Bad Soldier: Danny Black Thriller 4 (32 page)

Danny wiped his bloody fingers on his clothes, then turned to Pallav.

‘Ask him how many guards there are at the next checkpoint.’

Pallav asked the question. The answer came immediately. ‘Three.’

‘And how many inside the compound, including Dhul Faqar?’

‘Seventeen,’ Pallav said, having asked the question.

‘Ask him where the keys to his vehicle are.’

‘In the ignition,’ Pallav translated.

‘Tell him to get his mobile phone out. He’s to send a text to the guys at the next checkpoint to say that some locals have brought them gifts for the guys in the compound. He’s driving down to see them in five minutes to deliver them. Check it before it goes.’

Pallav nodded and started speaking in Arabic to the IS guy in quick, urgent tones. The guard nodded fervently, as he understood what was being explained to him, his eyes flickering frequently down to the disembodied tongue. He patted himself down and pulled out his mobile phone from his pocket. With trembling hands, he typed a message, which he showed to Pallav. Pallav nodded, and the guard hit send.

One of the other Kurds appeared in the doorway. He said a few short words, which Pallav translated. ‘Someone’s coming.’

Danny looked at Caitlin. She still had her weapon pointed at the IS guard’s head. He nodded briefly. Without hesitation, she squeezed the trigger. There was another dull, suppressed thud. A tiny explosion of blood, bone and brain matter, but by the time the guard had slumped to the floor, Danny had turned and was heading towards the exit. He looked out in the direction of the main supply route. Four sets of headlamps, distorted and hazy through the rain, had turned off on to the smaller road and were moving towards them.

‘Is it them?’ Spud said from just behind him. ‘The middlemen?’

Danny checked the time. 2350 hours. He felt a crunch of urgency in his gut. Either they were ten minutes early, or it was someone else. Either way, they couldn’t delay. He swore under his breath. He’d wanted at least some of them to get dressed in the black gear of the IS guards. Now they wouldn’t have time.

‘Caitlin, Naza, come with us. If they see women at the checkpoint they’ll get suspicious. Pallav, you know what to do?’

Pallav nodded.

‘Do what you can to keep everything quiet. There’s no sign that anyone in the compound knows what’s happening. We need to keep it that way.’

The three unit members strode out with Naza. They moved directly to the IS guards’ pickup. It had Arabic writing painted on the side – some kind of IS bullshit, no doubt. But that was good. It meant the guards at the second checkpoint would recognise it easily as it approached. They wouldn’t get suspicious until it was too late. Danny got behind the wheel, rested his Sig on his lap and wrapped his
shemagh
round his head. Spud took the passenger seat. The women went in the back. Danny knocked the vehicle into reverse as the others obscured their faces with their
shemaghs
. Then they manoeuvred on to the road and sped forward through the first checkpoint.

He looked in the rear-view mirror. The darkness and the rain made it difficult to judge distances, but he reckoned the approaching convoy was 350 metres from the first checkpoint. He increased his speed a little to 40 kph. ‘Twenty seconds to contact,’ he said.

There were two clicks from beside him and behind him as Spud and Caitlin prepared their weapons.

‘Naza, get down. Stay down, whatever happens.’

‘I’m not—’

‘
Do it!
’ Caitlin barked.

Another rear-view mirror check. Naza was crouching down behind Spud’s seat. The convoy was 300 metres from the first checkpoint. Up ahead, a single figure had emerged from the second checkpoint hut. Danny could make out that his weapon was slung over his back. He clearly wasn’t suspicious.

Ten seconds to contact. Danny wound down his window, slowing down at the same time.

The vehicle came to a halt. The figure was standing right in front of them. Ten metres from the vehicle. He was squinting, clearly blinded by the vehicle’s headlamps. It meant he couldn’t see who was inside.

‘I’ll take him,’ Danny said. ‘As soon as he’s down, we clear the concrete hut.’

He didn’t wait for a response. With the headlamps still glaring, he opened the side door. He stepped out into the rain, his handgun pointing through the open window.

