Firefight (10 page)

'The boss says we're to take our orders from you. That's
good enough for me.'

Will nodded. 'Right then. Sit down and listen. We're
leaving soon and there's a lot to get through.'

The men took their seats and Will started to speak. It
felt weird - as if he had never been away - but he fell into
it naturally as he repeated the plan he and Pankhurst had
devised before he left Thames House.

'At 17.00 hours a C-5 Galaxy military transport plane
will land at Brize Norton. It's an American transport,
rerouted through the UK for the express purpose of
ferrying us to the NATO base outside Kandahar in
southern Afghanistan.' He looked at each of them for any
sign of surprise or alarm. There was nothing, so he
continued. 'Once we reach the base, we're going to be
introduced to an Afghan informer. This man knows the
whereabouts of an individual who has been abducted by
a Taliban faction in the countryside. Our mission is to
locate and extract the target and bring this individual back
to the UK. Alive.'

'Do we have any idea of the target's current location?'
Anderson asked.

'Nothing specific. The source is nervous about who he
gives that information to. He'll be coming with us, so we
need to be prepared for that.'

'What's the target's name?' Drew asked.

Will's eyes flicked to the door. 'I'll tell you that once
we're on our way.'

The men nodded. Will scanned their faces for any flicker
of dissent, ready to stamp on it if he saw it. But there was
none.

'OK,' he continued. 'We need to get tooled up. Let's go.'

The foreign-weapons armoury was housed in a small
brick building. There were large metal doors at the
entrance which were normally locked by chunky
padlocks, but as the four of them approached, Will could
see that the place had been opened up. They filed quietly
inside.

There was something reassuring about the armoury. It
smelled comfortingly of gun oil, and metal racks lined
the walls, displaying weapons from all around the world,
or copies of them. This place housed every armament
you'd ever need on a mission, neatly ordered and well
maintained. MP5 sub-machine guns, AK-47s, a smattering
of MI6s alongside its more modern replacement, the
Diemaco C8 carbine, along with a huge number of handguns
and sniper rifles. There was a large selection of
suppressed weaponry and Will knew that much of the
equipment in this particular armoury would be nonattributable
- no serial numbers, nothing to give anyone
a clue as to where it came from or, more importantly,
who had been using it. On an officially deniable mission,
an attributable firearm was like a fingerprint at a crime
scene.

The armourer - no doubt a weapons technician attached
to the Regiment from the REME - was waiting for them.
His job was to keep track of all the weapons, make sure
they were signed out properly and keep them clean and in
good working order. What he would never do, however,
was ask questions: it wasn't important that he knew
why
the weapons were needed, just that they
were
needed. A
couple of years at Credenhill, maybe less, and he'd be on
his way, so none of the SAS men felt any sense of comradeship
with him. He was a gruff, no-nonsense kind of man.
Serious. Responsible. Just what you wanted in the guy whose
job it was to make sure your weapon didn't jam at the
crucial moment. He nodded a curt greeting at the fourman
unit as they walked in, then they went about selecting
their weapons.

It was done with a cool detachment, a professionalism
borne of respect for the firearms they were taking that
could mean the difference between life and death. They
selected four suppressed C8s, along with a number of
scopes and a 40 mm grenade-launcher attachment. These
were duly packed into a heavy-duty protective case for
the journey, while Will picked out a Minimi 5.56 mm
light machine gun. He hoped they wouldn't have to use
it, but if the situation demanded it, this gun had an effective
range of 800 metres and was capable of a thousand
rounds a minute. Once the Minimi was packed away, they
each selected a Sig 226 pistol. Will also took a Sig 230 -
smaller, less conspicuous, it could be hidden under civilian
clothing without a noticeable bulge. Boxes of armourpiercing
ammo were added to the requisition, as well as
a stash of fragmentation grenades and phosphorous
grenades, then each man carefully signed the forms the
armourer gave them.

