Masters of War

by Chris Ryan

  He pointed to a side street about twenty-five metres ahead and nodded to Taff. They continued to move confidently through the shadows. In less than five minutes they were standing outside the bakery.

  It looked just as it had when Danny had left it: the padlock broken, the heavy chain coiled snake-like on the ground, the window smashed. Astonishingly, there was no sign of any further looting, though it occurred to Danny that there weren’t many people with the stomach to stick around once they saw what secrets this building was hiding. He turned to Taff. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  ‘Lead the way, kiddo.’ Taff’s tone suggested that Danny was about to make a fool of himself. He stretched out one hand in an over-polite gesture.

  Danny stepped into the shop.

  He climbed the stairs.

  He stopped at the door to the room and looked over his shoulder. Taff was right behind him.

  It was the act of swinging the door open that displaced the air in the room and brought the stench to Danny’s nose. He smelled the corpses before he saw them and it took only a single lungful of air for him to realise it was a stench he would never forget. Sixteen hours of putrefaction in an enclosed space in the Middle Eastern heat had done its work very well. The dead meat had started to turn.

  Danny pulled his shirt over his nose and removed his torch as he stepped into the room. The two men’s sudden arrival disturbed the flies that had settled on the bodies and the air seemed to move as he shone the torch around. He had to wave his hand in front of his face a couple of times to stop them settling on skin.

  ‘It took them about ten minutes to do this,’ he said quietly as he stepped into the room. ‘No firearms that I could hear. Just knife work.’

  He directed the beam at the children first. The skin around their eyes, noses and mouths glistened where fluid had discharged from these orifices and dried to a shiny crust in the heat. Their cheeks were already sunken. A fly crawled over the boy’s left eyeball, its supper clearly too interesting for these intruders to disturb it. The little girl’s pink hair clip glinted in the torchlight.

  A second thin beam of light came from behind Danny as Taff turned his own torch on to the scene. The two beams crossed, like prison searchlights.

  ‘They cut the father’s throat,’ Danny said in an emotionless voice as he shone his torch on the dead man. No sound from Taff behind him, so Danny continued. ‘Guess they must have done the parents first. Take out the hardest targets before dealing with the kids.’ The blood around the father’s slit throat had congealed and even scabbed over in places. The shape of the incision looked strangely like a smile, a direct contrast to the grimace on his face.

  And then there was the mother.

  Danny had to force himself to shine a light on her. Some sights are best left in darkness. Her swollen belly had collapsed somewhat, and the fetid mixture of blood and amniotic fluid had dried on her skin and the sheet on which she lay. ‘She was pregnant,’ Danny said, the beam of his torch still trained on the decaying body. ‘When I found her like this, the baby was still moving. Only for a few seconds. So Hector’s little story, that they found them like this? That’s bullsh—’

  The word caught in his throat.

  Something was wrong.

  The beam from Taff’s torch was no longer moving around. It was pointing directly at Danny’s back. He could see his shadow looming large against the far wall.

  There was a click behind him.

  ‘Drop the weapon and the torch, kiddo,’ said Taff. His voice was deathly quiet.

  Danny hesitated.

  He started to turn.

  ‘Drop them, I said!’

  Danny let the rifle and the Maglite fall from his hands. They clattered on the floor, the torch shining at an angle across the room and lighting up the side of the dead man’s belly.

  ‘Hands in the air, lad. Turn round very slowly.’ Danny detected a slight tremor in Taff’s voice. He did as he was told, and winced slightly as the bright white beam from Taff’s torch shone into his eyes. He couldn’t see Taff’s face, just the outline of his body, and the barrel of his pistol immediately next to the light source, held up at chest height.

  Five metres separated the two men.

  ‘What’s going on, Taff ?’ Danny said quietly.

  Silence.

  ‘Why did they send you, kiddo?’ Taff asked. ‘Of all the Regiment grunts, you’re the one that lands on my doorstep. Ever stop to think it might not be coincidence?’