Two dull thuds. Barely audible over the rain. The guard collapsed. In the same instant that he fell, Spud and Caitlin opened their doors in unison. Danny was already advancing on the open door of the hut. He could sense Caitlin just over his left shoulder.

A figure appeared in the doorway. He probably never even saw the advancing unit. Danny put him down with a single headshot. If the guard at the first checkpoint was to be believed, that meant there was one more target left. They needed to put him down before he had the opportunity to raise the alarm.

Distance to the entrance: five metres. Caitlin drew up alongside him. Both of them had their weapons pointing directly in front of them. As they surged forward, side by side, they alternated rounds, every three seconds, effectively covering the way ahead. At the threshold of the hut, they stepped over the bleeding body of the second guard.

Danny saw his remaining colleague immediately. He was crouched down in the far right-hand corner of the dark hut, the pale glow of a mobile phone in his hand illuminating his frightened face, as he desperately tried to key in a number.

Half a second later, two rounds slammed into his body – one from Danny, one from Caitlin.

Danny rushed forward to check the mobile that had fallen from the dead man’s hand. A quick glance told him he hadn’t managed to make the call. Which meant he hadn’t managed to raise the alarm. The unit’s approach on the compound was still covert.

Spud entered. He had the body of the first guard slung over his shoulder. He dumped it on the floor. ‘The convoy’s come through the first checkpoint,’ he said. ‘The Kurds are following it. We’ve got less than a minute.’

Danny started pulling the body in the doorway back into the concrete hut. ‘There are three enemy vehicles in the convoy,’ he said. ‘When they come to a halt, I’ll deal with the first, Caitlin with the second, Spud with the third. They’ll be sandwiched between our vehicle and the Kurds. Take out the drivers first in case they try to get the vehicles off the road. Then deal with the others.’ Danny reloaded his Sig as he spoke. They didn’t know how many targets there were in each vehicle. He needed a full clip.

He headed back to the doorway and looked out. The convoy was much closer. Seventy-five metres max. He checked that his
shemagh
was still properly wrapped round his head. When the convoy was thirty metres out, he gave the instruction. ‘Go.’

The three members of the unit stepped outside. They walked with a brisk confidence. If the Kurds at the first checkpoint had done their job, nobody in the convoy would know they were driving into a trap. Danny, Spud and Caitlin stood in the road, a metre apart from each other, blocking the way. The air was thick with rain, and the approaching headlamps elongated their shadows behind them. Danny hid his handgun behind the rifle slung across his chest. He only wanted to reveal it when the time came to use it.

The convoy came to a halt. The headlamps burned hard. Nobody emerged from the vehicles. Danny noted that the car in front was a Mercedes. Black. A rich guy’s car.

‘Go,’ he said.

They moved swiftly. Danny waited a few seconds until Spud and Caitlin were alongside the drivers’ windows of their vehicles. Through the rain-streaked panes of the Merc he saw the shadows of four passengers – two in the front, two in the back. He rapped three times, hard, on the driver’s window.

A pause.

Then the window slid down.

Danny didn’t even look at the face of the guy he was about to nail. He simply thrust his handgun in through the open window, up against the driver’s head, and squeezed the trigger. There was an immediate spatter of blood, not only over his gun hand but also against the inside of the windscreen. The driver slumped heavily towards the passenger in the front seat. Danny leaned a little lower to get line of sight. It all happened so quickly, the passenger didn’t even seem to know what was occurring. He looked towards Danny with an almost comically bemused expression. Middle Eastern. Grey suit. Tie. A fraction of a second later, he was slumped in his seat just like the driver, his face a bleeding mess.

The car started to shake. Panic from the rear passengers as they tried to get the hell out. Danny took a couple of paces along the car so he was alongside the rear passenger door. He fired at the window. It shattered. Shards fell to the ground. He aimed his weapon at the person sitting by it, then hesitated for a moment. It was a woman. He hadn’t expected that. She wore a richly embroidered headscarf and heavy make-up. He could tell she was about to scream, and he couldn’t risk the noise alerting anyone in the compound. So he didn’t hesitate any more. He made the kill with a single shot to the head. The woman slumped forward, her embroidered headscarf blood-spattered. And no scream.

