Hellfire (45 page)

He grabbed the suitcase and moved round to the side of the car, where he chucked the case into the back before taking the wheel and quickly starting the engine. The radio blared loudly, but it was distorted because they were undercover. Spud switched it off, and could now hear his hostage thumping frenziedly in the boot, and shouting. He knew he had to get out of earshot quickly. The VW’s tyres screeched as he reversed from the parking spot and cut across a line of empty spaces towards the spiral ramp that led to the exit.

More thumping from the boot, but the car park wasn’t busy and the ticket booths were unmanned. Spud used his own ticket to exit the car park. Within minutes he was pulling on to the M23.

It was pissing down with rain as he headed south – the wipers made almost no difference – but Spud was sweating so profusely he might as well have been out in it. The blue motorway sign for junction ten loomed up ahead, and he indicated left. As he listened to the tick-tock of the indicators, he realised the banging from the boot had stopped. He pulled off the motorway, the wipers still unable to keep up with the torrent of rain. The road ahead was a busy dual carriageway, red tail lights streaming off into the distance. Spud knew he needed to get away from the brightly lit tarmac, to take al-Meghrani somewhere deserted and covert where he could question him properly. When, after about three minutes, a road sign loomed towards him indicating a slip road a mile in the distance, he manoeuvred himself into the outside lane.

A minute later, they were curving off the main road. Spud didn’t slow down for the roundabout up ahead, and ignored the angry horns as he muscled his way on to it, then off at the second exit. He felt his back tyres skidding slightly on the wet tarmac as they joined a much narrower road, hedges on either side that grew thicker after about 750 metres.

There were no vehicles up ahead. In the rear-view mirror, Spud saw a single set of headlamps at a distance of, he estimated, a hundred metres. Suddenly, twenty metres away, he saw a cutaway section in the grass verge for parking. There were no other vehicles there, so he slammed the brakes hard. They squealed in the wet, and Spud surged forward as the vehicle skidded through the rain. Spud skilfully kept control of the vehicle, steering into the skid and coming to a halt neatly in the verge.

He switched off the engine. The headlamps and the light on the dashboard faded. The car coming up behind them passed and disappeared.

Darkness.

Spud stepped outside into the rain. By the time he reached the boot, he was already soaked. He put the key in the lock, turned it and opened up.

He was ready for al-Meghrani’s pathetic attempt. As the cab driver lashed out from the boot, Spud grabbed his wrists and yanked him out. In a matter of seconds he had pulled off his gloves. The skin of his prisoner’s hands were just as he’d seen in the picture: peppered and shrapnel-scarred.

‘Who are you?’ al-Meghrani breathed, rain streaming down his terrified face. His Brummie accent wasn’t quite so pronounced as it had been in the car with Eleanor. ‘What do you want with me? I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘Except carry a Claymore bag, fuck your hands up with dodgy explosives and . . .’ Spud plunged one hand into his own jacket pocket and pulled out the passport. The cab driver feebly attempted to grab it back. For his trouble, he received a brutal thump in the pit of his stomach, which made him bend double, half-gasping, half-spluttering. Spud flicked through the passport until he reached the photo ID page. He checked the name: Khaled al-Meghrani. Not Khalifa. And the picture, though a very good likeness, was not a perfect one.

‘Who is he?’ Spud asked. ‘Your brother?’

Al-Meghrani made no reply – he was too busy trying to suck in air – but it didn’t really matter. Spud ripped the photo ID page out of the soggy passport to render it useless, then threw the remnants into the boot.

The cab driver struggled again and tried to escape. It was totally in vain. Spud simply grabbed a clump of al-Meghrani’s sopping hair, then forcefully tugged his head towards him.

‘Where were you headed, sunshine?’ he breathed, his voice almost drowned out by the pouring rain. ‘Athens first, then Turkey, then on to Syria maybe? Let me tell you something. I’ve been the guest of the Syrian
mukhabarat
. They did things to me that would make you piss your pants just to hear about. I’ve had African warlords threaten to feed me to the fucking dogs. If you spend enough time with people like that, you pick up a thing or two. So here’s the bad news, you piece of shit. I’m going to ask you some questions, and if you find yourself lying, it’s going to fucking hurt. Understood?’