  ‘Taff, mate, put down the gun.’

  ‘I’m going to do something now,’ Taff said. ‘You won’t understand why. Not at first. But you will, kiddo. I promise, you will.’

  He took one step forwards.

  Danny felt his fingers twitching. He could pull out the Sig and shoot in under a second. If this had been anyone else, that’s what he’d have done. But not Taff. He knew how good his old mentor was. How fast. And anyway, why would he try to kill the man who’d been a father to him?

  ‘Mate,’ he said. ‘If you’re worried I’m going to talk about this . . .’ He moved his hand to indicate the carnage around him.

  ‘Get your hands in the fucking air, boy!’

  Danny’s hands snapped back to their original position.

  ‘You’re in the wrong game, Danny. The Regiment should never have sent you.’

  ‘Hector and Skinner did this, Taff.’

  ‘Of course they fucking did it,’ Taff spat back. ‘What do you think I need, an entourage of fucking Girl Guides? We’re here to make a living, not win hearts and minds.’

  Another step. Blue and red dots danced in front of Danny’s dazzled eyes.

  Three metres now between him and Taff.

  Taff had something else in his left hand as well as his thin torch. Danny couldn’t work out what it was. But he knew one thing. Taff wasn’t about to shoot him. If he’d wanted him dead, he’d be on the ground with a bullet in the back of his skull. Whatever he wanted to do, he needed to be closer.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid, kiddo,’ Taff whispered.

  ‘You’re the one with the gun, Taff. Put it down. We can talk about this.’

  Another step closer.

  ‘Nothing to talk about, kiddo. Nothing to talk about.’

  Danny made his move without another moment of hesitation. There was no point trying to swipe Taff’s pistol away. He was as fast a shot as anyone in the Regiment, and in any case sudden movements could cause his old friend to make a mistake. Instead, Danny fell quickly and heavily to his knees, out of Taff’s line of fire. He hurled himself at him, dragging him to the ground and steeling himself for the blow to the centre of his spine that he knew was coming when Taff thumped his fists down as he fell.

  But he couldn’t have prepared himself for its severity.

  He knew instantly that Taff had Tasered him. An icy shock surged through his nervous system. It didn’t last more than a second, but it was enough to paralyse his limbs. The two men hit the floor together with a dull bang. Danny felt himself being rolled over on to his back. Taff scrabbled around beside him for a couple of seconds as Danny tried, in vain, to activate his shocked arms. But then Taff was on top of him, one knee on his chest, the torch shining into his face again.

  ‘Get out of Syria, kiddo,’ Taff said. ‘Turkish border is best. I’ll leave you money. Don’t bother with Buckingham. He won’t be around to join you. Tell the Ruperts that Asu double-crossed you. The Firm don’t have enough eyes and ears on the ground to know if it’s true or not.’

  ‘Taff, what the—?’

  ‘Shut it, kiddo. This is for your own good.’ A pause. ‘You were only a baby, but I told you once you need to be ready for anything. Remember that.’

  Danny had no chance to reply. Taff brought his hands down again, this time pressing the prongs of the Taser against his chest. There was a second agonising surge of electricity, more intense than the first, and longer. Taff had dropped his torch and Danny now caught sight of his face in the darkness. It was cont
orted. Agonised, almost. But it was also determined. The face of a man who wasn’t going to be diverted from what he had to do.

  And then it was gone, along with the pain, as Danny’s world dissolved into darkness.

  TWENTY-ONE

  It was still dark when Danny woke up.

  For the first few seconds of consciousness, he didn’t know where he was. Hereford, maybe? But if he was in Hereford, why was he lying face down on a hard floor? What was that buzzing? And what was that disgusting smell?

  Then he remembered.

