Bad Soldier: Danny Black Thriller 4 (24 page)

He didn’t wait for the answer. He just strode back into the room where the girls, fully dressed and terrified, were waiting. ‘Any of you sluts mention a word of this, you’ll be screwed, your family will be screwed,’ he said. He strode up to the girl who’d been roughed up. ‘And if you think you look bad now, wait till I have a go at you. Now get out of here.’

They couldn’t wait to leave. Ten seconds later, Tony was alone in the room. He gathered his thoughts, then headed back into the royal bedroom. No sign of him, so he rapped hard on the bathroom door. No answer. He tried the handle. The door opened.

Yellow Seven was sitting on the edge of the bath. He was still wearing his robe, and he had the bright-eyed, slightly wild expression of someone dosed up with marching powder. He sniffed, and licked his lips rather fast. ‘Are they gone?’ he asked.

‘Gone,’ Tony said.

‘Got a bit carried away. Hope they don’t mention it to—’

‘They won’t. I saw to it.’

Yellow Seven smiled. ‘Sweet,’ he said, his eyes going slightly out of focus. ‘It’s, er . . . it’s good to have you on board.’ He stood up rather uncertainly. ‘We’ll find a job for you. With the family. If you’re interested . . .’

Tony walked over to the shower and switched it on. ‘Get cleaned up,’ he said. ‘We need to leave Dubai this morning.’

Yellow Seven blinked. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘I thought we were having a blast—’

‘This morning,’ Tony repeated.

A pause.

‘Right,’ Yellow Seven said. ‘Sweet.’

Tony left, closing the bathroom door behind him. He scanned the room, immediately picking out a couple of glasses dotted around the place. He gathered them up and looked at the rims. Lipstick. He rummaged in a wardrobe and found a sturdy bag intended for dirty linen. He dumped the glasses into it, then examined the bedclothes. There was a smear of blood on one of the pillowcases. He stuffed that into the bag too.

He could hear the shower still running, and he took a moment to pause. What had the twat said?
We’ll find a job for you. With the family.
Part of him recoiled at the thought. He’d be the laughing stock of Hereford. But another part of his brain was coldly calculating the potential benefit to him. It was well known that the SAS gave the royals a bit of a hard-on. Now and then they took a Regiment guy – usually a Rupert – under their wing. The chosen one would be in attendance at every royal event. He’d appear in the background of every royal photo. He’d have unprecedented access. And he’d be made for life.

There was no doubt about it. If that jumped-up little turd, with his penchant for nose candy and slapping around hookers, was in Tony’s debt, he, Tony, could work it to his advantage. Big time.

He looked down at the bag of incriminating evidence in his fist. That stupid bitch sure chose the wrong party to join. But it wasn’t Tony’s problem. He just needed to get rid of the evidence, then get his Grace on a plane back to London before anybody started sniffing around. If he did that right, things could be looking up for him. And Tony couldn’t help but enjoy the thought that it would have Danny Black laughing on the other side of his stupid, smug face.

Danny drove east. He knew, from his mental snapshot of the terrain, that the road was following the Syrian border, a couple of klicks to its north. They’d been travelling for half an hour, mostly in silence, apart from the occasional one-word direction from Rojan. They’d seen nobody on these rough, unpopulated roads. Hereford had chosen their insertion point well, but Danny was very aware that anyone they encountered would be a potential threat. Nobody would be driving round these parts if they didn’t have a good reason to be here. And the only good reason to be here was military. All Danny’s senses were on high alert.

‘Describe the border crossing to me,’ he said.

‘It is a river crossing,’ Rojan replied. ‘Dry in the summer, flowing in the winter. But shallow, if you know the right place, which I do. This vehicle can cross it easily.’

Almost as if in response to Rojan’s words, big droplets of rain spattered hard against the windscreen. A minute later it was raining ferociously. The Hilux’s headlamps cut through the rain, but their visibility was reduced to ten metres, max, with the wipers squeaking ineffectively.

‘How far is the crossing from the nearest official border checkpoint?’ Danny asked above the noise of the water hammering on the top of the vehicle.

