Bad Soldier: Danny Black Thriller 4 (2 page)

Her captor stopped. ‘You are about to meet Dhul Faqar,’ he said. ‘If you look him straight in the eye, he will kill you.’

He didn’t explain any further, but just knocked three times on the door. It opened. He pushed Baba across the threshold.

The room was warm, dimly lit and smelled of cinnamon. It was richly furnished, with sofas, embroidered cushions and patterned rugs on the floor. A fire was burning. There were two people in here, a man and a woman. The man was short and stout, with a long black beard greying at the tips. He wore white robes and white socks with leather sandals. His head was covered with a red and white
shemagh
. He was sitting on a comfortable low chair, and was nursing a glass of mint tea. His face was expressionless as he turned to look at Baba. She quickly averted her eyes.

The woman sat at the back of the room, next to another door, which was painted blue. She was very beautiful, with long dark hair and almond eyes. But she looked out of place, because she was dressed in Western clothes. A laptop computer sat on a small, ornate table next to her, and her face glowed in the light from its screen. She was applying nail varnish and she glanced up at Baba as she entered. There was something in her expression that chilled Baba to the core.

‘Dhul Faqar,’ Baba’s captor said, bowing his head slightly. He was also avoiding eye contact.

‘Mujahid,’ the man replied. ‘What is this you’ve brought us?’

‘A gift. One of the Yazidi. I gave her sisters to my men, but I thought this one would please you.’

Dogs barked somewhere outside.

The woman walked up to Baba. Baba could smell her perfume, heavy and musky. It made her want to gag.

‘We can’t see her face properly,’ she whispered. With a rough yank, she pulled the rag from Baba’s mouth. Her long nails, glistened. Baba inhaled deeply, then tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry and it hurt her throat.

The woman reached out her hand and brushed it against Baba’s cheek, in almost exactly the same way that the man called Mujahid had done back in the village. Baba noticed that she wore several large rings on her fingers. ‘She’s a pretty one,’ the woman purred. And when Baba yanked her face away from that horrible touch, she smiled. ‘Are you a virgin?’

The question caught Baba by surprise. She nodded warily.

‘You’ll enjoy breaking this one in, my love,’ the woman said. And she muttered, ‘To the glory of Allah.’

‘Get her cleaned up,’ Dhul Faqar said. ‘She stinks worse than a horse. Mujahid, you stay here. We have things to discuss.’

The woman turned. ‘Follow me,’ she said as she stepped towards the blue door at the far side of the room.

Mujahid pushed Baba in the same direction. She stumbled. The woman stopped and turned. When she saw that Baba had hesitated, she stepped back up to her again. Her eyes narrowed – she looked like she was sizing Baba up. With a sudden, brutal swipe, she hit Baba hard across her face. Baba gasped. The woman’s long nails were viciously sharp. Baba felt blood trickling down her stinging cheek, but could not wipe it away because her hands were still tied behind her back. The woman stepped close to her again. She touched Baba’s bleeding cheek, then showed her her fingertips. They were smeared with a mixture of deep-red blood and slightly lighter nail varnish. ‘You are nothing,’ she whispered. ‘You are less important to me than an insect. I wouldn’t think twice about treading on an insect, and I wouldn’t think twice about treading on you. Every second that you stay alive, it is only because Dhul Faqar allows it. You are his to do with as he wants. If you deny him anything, you’ll have me to answer to, and I’d rather see you dead. Do you understand?’

Baba managed to nod. When the woman continued across the room, she followed, only looking back over her shoulder when she heard the main door open again. She caught a quick glimpse of two more men. They were both unusually tall. One had very dark skin – he almost looked African, not Middle Eastern. The other had a milky patch of discoloured skin on the left-hand side of his face, as if he had been badly burned as a child. They were both averting their eyes from Dhul Faqar.

