Hellfire (21 page)

Tony shrugged. ‘Your call,’ he said. Then, in a persistent, needling voice, he said: ‘Fucker in the car’s beginning to smell. I reckon those wounds are turning rotten. Shame about Ripley, hey? Seemed like an okay geezer. Nasty way to go.’

Danny looked back towards the compound. He heard Ripley’s voice again.
Find the fucker who did this . . .

‘Caitlin,’ he spoke into the radio. ‘You’ve got eyes on both shooters?’

‘
Roger that.
’

‘You take the one on the right. Wait till we both have a clear shot.’

Danny set his weapon to semi-automatic. Lying flat on the ground, he focused in on the area of burned vegetation where he’d seen the movement. Half his thoughts were on the shooter. The other half were on the prisoner in the car. Tony was right. He’d never survive the questioning they needed to put him through. They needed some other kind of leverage.

An uncomfortable feeling washed over him. Who were these ‘people’ Tony was talking about? What side of the law did they walk, and how far did Danny want to become implicated with his activities?

The less he knew, the better.

‘If you call your people,’ he said, ‘you do it for Ripley.’

‘I’m not doing it for anyone, Black,’ Tony said. ‘You’re the boss, remember. It’s your call.’

A silence. Danny felt the anger growing in him again. He mastered it.

Find the fucker who did this . . .

Without taking his eye from his sights, he said: ‘Do it.’

South London. 06.00 hrs GMT.

It was a smart detached house. A swimming pool out back. Marble columns framing the porch. And no lights on, because the household had not yet woken. In the large master bedroom, a couple were asleep beneath silk sheets. The woman had bleached blond hair and botoxed lips. The man was shorter than her, and a lot fatter. He looked and sounded pissed off that the mobile phone on his bedside table was vibrating. He swore under his breath, grabbed the phone and answered it with a distinct lack of grace.

‘Who the . . .’

He was cut short, but the voice at the other end of the line made him sit up.

‘Tony, mate, what’s the fucking time? Where are you anyway? The line’s awful.’ He belched noisily, as if to confirm just how awful it was.

As he listened to the voice he padded naked to the door, where his kimono dressing gown was hanging on a brass hook. He perched the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he put it on.

‘What?’ he said as he wandered into the en suite, lifted up the toilet seat and started to piss thunderously against the porcelain. ‘Yeah, I’ve got a couple of guys. For you, mate, anything. I’ll send them round sometime this week. What is it, they owe you money or something?’

He flushed the chain and padded back out into the bedroom. His wife was still fast asleep.

‘What?’ he continued. ‘Now?’ He whistled, to demonstrate what a tall order that was. ‘I dunno, mate, maybe in a couple of hours . . .’

He fell silent and listened to the response.

‘Right,’ he said quietly. There was a sudden hint of steel in his eyes. ‘Immediately. But let’s be clear, Tony, after this, we’re quits. Understood?’ He walked across the bedroom to the dressing table, where his wife’s eye-lining pencil was lying at an angle. ‘Where the fuck are you anyway?’ he asked as he started to scrawl an unfamiliar number across the glass of her mirror. ‘Bring us back a souvenir, won’t you? Box of, I dunno, 7.62s always goes down nicely. Least you can do, after a favour like this . . .’

‘Done,’ Tony said.

Danny didn’t move. His shooter had just stood up. Approximate distance, 70 metres. He wore the standard Boko Haram garb: camouflage gear, rifle, black woollen hat. The cross hairs of Danny’s scope were in line with his chest.

Radio communication to Caitlin: ‘Eyes-on.’

No reply.

Silence.

Thirty seconds passed. The militant was moving forward. Distance: 60 metres.

Caitlin: ‘
Eyes on.
’

Danny didn’t hesitate for a second. ‘Take the shot,’ he said. Immediately he squeezed the trigger of his HK. The suppressed round made a dull knocking sound as it exited the barrel of his rifle. A fraction of a second later he heard a second round from Caitlin’s direction. And a fraction of a second after that, the militant in his sights collapsed.

