Bolt Action (15 page)

Monday morning – the day of Operation Macchar Memorial Day in the US; May bank holiday in the UK

In a farmhouse

Outside the village of Elton

Derbyshire Peak District

0601 UK time, 1101 Islamabad time

W
hile they wait, Ferret is retelling a legendary story, a little light entertainment before the parting of the ways. Everybody in the farmhouse kitchen looks on, steaming coffee or tea in hand, faces already smiling: how an American Ranger had unzipped himself on to a bar stool and whacked one of his testicles with the heel of his shoe (Button, Whiffler and Piglet wince instinctively). According to Ferret, this one-upmanship happens in a pub in deepest Wales after a joint Para–Ranger exercise. It was nothing less than a challenge. Ferret continues: so, the Para sergeant major calls this private over and tells him, for the honour of the Regiment, get your balls out now, lad, and here, use my boot . . .

The air is quietly sucked out of the room as Tristie Merritt walks out of the shadows of the hallway, wearing a stunning ivory twill skirt suit with pinstripes and a lace hem. A dark smoky look. Deep blue eyeshadow heightening the aquamarine of her eyes.

In her hand a series of thick brown envelopes, £5,000 in used notes and another £5,000 in stored-value credit cards. Both untraceable. She deals them across the table to each of the men in Ward 13.

For a moment the envelopes lie untouched. Shoe looks to Whiffler, a reassurance, who turns to Ferret, an acknowledgement, who glances across to Button, and he nods. Quick meaningful exchanges, everything transmitted in the eyes or a tip of the head. The looks are not about what they feel in their loins, but in their hearts first, and their brains following. They understand once again why it is they will follow this woman to the ends of the earth. Part organiser, part tactician and part mesmeriser.

Tristie’s gaze takes in all of her men, one by one. Then, with a wry smile, ‘You all understand this is goodbye, for a while?’

Shoe, Weasel, Ferret and Piglet nod their understanding. Pocket their envelopes. They are staying behind in London, to play a waiting game. The Ministry of Defence’s deadline runs out within twenty-four hours and Tristie needs at least part of the team on the ground for whatever eventuates.

By contrast, Button and Whiffler, the medic and explosives experts respectively, are flying to New York with Tristie later today. Many Paras have valid multiple-entry US visas because they do more and more of their jump training in America, especially Fort Dix in New Jersey. This allows them to train with US chutes and rigging, and learn their signals and terminology. Button and Whiffler’s visas are the most recently issued, have the longest to run. Hence their selection.

From another envelope she deals out new SIM cards, which the team begin to fit into their mobiles, crushing or snapping the old ones. Everybody knows the protocols. The mobile numbers are re-entered but this time slightly altered with a simple code that renders the digits meaningless to anyone not in the know. Shoe had spent much of last night going through everybody’s belongings, taking away notebooks, diaries, pads, BlackBerrys, anything on which names, numbers and addresses of the Ward 13 team may have been stored. What wasn’t burnt is zipped up in a duffel and will be stored away.

Tristie ladles three teaspoons of instant coffee into a mug, plenty of milk. ‘We’re going to communicate with the MoD from a bolthole in America because if this craps out, that is the
one place the British government won’t dare to touch us. To extradite us from there, they’d have to completely show their hand – that the Trident software has been compromised.’

She brings the hot coffee to her lips and sips gingerly. ‘Their weakness is going to be our strength.’

Ramada Piccadilly

Portland Street

Manchester

0615 UK time, 1115 Islamabad time

H
otel room 703 – the man remembers being told that waking up is the nearest thing to knowing what it feels like to be born. Delivered into the world, truly a child, your eyes opening to a blank canvas. Then the brain powers up, senses activate and memory drops into place. Those shapeless fragments of the past fold into the present, into coherence.

His reaction to the start of the day runs as follows: he senses the comfortable plumpness of the hotel pillow and the cool starch of the sheets against his thighs and calves. He blinks at the whiteness of the walls (the notepad by the phone bragging
Best three-star hotel in the North-West
). A little green light winks at him from the smoke detector in the ceiling . . . but none of this tells him where he is . . .

His eye is drawn by the bright colour of the jacket hanging over the trouser press. Tailored. Powder blue. The single gold band around each of the sleeves. His uniform . . . he knows that in the past, in the decadent Western years, the airline had used designers like Pierre Cardin and Sir Hardy Amies. Now Pakistan International Airways uses a local and that makes him happy. He is crewing for the
national
airline, after all.

Then it comes to him. Of course . . .
today
. . . it is happening today . . . and the man in Room 703 finds himself overcome by a burst of happiness so intense and fulfilling that, as when
facing the sun’s purest rays, he knows he must close his eyes if he is to make sense of it all. The shattering truth of his grandfather’s words which have rung through him like the muezzin’s cry, unanswered for all these years . . .
Standing for an hour in the ranks of battle is better than standing in prayer for sixty years.

