Bad Soldier: Danny Black Thriller 4 (33 page)

He jabbed one finger forward. Spud started running. In his peripheral vision, Danny could see the Kurds’ vehicle. They’d killed the headlamps and were moving off the road, heading anticlockwise around the perimeter.

‘Go,’ he whispered at Caitlin. She followed Spud, ten metres between them, hands on her rifle, ready to engage it if necessary.

A couple of seconds later, Danny followed.

The NV goggles gave him extra peripheral vision. It meant he could track the movement of the Kurds’ vehicle as it drove into position without moving his head. By the time he was halfway across the open ground to the compound, it had come to a halt, having turned to face the compound from its north-westerly position, seventy-five metres from the perimeter fence. Danny estimated they had another minute before the Kurds opened up on the compound. He increased his pace. Spud and Caitlin did the same.

Twenty seconds. He reached the back wall of block 2. It was scrawled with black Arabic graffiti. Spud and Caitlin were in position, both on one knee on either side of the passageway, their rifles pointing down it. Danny positioned himself with his back to the building, and waited.

Ten seconds.

Twenty seconds.

A barking sound. Close. He turned to see the green, hazy forms of two dogs running towards them from across the open ground. He got one of them in his cross hairs. He didn’t want to fire until the Kurds had opened up. But the dog was getting closer. Twenty metres. Ten . . .

Thirty seconds.

Gunfire.

The burst from the fifty-cal cut through the noise of the pouring rain, rebounding off the whitewashed walls of the compound buildings. It lasted a full five seconds, and Danny could hear the secondary noise of shrapnel and debris bursting into the air as the heavy-gauge rounds slammed into the buildings on the northern edge of the compound – the short base of the L-shape he’d seen from their vantage position up in the hills.

Danny used the noise camouflage to release a single round on the dog. It was just five metres away, and foaming at the mouth. The suppressed knock of his rifle round put the animal straight down, and he heard Spud releasing a round too, killing the second animal.

Danny forced himself to breathe slowly as he waited for a response to the Kurds’ gunfire.

It came almost immediately.

The rain made it difficult to establish exactly where the shouts came from. Numerous locations, Danny sensed, from all around the compound. About ten voices, maybe more. All male. The closest maybe twenty metres away on the other side of the buildings. They died down after a few seconds, but then a second burst from the Kurds reignited them. Danny could tell that the shouting men were moving towards the northern end of the compound. It made perfect sense. They knew they would be protected by the base of the L-shape if they wanted to fire back. What they didn’t know was that this would clear the centre of the compound for the unit to make their approach on target.

Danny raised his rifle, and jabbed the butt into his shoulder. He and the weapon were a single entity. Where Danny turned, the weapon would turn. And if a threat appeared in front of him, he would put them down without hesitation.

He swung round from his protected position, into the mouth of the passageway. Distance to the far end, thirty metres. He advanced at pace, past Spud and Caitlin. A flicker in his peripheral vision told him that they’d got to their feet as soon as he’d cleared their position. He knew that as he advanced, one of them would follow, slightly to his left or right. The other would be walking in the same direction, but facing backwards, to keep them covered from both angles.

He had covered ten metres when he heard a third burst of fifty-cal fire from the Kurds. This time it was met not only with shouts, but also with the stuttering, barking noise of return Kalashnikov fire. It sounded relatively puny in comparison to the machine gun. Danny estimated eight weapons, all at the northern edge of the compound. He suddenly found himself thinking of the young girl Naza. Hoping she’d be OK . . .

Twenty metres down the passageway. A figure ran across the far end. Danny halted. He had the impression that the man had seen him.

Five seconds passed. The figure reappeared at the end of the passageway. He stepped squarely into Danny’s line of fire. Thin. Short beard. Rifle. Danny saw the guy peer in his direction.

No hesitation. Danny squeezed the trigger on his rifle. The single suppressed round flew from the barrel, its dull thud masked by the rain and the continued barking of Kalashnikov fire to the north. It nailed the target full in the chest. He went down without a sound.

