by Chris Ryan
‘Shit . . .’ Spud hissed from behind him. Danny turned just in time to see Caitlin, who was crossing the incarceration unit towards the door, roll her eyes and suddenly collapse.
Spud moved towards her immediately and checked her pulse, but Danny could guess what the problem was: surely a blood infection from her wound.
‘Pulse is there,’ Spud said. ‘But not strong.’
‘Move her to the side of the room. Out of sight of anyone entering.’
While Spud did that, Danny dragged the dead guard further to the side of the door. Caitlin’s collapse had made his decision for him. With only three guards left, their best bet was to wait until they realised the incarceration unit was open and unmanned, then pick them off individually as they came to investigate. But not with a gun. If the others heard rounds being released, they’d take precautions . . .
Danny took up position by the side of the door frame. Silence descended. It was broken a few seconds later by a distant, inhuman shriek from the Yazidi slave girl. It seemed to echo eerily across the whole compound and it turned Danny’s thoughts, which had been momentarily distracted, back to Clara and his daughter. He felt his skin prickling and his blood heating, and an unsuppressed knot of panic in his gut.
Then he heard footsteps. Running. Getting nearer. He tried to estimate the distance. Fifteen metres? Ten? Five?
He recognised the militant who appeared in the doorway as the guy who had held Caitlin at gunpoint in Dhul Faqar’s room. The man was slightly out of breath as he entered the incarceration unit. He never even saw his killer. Danny grabbed him from behind, swung him round and smashed his face hard into the wall. There was a smear of blood where flesh met concrete. Danny hooked one arm round the unconscious man’s neck and snapped his spine with the same ease with which he’d dispatched his mate minutes before. The body went limp. Danny dragged it over to the rapidly increasing pile of IS corpses, let it fall, then took up his position again.
Two guards left.
More screaming from the Yazidi girl. Danny was sweating badly. He tried to calm himself, but his eyes fell on the eviscerated corpse of Naza. If they’d captured her, they’d probably captured the other Kurdish militants. And most probably killed them – unlike the SAS unit, they were of no publicity value to Dhul Faqar and his men. When – there was no if in Danny’s mind – the unit got out of here, their ride to the Turkish border was gone. Their extraction plan depended on getting back into Turkey, since Whitehall was so nervous about sending aircraft into northern Iraq. Which meant they were now stuck in the middle of the IS heartland, with no obvious means of escape.
And every second they wasted stuck in the badlands of northern Iraq, the danger to his daughter increased.
Footsteps again. A hoarse voice called something out in Arabic. Danny pressed himself against the wall to the side of the door frame once more, waiting for the footsteps to get nearer. Spud was leaning over the recently dead militant, scavenging the rounds from the magazine of his AK. Danny hissed at him to be silent. Five seconds later, their next guy appeared. This one was not so easy to deal with. He entered warily, his weapon in the firing position, clearly expecting the unexpected. Which was what he got.
As soon as the militant entered the incarceration unit, Danny grabbed the leading barrel of his rifle, fixing his arm so that the weapon’s trajectory was clear of him, Spud and Caitlin. The militant fired, and Danny felt the weapon kick back as the round ricocheted dangerously off the front bars of the right-hand cage cell.
Still clutching the weapon, Danny reached out with his free hand to grab the militant’s neck. But the militant was strong, and with a ferocious twist of his body he managed to push Danny away, knocking him off his balance and ripping the gun barrel from his grip. Danny cursed. Everything seemed to slow down. The militant was facing him, and the weapon was pointing directly at Danny’s chest, the end of the barrel just inches away. A cruel sneer spread across the militant’s face as he prepared to take the shot—
Gunfire . . .
For the briefest moment, Danny thought he was hit. But the gunfire had come from behind him. The militant slumped against the wall by the door, half his face blown away and a river of blood gushing from the wound. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Spud with his weapon still engaged, covering the door.
‘I make that one to go, plus Dhul Faqar,’ Spud said.
‘Roger that. But he’ll have heard the shot. We can’t count on him just walking in here.’
‘Then let’s go find the fucker. We’ll come back for Caitlin.’
Danny engaged his own weapon and turned to face the door.
