by Matthew Hall
The building was little more than a shed made of corrugated tin and through its window Black could see the outlines of two figures, one of them smoking a cigarette and gesturing with his hands as he spoke to his companion. They were young men, fit and physically honed. Trained mercenaries ready to be deployed wherever Sabre found their next customer. The kind of men Black had been obliged to fight and kill in more countries than he could remember.
Black returned to the others. ‘I think we’ve found the start of our rat run.’
52
By five a.m. they were back in their original position, watching the compound come to life. The main generator had kicked into life and bright floodlights had been switched on. Personnel in military fatigues were moving busily about the camp. Twenty or so men dressed in civilian clothes emerged from one of the buildings, filtered into another that appeared to be the mess hall and emerged again ten minutes later. Most made their way towards the mine workings, while two of them went to collect pick-up trucks which they drove to the separation plant. Once there, half a dozen men loaded the truck’s beds with heavy sacks of coltan ore, then, balancing precariously on top of their loads, they travelled across the compound to the heli, where they transferred the sacks to its cargo bay.
At five thirty a.m. a flight crew emerged from the mess and started the Puma’s engines. With the aid of the floodlights Black could now see that the heli was equipped with forward guns and rocket launchers that protruded from its hull like two sets of fangs. It was a deadly weapon that would have to be disabled. It rose slowly into the air, switched on powerful dual searchlights, dipped its nose and headed west across the canopy towards Platanal.
As the sun rose above the treetops, activity intensified and then mining machinery got to work. Excavators took hungry bites out of the hillside while the JCBs trundled up and down behind them under the watchful gaze of a permanent guard detail. At the other end of the camp, Black counted approximately 120 men form up on parade. They appeared to be a mixture of nationalities, as many white faces as Hispanic and black. A sergeant major put them through their morning drill before three officers arrived to deliver the day’s orders.
Using his night-vision goggles as binoculars, Black adjusted them to full magnification. He watched patiently, waiting for a clear view of the officers’ faces. He was rewarded with a glimpse of one that belonged to a tall, lean man with pale, tightly drawn skin and eyes set in deep sockets that gave him the appearance of an animated skull. It wasn’t a face one could easily forget. It belonged to Mitch Brennan, formerly of the Australian Special Air Service Regiment. The man who had tempted Finn – no doubt with many false promises – to lend his expertise to this dubious operation.
The men divided into four platoons. Two of them dispersed, then arrived promptly back on the parade ground carrying full packs and weapons. They jogged off out of the camp and along the road with a five-minute interval between them. The morning run. If Finn had had anything to do with establishing the training regime, they would be gone for between three and four hours. The other two platoons meanwhile started into a round of rigorous circuit training. Push-ups, sit-ups, sprints, log hauling. The usual routine that armies used to keep men fit and occupied while waiting for proper work to begin. Black was encouraged by the sight. If, as he suspected, the men currently working their muscles to exhaustion on the parade ground would spend the afternoon yomping, by nightfall they would be spent.
There was no activity at the breeze-block building until shortly after seven a.m., when a detachment of six armed guards arrived at its entrance. A door was unlocked and, shortly afterwards, Black counted eight figures emerge dressed in identical shorts and T-shirts. They were of assorted ages and seven of the eight were male. The single female was in her late twenties and had dark hair. They had to be the four abducted British scientists plus four others Sabre had snatched from elsewhere. Flanked by their guards, they made their way across the road to the mess hut. There was little communication between them. Their stooped shoulders and downcast gazes reminded Black of the many hostages he had viewed from a distance over the decades. They made a pathetic sight. He could almost feel their helplessness.
‘That must be Bellman,’ Fallon said. ‘She’s our number-one priority, right?’
‘If we get to them,’ Black said. ‘We concentrate on destroying as much as we can and worry about her afterwards.’
‘Even if we razed the whole place, I don’t see how we could extract them,’ Riley said.
‘You’ve got a choice of six trucks,’ Black answered. ‘Did you watch the mine workers first thing? They left keys in the ignition overnight.’
‘And how do you plan on getting in?’
‘Through the gate,’ Black said.
He saw his two companions exchange another of their sceptical glances.
‘Do you boys have a problem with that?’
Riley shrugged. ‘Your gig, boss.’
‘Keep watching.’
They remained in place, closely observing and noting the routines of the camp. The Puma returned shortly after eight a.m., bringing barrels of fuel, crates of food and numerous other boxes which were distributed to the various sheds. Hoping to determine the function of each one, Black tracked the food supplies being carried to the building standing closest to the mess and boxes of other supplies and hardware being divided into the two adjacent buildings. A man in uniform clutching a clipboard, and with the unmistakable, bureaucratic demeanour of a quartermaster, appeared. He shuttled between his three stores, ordering a pair of young soldiers to move incorrectly stowed boxes to their correct locations. Assuming that the generator was housed in the building closest to the fuel tanks, Black made an educated guess that the one standing next to it, which had been left undisturbed, was the armoury.
