.’

  ‘No . . . I just mean, we’re safe, aren’t we?’

  Danny didn’t reply. He had one eye on the rear-view mirror, which he now adjusted slightly to give him a view of the other side of the road. He noticed the red tail lights glowing brighter. The car was coming to a halt. He cursed under his breath.

  ‘What?’ Buckingham said, twisting round in his seat to look back. ‘Oh my God! It’s turning round.’

  ‘Do you still have my Sig?’ Danny said. He gave the VW a bit more juice and the speedometer climbed to 80 kph.

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘My gun.’

  Buckingham’s eyes widened a little, but then he stretched out and opened the glove compartment in front of him. He gently removed the pistol with both hands.

  ‘Hold on to it. I’ll tell you when I need it.’

  ‘What do you mean, “when”?’

  Danny gave him a flinty stare. ‘Just hold on to it.’

  The VW was touching 100 kph now as they sped east away from the coast. Danny’s attention was as much on the rear-view mirror as on the road ahead. The three vehicles were spread out. Jack was maintaining the 500-metre gap between them, which meant he had accelerated as well. Another 750 metres behind him, the headlamps of the other vehicle had come into view. Then, suddenly, they were extinguished.

  ‘They’ve stopped,’ Buckingham said, relief in his voice.

  Danny shook his head.

  ‘What do you mean? They’ve turned off their engine, haven’t they?’

  ‘They’ve turned off their lights,’ Danny said. ‘That way it’s more difficult for me to judge how far away they are.’ His face set, Danny flicked a switch on the right side of the wheel, extinguishing his own lights. Behind him, he saw Jack do the same.

  ‘Hold tight,’ he said.

  Buckingham put the Sig in the footwell and clutched the sides of his seat as Danny floored the accelerator. At 130 kph the car began to judder noisily. Danny squinted, trying to make out potholes or obstructions in the darkness of the crappy road ahead. At this speed it would only take a dislodged stone in the wrong place to spin them out of control.

  Three minutes. Danny checked the rear-view mirror. He could just make out Jack. He appeared to have closed the gap between them: 250 metres, maybe 200. That meant only one thing. The Land Cruiser was gaining on them. It was a faster vehicle. They couldn’t hope to outrun it.

  ‘Pass me my weapon,’ Danny said.

  Buckingham swallowed hard, but did as he was told. Danny took the weapon in his right hand and laid it on his lap.

  ‘Recline your seat,’ he said. Buckingham just stared at him. ‘Recline your seat!’ Danny barked. ‘As far as it’ll go . . .’

  Breathing heavily, Buckingham did as he was told, awkwardly twisting the knob at the seat’s base until the back was leaning against the rear seat.

  ‘Stay down,’ Danny told him.

  The road had got worse. It was all Danny could do to keep the car straight. Jack was 100 metres back. Now fifty. Danny could make out the shape of the Land Cruiser a scant ten metres behind that. Jack was pulling out, as though overtaking on the outside.

  Different scenarios spun through Danny’s mind. Perhaps he should slam on the brakes right now, open up on the Land Cruiser while he had the advantage. He quickly dismissed that idea. He didn’t know how many men were inside it. Entering into a contact was always the last resort, especially when you didn’t know the nature of the threat. The tank was full, and this little VW was likely to have a better fuel consumption than the bigger Land Cruiser. But the Land Cruiser would have a much bigger tank. Could they outrun it? It wasn’t something he’d like to bet on. And what if they hit a roadblock or checkpoint?

  Sparks behind them. The side of Jack’s Renault had just made contact with the Land Cruiser, which was now alongside him. Was he trying to muscle them from the road, or was it the other way round? Impossible to tell. The two cars were thirty metres behind.

  And closing.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Buckingham asked. He looked like he was trying to sit up.

  ‘Stay down,’ Danny shouted.

  And it was a good thing he did.

