Bad Soldier: Danny Black Thriller 4 (16 page)

As he left the bathroom, a man in Arabic dress was waiting outside. Tony gave him a death stare as he pushed past him. Back along the aisle, five seats from his own, the same air hostess was leaning towards another passenger. Tony caught the disapproving sidelong glance she gave him. It almost made him want to spit with laughter. He slapped one hand against her arse. ‘Lighten up, love,’ he said.

The air hostess spun round. She looked very angry. It just made Tony want to laugh. ‘Please
don’t
touch me, sir,’ she said.

Tony sneered. He went for her arse again, but suddenly the guy she’d been dealing with was on his feet. He was older, in his sixties, with a neatly cut suit and a receding hairline. ‘There’s no need for—’ he started to say in a pronounced Italian accent.

He didn’t finish his sentence. Tony saw red. He didn’t even bother to use his fists. He simply headbutted the guy squarely in the centre of his face. There was a cracking sound as the Italian man’s nose went. He crumpled back down into his seat, clutching his nose to stem the sudden flow of blood. The air hostess gasped, but there was an acute silence from the other passengers – it was clear none of them wanted to get involved. Tony spat at the feet of the old Italian man, then wiped a smear of blood from his forehead. Staggering slightly from the booze, he started making his way back to his own seat. But he stopped before he reached it. Four air stewards were approaching, two from either end of the aisle. Tony found himself wanting to laugh again at these ponced-up pretty boys with their clean-cut collars and perfect haircuts. Did they really think that they would be able to restrain Tony? Didn’t they know who the hell he was?

‘Tossers,’ he muttered under his breath. Then he looked up at them. ‘Seriously, fellas,’ he said. ‘Don’t even fucking go there . . .’

Tony took his seat. Two of the air stewards were standing right by him. They were glancing uncertainly at each other, as if this was a situation they’d never encountered, and they didn’t know quite what to do.

Tony grabbed his drink, raised it to them in a toast, then downed it in one. He belched loudly. ‘Wake me up when we get to raghead land,’ he said, before reclining in his seat and closing his eyes. He knew the air stewards were still standing over him, and probably would be for the rest of the flight.

That was their problem, he thought. Tony had some booze to sleep off.

‘Why the hell aren’t we on a plane back home?’ Spud demanded.

It was midday. The Italians at Sigonella base had given them a large Portakabin for their personal use, but it was hardly the lap of luxury: four chairs, no table, and a TV in one corner with an Italian football game, sound turned down low.

‘You know as much as I do,’ Danny said. ‘We’re heading east. Hammond’s on his way. He’ll brief us when he’s here.’ He kept his voice level, but he was just as peeved as Spud. And he found Hammond’s insistence that they stay in situ just as mysterious. Surely the operation was over. He wanted to get back home. See the kid. Buy her a Christmas present. Not that he’d have admitted that to his unit-mates.

At least they’d had a chance to clean up and put on the dry camouflage gear supplied by the Italians. Apart from that, they’d stayed hidden in the Portakabin, out of sight of anyone else on the base, eating rations from their saturated packs. Grabbing what sleep they could, sitting on the hard chairs. And waiting.

There was a constant sound from the base of aircraft leaving and arriving. It was so regular that Danny barely noticed it as he stared unseeingly at the footie. It was 1230 hours precisely, however, when a sound shook him out of his trance. He’d heard a Hercules coming in to land often enough to recognise the distinctive roar of its engines. He walked to the window of the Portakabin, lifted the metal shutters and peered out. He just had line of sight towards the runway. Sure enough a C-130K was descending shakily towards the base. It could even have been the same aircraft that had dropped them at the base the previous night. Whatever, it was definitely a special forces flight, no doubt flown by the guys from 47 Squadron.

He let the blind fall and turned to the others. ‘He’s here,’ he said.

Sure enough, ten minutes later the door to the Portakabin opened. Ray Hammond appeared.

