Hunter Killer (32 page)

The central square of Ha’dah was not large. Perhaps 35 metres by 35. As they entered it from the south-west corner and lurked in the shadow of a deep, overhanging balcony, they saw the mosque on the far side. Night was becoming dawn now, and in the steel grey light Danny saw that the mosque’s tower – a good 20 metres higher than the surrounding buildings – resembled nothing so much as a small lighthouse. The sound of the
muezzin
, his reedy drone still calling the faithful,
rang out from the tower. At ground level, a large wooden door was open and an inviting glow emanated from inside. Men were hurrying into the mosque, paying little attention to each other at this early hour and not even seeing Danny and Spud, who had melted into the shadows and were staying very still and unassuming. The rest of the square was unwelcoming. There was nothing that resembled a shop, or even a dwelling. Just randomly spaced and rather rickety-looking wooden doors a little higher than a man leading into the buildings on four sides, all of them closed. The ground was strewn with dust and chunks of stone the size of Danny’s fist.

Danny recalled Hammond’s words at the briefing back at Heathrow, about Hamzah, their contact.
He’ll meet you outside the central mosque in Ha’dah when the call to prayer starts at dawn tomorrow.
He looked around for their contact, but saw nobody who looked like they were waiting for an RV. Perhaps they were too late? If so, they were fucked. They didn’t know what this Hamza character looked like, or where he lived. And even if Hamza was his real name, the chances of the locals responding well to the enquiries of two British men – or even understanding them – were vanishingly small. They would have no option but to abort the mission: leave town, hide up and call for a pick-up.

The wailing voice of the
muezzin
suddenly stopped. Two stragglers hurried inside the mosque and the doors creaked shut. The glow from inside the mosque escaped through the gaps round the door, and almost immediately a muffled chanting came from behind it. Danny and Spud continued to survey the square. It was deserted. Their contact was a no-show.

Danny felt a spike of suspicion. Had they been lured here? Was it a trap? He tucked one hand into his
dishdash
and pulled his Sig. Spud, next to him, did the same. Danny peered up to the windows of the buildings looking over the square. He saw nothing, but it was, he realised, very easy for anyone to hide in those gloomy holes. Walking across the square would make him too exposed. If they were going to search the vicinity, they’d need to stick to the edge of the square. To the shadows. One of them needed to go alone, while the other kept watch, weapon ready, alert for any threats.

‘Cover me,’ Danny breathed.

A gentle click as Spud quietly cocked his weapon.

Danny trod very quietly, moving lightly on the balls of his feet as he traversed the side of the square opposite the mosque. At the far corner he looked back. Spud was only just visible in the shadows, but he was there and that was all Danny needed to know. Still gripping his weapon he turned 90 degrees and started heading up along the eastern side of the square towards the mosque.

Danny had covered ten metres when he saw a man. He was directly diagonal from Danny’s position, hiding in the north-western corner of the square about five metres from the entrance to the mosque, a dark figure in the shadows pacing nervously. He’d been invisible from their original positions.

Danny was almost definite that the guy hadn’t seen him. He remained absolutely motionless for a second, then made a quick gesture to Spud, pointing first to his eyes and then in the direction of the figure. Then he continued to skirt around the edge of the square.

When he reached the front wall of the mosque he didn’t turn left towards the contact. Instead he took a right, his plan being to edge round the back of the mosque and approach him from the other side. As soon as he was clear of the square he sprinted, intent on getting to his target before he wandered off. Twenty metres north, before taking a left and boxing round the back of the mosque. There was a dog here – a lean, dark-haired mongrel with a white patch round its left eye, ribs visible under its meagre body. It chased him for a few metres before losing interest and scampering back towards where it had been. Danny took another left and hurried down the western side of the mosque. When he reached the front corner he stopped and listened.

The contact was still pacing. Nervous footsteps, up and down, just a few metres away by the sound of it. Fucking amateur should keep still if he’s on edge, Danny thought to himself. But the man’s footsteps crunched on the rough ground. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and . . .