  He tried to stand, but he couldn’t. His wrist was bound to something. Shaking his aching head, he peered around in the darkness. He was still in the same room. There was no sign of Taff. He was on the floor next to the bed on which the two dead children lay. A pair of sturdy metal handcuffs fastened him to the leg of the bed. He checked the time. 21.35. He couldn’t have been out for more than twenty minutes, but twenty minutes had been enough for Taff to arrange things the way he wanted. In the middle of the floor, three metres away, just out of reach, were his M4 and his chest rig. No sat phone. He couldn’t quite tell in the darkness, but it looked like Taff had left, as he’d said he would, a thin sheaf of currency with the rest of Danny’s gear.

  What the hell was Taff doing? Why had he left him here, cuffed to the bed in this bakery that had turned into a butcher’s? He felt like he’d been sleepwalking for the past twenty-four hours, accepting Taff’s word as gospel and not thinking for himself. Idiot. But he told himself to get his priorities right. Those questions had to wait. For now, he could concentrate on only one thing: getting out of here.

  Taff had left him his weapons. That was significant. It meant he knew Danny would be able to escape, eventually. Fastening him to this bedpost was Taff’s way of buying himself some time. Danny examined the post. It widened out at the bottom, so he couldn’t just lift the bed and slide the cuffs down. The obvious answer was to use all his strength to upturn the bed itself, then make a start on destroying the frame with his bare hands. But it was a heavy, solidly built bed. Even if he managed to upturn it with the added weight of the dead children lying on top, breaking it down to the point where he could release himself would take a long time. A couple of hours. Maybe more. Danny didn’t have that long. Not if he was going to find out what was happening.

  There had to be another way.

  With his free hand, he patted himself down. Perhaps there was something in one of his pockets he could use to pick the lock. He found nothing but the loose rounds he’d confiscated from the mag of Hector’s M16. He slammed his fist on the ground in frustration. These cuffs were a piece of piss to pick if you had the right tool. A paper clip. Even a fucking hair clip.

  A hair clip . . .

  He twisted himself round and kneeled up. The bed was high – three foot or so – and he could just see over the edge of the mattress. The dead boy was lying closest to him. Danny swung his free hand and grabbed the kid’s arm. Even through the sheet that covered it, he could tell it was icy cold and heavy. Rigor mortis had subsided, though, and the limb was easy to manoeuvre.

  Danny pulled. The corpse shifted a couple of inches in his direction.

  He pulled again. There was a splintering sound from the body as the shoulder joint cracked.

  On the third pull, however, the boy’s frame tumbled from under the sheet and over the side of the bed, collapsing in a heap at Danny’s side. He wore just a pair of baggy underpants – they looked like he’d pissed himself with blood – and Danny could now clearly see the wound that had killed him. It was about four inches long, running up his stomach. A new odour hit Danny’s senses: the rotting remains of the boy’s last meal. He felt himself gagging, but managed to hold down the contents of his own stomach as he turned his attention to the dead girl.

  She was on the far side of the bed and there was no way he could reach her. Instead he pulled gently on the lower sheet on which she lay. The body shifted gradually towards him with the movement of the sheet. He tugged a little harder, but quickly stopped when he felt the sheet slip between the body and the mattress. He pulled again, more gently. Then again. Finally the little girl’s corpse was within his grasp.

  As he pulled her over the side of the bed to join her brother, Danny saw that she had an almost identical wound in her little belly. A bubble of intestine the size of an orange protruded from the gruesome incision. Danny averted his eyes, and concentrated instead on her head.

  He cursed. The plastic pink hair clip was no longer there.

  It was thirty seconds later that he found it. It had dropped from the girl’s hair as she fell off the bed and was now resting on the ground just a few inches from where Danny was sitting. He grabbed it with his free hand and examined it in the darkness. It was about four centimetres long, with a hinge at one end and a clasp at another. He squeezed the clasp and the clip opened, doubling in length. The pink plastic part was merely a fascia. The rest was made of soft metal. Easy to bend. He gently inserted the clip into the keyhole of his handcuffs, then bent it down, so that the few millimetres inserted into the hole were now at right angles to the rest of the clip. He tried to turn it.