Once the weapons had been requisitioned, they needed
to gather the rest of their equipment. They would wear
civilian clothes as far as the NATO base in Kandahar;
once there, they would find themselves some local clothes.
Once they got out into the countryside, however, they
would need cold-weather gear. Into their rucksacks they
carefully folded Goretex jackets and pull-on snow suits.
As a matter of routine, they each stowed away a Sat phone
that would enable them to make encrypted calls from
anywhere in the world. Before he had left Thames House,
Pankhurst had told Will the Americans had given a promise
of air support once he was on the ground. Nice gesture,
but Will knew they couldn't rely on it if things turned
nasty. Still, it was a comfort to have them, even though
Will knew that if it came to the point where he needed
air support, it would probably be too late. Finally, they
each stowed a set of night-vision goggles. If they
conducted their mission under cover of darkness, NV
would be invaluable.

By the time they had gathered their equipment together
it was gone two o'clock. It would take a couple of hours
to get to Brize Norton and as they walked round to the
front of the main building they saw a vehicle pull up and
wait. It was a standard white minibus - the sort of thing
you might expect a scoutmaster to be in charge of - and
the driver was dressed in civilian clothes, although Will
knew he was Hereford through and through. Steve Elliott
was waiting by the minibus, his face unreadable as they
approached. He indicated to Will that he should step aside
with him.

'I don't like not knowing what my men are doing, Will,'
he said, once they were out of earshot. 'I know we're both
following orders and I know I don't need to say it, but be
careful, OK?'

Will nodded.

'And good luck. I want to see you all back here very
soon.'

'You will, boss,' Will replied, quietly. 'You will.' He turned
back to his unit, nodded at them and together they climbed
into the back of the minibus.

The case of weapons was already waiting for them on
the floor, tucked well out of sight of any casual observer,
and as they drove out of the heavily guarded gates to RAF
Credenhill, they looked for all the world like a bunch of
mates going on a trip together.

Inside the bus, the lads chatted calmly. 'You heard about
Stevens?' Drew asked no one in particular.

'Aye,' Kennedy replied. 'Out on his fucking ear. Sounds
like he went to the bank one time too many.'

Will's face must have registered his confusion. 'Andy
Stevens,' Kennedy explained. 'You know him?'

Will shook his head.

'No, you probably wouldn't. Only been with the
Regiment a year or so, silly fucker.'

'What'd he do?'

'He was out in Baghdad. Some of the lads were helping
transport fucking great palettes of Yankie dollars, which they
were sending out there to help rebuild the ragheads'
economy. Course, he couldn't resist helping himself, could
he? Would've got away with it, too, if some bird at that
bank in Hereford hadn't noticed he was coming in every
other day to change several thousand dollars.'

'How much did he take?' Will asked.

'No one knows. Enough to get him a fucking court
martial, though. Shame - quite liked the lad myself. Bit of
a wanker, but if I had a problem keeping the company of
wankers, I wouldn't be here, would I?'

The others smiled and the conversation moved on. Will
listened to them as they discussed the latest Hereford
gossip and the stories they'd heard on the news - anything
apart from the job in hand. But when there was a lull in
the conversation, Will knew they would be mentally
preparing themselves, going through the salient details of
the mission in their heads. Anderson, Drew and Kennedy
showed no signs of nerves - just a quiet, determined
detachment, a confidence that they would be able to get
the job done.

Deep down, Will wished he could share in that confidence.
Forty-eight hours ago he had been a nobody, just
some waster in the pub filling his time with whatever best
numbed his grief on that particular day. Now he felt he
had a purpose and he started feeling the hot anticipation
that always used to surge through him before a mission. It
was tempered, though, by an uneasiness, a self-doubt. Steve
Elliott had been brutal in his assessment that Will might
not be up to the job, yet he hadn't said anything Will didn't
feel deep down. But the confidence of the others was reassuring.

He tried to put those doubts from his mind and
focus on the task ahead.

There was a lull in the conversation. Will turned to
Anderson. 'You've got a kid, right?' he said.

Anderson looked surprised that Will should have brought
it up. 'Yeah,' he said, warily.

'How old?'

'Nearly three.'

'Looking forward to Christmas, I'll bet.'

Anderson smiled the smile of an indulgent parent. 'Yeah,'

he said quietly. 'She is.'

