While all this was going on, Ben and Roth had been screaming southwards in the Alpina and somehow managing not to get pursued by the traffic police. They arrived at the water treatment plant outside Alençon just before the helicopter appeared. With every passing minute Ben had been getting increasingly worried that he might have misjudged the whole situation. What if his instinct was wrong? What if he couldn’t read Nazim’s intentions as well as he thought he could? What if Nazim was somewhere else, far away, laughing?
But Ben’s fears were grimly put to rest when he saw the thick black smoke belching from the main building and rising over the facility, and the mangled hole where the front gates used to be. Fire alarms were going off inside the building. It wouldn’t be long before the police and emergency services got here. Ben wanted to be in, out and gone before that happened.
Roth nodded. ‘Good call, bud. This is it, all right.’
Ben said nothing as he rolled the car to a halt a distance from the wrecked gate and surveyed the scene. Other than the flames and smoke he could see nothing moving within the facility compound. The thought flashed through his mind that Nazim could have already achieved his purpose and left. Then he heard shots from inside the building and knew that wasn’t the case.
There was little time for introductions as the helicopter landed and Ben’s friends met Roth. The American’s Delta Force credentials were good enough for them. ‘Looks like the party started without us,’ Tuesday said, gazing across at the burning building. Having been thwarted in his ambitions to become the first ever black Jamaican soldier to serve in the SAS, he was the only one of the four without a Special Forces background. But his skills were on a par with anyone’s, and there wasn’t a comrade whom Ben and Jeff trusted more completely with their lives.
Now they moved fast. Two heavy holdalls were unloaded from the chopper, containing four Swiss-made Brugger & Thomet MP9 submachine guns, tactical vests with spare magazine pouches, and radios. They kitted up as the helicopter took off, blasting the ground around them with its rotors. Then the four jumped into the Alpina. Jeff took Roth’s place up front next to Ben at the wheel. Roth rode in the back with Tuesday. It was going to be a short journey. Nobody spoke. They knew what they were going into, and what was at stake.
Ben sped through the smashed gates, roared past the wreckage of the security hut and saw what was left of the man who’d been inside. Only a very large vehicle, travelling fast, could have wrought such destruction. Like a tank or an armoured personnel vehicle. But as the Alpina cut through the smoke wreathing the front of the building he could see no tank or APC inside the grounds of the treatment plant. Just a crash-damaged articulated lorry with its cab doors hanging open and the shutter rolled up on its empty trailer. Dead bodies littered the compound. None of them were Nazim’s men.
Roth leaned through the gap in the front seats and pointed a finger beyond the building towards the heart of the treatment plant. ‘The motherfuckers are already in. Keep moving, bud.’
Ben didn’t reply. He put his foot down and tore through the curtains of smoke and across the compound, rounding the side of the burning building.
‘Watch it!’ Jeff said.
Ben had seen it, too. He braked to avoid the industrial utility cart a few metres ahead. It looked as though it had been making its way towards the complex of reservoirs and ancillary buildings when it had broken down. The bullet holes in its plastic bodywork were a clue as to why.
But it wasn’t the bullet holes Ben was fixing on as he swerved to a stop. On the cart’s rear load bed stood two shiny aluminium drums. The same exact kind that Ben and Roth had seen aboard the beached boat at Plage de Vaucottes that morning. And standing beside the cart were three armed men. An instant earlier they’d been kicking it and jabbering curses at it in loud Arabic. Now they whirled their weapons around to aim at the Alpina and opened fire.
Bullets raked the car’s bonnet and windscreen. Jeff, Tuesday and Roth leaned from the windows with their MP9s and let rip. Their combined fire was devastatingly more accurate than that of the terrorists, and all three targets crumpled and hit the ground. Two instantly dead, the third badly injured. But the pure fentanyl spouting from a perforated drum and spattering over his face and chest would soon finish him off.
‘Just what the doctor ordered,’ Roth quipped.
