Rotten Gods (38 page)

Now he hears the crump of exploding gas canisters and realises that he has just seconds to vacate the building. He leaves through the back entrance at a run, where smoke is already thick from the grenades. Using this cover, he moves from the clearing into the sparse vegetation of the cliff tops, holding the girl tight to still her struggles. Gunfire comes from behind him, but he does not turn, just rips mighty lungfuls of air through his nostrils and expels them through his lips, taking leaping strides, almost tripping once but recovering his balance in time.

He enters the darkness away from the camp, and the concussion of gunfire loses its sharpness, the smell of phosphorus smoke fading, whipped away by the sea breeze that blows more briskly as they near the cliff, cool on his face after the claustrophobic hut.

Stopping at the edge of the cliff, he smells the sea now, hunting for a downwards path with his eyes. The girl in his arms struggles, cries out, a sound lost against the already withering firefight, but enough to alarm him. Freeing one hand he brings it down hard on the side of her face.

‘Shut up, or die now.'

The warm bundle collapses in his arms and he tucks her back further, legs dangling like those of a chicken. He begins to run down the track towards the boat, heedless of the crumbling stony surface.

 

Men scramble from the huts — half dressed, guns in hands, coughing from the CS gas, cut down where they huddle and fall over each other in the rush to find safety, struggling to react to a wraith-like enemy that comes from all directions. The gas is a new variant of the old chlorobenzalmalononitrile formula, safer than previous versions yet, delivered as an aerosol, debilitating with the slightest contact.

Targets now scattered, PJ leaps to his feet, running. His feet hammer into the compound as if disconnected from his body. The retractable stock of the HK53 thumps against his shoulder. He views the world through the single-minded ferocity of the lens, focusing on the door. A bearded face appears and he follows it before squeezing the trigger, watching the man go down, following the fall, firing again before resuming the scan.

The hapless faces of the targets stream with tears and mucus. Most drop their weapons from the effects of the gas. PJ knows what it feels like. Once, during a drill, he was affected and he still remembers the nausea, disorientation, dulled senses. It is almost impossible to function in the conventional sense.

PJ primes a green phosphorus grenade at the door to signal that he is into the building. Time moves slowly as his eyes, empowered with the night-vision goggles, scan the interior.

A figure races for the door and PJ takes him with a three-round tap to the chest. Moving deeper into the room he sees two human shapes huddled on the floor. Another stands nearby, misty green through the goggles, an Uzi submachine gun directed at the hostages. On his face is a gas mask. The man takes on an inhuman aspect, the mask giving him an otherworldly shape that hardens PJ's resolve.

The field of fire behind the target is clear. PJ shoots him twice, watches him fall, then runs to where the oldest of the captives
sits, weeping over the unmoving form of one of the girls.

Other men enter the hut now, checking, securing. PJ snaps, ‘Help me get them out of here, for God's sake.' One leads the young woman towards the door while he moves to the girl, lifting her beneath her knees and shoulders, carrying her outside, past the prisoners kneeling near the central fire, setting her down at a safe distance where he assesses her quickly. She is conscious now, breathing heavily, her eyes wide with fear. He can see two wounds: one in her shoulder and the other a nick on the side of her neck. He compresses the shoulder wound with his bare hand, stemming the flow of blood that has soaked the side of her shirt.

‘Medic,' he calls, ‘over here. Hurry.'

The girl's breathing changes and PJ realises that she is trying to speak, words interspersed with great racking sobs. ‘He … took her. Hannah. She's … gone.'

‘Who took her?'

‘The black one  … The dark one  … When the  … shooting started … Please get her back.'

‘Where did he go?'

‘Out there.'

PJ feels his throat squeeze tight. ‘I'll get her, I promise.'

More promises. Hell.
Blinding impatience, frustration, relief, subjugated by the realisation that the matter is not finished. He waits until the unit medic takes over her care, unpacking his field kit beside her, then moves across to where three bearded prisoners huddle around the fire. PJ grabs one by the hair and trains the HK on him. ‘Where is the other girl?'

The upturned face stares up at him, then spits a single sentence that finishes with ‘Allahu akbar'.

