Osama (7 page)

‘Of course.’ Delaney stood up and watched as Wallace stowed the photographs first in the envelope and then in his briefcase. ‘And Jed?’

‘Yes?’

‘Enjoy it.’

A pause.

‘Enjoy what?’

Delaney gave him a surprised look. ‘The victory, Jed. America hasn’t been the good guy for a long time, remember? Maybe the President can be persuaded to flex his muscles a bit more now he’s had a taste of success. Bin Laden’s not our only high-value target, you know? And as my physician never tires of reminding me, prevention is better than cure.’

Wallace looked as though he was in two minds whether to respond. ‘Look, Mason,’ he said finally. ‘I know you think this administration is a bit wet, but times have changed. America can’t afford to boss the world around in the same way any more—’

‘You start taking any flak,’ Delaney interrupted, as though Wallace had said nothing, ‘I’ll give you what you need. We got DNA samples, we got eyewitness accounts . . . damn, we’ve even got bin Laden’s daughter who was in the same room as him.’

A knock on the door. ‘Come!’ Delaney called.

The door opened and a young man appeared. He was extremely handsome, with lustrous black hair and well-defined cheekbones. Preppy – like he should be wandering the lawns of Princeton. He stood in the doorway without saying anything, but the anxiety on his face was evident as his eyes flickered between the two men in the office.

‘Scott,’ Delaney greeted him, blatantly – and lasciviously – eyeing the young man up and down.

‘Mr Delaney . . . we, er . . .’ Scott Stroman’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat again. ‘Mr Delaney, I need a word.’

‘Mr Wallace was just on his way out, Scott.’ Delaney held out a chubby hand, which the Chief of Staff shook. ‘So long, Jed,’ he said.

Wallace nodded and, without another word, left the room.

Stroman stepped inside, closed the door behind him, then stood with his back to it.

‘We’ve got a problem, Mr Delaney.’

Delaney wandered over towards his desk. ‘Go ahead.’

No answer. Delaney stopped and looked back at his young colleague. ‘Go ahead, Scott.’

But Stroman shook his head. ‘I think you need to come and see for yourself, sir,’ he replied, in what was little more than a whisper.

Delaney could see that he meant it. The two men left the room, Delaney locking the door behind him.

The corridors of CIA headquarters were alive with people. They all knew Mason Delaney – he was as much a part of the place as the enormous presidential seal on the floor of the main entrance – and they all knew that today was his day. He lost count of the number of congratulations he received. He did notice too that his colleagues, for once, did not appear to be suppressing knowing smiles at the sight of his pretty male assistant. But as they descended into the basement, the number of passers-by diminished until finally they were walking by themselves along a deserted narrow corridor with pale grey walls. And at the very end of the corridor was a door with a numerical keypad next to it. Scott punched in a number and there was a faint click. He opened the door and they both entered.

It was a small room – no more than five metres by five – and it appeared even more cramped on account of the large quantity of audiovisual equipment it contained, including four daisy-chained screens and two sets of reference speakers. Scott sat at the comfortable chair in front of the screens and pressed a green button. The same silent moving image appeared on all four screens. At first it was dark, blurred and indistinct.

‘What is this?’ Delaney asked, a hint of impatience in his voice.

‘Camera footage from the Black Hawk leaving Abbottabad, sir,’ Stroman replied.

And as he spoke, the image started to make sense. Delaney could see the ground receding, and in the top-left corner of the screen he could make out the dark shape of the compromised chopper. The Black Hawk rose higher. Now they could see the high compound walls, and the uncovered corridor that led from the main security gates.

And movement.

‘Who’s that, Scott?’ Delaney asked, his voice dangerously level.

Stroman shot him a glance that said ‘This is what I wanted you to see,’ and pressed a red button. The image froze. The young man spun a dial and zoomed in on that part of the picture which showed two shadowy figures. Delaney fancied he made out an assault rifle strapped to the body of one of these individuals.