It was a joke among the lads in the Regiment that the more stressed-out Ray Hammond was, the darker the rings under his eyes. Right now, he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. He was a tough, grizzled soldier, a veteran of both Gulf Wars. Danny didn’t think he’d ever seen him smile. He had a relentlessly hangdog expression that normally seemed to hide any emotion, whether positive or negative. Today, however, his frown was more pronounced than usual. It matched those rings under his eyes. There were no greetings. Just a curt: ‘This way.’ Danny, Spud and Caitlin grabbed their packs. ‘Face like a dropped pie,’ Caitlin muttered as they followed Hammond out on to the tarmac.

The rain had finally stopped, but the ground was still wet and the sky still boiled overhead. The peak of Mount Etna was still covered in cloud. The Hercules had come to a halt on the tarmac, and its tailgate was open. The team jogged towards it, led by Hammond. They ran up into its belly, their footsteps echoing against the tailgate’s iron floor. The familiar stench of grease and aviation gas hit Danny’s senses. Up ahead, dull strip-lighting illuminated the front end of the aircraft. He saw an RAF loadie and a couple of signallers moving about up there, but they showed no sign that they’d even noticed the team come aboard. There was also a woman – black hair cut into a bob, mid-thirties. She looked totally out of place, in what were obviously office clothes. Danny immediately knew she was a spook.

‘We stay in here from now until it’s time to leave,’ Hammond told them over his shoulder as they continued up to the front of the aircraft.

‘How long will that be?’ Danny asked.

‘As long as it takes to get permission from the Turkish authorities to fly a military aircraft through their airspace towards Armenia.’

‘We’re going to Armenia?’ Caitlin said.

The woman with a black bob gave her a withering look. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to Armenia.
We’re
going to Armenia, but we’re dropping you off on the way.’ She sniffed. ‘Literally.’

Caitlin gave her a look. ‘Who’s the wombat?’ she asked.

‘Alice Cracknell, MI6,’ Hammond unenthusiastically introduced the bristling spook. ‘Danny Black, Spud Glover, Caitlin Wallace.’ Caitlin gave the woman a faux-friendly smile. Danny left them to it. He looked to his right. There were a number of large, scuffed flight cases here. One of them had already been opened, revealing some of its contents. Danny immediately recognised freefall equipment, and the matt curve of a HALO helmet, with its glossy black visor attached. He knew what that meant: wherever they were headed, they could expect an airborne insertion. He turned to Caitlin. ‘You OK jumping?’ She didn’t reply, but Danny thought he saw a flicker of anxiety in her face. He reminded himself that, good as she was, their Aussie colleague was not Regiment trained.

‘Alright, listen up,’ Hammond said. They had congregated around a single row of airline seats bolted to the floor. In front of them was a long metal table, also bolted, with signalling equipment, a couple of laptops and their attendant wires snaking all over the place. There was an unfolded military map of the Middle East, and several unopened files. It was clear that, for Hammond, this had been a working flight. ‘It seems the target you picked up in the Med confirmed certain intelligence that the Firm have been collating over the past few weeks about a Christmas Day strike at Westminster Abbey. It goes without saying that if they manage it, it’ll be the Islamists’ biggest PR coup since 9/11. We’re mobilising all our personnel into the capital, throwing everything we’ve got at it. But we’ve got no handle on the identity of the bombers. That’s where you guys come in.’

All of a sudden, any tiredness Danny might have been feeling simply fell away. His mind was tuned in exactly, ready to receive every word Hammond had to say.

‘I’m not going to bullshit you. This is one of the most sensitive ops I’ve been involved with. Perhaps the most dangerous, too. You know what the stakes are if things go tits up.’ He paused. ‘Your target Rudolph mentioned an IS commander by the name of Dhul Faqar. We already knew that this attack was being planned in Syria or northern Iraq, and we think he’s the mastermind behind the operation. So we’re going straight to the source. We think he’s holed up in a compound to the north-west of Mosul. We also believe that he’s expecting the arrival of four Turkish oil dealers at midnight tomorrow, that’s the night of the twenty-second into the twenty-third. These are the guys who broker oil from IS-controlled oilfields on to the open market. Your principal objective is to lift Dhul Faqar, and get some names out of him. Your secondary objective is to eliminate the four oil dealers.’

‘I thought the Yanks were supposed to be bombing these fuckers to kingdom come,’ Spud cut in.