Someone touches PJ's shoulder. ‘There's no point. He doesn't speak English.'

‘The hell he doesn't.' PJ brings the muzzle of his weapon down to kiss against the man's temple. The smile widens, mouth dark and studded with yellow teeth. Strings of saliva join upper and lower jaws. ‘Allahu akbar,' he croaks out.

‘He's saying that God is Great. He wants you to pull the trigger. He wants you to martyr him.'

‘Jesus Christ, how do you beat these bastards?' PJ shouts, shoving the man down, where he lies still, seemingly expecting a bullet.

PJ turns away. There are more of them down at the harbour. That is where she must be. The memory of the little girl being led across the compound fills his heart. He made a promise to a father, now to a sister, and it is not one that he intends to break.

 

Five men guard the storehouse, a stone hut tunnelled into the cliff, one of the original fishermen's huts that dot the stone outcrops of the archipelago. The boat sits adjacent to the timber jetty built of old teak logs brought unknown decades earlier from across the sea.

As Saif approaches he grunts out the password and the others crowd him, recognising him with relief. ‘What is happening, sayyid? Please instruct us. Have the kufr attacked?'

‘The kufr have overcome the camp. Help me carry explosives, let us fill the boat. Hurry! A battery, detonators, wires.'

Saif al-Din carries the girl into the boat, using a rope to lash her to a bulkhead, looping it around her chest, then winding several times around the wrists. His fingers are jumpy and nervous. He fumbles with the knots, and she starts to fight him, necessitating a swift blow to the side of the head. Again she falls limp.

Saif smiles down on her. She too will die; will be with him at the moment of detonation. But not until the last moment — then
if the kufr chase him by boat he will have a hostage. Westerners are weak. They will not fire on him when she is aboard.

Now, lifting his head to listen to the sporadic gunfire, he climbs over the gunwale, loping back to the storehouse, where the mujahedin are unloading; the nervous, sweaty smell of them strong despite the breeze.

The storehouse is loaded with bags of nitrate fertiliser explosives, the remnants of a purchase made through Afriwide International suppliers in Nairobi, Kenya. Saif organised the consignment himself, using a fabricated NGO as a front, choosing the ammonium nitrate variety that he has used with success in the past.

The entire shipment was mixed with diesel fuel at the correct ratio here on the island and rebagged. Detonator systems were made up using 12-gauge shotgun cartridges, heat coils, plastic tube, and wire. Fifty kilograms of explosives went to make up the charges carried by Zhyogal and the others into the Rabi al-Salah Centre.

Now, Saif supervises the loading, packing explosives into the V-berth cabin of the RIB, the bags sitting in the curves and corners around the bunks. All the time Saif plans ahead — thinking of the next step. He knows that the kufr commandos must have come from somewhere. Out there in the sea is a ship, a big one. It would be a glorious act to send it to the bottom of the sea.

They carry across five more bags, enough to tear a hole in a battleship.

The mujahedin beg to be allowed to come with him and die also as martyrs.

‘No,' he tells them, ‘stay here, defend this storehouse, and when you are about to be overcome, detonate the rest of the explosives. Kill as many of the kufr as possible. I will see you in the green gardens of Jannah before the sun rises tomorrow.'

 

The twin Mercury outboards, tilted down on their hydraulic rams, start with just a pulse of the key. Saif throws off the lines while they warm up, water spitting out from the telltales and fizzing into the sea. Heedless of the hull bumping against the jetty, he pushes the throttles down hard, twisting the wheel, feeling the loaded RIB climb sluggishly onto the plane.

The entrance to the harbour is tricky, with sharp rocks lurking below the surface, and just a narrow channel. Negotiating it requires all his attention before he rounds the final cliffs, into the open sea at last.

Saif sets the boat on autopilot while he prepares the explosive charges. Not taking any chances he sets three detonators deep into the sacks then plays wire out into the cockpit. He cuts the ends with side cutters then strips insulation from both strands. These he sits next to the battery before moving back to the controls. There is no finesse to the preparations. The timing device he sets to the shortest possible delay. Thirty seconds. It is swift — uncomplicated and foolproof.

