Hellfire

by Chris Ryan

  Option two: call Hereford. No way. They’d told him to get back in his box once already. They wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

  Option three: head for Gatwick, kill the following day there and intercept al-Meghrani when he arrived to catch his flight. Do what he should have done the moment he saw his Claymore bag: make the fucker talk.

  Decision made. He turned the engine over, set his sat nav for Gatwick, and pulled out of his parking space. In his rear-view mirror he saw the two teenagers approaching al-Meghrani’s flat.

  Help yourself, he thought. He won’t be needing the place, by the time I’ve finished with him.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  05.00 hrs AST.

  Dawn was arriving as the unit hit the outskirts of Doha, but the lights of the high-rise buildings were still burning, illuminating the sky with a neon fluorescence. As their guy drove along a broad, beach-side highway, streaks of salmon pink crept across the sky from the horizon. The sea itself was dotted with yachts, many of the size that only the oil-rich could afford. Even at this early hour, commercial helicopters were coming in to land on the top of brightly lit skyscrapers – an airborne reminder that this was a place where the super-wealthy came to work and to play.

  ‘Your drop-off location is in the West Bay district,’ Morgan told them. ‘Poshest part of the whole fucking Gulf. Your guy must be quite the playboy.’

  Danny nodded as their guy looked in the rear-view mirror. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, love,’ he said to Caitlin, ‘but when girls looking like you rock up at the offices or apartments of men like him, they’re normally charging by the hour – and making a fair whack out of the deal too.’

  ‘Thanks for the heads-up,’ Caitlin said, her voice frosty.

  ‘I’m just saying people notice it, if you’re trying to stay under the radar.’

  ‘You train up Qatari SF?’ Danny asked the driver, trying to change the subject.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘They good?’

  ‘Not bad. No problem getting them the gear they need. You know . . . oil money.’

  ‘They end up working for the West Bay playboys?’

  Their guy shrugged. ‘Some of them,’ he said. ‘But the truth is these Qatari guys can afford to recruit from the flashier end of the market. It’s kind of a status symbol to have a couple of Seals in your security detail.’

  ‘Even after Bin Laden?’

  ‘Sure. Money talks louder than religion in Doha. For most people, at least.’

  As the city around them grew more built-up, Danny felt increasingly uncomfortable. They could easily be walking into a trap. What if the Caliph – whoever he was – had already got to Al-Essa? What if he was forcing this rich Qatari oil merchant to reel Buckingham and his SF team in? Danny looked in the rear-view mirror at Tony and Caitlin. Their severe faces suggested they were having similar thoughts.

  Their driver indicated left and headed down a slip road. Thirty seconds later they were driving through the centre of the metropolis, skyscrapers left and right, the streets perfectly clean and well-ordered. The way the neon reflected off the buildings, the pavements were shining. They drove for about a mile, until Morgan indicated again and pulled up outside an impressive building whose ground floor had a huge glass frontage and a marble-clad foyer.

  ‘This is where we part company,’ their guy said. He glanced towards the building. ‘There’s a service entrance round the other side of the building. Word to the wise – if there’s no covering security round this place, I’m a fucking Chinaman. Take my advice and keep your eyes peeled.’

  Danny turned to Tony. ‘Take the service entrance,’ he said. ‘Caitlin, front entrance. Any suspicious activity, let me know. I’ll go up with Buckingham. Work out whether this guy is on the level.’

  ‘Now look here,’ Buckingham cut in. ‘Ahmed is my contact. I’ll do the—’

  ‘You say a word before I give you the go-ahead, I’ll rip your fucking throat out.’

  Buckingham fell silent. Danny noticed the sweat on his forehead. He was obviously as tense as the rest of them.

  The unit alighted on the pavement in front of the foyer. There were no farewells. Once the doors of the vehicle were shut, it pulled out and became just another set of red lights on the increasingly busy main road. Danny looked around. There were only a handful of passers-by in the area, and no immediate sign of any surveillance on the building, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. There was a second skyscraper opposite, covered with mirrored glass which could conceal any number of observation posts. And there was enough traffic passing for at least one of the vehicles to be doing surveillance rounds of the building.

