Authors: Chris Ryan
‘He is
murderer!
’ the mother shrieked. ‘
Murderer of my son!
’
Asu didn’t take his eyes from Danny. They were calculating. Danny sensed that he didn’t mourn the loss of his grandson one bit. To lose face, though, was agony for him. ‘Why shouldn’t my men kill you right now?’ he said.
Danny almost gave him an answer, but then Taff was beside them. Keeping his eyes on the rebel leader, he stretched out a hand and gently moved Danny’s Sig to one side. There was nobody else on earth that Danny would allow to do that.
‘Don’t kill your friends, boyo,’ he told Asu quietly. ‘Concentrate on your enemies. Danny’s a good lad and Basheba’s mistaken. I saw it all. He tried to administer first aid. Look at the boy’s body. You know he couldn’t have survived that.’
Asu glanced for the first time at the dead child. His chest was a bleeding mass of flesh and bone.
‘He’s right,’ Buckingham said. ‘Best to think this through.’
Asu bowed his head. His guards lowered their guns.
Basheba’s reaction was heart-wrenching. She staggered back, tears streaming down her face. Whispering in Arabic, she gestured to her other son, who was watching from the doorway of the building. He started towards her, but stopped suddenly as Asu snarled an instruction. The boy was clearly terrified of his grandfather.
Basheba, realising she could not influence her son, turned her anguished face first to Danny, giving him a look of hatred like he’d never seen before, and then to Asu. She spoke again, now in English. ‘Will you punish him?’ she asked, pointing at Danny.
‘No,’ Asu replied. ‘I will not.’
A strange whimper left Basheba’s lips. With a final, imploring look at her surviving son, she ran, weeping, through the gates and disappeared into the street.
A long silence followed.
‘She is a stupid woman,’ Asu said.
‘Stupid enough to let the enemy know your location?’ Taff asked, a world of violence implicit in his question.
Asu waved his hand dismissively. ‘I have people patrolling the streets,’ he said. ‘They will find her.’ He looked, without pity or any other discernible emotion, down at the body of his grandson, then prodded it with his foot. ‘He must be buried before the setting of the sun. Government forces will be here soon. We must move on from this place.’
Buckingham jostled past Taff and Danny. ‘My condolences,’ he said.
‘He had one arm and was of no use anyway.’
If Buckingham found this distasteful, he didn’t let on.
‘Do we have an agreement, sir?’ he pressed.
Asu nodded his head slowly. ‘We have an agreement,’ he said. ‘Tonight I meet with my commanders in my safe house near the central mosque. Taff knows the place. I will explain everything to them.’
‘You must tell us where we can find Sorgen if we are to progress,’ Buckingham said.
Asu looked away. ‘I only hear rumours.’
‘What rumours do you hear, sir?’
‘He and his people stay away from the city. Like me, he keeps his commanders separate from each other. They occupy tents in the desert south-west of Homs. They are easy to move, and from the air look like simple Bedouin.’
‘But where is Sorgen himself ?’
‘Follow the road to Al Qusayr. After thirty kilometres you will see a track leading off to the right into the hills. Follow this. If my information is correct, you will find my brother.’ He spat out the word ‘brother’ as if he was swearing. He looked at Buckingham and Taff. Something seemed to pass between him and them. Then he turned and barked a single word at his bodyguards. He walked with them to the waiting people carrier, they climbed in and the vehicle drove off.
Taff looked down at the dead body, then at Buckingham. ‘Get in the Land Rover,’ he said.
‘What about—?’
‘Just fucking get in.’
Buckingham did as he was told, and as soon as he was out of earshot Taff grabbed Danny by the arm. ‘You’re not one of us, kiddo,’ he said. ‘You’re still serving and you just killed a child in front of a fucking spook.’
‘He was—’
‘I don’t care why you did it, lad. Just don’t give that twat the rope to hang you with. You can’t trust a fucking spook.’
‘What did you talk about in there, Taff ? When Buckingham sent me out of the room?’