‘Don’t ask me about the politics,’ Hammond said. ‘All I know is the Americans are holding back from attacking certain targets. And as you know, GCHQ are hacking into certain American intelligence communications, and the Firm are paranoid about them finding that out.’

‘It’s not paranoia,’ said Alice Cracknell. ‘It’s operational security.’

‘You call it that if you want,’ Hammond said. ‘The bottom line is that we don’t know the full story, so this whole op is strictly covert, strictly deniable. The Yanks
must not
find out what we’re doing. What’s the matter Spud?’

‘I’m just trying to decide,’ Spud muttered, ‘if I’d rather go straight back on ops into northern Iraq, or drape my wet bollocks over an electric fence.’

‘You want to be back in a desk job, just say the word.’

Spud’s expression darkened as Hammond turned to the mapping that was spread out on the comms table. He traced his forefinger along the southern Turkish border, where it met Syria on the west and Iraq on the south. ‘We can’t fly in over Syrian or Iraqi airspace – the Yanks and the Russians are monitoring it too closely. They’d pick us up within minutes and start asking questions. That’s why we’re seeking permission from the Turkish authorities to enter their airspace. We’ll drop you at a prearranged location close to the northern Iraqi border. Once you’ve inserted, we head north on a dummy errand into Armenia.’

‘What’s the plan for crossing into Iraq, boss?’ Spud asked. ‘That area’s crawling with IS.’

‘It is,’ Hammond replied. ‘But it’s also crawling with Kurdish fighters –
peshmerga 
– whose hobby is basically to kill as many IS militants as they can.’

‘Good hobby,’ Caitlin said.

‘You might not like the way they play it,’ Hammond said. ‘They’re easily as brutal as IS – beheadings, crucifixions, all the usual shit. MI6 have an open line of communication with them, but it’s impossible to say where their real loyalties lie.’

‘With themselves,’ Danny muttered.

‘We’ve made contact with one of these Kurdish groups in the past couple of hours,’ Alice Cracknell said. ‘They’re expecting you at midnight tonight. They’re very well acquainted with the border crossings. They’ll get you into northern Iraq, and drive you to Dhul Faqar’s expected location.’

Danny frowned. ‘We make contact at midnight tonight, these oil middlemen arrive at midnight tomorrow. How far is it from the border to the contact point?’

‘About seventy-five miles,’ Cracknell said.

‘That gives us hardly any time to put in an OP or conduct surveillance on the target.’ Danny turned to Hammond. ‘We need twenty-four hours’ surveillance, minimum.’

‘It is what it is,’ Hammond said. ‘If we give you another twenty-four hours, you won’t lift Dhul Faqar until Christmas Eve itself. That’s too late – it won’t give us time to act on any intel you uncover. In any case, we’re in the hands of these Kurds.’

‘And are you seriously telling me that we’re to expect a bunch of Kurdish militants to smuggle us over a heavily defended international border in a war zone out of the goodness of their hearts—’

‘Of course not,’ Hammond interrupted. He walked over to where all the flight cases were piled and banged his hand on the top of a cylindrical metal drum. ‘Do the Kurds have Christmas?’ he said. ‘Well, you’re taking them a present anyway.’

The unit walked over to Hammond and the drum. Danny twisted the top open and looked inside. It was tightly packed with five long items of weaponry. Danny instantly recognised them as surface to air missile launchers. ‘Stingers?’ he said.

‘And up-to-date radio equipment,’ Alice Cracknell said. ‘Western governments have been trying to supply the Kurds with small arms ever since the ISIS offensive began. Hardly any of them get where they’re supposed to – most go AWOL in Baghdad. They’ve been trying to get us and the Americans to put these sort of assets directly in their hands. They’ll be very pleased to have them.’

These were big-boy toys – the sort of gear a loose band of badly funded Kurdish militants would go out of their way to get their hands on. They could cause a whole load of damage. But that still didn’t make the Kurds trustworthy. Danny rapped on the side of the drum. ‘So that ensures that they turn up. What makes us think they’ll carry on helping us once we’ve handed over the hardware?’

‘You’ll just have to charm them, Black,’ Hammond said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. Charm was seldom the first weapon in an SAS operative’s arsenal.