Hellfire (36 page)

Spud wasn’t the kind of guy who normally doubted himself. But he doubted himself now. It wasn’t a feeling he liked.

Regiment ops officer Major Ray Hammond hurried into the Hereford ops room. His day had just got a hell of a lot busier. What was it with Danny Black? Whenever an op included him, things seemed to escalate.

There were already five guys in there, each of them talking urgently into telephones as they made speedy arrangements to get Black and his unit from a frigate in the eastern Atlantic over to the Arabian Peninsular. One of the guys put down his phone, strode up to the ops officer and handed him a piece of paper. Hammond quickly scanned it.

‘This is their quickest route?’ he said.

‘Yes sir.’

‘No military transports?’

‘Not that we can get covertly into the Middle East.’

‘OK. Get them on the line.’

Thirty seconds later, Hammond was wearing a headset and boom mike. An image direct from the frigate appeared on a screen in front of him. He recognised Danny Black’s features. Black looked like shit. His face was drawn and dirty. Rings under his eyes. Several days’ stubble. Tired? Bad luck. Get over it.

‘The Australians are going to put you on the ground in Ghana. We’re avoiding the Nigerians for obvious reasons. From Ghana you’re on a commercial flight to Bahrain. There’s a one-hour stopover in Dubai. That puts you on the ground in Bahrain at approximately 23.30 hrs. You’ll be transported to the UK military base there. We’re diverting an eight-man SBS support team into Bahrain from southern Iraq. They should hit the ground at about the same time as you. We don’t how this meeting with your tout is going to pan out, but they’ll be there if you need them.’

‘
Roger that.
’ Black’s voice sounded scratchy and distant.

‘From the Bahrain base you’ll insert into northern Qatar. You’re going in under the radar. We don’t want the Qataris aware of your presence.’

‘
How do we get into Doha?
’

‘We’re still working that out. We’ll have it sorted by the time you’re on the ground.’ Hammond paused. ‘We’ve been hearing whispers about Ripley. Anything we can tell the family?’

‘
Enemy fire
,’ Black said.

‘That’s not true, is it?’

‘
They don’t want to know the truth.
’ Black looked over his shoulder. ‘
I’ve got to go
,’ he said. Without waiting for another word from his ops officer, the Regiment man disappeared from the screen.

Hammond stood up. ‘I want a list of all our assets in Qatar within the hour,’ he announced to the room in general. He turned to leave – he needed to update his boss – but right then another soldier entered. He looked a bit perplexed, and was holding a mobile phone.

‘What is it?’ Hammond demanded.

‘Er . . . Spud Glover,’ the soldier said.

Hammond blinked. ‘What the fuck? I thought he was wiping the Firm’s arse for them.’

‘He says it’s urgent, sir. Demanding to speak to you.’

Hammond sighed, then grabbed the phone and spoke as he walked out of the ops room. ‘What is it, Spud?’

He was expecting one of Glover’s sarky remarks. What he got was a moment’s silence.

‘Glover, are you there?’

‘
Yes, boss.
’ He sounded uncharacteristically unsure of himself.

‘What the hell is it? I’m busy.’

‘
I . . . I’m following down a lead, boss. This bloke in Birmingham, acting strangely. Firm don’t seem that interested. Requesting permission to ask him a few questions.
’

Hammond stopped walking and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Spud, what the hell are you talking about?’

‘
It’s just, there’s this bloke . . .
’

‘Where’s your MI6 liaison?’

‘
We parted company, boss. Didn’t see eye to eye.
’

‘Spud, we’re doing our fucking best for you, but there’s a limit to how much dead weight we can carry. Get your arse back to London and do what you’re fucking told for once. That’s an order.’

Without waiting for a reply, Hammond killed the line and handed the phone back to the owner, who had followed him up the corridor. ‘If he calls again, I’m busy,’ said Hammond. Which was true. He had two units to mobilise covertly into the Middle East, and waves of barely concealed panic emanating from Whitehall. Black and his team had a big job to do. They were exhausted, and a man down.