‘Target down,’ he said.

‘
Target down
,’ came Caitlin’s reply.

Danny stayed where he was. ‘What now?’ he asked Tony.

‘Now,’ Tony said, ‘we wait.’

07.28 hrs

The inhabitants of Eastwick Drive, Peckham had grown used to seeing strangers in their road. First it had been the police, knocking on the door of number thirteen where that nice Pakistani couple lived who were always giving sweets to the local children, and helping out at community events. After the police had gone, some of the neighbours had knocked on their door to see if everything was okay. There had been no reply.

The following day the police had turned up again, and stayed longer this time. A couple of hours later there were reporters outside the door. Even a news crew. Nobody in the street knew why, until they read about it in the papers, and after that they could talk about nothing else: how the nice couple’s son, who they’d always thought was a bit of a strange one – not like their eleven-year-old daughter, who was very sweet – had travelled to Syria to fight with those terrorists. Who would want to do such a thing, they wondered. They felt so sorry for the parents, who must be worried sick.

Their concern had soon turned to annoyance when the unwanted visitors kept coming. Their address was all over the internet. Anyone who wanted to come and ogle at the house of the kid who’d gone off to fight and had ended up as Jihadi Jim, the brutal executioner, could rock up at any time of the day or night and throw stones at the parents’ windows, or spray graffiti on the low wall of their front garden.

And so, the sight of two unfamiliar, broad-shouldered guys walking silently up the road was entirely unremarkable. A couple of kids, up early and playing on their bikes, gave them the eye, but nobody challenged them as they walked up to number thirteen carrying a large bouquet of flowers, and rang the doorbell.

At first there was no reply, so they rang again. A minute later there was the sound of footsteps approaching the door. A thin, slightly frail man’s voice came from the other side. ‘Who is it?’

‘Flower delivery,’ said the guy holding the bouquet.

A pause.

‘Who from?’ said the voice suspiciously.

‘There’s a card here, mate.’

Another pause. Then the sound of three separate locks being unfastened.

The door opened a couple of inches. The visitors didn’t wait for more. The guy who was not holding the flowers barged inwards. The owner of the house gave an alarmed shout as he fell backwards, but by that time the two heavies were inside, the door closed behind them. They dropped the flowers carelessly on the floor and both pulled out handguns. Not that they needed them. The man of the house, who was wearing nothing but a pair of striped pyjama bottoms, had thin arms and balding hair and was skinny enough for his ribs to be showing. He staggered backwards as the men barged in. As he challenged them with a feeble ‘Who are you? What do you want?’, one of the intruders answered him with a sturdy boot in his ribs, then dragged him into the front room to the left of the hallway, while his companion climbed the stairs.

Three minutes later he returned. He had the wife with him, dressed in a floral nightdress, and the little girl in a panda onesie. Both were crying, and neither could take their eyes off the gun which the intruder who had just yanked them from their beds was waving at their heads.

‘Get on the ground,’ he said. ‘Face down, arms out. All of you. Now.’

The terrified family did as they were told. The sound of desperate sobs filled the room, but the two intruders were unmoved.

‘Make the call,’ one of them said. ‘Then we can get the fuck out of here.’

His companion took his phone from his pocket. He stuck it on to loudspeaker, and it beeped noisily as he dialled the number.

A thick plume of acrid smoke was rising from the isolation zone. Danny was standing in the main road. He knew what that smoke meant. He wondered if the lab team were burning just the Nigerian corpses, or if Ripley had been added to the impromptu funeral pyre. His lip curled at the thought. The whole village was strangely silent. Apart from the two stray militants, nobody had approached. It was as if they knew Chikunda was cursed.

His earpiece crackled into life. Tony’s voice. ‘
The sat phone’s ringing. Get here, now.
’

Danny turned and sprinted towards the vehicle. It took him twenty seconds to get there. By that time, Tony had opened the driver’s seat and was sitting there, the sat phone to his ear. Danny opened the passenger door. ‘Is it them?’ he demanded of Tony.

