Who Dares Wins (18 page)

Once the squadron was assembled, the man spoke – the clear, confident voice of someone used to talking in public. ‘Don’t get too comfortable, gentlemen,’ he announced. ‘You’ll be going in tonight.’ He looked around. ‘Air troop sergeant?’

Mac stepped forward.

The spook nodded. ‘Get your lads together. The rest of you, remain on standby.’

The British Army representative spoke up. ‘You can get food at the PX,’ he announced. ‘And I’ll show you where you can bunk down.’ He walked back towards the entrance of the hangar. There was a brief moment of camaraderie among the men – those who were remaining on standby briefly shaking hands with those going on the op. Nothing over the top. Nothing showy. Nobody said ‘good luck’; nobody said anything at all, really.

The others quickly melted away, leaving the eight members of air troop alone with the spook. There was Sam and Mac, Craven, Tyler and Cullen; and three others. Matt Andrews was the troop medic. He was black-skinned with short, cropped hair and a quiet, serious manner. Steve Davenport was one of the regiment’s parachute instructors. He’d done more HALOs than most of the guys had had hot dinners; he’d taught half of them everything they knew and it was always good to have him along during an airborne insertion. And finally there was Hill Webb. Real name Hillary, but call him that and you’d be given a pretty swift demonstration of the Regiment’s more advanced fighting skills. Sam had always found him to be a testy little fucker, but sometimes that was exactly what you wanted.

‘You’ve been briefed on the basic nature of the operation?’ the spook asked when they were all alone. It was only half a question, though, and didn’t require an answer. He turned and led them to a corner of the partitioned room where a large whiteboard had been erected. Two maps were pinned to the board, both of them a couple of metres square. One was an aerial view of a piece of land, crystal clear. It looked like it had been photographed from only a hundred metres up, but in fact it was a satellite image. Next to it was a simple map, a line drawing showing the salient areas of the region in more detail.

‘Your objective is here,’ the spook told them, without preamble. He pointed to three long, rectangular-shaped buildings, set at right angles to each other in a horseshoe arrangement with a small, separate building, not much bigger than a shed, at the north-west corner. Arcing round from the south of the training camp to the west was a thin band of forest. Sam glanced at the scale and estimated it to be about two hundred metres deep. North of the camp and the forest, running west to east was a perfectly straight road. Still further east, stretching further than the boundary of the maps, was what looked like agricultural land. The spook pointed at it. ‘Hemp plants,’ he told them shortly. ‘This area is known as the Chu Valley. It’s a major centre for marijuana production. There are no major settlements close by, but you need to be aware of the possibility of hemp farmers moving their product up and down this road under cover of night.’

The man moved his attention to the area south-west of the band of forest. ‘You’re aiming to HALO into this area here,’ he said. ‘The trees should give you some cover from which to make your assault. We expect most of the targets to be in the southernmost building, but we can’t guarantee that. All the buildings need to be cleared before you call in air to pick you up. We don’t expect there to be any resistance and there’s no intelligence of anything in the way of an armed guard. Once the targets have been taken out, we’ll need photographs for identification purposes.’

‘Aye, well,’ Craven piped up. ‘Tyler can do that. Fucking takes enough pictures of the showers, don’t he?’ He accompanied his joke with a wanking motion to make sure everyone got the message.

‘All right, all right,’ the spook interrupted. ‘Estimated time of insertion: 03.00 hrs. Daylight at 04.27. You need to be well out of there by then. No more than an hour on the ground. Have you got any questions?’

Silence.

‘Good.’ The spook looked solemnly at them. ‘For gentleman of your abilities, it should be a walk in the park.’

Cullen snorted. ‘If it’s going to be so damn easy,’ he muttered in his thick Scottish brogue, ‘maybe you’d like to come along?’

The spook made some reply, but Sam didn’t hear it. He was too busy staring at the maps for a final time, recording the lie of the land, committing it to memory as he knew his patrol mates would be doing. It was a simple set-up, on the face of it. Their unit would be inside the buildings before anyone even knew they were there. The fact that there were only four buildings to clear made it even more straightforward.