  Danny slung his sports bag over his shoulder. ‘Take your positions,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  The foyer of the building was air-conditioned to perfection. There were seven or eight indoor palm trees, and a brightly lit interior fountain. In the centre was a concierge desk of burnished wood and shining brass. A man in full traditional robes sat behind it. There was nobody else apart from him. Danny strode up to the concierge, with Buckingham trotting behind him.

  The concierge made no attempt to hide his disapproval of two men with tracksuits and sports bags approaching his desk. ‘May I help you, sirs?’ he asked, obviously assuming that they would speak English.

  ‘Ahmed bin Ali al-Essa,’ Danny said. ‘He’s expecting us.’

  The concierge inclined his head, as if to say: I don’t think so. But he made a call, spoke a few words in Arabic and then, with a small bow, led them to an elevator at the back of the foyer. Danny’s earpiece crackled as he walked towards it. Tony’s voice. ‘In position.’

  Danny checked the foyer again before stepping into the elevator. Nobody appeared to be watching them. Once inside the lift, he and Buckingham stood silently. Danny unzipped his tracksuit top and felt for the handgun strapped to his body.

  The lift stopped. The doors pinged, then slid apart.

  The elevator opened up on to another marble-clad reception room. To one side there was an enormous tank full of tropical fish. To the other, a door. It was open, but there was no sign of anyone.

  ‘Stay behind me,’ Danny said. He pulled his handgun and the two men stepped out of the lift into the lobby.

  Buckingham’s feet clattered across the marble floor. Danny’s were much quieter. They approached the open door. Danny was tense. He was pretty sure nobody inside the building had been watching them, but he didn’t know what to expect inside the penthouse apartment itself. He raised his weapon and crossed the threshold.

  He wasn’t prepared for what he saw.

  It was a lavish apartment. A window on the far side looked out over the sea. There was expensive-looking art on the walls, and stylish items of furniture dotted around. Two more doors led off the room, at Danny’s ten and two o’clock. A large coffee table in the centre with a mirrored surface and a pile of magazines on one side. And behind it, sitting on a sofa, there was a man.

  The only image of Ahmed bin Ali al-Essa that he had seen had shown a neat, confident man with a well-trimmed goatee beard and full Arabic dress. Buckingham had spoken of a proud, determined businessman, used to giving orders.

  The man who sat on that sofa was anything but.

  He wore a plain, white robe, but it was stained down the front. His face was gaunt, his beard scraggly and his hair unkempt. His eyes looked red and sore. He was the picture of a broken man. The sight of Danny’s handgun didn’t seem to worry him. He stared instead at Buckingham.

  ‘You came, Mr Buckingham,’ he whispered.

  Buckingham was about to speak, but a deadly look from Danny silenced him. Danny himself stepped forward. ‘Who else is here?’ he demanded.

  Ahmed looked at Danny as though for the first time. The gun still didn’t seem to worry him. ‘Nobody,’ he said. ‘It is just us.’

  Danny spoke into his radio. ‘Tony, Caitlin, what you got?’

  Caitlin clocked in first. ‘Nothing, unless you count being
eyed up by a few lecherous old Arabs.’

  Tony: ‘Kitchen staff. Nothing else.’

  Danny didn’t like it. Like Morgan had said, the chances of this guy having no CP were a thousand to one.

  He moved suddenly forward, past the mirrored-glass coffee table, up to the sofa. With one strong hand, he grabbed the front of Ahmed’s robe and pulled him up from the sofa. Ahmed’s limbs flopped weakly – he seemed to weigh almost nothing. Danny pressed his weapon hard into Ahmed’s temple. ‘Who have you got watching us?’

  Ahmed closed his eyes. Danny felt his body start to shake.

  ‘Nobody,’ he whispered.

  Danny made a dismissive hissing sound. He spun Ahmed round, then forced him to his knees so he was facing back towards where Buckingham was standing. With his handgun still pressed against the Arab’s skull, Danny grabbed his left arm pulled it behind his back, forcing the joint up to breaking point. Another inch, he knew, and the bones would snap. Danny was aware of Buckingham taking a couple of steps back, his eyes bulging. The bulk of his attention was on Ahmed.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said, his voice very quiet and very menacing. ‘You might have all those twats in the Firm fooled, but I don’t trust you any further than I could fucking throw you. If I don’t get the answer I want, I’ll break this arm and then start on the other. Trust me, five minutes and you’ll be begging to give me information. So I’m going to ask you one more time: who have you got watching us?’

