by Matthew Hall
He turned the possibilities over and over in his mind and each time came back to the same conclusion: the only coincidence, if it could be called that, was that Kathleen had turned to him to identify Finn’s body. For Towers it had proved an unbelievable stroke of luck, a gift that he had grasped with both hands.
There was another explanation, of course, offered in the words of the young Classics student, Sam Wright, who had spoken to him in the hours before Kathleen’s phone call: Events unfold only because they’re heading towards an inevitable conclusion.
Black thought of the bullets he had dodged, the explosions he had avoided by seconds, the two dozen times he should have returned home in a box. By any objective measure he had far outlived anything that chance could explain. He was the flipped coin that had come to rest on its edge.
It was a consolation of sorts. If his fate was sealed and his destiny set, nothing barring the collapse of the eternal laws of the universe would alter the fact.
Keep going and take what comes.
Try to survive.
It was all he knew.
He slipped silently from his hammock.
Black watched from dense cover twenty yards out from their camp as Riley made his way back towards Fallon. It was a minute before eight. Even at this short distance the beat of the jungle night drowned out the sound of his footsteps and the brief exchange of words between the two men. Through his goggles Black watched Fallon climb out from his hammock and reach for his own goggles and rifle only to find that neither were where he had left them. He said something to Riley, who turned, his body language betraying alarm.
Black spoke into the headset mic of the intercom stowed in his webbing. His voice was transmitted to Riley’s unit, which Black had placed in the undergrowth next to Fallon’s hammock.
‘Listen up.’ He watched both of them turn to the source of his voice. ‘Do exactly as I say or I shoot, understood? Stay where you are. Chris, take off your goggles, drop your rifle. I won’t tell you twice.’
Black waited. Riley stiffened but did as he was told. The two of them were now standing by Fallon’s hammock, staring out blindly into the night.
‘Pistols on the deck.’
This time there was a longer pause as they weighed the risks, then decided to comply.
‘Thank you. I apologize for the circumstances of this conversation, but I’m afraid I’ve no choice. These are the rules: lie to me and I shoot, tell the truth and you live.’ He watched them straining to see through the darkness, hoping against hope they could locate him and scatter. But there was only the faintest moonlight. Barely enough to see a hand at arm’s length.
‘Ed. You first. You’ll answer clearly, directly and fully. Understood?’
‘Boss.’
‘State the full extent of your orders from Colonel Towers.’
Fallon took a breath. A moment to collect his thoughts. ‘To accompany you on the mission. To sabotage and disable the Sabre base. To eliminate as many Sabre personnel as possible, especially senior officers and staff. And if circumstances allow, to extract hostages.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No, boss.’
‘Why did you agree to accompany an ex-officer you had never worked with before?’
‘Just obeying orders, boss.’
‘I thought you volunteered.’
‘We were asked, boss. You don’t say no.’
‘How much is Colonel Towers paying you?’
‘Nothing, boss.’
‘How much?’
Fallon hesitated. One second. Two.
Black lined the sights of his M&P with his forehead and fired. The suppressor reduced the noise of the shot to a click no louder than a door catch. Fallon dropped – his knees folding beneath him – and lay still.
Riley froze, his body rigid and paralysed with fear.
‘You’ve got a wife and child at home, Chris. I’d like you to see them again. That’s why I didn’t want to tempt you to lie. How much is Colonel Towers paying you to be here?’
‘Thirty thousand, boss.’
‘In exchange for what?’
‘To achieve the objectives Ed stated –’ he paused to swallow – ‘and to make sure you didn’t come home.’
‘Were you given a reason for killing me?’
‘He said you were a dirty soldier, boss. That you were heading for court and would smear the Regiment.’
‘Did he specify my alleged crimes?’
‘He said you killed women and children. Tortured prisoners. Cut off their fingers and raped them. He said there was a dossier that the Iraqis had compiled. Your name was top of the list. He wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of putting you on trial.’
‘When were you planning to kill me?’
There was a short pause.
‘After the op.’
Black took a moment to weigh his options and hoped Riley was doing the same.
‘OK. We have a challenge. I want you to think very carefully before you answer, Chris. Can we find a way to work together, to get the job done and both get home alive?’
‘Yes, boss.’
Black pulled the trigger.
It was a lie.
Whatever. However.
It was binary.
Live or die.
55
Black dragged the two bodies away from the camp and returned to his hammock. Sleep came easily. He fell under in seconds and woke, refreshed, at midnight. He ate quickly, like an animal, raided Riley and Fallon’s packs for extra ammunition and rations and moved out by twelve thirty. Navigating with the aid of his GPS unit and night-vision goggles, he plotted a course that took him west past the Sabre compound and half a mile beyond it, parallel to the access road.
He made rapid progress, feeling strong and sharp, his senses melding with the jungle, until in his bones and sinews and in every ganglion of his brain he felt a sensation like the subtle, harmonious vibrations of a plucked string.