Finally. Grandfather will be proud of me. Today.
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds.
Finally I will avenge my grandfather. Killed in that bomb blast on Gulshan Iqbal Road.
The Hereafter is for the pious, and there is no enmity save towards the unjust.
Killed in an explosion so huge that in the mind of the man in Room 703 he is always eight years old, and Mother still holds him tight, as the ground thunders beneath them and the air is sucked from the room . . . twenty-one years ago it was, masonry and plasterboard clacking to the floor.
I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship save Allah alone, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His Slave and Messenger . . .
Dust snows gently on to their backs as she cries for you, her father, my grandfather, the one she feared they would take.
May Allah bless him, his pure Household, his noble Companions, and all those who follow them in goodness upto the day of Judgement.

You will be my Sleeper.

That was what the General had promised, coming to Mother and him only a few months after Grandfather’s death. General Ali Mahmood Khan’s early smile had masked a searching stare as he scoured the eight-year-old’s eyes. Probing for a weakness, for a tic or flinch that spoke of doubt. Finally, satisfied, he had cupped the boy’s jawline with leathery palms and moved closer still. Eyes blazing like hot coals. Be my Sleeper, but never let go of the Anger you feel now.

The General had given them a new life. And to seal the pact was a flawless set of documents: suitably aged birth certificates and Ministry of Interior-issued passports, even a back-dated school registration that connected both of them with a completely different family tree. All properly worn-in with careless stamps and random grease-stains, so that when the time
came for the young men to join the airline there was no trace of his family’s radical past. Not a red flag in sight.

One day your Grandfather will need your Anger.

Beside his hotel bed is a small, sealed package. Covered in Chinese characters and the picture of an enraged, red-eyed cat swatting at a pesky rodent. Dushuqiang is the name of the formulation. Chinese for Extra-Strength Rat Poison. ‘Odourless, tasteless and water soluble’. The man in Room 703 says the words to himself. Odourless. Tasteless . . . miraculous.

The poison is so potent it was formally banned in the 1990s, the government even setting up an anti-Dushuqiang task force. But, China being China, the farmers in the faraway provinces keep using Dushuqiang and couldn’t care less what the World Health Organisation has to say. On the tried and tested principle that what Beijing can’t see isn’t going to hurt them, illicit factories churn out the soluble white crystals, all using the same active ingredient, tetramethylenedisulfotetramine (TETS). But quality is haphazard: a shop owner from Nanjing was executed after sprinkling a light dusting – no more than five milligrams – over the snacks sold in a rival store and killing thirty-eight people. A year later that same dusting, on the food served at a funeral in Hubei province, and this time only ten died.

The sample in Room 703 is an eye-popping thirty-two per cent concentration weight for weight. Devastatingly lethal. At least a hundred times as powerful as potassium cyanide. And there is no proven antidote to TETS. Once ingested, the poison attacks the membranes of the neurone cells, causing death by convulsion in seconds.

It was last night that the small, sealed package had been handed to the man in Room 703.

At the time, he had been pecking away on the Internet in the small crew room set aside for airline staff at the hotel. Blogging. Writing a commentary about ‘gay’ Manchester. The Ramada Piccadilly stood on the edge of this tide of sin. The epicentre is Canal Street (or Anal Street, the nickname,
which is enough to send shooting needles of pain through his temples). Having overnighted in Manchester many times before, he was still capable of being outraged, almost rhapsodically revolted, by what he saw. Saunas. Sex shops. Louche bars where same-sex couples rubbed against each other like animals. To him, the historic canals that cut through the area, giving it some charm and a leafy, bohemian feel, were nothing more than open sewers, carrying the dark polluted water of this bestial world to all corners of the city. Five times –
five times
– he watched men having sex in the shadows of various alleyways. The man from Room 703 had looked on, open mouthed. Shocked.

Tapping away at his blog, he had just typed in two well-known
hadithas
on homosexuality from the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) –
When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shakes
and
Kill the one that is doing it and also kill the one that it is being done to.
Working fast, two fingers, angry words poured out like a wellspring.

‘Sir. The electronics store delivered your CD player.’ The accent was from Manchester. A native English speaker. The man from Room 703 had continued to type. Lost in his whirl of thoughts.

‘Sir. Your CD player.’
Tappity-tappity-tappity . . . tap, tap . . . tap.
Slowly he had turned from the screen, surprised.
What CD player?
The eyes of the blond-haired porter beseeched him to look at the package he was holding. He looked to be mid-twenties. Freckled and fair faced, the gold buttons of his uniform straining to keep his tubbiness together.

The box said Sony Sports ATRAC portable CD player, but it was the slight wiggle of the man’s thumb that did it. It revealed the slenderest scrap of paper, no bigger than a salt sachet. Tightly wadded, it opened to disclose the words
Operation Macchar
.

He had blinked with surprise,
What?!
, then looked up for reassurance from the porter’s eyes. This plump, pale-skinned porter would be an ideal messenger. A convert maybe, perhaps
a believer, maybe just someone in the pay of one of General Khan’s Pashtun allies. Who would think to tail a white man?

