Bad Soldier: Danny Black Thriller 4 (10 page)

He moved along to the ladder, bent his knees and jumped. His fingertips just brushed the bottom rung, but slipped off it. He cursed under his breath and tried again. This time he didn’t even reach the bottom rung, and he fell in a painful heap on the floor.

There was a great hissing sound from the freight train. Did that mean it was about to move? Joe stood up. He took a deep breath and jumped for a third time. His left hand slipped off the rung again, but he just managed to grab hold with his right hand. He felt his other three limbs flailing pathetically, but got control of himself and grabbed the rung with his left hand too.

Joe wasn’t strong, and months of travel had weakened him further. It took everything he had to pull himself slowly up four rungs of the ladder until his feet were no longer hanging helplessly in mid-air. His muscles burned, and when the train hissed again his sense of panic went into overdrive. He scrambled quickly up the remainder of the ladder and peered nervously over the top edge of the freight carriage. The one thing he didn’t know was what this train was carrying. Would it be safe for him to stow away among its contents?

He peered through the darkness, and a sense of relief swelled up over him. It was gravel. A great, coarse, wet pile of it, filled to about half a metre below the brim of the container. Joe swung his legs over the edge and landed inelegantly. His glasses fell from his face and he spent a few seconds scrabbling around in the gravel. When he found them, however, he didn’t put them back on his face, but instead stowed them carefully inside his rucksack. Then he started scooping out a hollow in the gravel. It took him thirty seconds to make one deep enough to cover up his rucksack, before he started digging himself into the gravel. Just because there was nobody checking the train at this location, security might be tighter when they grew closer to the border. It was important that he stayed hidden.

Within seconds, Joe’s clothes and skin were caked in wet gravel. It was much more difficult for him to cover himself than he had imagined, but at least he was semi-hidden. He just hoped it would be enough.

A third hiss from the freight train. Two seconds later, Joe felt it move. He shivered. The wet gravel was extracting any remnants of warmth from his body. His plan was far more gruelling and uncomfortable than he had thought it would be.

But as the train gathered speed, Joe consoled himself with one thought. It didn’t matter how cold he was, nor how ill it made him. It didn’t matter how dangerous his situation, or how likely it was that he would be captured. It didn’t even matter if he was killed. Whatever the future brought, it would be better than what had happened in the past.

And when you have only one aim in life, as Joe did, there is nothing you won’t suffer to make it happen.

Five

‘I can’t believe that fucker Tony tried to plug me.’

It was the third time Spud had said this in the past ten minutes. And as on each previous occasion, Danny and Caitlin said nothing, because there was nothing to say.

They sat with trays of heated microwave lasagne in front of them. Danny’s was half-eaten. He didn’t have the stomach for it. Spud had barely touched his food, but Caitlin had wolfed hers down.

‘Hungry?’ Spud said. He sounded slightly aggressive.

Caitlin gave him a cool look. ‘I need some tucker. Got a problem with that?’

‘Oh nothing. In fact, I’m really looking forward to witnessing a bit of . . . what was it? Rectal feeding? Whatever the fuck that is. Really sharpens the old appetite.’

‘They’ll cark it before morning anyway,’ Caitlin said matter-of-factly. ‘Nobody’s going to let them live after going to the trouble of getting Tony to kill all those migrants.’ She seemed quite sure that this was what had happened, and if she was upset at her sudden break-up with Tony, she didn’t show it. ‘They need to get the information out of them somehow.’ She gave Spud a shrewd look. ‘If you’ve got a problem with this kind of thing, get out of the game.’

Spud’s cheek twitched awkwardly. ‘I’m just saying,’ he said, bristling like a child losing an argument, ‘you’ve got to be pretty keen on your job to come and work in the arse end of nowhere like this for months on end. I don’t mind a bit of interrogation. It’s when the interrogators start to enjoy it that I get a bad taste in my mouth.’

What was it Hammond had said?
Keep a close eye on Spud. He’s been at the receiving end of more than his fair share of field interrogations. The military shrink flagged it up before I put him back on ops.
Danny knew he had to watch his mate.

