Bad Soldier: Danny Black Thriller 4 (36 page)

Silence.

But not for long.

He heard someone burst into the adjoining room. Footsteps. They were moving quickly. Danny hid to one side of the open cell door, hoping that this newcomer would enter the cell quickly and that Danny could attack him as he did so. But the bastard was cuter than that. He stood opposite the door but at a distance from it – Danny could tell from the shadow he cast into the cell. He could also tell from the shape of the shadow that he was armed.

Danny suppressed another surge of anger. His escape attempt was fucked. The newcomer was shouting something. Danny didn’t understand what he was saying, but he sensed that the guy was calling to his mates. And when they didn’t reply, the shouting got more aggressive, like he was speaking to Danny. He sensibly didn’t get any closer – Danny estimated that he was six or seven metres from the cell. Far enough away to take a shot if Danny went for him.

Two options. Stay where he was and hope the gunman would advance. Or show himself, and hope another opportunity to attack arose. After a few seconds he could tell the guy wasn’t going to advance, so he chose the latter option.

Danny stepped into the doorway of his cell with his hands up.

He was looking at a windowless room. To his left were two more cells. They weren’t enclosed, like Danny’s, but had bars at the front, and bars dividing them. Set in the back wall of each cell were two metal rings, about eight feet high. Whatever torture they were intended for, it looked medieval.

To his right, there was a door. It was open, and it led outside.

Straight ahead was the gunman. He looked half scared, half angry. His Kalashnikov was pointing straight at Danny.

Danny took a step forward. A ferocious bark from the man opposite stopped him in his tracks. The gunman made a gesture that Danny understood to mean he should lie down on the ground. Danny gave him a ‘be reasonable’ look, but that just invited more shouting.

Keep shouting, asshole, Danny thought. The more you keep shouting, the less you’re concentrating. He dropped to his knees, then looked stubbornly – arrogantly – at his adversary. The gunman continued shouting at him. His voice was getting hoarse and he took a step closer.

Danny lay on the floor, front down, his head to one side, watching the guard. The guard wasn’t shouting quite so much now. But he was still talking. His words – still incomprehensible to Danny – were a constant flow of spitting, bile-ridden invective. He had lowered his gun so that it was still pointing at Danny.

And he was taking another step forward.

Distance, four metres.

Danny knew that the span of one arm was approximately seventy-five centimetres. Another three metres, just over, and he would be within reach.

He was still talking. Danny could see that he was sweating. Did he know his mates were dead? Was he planning to send Danny the same way? He was certainly gesturing forcibly with his weapon.

But he was also getting closer.

Three metres.

Two.

Just a little further, buddy.

Danny kept his arm very still. He didn’t want to give the guard any premonition of what he had in mind. But he kept his gaze fixed on the guy’s ankles. As soon as he was close, he’d stretch out, hook his arm round whichever ankle was closest, and then . . .

A metre.

He was almost in reach.

His right foot was moving.

Someone entered the room. A female voice spoke harshly. The guard froze.

Another instruction from the woman. He stepped back. Two paces. Three.

Danny felt himself burning up with frustration. He remained very still, but his eyes flickered towards the new arrival. It was the woman who had betrayed them. She stood over Danny at a safe distance of three metres. ‘I’ve told this idiot,’ she said, ‘that if you move a single muscle without being told, he must shoot you. And please don’t imagine he’s going to be stupid enough to get that close to you again.’

Danny didn’t reply. But there were alarm bells in his mind. Whoever this woman was, she had outfoxed him twice. She showed a load more tactical awareness than Danny would have expected of her. Who the hell was she?

She didn’t wait for a reply, but stepped into the cell Danny had just vacated. Ten seconds later, she emerged again. ‘I see you’ve been busy, Danny Black.’

‘That’s not my name,’ Danny said.