  To add a final piece of emphasis, he squeezed the joint just a fraction of an inch harder. Ahmed whimpered.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Buckingham breathed. ‘He’s our only . . .’

  ‘You’ve got five seconds, Ahmed. Five . . . four . . .’

  ‘Jesus, man,’ Buckingham said. ‘Look at him . . .’

  Danny stopped counting. He forced Ahmed’s head forward so that he was bending over the mirrored coffee table. He looked at Ahmed’s reflection. At first, his eyes were closed. But a second later, he opened them again. They were brimming with tears. Ahmed blinked. The tears dripped down his face. A couple of them splashed on to the coffee table. Ahmed’s face was etched into an expression of complete despair.

  ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Look . . .’

  His reflection nodded towards the pile of magazines on the opposite side of the table. Lying on top, face down, were several sheets of photographic paper. Danny hadn’t noticed them before.

  ‘Look at them,’ Ahmed breathed.

  Danny hesitated for a second. Then he looked over at Buckingham. ‘Spread them out on the table,’ he said.

  Buckingham’s eyes tightened slightly at being told what to do. But he stepped over and picked up the images. He looked through them, and visibly paled. With trembling hands he laid them out on the table.

  Even Danny, who had seen things most people could never conjure up in their worst nightmares, was sickened by what he saw. An old lady lying back, her rictus grin matched by the open wound on her throat. A man in the same position, his eyes and tongue gouged out. A fat man on the floor, lying in a pool of his own blood. And more blood on the walls scrawled into Arabic lettering.

  ‘What does it say?’ Danny demanded.

  ‘You need to ask?’ Ahmed said. Danny looked at his reflection again. His cheeks were wet. Danny tightened the arm another fraction, and Ahmed hissed in pain. ‘You are looking at my mother and father,’ he whispered. ‘That is what he did to them. That is the Caliph’s work.’ More tears splashed on the mirrored surface of the coffee table, and Ahmed’s body started to shake even more violently. Danny suspected that it was not just down to the pain he was inflicting. ‘That is what he will do to me,’ Ahmed continued, ‘if he finds out I am speaking to you. And he will find out if I allow anyone else to know that we are speaking. He has eyes and ears everywhere. There is nobody else here because nobody would dare to cross the Caliph, and I do not dare to let anybody know that this is what I intend to do.’

  Danny stared at his reflection again. His eyes were still welling with tears, his brow still creased with pain. But there was something else in his expression. A grim severity. The determination of a man bent on revenge. Danny could see the hate in his eyes. It told him more than any words.

  Slowly, he released the tension on Ahmed’s arm, and removed the gun from his head. He spoke into his radio. ‘Tony, Caitlin, make your way up to the penthouse.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  Ahmed was still kneeling. He had buried his face in his hands, and his shoulders still shook. After a few seconds, though, he looked up again. He wiped his face with the sleeves of his grubby robe, then stood and addressed Buckingham. ‘I thought it was only my people who could be so brutal.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it, old sport,’ Buckingham muttered.

  ‘Sit down,’ Danny interrupted them, ‘and shut up.’

  Ahmed looked over at Danny and bowed his head acquiescently. He clearly had no wish to pick an argument with the Regiment man.

  ‘The situation is this,’ Danny said. ‘We think that the Caliph, whoever the hell he is, is orchestrating a bioweapon strike on the London Marathon. That’s tomorrow morning. We’ve got twenty-four hours to find him, or someone who knows what he’s got planned. The Firm played us your cryptic call to London. Whatever your big idea is, it had better be good, or a lot of people are going to be killed.’

  It was as if Ahmed had suddenly forgotten what he’d undergone at Danny’s hands in the past couple of minutes. He stared at him, shaking his head slightly in disbelief. ‘Who would do such a thing?’

  ‘A sick fucker,’ said Tony. He and Caitlin had appeared at the door to the penthouse.

