Murder Team (3 page)

Spud closed his eyes. A second later, he felt the gunman hoisting him into a sitting position. From somewhere, clothes appeared – cloth pyjamas – and the gunman was dressing him. Now he forced Spud to stand. It was agony to walk, but the morphine pushed that agony to the back of his mind. He opened his eyes again and, with the help of the silent gunman, staggered toward the open door.

Outside, a blood-red sun was sinking toward the horizon over a bleak, parched landscape. As far as Spud could see, the terrain consisted of rough, hard-baked scrub covered with a layer of loose, stony sand. His left leg was stronger than his right, which trailed behind him in the sand, limp and useless. Twenty metres east of the tiny shack that had been his hospital and home for the past few days was a pale grey Land Rover. As they approached it, Spud noticed that although the chassis was dirty and dust-covered, the wheel hubs were gleaming clean. They reflected the setting sun, and the distorted image of the two men staggering toward them.

Where are we going?
he tried to say. The sound that came from his mouth was breathless and incoherent. When they reached the vehicle, the gunman eased him into the back seat, strapping him in, no doubt so that his listless body would remain upright. Then he took the wheel, started the engine and revved it sharply before shooting away from the building.

3

18.30hrs EAT

It was almost fully dark. The African sky was black up above, indigo at the horizon – a clear background for silhouettes of the occasional gnarled acacia tree. Triggs’s black Land Cruiser trundled over the stony desert earth. They were two hours south west of Asmara, and to Danny’s eyes things weren’t looking good. They hadn’t seen a building or a human for the past ten miles. Now the terrain was deteriorating into an expanse of featureless, rough brush with no sign of habitation. All this on the basis of a vague tip-off from one of Triggs’s contacts. It was almost nothing to go on, but it was all Danny had.

‘Did you
pay
for this intel?’ he asked as the Land Cruiser hit a bump in what passed for a road, violently shaking the two passengers.

‘I’ll grease the right palms, if the intel’s good.’

‘Looks to me like your money’s safe,’ Danny said with a scowl.

They continued in silence for a couple of minutes.

‘There!’ Triggs said sharply. He nodded forwards.

Danny squinted toward the horizon. He cursed himself for not having observed it before his companion. There was the rectangular black outline of a small building. It was hard to judge distances in this light, but he reckoned it couldn’t be more than a mile away.

‘Stop,’ Danny said. Triggs hit the brakes. ‘Kill the lights.’ Triggs was already on the point of doing so. ‘Approach slowly. Low gear. Keep the engine noise down.’

Triggs moved off again at a crawl. Danny took his Browning from its holster and gave it the once-over. Not his firearm of choice, but it would do. He cocked the weapon, then locked it safe before lowering his window.

‘There’s a light on,’ Danny breathed as they got within half a mile. He could make out a faint halo around the building. It looked as though the light source was on the far side.

Seconds later, it flickered off.

‘Someone knows we’re coming?’ Triggs asked.

Danny narrowed his eyes. ‘Maybe. Keep going.’ He stared hard through the windscreen, panning the area from left to right, super-alert for any sign of movement. There was none.

They stopped twenty metres from the building. Triggs killed the engine.

The silence was sudden and deep.

Triggs withdrew a handgun of his own. ‘Any dead bodies, boy,’ he breathed, ‘and
you
dig the hole. Just so we’re clear.’

Danny didn’t respond. He opened the passenger door and, unlocking his weapon and holding it two-handed, approached the building. His footsteps were almost silent. So were Triggs’s, who was following a couple of metres behind and to his right. Five metres from the building Danny jabbed one hand to the right, indicating that Triggs should follow that direction. Danny himself went left.

Close now, he could tell that the building was a breeze-block shack, about ten metres in length. As he skirted around the left-hand end of the building, he passed an old electricity generator. It was quiet, smelled of fuel and was warm to the touch. Danny surmised that it had just cut out, which would account for the loss of light. But had someone switched it off, or had it failed on its own?

He carefully turned the corner. There was a window along the far side of the building. Danny crouched down as he passed it, but he noticed that the inside panes were covered with newspaper.

Triggs was waiting for him at the other end. He was standing, weapon raised, about seven metres from the door to the building. The door was wide open.

Danny stood by the open door, back against the wall, breathing slowly. He nodded at Triggs. Then, weapon poised, he turned and faced the interior of the building.

His eyes picked out certain features in the darkness. A bed along the wall opposite the window. A metal shelving unit.

And two dead bodies.

Danny felt his stomach twisting. He stepped into the room, checking all four corners for threats as he did so. None. ‘Clear!’ he called. Seconds later, Triggs was there, pulling a small, bright torch from his pocket. He shone it into the faces of the dead bodies.

‘White,’ he said tersely. ‘Either of them your mate?’

Danny shook his head. He felt the knot in his stomach subsiding. ‘Give me that,’ he said, and he grabbed the torch from Triggs’s grasp. He shone it round the room, letting it linger momentarily on the upturned drip stand that lay across the floor, and the faint depression on the mattress of the unmade hospital bed.

At the end of the bed was a plastic box. Danny opened it and found a khaki-coloured T-shirt, stained with blood and with a hole ripped in the front to access a chest wound. Danny recognised it as Spud’s.

‘My mate was here,’ he said.

Triggs was leaning over one of the corpses. ‘These bodies are still fresh,’ he said. ‘Two or three hours max.’

Danny’s mind had already moved on. He was crouching on the ground, shining the torch across the floor. He found what he was looking for five minutes later: a spent cartridge, 9mm.

‘Let me see that,’ Triggs said.

Danny handed it over and illuminated it with the torch. Triggs examined it for a few seconds. ‘See that?’ he said. His fingertip underlined a code etched in tiny writing at the base of the cartridge: it read ‘BOF’. Danny recognised it for what it was: the cartridge’s head stamp, a tiny identification marker that indicated where the ammunition was made.