Baba didn’t dare look at these newcomers any longer. The woman had opened the blue door and was disappearing through it. Baba followed. She found herself in a much less comfortable room. It had a stone floor, bare brick walls and a further door on the far wall. There was no furniture. Just a dim light bulb hanging from a single cord in the low ceiling. Baba had a sudden vision of herself hanging from that cord.

The woman closed and locked the door behind them. ‘You will stay here,’ she told Baba. ‘You will be completely silent. If you disturb Dhul Faqar with your whimpering, I will cut out your tongue. If you don’t believe me, I invite you to put me to the test. Do you understand?’

Baba nodded.

The woman left the room. Baba heard the sound of a lock clicking, and knew that there was no way she could escape.

Her knees would not support her. She collapsed, a shivering, bleeding, sobbing, terrified mess. As she lay crouched on the floor, she relived the monstrous events of that day – her parents, and her poor, poor sisters. She longed to be close to them. To hug them. To tell them everything would be alright, and hear the same reassurance in return. But deep down, she knew it would
not
be alright. Nothing would be alright ever again . . .

She heard dogs sniffing and growling by the far door. They terrified her, so she crawled to the opposite end of the room, collapsing again right outside Dhul Faqar’s door.

Baba didn’t know how long she lay there, lost in that awful, waking nightmare. But gradually she became aware of voices on the other side of the door. She recognised Dhul Faqar, and Mujahid who had the scar on his throat. And although she couldn’t work out what they were saying, she could hear certain words.

‘Attack . . .’

She remembered how the IS fighters had attacked her own village that day. How they had killed people without seeming to think about it.

‘Terror . . .’

She remembered the terror in her sisters’ eyes. The way they had begged their rapists to stop, because it hurt so much.

‘Jihad . . .’

It was a word all the Yazidi knew well. She knew the story of how, when she was just three years old, four suicide bombers had killed nearly 800 Yazidis. People said it was the second deadliest jihadi attack after the planes that had flown into tall buildings in America.

The room started to spin. Baba’s exhaustion was catching up with her. She was desperate for a drink, but she dreaded asking that awful woman with the almond eyes.

‘British . . .’

She had heard that word before. She knew there was a country called Britain, far away. Or was it part of America? Baba wasn’t quite sure. Her face was throbbing badly. A curiously hopeful thought crossed her mind. Maybe, if the cut made her look ugly, Dhul Faqar would not touch her. But another thought followed quickly.
It’s not your face he wants you for
 . . .

‘Westminster . . .’

The word meant nothing to Baba. She was hardly listening anyway. She started violently as she heard a key turn on the other side of the far door. Terrified, she lifted her head. The far door opened. The woman appeared. She looked calm, but somehow all the more terrifying for it.

‘What do you think you’re doing, devil girl?’ she demanded. ‘Eavesdropping?’

Baba shook her head. ‘No . . .’ she whispered. ‘I promise . . . I was just—’

But the woman was storming towards her. She bent down, grabbed a clump of Baba’s hair and pulled her harshly to her feet.

‘I wasn’t listening . . .’ Baba wailed. ‘I didn’t hear anything . . .’

But she was silenced by another hard slap across her cheek. ‘If you ever listen to things that do not concern you,’ the woman breathed, ‘I will throw you to the common soldiers, like your whore sisters. Do you understand?’

It was all Baba could do to nod.

The woman yanked her towards the open door. Baba didn’t – couldn’t – resist. But before she was dragged across the floor, she heard one more word from the adjoining room. Again, she had heard it before, but it meant very little to her.

The word was ‘Christmas’.

December 20

One

Sigonella NATO base, Sicily. Dusk.

The snow-capped peak of Mount Etna was lost in the dark clouds that boiled over the island of Sicily. Chief airman
Romano Messi watched them through the windscreen of his olive-green Land Rover, whose wiper blades were clearing a thin drizzle from the glass. Romano was a young recruit to the Italian airforce, and had lived on the island all his life. He remembered his grandmother saying that when the sky went dark over Etna, trouble was round the corner. But she was just a superstitious old lady. In Sicily, with its gangs and its undercurrent of violence, trouble was
always
round the corner.

