Authors: Alan McDermott
With his suitcase packed it was time to
head to the airport, where his ticket was waiting at the Emirates Airline desk,
and in the First Class lounge he relaxed with a twelve-year-old malt.
As he sipped the whiskey he was thankful
that the end of the operation was in sight. Just another couple of weeks
and his career progression would advance another step closer to the top.
* * *
When the phone call ended Callinag
demanded to know why the British government were sending kill squads to his
island. The reply was rather succinct: “That's bullshit!”
“We'll find out soon enough,” Dog said,
stepping in to calm the situation. “Once your files come back we'll know
what to do with you.”
“I want to talk to you,” Callinag said,
and Dog followed him out of the guardhouse.
“The bastard set us up,” Smart whispered
once they'd gone, his anger apparent.
“Why, though?” Baines wondered.
“Pretty obvious, really,” Grant
said. “Very few people outside the government know that I'm still alive,
and every single day brings the threat that one of us might break the
news. It's something I've thought about for the last year, and I know
what I would do if I was in their shoes: Get rid of us, permanently.”
“We considered that, too,” Smart
admitted, “but they can't kill us all. We agreed that if one of us dies
in suspicious circumstances, the others would go to the papers with our story.”
“What if the deaths were above
suspicion? Farrar told me that Tris died while on a mission in Iraq, and
that happens in our line of work, so it didn't raise any alarm bells with me at
the time. That means, of the seven of us that survived the attack last
year, there are only six of us left. If Farrar had succeeded in getting
us captured and killed by Abu Sayyaf there'd be just three.”
“Two,” Baines corrected him. “Paul
came off his bike a couple of months ago.”
“Fell off, or knocked off?” Grant asked.
“The back tyre blew while he was bombing
up the motorway. Witnesses said there was no-one near him at the
time. Trust me, we checked.”
“So with us out of the way there's just
Jeff and Carl left, and the secret will die with them.”
“That's if they accepted that our deaths
were not suspicious,” Baines pointed out.
“Of course they wouldn't be
suspicious. They can hardly blame the British government if we were
killed by terrorists in the Philippines, can they?”
They considered their position for a
while, but no matter which way they looked at it they kept coming back to the
same conclusion.
“Farrar's trying to bury the evidence —
namely us,” Smart said.
The others agreed, and the discussion
turned to their options. Baines wanted to turn the tables on Farrar but
Grant was quick to point out that it was a waste of time.
“Farrar must have been taking orders
from someone in power, someone near the top of the political ladder. If
we take him out they will just replace him with someone else to finish the
job.”
“So we take the fight to them?” Smart
asked.
“It's that or spend the rest of our
lives on the run.”
Baines began suggesting a plan of
attack, the first stage of which was to grab Farrar and find out who was
pulling his strings, but Grant was quick to dampen his enthusiasm.
“One step at a time. First we need
to get out of here.”
The thought brought them all back to
reality. With their photos winging their way to Langley it was only a
matter of time before Baines and Smart were identified.
Grant was another story.
If the CIA cross-referenced with the
British security services it was possible that a match might come back, but
more likely the U.K. government wouldn't want to share the fact that Tom Gray
was still alive.
They were considering their next move
when Dog and Callinag returned.
“So, Mr. Baines, Mr. Smart, we now know
a lot more about you than we did thirty minutes ago,” Dog said. He
focused on Grant. “You, however, remain a mystery.”
Grant simply looked away, not wanting to
engage the man, and Dog was content to deal with the other two for the moment.
“Quite a past you guys have,” he said,
reading from a printout. “Served in the SAS; saw action in Iraq;
freelancers for the last five years; and co-conspirators with Tom Gray in the
spring of last year.”
He looked up from the page. “If
you'd tried that stunt in the States you'd be on death row right about
now. How come your government let you walk?”
“I guess the PM is a sucker for a pretty
face,” Baines quipped.
Dog ignored the comment and turned his
attention back to Grant. “What about you? You’re obviously British,
and friends with these guys, yet your picture isn’t listed on any database and
the name Sam doesn’t bring back any matches. How do you explain that?”
Grant maintained his silence, much to
Callinag’s annoyance.
“Answer the question!” he shouted, but
Grant didn’t so much as flinch.
“Don’t worry, General, Langley is
passing their details over to the Brits, so we should have a match real
soon. In any case, they’ll no doubt be sending someone to take them off
our hands.” He flipped a lazy salute to the superior officer and took his
leave.
* * *
It was four hours later when the reply
from Langley came through. Dog looked at the printout and wondered just
who the hell this man was, given that the page simply contained the name Sam
Grant and the words TOP SECRET in big, bold letters. No matches in the
CIA database — or any other database for that matter. NSA had turned up
blank, as had the FBI, leaving just the concise response from the Brits.