‘Mean something to you?’ Danny asked.

‘Damn right it does. BOF stands for Bangladesh Ordnance Factory.’

Danny gave him a suspicious look. ‘What are you?’ he said. ‘Some kind of ballistics nerd?’

‘Not really. But I know that head stamp. Only two guys in these parts use that ammo, far as I know.’

Danny gave him a sharp look. ‘How can you be so sure?’

Triggs shrugged as he stood up. ‘One of them’s me. The other’s a friend of mine.’ He shot Danny a defensive look. ‘What do you want me to say, boy? I can’t just stroll into the armoury at Hereford these days. I’m a businessman, the ammo’s cheap, I know a guy who’ll send it anywhere . . .’ He turned his back on the scene and walked out of the building. ‘Bring that torch,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘We need to check for tracks.’

Danny strode out of the building and directed the torch at the ground. The terrain was hard and dry – the worst type of ground for tracking – but there was a thin, patchy covering of dusty sand which accepted footprints here and there. In about thirty seconds Danny found something: a pair of boot prints and, next to it, the indentation of a human foot, with a long channel to its right, as though something had been dragged alongside it.

He followed the tracks for about fifteen metres until he came to a new marking: a set of thick wheels, heading east.

‘Your buddy,’ Danny called back to Triggs. ‘What does he drive?’

‘Land Rover,’ came the reply.

Danny nodded. ‘Spud was here,’ he said. ‘Whoever killed those two guys helped him into a vehicle. Spud had difficulty walking and dragged his right foot in the sand.’

‘
Helped
him into the vehicle?’ Triggs said. ‘Or
forced
him?’

‘You tell me. What kind of guy is this mate of yours?’

‘Not a helpful kind. He wouldn’t be out here unless someone was paying him well. I’m guessing Spud didn’t have much money on him?’

Danny shook his head.

‘Then my guess is he came here to abduct him. The two stiffs in there are collateral damage. A wounded British soldier would be a valuable commodity for certain people in these parts.’

What people
? Danny was on the point of asking. But he didn’t get the chance. At that moment there was a ringing sound from the other side of the building. The two men glanced at each other. Then, firmly gripping their weapons, they eased round the building. The ringing sound was coming from Triggs’s Land Cruiser. Inside it, there was a pale glow. It was the sat phone.

Triggs ran toward the vehicle. Danny followed carefully. He didn’t like the surprised look on his companion’s face. Something was wrong.

He waited at a distance of ten metres while Triggs entered the vehicle and picked up the handset. The ringing stopped. Triggs kept the handset to his ear for about fifteen seconds. Then he laid it carefully on the dashboard and stepped outside the car again. He was frowning. His face was full of suspicion.

‘It’s for you,’ he said.

4

‘What the hell do you mean, it’s for me?’

‘Which bit don’t you understand, boy?’ His face darkened. ‘I thought nobody knew you were here.’

‘Nobody does.’ But he realised, as he said it, that it couldn’t be true. ‘Who have
you
told?’ he demanded. He felt his blood pumping hot as he strode up to his companion and jabbed the heel of his free hand into his chest.

The older man stayed calm. ‘Easy boy,’ he wheezed in his strange half-voice. ‘If I was you, I’d stay on the right side of the only dude in the country who can help you. Answer the fucking phone call.’

Danny cursed under his breath. He stepped away from Triggs, perched on the side of front seat and grabbed the handset. ‘Who’s this?’ he said.

A three-second pause. Then a female voice: ‘
Patching you through to Hereford now. Wait out, seconds ten . . .
’

Hereford? How the hell . . .

Before the ten seconds were out, another voice came on the line. Male. ‘
This is an unencrypted line. Be mindful.
’ Danny recognised the voice of Major Ray Hammond, ops officer in Hereford.

‘How the hell did you find me?’ he said.

‘
The Firm never lost you. They’ve had eyes-on since you left home. And the bloke who’s phone you’re talking into?
’
Hammond was studiously avoiding the use of anyone’s actual names.
‘
You think he’s the only former military asset living in your location? The Firm keep tabs on these people.
’

Danny remembered the white guy whose gaze he had locked back at the airport, and cursed himself for not being more careful.

‘I’m not coming back,’ Danny said. ‘I’ve got a job . . .’

‘
Shut up and listen. We know who you’re trying to find. We’re trying to find him too.
’

‘If anything happens to him, boss, I swear I’ll . . .’

‘
Shut up and let me finish. Our friends in the Doughnut have reported a spike in terrorist radio chatter coming out of Eritrea in the past hour.
’ The Doughnut was the GCHQ building in Cheltenham. It never failed to surprise Danny how extensive their listening networks were. ‘
There’s an Islamist group advertising on certain internet forums that they’ve taken receipt of a wounded British soldier and they’re putting him up for sale to the highest bidder.
’

There was a dark pause. Danny didn’t blame the Regiment for not coming to rescue Spud. They couldn’t authorise an operation without the say-so from on high, and until now, the Firm had been happy to chalk Spud up as lost in action. But now the situation had been turned on its head. If Spud was up for sale, it meant only one thing: some time in the near future, he’d appear on a grainy video dressed in an orange jump suit, with a masked, machete-wielding executioner standing close by. The worst kind of publicity for the West. No wonder they were suddenly more interested in Spud’s safe return.

It warmed your heart.

‘
I’m taking it you haven’t found him yet?
’

Danny glanced toward the building where the two corpses lay on the ground. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘But I’m not far behind.’

‘
Good. We’re mobilising a unit right now, but it could be several hours before they get to you. In the meantime, you’re our only asset on the ground.
’