For a moment, Taff looked like he was going to give Danny a straight answer. But then he shook his head. ‘Business, kiddo,’ he said. ‘Just business. Come on, let’s get the fuck out of it before those government cunts come back and dish out second helpings.’
EIGHTEEN
17.00 hrs.
‘What the bloody hell do you mean, you didn’t plant the device?’
Back at Taff’s base, Danny and Buckingham were alone in the bleak first-floor room that had been set aside for their use. Danny was peering through the gap in the wooden planks reinforcing the windows. In the street below, fifteen metres to his eleven o’clock, he could see a group of five young men huddled by a pile of garbage the size of a small car. He spotted a couple of rats among the waste, but they didn’t seem to worry the men. They were talking intently. Maybe they were making plans to cause, or avoid, violence. Maybe they just wanted to know where their next meal was coming from. In any case, they didn’t immediately appear to be armed. Danny looked back into the room, where Buckingham was standing with his arms folded. His face was grimy and covered in dust. He looked a lot less suave than when they’d first met.
‘I said, what the
bloody hell
do you mean, Black, you didn’t—?’
‘I had my hands full. Maybe you noticed?’
‘Oh, I noticed. I bloody
noticed
. Risking everything for some kid who was going to die anyway.’
‘I’ll remember that, next time you need my help.’
‘A fat lot of use you’ll be.’
‘You’re alive, aren’t you?’
‘Just!’ Buckingham was raging now. ‘Which is more than can be said for Jack and . . .’
‘Go ahead and say it, mucker.’
For a moment, Danny thought Buckingham was going to finish by laying at Danny’s feet the death of his mates. Perhaps he thought better of it. Perhaps Taff’s appearance in the doorway quietened him. Buckingham seemed very wary of these PMCs. Deep down, Danny didn’t blame him.
Taff’s frame filled the doorway. He didn’t need to say anything. ‘All friends?’ he asked delicately.
‘Oh yes,’ said Buckingham. ‘I’d say it was all going absolutely swimmingly, wouldn’t you, Black?’
‘Danny?’ said Taff.
‘Hunky fucking dory. When do we go and see Sorgen?’
‘First light tomorrow.’
‘That’s too late. I want to get this over and done with.’
‘No can do, kiddo,’ Taff said. ‘If we start moving around after dark, chances are we’ll be stopped by government troops. Or even worse, followed. Better to leave it till the morning.’
‘In any case,’ Buckingham put in, ‘Eid al-Fitr starts tomorrow. Sorgen will be more receptive to our offer then.’
‘So we just sit around here and wait for a MiG to dump its payload on us?’
‘Relax, kiddo, we’re in a safe part of town.’
‘That’s what Asu thought.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m smarter than Asu. Why don’t you head downstairs? De Fries’s cooking – some disgusting Dutch shit, but it fills a hole and there isn’t much else to do till dawn.’
Taff nodded at them and disappeared along the hallway.
03.20 hrs.
Sleep was impossible. Not with the sound of a midnight bombardment raging all around. Taff had been right: the air strikes were avoiding this part of town. But when ordnance is dropping from the sky, any part of town is close. Lying on the hard floor in the darkness, the recumbent form of Buckingham just a couple of metres to the right, Danny could see him jerk every time a bomb hit. And, truth to tell, Danny was on edge too. This wasn’t his idea of a secure LUP. But Taff was calling the shots and he didn’t have Regiment SOPs to adhere to. Not any more. If he said this was where they were staying, then this was where they were staying.
Buckingham sat up suddenly as a particularly loud explosion somewhere in the distance hit their ears. He cursed under his breath before lying down again. Danny got to his feet.
‘Where are you going?’ Buckingham whispered, unable to keep the nervousness from his voice.
‘I need a slash. Come if you want. Just don’t expect me to hold yours like Nanny used to.’