Orders from Langley were to await their collection
by a British team, ETA thirty-one hours.
Back in his office, and with his
interest aroused, he spent the next two hours researching Baines, Smart and the
whole Tom Gray affair, but there was no mention of a Sam Grant.
There was, however, a strong likeness
between Grant and the image of Gray on his screen. Could this be the man
sitting in his cell? It would explain the secrecy, especially as Gray was
certified dead.
Internet searches for Sam Grant returned
nothing that related to his prisoner, adding further weight to his burgeoning
theory.
He printed off a photo of Tom Gray and
was heading over to the guardhouse when one of his troopers caught up with him
and flashed a salute.
“Sergeant Garcia has just reported in,
Dog! He's taking heavy fire on hill 178!”
“Casualties?”
“One dead. He's pulling his team
back.”
Dog grimaced. Callinag wouldn't be
happy that one of his men was down.
“Okay, tell Harrison to take two squads
in support.”
The trooper nodded and ran off to relay
the order, while Dog abandoned his trip to the cells and instead headed towards
the command centre.
“What's the latest?” he asked as he
entered.
“Garcia's pulling out. Confirmed one
dead, one injured: a bullet to the leg. It's slowing their withdrawal.”
Dog grabbed a headset. “Bravo One,
Charlie Two, what's your situation, over?”
“We're half a click from the base of
hill 178, no pursuit at this time, over.”
“What's the enemy strength, over?”
“Upwards of thirty, small arms and
mortars, over.”
It didn't sound like a typical skirmish:
the numbers suggested a much larger concentration of enemy than they normally
encountered.
Dog gave Garcia co-ordinates to an
exfiltration point and ordered a medivac team to meet them there. With
the team now out of danger he crossed the square to the guardhouse, formulating
a plan as he walked.
Dusk was approaching, heralding a
shift-change for the ubiquitous flying insects. He was thankful for the
Army-issue repellent that would keep them at least eight inches from his skin,
for a while at least.
Inside the stockade he took his usual
seat on the corner of the desk and pulled out the printout he'd made, which had
Tom Gray's photo and some notes he'd garnered from the Internet. Now and
again he would look up at Grant, then back to the page.
“So, it looks like you did some time in
the SAS, too, Sam Grant.”
He glanced over to the cell but the
prisoner remained impassive. Time to crank it up, he thought.
“It also says you're single. Well,
you are now that your alcoholic wife rammed herself into a bridge!”
Grant's jaw hardened at the remark, but
it was Baines who gave the game away by leaping from his seat and grabbing the
bars.
“She wasn't an alcoholic, you worthless
shit!”
Dog dismissed the two Filipino soldiers
on guard duty and once they were gone he strode over to the cell. “Calm
down, son, I didn't mean anything by it. I was just fishing, and I think
I just caught me a Tom Gray.”
He looked at Grant, who offered no
denial. Baines also turned to Grant and shot him an apologetic look.
“So what happens now?” Grant asked.
“Well, a team is en route to pick you up
and take you back to England. In the meantime, why don't you explain what
you're doing here, and what was that phone call from Farrar all about?”
“Wait! Who exactly is coming to pick us
up?”
Dog shrugged. “All I know is a
team from the U.K. are on their way and they'll be here the day after
tomorrow.”
The three men looked at each
other. After a few moments it was Grant who made the decision and he told
Dog the entire story, starting with Abdul Mansour's attack the previous
year. He explained how all three came to be on Jolo and ended on Farrar's
phone call and the implications it held for all three of them.
“I know you don't agree with what we did
last year, but if you hand us over to them you'll be signing our death
warrants.”
“That's where you're wrong. What
you guys did took balls, but I couldn't say that in front of the General.”
“Then let us go.”
Dog shook his head. “No can
do. The best I can offer is to pass your concerns back to Langley and let
them decide.”
Grant sprang to his feet. “Are you
fucking listening to me? If you mention the name Tom Gray to anyone,
you’ll be next on their list!”
Dog considered the statement, and with
the story he’d just heard he knew it made sense.
“Okay, so I don’t tell Langley.
But that doesn’t leave me with many options.”
“Well, we’re fresh out of options, too,”
Grant said. “So I’ll make this simple: if you hand us over to them, I’ll
tell them you know my real identity.”
He let the threat hang for a moment.
“Now find a way to get us out of here!”
Chapter 11
Thursday 19th
April 2012
When the Emirates flight touched down in
Dubai, Farrar was one of the first to disembark from the first class
section. After the short walk to his connecting flight he turned his
phone on and checked for messages. He was a nervous flyer and had happily
complied with the stewardess once she informed him that it could interfere with
the flight instruments.
