Osama (40 page)

It was still dark and the mist was thick, yet he could just make out the individual waves crashing onto the beach. He estimated the distance between his firing point and the sand at about 350 metres. Close enough for a swift, clean kill.

He looked over his shoulder. The boy was still lying on the ground. Still shivering. Still silent. It crossed his mind that he should kill him now, but Ashkani had been quite clear: the boy would only cease to be useful once his father was dead. The marksman looked at his watch. Four fifty-six: that gave the kid just over an hour to live.

0558 hours.

The gulls that had flocked on the flat, sandy beach had predicted the arrival of dawn. Their chorus had lasted for a full half-hour. There hadn’t been a particular moment when night had become morning. The sky had just grown almost imperceptibly lighter. The marksman lay very still, watching, waiting. There was a weak offshore wind. It blew the safety flag almost exactly in the marksman’s direction. He checked the direction of the spray, to make sure it matched up with the wind direction further from the ground. It did. He would wait until his target was positioned on a straight line between the rifle and the flag. It would make the shot more accurate because he would then not have to adjust for the altered trajectory of the round.

It was the gulls, too, that announced the arrival of the target. The marksman became aware of crowds of them flocking up from the sands at the northern end of the beach, shrouded by the mist and screeching loudly.

The figure came into view at 0600 hours exactly.

At first he was just a vague darkening of the mist 200 metres to the north, the shapeless form gradually developing a human frame as the gulls screeched and flew away from him. He was walking slowly, his head bowed, his hands stuck into the pockets of his hooded top. His frame was bulky – barrel-chested, almost – and although the hood he was wearing obscured his features, the marksman had the impression that his gait was slow and ponderous. Almost as if he knew he was walking to his death.

‘
Do not underestimate him,
’ Ashkani had said. The marksman didn’t. He examined every facet of the man’s movement. Something wasn’t right. Why was he not looking around? If he was here to see his son, why was he not searching for him?

Perhaps he was not so impressive as Ashkani had predicted.

Or perhaps he thought that if he sacrificed himself, his son would be set free. A foolish thought, but the marksman knew that, at times of stress, a person’s decision-making could lose clarity.

The figure continued to walk at a slow, steady pace. He was ten metres from the line of fire.

Five metres.

Three.

The marksman’s fingers brushed the cold metal of the trigger.

Two metres.

One.

The target stopped.

He turned round, peered out to sea and stood there immobile. Some of the gulls he had disturbed had settled on the sand again, and he was surrounded by them. The marksman experienced a moment of doubt. If this man was here to find his son, why was he not looking around? But he put that thought from his mind – Ashkani’s instructions had been very clear – and adjusted his line of fire by the fraction of a degree necessary to get the target in the centre of his sight. The edge of his body was slightly ill defined because of the mist, but he placed his cross-hairs over the centre of the target’s back: a location as deadly as the head, but broader and therefore easier to hit.

He heard a whimper from the boy: the first sound that had escaped his lips since the marksman had taken possession of him. It was almost as though he knew his father was about to die.

Which he was.

The marksman squeezed the trigger.

The retort of the rifle echoed over the vast expanse of sea and air. The gulls that had congregated on the sand flocked up into the sky with a single mind, and a sudden, frightened squawk.

And the target crumpled, instantly, to the ground.

The gunman watched the body. He didn’t know why. Something told him he should. Its head was pointing out to sea, and as the waves swelled towards the beach, the water lapped against it. A seagull settled on the body, and then another. To them, the corpse was clearly as still and solid as a rock.

The marksman lowered his gun. His fingers felt for the satellite phone at his side and, for the first time since arriving at the firing point, he rose to his feet. He stood a metre from the edge of the cliff, looking out to sea. Without the aid of the sight on his rifle, the body on the beach was just an indistinct lump. Further out, he could see the grey outline of an oil tanker. The breeze was a little stiffer now, and it blew his black hair away from his face as he called a number, which rang only once before it was answered.

‘Well?’ came Ashkani’s voice in Arabic.

‘It’s done.’

‘Good. See to the boy and do not contact me again.’

‘Wait!’

‘What is it?’

A pause.

‘
Allahu Akbar
,’ said the marksman.

‘
Allahu Akbar
,’ Ashkani replied.

The line went dead.

The marksman stared at the digital display for a brief moment. He thought of Ashkani. Thought of what he was about to do. ‘
You would not wish to deny the Lion his final roar?
’
he had said. No indeed. A picture rose in his mind: a thin, weak old man, wrapped in a blanket as he watched television in a shabby room in a compound far away in Pakistan. That was the image his killers wanted to present of the Sheikh al-Mujahid, but his last act would strike fear into the heart of the West.

Then he saw the briefest glint of something reflected in the screen.

He had no way of knowing what it was. No way of recognizing the checked lumberjack shirt or the expression of purest menace. And no way of defending himself as the figure marched relentlessly towards the edge of the cliff, his arm outstretched, a handgun in his fist as, having located the marksman, he strode close enough to ensure a single round from that weapon would serve its purpose.

The marksman closed his eyes. The flicker of a smile played across the corners of his lips. He had been beaten. He did not mind. He had always known that Paradise would come earlier to him than to others who did not fight the
jihad
.

He heard the gunshot from three metres behind, and felt the round enter the back of his neck and become lodged in the gristle at the front of his throat. He felt the sudden impact pushing him forward. He might not have toppled quite so soon if the heel of a shoe hadn’t jabbed him hard in the small of his back. As it was, he experienced the sudden weightlessness of freefall less than a second after he had been shot. As he fell, the breeze that had blown his hair back from his face slammed his body against the side of the cliff and it was the impact of this that finally knocked the life from him. He was dead seconds before he crashed onto the rocks below.

