by Chris Ryan
‘Did you let your mates down?’ said Jed.
Nick hesitated. ‘That’s what they think,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘Marlow and some of the other Ruperts. They think I cracked under torture.’
‘Did you?’
Nick shrugged. ‘After I was captured, two of our patrol were intercepted by the Iraqis,’ he said. ‘There were four men on each, and they were all killed. The Ruperts reckon I gave the Iraqis enough information for them to track our boys down.’
Jed hesitated. A couple of cocks were starting to crow in the distance as the light crept down further into the valley. ‘And did you?’
Nick shook his head. ‘I would have broken if I could,’ he said. ‘No man can hold up under torture, it doesn’t matter what they tell you. That’s why armies operate on a need-to-know basis. I didn’t know anything worth telling them. Those patrols copped it because the Ruperts fucked it up the way they always do. Dropped them down in the wrong place, with the wrong kit. They just don’t like admitting it, so they put the word around that I’d talked after I’d been captured. The story went out that I’d told the Iraqis Steve Hatstone’s location. It was bollocks, but a lot of people still believed it. It gave them a nice handy excuse for their own incompetence.’
‘So you didn’t let anyone down?’
Nick shook his head. ‘I didn’t say that,’ he replied. ‘I let Mary down. And I let Sarah down as well.’
‘What really happened to her mother?’
Nick sighed, as if the memory was still painful for him. ‘I’ve never told anyone.’
‘Well, you might well be dead by lunchtime,’ said Jed. ‘So if you don’t tell someone now, you might never get another chance.’
‘We’d set up this ski school out in the French Alps, and we’d been there for about a year,’ said Nick. ‘It wasn’t going very well. I was still drinking, I just couldn’t shake it. I was meant to be doing the teaching while Mary looked after the books, but nobody wants a ski instructor who can’t even stand up straight. We got a few clients, but they didn’t last long, and there certainly wasn’t any word of mouth. We had a bit of cash saved up but it was slowly draining away, and there was nothing coming in. We were rowing all the time. Mary was pissed off with me for not pulling myself together, and I couldn’t blame her.’ He paused, looking up into the sunlight that was starting to fill up the valley. ‘One afternoon I was meant to be meeting some Austrian tour company that was interested in booking a series of military ski courses. It could have been a big contract for us. I completely forgot about the meeting. When they called to see where the hell I was, I was already in one of the bars having a couple of pints. When Mary found me, she went crazy, started shouting at me, I shouted back, then she drove off in her car.’ Nick stopped again, taking another sip of his tea, as if he needed something to fortify himself for the next sentence. ‘That’s when she had her car crash. The next time I saw her she was lying in a morgue. If it hadn’t been for that row, she wouldn’t have died. It was my fault.’
‘You don’t know that,’ said Jed.
Nick shrugged. ‘Sure, people have car crashes all the time. I’ve tried to tell myself that a million times. I’ve never managed to convince myself, though. Not for a second.’
‘You blame yourself …’
Nick laughed. ‘If I could find some other bastard to blame, I would. I just can’t seem to find anyone. It was my fault, as surely as if I’d killed her myself. I let her down. And I let Sarah down as well. She was just a kid, and she needed her mum. After that, the ski school closed down. We came back to England, and I was still drinking heavily. I just couldn’t get any kind of handle on myself. Eventually, Sarah was taken into care. That’s what finally got me to sober up. It gave me enough of a shock to pull myself together. I stopped drinking and found myself some work. In time, they let me take Sarah back again. She was damaged by it, though. She never quite trusted me to look after her again, not the way a girl should be able to trust her dad to take care of her.’
‘A lot of dads are useless,’ said Jed.
‘Like yours?’
‘A thief, and he wasn’t even any bloody good at it,’ said Jed. ‘My mum couldn’t cope either. That’s how I ended up in care, and that’s how I met Sarah. The rest you know.’
‘So how’d you end up in the army, then?’
Jed shrugged. ‘Buggered if I know,’ he said briskly. ‘Trying to prove something, I suppose. That I could take the punishment, not like my dad.’