More shouting. But it wasn’t the Yazidi girl this time. Two male voices, perhaps twenty metres distant. One of them sounded like Dhul Faqar. The second was male. The remaining guard taking instructions from his boss.
‘Let’s kill two birds with one stone,’ he growled.
‘Hold your fire on Dhul Faqar, mucker,’ Spud reminded him. ‘Remember why we’re here. We need his intel on the London hit.’
‘We need more than that,’ Danny muttered, as the iPad footage of Rose and Clara flashed across his consciousness. ‘Let’s move.’
He stepped out into the half-light of the Iraqi evening, leading with his weapon. The weather had dramatically changed. The sky was very clear, a deep blue. No sign of clouds, and a half moon visible in the sky. He immediately turned ninety degrees anticlockwise so he was facing towards Dhul Faqar’s building. Distance: thirty metres. He could see that the door was open, and as he scoped it, he heard the sound of panicked shouting from the two men again.
Keep panicking guys, he thought to himself. Panic suits me just fine.
He advanced at a fast walk, keeping the weapon fixed precisely at the open door. He knew that if a threat was to come, it would come from there. He was aware of Spud following him. Though he couldn’t see his mate, he knew he would be walking backwards, covering left, right and behind, just in case they were making the wrong call about the location of their final target.
But they weren’t.
The target appeared in the doorway when Danny was fifteen metres out. Danny didn’t fire immediately. He needed to be certain that this was Dhul Faqar’s remaining guard, not the man himself. But the image of Dhul Faqar, with his white robe, sandals and greying beard, was burned into Danny’s mind. It took a fraction of a second to make the positive ID, and even less time to squeeze the trigger and nail the guy in the doorway. The gunshot echoed across the compound, and a flock of birds rose with a screech from the reservoir to his left. The guard went down. Danny continued to advance implacably on Dhul Faqar’s quarters.
Five metres out, he stopped, holding his breath to eliminate any unnecessary noise. The door was open, but it was dim inside and he couldn’t see much apart from the shadows cast by a flickering candle. He could hear the sound of desperate whimpering, though. The Yazidi slave girl was still alive. Danny would give almost anything for a flashbang, but their packs had been taken from them. He’d have to make do without.
‘Spud, are you with me?’ Danny breathed. He didn’t look back.
‘Roger that.’
‘I think he’s using the slave girl as a human shield.’
Danny’s mate advanced past his left shoulder, weapon engaged, until he was just to the left of the open door. He fired a quick round at the door itself, which splintered and swung open on its hinges. Then he fired two more rounds in quick succession into the room, above the top edge of the door. He nodded at Danny, who advanced carefully through the doorway.
Danny saw immediately that he’d been right. Dhul Faqar was backed into the far corner of the room. Distance: six metres. He had the slave girl in front of him, his left hand clutching her hair, his right hand holding a knife to her throat, which had been released from the metal collar. The blade was long and thin, maybe nine inches, twice the width of the girl’s throat. The girl herself was naked. By the dim candlelight and the orange glow of the fire, Danny cou
ld see the bruises and welts all over her breasts and abdomen, and blood streaks down her inner thigh. She was shaking. Crying. Danny didn’t think he’d ever seen anybody look so terrified.
But Dhul Faqar ran her a close second. His sleazy eyes were wide and alarmed. His knife hand shook. ‘If you take another step,’ he said, unable to stop the quaver in his voice, ‘I slit her throat.’
Danny didn’t move. Didn’t lower his weapon. He stared directly into Dhul Faqar’s eyes. In his peripheral vision, he saw flames licking up from the fire, which had just been smouldering when they were last in here. Something had just been thrown on it. Paper.
But Danny focussed on Dhul Faqar and the girl. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Kill her. Saves me a job.’
Silence. Danny sensed Spud moving into the room behind him, and saw Dhul Faqar’s frightened eyes glance towards his mate, then back to Danny. He licked his lips nervously.
‘Drop the girl, mucker,’ Spud breathed from behind him. ‘He’s going to kill her anyway.’
Danny hesitated for just a moment. Then he advanced. He disagreed with Spud. Dhul Faqar wouldn’t kill this girl. She was all he had, his only negotiating tool. As Danny crossed the room, Dhul Faqar’s eyes grew wilder, and his hand shook more violently. But he didn’t slice the girl’s neck, and within a few seconds, Danny had the barrel of his rifle inches from Dhul Faqar’s forehead.