‘If you insist,’ she said. ‘Now stand up, very slowly, and put your hands on your head. Dhul Faqar wants to see you. And he doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’

Eighteen

It took three gunmen to usher Danny into the elaborately furnished room that he had identified as Dhul Faqar’s living quarters. As he stepped out of the cell complex, he realised immediately that he was on the northern edge of the compound. The reservoir was to his right. The two dead guards in the observation tower had been removed and replaced with two of the remaining armed personnel. As Danny passed, they climbed down from their towers and started concerning themselves with a large bundle on the ground – he couldn’t see what. The rain had stopped, but it was still cloudy. Danny identified the bright patch in the clouds that indicated where the sun was. His timing had been slightly out of sync. The position of the sun told him that it was mid-afternoon.

It might as well have been midnight in Dhul Faqar’s living quarters. The candles still burned and the open fire still smouldered. There was no natural light apart from what came through the open door. The smell of incense was sweeter and thicker than before.

Spud and Caitlin were there. It was clear that they had undergone the same treatment as Danny. Their faces were a mess of bruises, cuts and swellings. They were kneeling on the floor, shoulders hunched. Each of them had an armed guard pointing a rifle directly at their head. Caitlin had been stripped down to her tight grey vest. The wound on her arm was exposed. It looked like the guards had been beating it. It was bleeding, puffed up and pus-filled. Her face was drained white, and she was sweating badly.

Danny clocked the unit’s packs and weapons, piled up along the right-hand wall of the room. Next to them, still tied to the post by her metal collar, was the slave girl. She wore the same flimsy clothes, and the same expression of helpless despair. Her eyes flickered towards Danny as he entered, but really all her attention was elsewhere.

Sitting between Spud and Caitlin and the slave girl, in a low, comfortable chair, and wearing a plain white
dishdash
with white socks and comfortable leather sandals, was a short man, slightly plump, with a long black beard that was turning grey at the tips. He had an iPad on his lap, and his face glowed slightly from the light of the screen. He was an unremarkable-looking man, but clearly the boss. Danny instinctively knew that this must be Dhul Faqar. He remembered what Hammond had said about this arsehole not wanting anyone to look him in the eye, and it was true that nobody else in the room seemed to be making eye contact.

Fuck that, he thought, and he stared directly at him.

Dhul Faqar watched with flat, expressionless eyes as Danny was forced to his knees a metre to the right of Spud. Danny felt the hard metal of a Kalashnikov barrel against the back of his head. He stared at Dhul Faqar and waited for him to speak. Dhul Faqar looked at the screen on his lap, then directly at Danny.

‘Danny Black,’ he said, in stuttering but serviceable English. ‘British special forces. Mother deceased. One father, one brother.’ He cleared his throat. ‘One daughter. Name, Rose Black. Mother’s name, Clara Macleod. Place of residence, Hereford.’ He pronounced it ‘Hear-ford’.

Danny felt his blood turn to liquid fear. It was all he could do to control his breathing. He could feel Spud and Caitlin’s eyes on him.

Dhul Faqar looked up and smiled. His lips glistened in the candlelight. The woman with almond eyes stepped up to him and whispered something in his ear. Dhul Faqar nodded gently. ‘If he tried to deny it, he is more of a fool than he looks,’ Dhul Faqar said. He held up the iPad. ‘Your CIA file, Black. It makes
very
interesting reading. You are a hero, although I’m not sure that is quite how
they
see you.’

Danny didn’t reply. He was too busy trying to master the dread, so that he could make sense of what Dhul Faqar had just told him. His CIA file? How the hell did an IS kingpin have
that
in his possession?

A memory clicked in his head. Ray Hammond, their ops officer, briefing them before they went after the migrant boat in the Med.
The Yanks seem to think Santa and Rudolph might have terrorist intentions on UK soil, so why they haven’t shared this with us is anyone’s guess.

And later, while they were being briefed in the Hercules before their drop into Turkey.
All I know is the Americans are holding back from attacking certain targets.

‘There is something else I want to show you,’ Dhul Faqar said. He stood up from his low chair and carried the iPad towards Danny. When he was standing right in front of him, he tapped the screen, then turned the iPad round and held it at the height of Danny’s face.