  More sparks. But these were not from a collision. They were from the barrel of a gun. Danny didn’t hear the retort of the weapon over the shriek of the VW’s maxed-out engine, but he sure as hell heard the crashing of its rear window as a burst of rounds spattered the glass. The entire panel shattered, and two bullet holes appeared on the right-hand side of the windscreen, directly in front of the passenger seat. If Buckingham had still been sitting up, Danny wouldn’t have been looking at the spider-web of impact. He’d have been looking at the contents of his passenger’s head.

  Instinct took over. Danny slid lower in his seat as he swung left into the middle of the road and slammed his foot on the brake. So long as he was in front of the Land Cruiser, he was a target. He couldn’t take a defensive option in that situation. His only hope was to attack. As the VW sharply decelerated, he rocked the steeering wheel left and right so that he didn’t present a static target. The Land Cruiser – and Jack alongside it – caught up in a matter of seconds. All three vehicles were side by side, the Land Cruiser sandwiched in the middle. Danny felt for his weapon with his right hand and, with his left hand gripping the juddering wheel, discharged a single round across Buckingham’s prone body and into the Land Cruiser’s front-left window. The glass exploded, and the rush of air into the vehicle increased dramatically.

  Danny was right alongside the Land Cruiser, and he had the shooter in plain view. He allowed himself a split second to take in some details. His target was leaning out of the rear passenger window. He wore a Kevlar helmet and carried what almost – but not quite – looked like an AK-47. Danny had it down as a Saiga-12 combat shotgun. Its owner was clearly surprised by Danny’s sudden deceleration and was awkwardly swinging the weapon round ninety degrees so that he could aim at the VW.

  Danny fired before he had the chance: three rounds in quick succession. Because of the speed of the vehicles, and the way they shuddered on the poor road surface, he couldn’t tell how many of his 9mm rounds hit their target. At least one of them did the job, though. The Saiga-12 fell to the road and, through the darkness, Danny caught a glimpse of the trigger man’s face, mashed by the full-on impact of a bullet.

  He slowed down again. The tyres made a wincing screech as he fell in behind both Jack and the Land Cruiser at a distance of ten metres. His visibility was impaired by the network of cracks across the windscreen, but there was no way he could take out the glass while travelling at this speed – the shards would simply fly into his face. Instead he swung over to the other side of the road, hoping to lean out of his window and take out the Land Cruiser’s tyres.

  But he couldn’t risk it.

  Jack was still alongside the enemy vehicle, his right-side wheels just inches from the edge of the road. All of a sudden they were playing dodgem cars. The vehicles collided once, twice, three times – with each collision there was a shower of sparks, and they careered all over the road. Danny was now ten metres behind the other two vehicles, which had both moved inward from the right-hand lane. But he didn’t shoot. With moving targets like that, he had no way of being sure he would hit the Land Cruiser and not Jack.

  The speedometer was still flickering around 130 kph. The road was still treacherous. If another veh
icle came, there’d be a pile-up. Danny found himself shouting at Jack: ‘Hold back! HOLD BACK!’ All his mate needed to do was join Danny behind the Land Cruiser and they could open up on it together. But Jack, of course, couldn’t hear him, and he remained locked in battle with the bigger car. A battle, it seemed to Danny, he couldn’t hope to win.

  ‘What the bloody hell’s happening?’ Buckingham shouted. Danny ignored him. If he lost his concentration, for even a moment, they were shafted.

  It happened in the blink of an eye. It was the Land Cruiser that lost control. Maybe one of the front wheels had hit a pothole. Maybe the driver had lost his concentration. Whatever the reason, it swerved to the right, tilted on its right-side wheels and, still at speed, tumbled over on to the Renault, ploughing it off the road and on to the rough ground to the side. The dreadful crunching sound was audible even over the screeching VW and the inrush of air. Danny slammed on his brakes and skidded past the two vehicles.