The next few seconds were critical. If anyone saw the dead body lying in the mouth of that passageway, they’d realise that a secondary threat was coming in from that direction. He extended his left arm and made a forward jabbing motion with his thumb. Then he fell to one knee, carefully covering the mouth of the passageway, as Spud overtook him at a run. His mate reached the corpse, then bent down to grab its ankles and drag the body into the dark passageway, out of sight of anyone up ahead.

Danny looked behind him. Caitlin was five metres back, also on one knee, covering the passageway behind them. ‘Caitlin, keep your position,’ he said quietly into his radio. Then he got to his feet and ran to the far end of the passage, his weapon still fixed rigidly in the firing position.

Another burst of fire from the Kurds. The noise had a slightly different quality. Looser. It sounded to Danny as though their vehicle was moving while the machine gun fired. He cursed silently. It was too soon. They hadn’t given the unit enough time to penetrate the compound. He surveyed the area beyond the passageway. He was looking out on to a rough triangle of open ground, bounded on the far side by the shore of the reservoir. Distance to the water: twenty-five metres. Precisely to his left was block 3, where he expected to find Dhul Faqar. There were no enemy targets on the open ground, but on the shore of the reservoir were the two observation towers Danny had spotted when recceing the compound from a distance. Twenty metres apart, each one was about five metres high, with corrugated iron cover, and contained a single gunman. It was clear to Danny that the gunmen were positioned to check for anyone trying to approach by water. But of course, with the Kurds’ distraction, they were currently looking north. They hadn’t seen Danny’s unit yet. Their lack of observation was about to prove fatal.

‘See them?’ Danny breathed to Spud, who had rejoined him at the mouth of the passageway.

‘See them,’ Spud breathed.

No need to speak any more. Both men knew what to do. Spud was to Danny’s left, so he would take the guard in the left-hand observation post. But they needed to take the shots at the same time, and the shots had to be accurate. If only one guy went down, it would give the other a chance to protect himself, or raise the alarm.

Danny aligned his rifle. The thirty-metre shot was not a difficult one, but it needed to be right. He slowed his breathing down, and tried to put the constant barks of gunfire from the north out of his mind.

Five seconds passed.

‘Take the shot,’ he said.

Danny and Spud fired in unison. He knew instantly that his shot was good, and instantly moved his line of fire towards Spud’s guy, in case his mate had made an error. But Spud hadn’t. Both observation post guards were down.

‘Move towards us,’ he told Caitlin over the radio. As she ran down the passageway, Danny tuned his hearing back in to the noises around them. More men were shouting. He heard a couple of vehicle engines start up. This was good. The Kurds’ distraction had worked. The IS guards were making chase, taking the heat off Danny and his unit.

But it was impossible to know how long the distraction would last. They had to move quickly.

The door to block 3 – wooden, painted blood red – was five metres to their left. With Spud and Caitlin covering him, Danny moved towards it. He stood by the door, his back to the wall. The noise of the gunfire was a little more distant. He could hear tyres screeching off to the east. The IS guards were definitely chasing the Kurds. Closer by, things were quieter. A strange, unnatural calm covering the centre of the compound, like a thick blanket. Danny could hear his own heartbeat.

It was an inward-opening door. Danny kicked it gently. It creaked as it swung open. A pale, flickering light from inside the room. Firelight. He flicked up his NV goggles. A thick, sweet stench of incense hit him.

He considered utilising a flashbang. It would disorientate anybody waiting for him inside. But the noise could alert others to their presence. He decided against it. Instead, he slowly directed his weapon in through the open door, carefully panning left and right, his finger light on the trigger, ready to eliminate any threats in an instant.

At first, it seemed like there was nobody in there. It was a richly furnished room. Sofas. Embroidered cushions. Expensive rugs on the floor. He’d been right about the firelight – candles were dotted all over the place, filling the room with an attractive, comfortable glow. A closed door at the right-hand end, painted blue.