He just hoped they were up to it.

Part Three

The Caliph

Twenty-two

10.00 hrs

Danny, Tony and Caitlin had ditched their military kit. As they ran across the flight deck and ducked into the chopper, they carried no personal weapons, no ammo, no webbing, no blades. They had showered and changed into civvies provided by the Australians. If they’d been taking a BA flight across Africa, the Firm might have pulled some strings and they could have taken their gear with them. But the plane transporting them from Ghana into Dubai was operated by Emirates, which meant they needed to look entirely ordinary. Danny felt naked without his kit, but there was no other option.

The chopper lifted up from the flight deck the moment they were inside and the side door was shut. Flight time to Kotoka International Airport in the Ghanaian capital of Accra: thirty-five minutes. The ocean had settled, and the sun reflected dazzlingly off its surface. As Danny stared through the window of the chopper, watching the frigate disappear until it was a dot in the distance, and the shadow of the aircraft rippling over the water below, the events of the previous night felt strangely distant. In the middle of an op, there’s no time for looking back. You can only look forward.

He glanced at his team-mates. Buckingham was asleep. Caitlin had taken her place next to Tony, and had her head resting on his shoulder. Tony himself was staring into the middle distance, expressionless. Danny couldn’t stop thinking about the last conversation they’d had on deck. He tried to put to the back of his mind his distaste for Tony’s refusal to warn his wife. He didn’t have to like Tony. He just had to work with him. But he couldn’t help thinking of Frances, and remembering the words of the Porton Down guy in Chikunda.
Forget 9/11. Explosions are yesterday’s news.

They suddenly saw land. Danny saw the grid-like outskirts of an African town. Accra. Even from the sky he could tell it was sprawling, dense and over-populated. Nose-to-tail traffic. Busy streets. Lines of palm trees and a dusty, sun-soaked haze covering everything. There would be slums on the outskirts and tired government buildings on the interior. Danny had never been here before, but he’d seen enough large African towns to feel like he knew it well enough.

Moments later, they were losing height. Danny saw the dull, grey tarmac of Kotoka International, with the bleak, utilitarian terminal building a couple of hundred metres away. They touched down on to a busy landing zone and spilled out of the chopper. A member of the ground staff was waiting for them in an old electric buggy. He ferried the team to the terminal building, where a uniformed immigration official made a brief study of their passports before waving them through.

The terminal concourse was crowded, with the usual collection of tawdry gift shops and tired-looking cafes. A member of the British consulate was waiting for them by the Emirates ticketing desk. Young guy, fresh-faced. Danny supposed that Ghana was pretty low on the ladder of diplomatic postings. He, Tony and Caitlin held back while Buckingham approached him and, in the course of a two-minute conversation, received a handful of tickets for their journey. The consular official glanced inquisitively over towards the military trio. He received nothing but grim faces in response, before nodding at Buckingham and disappearing into the crowd of the terminal. Buckingham handed out the travel documents – business class into Dubai, economy from Dubai into Bahrain. Departure time, 11.35.

At the check-in desk, a bored-looking airline employee looked Danny up and down. He clearly didn’t get a lot of white guys at his counter. ‘What is your reason for travel?’ he asked in faltering English.

‘Business,’ Danny said.

‘What business?’

The lie came automatically to Danny’s lips. ‘I work for an oil company. Mineral Explorations.’

The guy nodded slowly, as if he knew a great deal about this company and its business. Without another word, he printed out Danny’s boarding card and handed it back.

By the time they were all checked in, their flight was being called. They walked to the gate, very obvious among the Africans and Arabs who made up the rest of the passengers. Buckingham fell in alongside Danny. He’d been mostly silent since they left the frigate. Danny could feel the anxiety emanating from him. Good. A few nerves might stop him fucking up. But they didn’t stop that tone of superiority in his voice. ‘Ahmed’s a tricky character,’ he said. ‘You need to know how to handle him. I’ll brief you further on the flight.’