There were seven voicemails, all from
his boss, which suggested they weren’t welcome home messages. His call
was answered on the second ring, the voice exploding in his ear.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“I was on a flight, sir. What’s
the emergency?”
“What’s the emergency? Well, let’s
see. The last communication I had from you said our three problems had
been eliminated. So why did I receive a request for information about
them from our American cousins? How do you explain the fact that they are
being held at a U.S. base on a remote southern Philippine island?”
Farrar’s head was spinning. How
could they still be alive? Did they escape, or did Abu Sayyaf let them
go? As he pondered the likelihood of both scenarios, a third popped into
his head: they hadn’t been with Abu Sayyaf when he’d called.
“Are you still there, Farrar?”
His boss’s voice brought him back to the
moment. “Yes sir, still here. I’ll catch a flight back and
sort this out personally.”
“Don’t bother. I’ve sent a team to
do the job. I couldn’t wait around all day waiting for you to return my
calls. You just get back here and report to my office as soon as you
land.”
“Yes sir, I’ll be there in...,” but the
line was already dead, and a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach told him
his future was heading in the same direction.
Damn you, Tom Gray!
He sat in the lounge fuming for what
seemed an eternity, until self-preservation took over. Perhaps all was
not lost. There was still a chance to redeem himself by personally making
sure the remaining two hits were executed as planned. His failure in the
Philippines could be explained away and once this mission was over he would
make damn sure the next went without a hitch.
Once he boarded the plane he declined
the offer of champagne, preferring instead to keep a clear head while he
fabricated an explanation for his superiors.
* * *
“What makes you think Grant is telling
the truth?” Dog asked Garcia towards the end of the debriefing.
He'd given his sergeant a rundown of the
information received from Langley, but had stopped short of revealing Grant's
true identity.
“These people were dug in, and dug in
well.” Most of the encounters with the terrorists had taken place as they
moved from one temporary base to the next, but this latest battle suggested a
more permanent encampment.
“It still doesn't mean an attack is
imminent, or that Abdul Mansour is on the island.”
Garcia had to agree, but said the shift
in the enemy's Standard Operating Procedure suggested they were hunkering
down.
“Maybe they just got sick of running,”
Dog offered. “Either way, it plays into our hands. We don't have to chase
them all over the island and we can keep them contained on that hill
indefinitely. If necessary we can starve them out.”
“They're bound to have hostages,” Garcia
pointed out. “We'd be starving them, too.”
“I've taken that into account. We
offer food in exchange for the hostages and eventually they run out of
bargaining chips.”
He could tell by the look in Garcia's
eyes that something was bothering him and asked him to speak his mind.
“Well, they might refuse an exchange and
instead start killing hostages until food is delivered. Their regard for
human life isn't all that great.”
It was something Dog had considered,
too, and to be fair to Garcia it was probably the most likely outcome.
Grant's recollection of his time with Abu Sayyaf suggested they had just three
western hostages and a handful of Filipinos. The locals would probably be
the first to go, the American and two Brits being too valuable to simply
kill. Having said that, they were quite willing to murder Grant and
probably would have, had he not had any help. His planned execution came
at a time when they thought a million dollars was on its way, which suggested
their need for money wasn't as great as previously thought.
So what made them toss away a million
bucks?
The question brought him back to Grant's
sighting of Abdul Mansour, and he knew in an instant that the man was telling
the truth. He shared his thoughts with Garcia, who concurred.
“He could be telling the truth about an
attack, too,” Garcia said.
Dog nodded. If Grant was right, a
couple of hundred terrorists were about to come charging out of the
jungle. He'd need more than a handful of battle-hardened soldiers, some
National Guard bridge builders and a heap of — in his opinion —
poorly-disciplined Filipinos if he was going to repel them successfully.
“Do we wait for them to launch an
attack, or try to stop them before they get here?” Garcia asked.
“We don’t have the men to go out and
face them. In fact, we are going to be hard pushed to mount a solid
defence within our own perimeter. I’ll call SOCPAC and see what resources
they have available.”
He rose from his chair and gestured for
Garcia to follow him.
“Before I call this in I want to see if
Grant knows what we will be facing,” Dog said as they crossed the square to the
stockade.
The prisoners were just finishing up a
meal when they entered, and Dog waited for the Filipino guards to clear away their
dishes before dismissing them.
“Sam, you said an attack was about to
take place on this base, and we believe you,” Dog said. “We need to know
what we’re up against.”
“How many men, what weapons they have
available, anything you can tell us,” Garcia added.
Grant told them what little he knew
about the enemy's strengths. He had seen them brandishing new M16s and
there were several ammo boxes dotted around the camp. There were also the
multiple-shot RPGs, but he had no idea how many rounds they had for them.
