Bad Soldier: Danny Black Thriller 4 (43 page)

Danny strode up to Hammond and jabbed his thumb back to indicate the armed police, who were following him uncertainly. ‘You can lose them, boss,’ Danny said. ‘Me and Spud aren’t going anywhere. We’re not stupid.’

Hammond seemed to consider that for a moment. Then he looked towards the police officers. ‘Get back to London,’ he said. ‘You’re needed there.’ He pointed at Danny and Spud. ‘You two, with me.’

Credenhill was clearly being manned only by support staff. Danny, Spud and Hammond’s footsteps echoed down the empty corridor as their ops officer led them towards his office. Once there, he silently pointed at two chairs on the other side of his desk. He sat down, pressed his fingers together and looked severely over them at his two soldiers. ‘Caitlin will be fine,’ he said. And then, rather grudgingly: ‘It looks like you might have had a point. The medics said it was touch and go.’ He sniffed. ‘You two look like shit. Especially you, Black.’

Danny inclined his head.

‘Talk,’ Hammond told them.

Danny drew a deep breath, willing Spud to keep quiet. He reckoned he had his story sorted. With the practised skill of an operative who had been in more debriefs than he could count, he explained the events of the past forty-eight hours. The HALO insertion. The border crossing with the Kurds. The Spetznaz contact. The assault on Dhul Faqar’s compound. Malinka. The Yazidi girl. Their capture and escape. Hammond listened quietly and intently. Only when Danny explained the CIA’s involvement with Dhul Faqar, and the arrival of American special forces to extract their mole, did he ask Danny to repeat himself. Danny understood why. For the security services, intel like this was solid gold. And it might just buy him and Spud out of a court martial.

‘The CIA were brokering a deal with IS,’ Danny said. ‘It’s why they were holding back on supplying any information on the London hit. The Americans wanted to persuade him to move his forces out of northern Iraq and into Syria, to help destabilise the Syrian regime. If the Firm want more intel on Westminster Abbey, they should turn the screw on the Americans. They know more than they’re letting on.’

Hammond nodded. ‘What else?’ he said.

‘That’s all,’ Danny said. He sensed Spud give him an anxious look. Hammond looked from one man to the other. It seemed that he was trying to decide whether or not to believe them. Danny stayed silent. There was certain information he wasn’t prepared to share. His daughter’s abduction. His belief that the London strike was a red herring. Because he knew that as soon as he offered up
that
intelligence, the one man who could lead him to his daughter would have the cross hairs of 22 SAS aimed firmly at his skull. And that story was only going to end one way.

‘I want you both to return home,’ Hammond said. ‘You don’t leave your houses.’

Danny nodded. Silently, he told himself that Hammond wouldn’t have given that instruction if he knew anything about Clara and Rose being abducted. Good.

‘You’ve left me a fucking mess to sort out,’ the ops officer continued. ‘If the security services like your information there’s a chance – a
chance
, mind you – that you’ll have a job after Christmas. If not . . .’ He left it hanging. ‘Now get out of here.’

Danny and Spud stood up.

‘Black,’ Hammond said. ‘Is there anything you’re not telling me?’

Danny paused.

‘No, boss,’ he said.

‘Spud?’

‘Nothing, boss.’

They made to leave the room. But as Danny’s fingers touched the doorknob, he stopped and turned.

‘Boss?’

‘What is it?’

‘Any news of Tony?’

Hammond gave him an impassive stare. ‘What is he, your best buddy all of a sudden?’

‘I just need to know what to expect, next time I see him.’

Hammond stood up. ‘Looks like there’s some kind of love-in between him and Yellow Seven. The palace have requested that Tony be assigned to his CT team. I’m fighting it – we don’t have the resources – but for now he’s cosying up with the royals.’

‘Sandringham?’ Danny asked.

‘What is it, Black, you thinking of sending him a Christmas card?’ And when Danny didn’t reply: ‘Yes, Sandringham. Now get the fuck out of here, I’ve got work to do.’

Danny and Spud left, closing the door quietly behind them.