‘Trying to prove it to me?’ said Nick. ‘That you were good enough for Sarah?’
Jed remained silent. It might be true, but I’m not going to bloody well tell him.
Nick stood up. ‘It won’t work, you know,’ he said sourly. ‘A soldier wasn’t good enough to be her dad, and no soldier is ever going to be good enough to be her husband either. We all let our women down in the end. That’s just the way things are.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Jed.
‘Right,’ said Nick. ‘I’ve seen the way you and Laura look at each other.’
Jed fell silent. Before he could reply, Nick was on his feet and heading purposefully towards the mountains. Rezo was up, and was finishing his breakfast. Laura had slept in the next hut, and had already washed herself down. She was walking towards Jed.
‘You’ve done really well so far,’ she said. ‘There might well be an MC in this for you. Maybe even a VC.’
‘You can stuff the medals,’ Jed replied sourly. Nick’s remark was still stinging his eyes, and he was regretting ever having allowed himself to get close to Laura. ‘I just want to get Sarah back.’
‘Yes, well, I’m doing my best to help you,’ said Laura sharply.
‘Then let’s go,’ said Jed, turning to walk away.
Five of Rezo’s men were lined up, ready for the mission: they were introduced as Darwen, Mezdar, Camer, Neroz and Joro. Doesn’t make much difference what they’re called, thought Jed. None of them can speak English. We’re not about to become mates, even if we do stay alive through the next few hours.
‘You ready?’ said Rezo.
Nick nodded. He’d already hoisted his kitbag up on to his back, and readied his AK-47. ‘We’re good to go,’ he said.
They started to walk up the narrow twisting path that turned steeply into the mountains rising up from the side of the valley. It was still early in the morning, the ground was wet with dew, and there was a cold breeze blowing in from the east. Jed had been on plenty of marches before, a few of them even into the face of gunfire, but this one felt different. They had no idea what kind of enemy they might face, how strong he might be, or what resources he might have. All they knew was that Sarah was up there somewhere, and they had to find her. If she was still alive.
‘Can’t we call into Hereford for some air cover?’ said Jed to Laura.
‘We lost four guys last night,’ said Laura. ‘They aren’t going to send us any more. There isn’t an unlimited supply.’
‘They think we’re coming in with the heavy stuff, the chances are they’ll kill Sarah,’ said Nick. ‘To have a chance of getting her, we have to get up so close we can smell their aftershave. Then catch them off guard.’
Jed looked up ahead. Rezo was leading the way, with the five Kurds following close behind in single file. They were like mountain goats: thin and wiry, they glided across the rocks and stones the way skaters move across the ice. This is their territory, he reflected. The trouble is, it’s Salek’s territory as well. We’re fighting on foreign soil. Their soil.
After two hours’ walking, they stopped. Rezo handed out some dried pitta bread and dates, and they drank from a mountain stream. The water tasted pure and fresh, melted from the snow, which, as they climbed higher and higher, was drawing closer all the time. ‘How far to the caves?’ said Jed, spitting out a date stone and looking towards Rezo.
‘Another hour,’ he replied.
He pointed to the east. They were already two t
housand feet above the floor of the valley, tucked into a flat shelf of rocky ground that stretched for a half-mile in front of them. Then the mountains started to rise in a series of steep ridges, before soaring up into the snow-covered peaks just beyond them. Where the steps started, Rezo explained, they would find the caves: a long, dark set of interlocking tunnels and spaces carved into the rock over hundreds of centuries.
They started walking again. It was getting chillier as they rose higher into the mountains, and even though Jed could feel himself starting to perspire from the climb, it was a cold sweat that was running down his spine. Nick was starting to slow down. Jed could tell that the wound in his leg was too bad for him to attempt a long mountain trek like this. For a brief moment, he considered telling him that he should wait for them back down in the village, that he was just going to slow down the march, and they’d have more chance of finding Sarah without him. But there was no point. You could no more keep a raging bull tethered to a matchstick than you could keep the old guy out of a fight to save his daughter. If they couldn’t find her, it would ruin what was left of him. There is only so much punishment one man can take, and he’s reached his limit.