That was all he could be certain of. One or two of the boxes looked like
they might contain more RPGs but he hadn't seen the contents, so he couldn't be
sure.
“What else?” Garcia pressed.
“There were a few other containers but
they were nondescript and could have contained anything from food to a small
generator. Apart from the weapons, there's a couple of hundred bad guys
and Abdul Mansour.
“How does that stack up against your
defensive capabilities?”
“We're slightly outnumbered, but we know
how to build a perimeter,” Garcia said confidently.
Baines wasn't impressed. “I've
seen Abdul Mansour in action, and he knows how to plan a co-ordinated attack at
very short notice. Last year he took thirty kids off the streets, gave
them AK-47s and managed to get through Tom Gray's defences, which included
well-trained armed police officers. Imagine what he could do with two
hundred armed men who've already seen their share of battle.
“So tell me, how many skilled troops do
you have?”
“Six with combat experience,” Dog
replied, “plus another seventy National Guard and a hundred locals, give or
take. They can all handle a weapon.”
“That may not be enough. Can you
draw on anyone else in the region?” Smart asked.
“I'm heading over to speak to Special
Operations Command Pacific. We'll have all the men we need by the time
tomorrow night comes.”
He got up to leave, but Grant had some
final words of warning.
“Don't underestimate him. Get them
to send the best they have, and lots of them.”
* * *
When Nabil climbed back to the camp he
found Mansour and Abu Assaf were waiting for him. The gunfire had lasted
barely three minutes, and the battle was over by the time he’d got there.
“A small patrol,” he reported when they
asked what had happened. “I estimate five or six men. We killed one
that we know of, and took no casualties of our own.”
Assaf shrugged off the incident.
“We have these skirmishes all the time,” he told Mansour. “It is nothing
new.”
“Perhaps,” Mansour mused, but something
told him all was not well. “How often do patrols come into this area?”
Assaf had to think about the question
for a moment. “The last time they ventured this close was about three
months ago,” he admitted. “Most of our encounters are in the lower
regions, in the valleys and flatlands towards the edge of the forest.”
As the last of the twilight gave way to
darkness, Mansour made his decision. “The prisoner who escaped must have
alerted the enemy, which is why they sent a scout party. We must bring
forward the attack before they can prepare their defences.”
“You want to attack them in daylight?”
Assaf asked, his expression suggesting he wasn’t entirely happy with the idea.
“No, we must hit them tonight.” He
turned to Shah. “Nabil, have you prepared the defences?”
“Everything is in place.”
“Good, good.” To Assaf he said:
“Nabil will lead the attack. Gather your senior men and we will assign
them their targets.”
Assaf called one of his men over and
told him to assemble the others.
“I must leave tonight,” Mansour
said. “Please ensure the transport is ready to go in three hours.”
Assaf handed a phone to another soldier
and told him to contact the boat owner with the updated schedule. As he
did so, a group of men arrived at the camp with nine children in tow.
Nabil looked at Mansour
questioningly. “What are they doing here?” he asked.
“Just a little insurance, my
friend. There is no telling how they will retaliate, and a few adult
hostages might not be enough to stay their hand. They will think twice if
they know there are children in harm’s way.”
Nabil wasn’t happy with the idea, but
was not about to question Mansour’s decision. Instead he offered to lead
the briefing and with Mansour’s blessing he went off to prepare the map of the
base.
“The boat is on its way,” Assaf told
Mansour. “I will have my men escort you to the rendezvous point.”
Mansour thanked him for his
hospitality. “May Allah watch over you; I pray he doesn’t need too many
martyrs tonight.”
“Thank you, my brother. Will we
see you again?”
“No. I cannot make this journey
again, but I will send others in my place. You can be assured of our
continuing support.”
He saw that Nabil was about to begin the
briefing so he said a quick farewell.
“Once the attack is over I want you to
make your way to Sumalata as planned.”
Sumalata, set in a bay in one of the
seventeen thousand Indonesian islands, was a three-hundred mile journey due
south.
“The vessel that brought us here should
be able to make the journey in less than a day. I will have someone
waiting onshore at one o’clock in the morning for the next seven days. If
you don’t arrive by then I will assume Allah’s need was greater than mine.”
After a brief hug, Mansour — carrying
his bag and an M16 — joined the four armed men ready to guide him through the
pitch black jungle. The Sundalos never ventured into the jungle at night,
one of them explained, but that did not prevent them from taking their
time. One man took point a hundred yards ahead, ready to raise the alarm
if necessary, but the trek passed off without incident.
As Abdul Mansour climbed aboard the
banca he saw the sky on the horizon light up as mortars hit their targets,
followed moments later by the signature
CRUMP!
and the chatter of
distant small arms fire. Saying a prayer for his friend, he gave the
order to cast off and began the next leg of his mission.