He kept his voice level. Reasonable. ‘Drop the knife,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to kill you. I’m not even going to move you from here. You know I don’t want you dead, but you’ve got to work with me. You have to drop the knife first.’
Dhul Faqar didn’t move. His eyes flickered towards the door.
‘All your men are dead,’ Danny continued. ‘You don’t have any other option. Drop the knife. You and me, we’re going to work this out.’
Dhul Faqar’s face twitched. He lowered the knife a couple of inches.
‘You’ve got to drop it, buddy,’ Danny said.
Dhul Faqar opened his fingers. The knife fell to the floor. He was still clutching the girl’s hair in his other fist.
‘Let the girl go,’ Danny said.
Dhul Faqar’s fist loosened. The slave girl scrambled away from him. Dhul Faqar suddenly shrank further into the corner of the room.
Maybe he’d seen something in Danny’s eyes.
Maybe he knew what was coming.
Danny’s anger, which he had suppressed so well, burst out. Shooting Dhul Faqar wouldn’t be enough. He wanted to hurt him. Badly. So badly that he’d be begging to tell Danny who had his daughter and where she was.
Danny flicked the safety switch on his rifle to the safe position, then advanced suddenly and angrily. He spun his weapon round so that the butt was facing Dhul Faqar, and crashed it hard into the side of his head. There was a nasty crack as the man’s nose broke, and a spray of mucus and blood showered across Danny’s face and the surrounding walls. He let the weapon fall, grabbed Dhul Faqar by the throat and raised his knee sharply into his groin. Dhul Faqar bent double with an agonised groan, and immediately received Danny’s knee on the underside of his jaw. Danny heard teeth go, and a sharp, hissing intake of breath as Dhul Faqar staggered back against the wall, his eyes rolling.
‘Don’t like people looking at you, you piece of shit? Well how about I gouge your fucking eyes out so you can’t tell either way—’
‘Leave him . . .’
Spud was there, right behind Danny, grabbing him by the shoulders, pulling him back. Danny rounded on his mate and jabbed the heels of his hands into Spud’s chest, knocking him back. He knew he was out of control, but he couldn’t stop himself. He turned back to Dhul Faqar, and was on the point of moving in again, ready to pummel him with his bare fists, when Spud pulled him back for a second time. Danny’s anger swelled. He felt himself burning, ready to go for Spud himself. He was bearing down on his mate, fists clenched, his face set like iron . . .
‘You’re going to kill him,’ Spud hissed. ‘What then, Danny? How do you find your kid when he’s dead?’
Danny stopped. He was breathing heavily. Sweating.
Spud was right. He needed to get a grip. To control himself—
‘NO!’
Spud shouted so loudly that Danny was momentarily taken aback. His mate was raising his gun, and Danny suddenly realised that he’d made an unforgivably basic error and turned his back on his opponent. He spun round, fully expecting to see Dhul Faqar coming for him with his knife.
He saw something very different.
The Yazidi girl, naked, bleeding and battered, had a look of animal desperation on her face. She also had Dhul Faqar’s knife in her fist. She was crouching to one side of Dhul Faqar, holding it low, the blade pointing upwards, just inches from his midriff.
Danny lunged towards her. But too late. She stabbed the blade hard into the side of her abuser’s body, deep into his ribcage. It slid in with atrocious ease – and out again as she stabbed him for a second time before Spud could release his round.
Deafening gunshot resonated round the room. Spud’s round slammed into the side of the Yazidi girl’s head. She collapsed immediately, leaving the knife buried deep in Dhul Faqar’s guts. His white robe was wet with blood. It was pissing from the wound. Dhul Faqar was staring down at himself with a look of mingled horror and astonishment.
Then he tried to breathe.
It was immediately clear to Danny that the long blade had punctured one lung, maybe both. There was a dreadful gurgling, gasping sound as Dhul Faqar collapsed to his knees, trying unsuccessfully to get breath into his damaged lungs. Neither of them looked at the body of the poor Yazidi girl, her head bleeding and shattered. All Danny’s attention was on Dhul Faqar as he surged towards his enemy.