‘You going to make it?’ he said, looking at Nick, and the way he was dragging the wounded leg behind him.
‘I’ll be fine.’
Jed noticed that his teeth were gritted, and there was sweat pouring off his face. As he glanced down, he could see fresh blood seeping from the wound, and staining the outside of his trousers.
It was just after ten in the morning by the time they closed in on the entrance to the caves. The ground was rocky and barren, covered in a dusting of hard frost. The wild flowers and grasses of the valley couldn’t grow up here. Rezo called them to a halt, and pointed to a slit opening up in the rock in front of them. ‘Right there,’ he said. ‘That’s where the cave network starts.’
Jed looked into it. You could see the way the thick slabs of granite opened up, and a few feet of the tunnel were visible, but after that it was completely dark. They were equipped with AK-47s, and they still had some stun grenades in their kitbags, about a dozen in total. ‘How many men do you reckon are in there?’ said Jed.
‘A dozen,’ he said firmly. ‘We counted them as they went past. We like to know how many Iraqi bastards are on our land.’ He paused for a moment, exchanging a few words with his men in Kurdish. ‘They will have built their defences by now. The Republican Guard have fought in these tunnels before and they know their way around.’
‘We draw them out,’ said Nick. ‘Fight the bastards in the open. That’s our best chance.’
Jed glanced at Nick. ‘A diversion?’
Nick nodded. Scanning the area, he could see two cuts in the rock: one here, and another four hundred yards to their right, across a strip of barren rock. There was clear open ground between the two entrances. About twenty yards back from the second entrance there was a group of rocks, about ten feet high: natural cover for men contemplating an assault. He nodded towards Rezo. ‘You take your men over there, then lay down some heavy machine-gun fire, and a few grenades. Make plenty of noise, but make sure you’re well dug in behind the rocks. Jed and I will stay right here. When the bastards come out to see what all the fuss is, we’ll open up. Let them have it right where they deserve it. In the back.’
Rezo nodded. A few more words were exchanged in Kurdish, then he looked back at Nick. ‘How many grenades do you have?’
‘A dozen.’
‘Then let us have six.’
Nick took the grenades from his kitbag, and handed them over. Rezo led his men across the four hundred yards to the second entrance. As they started to move carefully up to the open rock, Jed scanned the entrance to the caves. The opening was six feet high and twenty feet wide: you could drive a whole brigade into this mountain if you wanted to. There was no sign of any men, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any listening to them. An attack could come any minute. You had to be prepared.
‘Step back behind those rocks,’ said Nick to Laura.
‘I’m staying right here,’ she said defiantly.
‘You ever been in a firefight?’
Laura remained silent.
‘Just as I thought,’ said Nick. ‘You can do office warfare, but let me tell you, the real thing is different.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ hissed Laura.
Nick knelt down. He pushed his hand into the ground, bringing up a lump of cold moss with a few bits of earth attached to it. Below that, there was just rock. ‘There’s nowhere up here to build a bloody grave,’ he snarled. ‘So unless you want the local rats chewing up your corpse, I suggest you move back.’
Slowly, Laura started to move away. She positioned herself behind a circular clump of rocks, looking out over the scene of the impending battle. Jed lay down on the cold ground, keeping his body as flat as possible. Nick was kneeling down next to him, tying a rough bandage around his wounded leg as he did so. He was finding it difficult to move. Specks of blood were dripping out into the moss where his wound had opened up, and from the strain on his face, Jed could tell he was burning up from the pain running through him. ‘You cover this entrance closer to us, I’ll fire on the men who go after Rezo and his mates,’ he hissed.
Jed nodded. He put the AK-47 into position, checked that the thirty-round magazine was slotted into place, and that he had a spare lying right next to him. Both he and Nick pulled some moss up around their faces and guns to obscure their position. Unless you were walking right into them, they shouldn’t be visible. ‘Ready,’ he said firmly.