Al-Meghrani was taking short, shaky breaths. He nodded, almost imperceptibly. The rain hammered noisily on the roof of the vehicle.

‘Good,’ Spud said. ‘We’re getting somewhere. Question one: where did you fuck your hands up?’

The cab driver closed his eyes. ‘Iraq,’ he breathed. ‘A training camp. There was a faulty grenade . . .’

Spud didn’t let it show in his face, but the relief that washed over him was like a warm shower: he
hadn’t
been making this shit up after all.

‘Question two: where
were
you heading after Turkey?’

Al-Meghrani seemed more reluctant to answer this question. He tried to look away, but a firmer grip on his hair made him yelp the word: ‘Syria!’

Spud nodded. ‘Question three,’ he said. He twisted the cab driver’s head closer so they were just inches away from each other. ‘What do you know about the Caliph?’

Whatever reaction Spud had expected, it wasn’t this. Al-Meghrani’s shaking became more violent. He whimpered, and with a sudden surge of energy started flailing around, trying to release himself from Spud’s grip.

Spud didn’t hesitate. With one great swipe of his free arm, he slammed al-Meghrani’s solidly in the centre of the face. There was a brutal thud, accompanied by the cracking sound of a bone splintering. Al-Meghrani gasped in pain. When Spud lowered his fist, he saw that his nose was impressively broken, and blood was streaming down over his lips and dripping from his chin.

‘Let’s try that again,’ Spud whispered. ‘What do you know about the Caliph?’

‘Nothing,’ al-Meghrani whispered. But his pathetic denial was accompanied by a waft of urine. His companion had pissed himself with fright.

‘You’re scared of him?’ Spud said.

Al-Meghrani looked at him with a pitiful expression. He nodded.

‘Right now, my friend, you should be more scared of me.’ And without warning, he slammed his fist against the cab driver’s broken nose again. A yelp of pain filled the air, and when Spud looked at the bleeding face again, he saw streaks of tears on the blood-smeared cheeks. But both blood and tears were almost immediately washed away by the rain.

‘Please,’ al-Meghrani whispered. ‘
Please
 . . .’

‘Have you met him?’

Al-Meghrani nodded faintly.

‘Where?’

‘In . . . in Iraq. At the training camp.’

‘So why’s he so fucking scary.’

Al-Meghrani could barely speak. Over the noise of the rain, Spud only faintly caught certain words.

‘
Beheadings . . .’

‘
Burnings . . .
’

‘
Families killed . . . villages wiped out . . .
’

‘
Crucifixions . . .
’

The cab driver buried his head in his hands. His shoulders shook. Spud released his grip on the man’s hair. He’d broken him. Al-Meghrani’s pretence was over.

Spud stepped backwards. He was cold and soaking wet. But there was a fire inside his gut that kept him warm. A car sped past, momentarily lighting them up, but it didn’t stop. Spud looked at his shaking, bleeding hostage. He had a decision to make. Should he call Eleanor? Tell her what he’d discovered? Drag this bleeding, battered, wannabe jihadi into the MI6 building and wait for her to tell him exactly which procedures he’d failed to follow, and fit the target up with a medic and a decent lawyer?

Or should he head for Hereford, his home turf that no longer felt like home? Where Ray Hammond could tell him what a dead weight he was, and scoff at his attempt to keep in the game while the Regiment had bigger fish to fry?

He drew a deep breath. Neither choice appealed to him. But he couldn’t stay here, stuck down a country lane, with a terror suspect who might just have a link to the guy the Firm were chasing . . .

Spud suddenly grabbed the cab driver by his neck again.

‘What are you doing?’ Al-Meghrani whimpered. ‘What’s going on?’

