by Matt Rogers
Abu stared at the driver, who had his gaze fixed straight ahead in horror. The guy squirmed uneasily under the pressure of Slater’s gun barrel.
‘Yes,’ Abu said in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘He’s AQAP.’
‘What?’
‘Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.’
‘Does that mean my friend over there hired him to help do his dirty work?’
‘Probably. How do you know that man?’
‘Bit of trouble at a security checkpoint.’
Abu nodded understandingly.
‘Tell my friend,’ Slater said, ‘that this won’t end well for him either way. If he kills me, this pistol will go off and his al-Qaeda buddy will get his neck blown to shreds. Ask him if he understands how that particular organisation will react if they find out one of their own was killed helping police. Ask him to think long and hard about this.’
Slater had entered a different zone. There was a loaded gun barrel pointed at his face, and it had shifted him into a primal state, the kind of state where he thrived. He would do absolutely anything necessary to survive this encounter. Instincts had kicked in.
And all concept of mercy had fallen away.
He had done the guards a favour at the security checkpoint by keeping them alive. Now, he would not be so gracious. If the initial hit with the Land Cruiser had incapacitated him, he would have caught a bullet through his skull while lying helpless and injured on the hot ground.
Abu began to speak to the checkpoint guard, talking in a low tone just as he had done to the woman minutes previously. The man had broken out in an uncontrollable sweat, affected by the stress of the situation and the stifling humidity of the Land Cruiser’s cabin.
Abu continued to talk.
The guard kept his eyes fixed firmly on Slater.
Slater kept his gaze fixed equally firmly on the guard.
The guard faltered first.
In the midst of Abu’s speech, the man said something that attracted the attention of the guard for a brief few milliseconds. The guard’s pupils flickered over to Abu for an instant, and the barrel of the Kalashnikov dipped a half-inch in the air.
He had broken concentration.
Slater pulled the trigger of the Jericho 941, sending an unsuppressed Parabellum round through the soft tissue of the al-Qaeda mercenary’s throat. It killed the man instantly, but before the guy’s brain had even registered the overwhelming roar of the gunshot, Slater had wrenched his aim around to face the guard in the passenger seat.
He pumped the trigger once more.
Two deafening blasts, loud enough to resonate throughout the entire town.
And two dead occupants.
The second bullet had sliced through the checkpoint guard’s forehead, jerking his head back into the opposite window and spraying blood over the upholstery.
Slater saw none of it, because he had tackled Abu to the ground as soon as he unleashed his shots, hurling them both below the line of sight just in case the checkpoint guard spasmed against the Kalashnikov’s trigger in his death throes.
Nothing happened.
Ears ringing, pulse pounding, Slater took a deep breath and composed himself.
Situation handled.
11
He didn’t think there would be a single person in the mountain town who hadn’t heard the altercation unfold. As he rose back to his feet and confirmed that the two men in the Toyota were dead, he exhaled softly, stilling his nerves.
He knew the dangers of letting the rush of cortisol get to his head.
He had to remain tactical.
For all he knew, the other two checkpoint guards were on their way.
‘Are you okay?’ he said as Abu clambered tentatively to his feet.
The man nodded, his cheeks pale, still in shock. ‘I’ve only ever seen gunfights like that from a distance.’
‘How common are they around here?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I need to know if what just happened will cause an uproar.’
‘Not an uproar,’ Abu said, shaking his head. ‘There are many fights around here. For the last couple of years death has become more and more common in these parts. But there has not been commotion in this town for quite some time, as far as I can tell. There’ll be attention on you.’
‘Might need to retreat away from here for a bit then.’
‘I’d say so.’
Slater paused and stared at the vehicle with its two dead occupants. ‘Lucky I have a ride, then, isn’t it?’
Abu hesitated. ‘I hope you’re not about to do what I think you are.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘Something foolish.’
‘That’s all I ever do.’
He set about opening each of the Toyota’s doors in turn and hauling both corpses out onto the pavement. He made sure to drag each body away from the main road to allow traffic to pass by. Death had long since lost its mystique, and he had no qualms with handling bodies.
Not after what he’d been through.
He propped each man up against one of the mud brick walls lining the laneway and crossed back to the Toyota. Thankfully, no arterial veins had been severed by the gunshots. They’d bled, but nothing Slater hadn’t seen before. The cabin was relatively tidy, considering he’d killed two people in it moments earlier.
‘What do I do with them?’ Abu said, grimacing as his gaze drifted from the man with no throat to the man with no forehead.
‘Whatever you want,’ Slater said. ‘Blame it all on me if you need to. I can take the heat.’
‘And where are you going?’ Abu said.
Slater paused by the driver’s door, staring across the street at the woman in the burqa. Her eyes were still transfixed on the shocking scene of violence that had unfolded before her, but he could see the pain behind the stare.
He could see that if nothing was done, the unanswered questions would plague her for the rest of her life.
‘I’m going to go find her son,’ Slater said. ‘She deserves that much. It’s my fault I let him go up into the mountains.’