Unless, of course, your objective wasn’t what it appeared to be.

As Sam examined the plans, he tried to work out where his brother might be; but it was impossible to tell. Any of these buildings could house him, and when they hit the compound he would be as much at a disadvantage as any of them. If Jacob was going to get away, he needed to be warned of their approach; but Sam couldn’t think of any way to do that without making it clear to his unit that he had compromised the mission.

Nor did he have time to give it much more thought. ‘You’ve got half an hour,’ the spook told them. ‘The aircraft are waiting. Flight time to your insertion point, about two hours.’ He looked them all individually in the eye. ‘Good luck, gentlemen,’ he said briskly. ‘I’ll be here when you get back.’

*

Three and a half thousand miles away, night was falling over London. The windows of the MI6 building on the Albert Embankment started to twinkle in the half-light and workers started to spill from its main entrance and hurry towards the Tube station.

Inside the building, though, plenty of people remained. Their jobs involved parts of the world in very different time zones to London, after all, so the usual boundaries of the average working day meant nothing to them. Among those offices that were still inhabited was one, high up, that overlooked the river. It was a spectacular view, with the bridges all lit up, and the occupant of that office knew he would never tire of it. He stood at the window in a well-cut suit, his tie an immaculate Windsor knot and his hands behind his back, gazing out. He was an elderly man – older, at least, than most of the people who worked for the Firm and were happy to take their retirement at sixty-five and forget all about the complexities of their working lives. Not so Gabriel Bland. Some of the younger members of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service joked that the only way he’d leave was in a box. Bland had heard the jibes and didn’t mind them. They were probably true. Others joked that he had the kind of icy demeanour that indicated he was – that he absolutely
had
to be – some kind of sexual pervert. These rumours were
not
true, but again Bland ignored them, remaining perfectly polite even to those members of the service that he knew to be the most enthusiastic champions of such gossip.

On the desk behind him there was a computer – something Bland really could not get used to – and a small pile of files. There was work to be done on them, but really he knew he would be unable to concentrate on such things. Not tonight. He looked at his watch. Nearly seven o’clock. That would make it almost midnight in Afghanistan where a covert unit were preparing to undergo a mission on his orders. Godwilling they would be successful. If not, things could become exceedingly uncomfortable . . .

A knock on the door. ‘Come!’ Bland called without turning.

He watched the door open in the reflection of the window. A much younger man walked in. He too wore a suit and had hair that was neatly parted to one side and flattened down with some shiny product. It was a curiously old-fashioned look for someone only in their mid-thirties. ‘Yes, Toby?’ Bland intoned.

Toby Brookes. Of late, MI6 had taken to encouraging all manner of people into the service. Brookes, however, reminded Bland of himself as a younger man. A little too eager to please, perhaps. But a good worker. Conscientious. Able to see the bigger picture. Heaven knows, Bland thought to himself, in these troubled times that was an important attribute.

‘Something’s been flagged up, sir,’ Brookes said efficiently. ‘Clare Corbett. I thought you’d want to see it.’

Bland sniffed. He allowed himself one final glance at the river, then turned to face his young assistant. ‘Be so good,’ he asked mildly, ‘as to shut the door, would you Toby?’

Brookes did as he was asked before speaking again. ‘It might be nothing,’ he said in his slightly nasal tone of voice. ‘But I thought I’d bring it to your attention.’

‘That’s most kind of you, Toby,’ Bland murmured.

‘The Met carried out a search,’ Brookes continued. ‘A billing address for a mobile phone number registered in her name.’

Bland remained silent.

‘Like I say,’ Brookes continued, suddenly sounding a little less sure of himself. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

‘When was this request processed, Toby?’

The younger man examined a piece of paper in his hand. ‘Tuesday night,’ he said. ‘Forty-eight hours ago. I guess it took a while to come through the system.’

Bland turned once more to look out of the window. ‘Do you know who the police officer in question is who requested this information?’ He watched Brookes’s reflection as he once more looked at his sheet.

‘A DI Nicola Ledbury.’