Caitlin, however, gave a callous little shrug. ‘I just hope that Penfold drongo gets something worth knowing out of them,’ she said. ‘I’d hate to have gone through all this for chicken feed.’

Danny was about to reply, but the sound of someone clearing their throat at the doorway stopped him. Penfold was standing there, and clearly had been for a few seconds. Having heard what Caitlin had called him, his cheeks were slightly flushed. ‘We’re ready for you,’ he said. ‘Come this way.’

Caitlin showed no hint of embarrassment as she stood up and strode towards him. Danny and Spud followed. It was an indication of how shaken up he was that there was no sign of a smirk on Spud’s face. The old Spud would have found a situation like that hilarious. ‘You don’t have to watch, mucker,’ Danny said quietly.

Spud just gave him a dead-eyed look. ‘What are you talking about?’ he muttered. He followed Caitlin out of the room.

‘Spud.’

Spud looked back at him.

‘We leave them to it. Even if we don’t like what we see.’

Spud sniffed. ‘Course,’ he said.

Danny watched him go, concern nagging at him. Spud was unfocussed, and had been ever since the incident on the ship. Danny didn’t blame him, but he didn’t like it either.

Penfold led them back into the hexagonal interrogation room. There were three more people in here now. One of them wore a white coat and carried a clipboard. A doctor, Danny surmised. A second man was very young – barely in his twenties – and looked Middle Eastern. Danny had him down as a translator. A third guy was broad-shouldered, with a shaved head and a cracked front tooth that gave him a brutish expression. The muscle. He looked at Danny, Spud and Caitlin with an undisguised frown as they entered.

‘Put these on,’ Penfold said, passing round a handful of black balaclavas to everyone in the room. They all pulled them on – even Penfold himself, whose glasses formed a slight bulge under the black material. The translator looked particularly uncomfortable as he pulled his balaclava on.

‘Try not to get in the way, please,’ Penfold told them. He received three flinty stares from the unit’s eyeholes in return. ‘OK, Birchill, bring him out.’

Danny, Spud and Caitlin moved to the edge of the room. The guy with the cracked tooth – Birchill was obviously his name, or anyway the name he preferred to use in this place – walked to the cell containing one of the targets, opened it up and disappeared inside. He emerged a few seconds later, dragging a thin, naked, shivering man with a bruised torso and shrunken genitals. Santa, the taller and darker of the two prisoners. He was still hooded but his ankles and wrists had been untied. His body was very lean. Small muscles, but well defined. A bit of a six-pack. Birchill removed the hood as a blast of cold air came from Santa’s cell. Penfold and his team had obviously been making life as uncomfortable as possible for their guests.

Santa’s dark face looked crazy with fear. All the arrogance visible in the photograph of him was now absent. His eyes were rolling in his head. His whole body was shaking. As Birchill dragged him by one arm towards one of the other chambers, Danny could see a stain of brown on the back of his thigh – a remnant of where his bowels had loosened out of terror. Santa was pathetically trying to cover his genitals with the palm of his free hand. He shouted a couple of words in Arabic that Danny didn’t recognise. The translator stepped over to the man with the clipboard and muttered something. The man with the clipboard made a note, while Santa was bundled into the room that had the chain attached to the wall, and the dog collar at one end.

‘Seriously?’ Spud said quietly, his voice slightly muffled by the balaclava. ‘Walling? Why not just waterboard him? Get it over with?’

Spud sounded disgusted, and Danny silently agreed with him. It wasn’t that he felt a moment’s real sympathy for the two IS suspects. It was just that there were more efficient ways to interrogate them, and he couldn’t help feeling that what was about to happen had something to do with the sick enjoyment of Penfold and his team. He glanced at Spud. His mate’s eyes were slightly narrowed. Even Caitlin, who had sounded so matter-of-fact in the other room, now looked a little doubtful.

‘Our methods are effective,’ Penfold stated. ‘You don’t need to worry about that.’ He stepped into the chamber and switched on the spotlights. The prisoner squinted hard. ‘Birchill,’ Penfold told the broad-shouldered man, ‘go ahead. You know the drill. Two minutes to start with.’