Without waiting for an instruction from his boss, Stroman started the film again. The Black Hawk rose sufficiently for the perimeter of the whole compound to be visible. A shudder, and an explosion of orange light, as the compromised chopper exploded down on the ground. The compound receded from view as the chopper banked; when it straightened up again, Delaney could see that it was outside the perimeter of the compound.

Stroman hit the stop button again. He pointed to the bottom right-hand corner of one of the screens. Two figures again, both crouching and watching the departing chopper. Both holding their faces directly up to the camera. Stroman zoomed in again. The level of magnification caused the faces to appear a little pixellated, but it was still possible to determine their features with some accuracy: the long hair and dark skin of one of them, the full black beards of both; as well as the weapons they were carrying.

‘Facial recognition?’ Delaney asked.

‘I’ve already run it, sir.’ Stroman pressed another button on the console. The image on two of the screens was replaced by a portrait of an Asian-looking man with shoulder-length hair and a thin scar along the left side of his nose where the dark skin was slightly lighter. The remaining two screens showed a different man: Caucasian, no beard in this picture but thick eyebrows that met in the middle, unruly hair and dark bags under the eyes which looked like no amount of sleep would chase away.

‘Introduce me to these handsome young men, Scott,’ Delaney breathed.

Stroman pointed first at one, then the other. ‘Richard Singh, Joe Mansfield. British SAS. Records show they were part of the unit holding the cordon.’

‘Have any of our guys reported making contact with them?’

‘No, sir.’

‘And you’ve been in touch with Hereford HQ?’

‘Of course, sir. They deny there was any breach of SOPs.’

Delaney closed his eyes, removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘So, tell me, Scott. Tell me this. If they were supposed to be holding the cordon, and there was no breach of SOPs, what in the name of
fuck
were they doing running out of the compound in the wake of the raid?’

Stroman looked at his knees. ‘I don’t know, Mr Delaney, sir. I just don’t know.’

A thick, uncomfortable silence fell as the two men stared up at the faces on the screens.

‘Do we know where they are now?’ Delaney asked.

Stroman nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Of course we do.’

Four

Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. 1700 hours local time.

The Chinook that put Joe’s team back on the ground didn’t close down. It was needed elsewhere. Joe barked at the Doctor’s wife and their three daughters to get off the transport. The old woman gave him a look of loathing – she hadn’t liked the abrupt way Joe and his mates had manhandled her family out of Abbottabad without looking for her husband. Joe reckoned he could live with that. He worked for the British Army, not Thomas fucking Cook. He pointed towards the tailgate to indicate she should take her daughters and get out.

The rotors were kicking up a massive wall of brown dust as the unit lugged their gear off the plane. One of the kids was crying because the sand was in her eyes. He saw Ricky help the little girl out of range of the downdraft. His mate hadn’t said a single unnecessary word to him since they’d left the vicinity of the compound. The way Joe was feeling, that suited him just fine.

The tailgate closed; the chopper lifted; the dust swirled around a larger area for a few seconds. Only as the dust settled did the peaks of the Hindu Kush that filled the horizon come into view. Joe had stopped being impressed by the sight. The snow-capped mountains were just another obstacle in this dog turd of a country. Closer to hand, the LZ was surrounded by a sea of cargo containers – impossible to say how many, but in the hundreds. Some of them were covered with camo-nets; others were just scratched and exposed. Bagram – all six and a half square miles of it – was an important staging post for the Americans. A large proportion of the goods necessary to keep the US’s show on the road in Afghanistan passed through here.

Military vehicles – Humvees, mostly – were driving all over the place, as well as large SUVs that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the New Jersey Turnpike. Joe knew that the drivers of half these SUVs were only moving around because the air con in their vehicles was better than that in their bunkhouses. The Chinook flew out of earshot; the grind of its motors was immediately replaced by the ear-splitting din of an F-16, flying low, probably on its way to put the shits up the locals – a not-too-subtle warning of what they could expect if they messed with the stars and stripes.