Nick looked up towards where Rezo had taken up position. He was dug in behind a set of rocks, guns lined up in a row. With his right hand, Nick gave him a salute, and Rezo nodded in reply. There was a moment of silence in the mountains. Somewhere in the distance, Jed could hear some birds fluttering down the slopes, and he could feel the breeze whistling across the barren rock. In the next instant, his ears were exploding to the raucous sound of gunfire. A barrage of heavy fire was spitting against the far entrance to the cave. Bullets were raging furiously into the air, cutting into the rock, hurling splinters everywhere. As they ricocheted, they were striking the ground, then flying upwards. The noise was echoing in a thousand different directions, so that if you closed your eyes, it seemed you were surrounded by guns. Jed looked into the hurricane, keeping himself steady on the ground, tracking the volleys of fire. One grenade was thrown into the air, then another. They crashed near the entrance to the caves, throwing up thick clouds of smoke that swirled through the air. That should grab their attention, thought Jed grimly. If it doesn’t, there is nobody there.
A silence. The initial volley of fire died away, and the mountains were suddenly eerily quiet. Jed looked towards the entrance closest to him. The soldiers inside would know they were under attack by now, and they would know they had to respond. The issue was, how? And how long would they wait? Unless they were planning to throw their lives away, they wouldn’t attempt a frontal assault. They would slip out of the other entrance, then try and attack them from the flank. Unless there was some other way out of the caves, thought Jed. Unless they could mount a surprise of their own.
‘Get ready,’ said Nick.
A figure emerged from the tunnel. It was no more than a shadow at first. Some kind of animal, Jed wondered as he tracked its movements. No, he could see more clearly now. A man. He was wearing a green military tunic, marked with the purple insignia of the Special Republican Guard. In his hands, there was an AK-47. He was emerging slowly into the sunlight, inching forward suspiciously, his eyes peering around the corner to see if he could see where the assault was coming from. He let off a few rounds of gunfire, but the bullets struck the stony ground harmlessly. ‘Hold it steady,’ said Nick. ‘Let more of them come out.’
Jed lay tight into the ground, as still and as calm as the rock on which he was lying. The man edged forward again, so that he was now outside the tunnel. He was looking towards the far entrance,
and he could see Rezo’s men in their position four hundred yards away. A hundred yards to his left, he hadn’t noticed Nick and Jed. ‘Give it another minute.’ Nick’s voice was no more than a whisper.
The soldier shouted something back into the tunnel. He tucked himself into the side of the rock, so that he was out of range of Rezo’s men. A minute passed. Jed kept his finger hovering on the trigger of his AK-47. Another man was standing on the side of the rock, then another. Within a few seconds, Jed could see six of them, grouped in a tight unit. They were moving out slowly, making sure they kept themselves under cover as they planned their assault on Rezo’s position. ‘Three seconds …’ whispered Nick.
Jed took aim. One man was clearly in sight of his gun, two others near by. The AK-47 was not a sniper’s weapon: it laid down a barrage of fire that could destroy anything it encountered, but it was impossible to target with pinpoint accuracy. Both men silently counted down the three seconds. In the next instant, their guns leapt into life, as bullets rattled out through the air. There was a delay of just a fraction of a second before the first shards of lethal metal tore into their victims. The man in Jed’s sights spun round as a dozen different bullets cut open his chest. As he fell to the ground, Jed moved his gun just a fraction of a millimetre, directing his fire at two more men. The bullets lashed into them: one man was hit in the face, another had his back peppered with bullets as he tried to turn and run back into the caves.
In less than five seconds it was all over. Not so much a firefight as a slaughterhouse, thought Jed grimly.
He took his finger off the trigger. Once again, the mountainside was silent. As Nick did the same, Jed looked up to check how much damage they had done. Six men were lying flat on the ground. Picking himself up, he ran quickly across to the corpses. All of them were dead, apart from one man, who was lying on his side, moaning. Without hesitating for a second, Jed dropped his gun to the man’s head. A double tap, and he was finished.