In an instant Danny swung round, his weapon raised. He saw a young man with a short wispy beard and thick, glistening lips. White
dishdash
. Red
shemagh
tied with a cord around the forehead. Colourful sheath hanging in front of his groin. Danny’s sudden, unexpected appearance clearly terrified him. He looked like he was going to shout out. But before he could, Danny had wrapped one arm around his head, covered his mouth with his free hand, and pressed his Sig against his skull.

Hammond had said their contact’s English was good. So if this was Hamza, he’d understand what Danny was about to say.

‘Make a sound and I’ll kill you.’

The man was trembling. He nodded his head vigorously. Danny noticed with satisfaction that he clearly understood English. The chances of him being their contact were good.

‘When I remove my hand, you’re going to tell me your name. You’ll whisper it, and if you do or say
anything
else . . .’ He made a double clicking sound in the corner of his mouth. He paused, for a couple of seconds, then slowly moved his hand.

‘Hamza,’ the man whispered.

Danny quickly covered his mouth again.

‘Okay, Hamza. My friend’s waiting for us at the corner of the square.’ He pointed with his gun in Spud’s direction. ‘You’re going to walk there, I’m going to walk behind you. Don’t try and run away unless you can run faster then twelve hundred feet a second, because that’s how fast a bullet from this gun will travel and I’ll have my weapon on you all the time. Do
anything
that makes me nervous, it’ll be the last thing you know about. Got it?’

Hamza nodded again.

Danny removed his hand and pushed Hamza towards the square. He was flat-footed and noisy as he walked, but the sound was drowned by a sudden swell in the muffled chanting from inside the mosque. They moved along the edge of the square towards where Spud was waiting for them. He eyed Hamza up and down with a single unimpressed glance.

‘This him?’

Danny nodded.

Hamza was twitchy. Nervous. He rubbed his clenched hands as though he was washing them with invisible soap and water. ‘My house is not far from here,’ he said in a dry voice. ‘We must go there.’

Danny and Spud exchanged a questioning look. They wanted to get out of Ha’dah as quickly as possible, but maybe it was best that the exchange of information and money took place off the streets. Spud nodded his approval. ‘Okay, sunshine,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

Hamza’s house was on the western edge of Ha’dah, and accessed via a maze-like network of rough side streets. He had a donkey tethered to a post just outside, whose head was swarming with flies. ‘Yours?’ Danny asked. Hamza nodded.

Inside it was a poor place, made of the same mud bricks as the larger buildings, but only a single room, about ten metres by eight. A thin mattress and blanket at one end served as a bed, and next to it a small stove fitted to a beaten-up old propane canister. No chairs or tables, no sign of running water or a toilet. There was a small saucepan of food on the stove, and the air smelled of goat meat and fenugreek. And on the mattress, the bulky form of a sat phone. Hamza’s CIA handlers were clearly keener to ensure he had a means of staying in touch with them, rather than anything in the way of luxuries.

Danny pointed at it. ‘You should keep that hidden,’ he said.

Hamza nodded, and stuffed the sat phone under the blanket. ‘May I offer you food?’ he said. ‘Tea?’ He was stooping slightly, and still soaping his hands.

Danny shook his head. He knew he was probably offending their contact, but to accept food from him would be foolhardy. They had their MRE packs which they knew hadn’t been tampered with.

‘You know why we’re here?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘So where is it?’

‘Where is what, sir?’

‘The training camp, shit-for-brains.’

A venal look crossed Hamza’s face. ‘You have something for me first?’

Danny shook his head. ‘You don’t get shit until you tell us where the training camp is.’

Hamza’s nose twitched.

‘I don’t know, sir.’

Danny blinked. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ There was a dangerous edge to his voice.

‘But I know a man who does,’ Hamza said hastily, his face brightning as though this was excellent news.

The two Regiment men were silent for a moment. The donkey brayed noisily outside.