Nobody replied. Ben went to drive on in pursuit of the others. The moment he pressed the accelerator he knew one of the terrorists’ high-velocity rounds had hit something critical under the bonnet and the car was in bad trouble. It limped a few metres then ground to a halt. A loud mechanical rattle from the engine compartment getting rapidly louder. Smoke already beginning to leak out from the edges of the bonnet. He pressed the pedal all the way down. No power. No response. Useless.
He kicked open his door. ‘Everyone out. We’re on foot from here.’
Chapter 62
‘Someone’s out there.’
‘The police?’ Abbud said, creasing his brow as he peered up at the ceiling and listened hard to the thump and clatter of the rotor blades not far away. ‘So soon?’
‘Maybe,’ Nazim said. He hadn’t anticipated them turning up this fast. But he didn’t have time to worry. ‘It’s not important. We do this, no matter what.’
They pressed on. The hostage had come to and was squirming and struggling on Nazim’s shoulder. He thumped her again. Outside, the helicopter sounded as though it had landed. Then, just moments later as the terrorists pushed on deeper into the building, kicking open doors as they went, they heard it taking off again.
Nazim thought that was extremely odd. A police helicopter wouldn’t just touch down momentarily and then fly off. It would be joined by a whole mass contingent that would surround the building, seal off every exit and prepare for an armed siege.
His puzzled thoughts were cut short as he picked up the muffled and distant-sounding reports of shots being fired somewhere outside in the compound. Something strange was happening out there. He couldn’t believe that the security guards were trying to remount a resistance. This was somehow connected to the mysterious helicopter. Nazim didn’t like not knowing, but the pressure only made him more determined to succeed.
They burst into an office. A plump black woman in her forties, wearing a pink dress, froze in wide-eyed horror by the window she’d been unsuccessfully trying to climb out of. Nazim let the hostage slip from his shoulder and kept a tight grip on her arm as he pointed his gun one-handed at the woman in the pink dress. He demanded, ‘Are you a manager? A technician?’
Her words tumbled out in a breathless gasp, ‘No, I’m just a secretary. Please, don’t—’
Nazim shot her twice in the chest before she could finish, and watched impassively as she slid down the wall by the window. ‘Just as I thought.’
He swept out of the office, dragging the hostage along behind him. The girl was unsteady on her feet, traumatised past the point of dumb shock. Abbud followed, then young Jafar, then Dariush and Zahran bringing up the rear. Further down the same corridor they reached another office. Nazim smashed the door open so violently that it nearly came off its hinges, and stormed inside the room to see a middle-aged white man cowering on all fours under a crowded desk, as though trying to shelter from a bomb attack. Suit, crooked tie, greying hair, and a large slab of a belly that hung down to the floor. This one seemed a more likely proposition. The blood drained from his face and he showed his palms in supplication. ‘P-please! I don’t want to die!’
Nazim repeated the question, ‘Are you a manager?’
The fat man’s head pumped up and down, shaking his jowls. ‘I-I’m Daniel Lebrun. I’m CEO of this facility. Who are you people? W-what do you want?’
At Nazim’s nod, Abbud and Dariush dragged the company director out from under the desk and forced him into a chair. He was wheezing and clutching his chest, and his face had flushed from ghastly pale to purplish-red. ‘Oh, oh! I think I’m having a heart attack. My pills!’
‘Yo
u can have your pills if you help us. I’ll even get you a doctor.’ Nazim could lie with great sincerity when needed.
Lebrun could barely take his eyes off the gun in Nazim’s hand. ‘Help you do what?’ he croaked.
‘You’re going to show us where we can access the public water supply from your facility. I want to see blueprints. Maps. Or else you take us to it personally. I don’t care which. But you’d better make it quick.’
Lebrun babbled, ‘I d-don’t understand. Access it for what?’
‘To spike it with poison and kill all the infidel pigs like you,’ Dariush said fiercely.
Lebrun seemed to suddenly forget his imminent heart attack, and now the redness in his cheeks was a flush of anger. ‘You’re insane if you think I’d help you with a terrorist act. I’ll die first. And who is this poor young woman? What are you animals doing to her? It’s an outrage. Hear me?’
Playing the hero. Nazim glanced at Abbud, who shrugged as though to say, ‘I told you so.’
