by Chris Ryan
‘Does it have a name?’
‘Yes sir. Qatar Drilling Rig 17.’
‘Find out who owns it,’ Bixby said. ‘Now.’
‘It’s an oil rig,’ Ray Hammond stated down the open line from Hereford. ‘Qatar Drilling Rig 17.’
‘Qatar Drilling Rig 17,’ Danny repeated out loud.
‘London’s finding out who owns it now. Whoever it is, we’ll put the screws on them, find out if they . . .’
‘Tell them not to waste their time,’ Danny said. He was watching Ahmed closely. At the name of the rig, the Qatari’s face had changed into an expression of complete bewilderment. ‘Wait out,’ he said down the line, before addressing Ahmed. ‘It’s yours, isn’t it?’ he asked quietly.
Ahmed slowly nodded his head. His expression had turned from bewilderment to nausea. ‘What kind of game is this man playing?’ he whispered.
‘A dangerous one,’ Danny breathed. He looked at his watch. 18.05 hrs. Twelve hours fifty-five minutes until the Caliph’s RV time. He spoke back into the phone. ‘It’s Al-Essa’s rig,’ he said. ‘We need to mobilise. We don’t have much time.’
TWENTY-SIX
‘How many men are there on the rig?’ Danny demanded of Ahmed.
The Qatari was clutching clumps of his own hair. His knuckles had turned white. Mustafa sat next to him, physically shaking.
‘About two hundred,’ Ahmed said.
Danny took a moment to process that. He knew enough about these floating cities to realise that they would be filled with a massive cross-section of individuals. Roughnecks, welders, rig operators, drillers, engineers, cooks, safety and medical personnel . . . The rig would be populated by foreign nationals from all over the world. There’d be a manifest listing everyone on board, and if they had the time, the intelligence services would want to dig deep and find out if anybody on the rig had a possible connection with the Caliph.
But there was no time. Their only option was to evacuate the rig. Clear it of all potential existing threats.
‘We need to clear all personnel from the rig. How long will that take?’
Ahmed blinked at him. ‘It’s complicated. If I perform an immediate emergency evacuation, the Qatari emergency services will become involved. They will send a fleet of helicopters and will take perhaps two hours. But it will be common knowledge. The Qatari government will know what is happening.’
‘What if you do it as a training exercise, without the involvement of the emergency services. How long will it take?
‘I . . . I would need to summon my security staff.’
‘No,’ Danny said. ‘I don’t want anybody else in this room. You can make arrangements over the phone, but only with me listening.’
Ahmed nodded nervously. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will tell my security staff to initiate a training evacuation. We have a limited number of helicopters. It won’t be quick. Perhaps ten to twelve hours. But we should keep some staff on the platform, to maintain the essential systems.’
Danny shook his head. ‘Evacuate all personnel. Give the order now. I don’t want anyone left on that rig. We can’t risk an ambush.’
With a slightly stunned look on his face, Ahmed dialled a number on his phone.
‘Hands-free,’ Danny said.
Ahmed looked at him in surprise but pressed the keypad, and the sound of a ringtone came over the phone’s speaker. An Arabic voice answered. Ahmed gave a few short instructions, then hung up. He nodded at Danny. ‘It is under way,’ he said.
Danny looked at Buckingham. ‘Did he give the correct order?’
Buckingham nodded.
‘How do we get ourselves out there?’ Danny asked.
Ahmed looked momentarily flustered. ‘I . . . I have a private helicopter. It can transport us.’
Danny gave that a second’s thought. His preference would be to bring in one of the SF choppers from Bahrain, but that would mean alerting the Qatari administration, and the risk that the Caliph had eyes and ears there was too high.
‘Where would they transport us from?’
Ahmed looked up and pointed to the ceiling. ‘There is a helipad above us.’
‘Get it on standby, but we don’t leave until the rig is evacuated. And don’t tell the flight crew that we’re all going. I want them to think it’s just you, Mustafa and the money.’
Ahmed blinked at him. ‘Why?’
‘The Caliph’s infiltrated your organisation. From this point in, we trust absolutely nobody.’
