Hellfire (47 page)

Danny quickly turned and made to exit the control room, his KH-9 engaged. As he stepped through the door, he saw Tony and Caitlin down on one knee in the firing position, a ninety-degree angle between the trajectories of their two weapons.

There was no warning. Like the last groan of a dying man, the background hum of the electrical generator on the platform slurred and died. All the lights on the platform faded with it.

Danny hit the ground as his vision suddenly blackened. He heard Tony hiss: ‘What the
hell’s
going on?’

It was totally dark – Danny reckoned they had another twenty-five minutes until sunrise. He clenched his eyes closed to force his pupils to relax more quickly. When he opened his eyes, the oil platform looked totally different – an impenetrable jumble of dark shapes and shadows, lit only by the light of the moon.

He issued a sharp instruction: ‘We need to get back to the others . . .’

But his words were cut short by an unmistakeable sound.

Gunfire.

Three shots.

They echoed across the rig, but there was no doubt from which direction they came.

‘
The med room
,’ Danny stated. ‘
Get there now!
’

They ran with weapons engaged, retracing their footsteps back towards – and past – the centre of the rig. With every step, Danny’s eyes panned left and right, searching for threats, or even the faintest movement in the dark. There was none. But as they approached the med room, and from a distance of twenty metres, he could just make out that the door was swinging open.

‘
Shit
,’ he breathed. With his weapon fully engaged, he approached, aware that Tony and Caitlin had his back.

Five metres out from the open door of the med room he paused. He could make out no sign of forced entry on the door, which meant that whoever had opened it up had a key.

There could also
easily
be shooters still inside there.

And although there was no light inside the Portakabin or out, anyone inside would have the advantage, because if he approached, the moon would light Danny up, and the door opening would frame him.

He reached into his ops vest and pulled out his flashbang. He silently held it up to Tony and Caitlin to indicate what he had in mind. Caitlin got down in the firing position, pointing away from the med room and at an angle. Tony ran quietly to the far side of the steps, continued for five metres and did the same. Only when they were in place did Danny approach the steps. He knelt two metres from the bottom step and looked up through the open door.

Just blackness. No sound.

He pulled the pin from his grenade and quickly lobbed it into the med room.

Three seconds. Danny looked away just in time to stop his vision being compromised by the blinding white flash that emerged from the doorway. He was, of course, expecting the deafening bang. When it arrived, he hurried up the steps, weapon still engaged, and slipped through the doorway. He switched on his Surefire torch, trusting that any shooters in the med room would be too disorientated to fire on him if he made himself a target. He conducted a broad sweep of the room with his weapon.

No movement. No armed personnel.

But three bodies, slumped on the floor just by the stretcher bed.

With a sick feeling in his stomach, Danny approached swiftly. The Surefire shone brightly on the faces. Each man had been shot point-blank in the forehead. The entry wounds were catastrophic. Each forehead had splintered open and spattered blood over the stretcher bed and the walls. It was as much from their clothes as their damaged features that Danny identified the bodies.

‘Mustafa and the two pilots are down,’ he said into his comms. Danny realised he hadn’t even known the pilots’ names.

There was no point wasting time on the dead. Danny spun round and continued his sweep of the med room. There was no sign of Ahmed or Buckingham.

He returned to the door frame and scuttled back down the stairs before hitting the ground in the same position as Tony and Caitlin.

‘Some fucker was waiting for us,’ he said tensely. ‘They took out the radio comms and now they’ve got Ahmed and Buckingham.’ He realised he was sweating profusely.

‘How?’ Caitlin demanded. ‘The head shed’s had the place under surveillance since we made contact with the Caliph. How did somebody get here before us?’

‘I don’t know,’ Danny stated. ‘Maybe they were already here.’

‘What now?’

Tough call. There were just three of them on a large oil platform against an armed threat of unknown size.

‘We stay together as a unit,’ Tony said. ‘That way we have a better chance of defending ourselves if we come under fire.’

‘And no chance of finding Buckingham or Ahmed,’ Danny said.

‘Who gives a fuck about Buckingham?’ Tony spat.

‘Not me. But Ahmed’s the only reason we’re here. If we lose control of him, we’ve no chance of getting close to the Caliph.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Black, have you taken a knock to the head? Isn’t it obvious we called him wrong? He’s sprung a trap and I’ll bet he’s not within a hundred miles of this place.’

‘I say we get back to the chopper,’ Caitlin hissed. ‘Use the aircraft’s VHF to get a Mayday signal out . . .’

It was a good call. But even as Caitlin was making the suggestion . . .

‘What the
fuck!
’ Tony shouted.

A massive explosion had just ripped the skies from the direction of the chopper. They didn’t have a direct line of sight, but they could see the top of a huge cloud of orange flame licking towards the sky, which glowed for a full ten seconds before the explosion subsided. A stench of acrid burning hit their senses.

Nobody needed to say it: someone had taken the chopper – and the money – out.

‘What the
hell
do we do?’ Tony hissed, an edge of panic in his voice. He and Caitlin were both looking at Danny. ‘This was
your
fucking idea, Black. What now?’

Danny kept his breathing steady. Things had turned to shit, but losing your head wasn’t going to help.

‘We split up and find Ahmed,’ he said tersely. ‘Any enemy targets, we shoot to wound. We still need that information. We’ll start on the west side of the platform and sweep east. Caitlin take the north end, Tony take the south, I’ll take the middle. Keep in contact.’

They nodded. Then each of them melted into the darkness.

Hereford. 03.27 GMT.

