For Valour (8 page)

The next time I looked, my pursuer had emerged from behind the flank of the hill. I didn’t have time to take in every detail of his waterproof clothing and equipment, but I didn’t need to. All that mattered was the weapon he carried.

The largest arms manufacturer in the former Soviet Republic was an outfit called OSJC ‘IZHMASH’, founded by Tsar Alexander I in 1807. Their plant at Izhevsk had turned out more than eleven million rifles and carbines during the Second World War. It was still the proud producer of the Kalashnikov AK-47 and the Warsaw Pact sniper’s favourite, the Dragunov SVD.

These things weren’t as well engineered as the Winchester or the Remington and didn’t guarantee their pinpoint accuracy, but in the right hands they could do some serious damage. I had the feeling that this one – an SVDS with folding stock extended – was in the right hands now.

15

He spotted the glow from the Bolthole immediately, and got the butt in his shoulder as he advanced.

I stepped back, removed my left glove and powered up the iPhone again, shielding its glow in my right palm. I pressed ‘A’ once, then the stop bar the moment I heard the G3 ring.

A nanosecond later I heard nine rounds being pumped into the mouth of the cave, followed by the distinctive metallic clicks of a mag being removed and replaced while he still had a round in the chamber. Good skills. This lad wasn’t fucking about.

The silence returned.

Even the wind seemed to stop and wait for his next move.

Then footsteps crunched towards me through the snow.

Going into slow-mo, I slid the NVGs carefully off my head and put them down beside the shovel, pocketed the iPhone and pulled on my glove. Taking a deep breath to oxygenate myself for the drama ahead, I retrieved the ice axe and rose to my feet.

The crunch rate slowed and began to sound more cautious, but Sniper One kept on coming.

I heard his waterproofs rustle as he moved.

He’d keep his SVD in the aim – no way would that butt be taken out of the shoulder now. Finger pad on the trigger. Safety lever down and off. Eyes flicking left and right as he advanced towards his target.

He’d kick my beautifully sculpted snow tunnel apart with his boot. Then he’d have to stoop down to look inside. That was the moment I wanted to be on top of him. Give him no time to react. No room to move.

It wouldn’t take him long to discover that he’d emptied his magazine into my daysack. But by then his night vision should be well and truly nailed by the hexamine blaze. Even if it wasn’t, I’d have to crack on and take him, to render his rifle a whole lot less effective than it had been when Trev’s eyebrows were at the centre of the optic.

The crunches came to a halt.

I flexed my finger muscles, closed both hands over the grip of my ice axe and bent my knees. As soon as he leaned down to inspect what lay behind the entrance, he was mine.

I could hear him breathe.

He was at the mouth of the cave.

I stepped out, axe raised above my head, eyes focused on the space between his shoulder-blades as he crouched below me.

The almost subliminal clink of crampon on rock and the sixth sense shared by every hunter in the universe made him look up before my feet had left the ledge.

He threw himself sideways and tried to roll away before I could swing the pick down – tried to get out of my range, heave his barrel up and get a round into me. But it wasn’t working.

My crampons dug into the snow. I zeroed in on his centre mass and cannoned into him. I wasn’t aiming my weapon with any precision. All I wanted to do was drive four or five inches of sharpened metal into him as far as I could and take it from there.

I managed to make contact. With all the movement going on beneath me, I couldn’t immediately tell where the pointy bit had connected, but I felt it tear into flesh and muscle and the shaft juddered as I raked it up his spine. He grunted or cursed and twisted away, wrenching himself clear of my ice axe and putting some space between us. Blood glistened around a big tear in his waterproof top.

I raised the pick above my head for a repeat performance as he turned towards me again. The pain must have been outrageous, but it didn’t seem to register. He kept on coming, filling the air with the stench of garlic, sour cabbage, untipped cigarettes and unbrushed teeth with every tortured breath.

His neck muscles tautened as he strained to bring up the Dragunov’s muzzle so he could blast a hole in my chest, and I suddenly knew beyond any doubt that he was going to do it before I could bring my weapon down again.

I let go of the grip with my left hand and kicked out. I missed the barrel but connected strongly enough with his arm to shunt the muzzle off at an angle.