‘Your CD player,’ the porter had repeated for the second time. Somewhat loudly.

‘The instructions are all inside.’ A smile playing behind his brown eyes. Then a whisper, his lips barely moving.

‘May Allah bless your martyrdom with an abundance of casualties.’

And with that fine thought pulsing in the front of his mind – Allah . . . casualties . . . and glorious martyrdom – the man from Room 703 bounds out of bed. Getting ready for work with a real spring in his step.

Crew call for today’s flight is in less than an hour.

0658 UK time, 1158 Islamabad time

I
n the outskirts of Peshawar, Kirsten Ackerman wobbles her way unsteadily from beneath the jingly-jangly Bedford truck. Then pauses. Checking this isn’t some bizarre dream looping through her mind.
Where the hell am I?

It takes her a while, standing in the silence, to work out that she’s in a long, darkened garage with pulleys and hoists hanging from the roof, ramps and workbenches. The place is empty. Soundless. There’s a sharp smell of oil and petrol, and through a small crack in a door in the distance beams enough light to show up dust motes floating lazily. She can just make out somebody outside . . . speaking in Pashto.

She checks her watch . . . shit. Asleep almost ten hours. She feels a tweak of anger. Where the hell are you, Bill?

Slowly Ackerman inches her way around the tyres and spanners and bits of tubing towards the door. The closer she gets the more she is sure that the voice is Jahanghir’s, telling a story about the unmanliness of Tajik men. She edges carefully to the doorway, the slit of sunlight almost blinding. Jahanghir’s voice quietens, very conspiratorial with his audience . . .

Ackerman finds herself smiling as she listens: a Tajik man is standing in a window at the top of a burning building. Screaming to be rescued. On the other side of the street a Pashtun warrior is becoming irritated. All the noise is disrupting his quiet cup of tea.
Help. Help me
, the Tajik squeals. Reluctantly, and only because the Pashtun knows there’ll be no peace until this is resolved, he moves across the road towards the inferno, still holding his tea.
‘Call yourself a man . . . why don’t you stop crying like a girl? [
Guffaws of approval
] Here. If you want to save yourself, jump into this cup of tea. [
Laughter
]’ Flames licking around him, the Tajik thinks about this carefully. Weighing up the pros and cons. And makes up his mind. ‘No . . . no way I can trust a Pashtun.’ He shakes his head. ‘When I jump, you’ll just move the cup . . .’

Creak.

As the American woman pushes against the door frame, her eyes squinting, there’s a tumble of chairs tipping over. Kalashnikovs being readied.

Jahanghir wades into the scene. ‘Stop. Stop. Stop . . .’, his arms windmilling. The little group stands easy. ‘How nice to see you, miss.’

Ackerman shields her eyes from the sun. ‘Nice to see you, Jahanghir.’

As she gets used to the light, she notices he appears to be particularly delighted about something. A beaming smile on his face. Pristine white teeth flash.

‘And Mr Bill?’

‘Yes. Where is Mr Bill? I need to get back to Islamabad.’ Her mouth feels parched.

His eyes smile even more widely, and he looks over her shoulder towards the garage behind. ‘You and Mr Bill. Both of you were . . .’ Then his composure deserts him for a moment, a worry line snagging his brow. ‘. . . Mr Bill is still there . . . Perhaps he recovering?’

‘Recovering? Mr Bill was with
you
, Jahanghir. He told me he was travelling
with you
. In the tow truck. Back to Peshawar.’

More worry lines fracture across his broad forehead, and Jahanghir’s black eyes hold a blank look of genuine incomprehension.

‘I’ve been in the back of that cabin. Asleep.
On my own
.’

‘No Mr Bill?’ he pleads.

Ackerman draws a sharp breath, not wanting to lose it with Jahanghir in front of these other men. ‘For the love of God
. . . No Mr Bill
,’ she says quietly.

Another whirl of arms and Jahanghir barks out a series of sharp commands. Two men in identical grey dishdashas rush into the darkness of the garage. AK74s braced against their chests. Ackerman watches a series of overhead lights flick on, eventually illuminating the whole length of the garage.

‘He must have told the same lie to you that he told me.’

‘Then . . . if he’s not here . . .’ A look of complete darkness and uncertainty settles over Jahanghir as the logic of the situation unravels in his mind. He mutters under his breath, tugging forcefully on his whiskers. ‘. . . Mr Bill’s gone back there. To the madrasa.’

‘Probably, yes.’ The two dishdashas return, shaking their heads, very solemn.

‘But why not take me, take my cousins? Without us, surely he will be killed. In the daylight. An American. On his own, no speaking Pashto . . .’ Jahanghir’s face falls as he works through the multiple dangers. ‘. . . In
that
valley. That is very, very not good for Mr Bill.’

The look on the man’s face is almost too much for Ackerman. A proud warrior crushed by the rejection of a man who, when the chips were down, did not want his help.

She takes a step closer, beseeching him with those sea-green eyes, turning her lamps on full beam. ‘Is there
anything
we can do?’