‘It certainly isn’t,’ Abu said, suddenly furious. ‘How on earth could you have known?’
‘I did know,’ Slater said. ‘Subconsciously, I did. I just didn’t do anything about it.’
‘And what do you intend to do about it now?’ Abu said. ‘I fear it is too late.’
‘It might be. I can still knock a few heads together.’
‘I wouldn’t lay a finger on the tribesmen up in those mountains,’ Abu said. ‘Please. I know we barely know each other, but it would be fatal, and I quite like you, Will. I consider you a friend. I don’t want you to go getting yourself killed.’
Slater slotted wordlessly into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. The rolled-down window gave him a hole through which he could communicate with Abu.
‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘I can take care of myself.’
‘I’m sure you can. But what about me? If it comes out that I’ve been seen with you, and you cause havoc up there … how will I end up?’
‘I’ll make sure it doesn’t come out,’ Slater said.
‘But…’
Slater seized the man’s wrist and locked onto his gaze.
‘Look at her,’ he hissed. ‘Look.’
Abu turned and glanced at the woman behind them, standing sheepishly on the sidewalk, covered in the shadow of a three-storey building.
‘She needs to know what happened to her boy,’ Slater said. ‘I’m not walking out of here without knowing. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ Abu said.
He offered little in the way of resistance, obviously aware that Slater had made his mind up.
Slater pressed his foot down on the brake pedal and slotted the gearstick into drive. With a glance in the rear view mirror, he noted a cluster of civilians forming at the base of the street, further down the hill. It wouldn’t take long for news of the firefight to spread thro
ugh Qasam like wildfire. Most of the town would have heard the gunshots.
It would do him good to set off as soon as possible — both to let the recent violence fade away, and to possess the highest chance of retrieving the boy. The sooner the kid’s mother knew his fate, the better.
He nodded once to Abu, wordlessly exchanging a farewell with the man who had shown him such hospitality when none was needed, and pressed the accelerator. The Toyota took a moment to lurch off the mark, as the revving of the engine shot through the tyres. The rubber eventually found purchase on the steep incline and Slater set off.
Toward the mountains.
Toward uncertainty.
12
The town fell away instantly, replaced by imposing cliff-faces on either side of the Land Cruiser. Slater tuned out the grim thoughts swirling through his head, opting to believe — for the time being, at least — that the boy was unharmed.
He had been intuitively trained to expect the worst in every possible situation.
But he wasn’t employed anymore.
He was here by choice.
The thought rattled him, icing his veins, narrowing his vision. For years he had justified the violence and the rage and the devastation as the simple act of carrying out orders. Sure, the adversaries he’d faced over his career had all deserved it — at least, in his eyes — but he fully understood that the events he’d taken part in would have an undeniable toll on even the most hardened operative, unless a justifiable excuse was made as to why.
That thin veneer was beginning to fall away.
Now he was a free man, voluntarily heading for confrontation.
Looking for a fight, it appeared.
He told himself that was nonsense. Just as it had been justified to wage war against mercenaries, drug barons, bio-terrorists, and the scum of the earth in general, it was necessary that he retrieve an innocent boy from the hands of northern highlander tribesmen.
Who knew the things they might be doing to him…
Everything’s fine, Slater told himself. The boy’s safe.
He passed the first remote mountain village less than five minutes into the cross-country journey.
The twisting path guided the Toyota through the midst of a maze of crags in the mountainside. When the shadows across the truck fell away, replaced by an open view of the Hadhramaut Valley, Slater caught the first glimpse of human activity.
It didn’t instil confidence within him.
The village was a ghost town, nothing more than a collection of mud brick huts, entirely abandoned and crumbling away under the intense glare of the Yemeni sun overhead. It had been erected in the centre of a smooth plateau, this one positioned far above Qasam. The wadis stretching out for hundreds of miles appeared small from this height. Slater touched his foot to the brake and slowed the Land Cruiser to a crawl as the track passed by the village.
He gulped back apprehension, at the same time quashing a dizzying sensation as he realised the altitude. It made him acutely aware of a potential fall, to the point where his breathing became more laboured. He sucked in air, wound down the window, and studied the village and the view beyond.
There was no sign of life whatsoever.
The majority of the huts sported roofs that had caved in weeks or months earlier. Coupled with wooden doors hanging off their hinges and stone bricks crumbling to pieces before his eyes, Slater imagined that no-one had lived at this site for at least a year.
The hairs on his forearms rose.
Out of instinct, he killed the engine, letting the desolation of the mountainside wash over him. The cabin turned to an oven in seconds, sweltering in the desert heat. He listened hard for anything notable — either the howl of a wild animal, or the squawk of a bird, or the cry of a child, or the clanging of pots and pans.
Nothing.
Just wind and heat.
Dejected by the uncertainty, Slater fired the Toyota back into life and continued on the path.