Will nodded and for a moment an image of his own
daughter flitted through his head. 'We're going to make sure
you're back for her.'

The three other men stared at him in mild astonishment
and Will felt a flush of embarrassment rise to his face. What
the hell had made him say that? He knew full well that
that kind of talk before an operation was strictly out of
bounds. These guys didn't even want to entertain the notion
of failure and Will knew that Anderson had not even considered
the idea that he wouldn't be back home for Christmas.

It wasn't that they were blasé, it was just that they knew
that full confidence in their own training and ability was
their best friend.

Kennedy broke the uncomfortable silence that followed.
'You said you'd give us the name of the target once we left
Hereford,' he reminded Will.

Will sniffed. 'Her name is Latifa Ahmed.'

Surprise registered on Kennedy's face. '
Her
name? It's a
woman?'

'That's right,' Will said, flatly.

'Easy, tiger,' Drew said to Kennedy with a smile. He looked
over at Will. 'Our Nathan's got a bit of a reputation,' he
said. 'Pulled pigs in fifteen countries at last count, or was
it sixteen?'

'Seventeen, actually,' grinned Kennedy, and Will was
relieved that his fuck-up of a moment ago seemed to have
been forgotten.

'She'll slow us down,' Anderson noted more soberly. It
clearly wasn't a complaint; just an observation.

'Probably,' Will agreed. 'And she's being held captive by
Taliban extremists, which means she won't be in the best
of health. But from what I know about her, she's pretty
tough. And she'll want to get away from that place as much
as us.'

'You're under instructions from Five, right?' Drew piped
up.

'That's right.'

'So what do they want with her?'

Will couldn't say too much, but he knew that if the unit
thought he was keeping too much from them, it might
engender bad feeling. 'She has information about a possible
terrorist strike against London,' he said evasively, and the
three of them seemed to accept that.

'Fucking ragheads,' Kennedy murmured, and the minibus
continued to speed down the motorway.

Night started to fall and by the time they reached Brize
Norton it was pitch black. Word of their arrival had clearly
preceded them and the minibus was allowed to drive
straight through and wait at the side of the runway. They
arrived just in time to see the lights of the Galaxy emerge
through the clouds in the distance. It was an impressive
sight as it roared in to land, the engines of this massive
transport plane filling the air all around, making it impossible
for them to shout at each other, let alone speak. Will
had been in enough of these aircraft - and planes like it
- in the past, but he was always slightly taken aback by
the sheer size of them when seen close up. The Galaxy
had a wingspan of almost seventy metres and housed a
cargo department nearly forty metres long. As soon as it
came to a halt, the engines whirred to a silence and a fleet
of refuelling vehicles drove up to it to start replenishing
its tanks, while Drew and Kennedy flung open the back
doors of the minibus and carried the weapons case out
on to the tarmac.

A uniformed man descended from the cockpit of the
plane. He walked briskly up to the unit and gave them all
a cursory nod. 'You're our passengers, I take it?' he shouted
in an American accent.

'That's us,' Will replied. 'How long before we're airborne?'

The pilot looked back over his shoulder. 'As soon as we're
refuelled.'

'Do you have any passengers other than crew?'

The pilot shook his head. 'No,' he replied. 'Just cargo.
There's seating on the top deck.'

Will nodded, pleased that the pilot hadn't seen fit to ask
them who they were or what they were doing. It was often
the way in situations like this. Clearly someone had told
the yanks not to ask too many questions. Drew and Kennedy
picked up the weapons stash once more, and the four of
them strode across the tarmac to the steps which led into
the aircraft.

The Galaxy had two decks. The steps took them on to
the lower one, which was packed full of equipment. Most
of it was on enormous pallets, covered with plastic sheeting
and held in place by cargo nets. It was impossible to tell
what was on those pallets, but Will knew it could be
anything from weapons to ammunition to food rations
or clothes. At one end of the cargo deck he saw two
military vehicles - five-ton trucks, they looked like - and
a couple of loadies were milling around them, checking
they were secure. At the cockpit end of the cargo deck
was a flight of metal stairs. Will and his men headed
straight for these and carried their weapons case on to
the upper level.