He arrived at his destination and logged its position on his GPS unit. It was a spot fifty yards back from the road, half a mile from the compound’s entrance, where a dense clump of palms provided a spot in which to conceal his pack along with his machete. All that he needed he transferred to the array of webbing pouches strapped across his chest. Armed with his rifle, pistol and Bowie knife, he set off towards the road, zig-zagging from the cover of one tree to the next, until he arrived at the edge of what turned out to be little more than a dirt track, barely wide enough for a truck to pass along it. He waited several minutes, checking both ways, before flitting across and disappearing into the forest on the far side.
Navigating by GPS, he cut back in the direction of the compound, gradually descending the gradient towards the valley floor. On arriving at the river’s edge he made his way along the bank until he glimpsed the light from the pump house. The sight of it sent a shot of adrenalin coursing through his veins. He paused, took a breath and waited for his racing heart to settle before pushing on to within ten yards of his objective.
Through an opening in the leaves he saw two men sitting on chairs on either side of a small table inside the pump house. The door to the outside was open to the night with a bug screen pulled across. They were drinking cans of cola and had rested their rifles up against the wall. To the left of the building was a small area of level ground on which a Toyota pick-up, identical to those Black had observed inside the compound, was parked.
He waited, hidden from sight, watching and listening. Fifteen minutes passed, more than long enough for a man on foot patrol to walk to the compound and back. Once satisfied there was no third guard, he crept closer, the sound of the water tipping over the dam masking the sound of his approach. He sniffed the air and detected the ammonia scent of stale urine. He traced it to a thick-stemmed palm that stood no more than fifteen feet from the building’s door. He tracked left, finding cover midway between the pick-up and the tree. There he crouched low, waiting for the inevitable moment when one of the tw
o emerged.
Ten minutes later his patience was rewarded. One of the two, a tall, thin-limbed man, stepped outside without his rifle and made his way casually towards the tree, unzipping himself as he went. Black waited until he was midstream before he pounced. He drove the blade of the Bowie knife in hard to the right of the spine, at the same time cupping his left hand over the man’s mouth to stifle his momentary gasp of surprise. Black pushed down hard on the knife’s handle and twisted. Blood from the severed aorta gushed out of the wound and drenched his fingers as he extracted the blade and lowered the body to the ground. He quickly dried his hand on the shoulder of the dead man’s shirt, his eyes fixed on the open door of the pump house. There was no movement inside.
Black sheathed his knife, picked up his rifle and walked towards the pump house. He yanked open the bug screen and stepped inside without breaking stride. The second soldier, a stocky white man with a thick neck and biceps to match, looked up from his chair with a look of alarm. He reached instinctively for his rifle and swung it by the muzzle, deflecting Black’s oncoming bayonet and throwing him momentarily off balance. The soldier used the precious second of advantage to flip his weapon and come up for a shot as Black regained his footing and hurled the bayonet at his face.
Black felt the impact of steel on bone and saw the lights go out in his victim’s eyes as the rifle dropped from his slackening fingers. Black yanked back on the butt of his rifle, extracting the blade from the dead man’s open mouth. He caught the body as it slumped forward, grabbed the shirt collar and hauled the lifeless bulk backwards across the table so that the head was hanging over the far side. This time he wanted to keep the shirt clean. He succeeded. The blood brimming out of the wound spilled out of the corpse’s mouth and over its stubbled scalp to the floor.
Black stripped the dead man of his Sabre fatigues and swapped them for his own. They were a size too large and stank of sweat but they would have to do. He turned his attention to the pumps, currently idle, that filled the water tank and supplied the separation plant. He found the master stopcocks and closed them, then isolated the incoming power supply and ripped out the cables. There would be no more water to the compound.
Behind the door he found the keys to the pick-up hanging from a hook. He took them and went down to the water’s edge, where he took his time meticulously washing his face and arms clean of blood and scrubbing the stubborn camouflage cream from his face and neck. Once clean, he approached the truck, stowed his goggles, webbing and weapons in the passenger footwell and started the engine. Before pulling away, he flicked on the interior light, placed a sand-coloured Sabre beret on his head and checked his reflection in the mirror. Aside from four days’ growth of beard, he looked almost respectable. The whites of his eyes shone back at him with arctic brilliance.
The four-wheel-drive Toyota took the steep, rutted track that led up the side of the valley to the compound in its stride. Black drove slowly, wanting the sentries at the gate to hear only an unhurried, routine sound. The track snaked to the right, turned through 180 degrees and joined the main road leading to the compound’s entrance. Remaining in second gear, Black approached the floodlit area in front of the sentry post and came to a stop. There were two men inside the small, insect-proof guard hut and two TV screens, each relaying multiple images from the perimeter security cameras. One of the two sentries stepped out, peered through the glare of the headlights and caught sight of Black’s hand as he gave a friendly wave. He reached for a switch and the barrier rose. Black drove through unchallenged. He glanced in the mirror and saw the sentry step back inside.
As he had anticipated, getting inside the compound was the easy part.
Black followed the road a short distance, then took the left fork towards the area where the storage and plant sheds and fuel tanks were housed. Shielded from the sentry post by the bund protecting the fuel tanks, he pulled up alongside the other pick-ups, switched off the headlights and killed the engine. He climbed out, pocketed the keys and pulled on his night-vision goggles, pleased to hear the reassuringly loud chug of the diesel generator. He scanned the surrounding area and confirmed that the security cameras were trained along the line of the perimeter fence. He had a view the length of the camp and detected no sign of movement. Nevertheless, he was aware from what he had observed in the early hours of the previous day that somewhere a pair of guards would be patrolling. Counting the two sentries at the gate, that meant four men to be avoided.