  ‘So if you know how to find him,’ Danny continued, ‘tell us now.’

  ‘Do we trust him?’ Caitlin demanded as she walked into the apartment. At first she seemed oblivious to the faint look of disapproval she received from Ahmed. But then she turned to him. ‘Don’t worry, darling, they’re only tits, they won’t bite.’

  ‘We trust him,’ Danny said, ‘as soon as we’ve heard his strategy for getting close to the Caliph.’

  The unit were now standing round Ahmed in a semicircle. He seemed very small, hunched on the sofa in his plain white robe.

  ‘So let’s hear it,’ Tony said.

  Ahmed bowed his head, then stretched out one hand to indicate their lavish surroundings. ‘I am a wealthy man,’ he said. ‘One of the very wealthiest. And I have learned something very important. Money opens doors. It buys you anything, except long life and happiness. Everybody has their price.’ He looked at each of them in turn. ‘Even the Caliph.’

  He looked at each of them in turn.

  ‘Go on,’ Danny said.

  ‘Terrorism costs money. A great deal of it. Each bullet fired, each man trained is an expense.’ He gave a rueful smile that looked strange against his wet cheeks. ‘You could say that it is a very poor business model: all expenditure, no income.’

  He had a point. Danny remembered Ntoga, the corrupt Nigerian official, who’d received fifty grand from Boko Haram for help in kidnapping Target Red.

  Ahmed stood up and walked to the wide windows at the back of the penthouse. He lifted his left arm and indicated a line of skyscrapers along the waterfront. ‘Men like the Caliph have support in this part of the world, and not just because people fear him. There are rich businessmen in Qatar and Saudi Arabia who fund his activities – and the activities of people like him – to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. They see it as their responsibility as good Muslims, while they rely on the West for their more worldly needs.’ He turned to look at them again. ‘We businessmen like to hedge our bets. If we invest in one stock, we also invest in another equal and opposite stock. If one goes down, the other goes up and so we minimise our losses. Those Qatari and Saudi businessmen who donate money to the Caliph and his like, they are doing the same thing: a spiritual hedge fund to guarantee them entry into Paradise, if it turns out Allah takes a dim view of their wor
ldly wealth.’

  ‘Very poetic,’ Danny said. ‘Get to the point.’

  ‘The point is this. I have heard rumours – and I must tell you that they are just rumours – that the Caliph is accustomed to accepting large financial donations from men like me. He is not independently wealthy, so how else could he operate? It is also true that I am able to make him a financial offer he cannot refuse. Excuse me for a moment.’

  Ahmed left the room through the door at Danny’s two o’clock. When he walked back in twenty seconds later, he was carrying a metal briefcase.

  ‘What’s that?’ Danny said.

  Ahmed put the briefcase down on the table. He clicked it open. Inside, neatly arranged, were piles of crisp, new American dollars.

  ‘Five million,’ Ahmed said.

  Danny lowered his gun. So did the others. Something made Danny glance at Tony’s face. The greed in his eyes was plain to see.

  ‘I have another twenty cases waiting. A hundred million in all. I propose offering it to the Caliph, in return for my life.’

  There was a silence in the room. It appeared that nobody could take their eyes off the money. Danny found it amazing, how little space five million could take up. It would be the easiest thing in the world to swipe it now, go off the grid and never have to worry about anything.

  ‘It’s all very well having the money,’ Danny said. ‘But the whole point is that we don’t know how to contact the Caliph.’

  ‘Yes we do,’ Ahmed said quietly. He stared meaningfully at Buckingham.

  For a moment Buckingham looked confused. Then realisation dawned on his face. ‘Your driver,’ he said. He clicked his fingers excitedly. ‘The one you asked about the Caliph when we met in Riyadh. What was his name . . . Mustafa!’ Buckingham turned to Danny. ‘Mr Al-Essa asked his driver if he’d heard about the Caliph. He denied it, but he looked nervous, as if he knew something but was too afraid to say it.’

  Ahmed nodded. ‘Mustafa was the only person who knew we discussed the Caliph. I mentioned it to nobody else. I didn’t dare.’

  ‘You think your driver was the Caliph’s man?’ Danny asked.