‘Go on,’ Danny breathed.

‘His name is Ahmed. I heard him talking during the khat chew.’

Danny’s heart sank. ‘The hour of Solomon,’ he muttered.

Hamza grinned. ‘Yes!’

‘When everyone spouts bollocks,’ Spud added.

Hamza’s face fell into a frown. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, sir. Many important things are discussed during the khat chew. Serious things. The man I am talking about, Ahmed, he hears things from all over. He is one of the older men in the village. Everyone respects him. Even the Houthi leave him alone.’

‘I want to know exactly what he said,’ Danny stated. ‘
Exactly
.’

Hamza took a moment to gather his thoughts. ‘You have to understand,’ he said. ‘Ahmed, like many in Ha’dah, longs for the days of the Zaydi kings to be returned, for the Yemen to be ruled by a Shi’ite majority. He has no time for the Sunnis, and makes it his business to know when they trespass upon what he believes to be the land of the Zaydi Muslims.’

‘Thanks for the history lesson, pal. I still don’t know what he said.’

Hamza soaped his hands even more vigorously. ‘That a famous British cleric was arriving in the lowlands. That he was to be given sanctuary at a training camp of the Sunni jihadi. And he even said where the camp was.’

Danny and Spud looked at each other, then back at the joker in front of them.

‘So where
is
it?’

Hamza lowered his head and looked suddenly rather embarrassed. ‘I do not remember,’ he muttered.

A moment of silence. Then Spud swore under his breath. ‘You were fucking stoned, weren’t you?’ he said in disbelief.

Hamza gave them an apologetic look. ‘It was the khat chew,’ he said, as if that explained everything.

‘For fuck’s
sake
!’ Danny exploded. Spud had murder in his eyes. Their chances of ducking quickly and unseen out of Ha’dah were crumbling. At a stroke, their op had become ten times more dangerous. Danny felt himself grabbing the tout by his throat, throttling him. Seconds later, Spud was there, removing Hamza forcibly from Danny’s grip but not treating him much less roughly. He threw the tout roughly to the ground.

Danny stood bleakly over him. ‘How do we find this guy?’

Hamza loooked terrified and started jabbering. ‘I do not know where he is during the day . . . but at six o’clock – at the hour of Solomon – he will be where he always is, at the khat chew near the marketplace. I will take you there.’ His eyes brightened as he tried to put a positive spin on things. ‘You can join in! You will like it very much, the khat. It makes you feel . . .’

Hamza didn’t get a chance to explain how it would make anybody feel, because Danny kicked him so hard in the guts that he started to cough and wheeze violently. ‘If I see you
anywhere
near that shit while we’re still around, you’ll be chewing your own fucking teeth.’ He turned to Spud. They exchanged an anxious look.

Time to make a call. Should they split now and call off the op? Or risk staying in Ha’dah for another 12 hours, where strangers, surely, would be noticed?

Danny and Spud locked gazes for ten seconds.

‘We stay here till six,’ Danny said finally. ‘All three of us. Then we go find this Ahmed character.’ He gave Hamza a contemptuous glance. ‘And if Howard Marks here tries to leave, we nail him.’

‘It’ll be my pleasure.’

Hamza cringed on the dusty ground.

‘Two hours on, two hours off,’ Danny said. ‘I’ll take first stag.’ He looked over at the thin mattress on the ground. ‘You take the four-poster, get some kip.’

And without another word, Danny sat cross-legged on the ground and aimed his rifle purposefully at the door.

The day passed slowly. When it was Danny’s turn to rest, he slept soundly and awoke to find Hamza conked out on the ground. He lay there, snoring, for most of the morning. Outside it was much noisier than it had been at dawn. Even here on the outskirts, Danny could hear men shouting to each other, the occasional tinny buzz of a motorbike, and footsteps passing Hamza’s tiny residence. Every few hours, the brittle sound of the call to prayer drifted over the town.