‘Thirty miles in either direction. I told you, it’s a good place.’

They fell silent again. Danny could sense the tension emanating from Caitlin and Spud in the back.

‘Your friends on the Iraqi side of the border,’ Danny said. ‘How many?’

‘Four, maybe five.’

‘How many vehicles?’

‘One. Maybe two.’

‘Which?’ Danny asked peevishly. ‘One or two?’ Rojan pulled out a mobile phone and started to dial a number. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Calling them.’

‘Put the phone down. I said,
put the fucking phone down
.’ He grabbed it from Rojan’s fist and threw it to the floor.

‘What are you doing?’ Rojan demanded angrily. ‘Daesh are not listening in to our phones, we know that.’

‘They’re not the only people we have to worry about,’ Danny snapped. And he meant it. It was inconceivable that GCHQ weren’t hacking every communication they could pick up along this border. If GCHQ were doing it, you could bet your bottom dollar that the Yanks were doing the same. The unit’s orders were very clear: do nothing to alert the Americans to their presence. That meant keeping mobile communications to an absolute minimum.

He didn’t explain all that to the Kurds. Rojan’s irritation was palpable. Danny didn’t care. He just kept driving.

Time check. 0415 hours. Sixty minutes till dawn. The rain hadn’t let up. The inside of the windscreen kept fogging from the breath of so many people in the vehicle. The tyres felt sluggish on the ground. It was difficult driving, but that was OK by Danny. The rain kept them camouflaged, to an extent.

‘Go right at the junction up ahead,’ Rojan said, ‘off the road.’ These were the first words he’d spoken since their argument about the phone, and he had a sulky tone of voice.

Danny nodded. After 300 metres they came to an unmarked T-junction. The terrain to the right was marshy. Danny slowed down and knocked the vehicle into first gear to avoid wheelspin, then he killed the headlamps.

‘What are you doing?’ Rohan asked. ‘You won’t be able to see.’

Danny lowered his NV goggles from the top of his helmet. ‘I’ll be able to see just fine,’ he said. The world outside turned into a green haze, with every bump and undulation of the terrain ahead clearly defined, despite the darkness and the rain. ‘Distance to the border crossing?’

‘About two kilometres,’ Rojan said. Danny nodded. He manoeuvred the vehicle slowly and carefully through the driving rain. He didn’t even need to look in the rear-view mirror to check that Spud and Caitlin had engaged their own NV. He could sense their tension in the air. ‘You come to a hill in 1,500 metres,’ Rojan said. ‘Once you go over the hill, you can see it in the distance. There is a barbed wire fence on the other side of the river.’

‘Do you have any cutting tools?’ Spud asked from the back of the vehicle.

‘You won’t need them,’ Naza piped up. ‘We already cut a section out of the fence.’

There was a pause. ‘When did you cut it?’ Spud asked.

‘Does it matter?’ Rojan said.

‘
When did you cut it?
’

‘About twelve hours ago.’

There was a pause. It was as if none of the unit wanted to ask the question that they all had in their head.

‘This section you cut out of the fence,’ Spud said finally. ‘You replaced it, right? It doesn’t
look
like you cut anything out?’

Silence.

Danny braked. He turned to Rojan. ‘Answer him,’ he said.

‘No,’ Rojan said defensively. ‘Of course not. What’s the point? It’s just a small gap. A few metres.’

Danny swore under his breath, and he heard a restrained ‘For fuck’s sake’ from Spud. The Kurds had made an elementary error. A hole in the border fence, no matter how small, would be a beacon to anyone patrolling the area. It didn’t matter who – Iraqi or Turkish authorities, IS patrols, border guards. Anyone who saw it would know that someone had got, or was planning to get, a vehicle through there. And that meant there was a high probability that someone would be watching the crossing point.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Rojan said, though his voice quavered slightly. ‘We cross this border all the time. It will be fine.’

None of the unit answered. Danny knocked the vehicle back into first gear and continued to trundle south towards the border, his mind turning over. What should they do? Abort? Try to find another border crossing? That could take days. They only had hours.