The noise coming from the boot of Spud’s car – a frenzied beating – had subsided halfway round the M25. Now, as Spud pulled up in front of the barrier at RAF Credenhill, there was total silence from the back.

The MoD policeman at the barrier walked up to Spud’s open window. Spud didn’t know his name, but they recognised each other. As the policeman leant down to Spud’s height, he frowned. ‘Fuck me, buddy, you okay? You look like shit.’

‘You going to let me in,’ Spud said, ‘or are we going to shoot the shit for another ten minutes?’

The policeman shrugged, walked back to his post and opened the barrier. Spud pulled into camp, but immediately parked up outside the guard room next to the barrier. He killed the engine, walked round to the boot and, under the watchful eye of the MoD policeman, prepared himself for an onslaught – physical or verbal – from al-Meghrani.

It didn’t come. He opened the boot on a broken man. His split nose was a mess. His face was smeared with dried blood. He stank of stale urine. But it was the look in his face that told Spud he’d get no trouble from this man. Spud had seen it before on the battlefield – the thousand-yard stare of a terrified, traumatised soldier.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ the MoD guy demanded. Spud ignored him. Al-Meghrani’s body was almost limp as he yanked him from the boot and dragged him into the guard room.

It was a bland room with a couple of desks, a TV blaring in one corner and a door that led to the camp’s holding cells, which served to isolate anyone who caused trouble on site. Spud himself had even spent a few nights acting as duty sergeant in the guard room. It was a total pain in the arse and the short straw for anyone in camp. But he was relieved to see that tonight, the short straw had been drawn by Bob Pickford, a mate of his from A Squadron, sitting behind a desk with a bored look as he stared at the telly.

The bored look fell away as he saw Spud, and the state of his bruised, beaten companion. ‘Spud, what the—’

‘Do me a favour, Bob,’ Spud interrupted. ‘Put this cunt in the holding cell.’

Bob nodded, grabbed the glazed al-Meghrani by one arm and dragged him roughly through the door into the cell. When he returned a minute later, Spud said, ‘Is he secure?’

‘Roger that.’

Spud pointed in the direction of the main Regiment building. ‘Who’s in charge?’ he said.

‘Hammond. Something’s going down, I don’t know what.’

‘Give me the phone, mucker, I need to speak to him.’

The look on Bob’s face made it clear he didn’t think this was a good idea, but he passed Spud the cordless handset. Spud consulted a sheet of numbers pinned to the wall. When he found Hammond’s internal line, he dialled it.

Three rings.

Four.

‘
Hammond.
’ The ops officer’s voice was taught and stressed.

‘Boss, it’s me. Spud.’

A momentary silence that spoke volumes.

‘
Glover, I’m right in the middle of a
fucking
 . . .
’

‘Listen to me, boss. Just
listen
to me, okay? You need to come to the guard room. There’s someone you have to see.’

‘
Glover, I’m on my way to the ops room, and you’re on your way out of camp. If I see you—
’

‘It’s about someone called the Caliph.’

Silence.

‘Seriously, boss. Come by the guard room on your way to the ops office. It’ll take one minute, then I’ll be off your back.’

The phone clicked silent.

Spud’s palms were sweating. He laid the handset on the table and felt Bob’s eyes boring into him. He was grateful to his friend for not asking any questions. They stood there in silence. Spud didn’t know if he’d persuaded Hammond to come, and wondered if he could somehow drag al-Meghrani directly over to the ops room. Impossible. Security was too high. They’d never let him in . . .

The door suddenly burst open. Hammond was there, dark rings around his eyes. He slammed the door shut behind him, but seemed almost too angry to speak. He had a thick manilla folder under his arms.

Spud turned to Bob. ‘Give me the keys to the holding cell,’ he said.

Bob handed them over.

‘This way, boss,’ Spud said.

The holding cell had a steel door with thick rivets. Spud opened it up and led Hammond inside. Al-Meghrani was crouching in the corner, hugging his knees.

‘The Firm are putting all their resources into finding this geezer called the Caliph,’ Spud said. ‘
They
won’t listen to me,
you
won’t listen to me, but I’m
telling
you:
this
guy has met him face to—’

There was a sudden flurry of movement from the corner of the cell. Al-Meghrani had pushed himself to his feet and hurled himself towards the two Regiment men in an attempt to get through the open cell door.

It was the act of an optimist, or an idiot.

He slammed hard into Hammond himself, who dropped his manilla folder but barely moved from the impact. Al-Meghrani staggered back as the contents of the folder scattered all over the floor.

Spud was about to speak again, to explain his investigations to Hammond, when something stopped him. The cab driver’s expression had changed. The thousand-yard stare had morphed into something else.

Dread.

He was staring at one of the pieces of paper that had scattered from Hammond’s folder. Spud looked to the floor. He saw photographs. One of them was of his mate Danny, and for a moment Spud thought he was staring at that. But it made no sense. Al-Meghrani didn’t even
know
Danny . . .

‘What is it?’ he hissed. ‘What have you seen?’

He suddenly realised that there was another photograph lying face up on the ground, just inches from the one of Danny. A Middle Eastern face. Reading upside down, Spud saw a name printed at the bottom of the photograph: Ahmed bin Ali al-Essa.

‘What?’ Spud said. And when his prisoner didn’t reply, he pulled him to his feet and raised one fist as if he was about to crash it down on his hostage’s already broken nose. ‘Fucking
what?
’

Al-Meghrani flinched backwards. There was a deep silence in the cell. ‘That’s him,’ al-Meghrani whispered. ‘That’s the Caliph.’

Twenty-eight

Hammond blinked.