‘What now?’ Spud hissed as they walked back along the corridor, their footsteps echoing as they went. ‘We go home like Hammond said? Sit and play with our dicks all Christmas?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then what do we do? Where are we going?’

‘To the armoury.’

Spud closed his eyes. ‘Jesus Christ, Danny,’ he breathed.

Dusk was falling as they crossed to the separate building that was the Regiment armoury. With Credenhill all but empty, Danny knew there was little chance that the armourer would be there. Having taken a detour to their bunk room to change into the civvies they’d left here before leaving for the op on the migrant boat, and to fetch a sturdy sports bag, he and Spud loitered in the shadow of B Squadron hangar all the same, keeping eyes on the armoury building for a full five minutes to check there was no movement of personnel in and out of it before making their approach.

Access to the armoury required a six-digit code on a numerical keypad by the main door. Danny tapped it in, and the heavy door clicked open. They entered quietly.

The familiar smell of gun grease and cordite hit Danny’s senses. He moved quickly to the rack that ordinarily housed his personal rifle. The weapon had been returned since they got to Credenhill. Danny made to take it, but then stopped before his fingers touched the gunmetal. If anyone noticed that his and Spud’s personal weapons were missing, questions would be asked. Better to take a couple of anonymous rifles. They would have the opportunity to zero the sights before the weapons were needed.

That was not all they took. Suppressors. Handguns. Ammunition. Laser sights. Covert radio equipment. Danny had a very specific shopping list, and he packed it all carefully into the sports bag, first stripping down the rifles into their constituent parts so they would fit. The chances of any of this stuff being missed this side of Christmas were slim. Spud hung at the doorway, nervously scoping the exterior for any sign of movement.

‘We should go back to Hammond,’ he said finally, as Danny zipped up the bag and lifted it easily, despite its weight. ‘Tell him everything. Mucker, if the hit’s going to be on the royals on Christmas morning, they’ll need a whole bunch of shooters. The chances of just two of us stopping them are tiny. It’ll be a fucking JFK moment.’

‘I don’t care about the royals,’ Danny said, his voice sounding bleak even to himself. ‘I just care about my kid. If you don’t want to come, say the word, I’ll go it alone.’

For a moment, Danny thought Spud was going to take him up on the offer. But Spud shook his head. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

Danny’s BMW was one of the few vehicles parked up in the Credenhill car park. It beeped loudly as Danny pressed the button on his key fob, and its hazard lights flashed, illuminating the two SAS men as they approached. Danny stowed the sports bag carefully in the boot. A minute later, the MoD policeman at the camp entrance was waving them out of base. Danny floored the accelerator, and could sense Spud’s eyes on the speedo. ‘Take it easy, eh?’ Spud said. ‘Let’s not get pulled over tonight.’

Danny barely heard him. ‘I’m going to drop you off at a car hire place,’ he said. ‘Get a vehicle, meet back at mine. I don’t want to use this car.’

‘Why not?’

‘If they find out we’ve gone AWOL, they’ll try to track us using this numberplate. I don’t want anyone to know where we’ve gone.’

Spud nodded, and stared straight ahead.

Danny walked alone from room to gloomy room in his ground-floor flat. He was wearing a long coat. It was a suitable garment for hiding an assault rifle. He felt like he was reading the story of Clara and Rose’s abduction. In his bedroom, the bed was unmade. There was still an indentation in the pillow on the side where Clara slept. On the same side of the bed was Rose’s Moses basket. The blanket Clara used to swaddle the baby was still there. In the sitting room, a cup lay on its side on the carpet, next to the stain its contents had made as it spilled. There was Clara’s phone, smashed. On the mirror above the fireplace, a narrow spatter of blood.

Almost on autopilot he opened a wooden box on the mantelpiece and removed a wad of notes – an emergency fund he always kept there – and shoved them in his back pocket. Then he stood in silence. He expected to feel anger. Determination. But he felt something else. Sickness. Dizziness. That damn image of his daughter, with her bleeding eye, kept playing in his head. Making him lose his focus. He looked at his hand. It was shaking, and for a moment he thought he might vomit.