But no sign of their target. Danny felt a twinge of doubt at his analysis of the compound. Where was he?

‘Dhul Faqar?’ Danny whispered in a friendly, sing-song voice. ‘
Dhul Faqar?
’

A distant burst of fifty-cal fire. Rain on the roof. And the soft sound of weeping from the corner of the room. Danny’s weapon instantly tracked towards it.

In the far, right-hand corner of the room was a floor-to-ceiling post. Sitting at the bottom of the post, chained to it by a thick metal collar, was a young woman, little more than a girl, her head bowed, her shoulders shaking as she cried.

Danny kept his weapon trained on her as he approached. He saw that she was naked under a gossamer-thin, see-through robe. Her breasts and stomach were badly bruised. There were streaks of blood down her inner thighs. She was starved and thin, her ribs easily visible.

As Danny stood over her, she looked up, slowly, as though terrified to see what horror was in front of her. Her lips were split, her eyes bruised. The skin, however, shone angrily, as though it had been scrubbed too hard. Danny could tell that she’d been beautiful once. But no longer. He remembered Hammond’s briefing back on the plane.
Dhul Faqar’s a real piece of work, by the sound of it . . . Intelligence suggests that he lets his men rape whichever captured women take their fancy, so long as they leave the choicest specimens for him. You can expect some pretty brutalised sex slaves in the stronghold. Don’t start getting chivalrous. Nothing’s more important than getting Dhul Faqar alive.

That might be so. But Danny knew one thing for sure. If there were women here who had been abused by Dhul Faqar, they would want nothing more than to be free of him. Which meant that right now, this poor, molested, maltreated girl was his best ally.

It was too much to hope that she would speak English. Danny whispered, ‘Dhul Faqar’, then made a slicing gesture at his throat to indicate what might be in store for him. The shadow of fear on the girl’s face grew darker, but she couldn’t help looking towards the far end of the room, where the closed blue door was. Danny pointed to the door and gave an enquiring look. The girl nodded. Danny put one finger to his lips to make a shushing gesture. Outside, there was a distant burst of gunfire. The girl started violently. Her nerves were obviously shot.

Danny looked back over his shoulder to the main entrance. Caitlin and Spud were there, Caitlin looking in, Spud facing out. Danny pointed sharply at the closed door. Caitlin nodded. Together, they approached it.

A metre from the door, Danny stopped, Caitlin just behind him and to the right. The door didn’t look strong. It wouldn’t withstand a sturdy boot.

Danny held up three fingers.

Two fingers.

One.

His weapon still pointing straight ahead, Danny booted the door open. It clattered on its hinges in unison with a distant burst of gunfire.

The adjoining room was completely different. Stone floor. Brick walls. A bare light bulb hanging from a cable in the ceiling. Another door on the far side, inward-opening again and fractionally ajar, a little rainwater dribbling inside. And another solitary woman, crouched in the corner, hugging her knees.

But no Dhul Faqar.
Shit.

Danny immediately trained his weapon on the woman. She was older than the girl chained to the post, and not so scantily dressed. In fact, she was wearing Western clothes. Jeans. Black shoes. A dark jacket with white stitching. Her face was not beaten and bloodied like the younger girl’s. But it was equally terrified. Her lower lip seemed to tremble as she looked directly up at Danny. Danny saw that she was very beautiful. Dark hair. Almond eyes.
Intelligence suggests that he lets his men rape whichever captured women take their fancy, so long as they leave the choicest specimens for him . . .

‘Dhul Faqar?’ Danny breathed. And as before, he made the slicing gesture at his throat.

The woman’s eyes widened. She looked hopeful and pointed towards the slightly open door.

Danny spoke quietly into his radio. ‘Spud, we’re heading outside. South end of block one. Meet us there.’

‘
Roger that.
’

As he had with the younger girl, Danny put one finger to his lips to tell this woman to keep quiet. Then he advanced on the door.