‘You’ll keep your fucking mouth shut on the flight,’ Danny murmured. ‘We’re under the radar. You don’t say
anything
that an oil company employee wouldn’t say. Got that?’

Buckingham gave him an evil look. ‘You’d do well not to speak to me like that, old sport,’ he said.

‘You’d do well not to speak to me at all.’

They continued for a few paces in silence.

‘I saw you looking at her,’ Buckingham said. ‘Probably for the best that she’s getting shacked up with Tony, eh? Your record’s hardly exemplary. I heard Clara ditched you. Not really a surprise, old sport. Girl like that needs a man who won’t drag her down.’

Danny forced himself to look ahead and ignore the lava in his veins.

‘I could bury you with a single word,’ Buckingham said quietly. ‘I could have your head on a plate.’

A poor choice of words, Danny thought, all things considered. He continued his walk towards the gate. This time the spook lagged a few paces behind.

A rickety old bus took them to the 737 that was waiting on the tarmac. On the aircraft they turned left, and at 11.35 exactly, they were thundering down the runway.

Tiredness overcame Danny. As he waited for sleep to take him, he watched the ground recede. There were no clouds, so within two minutes he had a vista over the African continent. It spread out beneath him, vast, unending. An uncomfortable thought wormed its way into Danny’s brain. Somewhere down there – not in Africa maybe, nor even in the Middle East where they were heading – someone, perhaps just one person, was preparing for a spectacular. Forget about needles in haystacks. They could be looking for just a single person on the planet. In less than forty-eight hours, tens of thousands of potential bio-terror targets would congregate on London, and their only lead was a dodgy Qatari businessman mate of Buckingham’s.

He closed his eyes. In his mind he saw a faceless terrorist preparing for an attack on London, knowing he was impossible to find. Danny shoved away the negative thoughts. There was no place for them. He needed to focus on finding his man.

And he needed to forget that it was a billion-to-one shot.

His name was James Bailey, but he preferred to be called by just his surname.

He had a shaved head, a sleek, thin nose and a protruding Adam’s apple. He lived alone in a comfortable house – two bedrooms and a garage – on the south side of St Albans. He liked it here. The countryside was just a five-minute drive away, but he could get into London when he needed to, as he often did. At first glance, there was very little to distinguish his house from any other. In the front room where he now stood there was a slightly tatty three-piece suite, an Ikea rug on the floor and an Ikea coffee table in front of the electric fire, which had both bars on. An old, out-of-tune upright piano that the previous occupants of the house had left here, and which Bailey had never bothered to get rid of. A laptop sat on top of the piano. On the wall was a black and white picture of the Eiffel Tower, and next to the flat-screen Samsung TV was an ageing CD player, with a Cat Stevens CD box open on top of it.

There were two sets of unusual objects in the room. The first was the camera equipment. It was piled in one corner by the front door that led directly out on to the street. A steadicam rig was packed up in a set of flight cases. A couple of tripods were leaning up against them. On top, open, were two smaller cases – one of lenses, the other of gels. There was a light meter, and of course a camera – a Canon 7d DSLR. A sturdy, well-worn North Face jacket was draped next to it.

The second unusual object was the prayer mat. It was neatly rolled up and wrapped in a cotton drawstring bag to protect it from becoming unclean.

Bailey was preparing for his second prayer of the day. He had not taken any food or drink since dawn, but had carefully washed and dried his hands several times. He did so again now, before moving directly from his bathroom to the front room, where the thick curtains were still shut, the morning light peeping in around the edges. He carefully removed the prayer mat from its drawstring bag, and rolled it out on the ground, facing east. He knelt reverently, then bowed his head to the floor with his arms stretched out in front of him.