He mastered it. Tried to quell the frustration. He wanted to act now, this very minute. But he needed patience.

He closed his eyes and drew a deep, tremulous breath. How long since he’d slept? Apart from a couple of hours’ shut-eye on the flight back from Iraq, days. He couldn’t let Spud – or anyone – see him like this.

He had an old laptop. It was in its usual place, shoved under the sofa. He powered it up and got online. Then he navigated to the website for the Sandringham Estate. One more click and he was looking at a colourfully drawn plan of the estate, clearly designed for tourists. The North Garden. The West Lawns. The Visitor Centre. Not that the public would be allowed on to the estate at this time of year, when the royals were in residence. He noted the position of the main gates on the northern edge of the estate, and another set on the south-eastern perimeter. He tried to identify which part of the estate would be set aside for Tony and any other security personnel. Either the eastern wing of the main building, or the separate group of buildings by the south-eastern gate. Either way, that gate would be closest to where Tony would be sleeping, if he was on the estate. A strategy began to form in Danny’s mind. He shut down the computer and gathered up the power cable, the map already burned indelibly on his mind.

The doorbell rang. It was Spud. ‘Christ, mate, you look like death warmed up.’

Danny didn’t answer, or ask him in. He just put his laptop and cable into the sports bag containing the hardware they’d taken from the armoury, picked it up and stepped outside into the cool night.

‘You get the motor?’

Spud nodded and pointed to a black Honda Civic parked up in front of the flat.

‘Good,’ Danny said. ‘Let’s go.’

Twenty-two

Yellow Seven had told Tony there was nowhere more boring than Sandringham. In the forty-eight hours that he’d been here, Tony hadn’t seen much to make him disagree.

The Regiment man had been assigned quarters in a small house fifty metres to the east of the main residence. This was where all the security personnel were housed, but Yellow Seven had pulled some strings to get Tony a pad to himself. Not that it was any great shakes. It looked swanky and ornate from the outside, all red brick and manicured gardens. Inside, it was shabby. Moth-eaten furniture that couldn’t have been less than fifty years old. Dusty hunting prints hanging crooked on the wall. A smell of age and neglect.

At least there was a TV. Tony was sprawled on a lumpy old sofa in front of it, a glass of Scotch at his side. Decent stuff. Yellow Seven had pressed it on him when they’d arrived at Sandringham, and it was already half gone. Tony flicked through the channels with a bored, glazed look. One moment there was a rerun of some twat dancing the tango, the next there was footage of hungry Syrian civilians starving in some town under siege by government forces. Tony found them both equally tedious.

He thought about leaving. Truth to tell, he’d thought about leaving since the moment he’d arrived and delivered a shaken-up Yellow Seven to the royal family’s CP team. But each moment he was on the point of jacking it and heading back home to Hereford, he reminded himself why he was here. Proximity to the royal family was an asset that a man like Tony could use to his advantage. Fuck the army. Fuck the Regiment. If Yellow Seven wanted Tony by his side, and if Tony had enough dirt on his new royal friend to bury him – which he already did – he reckoned he could name his price.

So he’d made the best of it. He’d got in with all the royal protection officers on site, and all the minor security personnel. To a man, they were pissed off that they’d be spending their Christmas keeping tabs on this bunch of overprivileged twats. It hadn’t taken much to cosy up to them. A few well-chosen comments about the royals and they were putty in Tony’s hands. Half of them were in the grounds now, supposedly combing the place for intruders, more likely loitering out of sight and smoking cigarettes to make the evening pass quicker. Talk about a crappy way to spend Christmas Eve.

He flicked the TV off and drained his Scotch. He thought about calling his missus, but decided against it. Stupid bitch had played hide the zucchini with Spud Glover, for Christ’s sake. She could sit by herself all fucking Christmas, as far as Tony was concerned. Yellow Seven had asked that Tony accompany him on a clay pigeon shoot on Boxing Day. Should be good for a laugh, watching those inbred cunts trying to handle a shotgun.

His phone rang. Tony glanced at it. At the sight of the name on the screen, he felt a wave of dislike so powerful it made him sit up.