‘I see.’ Bland furrowed his hairy, eagle-like eyebrows. ‘I wonder, Toby, if I might ask you to invite Miss Ledbury to come and have a brief word with us.’

‘Of course.’

He turned again and allowed a friendly smile to spread across his lips. ‘Tonight, Toby. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.’

Brookes nodded and gave his superior a look that showed he understood.

‘Thank you, Toby,’ he said quietly. And as the young man slipped out of the room, he returned to his place at the window, surveying the splendour of that scene as he calmly slotted this new piece of information into the jigsaw of his mind. It worried him that he could not yet see the whole picture.

*

Bagram airbase. Midnight.

Before the off, the unit spent every spare moment checking and rechecking their rigs. There was no banter; there was hardly any conversation at all as they went about the business of getting kitted out. Sam approached the runway knowing that his freefall rig was firmly strapped to his body. He had checked the chute several times and strapped his weapon to his side. As he carried his rucksack and helmet away from the aircraft hangar in the company of the rest of the unit, he couldn’t help but feel the familiar sense of tension that always preceded a HALO jump.

It was the little things that could go wrong. At thirty thousand feet there was very little oxygen and the temperature was freezing. Any slight malfunction of the rig and you’d pass out. Problems like that you could predict and prepare for; others you couldn’t. During a high-altitude jump over the Syrian Desert, his mate had hit Sam’s rucksack from one side as they dived from the aircraft. The rucksack had shifted, changing Sam’s centre of balance. He’d started to spin; and once the spinning started, it didn’t stop. Freefalling at one hundred and fifty miles per hour it hadn’t taken him long to black out. He’d have been a goner if it weren’t for the HALO rig’s automatic opening device that kicked in at four thousand feet. When he regained consciousness, the capillaries in the whites of his eyes had burst, his inner ears were fucked and he was too dizzy even to walk, let alone continue the operation. He put that thought from his mind. Burst capillaries or not, nothing was going to stop him from completing what he had to do on
this
op. Nothing at all.

‘We need to talk.’

Mac had started walking alongside him. His friend put a firm hand on Sam’s arm and forced him to a halt, while the others carried on walking. Sam’s body tensed up.

‘What do you mean?’

Mac stared straight into his eyes. ‘You think I didn’t recognise him?’ he murmured.

Sam felt suddenly trapped.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he spat. But even as he spoke, he felt his hand move almost involuntarily to his weapon.

Mac glanced down at Sam’s gun hand. ‘Christ’s sake, mate,’ he hissed. ‘If I was going to stop you, do you think I’d have waited till now?’

The noise of the airfield around him retreated. In that moment there was only Sam and Mac.

‘I couldn’t tell you before, Sam. Not till we were here.’

‘Why the hell not?’ Sam was suddenly angry with his old friend. He didn’t know why. He just couldn’t control his emotions.

‘Think about it, Sam. Something about this whole operation stinks. The Regiment sent out to kill one of their own? And fuck knows what sort of surveillance we’re all under. You and me start having cosy little confabs, it’s going to send up warning signals for someone, isn’t it?’

Sam thought about that. He realised that of all the people he couldn’t trust, Mac was the most trustworthy.

‘I don’t think Five know he’s there,’ Sam said quietly. And then, in response to Mac’s sharp look, ‘Or whoever it is who’s behind this. If they did, they’d hardly be sending you and me on the op.’ He took a deep breath, quickly wondering whether he should tell Mac everything he’d learned – the letter, Clare, the red-light runners, what they were
really
being sent to Kazakhstan to do – and just as quickly deciding not to. It didn’t change anything. It didn’t change what he had to do. ‘I’m not going to let anyone kill him, Mac. I don’t care about the other targets, but I’m not going to let anyone kill my brother.’

‘And you think
I
am? Jesus, Sam, he was my friend. God knows what he’s got himself mixed up in, but . . .’

A shout from up ahead – Tyler, his Cockney voice rising above the noise of the airfield. ‘Havin’ a mass debate, you two?’ he barked lewdly.

Sam and Mac looked towards him, then started to follow the rest of the unit, but slowly.

‘Maybe we should tell the others?’