Nobody approached to help the unit with their gear, and the unit wouldn’t have wanted anyone to. They worked alone. Everybody knew that. Joe and his mate JJ – whose brown beard was longer than the rest of the unit’s because he’d worn it for years – lifted a crate of weaponry in the direction of a large hangar situated 100 metres from the LZ, just beyond a two-metre-high HESCO wall over the top of which an array of satellite receivers and other signalling apparatus was visible. A couple of Paras stood guard at a gap in the wall, next to a green and white sign stating: ‘No Unauthorized Entry’. There were thousands of signs, plastering every inch of Bagram. Even the thunderboxes had a notice telling you not to piss on the seat.

One of the Paras was lazily scraping the Afghan dust from the inside of his nostril with a rolled-up piece of Kleenex. Both had expectant looks on their faces. Word of bin Laden’s death had obviously got out, and anyone who knew that Joe’s unit had been on ops in Pakistan at the same time would have put two and two together.

Joe looked over his shoulder. Ricky and the rest of the unit were walking towards the hangar, their bodies appearing to waver in the heat haze. Beyond them, three guys whom Joe recognized as American DOD personnel had surrounded the Doctor’s family, and five black SUVs were driving up towards them. Fuck knows what was going to happen to them. A new name and a safe house in a faceless North American suburb, he supposed.

‘Been busy, lads?’ one of the Paras asked.

‘Aye,’ JJ replied. ‘Shagged out, me. Never knew your sister was such a goer.’

The Para grinned. ‘She told me you had a dick like a maggot, JJ.’

JJ gave a look of mock acceptance. ‘Aye, it’s true,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s why she got her rocks off with the rest of the unit as well. I’m telling you – she was walking like Charlie Chaplin by the end, and Joe here has been grinning like the Cheshire fucking cat ever since . . .’

‘Yeah, looks like it.’ The Para nodded at Joe. Joe glowered back.

The hangar housed the Regiment’s operations base at Bagram. A third guard standing outside and armed with an M16 slid open the huge metal doors that remained closed as a matter of course, to reveal the cavernous space bustling with activity. The hangar itself was about eighty by forty metres. There were windows along both sides, but these had been covered up against curious eyes with sheets of plastic tarpaulin. The space was lit by twelve portable floodlights aimed up at the flat metal ceiling to stop them dazzling the people inside, of whom there were thirty or so. The combination of the metal walls and the powerful lights could easily turn the hangar, big as it was, into an oven in this climate and so, evenly spaced along both walls, were six air-conditioning units. Out of sight, on the other side of the far wall, Joe knew there was a large petrol-operated generator, which added to the general noise.

The hangar was divided into four quadrants. Closest to Joe and on his left was a bank of computer screens. A mess of wires on the floor trailed through the wall towards the signalling area and the Genny, and a handful of the guys, as well as two female ’terps, were leaning over the screens examining maps and other imagery. Joe counted seven men and one woman he didn’t recognize. They were standing in a group by themselves and watched Joe and the others with interest as they entered. To the right was a weapons store: crates of hardware piled high, manned by a grizzled member of L Detachment. He nodded at Joe and JJ to indicate that they should dump their own crate just next to him.

In the far-left quadrant was an R & R zone: a television mounted on the wall, a few old sofas and a kettle for anybody wanting to make a brew. This area was deserted. No rest. No recuperation. Not out here. The fourth quadrant in the far right-hand corner of the hangar was blocked off by a series of large screens. This was the briefing area – the place where Joe and the unit had first been informed about the nature of their operation. Now a tall, gangly rupert with a lean face and a two-day-old beard was walking out of it. Major Dom Fletcher, OC E Squadron, looked and sounded like the prince of public-school twats. To hear him talk, nobody would guess he’d come up through the ranks, or that his rough London accent and squaddie turn of phrase had miraculously disappeared the day he got his commission. Overnight, Dom had become Dominic. But the guys had learned the hard way not to test his patience, and just called him ‘boss’. Fletcher wasn’t beyond issuing an RTU for anyone who took the piss. He nodded in Joe and JJ’s direction, jabbed his thumb towards the briefing area and turned on his heel to walk back into it.