  Once more, instinct kicked in. Danny tried to bring the VW back under control, but, as he yanked the wheel down, the car spun violently. He heard two bangs in quick succession, and he knew his front tyres had gone. Within five seconds the car lurched to a halt. Buckingham, still lying back in the reclined seat, had his hands over his face. There was a dreadful silence. Danny twisted round to look back at the crash. All he could see was the undercarriage of the Land Cruiser, thirty metres away and at his five o’clock.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he said. Sig in hand, Danny opened the driver’s door and slipped out of the vehicle, keeping low, using the car for protection. He crept to the back, every sense on high alert. Heat pounded from the tyres. He could smell the burning rubber. Resting his weapon on his left forearm, he peered round the back of the VW.

  He would almost have preferred the sound of gunfire to the silence that surrounded him – a silence that made dread seep through him like icy water. There was neither the sight nor the sound of movement from the crash site. Danny’s eyes scanned the upturned Land Cruiser, ready to fire at the first sign of a threat. But there was none. Just that silence, which made the thumping of his pulse sound all the louder.

  Sweat poured from him as he made his approach. He covered the stretch of open road in about twenty seconds, moving slowly with his pistol engaged so he was ready to react to the minutest sign of movement. There was none. When he reached the Land Cruiser, he crouched low, before creeping round the front of the vehicle to assess the damage to it, and to see what kind of state Jack was in.

  The answer was bad. On all counts.

  Jack had managed to keep all four wheels of the Renault on the ground. The roof, however, had been pushed in by the Land Cruiser upturning on it. The windscreen had smashed and crumpled like paper and Danny could quite clearly see a twisted, jagged shard of metal that had thrust itself into the flesh near Jack’s jugular. The rest of his body was lost in the darkness of the crushed Renault, giving him the unnerving appearance of a disembodied head upon an ugly, improvised spike. His eyes were still open, bulging in their sockets. Blood frothed from his mouth.

  A groan. Very faint. Jesus, the poor bastard was still alive.

  He wouldn’t be for long.

  Another noise. A human voice. Danny turned his attention to the Land Cruiser. Miraculously, its windscreen was still whole. A sharp jab with the heel of his boot quickly rectified that. As the glass shattered, Danny aimed his Sig into the car, ready to fire at even the faintest hint of a threat.

  The driver was clearly dead. The impact of the crash seemed to have broken his neck – his head was hanging gruesomely to his side at an unnatural angle. Like the shooter Danny had taken out, he was wearing a Kevlar helmet. Also, body armour. No question that these were pros. It was the guy in the front passenger seat making the noise. His eyes were closed, his face bloody from a severe gash along his forehead, but his lips were moving. His voice was very weak, and Danny couldn’t understand what he was saying. But he thought he recognised the accent. If this guy wasn’t speaking Russian, it was something very close to it.

  Without hesitation, Danny fired a round into the whispering man’s head. His body slammed back violently as his skull erupted like a cracked egg. He slotted the driver too, just to be sure, before climbing up on to the side of the Land Cruiser and discharging a couple of rounds into the rear passenger window. There were two bodies there. One of them Danny had already shot in the face. Both were now out of play.

  Which left Jack.

  The only indication that his mate was still alive were the bubbles of blood and phlegm that appeared around his lips as his dying lungs exhaled. Could he feel anything? Danny doubted it. His nervous system would have shut down by now. His brain would barely be functioning. Even so, Danny didn’t want to think of him in pain. Jack had a mouth on him, but he’d been a good soldier and he deserved a quicker way out than this.

  Danny raised his Sig once more, holding the end of the barrel an inch from Jack’s forehead. His mate’s eyes flicked open. He nodded, very faintly, then more foam spewed from his mouth.

  ‘Goodnight, mucker,’ Danny whispered.

  And then he fired.

  Danny’s hands and the front of his clothes were covered in blood. Buckingham looked ill as he stared at him.

  ‘I heard shots.’

  They were standing by the VW. Danny said nothing. He was scanning up and down the road, checking for lights, movement. All clear for now, but that wouldn’t last.

  Time check: 02.10 hrs. Less than three hours till dawn, but the night sky was very clear, the moon bright.

  ‘What about Jack?’ Buckingham asked.

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘What? How?’