‘For God’s sake, Black,’ Buckingham said from the far side of the room. ‘Tell me you’re not actually thinking of going to this damn oil rig. It’s suicide. You’ll get us all killed. It’s obviously a trap.’
‘We’re going to the rig,’ Danny said flatly.
‘Well, you can damn well count me out,’ Buckingham said. ‘You might want to get yourself killed by some insane . . .’
He didn’t finish his sentence. Danny had stridden over to him and grabbed him by the neck. ‘Everybody in this room goes to the rig,’ he said. ‘Including you.’
Buckingham had fiery hate in his eyes. ‘Why?’ he spat.
‘Ahmed goes because the Caliph’s expecting him and he might need to show his face before we can get close to the bastard. Mustafa goes because I don’t trust him not to go singing to Rashed to save his own skin. And you go for two reasons: first, I need you to translate any Arabic that gets spoken. Second, because I don’t trust you not to fuck something up when my back’s turned. I saw my friend die of plague, and I’m not going to let the bastard responsible get away because you’re an incompetent idiot and a coward. You’re coming with us.’
Buckingham staggered back as Danny roughly released him. Danny’s own phone rang, and he answered it to hear Ray Hammond on the line from Hereford. ‘Update me.’
Danny put the phone on to speaker so that Tony and Caitlin could listen in. ‘We’ve given the order to evacuate the rig,’ he said. ‘It’ll take approximately ten to twelve hours. I don’t want us to approach until the last man’s off the platform. Any of them could be in contact with the Caliph, and I don’t want the bastard to know Ahmed and Mustafa have company. We’re using Ahmed’s chopper to get there, but we need to avoid any comms between ourselves in case the flight crew is compromised.’
‘Roger that. The oil platform is equidistant from the Qatari and Iranian coasts. But we expect your target to approach from the direction of Saudi Arabia to the north-west. That’s where it’s easiest for him to seek sanctuary if he needs to.’
‘What about other oil platforms in the area?’
‘There are two more rigs within a seven kilometre radius. They operate through UAE holding companies and we’ve managed to get our hands on the manifests. The analysts are examining them now, but we’ve pretty much discounted them as forward mounting positions for the Caliph or his proxy. Security’s too tight on these platforms.’
‘You’d better be right,’ Danny said.
Ray Hammond ignored that. ‘At the RV time, you’ll have a sixteen-man SAS team and eight SBS guys circling ten klicks to the north of the platform, out of sight.’
‘You’ll be violating Qatari or Iranian airspace.’
‘Let us deal with that.’
‘Make sure they don’t approach unless we give the order. If the Caliph or his proxy sees them, we’ll lose our chance.’
‘Understood. GCHQ have established that there’s a sat phone uplink on the rig. As soon as you get there, you’re to establish an open line with Hereford HQ. In the meantime, we have active surveillance on the area. We’re scanning a hundred-kilometre radius around the oil platform for any unexpected or suspicious radar splash. London have a contact in Iranian air traffic control, but we need to be aware that a seaborne approach will be much more difficult to pinpoint. If we get any sniff of the target approaching, we’ll let you know what direction they’re coming from and what their ETA is, as soon as you’ve established radio contact with us.
‘And Black,
listen very carefully: make sure your team understand that the Caliph is no use to us dead. If he knows about the strike on London, he could know about many other potential hits. We need his information, not his corpse.’
‘Roger that,’ Danny said, with a nod at Tony and Caitlin.
‘And Black?’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Be careful. This is all happening too quickly, and something about it stinks. If the little we know about the Caliph is true, he’s no fool. We have to assume that he at least admits the possibility of a welcoming party, and he’ll come prepared. There’s a very good chance that this is going to go noisy.’
‘Roger that,’ Danny said grimly. And silently, with an image fixed in his mind of Ripley rotting before his eyes, he said: bring it on.
‘One other thing, Black. When this is over, you and me are going to have a conversation about your mate Spud. I’ve got a nasty feeling he’s turning nutcase on us.’
Danny blinked. He hadn’t thought about Spud for days, but now wasn’t the time to start worrying about him. He ignored the unpleasant sneer on Tony’s face, muttered a final ‘Roger that’, and killed the line.