There was an art to sabotage. It was more than merely causing damage, it was doing so in a way that caused maximum panic, bewilderment and terror. SAS recruits spent weeks studying the discipline but it had always come naturally to Black: running through his plans for slaughter and destruction he felt entirely at ease, like a painter preparing his palette.
Satisfied that he had settled on a running order, he placed the goggles back in the pick-up and put on his beret. He strapped on his shoulder holster and webbing, left his rifle in the cab and locked it.
There was no going back.
Black walked calmly through the shadows towards the centre of the semicircular earth bund, which enclosed two above-ground tanks. The area in front of them was concreted and two large fuel pumps were set against a retaining wall. There was a diesel pump similar to one found on any filling station forecourt and a second, larger one, which pumped aviation fuel through a hose reel to the heli which stood twenty yards off to the right. A storm drain covered by metal grating ran through the centre of the concrete apron and connected with a network of similar drains criss-crossing the compound, all of which conjoined to empty into the drainage ditch that separated the inhabited area from the mine.
Black lifted the grating and took the diesel pump from its holster. He inserted the nozzle into the storm drain, pulled the trigger and clicked the catch that held it in the on position. The pump’s motor whirred into life at a higher pitch than the generator but after a few seconds the initially discordant notes seemed to blend into a single sound. He replaced the grating so that the weight of it held the nozzle in position. The diesel poured into the drain, giving off only a light odour, many times less powerful than petrol or the even higher-octane aviation fuel, which made it the arsonist’s perfect choice.
Leaving the pump to do its work, Black moved on to stage two. He returned to the row of pick-ups and ducked down low beneath the windows of the furthest vehicle. He opened the driver’s door, removed the keys that the mine workers had left in the ignition, tossed them away, then pressed the tip of his Bowie knife into each of the tyres in turn. Air hissed from the slits and the truck sank until the wheels were resting on their rims. He moved to the next truck, then the next, repeating the procedure until only the vehicle he had driven from the pump house remained in a usable condition.
Now they could no longer be driven, it just left the problem of the pair of heavy machine guns mounted on two of them. The weapons themselves were unloaded but their ammunition belts were stored in metal boxes which were firmly bolted to the pick-up beds. The only way to disable them was to destroy the whole vehicle. He unclipped a jerrycan from the rear of one of the trucks and carried it to the diesel pump. He lifted the nozzle from the drain, filled the can, then replaced it again before lugging the full can back and emptying the contents through the vehicles’ open windows.
Retreating to the shadows at the side of the bund, he took a large lump of yellow Semtex from his webbing pouches and divided it into five separate portions: two of approximately two pounds each, and three of roughly half that size. Into each of them he pressed a detonator the size of a large rifle round. These contained battery-activated explosive charges which he had programmed to ignite when he simultaneously pressed the two red buttons on the phone-sized control unit.
He replaced the bombs in his pouches, double-checked to ensure that the control unit was switched to off and moved out.
There was no other route to the heli other than across a stretch of open ground and no way to approach
it other than by acting as if he had every right. He strolled across the scrubby grass to the helipad, looking out for the two patrolling guards and arrived at the Puma’s hull without being seen. It was a big, solid hulk of metal that seemed far too large and heavy to be capable of flight. Adding to its bulk was armour plating strong enough to repel machine-gun fire from the ground. It would have been a grave error to fix a pound of explosive to its hull and expect to ground it. Even two pounds of Semtex, incorrectly positioned, would cause little more than a slight dent in the bodywork.
Black ducked under the mid-section to the starboard side of the machine, where he was hidden from view. He tried the doors. They were locked. There was nothing for it but to climb. He put his right foot on the mounting step, reached up to the casing above the door which housed the external winch unit, placed his right foot on the door handle and scrambled on top of the winch, grabbing the lip of the wide exhaust port above to steady himself. He was now within touching distance of the main rotor mechanism and engine air intakes. It was a toss-up, but he chose to attack the potentially more vulnerable rotor rather than the engines. He pressed a pound of explosive in around the main shaft, moulding it like plasticine, hoping the shock waves would be enough to blow apart the bearings and render it immobile.
He dropped to the ground, more noisily than he would have liked, and walked back towards the cover of the bunds, resisting the urge to hurry and make himself conspicuous. His progress had been good but he was on borrowed time: the smell of diesel was starting to spread through the humid air.
Time to up the pace.
Black pulled out the second one-pound lump of Semtex and pressed it against the side of the aviation fuel tank. He took hold of the hose and ran it across to the nearest building – a rectangular box of reinforced concrete – which, he had deduced, was the armoury. He set the nozzle down on the ground close to its steel-plated door, returned to the pump and pressed the button that switched it on. The second pump struck a louder, more conspicuous note than the first. Black hesitated for a moment over whether to kill it, but decided to risk it.