He didn’t
need a slash, but his companion’s constant twitching was getting on his nerves and he wanted some air. Treading silently, he left the room and padded along the corridor. The generator was still grinding in the room next door, and Danny could see the outlines of Taff’s local workforce lying on the floor, and the silhouette of the gimpy by the window. He peered in for a moment, wondering if Taff was in there, asleep. Difficult to say, but he couldn’t make him out. Perhaps he was keeping stag outside. Danny decided to go and have a look.
The compound was still. There was a full moon overhead, and the fire pit that De Fries had used to grill fatty hunks of some meat Danny didn’t recognise – camel maybe? – was still glowing near the left-hand wall. The vehicles were parked in a row about five metres from the rear wall, all facing the gate in case they needed to evacuate quickly. And beyond them, right by the gate, were two figures. Danny couldn’t see their faces, but he could tell they were Skinner and Hector from their outlines. He could also see that they were tooled up. Heavily. Not only a rifle each, but Skinner held some other tool which Danny couldn’t quite make out.
It was instinct that made Danny hold back in the doorway of the house. He didn’t want these two to see him and there was something about their body language that suggested they didn’t want to be seen. Hector looked furtively over his shoulder before quietly unlocking the gate and sliding it open just wide enough for the two of them to slip outside. It closed without the slightest noise.
Something wasn’t right. Where were these two going? Why the secrecy?
Looking back into the house, Danny thought about returning to his position by Buckingham’s side. But Taff was around somewhere, and he could trust him to make sure Buckingham was OK if anything went wrong. Danny had an itch that needed scratching. What were those two up to? Something they didn’t want Taff – or anyone – to know about? There was only one way to find out. Danny felt his fingers move to his chest rig, which he hadn’t removed since arriving in Syria. The Sig was there.
He crept round the compound’s perimeter wall, keeping out of the moonlight and staying in the shadows. The gate was still unlocked. He slid it open and crept out. As soon as he had shut the gate behind him, he pressed himself back against it. He could hear a chopper approaching from the north. Twenty seconds later it was passing overhead, its searchlight beaming down on the compound and the street outside. But then it veered westward and the sound of its rotors disappeared. Danny breathed again.
The street was deserted, the outlines of the concrete buildings strangely ghostly in the moonlight. Eerie, too, to be in a city with no one on the streets. The only trace of movement was thirty-five metres to his right. Two figures, also keeping to the shadows, turning left into a side street and disappearing.
Danny made next to no noise as he ran lightly on the balls of his feet. He could move through jungle undergrowth without making a sound, so remaining the grey man, invisible and inaudible, presented no problems here in the chaotic darkness. When he reached the corner of the street, he waited and peered ahead in each direction. He saw Hector and Skinner walking along with the swagger of men who didn’t think they were being followed, or didn’t care if they were. If it hadn’t been for the signs of battle all around them – two burned-out vehicles, one behind the other fifteen metres from Danny’s position, the dark bullet holes on moonlit buildings, the total absence of civilians – they could have passed for a couple of blokes sauntering home from the pub. Except that blokes sauntering home from the pub didn’t normally have Colt Commandos strapped to them, and God only knew what other hardware these two were packing.
Danny followed the pair for fifteen minutes, staying thirty metres behind them – far enough that they wouldn’t recognise him even if they noticed they had a trail. What were they after? What diversions could this fucked-up town offer them? Hookers, maybe. It seemed unlikely. Would they really risk venturing out just to lose their load in some rancid Homs brothel, full of clapped-out prostitutes servicing the needs of government forces and rebels alike? It occurred to Danny once more that perhaps they simply wanted to keep what they were doing below Taff’s radar.
He kept careful track of his route, ticking off landmarks in his head: a small mosque on his left, one of whose minarets was crumbling and dilapidated, a school with elephants and zebras painted on the perimeter wall. Finally, Hector and Skinner stopped in a side street. From his vantage point on the corner, Danny could see that this little road had avoided the worst of the fighting. It was deserted, of course, and there was the ever-present smell of rubbish decaying as fast as Homs’s failing infrastructure. But the buildings – modern, two-storey structures on either side – looked largely untouched. The pair stopped outside one of these buildings, twenty-five metres from where Danny stood watching in the shadows.