Murder Team (12 page)

‘We’ve got a problem,’ the pilot said. He was right. Through the front window Danny could see the second Black Hawk hovering twenty metres from the settlement. And beyond the settlement itself, about five hundred metres from the position of Danny’s Black Hawk, a third helicopter hung in the night sky, facing them.

Danny recognised its shape immediately. It was narrower than the Black Hawks. Sleeker. The unmistakable outline of an Apache attack helicopter. Danny couldn’t make out the detail of the Hellfire missiles attached to its body, but he knew they – or something similar – were there. And he knew they would make short work of workhorse utility choppers like the Black Hawks.

The Apache hung in the air, facing the two Regiment helicopters, its nose slightly dipped.

‘Eritrean?’ the pilot said.

‘No,’ Danny said flatly. ‘Israeli.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just know. Are you missiled up?’

‘Negative. We’re principally crewed for medical evacuation.’

Which meant the Apache could make mincemeat of them.

From behind, the loadie handed Danny a headset. He put it on. Instantly there was a hiss, and then a crackly voice came over the earphone.

‘
Identify yourself.
’

The pilot and his navigator exchanged a nervous glance.

Danny spoke into this headset. ‘Hereford, are you getting this?’

A pause, then a British voice in his ear. ‘
Roger that.
’

The crackly voice repeated itself. ‘
Identify yourself, or we will engage you air to air.
’

‘This is Danny Black. Can the Apache hear me?’

Another pause. And then, from Hereford: ‘
You don’t have authority to make this negotiation, Black.
’

Danny suppressed the surge of anger that drilled through him. ‘Listen to me, you’re seconds away from a blue on blue. The Israelis were behind Spud’s capture, and it would be the easiest thing out for them to down us and claim they believed we were enemy forces, if it meant they could cover up what they’d been doing. Trust me, they’re having that conversation
right now.
I’m the
only
person that can talk them out of it. Put me through, now.’

Silence. Five seconds. Ten.

Then: ‘
You have the go-ahead from London. You’re patched in.
’

Danny nodded to nobody in particular. He frowned as he collected his thoughts for a moment. Then he spoke, clearly and without emotion. ‘Here’s what I know. Mossad engaged a former IDF mercenary, name of Gilad Friedman, to kidnap a wounded British soldier in Eritrea. He delivered him to a military faction at this location, so they could put him up for sale on the open market. Their plan was to use the British soldier as bait to draw out a high-value Islamist target by the name of Abu Bakr, then take out him
and
the Brit at the same time.’

He paused for ten seconds to let that soak in. The Apache didn’t move, but its nose remained aggressively tilted.

‘I know I’m patched in to Tel Aviv,’ Danny continued. He could almost see a roomful of suits sitting round a table at Mossad headquarters, paying rapt attention to his voice from a battlefield half a world away. ‘So listen carefully, fellas. If you give your Apache the instruction to fire on us, that’s your call. This communication is being recorded by Hereford. British Intelligence now know exactly what you’ve been doing. I’m thinking you’ll want to sweep this whole clusterfuck under the carpet. Much easier to do that if you
don’t
have two downed choppers full of dead Regiment soldiers. Wars have been started over less than this, so you’d better be damn sure you’re up for a fight.’

Silence on the line.

Danny’s throat was dry. He’d run out of things to say.

Thirty seconds passed. Were frenzied communications taking place between Tel Aviv and London? Were the Apache flight crew preparing to fire, or retreat? Was that sight, of the choppers hanging over a rough desert settlement, the last Danny would ever see?

The situation was out of his hands.

Movement from the Apache. It dipped its nose a little further, almost as though it was nodding. Then it straightened up.

The pilot let out a hiss of relief as the Apache turned to face away from the Black Hawks.

Danny could still see the red lights of the vehicle convoy moving away from the settlement. From this distance, they seemed to be going at a crawl, but in reality he was sure they were flooring it.

Maybe they knew what was coming. Maybe they didn’t. It hardly mattered either way.

Danny didn’t see the air-to-surface missiles shoot through the air. But he sure as hell saw their impact as they hit the convoy. Four missiles hit the ground in quick succession. One would have been enough to take out the convoy. Each strike exploded in a massive burst of flame. Even from this distance of a couple of klicks, the noise of the explosions echoed inside the Black Hawk, and lit its interior with a dull orange light.

The flame subsided as quickly as it had burst into life. The moon illuminated a heavy cloud of silvery smoke at the blast site. There was no sign of the convoy. Nobody could have survived a strike like that. The Somali terrorists were unquestionably dead.

Twenty-four hours from now, Danny realised, the TV news would report the death of a suspected terrorist cell. There would be honours for somebody. But only a handful of people would know the full details of what had
really
occurred in this empty part of the world. Or how the supposed friendship between two allies had been exposed for what it was: tentative, fragile and liable to break. When the Israeli and British PMs next appeared together, they would be all smiles. Danny would expect nothing less of politicians for whom the life of his mate Spud, who’d served them so fearlessly, meant so little.

‘Everyone’s a fucking winner,’ he muttered bitterly.

The Black Hawk turned 180 degrees. Danny turned too, and saw Spud lying on a stretcher bed fastened to the side of the chopper. He was still wearing the oxygen mask, but his eyes were open again and he was staring at Danny.

Danny nodded at his mate. Then he took a seat by the open side door, and watched the moonlit shadow of the Black Hawk speeding across the desert floor, over the ridge where two dead bodies – one British and one Israeli – were still lying, and into the blackness beyond.

Danny and Spud will return in the new Chris Ryan adventure:

Hellfire.

27.8.15