He stayed on edge, checking intermittently that the Jericho 941 in the centre console had its safety off and its trigger ready to fire. Over the course of his career he had come to learn that he preferred raging madness and total confusion to the pulse-pounding silence that signified an ambush.
The altitude steadily rose.
Over the next ten minutes, the thought began to creep into his mind that he had set off on a fool’s errand.
What are you expecting to find?
Optimistically, he anticipated that any twist in the road would reveal a strongly-populated mountain village bristling with activity in the mid-morning heat. He would pull up to find the young boy from the day before beaming with glee, just as he had been fourteen hours previously. An elderly highlander couple would approach Slater’s vehicle without fear, handing over the boy so that he could be returned to his mother without incident and the entire ordeal could be chalked up to a frightening but ultimately harmless misunderstanding.
Instead, moments after visualising a warm-hearted ending to the search, Slater swung the Land Cruiser around a steep bend in the road…
…to reveal one of the most horrifying sights he had ever laid eyes on.
13
Slater stamped on the brakes.
The Toyota screeched to a halt in the middle of the uneven track.
Dust wafted off the fat off-road tyres. The engine rumbled idly as he clenched the steering wheel double-handed, knuckles white. Sweat began to leech off his forehead — but not because of the heat.
There was no doubts or qualms about what lay ahead. It couldn’t be interpreted any other way. Slater considered turning back, pretending he had never seen anything, calmly informing the woman that he had found no sign of her son.
Anything would be better than the truth.
He forced himself into motion and trundled the big Land Cruiser over to the side of the road, steering it out of the way of any passing traffic. He stifled a curse at the foolishness of his own actions — there was as much chance a vehicle would pass by as there was of the boy making it back home for dinner.
Slater parked the Toyota, yanked the handbrake on, shut the engine off, and stepped out of the cabin onto the potholed mountain track.
He grimaced, suppressed a wave of nausea…
…and crossed the road to scrutinise the boy’s severed head.
Three distinct emotions rolled over him as he observed the scene of the haphazard execution.
First, regret.
He couldn’t believe he hadn’t stopped the boy in his tracks. At the very least he should have communicated through rudimentary sign language to ask if the boy’s home rested in the mountains. Had he recognised that the kid didn’t belong in the highlands, he never would have let him out of his sight.
Then, that passed, replaced quickly by confusion.
The hairs on the back of Slater’s neck rose and he pondered exactly what the boy had done to deserve such a horrific fate. Like he had thought earlier, the kid couldn’t have been older than eight. There was nothing that an eight-year-old could have done to antagonise anyone to this extent.
Slater studied the scene, even though he would have rather been anywhere else.
The kid’s rigid body had been dumped in a shallow ditch by the side of the mountain trail, arms and legs awkwardly splayed in random directions. His neck consisted of nothing more than a bloody stump. The head — sporting a grotesque expression of abject terror — rested upright in the dust, covered in sand and barely recognisable.
That brought on the third emotion, a sensation that was accompanied by the blood rushing to Slater’s face, the veins in his forearms and legs beginning to pump, his heart rate rapidly increasing.
Pure, unadulterated rage.
A particularly vicious gust of wind blew up the mountainside, whistling between the surrounding crags, kicking up particles of sand and dirt and dust. Slater let his gaze follow a soft cloud of dust that shot away from the boy’s corpse.
That was when he saw it.
Someone had used the kid’s arterial blood to paint a crude arrow atop the rocky ground just a few feet away from his corpse. Slater’s attention had been so consumed by the sight of the decapitation that he hadn’t noticed the symbol until now.
It pointed straight back down the mountain, delivering a clear message.
Back.
Slater lost track of the amount of time he spent staring at the arrow. He paid attention to every stroke that had been painted, every crimson speck. It had all come from the most innocent person he had met in months. A boy frolicking happily into the mountains. He spent so long looking at the symbol, enraptured by the brutality of it, that he didn’t notice the voices until they were right on top of him.
By the time he broke out of his dazed stupor and heard coarse Arabic echoing off the rocky crags all around him, he knew he only had seconds to act.
The voices came from further up the trail, where the majority of the ascent was hidden behind a maze of natural rock formations. Slater’s attention jerked directly to the sound.
Three men.
Maybe four.
He crouched low and slunk away from the track.
* * *
The trio muttered in low voices as they descended the mountainside.
After a beat of reasonably loud conversation, the leader hissed in a low tone at the other pair, instructing them to lower their voices.
Just in case any of the townspeople had dared to venture up in search of the child.
They had been speaking of protective measures, and the necessary actions that had come about as a result of staying loyal to their mission.
One of them had suggested they should check to see whether the signal had been received.
There was nothing else to do, so two of them snatched up their Kalashnikov AK-47s and the other fetched his traditional curved dagger — called a jambiyah in their native tongue.
As a pack, the trio set off for the place they had left the boy.
Striding purposefully to ensure they didn’t turn an ankle on the loose, steep track, the three of them rounded the final bend to see the kid still resting where they had left him.