  ‘Leaking head,’ Danny said flatly. No point telling him any more. He strode to the boot of the VW and opened it. His pack was inside, his M4 beside it. He removed both items, shouldered the bergen and slung the assault rifle across his body.

  ‘Who were the men in the other vehicle?’ said Buckingham.

  Danny didn’t reply. He closed the boot quietly, to avoid attracting attention.

  He needn’t have bothered, because suddenly Buckingham slammed his fist noisily on the roof of the car. Danny felt his nerves snapping, and he turned to give him a bollocking. The expression on Buckingham’s face stopped him. There was fury in his eyes, and his diffident expression had gone, to be replaced by a contemptuous sneer.

  ‘Who,’ he repeated, his voice much quieter, ‘were the men in the other vehicle?’

  Danny squared up to him. ‘Bad guys.’

  ‘I will not,’ Buckingham said, ‘be patronised by a bloody soldier. Is that understood?’

  Silence. The two men stared at each other. Danny could see a vein pulsing in Buckingham’s neck.

  ‘Fine,’ Danny said eventually. Now was not the time or place. ‘Russian. Spetznaz would be my guess. Russian special forces. They were wearing body armour and Kevlar, and they were using Saiga-12s.’

  ‘What the hell’s a Saiga-12?’

  ‘A very big gun,’ Danny said, as though talking to a child. ‘My guess is that our fixer is behind it,’ he continued with a shrug. ‘But that’s only a guess.’

  ‘How many were there?’ Buckingham asked. His face and voice had softened a little.

  ‘Four.’

  ‘I heard five shots.’

  ‘Then there’s nothing wrong with your hearing. We need to get away from here, and we need to do it quickly. Understand?’

  Buckingham drew a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry about your friend.’

  But there was no time to kiss and make up. Danny was already scanning the surrounding country. He knew, from his previous study of the terrain, that this road continued in a straight line for 100 kilometres east towards Homs. It cut through a mountain range on its way – the Homs Gap. Whatever their next move – whether they continued inland or retreated back to the coast – they needed to stay close to the road because it led directly to both destinations. He tried to think calmly. Tactically. If he w
as being tracked, what would his pursuers expect him to do? Retreat? Or get as far from the road as possible? One of the two.

  Would they expect him to continue after losing three men? Probably not.

  He looked east. He reckoned he could just make out, in the distance, the craggy outline of the mountain range. He had no intention of climbing it with Buckingham in tow. If they were to continue, the road was their only option. As options went, it stank.

  Danny nodded in a northerly direction. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  The two men ran twenty metres off the road. At a word from Danny, they stopped. He turned and aimed his rifle back at the vehicles, discharging five rounds at the Land Cruiser. The spent cartridges fell at his feet.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Buckingham asked.

  Danny lowered his weapon. ‘They’ll see gunfire came from this direction and assume we made our escape this way.’

  ‘Who’s “they”?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He ran north for another twenty metres, then fired three more rounds. That was enough. He’d laid their false trail. They had to get out of there. They ran back to the road and over to the other side, passing five metres to the east of the crash. Danny sensed Buckingham slowing down as he caught sight of Jack’s butchered head. But he didn’t stop or speak.

  Danny checked the time. 02.58 hrs. They had roughly two hours of night cover left. On his own and at a push, he could cover a good ten klicks in that time, but he knew Buckingham had nothing like his fitness and he wasn’t sure he could beast him that far. Already the MI6 man was ten metres behind him, and they’d barely tabbed fifty metres from the road. They’d be lucky to cover seven klicks before the sun came up. He lessened his pace. Ten seconds later Buckingham caught up with him. ‘We’ll head south, staying a couple of kilometres from the road,’ Danny said. ‘After that we turn east again. They won’t expect us to be heading to Homs, not after all that.’

  ‘What happens when it gets light?’

  ‘We find a lying-up point.’ Danny didn’t elaborate on where that might be. The terrain all around them was sparse, flat and open. At sunrise they’d be visible to anyone with binoculars. And Spetznaz, if it really was them they were dodging, would have a lot more than that. ‘And then we make some decisions.’