There was some video footage playing. Shaky, close-up of a man’s face, Middle Eastern. Hard to make out his features, because the camera was so close. He was talking in Arabic. As he spoke, the footage panned out. Danny saw that this man had a very distinctive scar across the entire width of his throat. The camera panned to the right to show the rest of the room. Danny knew what he was going to see, even before it appeared.

Clara was sitting on a stool. Her eyes were puffy and red. She had clearly been crying. She was wearing a dressing gown and cradling a bundle in her arms. The camera moved closer. A hand appeared and roughly grabbed the blanket that was covering the baby. The child started to cry. Danny saw a glimpse of his daughter. She had a cut under her left eye. It was bleeding. Like she was weeping blood. The camera moved away and returned to the close-up face of the man with the scar at his throat. He continued talking in Arabic.

Dhul Faqar stopped the video footage. He walked back to his chair. Danny followed him with cold, hard eyes. He felt like stone. All he wanted to do was kill the man in front of him. His limbs twitched. But the gun was still pressed hard against the back of his skull. He could do nothing.

‘You will all die, of course,’ Dhul Faqar said. ‘Eventually, and at a time of my own choosing. We will hang you from our cranes as a warning to anyone else who wishes to trespass on our territory. But not before you have served a very useful purpose to us. Three members of the famous British SAS. If we celebrated Christmas, I could not ask for a better gift. After our attack in the UK, this will be . . . what is the phrase you use? The icing on the cake. The footage of three soldiers suffering all the humiliations that the Qur’an demands we inflict upon the infidel will be a fitting follow-up to our Christmas celebrations. You will be what I believe they call a “publicity coup”.’ Dhul Faqar fixed Danny with his piercing gaze again. ‘So far you and your Kurdish friends have killed eleven of my men,’ he said. ‘Not to mention my Turkish business associates whose deaths are, I will admit, a difficulty.’

Danny forced himself to count carefully. The guy at the checkpoint had said there were seventeen men in the compound, including Dhul Faqar. Eleven down left six. Two guys in the observation tower outside. Three guards in here plus Dhul Faqar. The women were probably extras the guard hadn’t taken into account. Dhul Faqar had made a big mistake giving them this information, because now they knew how many hostiles they were dealing with.

‘Ordinarily I would expect to exact payment in return,’ Dhul Faqar said, oblivious to the calculations whirring in Danny’s brain. ‘Your child and her mother would seem a good place to start.’ He turned to the woman in Western clothes. ‘Don’t you agree, Malinka my dear?’

‘Yes, Dhul Faqar,’ Malinka purred. ‘It would be a
very
good place to start.’ She looked hungry as she walked up to stand beside him, and put one arm round his shoulders. ‘The baby first.’

Dhul Faqar raised one hand. ‘I am a reasonable man,’ he said. ‘Your family will remain safe, so long as you do not try to escape. When you are finally dead, Sergeant Black, they will be released. But if you cause us any trouble . . .’ He gave a regretful gesture. ‘Our friend Mujahid, he with the . . .’ He traced a finger across his neck to indicate the scar of the man in the video. ‘He will be very happy to be distracted from his Christmas Day plans to travel west and put an end to your child’s life. He will document the process, of course.’ An exaggerated shadow fell across Dhul Faqar’s face. ‘I imagine you would find it a trial to watch such a scene, so I beg you not to force us all into a situation we would rather avoid.’

Danny forced himself to show no emotion. His body was trembling with frustration and fury. He concentrated on calming himself.

‘Shall I return them to their cells?’ Malinka asked.

‘Just one minute, my love,’ Dhul Faqar said. ‘We have another matter to discuss. Haven’t you wondered why these three are here in the first place?’ It was strange, the way they spoke to each other in English. Danny could only think that it was for the unit’s benefit.

Malinka frowned, but she didn’t reply.

‘Isn’t it clear that the British have found out something about our forthcoming plans? My guess is that they do not know enough to stop it, and so they have sent these soldiers to find me. But how did they know the strategy was mine in the first place? How did they know to find me here?’ He looked up, and Danny realised he was staring at the three men who had the individual members of the unit at gunpoint. ‘How else,’ he said quietly, ‘unless we have a traitor among us.’