One more guy to go on the other side of the back seat. He was leaving the vehicle. The door on the far side was opening, a figure emerging. In his panic, he didn’t even have the sense to keep low as he exited the vehicle. His head was visible above the line of the Mercedes. Danny raised his Sig relentlessly and fired a fifth round. It flew over the top of the Merc and blasted a chunk from the target’s skull.

Danny was already looking back towards the others. Caitlin appeared to have killed everyone in the second vehicle. But one of the guys in the third car – Spud’s – had escaped from the back seat. He was sprinting from the vehicle. Danny raised his weapon, getting ready to take a shot. No need. Pallav had jumped out from his pickup behind the convoy. He chased the guy for a few seconds, then grabbed him round the neck with one strong arm. They were out of the main beam of the headlamps, but there was enough residual light for Danny to see what happened next. The target was struggling and screaming. The screams were quickly cut short as Pallav brought a knife to the guy’s throat. He didn’t slice. He simply pulled the broad edge of the blade hard into the target’s Adam’s apple. The screaming stopped immediately. There was a catastrophic fountain of blood, which subsided after a second and merged with the rain as it drained down the target’s soaked business suit. Pallav let him fall.

Objective one achieved: the middlemen were dead.

A sinister, hushed hum filled the air – the sound of the convoy’s engines ticking over, coupled with the rain hammering on the car roofs. Caitlin was jogging over to the Hilux. Danny knew she was going to grab Naza and deliver her back to the Kurds. Danny and Spud strode up to Pallav, who was still standing over the butchered corpse of the guy he’d killed. ‘You know what to do?’ he said.

Pallav nodded. ‘We’ll give you three minutes to get up to the compound. Then we’ll start firing on it to draw them out.’

‘Don’t fire for more than a minute or so. It’s just a diversion, but they’ll probably send guys out to chase you. Give yourself the chance to get away in one piece.’

Pallav gave a rare grin, then offered Danny his hand. ‘Kill some more Daesh for me?’

‘I’ll make a point of it.’

Caitlin joined them. She was holding Naza by one arm. Naza was struggling a little. ‘I want to stay with you,’ she whispered, looking up at Caitlin.

Caitlin thrust the girl towards Pallav. ‘Make sure she stays safe,’ she said. It sounded like a threat.

Pallav nodded. He grabbed Naza. ‘Good luck,’ he said, before dragging the girl back towards the Hilux. ‘I think you’re going to need it.’ He thrust her into the back seat, then climbed up to man the fifty-cal as one of his men took the wheel. ‘We will meet you at your RV point off the main supply route. If you are not there by dawn, we assume you’re dead and we—’

‘Quiet,’ Danny interrupted him. He cocked his head. He could hear barking in the distance.

‘Dogs,’ he said. He turned to the others. He was already unwrapping the
shemagh
from round his head so that he could engage his NV. ‘We’ve got three minutes to get to the compound,’ he said. ‘Our only priority is Dhul Faqar. Once we have him, we can use him as a human shield to fight our way out. Let’s move.’

December 23

Sixteen

Once more, Danny saw the world through the green haze of his NV googles. Hyper-aware of their surroundings, he, Spud and Caitlin passed through the checkpoint in single file. They were now inside the perimeter fence. They skirted clockwise around it for thirty metres, through the heavy rain, so that they were alongside the first cherry picker with its gruesome swinging corpse. He got a whiff of rotten flesh, but from here they could approach the compound to the left of the main track in. But he saw no sign of any militants outside the compound. The rain was doing its job and keeping them inside. He was grateful for it. The elements were keeping them invisible.

Distance to the closest compound building: 200 metres. From his surveillance of the compound earlier that evening, Danny knew that block 3, where he believed Dhul Faqar was most likely to be holed up, was to their eleven o’clock. It was obscured, however, by another long, low building – block 2 – to the right of which was a passageway formed by the left-hand wall of what Danny had dubbed block 4. It was this passageway that they needed to head for. Danny estimated they could make it in forty-five seconds, if they remained unobserved.