  Nothing doing. The mechanism was jammed.

  He fiddled blindly with it. Another twist. Another failure.

  Only on his third attempt at manoeuvring the clip within the keyhole did the cuffs click open.

  Danny jumped to his feet. The sudden movement caused the flies to swarm up from around the corpses, but Danny ignored them as he strode towards his gear. He stuffed the money into his pocket, then strapped on his chest rig – Taff had left it fully stocked, as far as he could tell – and fitted the Maglite to his M4. Without another look at the horrific scene he was leaving behind, he left the room and hurried down the stairs.

  He stopped before entering the shop on the ground floor. Listening. Looking. There was no sign or sound of anyone. He advanced to the door and out into the street.

  He checked his watch. 22.03 hrs. He’d been out for a couple of hours.

  The streets were still deserted, but he could hear noises elsewhere. Shouts. A small crowd, by the sound of it. And then one – no, two separate gunshots. Retaliation for the sniper fire that had just downed the two government soldiers? Likely, but it was impossible to be certain.

  He moved quickly but cautiously, scanning ahead as he retraced his steps back towards the base. It took him ten minutes to reach the corner nearest to it. To his left – fifty metres away – there was activity. A mob, maybe thirty people, dressed in civvies, advancing on a group of five or six government soldiers. It was seconds away from getting very ugly, but at least their attention was on each other. Danny turned to the right. A minute later he was standing in front of the sliding gate. He couldn’t tell from outside whether it was locked or not, and there was only one way to find out. He pressed his back against the exterior wall, double-checked his rifle, then gently pushed the gate with his right foot.

  It slid open. No problem at all.

  Danny swung round into the opening and dropped down on one knee in the firing position, checking out the compound through the sight of his rifle. It was empty. Totally empty. No Taff. No Hector. No Skinner. No De Fries even. And, crucially, no vehicles. The place showed every sign of having been abandoned.

  Danny wasn’t going to take that for granted. He trained the sight on the windows of the house, then on the door. Nothing, so he advanced carefully towards the entrance. It was very dark inside the building. Danny switched on the Maglite. A calculated risk: the beam would indicate his precise position, but he had to see what was ahead of him.

  Or who was ahead of him.

  The torch sliced a narrow beam across the dark room. The mattresses were empty. So was the wooden gun rack. The ground floor looked deserted. He trained his M4 on the staircase and moved towards it, past the door that led to the fire-damaged part of the house – even though Taff had pointed this out to him, it had gone completely unused. Better to check upstairs first.
He realised he could hear his own pulse thumping as he edged up the stairs to the first floor.

  The corridor came into view. The doors to the generator room and toilet were wide open. He checked them both. The generator was off, the air-con no longer whirring. The gimpy that had been by the window was no longer there. The toilet was unoccupied, but it still stank. He moved along the corridor to the room he had shared with Buckingham. Also empty.

  A knocking sound.

  Danny spun round, his M4 aimed back down the corridor. He paused and listened.

  There it was again. Very faint, but just audible. Hard to tell which direction it came from, but he sensed it was downstairs. He trod carefully back to the staircase.

  The knocking was a fraction louder.

  Danny started to move back down the stairs.

  He was halfway down when he saw what he had missed before. The door at the bottom, which led into the fire-damaged part of the house, was slightly ajar – just a couple of inches, but it was the first time he had seen it anything other than firmly shut. And as he reached it, he realised that the knocking sound was coming from the room beyond.

  Danny was breathing very slowly now. He needed a constant flow of oxygen to keep his wits steady and his aim true, if it came to that. With the butt of the rifle pressed firmly into his shoulder, he kicked the door fully open. The scent of fire damage thumped his nostrils. He directed the narrow beam of the torch into the corners of the room, his trigger finger ready to squeeze at the sight of the slightest threat. The walls and ceiling were blackened with soot. Part of the ceiling in the far-left corner had collapsed, forming a pile of rubble on the ground. No windows. No other exits.