 

PJ is halfway down the cliff, clinging behind a hummock of earth on the trail when he sees the vessel as a blob of darkness passing through the sheltering arms of the harbour, just as the first burst of automatic fire comes out of the night, illuminating the storehouse below.

Captain Pennington settles down beside him. ‘We could call in an artillery strike from the ship onto that storehouse.'

‘What if the other girl is there? We can't take that risk.'

‘Unlikely — surely she's on that boat?'

PJ turns, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice. ‘Beg your pardon, sir, but do you know that beyond any doubt? Do you know that I won't have to look a man in the eye and tell him we called in the four-inch HE round that blew his daughter into little pieces?'

‘OK, OK. Take it easy. Let's have the benefit of your thoughts.'

PJ peers through the goggles. ‘I can see three of them, no four. I'll go down and take them out.' The words come as disconnected grunts. What he is proposing is infinitely dangerous. Four, maybe five men against one at close quarters.

‘That's your call. I'll stay here and keep firing as if they've got us pinned down. As soon as you engage we'll come down on them fast.'

PJ uses the officer's foot as a handhold as he goes over the edge, scrabbling for purchase on anything that comes to hand. Finally he is on his way down an almost sheer face, stones falling ahead of him and splashing into the sea.

Reaching the bottom, he is conscious of the sound of falling stones and rubble, trying to time his movements with outbreaks of shooting from above. The sea laps all the way to the base of the cliffs and he sloshes along in calf-deep water towards the jetty area, keeping his movements slow. Silence is vital now. Finally he stops altogether, using his eyes like weapons.

Three gunmen kneel close together, using the ruins of an old stone wall for cover. They shoot intermittently up at the SBS men on the path and it is tempting to take them out in one burst. Instead he moves as close as he dares, unclipping a grenade from his webbing, pulling the pin and lobbing it underhand into the midst of the group.

As if hearing the grenade land they hit the earth and roll fast, but the timer is set for just three seconds and they have little time
to move. In the last of the flash PJ sees a fourth man run inside the door of the storehouse. He fires after him, and is just about to follow when he hears a shout from up on the track.

‘PJ. No. Run!'

PJ does not even consider ignoring the warning  — no SBS comrade would give it without dire need. He turns and tries to get away, pumping his arms like tie rods on a steam locomotive. Reaching the shallows near the jetty, salt water sprays up around his legs and to his thighs.

The blast, when it comes, picks him up and throws him face down into the water. The shockwave is pitiless, robbing him of air and strength. The heat sears and scorches exposed skin — the back of his neck and hands. He feels himself begin to drown.

Uncaring now, he lies face down. There is no longer any desire to breathe. Hands clutch at his shirt, and he feels himself lifted. Someone drags him to shore. He sits up, empties a stream of bile onto the bare earth. Recovering, he looks at Pennington, and then Don, who has come up beside him.

‘Thank you,' he chokes out. He has lost his night-vision goggles, but not his weapon, still looped around his shoulder. He tries to focus on Captain Pennington.

‘You,' he says, ‘saved my bloody life.' He forces himself to his feet. It is not over yet.
They
still have one of the girls. No harm can come to her. Not when he has made a promise.

 

Saif hears the explosion and looks back to see the orange fireball ballooning high into the sky. He hugs himself with excitement, wondering how many of the infidel commandos have perished.

With that thought warm in his heart he turns and looks to where he tied the kufr girl against the bulkhead. He grunts
in annoyance. The girl has gone, having somehow slipped out of the ropes. He opens the door into the cabin and switches on the interior light. It is filled with the sacks of explosive, surely leaving insufficient space for even a girl of that size to hide. He closes the door and moves back into the cockpit, then walks around the side decks once. There is no sign of her. Saif relaxes. She must have slipped overboard and, if so, the sharks will have her.

Soon there will be enough killing, he thinks to himself. A kufr warship, a thousand men perhaps, waiting out there in the night. Clear on the radar now. He thinks of the commandos trying to return to their ship, only to see an explosion lighting the heavens.