They could have tortured Lebrun into compliance, but torture takes time and has its limitations, especially when dealing with chronically ill subjects who are liable to drop dead from sudden cardiac arrest, defeating the object of the exercise. The alternative method was much more effective. Nazim threw the female hostage roughly to the floor, pinned her down with his boot and pressed his rifle muzzle to her throat. Her eyes were rolling and she made a gurgling sound. Nazim said, very calmly and evenly, ‘You will help us, or you will watch this female’s blood spray across your face, and you will die knowing that you could have spared her life. Your choice, kafir. Which is it to be?’
Lebrun boggled up at Nazim, then down at the hostage, then back at Nazim. Sweat poured from his brow, ran into his eyes and made him blink. ‘A-all right. I’ll … I’ll take you there and show you. Don’t hurt her. Please! I have a daughter the same age.’
Nazim took the gun away from the girl’s throat. She was spluttering and holding her neck, tears rolling backwards from the corners of her eyes. He yanked her harshly to her feet. He would kill her afterwards anyway. ‘Good. Then lead the way. And no tricks, or you’ll see what happens next.’
Lebrun was yanked up from his chair, shoved out of the office and made to lead the way through the building, one thick arm held tightly in Dariush’s grip. He muttered, ‘What are you going to put in the water?’
‘That’s not your concern,’ Abbud said.
‘Okay. Okay. We have to get to the main reservoir tanks.’ They came to a fire door and Lebrun gasped, ‘We can go out this way. It’s quicker.’ Dariush shouldered the door open. It led to a fire escape with a heavy outer door fitted with a panic bar. There were large windows either side, facing out onto the rear of the building and a view of all the large circular reservoirs, gantries, bridges and pumping stations stretching out far and wide.
Still holding onto Lebrun, Dariush grabbed the panic bar and shoved open the outer door. Nazim was standing three or four feet behind with the female hostage, Jafar and Abbud to his sides and Zahran hovering behind. Nazim felt he could trust Lebrun to lead them to the right place. They were close now. Triumph was inevitable.
And then it all suddenly fell apart.
As the outer door swung open Nazim caught a glimpse of someone standing there. Someone he’d seen before. Someone holding a pistol. Then, before anyone could react, the loud detonation of a gunshot filled the fire escape. The back of Dariush’s head blew out like an eggshell. Blood spattered across the side of Lebrun’s face. The hostage screamed. Dariush folded at the knees and slumped dead to the floor.
For a fraction of a second, all Nazim could do was stare. The shooter was a tall man, about the same height as him. Thick blond hair hanging across his brow. Blue eyes as hard and cold as the mountain glaciers of Afghanistan. The weapon in his hands looked like an extension of his arms. As though he’d been born holding it.
The foreigner. The white shaitan. The man with no name.
He wasn’t alone. A darker-haired man Nazim had never seen before was standing at his side with a submachine gun and the steely expression of a combat-hardened veteran.
Then in the next split second, everything erupted into chaos. Abbud fired at the doorway, in such haste that his bullets stitched a ragged line of holes up the wall and a pane of reinforced fire glass. A return chatter of full-auto fire spat from the doorway and Abbud staggered backwards, dropping his weapon, crimson flowers blooming on his shirt. Jafar never even got the chance to open fire before a lightning double-tap from the blond shaitan’s pistol punched through his forehead and chest and snatched the life out of him before he even began to drop. Zahran rushed in front of his leader to defend and protect him. He raised his weapon and yanked the trigger, but the AK had jammed. He hurled it down. Whipped out his knife, still wet with the blood of the lorry driver. Charged towards the doorway with the blade raised high and a furious bellow of ‘ALLAHU AKBAR!’ bursting from his lungs.
Nazim heard the ensuing gunfire, but he saw no more. Because by then, he was already retreating at a wild sprint down the corridor, dragging the hostage along with him.
Chapter 63
The surviving jihadist was only a young guy, barely in his twenties, but his short life would soon be over. He was moaning pitifully and reaching out for help with a red-slicked hand. Not everyone who thinks they’re willing to die for their beliefs still feels that way when the moment actually comes.