19.55 GMT.
With a belly full of coffee and a mood as foul as the clothes he was wearing, Spud stalked across the concourse of Gatwick North. Check-in for the Athens flight opened in five minutes. Two members of the airport staff, one male, one female, were busying themselves at the desk. Five metres to their right, an armed airport security guard stood, grimly scanning the crowds that swarmed around the concourse: a very visible presence.
Spud took up position by a long snake of luggage trolleys, about twenty-five metres from the desk itself. He looked up to see if he was being covered by airport CCTV. Sure enough, on the ceiling above him was an egg-shaped camera set-up. But they were dotted all over the concourse. It would be impossible to find a blind spot. There were two more armed security guards by entrances to the concourse at his nine o’clock and ten o’clock, distance about thirty-five metres. If they knew anything about their job, they’d notice someone standing and watching for several hours. Spud would have to use his basic fieldcraft skills to make sure he didn’t look too suspicious. He’d bought a copy of Esquire magazine from a branch of WHSmith. And from a clothes shop, he’d bought three hats: a red baseball, a blue baseball and a black beanie. Now he loitered by the trolleys, the red baseball cap on his head, pretending to read the mag but in fact watching and waiting for the Athens-bound passengers to arrive at check-in.
There was a small surge of arrivals immediately the desk opened. A family: mum, dad, two excited kids. An old couple, with skin as tanned and leathery as their suitcases. A group of lads: tight T-shirts, ripped physiques, maybe on their way to a stag weekend.
But no al-Meghrani.
Within ten minutes, the queue had extended to five metres back from the desk. After half an hour, it was ten metres long. Spud’s view was occasionally blocked by people walking across his line of sight, but he kept his attention properly focused on the queue every time he had a clear view.
Forty-five minutes passed. Spud bent down, ostensibly to tie his shoelace, but in reality to swap his red baseball cap for the black beanie. When he stood up again, he walked to a new position on the other side of the check-in queue, where he leaned against a departure-time board, out of sight of the two guards by the entrance.
By the time the check-in had been open for an hour, the queue was bustling and busy. Spud became aware that it must be raining heavily outside, because the newcomers had wet hair and clothes. Kids ran up and down the queue – one of them pointing excitedly at the armed guard by the check-in desk – and exasperated parents shouted at them to stand in line. Tannoy announcements echoed across the concourse, but Spud didn’t hear what they said. He was in the zone, robotically picking out faces in the line and comparing them to his mental image of al-Meghrani. None of them matched.
His phone rang. He glanced at it and vaguely registered Frances’s number before sending it straight to voicemail again. Then he turned his attention back to the queue.
It was growing shorter. He checked the time. 23.10 hrs. Check-in would close half an hour before the flight left. That meant al-Meghrani had only fifteen minutes. Why was there no sign of him?
The doubts doubled in Spud’s mind. He felt slightly sick, and asked himself again what the hell he thought he was doing. Some bird with her tits half hanging out looked out at him from the Esquire magazine, and for some reason it made him irrationally angry. He felt like throwing it to the floor and stalking off, giving up on the whole thing, accepting that he was chasing shadows . . .
He stopped, very still.
Forty metres across the concourse, walking from the entrance to the terminal towards the check-in desk and completely unobscured by passers-by, he saw a face he recognised.
Al-Meghrani didn’t appear to be in a hurry. His shoulders were hunched and there was a frown on his brow. He was pulling a small suitcase on wheels behind him, and as he grew closer Spud saw that in his spare hand he was carrying a passport with a folded piece of paper inside it – presumably a copy of his e-ticket. His hands, as always, were gloved.
It took him thirty seconds to reach the back of the queue. Spud watched carefully as he put his passport and ticket into the pocket of his overcoat. He stood there with his arms folded, approximately ten people in front of him, waiting to reach the check-in.
Spud smiled grimly. His plan had been to pretend to be a security guard and usher his target away from the queue. But al-Meghrani had just given him a much better option.
Spud dropped the magazine into the basket holder at the back of one of the luggage trolleys. Then he advanced. With his head bowed, he joined the queue directly behind al-Meghrani.