I felt the round before I heard it. It kicked off millimetres away from my right cheek, smashed the ice axe out of my hand and sent shock waves along my arm. The impact propelled me backwards but I somehow managed to stay upright. I knew that if I went down now, it was over.

I was fresh out of options as he brought the weapon back up. All I could do now was take one step forward and launch myself at him, feet first.

My right crampon caught him in the gut. I felt its claws rip into him, but he just took the pain. My left crampon clattered against gunmetal. Without any purchase, I lost my balance and had to jerk back and plant it in the snow again to stop myself falling.

Its claws were too short to puncture an organ, so I raised my right foot and stamped on his face instead. I channelled my entire bodyweight through that one leg and kept it there. He finally let go of the Dragunov and grabbed my ankle, but instead of dislodging my boot he forced its metal sole to grate against his jawbone. His flesh fell away like raw meat spilling from a mincer.

He bucked and heaved and flailed his arms, fingers scrabbling to reclaim his rifle. I kept my right foot in place and skewered his neck with the left. For a moment I didn’t think that was going to stop him either.

His lips peeled back in a ferocious snarl, but blood gushed from his mouth instead of sound. He arched his back and shuddered, like he’d chewed on a power cable, then lay very still.

16

I fetched the Dragunov and pushed up the safety lever on its right-hand side, then removed my gloves and went through Sniper One’s pockets. I didn’t expect to find anything, and I wasn’t wrong. Apart from a half-empty packet of dextrose tablets and two hundred and fifty quid or so in well-used notes poking out of a money clip, they were empty.

I kept the cash and powered up the torch app on my iPhone so I could take a closer look at him. You’re never at your best when your face has been rearranged by a set of crampons, but even on a good day this guy wouldn’t have turned heads on the catwalk. If he had done, he’d have had to choose a different line of work. Snipers and surveillance operators aren’t supposed to stand out in a crowd. With his closely cropped hair, broken nose and cold grey eyes this lad was every bit as forgettable as I was. And we pretty much shared the same tailor.

I unzipped his waterproof top and wrenched open the layers of fleece and thermal kit beneath it. There were no coal-dust tattoos telling the story of his life – just the sculpted pecs of a man who took his fitness seriously.

Then I caught sight of something on his neck. At first glance I assumed the crimson splash was blood or possibly a birthmark. When I turned his head and ran the beam beneath his shattered jaw I realized it was neither.

This was quality ink work, somewhere between a starburst and a multi-leaf clover. It reminded me of the so-called roses that decorated the roads and pavements of Sarajevo when the locals had filled the Serb mortar scars with red resin to honour their dead.

Well, I wasn’t in the mood to honour this fucker. I put my gloves back on, grabbed him by the legs and dragged his body into the Bolthole, leaving a trail of dark red deoxygenated blood on the snow. I sat him against the rock wall and reunited him with his Dragunov in the flickering light of my hexy bonfire.

As soon as the weather cleared and the ramblers got back into their anoraks, this area would turn into a major crime scene. I needed to make distance.

17

I legged it back to St Ellyw’s as quickly as possible after picking up what was left of my kit.

The daysack had been well ventilated, but it would live to fight another day. The Samsung G3 had been terminated with extreme prejudice, along with the chicken casserole MRE pack. The manufacturers insisted these things could survive a 380-metre drop, but a blast of 7.62 was more than it could handle. The hotpot was miraculously unscathed.

I picked up the Defender of the Faith way after midnight, as another wave of snow began its assault. All sign would have been covered on the hill by now.

I headed west past Brecon until I found a couple of artics parked up in a layby and joined them. I left the engine on and the heater running while I warmed Trev’s hotpot in its FRH (flameless ration heater) pouch. MREs weren’t everybody’s favourite snack – as squaddies we’d called them Meals Refusing to Exit – but after freezing my arse off in the Black Mountains it ticked all the boxes. It also gave me something to munch as I thought about my next move.

If Trev was right about the Head Shed killing their own, I had to ID who was loading the rounds. So the first step was to try to find out why. And since none of us knew who we could trust, I had to be more careful than he had been about the questions I needed to ask – and about selecting the people I could look to for answers.