After their breakfast the hostages were returned to their quarters and the door locked behind them. Three sealed wooden crates unloaded from the heli were later delivered to the entrance and carried inside. There was one further visitor to the building who arrived several minutes later. Black spotted him as he crossed the parade square smoking a cigarette. He was of Middle Eastern appearance and in his mid to late fifties. He was distinguished from the Sabre personnel by his civilian dress and the fact that nothing in his gait or demeanour suggested any background in the military. He was an anomaly, which told Black that he had to be of significance. Focusing in as tightly as his goggles would allow, Black followed him to the door of the breeze-block building where he turned to stub out and discard his cigarette. The action afforded Black a window of nearly three seconds in which to register his face.
He had last seen it fifteen years before. It belonged to Ammal Razia, a neurosurgeon who had worked alongside the infamous Dr Rihab Taha, otherwise known as Dr Germ, the architect of Iraq’s chemical and biological warfare programme. Taha had masterminded the gassing of Iranian troops during the Iran–Iraq war of the 1980s and the genocide of the Marsh Arabs. He had experimented on human subjects and Razia had been a willing student and disciple, devising surgical techniques to ‘cure’ religious fanaticism and political non-conformity. The unwilling victims had been inmates of Saddam’s many prisons. Their only crimes had been to offend the tyrant.
Unencumbered by ethical restraints, Taha, Razia and their colleagues had made great strides in their fields. Razia, in particular, by surgically nullifying distinct areas of the brain over the course of thousands of procedures, had contributed an inestimable amount to the understanding of evolution’s most complex creation. Though not published officially, his findings had been widely disseminated throughout the global scientific community.
Black knew all this because he had read MI6’s detailed dossier on Razia and several of his colleagues in Saddam’s secret weapons programme. Having established their likely whereabouts he had personally led the snatch operations that had resulted in their arrests and transfer to Camp Cropper. He recalled the arrest of Razia in minute detail. He had been hiding in a house
on the outskirts of Baghdad belonging to a cousin. He claimed to be a schoolteacher and had documents to back up his claim, but there had been no doubting the match with the multiple photographs that both US and UK military intelligence had on file.
Black remembered a charming and sophisticated character who had kept up the pretence of being the innocent victim of mistaken identity throughout his transfer to military prison. There had been no doubt in Black’s mind that he was a psychopath and a committed and unrepentant member of Saddam’s scientific cadre.
Spotting Black’s intense focus on this individual, Riley asked, ‘Any idea who he is?’
‘No,’ Black lied. ‘You?’
Riley shook his head. ‘I think he wants putting to bed, though.’
‘Agreed.’
Razia drew keys from his pocket and let himself into the building.
By midday Black had seen enough. Razia was still inside with the hostages, which confirmed any lingering doubts over his identity. The silent hours of observation had also given Black some time to think. To piece together fragments of memory and set them into an order which led him to a set of dark conclusions.
He had delivered Razia and his colleagues to interrogators from the British intelligence services who were operating alongside American counterparts in Camp Cropper. He had assumed that, like other high-value detainees, Razia would be interrogated at length before either being released or more likely charged with serious offences. Some three or four months after his arrest, Black recalled asking Towers whether his interrogation had yielded any further leads to aid in their ongoing sweep-up operation of senior members of the Ba’ath regime and its cronies. Towers had told him that unfortunately Razia had not survived the interrogation process. At the time Black had interpreted this euphemism as meaning that he had either drowned while being waterboarded or suffocated. It had seemed perfectly logical: if Razia had admitted to his crimes, the Iraqi authorities would have hanged him. Remaining silent presented his only chance of staying alive.
Towers had lied. Somehow, Razia had fallen into the hands of Sabre, as had Brennan and Drecker, and all three had been there in Baghdad. Towers had had ultimate responsibility for Razia’s arrest and detention and would have known if he had been released. If the reason had been legitimate, he would have had no reason to withhold the truth from Black, his right-hand man. Why lie? Why pretend he was dead? Black could come to only one conclusion: Razia was an asset. He was young, fiercely intelligent and possessed knowledge with huge commercial value; he was a leading expert in the field of neuroscience. The USA had scooped up 1,600 German scientists in Operation Paperclip after the Second World War. Could they have done the same in Iraq? Or could Sabre have stolen a march and got their hands on him first?
Finn had been on the mission to arrest Razia. Like Black, he wasn’t a man to forget a face. He would have recognized him and when on his return he connected with Towers he would surely have told him. Towers could have dodged or disowned the situation but for one fact: he had lied to Black about Razia’s fate. And if the day came when Towers found himself hauled to the Hague to account for his actions in the chaos of post-invasion Baghdad, Towers was afraid that Black would mention Razia.
Black tried every mental convolution to avoid it, but arrived at the same conclusion every time: he had been sent here by Towers to die. To be tidied up along with all the other problems of his past.
53
The knock on the door came shortly after Sarah Bellman returned from breakfast. She was greeted by two uniformed men and marched across the compound to Dr Razia’s office. Shortly afterwards, she was joined by Professor Kennedy, who had also been forcibly escorted from his quarters. They were instrcuted to wait in silence. Eventually, Razia made an appearance, smelling of cologne and cigarette smoke. He bade them a friendly good morning and relaxed into the reclining chair behind his desk.