A fork of lightning split the sky, but the only thunder that followed it was artificial. It came from the four engines of a British Hercules C4 turboprop, as grey as the clouds from which it now emerged as it made its descent towards the runway. Romano had been waiting for this aircraft. They had all been waiting for it.

The runway was brightly lit. There was only another thirty minutes until sunset, but it was already half dark. Ground crew staff sat in stationary service vehicles, well clear of the runway itself, but with their engines ticking over. The word had come through two hours previously: this aircraft, and its four passengers, were high priority. The ATC operators knew to get the Hercules on the ground as quickly as possible – any other military aircraft wanting to land at the same time would have to circle. The passengers were to be ushered as quickly as possible to the nearby helicopter LZ. That was Romano’s job. Get them to the chopper, and don’t ask any questions. He knew that instructions like this could only mean one thing: a special forces unit was on its way.

It was an unusual situation. This was a British military plane. They often stopped here to refuel, but the passengers were generally not allowed to disembark. When they did, SF units were normally housed in the American sector of the NATO base. Italian squaddies like Romano were kept well away.

Romano blew a lock of his black hair off his forehead, then absent-mindedly brushed down his khaki camouflage gear. One day, he thought to himself, he would put himself up for selection to the
Stormo Incursori
. He and the guys he was about to meet were made from the same stuff. His eyes wandered to the tiny length of Christmas tinsel wrapped round the stem of the rear-view mirror. Deciding it didn’t make him look hard enough, he tore it away and shoved it in the glove compartment.

The Hercules’ engines screamed as the landing gear hit the runway in a cloud of spray. Romano knocked the Land Rover into first gear and screeched in the direction of the Hercules before it had even turned off the runway. Through the drizzle, he saw the aircraft come to a complete standstill. The tailgate opened immediately. By the time it was down, Romano had come to a halt twenty metres away. He saw four figures emerging from the dark belly of the aircraft. Two of them led the way. The other two, a few metres behind, were carrying a flight case between them. Romano squinted as he tried to make out their faces, but he couldn’t, quite. All he could see was that they were all shouldering bergens, and one of them was slightly narrower about the shoulders than the others. He congratulated himself on his powers of observation – surveillance, he knew, would be an important skill when he became a special forces operator.

Romano got out of the car and jogged towards the aircraft, whose engines were still powering down. As he grew closer, the four figures became more distinct. Halfway towards them, he stopped for a moment. Was one of them a woman?

Romano wiped the rain from his face and looked again. He hadn’t made a mistake. The figure with a slimmer frame was a stunning brunette, with grey eyes and clear, pale skin. Her hair was a tangled, rain-soaked mess, but to Romano’s eyes that only made her look more attractive.

He started jogging towards them again, taking in the others. Standing next to the woman was a broad-shouldered man with thick blond hair and tanned, leathery skin. He was looking disdainfully across the airfield. Romano could immediately tell he had a bit of an attitude about him. The two guys carrying the flight case were both scowling. One of them was a little shorter than the others, with thinning hair, and the sight of him made Romano smile briefly. His dad had a penchant for Phil Collins, and the little guy looked just like him. Broader, stockier and a hell of a sight grumpier-looking, but otherwise the spitting image. His companion didn’t look much more cheerful. With hair as dark as Romano’s own, and a handsome face with several days’ stubble, he looked like a statue, holding the flight case as the rain pelted against him.

Romano was a little out of breath when he reached them, but he did his best to hide it. ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ he said in his very best English. The blond guy looked him up and down, and Romano could tell from his body language that he was in charge of this four-man unit. ‘I am taking you to your helicopter.’

The unit leader looked over Romano’s shoulder towards the distant Land Rover. ‘Fuck’s sake, Manuel,’ he said with an unpleasant sneer. ‘I know the I-tais are shit drivers, but couldn’t you park a bit closer?’