Harry’s boy was clearly off limits, so I had to go a few different routes. And I didn’t have much time. I hadn’t broadcast my presence back in the UK, but I reckoned it wouldn’t be long before whoever had wanted Trev dead managed to put two and two together and come after me.

When I’d finished eating, I unfurled my Gore-Tex hood, put on my gloves and got my head down in the driver’s seat. That way I could stay as close as I could to what little warmth was leaking out of the heating vent.

It wasn’t the Ritz, but it beat the shit out of lying in a snowdrift with my brains dripping off a nearby tree.

1
St Francis Xavier’s Roman Catholic Church, Powys

Thursday, 26 January

I’d always steered clear of confession.

I could see the attraction of wiping the slate clean with a few Hail Marys, but I’d done some things over the years that I wasn’t proud of, and had never felt comfortable with the idea of spilling the details. The secret of keeping things secret was never, ever, to share them with anyone else.

I didn’t care about people standing in judgement against me, I just preferred not to give them any extra sticks to beat me with. Whoever said, ‘Knowledge is power,’ knew what they were talking about.

I’d given Anna the edited version of my life, of course, but she hadn’t bought it. She’d seen me in the shit a good few times, and with her journo hat on she was brilliant at uncovering stuff people wanted to hide. From the moment I met her, I’d had the slightly scary feeling that she understood me a whole lot better than I understood myself. Slightly scary because I discovered that it was one of the many things I really, really liked about being with her.

The only other person I’d allowed anywhere near the truth was Father Mart. I trusted him completely – which was why I was now sitting in a little wooden box in the corner of a church about fifty Ks north of his cottage. I needed to bring him up to speed on the events of the last twenty-four hours, and find out if he could fill any of the gaps.

The bench groaned as I shifted from one buttock to the other to try to make myself comfortable. Some hope. These places weren’t built for comfort. They were built for penance. But also for anonymity, which suited me fine right now.

I couldn’t help wondering about the kind of exchanges that must have taken place through the perforated screen that separated the sinner from the priest. And if the magic ever worked.

I ran a fingertip across a bit of graffiti some choirboy had scrawled in felt-tip while waiting to admit what he’d really done with the Communion wine:
Beware! Sudden prayers make God jump!
I didn’t know if Father Mart ever checked out this side of the booth, but I thought he’d probably like that.

The throaty growl of the 911 and the echoing clank of the heavy oak door told me he was on his way in. I kept eyes on the entrance through the gap in the velvet curtain.

Father Mart ducked his head towards the altar and made the sign of the cross before turning in my direction. His trainers squeaked on the quarry-tiled floor and the curtain rings on his side of the booth rattled as he stepped inside.

There was a moment’s silence. ‘
In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti
… Do you repent of your sins, my son?’

I couldn’t see much through the screen, but I swear there was a gleam in his eye. ‘How long have you got?’

‘Good point, Nicholas. That might be a conversation for another time …’

‘’Fraid so, Father.’ I paused. ‘You were right to be worried. Trev’s dead. A professional hit.’

I heard a deep sigh.

‘Who?’

‘No idea. He won’t be doing it again.’

Father Mart knew better than to ask for details.

I asked him if he knew about the claymore in Trev’s front hall.

He didn’t.

2

Father Mart’s bench creaked as he shifted position. ‘I’ve asked around, Nicholas, and got nothing.’

‘Well, now’s a good time to stop asking. There’s some high-level shit going on out there, and for the time being, no matter how long you’ve been on His firm, I don’t think we can rely on the Good Lord’s protection.’

‘Perhaps I should pay a visit to Barford …’

‘We should both steer clear of Barford right now. I think Trev had a pretty good idea who might be behind this, and he was dead set against going.

‘Maybe there’s another route to the truth about Harry’s boy. You know any of his mates?’

‘He kept his emotional cards pretty close to his chest. But, then, don’t you all?’ Father Mart went quiet for a moment. ‘I can’t think of any, apart from Guy Chastain and Scott Braxton. The three of them were almost inseparable.’