‘I apologize for the unscheduled nature of this meeting but we have a busy day ahead. You are looking much better, Professor. I trust the medication has done the trick?’
‘It would appear so,’ Kennedy said, avoiding Razia’s gaze.
‘Good. I’m glad to hear it.’ He turned his attention to Bellman. ‘And you are keeping well?’
‘Yes … Thank you.’
Razia rocked back in his chair and clasped his hands over the comfortable dome of his stomach. ‘No doubt you are aware of the matter we are here to discuss?’
He let the question hang.
Neither Bellman nor Kennedy replied.
‘Allow me to prompt you. For reasons that are too obvious to need explanation, with the help of Dr Holst I conduct a regular review of your work. The data you enter on your computers is not of course private to yourselves. It’s the property of our employers. Therefore, in my position of oversight, I have unfettered access.’
Another pause. He looked from one to the other, like a schoolteacher waiting for the thief to confess.
Bellman felt her heartbeat quicken. A sensation of panic simultaneously rose up from the pit of her stomach and pressed in on the sides of her skull. All the while, Kennedy remained still and poker-faced, his level gaze fixed on Razia.
‘Yes, Dr Bellman, you have every reason to feel anxious. I know that it was you who attempted to sabotage the code. Thankfully, Dr Holst has a keen eye for these things and was able to repair the damage.’
Kennedy turned to her with a look of disbelief. ‘There’s been a mistake,’ he said.
Bellman tried to speak but her tongue refused to respond.
‘I’m afraid not, Professor. All the evidence points to your protégée being determined to undermine our work.’ He let out a regretful sigh. ‘Which leaves me with a very difficult and unpleasant decision.’
‘No. Please –’ Bellman found her voice. ‘I was angry … It was a misjudgement –’
‘Indeed. Your work until then had been excellent. Faultless, in fact.’
Professor Kennedy leaned forward. ‘Whatever you’re contemplating, Razia, don’t do it. We didn’t ask to come here, so if either of us gave in to frustration, you’ve only yourselves to blame.’
‘I should hate to lose Dr Bellman. I really would. She has such a unique and promising mind. You, on the other hand, Professor, have already done your best work. And singularly failed in your responsibility to manage your junior colleague.’ He turned to Bellman. ‘Let this be a lesson to you.’ He nodded to the two men who had been standing silently at the door.
In an instant they had hoisted Professor Kennedy from his chair and were marching him to the door.
‘No! What are you doing?’ Bellman said. ‘Please, don’t hurt him. He’s got a family –’
The single gunshot silenced her protest. She heard the sound of a body slumping in the anteroom to the office, followed by the grunts of the two men as they hoisted it from the floor and carried it from the building.
‘Next time there will be no chance to explain yourself, Dr Bellman. We will shoot you in your sleep.’ Razia gave a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Please remove yourself from my sight.’
54
They returned to camp shortly after midday. Black let the others eat and brew coffee before laying out his plan of attack. It was simple and direct: create maximum chaos and confusion and move unseen among it. The risks were considerable but no higher, he assured them, than those on many other similar operations he and Finn had nailed, like the time they rescued five British and US hostages from an al-Shabaab enclosure in the Somali desert, leaving more than one hundred dead and as many wounded.
He was expecting resistance but Riley and Fallon listened with the impassive yet resolute expressions of men about to take their fight to the enemy. When he had finished talking, he looked into their eyes for signs of doubt. They stared straight back at him with almost unnerving calm.
‘Are we agreed?’
They nodded.
Then Fallon smiled, breaking the sombre mood. ‘What did you expect, boss? It’s not li
ke we signed up for the Girl Guides.’
They laughed harder than the joke deserved.
They agreed to make their move at midnight when the Sabre mercenaries would be at their most tired and ineffectual. The early afternoon was spent checking and preparing kit. Everything they needed would be carried in four webbing pouches worn across their bodies: ammunition, grenades, plastic explosives and detonators, goggles, radios and GPS units. Before launching their assault, they would make their way around to the south of the camp and stow their packs and machetes at a position set back from the road half a mile out from the gates. This would also serve as their default rendezvous point. If all went as they hoped, they would be making their escape driving the only functioning vehicle remaining in the compound. If not, they would be forced to improvise. In combat, spontaneity and instinct were every bit as important as meticulous preparation.
From four o’clock onwards they rested. Black took the first watch and was relieved by Riley two hours later.
Six hours to go.
Black lay silent in his hammock as darkness fell. Several feet behind him, separated by a thicket of bamboo, Fallon lay in his own hammock breathing with the slow and steady rhythm of a man who had fallen deeply asleep. When the last of the light had vanished, Black pulled on his goggles and scanned the surrounding area. He saw Riley standing ten yards away, facing out, composed and still. For a moment Black doubted himself. Was he imagining things? Had Finn’s death cast him into a state of irrationality and paranoia? Perhaps Freddy Towers had had nothing to do with the transfer of a genocidal criminal in his custody into the hands of a private army? Perhaps it had been a freak, unfortunate coincidence that Towers had arranged for Finn to act as bodyguard for Dr Sarah Bellman only to be killed by the same people he had fled from months before?