Five slow, tense minutes passed. There was no let-up in the rain. Through the green haze of his NV, and by the feel of the engine’s traction on the wet ground, Danny could tell that the gradient of the terrain had started to increase. This must be the hill Rojan had mentioned. Danny stopped the vehicle, engaged the handbrake and killed the engine.

‘What are you doing?’ Rojan asked. ‘We’re not there yet.’

‘We need to check the border crossing. Make sure there are no threats waiting for us.’

‘There won’t be,’ Rojan said. ‘There never are.’

‘That doesn’t mean there never will be,’ Danny replied. ‘Especially if you’ve left a signal for everyone, like a section of missing fencing. You and Naza stay here.’ He looked at Spud and Caitlin. ‘Get out,’ he said.

They were drenched the moment they stepped outside. They stood in a huddle in front of the car. ‘Caitlin, I want you to stay with them while me and Spud do a recce. And before you argue, it’s only because the girl seems to trust you.’ He looked up the hill. ‘We’ll get eyes on the border crossing from the rise, see if there’s anything suspicious. Then we’ll make a call whether or not to cross.’

Caitlin frowned. She obviously wasn’t happy at being excluded for a second time, but she didn’t argue. She returned to the car, leaving Danny and Spud in the downpour, NV engaged, the world around them a teeming green haze.

Wordlessly, they jogged up the hill. Distance to the rise: twenty metres. They went to ground five metres short of it. Danny removed his night-sight. Then they crawled the remaining distance through the wet, muddy earth, before carefully edging to the vantage point and looking down towards the Iraqi border.

He didn’t need the night-sight to realise they had a problem.

There was a vehicle. All Danny could see of it was red lights, which told him that it was facing away from them. He quickly disengaged his NV goggles and scanned the area with his night-sight. A couple of seconds’ observation revealed the river itself – it was about fifty metres from their position, and 100 metres in width, with high reeds along either bank. The border fencing was on the far side of the river, just as Rojan had said. It was about six metres high, with upright posts every five metres, joined by rolls of razor wire. The gap that Rojan had cut in the fence was almost directly in front of them. The vehicle was driving away from the gap. With the benefit of the night-sight, Danny could see that it was a four-by-four of some description, not unlike their own Hilux.

Danny and Spud watched it leave. It took less than a minute for the red lights to disappear into the drenched darkness. They retreated back behind the rise. ‘The border crossing’s compromised,’ Spud said. ‘That fucking Kurdish tosspot’s screwed up the whole op.’

Danny gave it a moment’s thought. ‘We need to find another crossing point.’

‘Mucker, it’s not going to happen,’ Spud said. ‘We need to get the hell out of here. It’s eighty–twenty someone
knows
there’s going to be a covert border crossing. They’ll be fucking
waiting
for us.’

Danny knew he was right. ‘Let’s get back down to the others,’ he said.

They slid back down the slope. By the time they reached the Hilux again, they were truly soaked through and covered in sticky, wet mud. Not that it mattered. They got back into the car and explained what they’d seen. Caitlin swore viciously.

‘You’re worrying too much,’ Rojan said. ‘It was probably just our friends on the other side of the border. They’re expecting us, remember?’

‘We can’t be sure of that,’ Danny said. ‘Is there any other crossing point?’

‘No,’ Rojan said. ‘Not for miles, and they’ll be manned. This is the only place. Trust me.’

Silence in the car. The rain hammered noisily.

‘We abort,’ Danny said. ‘Get on to Hereford, request a pick-up, dig in for the day and return to our LZ under cover of night.’

‘Roger that,’ Spud growled. Caitlin nodded. Full agreement. Trying to drive through a compromised crossing point broke every SOP in the book. It was potential suicide.

Rojan suddenly slammed one hand on the dashboard. ‘You see what they did to me?’ he spat. He pointed at his wounded face. ‘Don’t you see what they
did
to me? And you’re going to give up now, because you’re too scared to cross the border?’