The blood pumping from the several bullet wounds in his torso was the least of the dying man’s worries. Clear liquid fentanyl was still spouting from the holes in the shot-up drum, spattering and splashing over him where he lay unable to move. Ben was standing at a distance to avoid breathing the toxic fumes. What Roth had said about the sniffer dogs dropping dead from just one whiff had been enough to make him very cautious.
‘You’ve had it, son,’ Ben told him in Arabic. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do for you. But you can make it right by telling me where Nazim is.’
The young guy’s eyes rolled in fear and confusion. He pointed a bloody hand towards the main building. Whether it was the effect of the drug scrambling his mind or he was genuinely contrite in the face of impending death, Ben neither knew nor cared. Then the young guy’s body convulsed and a geyser of dark blood spouted from his mouth. After a violent seizure, he was dead. Ben turned away. Jeff, Tuesday and Roth were looking at him with grim faces, waiting for his lead.
Roth said, ‘You can’t know Nazim’s in there.’
Ben replied. ‘I aim to find out. But first we have the others to deal with. Split up. Two teams. Tuesday, you go with Roth. Jeff, you and me. Keep in radio contact.’
Tuesday and the American set off at a fast trot towards the complex of reservoirs where three dead terrorists had been heading. Ben and Jeff hugged the side of the building, working their way around. Ben was favouring his pistol over the MP9 that hung behind his back on its sling. Jeff muttered, ‘So, this Roth guy. What’s his role in all of this?’
‘That’s a good question, Jeff. I haven’t quite figured that one out myself yet.’
The front of the building was still burning fiercely. The wind had changed and was blowing the smoke their way, making the air acrid and bitter. Ben could no longer see Tuesday or Roth. He and Jeff stalked along a few steps apart on bent knees with weapons up and ready, constantly covering one another’s movements, eyes flashing left and right for the slightest glimpse of the enemy, totally focused, each man utterly confident in the other.
It was the lull before the storm. Nothing could root you more fully and consciously in the present moment than the knowledge that, any time now, conflict and violence were about to explode all around you. Whatever negative truths were spoken about the stress of combat, it was the time when true warriors felt most alive.
It was as he and Jeff were scouting the rear of the building that Ben thought he sensed a movement on the edge of his vision, and turned quickly to look. Nerves could play tricks on you, but he ha
dn’t imagined it.
Figures flitting past a window.
Heading for a fire exit door.
The door beginning to open.
Ben and Jeff ran to take up position. And then the door swung open the rest of the way, and the lull before the storm was over.
Two men were framed in the doorway. On the left, a darker-skinned man of Middle Eastern blood, clutching an AK-47 with the stock folded and his finger on the trigger. On the right, a greying fat man in a rumpled suit and a crooked tie, who looked as if he was having the worst day of his life. It was like a shoot/no shoot target on a firing range. Take out the hostage, you lose the game. Take out the bad guy, you win. A no-brainer, but all the same a supreme test of lightning-fast decision-making and reflexes, when split seconds mattered. Ben lined up his pistol sights on the guy with the AK and fired. One shot, one kill, centre of the forehead. The guy went down like a tree. The fat man stayed standing, blood spattered across one side of his face, eyes blinking in shock. Suddenly Ben could see four more men and a woman inside the doorway behind him. The woman didn’t appear as though she wanted to be there.
And the person holding her by the arm was Nazim al-Kassar.
The exchange of fire that followed was fast and furious. A full-auto burst rattled from inside the doorway but just strafed the entrance. Jeff fired off a string from his MP9. One more down. Then Ben fired again with his pistol. One more down, before he could get off a shot. Then a wild man with a shaven skull and a long black beard and a knife in his fist came flying at them, screaming like a demented maniac. Ben and Jeff’s bullets found him at the same time, a ragged quick-fire series of blasts that hammered into his chest and shredded his heart and lungs. The wild man staggered but somehow stayed on his feet and kept coming. Ben and Jeff shot him again, and he crunched down on his face at their feet.
House of War Page 32