He knew he didn’t have much time. If the cab driver turned round and looked at him full-on, he’d recognise him from the cafe. So he didn’t hesitate. Standing just a few centimetres behind al-Meghrani, he glanced round to make sure he wasn’t observed, then quickly and surreptitiously slipped his hand into his target’s overcoat pocket and deftly withdrew the passport. Within seconds he had it secreted in his own jacket, and was walking away, his heart thumping fast.
He took up position by a departure board twenty metres from the check-in desk. It took ten minutes for al-Meghrani to reach the front. Spud watched from a distance as he put his hand into his pocket, then hurriedly started to pat himself down.
Commotion at the check-in desk. Al-Meghrani was waving his hands around. A second assistant joined the one he was arguing with. But when al-Meghrani noticed an armed airport security guard approaching, he appeared instantly to back down. He grabbed his suitcase and tugged it furiously away from the check-in desk. Spud could see that he was muttering angrily to himself.
He followed his target at a distance of ten metres, knowing that without a passport his only option would be to leave the airport. Sure enough, al-Meghrani stormed in the direction that the overhead signs indicated led to the car park. Spud stuck to him, along the travelator, to the car park pay-stations. Al-Meghrani paid for his ticket with cash. Spud paid for his with a card at the adjacent machine. He pulled the peak of his red baseball cap down over his face as he followed al-Meghrani into the nearby lift.
There were nine others in the lift. Spud watched his target press the button for level three. Then he stood with his head down, his baseball cap covering his eyes, as the doors opened and closed at levels one and two. By the time they reached level three, there were only four of them remaining in the lift. The others were obviously avoiding al-Meghrani, who was muttering under his breath like some crazy tramp.
The doors hissed open and the cab driver stepped outside. Spud was the only one who followed.
At this late hour, the car park was not busy. Spud clocked a couple of people on the western side, and heard the distant screech of a single vehicle’s tyres as it left the level. Otherwise, nobody. The trundle wheels on al-Meghrani’s suitcase
echoed across the concrete as he stalked to the far side of the level, seemingly unaware that Spud was shadowing him, still at a distance of ten metres. When he finally arrived at the familiar white VW, which had empty spaces on either side, he fished his car keys from his pocket and used them to unlock the boot.
Spud quickly checked his surroundings. Nobody was observing him. He ran forward.
Al-Meghrani spun round at the sound of Spud’s footsteps, but too late: he didn’t stand a chance. Spud thumped him hard from behind in the side of his abdomen. He doubled over as the wind escaped his lungs, by which time Spud had already grabbed him by the back of the neck. With fierce, brutal efficiency, he forced al-Meghrani headfirst into the boot of the car, then grabbed his legs and stuffed him inside. The cab driver wriggled and flailed, but he was too winded to shout out. Seconds later, Spud had slammed the boot shut, locked it and pulled out the keys.
He grabbed the suitcase and moved round to the side of the car, where he chucked the case into the back before taking the wheel and quickly starting the engine. The radio blared loudly, but it was distorted because they were undercover. Spud switched it off, and could now hear his hostage thumping frenziedly in the boot, and shouting. He knew he had to get out of earshot quickly. The VW’s tyres screeched as he reversed from the parking spot and cut across a line of empty spaces towards the spiral ramp that led to the exit.
More thumping from the boot, but the car park wasn’t busy and the ticket booths were unmanned. Spud used his own ticket to exit the car park. Within minutes he was pulling on to the M23.
It was pissing down with rain as he headed south – the wipers made almost no difference – but Spud was sweating so profusely he might as well have been out in it. The blue motorway sign for junction ten loomed up ahead, and he indicated left. As he listened to the tick-tock of the indicators, he realised the banging from the boot had stopped. He pulled off the motorway, the wipers still unable to keep up with the torrent of rain. The road ahead was a busy dual carriageway, red tail lights streaming off into the distance. Spud knew he needed to get away from the brightly lit tarmac, to take al-Meghrani somewhere deserted and covert where he could question him properly. When, after about three minutes, a road sign loomed towards him indicating a slip road a mile in the distance, he manoeuvred himself into the outside lane.