Hellfire (26 page)

The most valuable object in their lives was the small boat that he now paddled through these polluted waters. He was not alone, of course. The waters were busy. Hundreds of other boatmen were making their way home, many of them shouting at each other. There always seemed to be shouting in Ajegunle, but Randolph had learned to keep quiet and avoid confrontation. Take this evening, for example. To get into an argument would be to risk losing the one small fish he had managed to catch in twelve hours of fishing – and that only because he had found it floating dead on the oily surface of the poisonous water. There were too many fishermen here, and far too few fish. But how else could he earn a living? He didn’t want to join the gangs who swaggered round the slums extorting money, unopposed by the police who never ventured into the Ajegunle slum.

He paddled carefully through the crowded network of houses on stilts until he finally came to his own – no different from the others, except that his daughters had tied a pretty red ribbon to one of the stilts to cheer their father up when he got home. It always had the desired effect. Randolph smiled as he tied his boat to the same stilt, grabbed the plastic bag that held the dead fish, and climbed the ladder that led directly into the doorway of the shack.

‘I’m home,’ he said as he entered. It was dark in the shack – even if they were connected to the electricity supply, it would be optimistic to expect power for more than an hour a day – and it always took a few seconds for his eyes to grow used to it when he got back. ‘Who’s got a hug for their daddy?’

‘Not me,’ said a man’s voice.

Randolph blinked in the darkness. He could just make out the silhouette of someone sitting in the only chair the family owned. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘Where are my girls?’

‘Safe,’ said the figure. ‘Actually, that’s not true. They’re not safe at all. But they are alive. For the moment.’

Randolph felt his perspiration getting worse. Sweat dripped into his eyes and down the nape of his neck.

‘They were right,’ said the figure. ‘You really do smell.’

Randolph stared at the figure. Then he winced. The figure had held up a small screen – Randolph assumed this was one of the smartphones he’d heard people talking about – and the light hurt his eyes. But then he started to understand what he was looking at, and he took two horrified steps forward.

He was watching video footage, and he could just make out his daughters. They were bound, side by side, to two chairs. Both girls were gagged by a piece of rope tied round their head. Their eyes were bloodshot – wide open and terrified. Behind them stood a man in a black balaclava, wide holes for the eyes and mouth roughly cut out. In his right hand was a short, curved blade, which he held over the children’s heads.

Nothing else happened. The video footage finished on a frame of the children looking straight ahead, not moving. Randolph’s knees went beneath him. He collapsed to the floor of his shack, his hands clenched in front of him. ‘My children,’ he whispered. ‘What have you done with them?’

‘What we’ve done with them isn’t the question,’ said the man. He stood up, and towered over Randolph. ‘The question is: what
will
we do to them, you stinking piece of filth.’

Randolph felt tears coming to his eyes, and perspiration to the rest of his body. ‘I’m a poor man,’ he said. ‘I don’t have any money.’

‘You don’t need money,’ said the figure. He looked down on Randolph with curling disdain. Only now could Randolph properly make out his features: flared nostrils, pockmarked cheeks and a frown of pure hate. ‘You just need to do exactly as you’re told.’

18.45 hrs

Night fell over Chikunda.

The stubborn stench of the burned bodies in the isolation zone lingered in the air. The only sound, now that the sun had set, was the occasional squawk of a bird from the thick vegetation surrounding the village, and the very distant rumble of thunder in the heavy air. And the only movement came from scavenging birds. Long beaks, cloak-like wings. They looked to Danny like old-world vultures. Endangered in this part of the world, but unable to resist a feast. Three had landed on the dead body of a young man with his arm and leg in tourniquets, and were pecking at his flesh with a clockwork regularity. Rather more were feasting on the bodies of dead Boko Haram militants dotted around the village.

One of the scavengers stopped pecking for a moment. It cocked its head and listened for five seconds. As one, every scavenging bird in the village launched itself into the air with a noisy flap of wings.

Silence.

Another shadow appeared in the air, much larger than the birds it had displaced, and certainly sleeker. Its nose was pointed and angular, its rotors a circular blur with a slight reflection of moonlight. It was a chopper, flying in over the isolation zone. The sound of its rotors was very quiet. Inaudible to any humans within fifty feet of it. It shape was sleek and angular. The ends of the rotor blades were curved downward to reduce radar splash and noise. It touched down in the middle of the road, its nose facing west.

New movement, this time from the east of the village. Eleven figures emerged from the vegetation. They were led by two men and a woman in camouflage gear, carefully gripping the rifles slung round their necks as they advanced towards the road. Behind them, four guys in dirty white hazmat suits, carrying their rebreathing helmets under their arms. Taking up the rear, four more soldiers, carrying guns and heavy flight cases of gear.

The company advanced carefully but quickly, picking their way over the bodies of the dead militants as they hurried towards the stealth chopper. Only when they were ten metres from the aircraft did the side door open. A uniformed loadie ushered them in. Once all eleven of them had embarked, he closed the door.

The chopper immediately rose from the ground. Danny Black stared out of a tiny porthole of a window, winding the paracord with Ripley’s dog tag and wedding ring round his fingers. He was pleased to leave this place, even though it meant deserting the pile of ashes that was all that remained of his friend. He had the uneasy sensation that there were a hell of a lot more piles of ashes to come.