Joe watched him fall.

The sound of the body’s final impact did not reach him at the top of the cliffs. There was just the wind in his ears and the hissing of the waves against the sand. From the back pocket of his jeans, Joe pulled the American passport in the name of Mahmood Ashkani and threw it after its owner. By the time it had hit the ground, he was kneeling next to his son, untying the ropes that bound him and rolling him over onto his back.

‘Conor?’ he breathed.

The boy’s face, pale and bruised, stared back blankly.

He checked Conor’s vital signs. His pulse was weak, his breathing shallow. Every limb was trembling. There was a cut on his lip that looked like it had become infected. But it wasn’t his physical state that made fear rise in the back of Joe’s throat. It was his mental condition. It wasn’t just that he didn’t recognize his own father: he didn’t seem to be aware of anything at all.

Joe scrambled the three metres back to the cliff?’s edge. His eyes narrowed as he saw the motionless form of Eva down below, wrapped in Kevlar and body armour and wearing the clothes Joe had stolen along with the bike.

She wasn’t
moving.

Joe quickly detached the sight from the dead man’s sniper rifle and used it to zoom in on her. The tide was lapping around her head. Two seagulls had settled on her body. Although it was difficult at this distance to be sure, Joe thought he could make out a dark patch, about the size of his hand, on her hooded top. And he knew what that meant.

Icy dread crashed over him. He looked from his oldest friend to his son. Had he sacrificed one for the other?

He shoved the sight in his shoulder bag, quickly dismantled the sniper rifle, then picked Conor up from the floor as easily as if he was a rag doll. With his son lifted over his shoulder, he started to run through the bracken. There was a steep, rocky descent to the beach 150 metres to the north. He covered the ground in less than twenty seconds, even with Conor’s extra weight, spurred on by adrenalin and a deep, horrible sense of foreboding.

He descended sideways, but otherwise with no thought for his own personal safety as he scrambled and slipped down to the beach, barely aware of the rain that had just started to fall. As he ran towards Eva, the sand felt like glue, dragging him back, holding him down . . .

And then he was just two metres from her, laying Conor gently on his back and kneeling down in the cold, salty water as he pressed his hand to the dark patch which had doubled in size . . . ripping the hood back from Eva’s face to see it pale and waxy, her nose and half of her mouth submerged in the water. He scooped her up and moved her away from the water’s edge, before pressing his fingers to her neck. Her skin was icy, but there was a pulse. She was still alive. Just.

Joe pulled the top over her head to reveal her torso clad in body armour, her shoulders and elbows wrapped in Kevlar pads. The blood was seeping from her left side, where the front armoured plate met its rear twin. He quickly undid the straps that held the two together. She was wearing a T-shirt underneath it, and this too was saturated with blood. Joe pulled it up to see the damage. An open wound. Massive blood loss. The rain was heavy now, but not heavy enough to wash away the blood. He quickly unstrapped the Kevlar helmet from Eva’s head, ran to the sea and filled it with water. Back at her side, he poured the salty water over the wound. As the blood washed away, he saw a gash at the side of her abdomen about two inches long and found himself exhaling deeply with relief. It was a flesh wound, not an entry wound. The round must have ricocheted somehow and punctured the gap between the plates. Had the angle been only slightly different, she would have been dead.

But even this wound was dangerous. The blood was flowing again. Joe had to stem it. He grabbed the top – it was covered with salt and sand now, but he couldn’t do anything about that. He ripped it along one of its seams and then wrapped it round Eva’s abdomen, tying the sleeves in a tight knot so that the material pressed firmly against the wound. It was hardly ideal, but it was the best he could do.

Eva coughed. Seawater spilled from her mouth. Her eyes flickered open. At first he thought she couldn’t see anything – her pupils expanded and contracted as she tried to focus. But then her vision seemed to clear. ‘Joe?’ she whispered.

‘We’ve got to get you back to the house.’ Joe’s voice was breathless. ‘You’ve lost a lot of blood . . .’

‘Conor . . . ’

‘He’s . . . OK. He’s here. Eva, do you think you can walk?’ He knew he couldn’t safely carry them both, not in the state they were in.

Eva closed her eyes. With a great effort she nodded, then tried to push herself up onto her elbows, before sinking back into the sand.

Joe put his hands under her arms and helped her to a sitting position. Her face was creased with pain, but she gave no word of complaint. Moments later she had one arm around Joe’s shoulder as he bent to pick up Conor, who was still lying, eyes open, on the sand, shivering but otherwise motionless.

It was still not fully light. The beach was deserted. His son over his shoulder, his oldest friend leaning heavily on his other side, Joe staggered slowly back towards the cliff. They needed shelter. They needed care. The nearest place was a kilometre from the clifftop. It was a deserted house where the body of an old woman lay rotting at the bottom of the stairs. A place where Joe was hopeful of finding something that might tell him more about the man he had just sent to his death.

It was not in Mahmood Ashkani’s nature to smile often, but he did sometimes. It was a sign of how much Mansfield’s continued refusal to die had unnerved him that confirmation of his death had lifted a weight from his shoulders.

He glanced at the passenger seat, at his laptop and satellite phone, and at the small data stick that looked so ordinary but whose contents would, within a few hours, have been viewed by half the people on the planet. Then he glanced at the dashboard clock. Seven thirteen. No need to increase his speed. He had plenty of time.

He arrived at his destination half an hour later. It was the bleak entrance to a deserted slate mine that had long since been abandoned. He parked his car behind a ten-metre-high pile of slag, quite confident that nobody would disturb him here. He had not chosen this place for that reason, however, but simply because it was the right place to be. He plugged his satellite phone into the side of his laptop before doing the same with the data stick.