Spud was with him. They wordlessly got the IS commander on to his right-hand side in the recovery position, so the wound was facing upwards. Danny pressed his hand hard on to the punctured skin, trying to stem the flow of blood, but it was useless. Thick and sticky, it oozed relentlessly out between his fingers. Danny tried to picture the route the knife had taken through Dhul Faqar’s body. It wasn’t just the lungs that would be damaged. Stomach. Kidney. Liver. Major organ failure. Without a full med team on hand, there was zero chance of him surviving.
He grabbed Dhul Faqar by the face and twisted his head so they were looking at each other, eye to eye. ‘Where’s my daughter?’ he hissed. ‘Who’s got her?’
Dhul Faqar didn’t reply. A couple of seconds passed. Then a fountain of blood and foam erupted from his mouth as his body went into spasm. Danny rolled him on to his back and started pumping his chest vigorously, one compression per second. The ribcage sank two inches with each pump, and Danny thought he felt the breastbone breaking. But as he tried in vain to keep Dhul Faqar alive, he knew that each chest compression was pushing him closer to the grave as it forced more blood from his wound, each wave less copious than the last.
After ten seconds, he knew he was pumping the chest of a dead man.
‘Mucker, he’s gone,’ Spud said from behind him.
Danny stopped pumping. He stood up and stared at the corpse at his feet, then at his own hands, which were covered in blood, sweat and dirt. The firelight flickered in the room. Danny and Spud were breathing heavily. Danny’s anger erupted again. He started kicking the body and head of Dhul Faqar’s fresh corpse. Pointless, but the only way he could think of to release his frustration.
He dealt the dead man six solid blows to the head, and only stopped there because Spud dragged him away.
Twenty
‘Did you have to kill the girl?’ Danny said bitterly. ‘She could have told us something.’
He instantly regretted saying it. Spud had a sickened, haunted look on his face. He had taken the course of action the situation demanded. He’d refused to let emotion get in the way. A bad soldier would have hesitated. That didn’t mean he had to like it. And he obviously didn’t.
In any case, this was a mess of Danny’s making.
He’d taken his eye off the ball. He’d done what Spud hadn’t, and let emotion cloud his judgement.
‘Go check on Caitlin,’ Danny said, by way of unspoken apology.
Spud nodded wordlessly, leaving Danny alone in the bloodbath that was Dhul Faqar’s quarters. He knew that he, Spud and Caitlin were the only people alive in the compound now. How long for, he couldn’t tell. People up on the main supply route could have heard gunshots. Dhul Faqar might have called for reinforcements. Bottom line: they couldn’t stay here. It wasn’t safe. They needed to extract.
But not yet. Not before Danny had searched Dhul Faqar’s quarters.
He looked around and picked out their packs and gear, which had been stashed along the wall. He had to step over the Yazidi girl’s body to reach them. He selected his own rifle, which was propped up against the wall, and detached the Surefire torch from its rack. He switched it on and turned back towards the centre of the room. Spud entered, carrying the unconscious Caitlin. ‘Get some meds inside her,’ he said, nodding back towards the packs.
‘We need to get out of here,’ Spud said, laying Caitlin carefully on the ground.
‘In a minute.’
‘Mucker, we could be overrun by more of these twats any time.’
‘I said, in a minute.’
There was a table in the centre of the room. It was littered with books and papers, all in Arabic. Danny shone his torch on it, and shuffled impatiently through the contents, looking for the iPad that Dhul Faqar had used to show him the footage of Clara and Rose. There was no sign of it. He took a step back from the table, and his torch illuminated something on the floor. Black. Rectangular. He bent down to pick it up. It was Dhul Faqar’s iPad, but the screen was smashed, like a window with a bullet hole. Danny tried to switch it on, but the device was dead.
He cursed, but kept hold of the iPad. Something else had caught his eye on the table, half hidden under some other documents. It looked like a British Ordnance Survey map. Danny pulled it towards him, and shone his torch at it. The map had been opened up, then refolded to expose four rectangles of terrain. It had clearly been well used, because the mapping was worn away at each crease. Even without examining the place names, Danny recognised London by the shape of the River Thames. One place name in particular, however, had been circled in black marker pen: Westminster Abbey. But there was nothing else that gave Danny any more information about the hit.