Tony nodded. ‘It’s them.’

Danny didn’t hesitate. He pulled out the adrenaline shots, released them from their sterile wrapping. He held the shot between his teeth as he ripped the sleeve on his prisoner’s good arm. When the skin was exposed, he sharply jabbed the needle into his arm and squeezed the syringe.

The effect was immediate. Their wax-faced prisoner’s eyes opened suddenly. He took in a sharp, noisy breath and for a moment he looked as if he was going to sit up.

Danny removed the spent adrenaline shot, chucked it on the floor, and then put his Sig to the prisoner’s head.

‘Listen carefully,’ he said.

Bang on cue, a scratchy, distant scream came over the phone. It sounded like a kid. Terrified and whimpering. Then a man’s voice, strained, quiet, but also scared. ‘
James
,’ the man said. ‘
It’s me, it’s your father. They have your sister . . .
’

The prisoner made a sharp intake of breath. His bloodshot eyes rolled. Danny had the impression that he was trying to say something, but couldn’t.

Another scream. A different voice. Older. Female. ‘
Leave her alone
!’ shouted the man at the other end of the phone. ‘
Don’t hurt her . . .
’

The prisoner was breathing very heavily. He managed to whisper three words. ‘Make . . . them . . . stop . . .’

‘There’s only one person that can make it stop,’ Danny said. ‘You. Who was the Chinese guy? Where was he going?’

Another pained, noisy intake of breath. The prisoner’s eyes rolled again. No reply.

Danny grabbed the sat phone from Tony. ‘Kill the father,’ he shouted into it, figuring that a cunt like this would be more attached to his dad than to the girls in the family.

‘No!’ the prisoner breathed. ‘Wait! No!’

‘Wait!’ Danny instructed down the phone.

Another scream from London, but then silence.

‘What’s the Chinese guy’s name? You’ve got five seconds to answer.’

‘Chiu,’ the prisoner breathed. ‘That’s all I know. I called him Mr Chiu.’

‘What was he doing here?’

‘Tests,’ the prisoner whispered. His voice was cracking badly. ‘On the Nigerians . . . to show that the weapon worked, before . . .’

His eyes drooped closed.

‘Before
what?
’ Danny shouted.

He handed the phone to Tony and nodded. Tony spoke into the mouthpiece. ‘Hurt them.’

Another scream instantly crackled down the phone. The prisoner started to shake. ‘Before they use them,’ he managed to say.

‘How are they going to use them? I said,
how are they going to use them!
’

‘Vectors,’ the prisoner said. ‘That’s all I know . . . vectors . . .’

‘What the fuck are vectors?’

The prisoner’s eyes were closed. He shook his head, then winced suddenly with pain. ‘Let my father go,’ he whispered. ‘Please, let him . . .’

He couldn’t finish his sentence. His breathing had become alarmingly shallow. Danny pressed two fingers to his jugular. The pulse was there, but weak.

He unwrapped the second adrenaline shot. One fierce jab and the liquid was pumping into the prisoner’s veins. He drew another sudden intake of breath.

‘What do you mean by vectors?’

‘I don’t know,’ the prisoner croaked. ‘I just heard the word. Please let him go . . .’

‘Where was Chiu going? He was taking you somewhere?
Where
?’

‘A ship.’ His voice almost wasn’t there. Danny instinctively knew the bastard didn’t have long.

‘Which ship? Where?’ His body shuddered. His breathing sounded worse than Ripley’s had. ‘I swear to God your old man gets a bullet in the head if you don’t tell me where!’

‘Bight . . .’ The prisoner caught his breath. ‘Bight . . . Benin . . .’

Finally. Something concrete. But Danny wasn’t done yet. ‘What are the Chinese doing in the pocket of Islamist militants? Who’s he working with? Who’s he taking orders from?’