Spud didn’t answer. He pushed the struggling cab driver back down into the boot cavity. Al-Meghrani shouted out in panic, and Spud winced as a shock of pain ran down his abdomen. But he kept the pressure on, and once more managed to bundle the cab driver and his scuffling, flailing limbs into the cavity and cram the boot shut with a dull clunk. Al-Meghrani’s renewed, panicked shouts became muffled. He banged furiously but ineffectually against the inside of the boot. Spud ignored the noises, walked round to the passenger door, slammed it shut and then clambered back behind the wheel.

He was drenched and slightly out of breath. His wounds throbbed agonisingly and he had a bastard pain between the eyes. He was in a bad state to make a clear decision, but that was what he had to do.

He inhaled deeply, started the car, lit the headlamps and knocked the engine into first. With screeching tyres, he pulled a quick 180-degree turn over the wet tarmac. Then he accelerated hard down the country lane.

He’d made his choice. He was heading to Hereford.

Twenty-seven

04.00 hrs AST.

They had taken it in turns to sleep through the night, but now everyone, even Mustafa, was awake and alert. From the window of Ahmed’s penthouse apartment, Danny saw the lights of a chopper approaching across the glowing Qatari skyline, its trajectory heading straight for them. It almost looked as if it was going to slam straight into the penthouse itself, but once it was fifty metres out it became clear that this was just an optical illusion. It was flying a good twenty metres higher than the building and disappeared overhead. Danny faintly heard the sound of its rotors beating on the roof above.

He turned to check out his crew. Like Danny himself, Tony and Caitlin had ditched their tracksuit tops and sports bags, and since there was now no need to hide the hardware they’d picked up in Bahrain, it was on full display. They wore T-shirts over which they’d donned their tactical vests. Their S&W handguns were tucked into the vests, and their KH-9 rifles were slung around their necks. They wore radio packs connected to their covert earphones, and their vests were packed with spare ammunition for their personal weapons, along with a flashbang each.

Mustafa and Ahmed couldn’t keep their eyes off the hardware. Buckingham was scowling, like a petulant child. ‘We should leave the fucking spook here,’ Tony had already suggested. ‘Cunt’ll only get in the way.’

‘He’s staying where I can see him,’ Danny said.

‘You’re fucking crazy. We should leave them all here – Buckingham, Mustafa, Ahmed.’

‘I don’t trust any of them. Until we’ve got the Caliph, they stay with us.’

Tony shrugged. ‘You’re the fucking boss,’ he said bitterly. ‘You can take the rap when they screw things up for us.’

Ahmed’s phone rang. He didn’t need to be told to put it on hands-free. Everyone in the room heard the conversation in Arabic, even though they didn’t all understand it.

‘The platform has been evacuated,’ Ahmed said once the call was over. ‘The last helicopter left two minutes ago.’

Danny shot Buckingham an enquiring look that said: is that what the conversation was about? Buckingham nodded. Danny took his own phone out and dialled through to Hereford. The call was answered immediately. ‘This is Bravo Nine Delta,’ Danny said. ‘We’re advancing to target.’

‘
Roger that
,’ came the reply. ‘
We’ll expect you to contact us as soon as you’re on the platform.
’

Danny killed the line. ‘Move the cases of money,’ he told Tony and Caitlin. As he spoke, he saw Ahmed’s face twitch. ‘What?’

‘What if I lose it?’ Ahmed asked quietly.

‘What if a psychopath releases a bioweapon in the middle of London?’ Danny countered. ‘Anyway, it was your idea.’

It took five minutes for Danny’s two companions to transport the flight cases of cash from Ahmed’s bedroom. They carried them out of the main entrance to the apartment and up on to the helipad above. Once they were fully loaded, Danny gave a single grim-faced command and all six of them prepared to leave.

Caitlin and Tony led the way. Ahmed and Mustafa followed, their shoulders sloped, like men walking to their death. Then Buckingham and Danny. But as the other four disappeared through the apartment’s main entrance, Buckingham held Danny back. Danny looked him up and down. The spook’s hands were shaking. He was clearly terrified. ‘Black,’ he hissed. ‘There is no
need
for me to come with you. I’m much better deployed here, as a conduit to—’

‘You’re coming,’ Danny told him.