He looked over at the others and nodded at them to indicate that they could enter the interrogation room. They filed in, along with the translator and the guy in the white coat. They stood behind the spotlights, their arms crossed.

Santa was struggling violently – he had stopped trying to cover his genitals and was attempting to hit Birchill. It was futile. Birchill was easily strong enough to hold on to him with one hand and slip the dog collar over his neck with the other. He tightened it, like a belt. Santa’s hands instantly shot up to his neck as he tried to rip the collar off. He started to shout loudly in Arabic. Birchill grabbed both his wrists, yanked them behind his back and bound them together again with a set of plasticuffs. The translator started speaking in a flat monotone. ‘You’ve got the wrong guy . . . you’ve got the wrong guy . . . please . . . let me go . . . let me go . . . you’ve got the wrong guy . . .’

On the far side of the chamber Birchill had grabbed Santa’s collared neck in one big hand. With a sudden, brutal thrust, he slammed the prisoner hard against the concrete wall. Santa’s knees buckled with the impact. As he collapsed, the chain grew taut. His eyes bulged as his neck was throttled by the hanging, and he stuck his tongue gruesomely out.

Birchill let him hang like that for no more than a second before yanking him up again. The chain grew slack. The prisoner shouted something. The interpreter said, impassively: ‘Not again.’

Santa’s relief was only momentary. Almost immediately, his muscular tormentor battered him against the wall for a second time. There was a dull thud of impact. The prisoner’s whole body seemed to go limp with the collision. He slid, dazed, down the wall. The chain tightened again. Danny saw a smattering of blood dripping down the side of Santa’s face. Birchill shoved him up to his feet again so that he was no longer being throttled, but he was gasping noisily as he tried to swallow some air. Still holding him, Birchill looked over his shoulder, through the window at Penfold, with an enquiring expression on his face.

Penfold nodded abruptly. Birchill slammed the prisoner against the wall for a third time.

The man in the white coat had been scribbling notes while all this happened. Now he exchanged a look with Penfold, and inclined his head. Penfold raised one hand, palm outwards. A dreadful rasping noise came from the back of Santa’s throat. It sounded like he was trying to say something, but couldn’t formulate the words. The interpreter said nothing.

Penfold and the interpreter walked further into the room. They stood two metres back from the prisoner while Birchill continued to hold him up to keep the rope slack. ‘You have information relating to an attack on British soil,’ Penfold said. He waited for a moment while his colleague translated into Arabic.

Santa shook his head. His eyes were still rolling.

‘You might as well tell me what it is,’ Penfold said. ‘It would be better for you, in the long run.’

The translator did his job. Again, Santa shook his head.

Penfold looked over his shoulder towards the man in the white coat. ‘Would you join us?’ he said.

The man in the white coat entered the chamber. While Birchill continued to hold the prisoner up, the doctor checked his pulse and pulled open his eyelids to examine his pupils. ‘He’s fine,’ he said after half a minute.

‘I think we’ll move into the water chamber,’ Penfold said, his eyes flickering over at Spud. ‘Bring him please.’

Birchill undid the collar. The prisoner collapsed to the floor as Penfold and the doctor walked out into the main room. Danny looked at Spud again. ‘Calm down, buddy,’ he said quietly. ‘This is their call, not ours.’

He instantly knew it was the wrong thing to say. Spud left the chamber. Birchill dragged the prisoner out of the walling chamber and into the waterboarding chamber. Penfold and the others were watching without any emotion. ‘You know you’re doing this all arse-about-tit, right?’ Spud said, a hard edge to his voice.

Penfold shut the door to the waterboarding chamber, then slowly turned to look at Spud. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said coolly.

‘You heard me. You’re screwing this up, big time.’

Penfold’s gaze hardened. ‘You’ll forgive me if I trust to my own considerable experience,’ he said.

Spud walked up towards him. Danny found himself holding his breath. He glanced at Caitlin, who nodded almost imperceptibly. They both took a couple of paces forward, ready to restrain Spud if he went for the spook.