Caitlin was sitting next to him. ‘So you’ve got a kid on the way?’ Her voice was just loud enough that only Danny could hear it over the engine noise.

He nodded.

‘You should have said. You had me barking up the wrong tree.’

He didn’t look at her. Thoughts like the ones he was having were too much of a distraction. ‘Maybe the middle of an op isn’t the right time for games like that,’ he said quietly.

Caitlin gave a short, dismissive, mirthless laugh. ‘Where else do you think I’d find a guy who can deal with the way a girl like me lives her life?’

Danny didn’t reply. He wanted the conversation to be over. But Caitlin pressed on. ‘When’s the baby due?’ she asked.

‘Any day now.’

‘You don’t know the due date?’

He looked down. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve got other things on my mind.’

‘So you’re not so different to me.’

Danny felt silent. From the corner of his eye, he could tell that Caitlin was staring across the body of the chopper to where Tony was sitting. He remembered what Tony had said about her.
She’s a ruthless bitch.
He was right. But there was much more to her than that.

‘You should be careful of him,’ Danny warned her quietly.

‘You had your chance, Danny Black,’ Caitlin breathed. She was smiling, but Danny could tell it was the kind of smile that hid something. Was she stung by his rejection? ‘Anyway,’ she said lightly, ‘I always had Tony down as the alpha male round here.’

The chopper banked sharply so that it was heading south. Invisible and almost noiseless, it sped across the Nigerian countryside, back towards the coast.

Seventeen

The journey away from Chikunda was a hell of a sight easier than the journey towards it. The stealth Black Hawk kept low, skimming thirty feet over the ground or above the treetops, depending on the prevailing terrain. It seemed unnaturally quiet within the body of the aircraft. Danny was used to the deafening growl of a regular chopper. Stealth technology made this one strangely ghost-like.

They flew in silence. Danny’s eyes picked out the faces of the Porton Down team. They looked exhausted, and a bit frightened. Was that because of their unusual circumstances, or were they unnerved by what they’d found in Chikunda? Danny had a definite feeling that their work wasn’t done yet. He hoped that they were up to whatever the next few hours held.

After ninety minutes’ flight time, the loadie spoke up. ‘We need to refuel,’ he said. ‘The Nigerians don’t know we’re in their airspace so we’re gonna take a pitstop. There’s a deserted football pitch on the outskirts of Lagos. Won’t be anyone there at this time. The Foreign Office have arranged for the BA lads at Lagos International to bring a bowser of fuel to meet us.’

As the loadie spoke, the chopper banked to the left. From his tiny port window, Danny saw the bright glare of a vehicle’s headlights down below, maybe a hundred metres from the chopper’s position. They disappeared as the Black Hawk straightened up, only to reappear again as it lowered itself in to land. The loadie opened up and jumped out. The headlamps of the fuel bowser immediately made Danny squint, but he regained his vision as the tanker drew up alongside the chopper. It had a bright yellow cab, but the long, cylindrical tank itself was rusting, its paint peeling off. A Nigerian guy – obviously on the Firm’s payroll – jumped out of the cab, head bowed from the downdraught of the rotors that were still spinning.

Danny, Tony and Caitlin alighted from the chopper and immediately took up defensive positions around it, Danny down on one knee at the angular nose of the aircraft, the butt of his HK pressed in against his shoulder. The flat surface of this deserted football pitch was hard and dusty. No grass. Certainly no goalposts. Fifty metres ahead of him was a dilapidated grandstand, but it was clear this was a place nobody came to, especially at this time of night.

It took ten minutes to refuel. The unit got back into the Black Hawk and immediately took to the skies again.

They flew higher this time – maybe eight hundred feet – and through the window Danny saw why. There were more lights down below: as they approached the coast, the terrain was more populated. He knew they’d be avoiding flying over Lagos itself – their route would be taking them north of the city. Out of sight and earshot.

Ten minutes later, land turned to sea. Danny saw moonlight trails reflecting on a rough ocean, with the sleek shadow of the Black Hawk cruising across the wave tops.

‘Five minutes out,’ the loadie announced. Danny caught a glance from Tony.

‘Thirty seconds out.’ The Black Hawk was banking and losing height at the same time. From the window, Danny saw the bright lights of a frigate, about 120 metres in length. He could just make out the white foam of the vessel’s wake and the pale glow of the LZ to aft. The frigate grew closer dramatically quickly, and before Danny knew it the Black Hawk had touched down on the landing deck. The unit were the first to alight and Danny instantly smelled the sharp tang of the sea and felt the spray stinging his dirty face. As the Black Hawk’s rotors slowed down he heard a thunderous crash, and the frigate yawed dramatically. The sea was very rough.

There were two guys waiting on the landing deck. They wore Crye Precision multicam trousers with small, dark green life vests, black boots and sturdy gloves. Both had stubble and short hair that was dishevelled by the stiff wind on board. Like Danny’s unit, each had a boom mike at his mouth. Danny knew at a glance that these were Australian SAS.

‘Regiment?’ one of them shouted in an Australian accent. He was eyeing Caitlin uncertainly.

Danny nodded.

‘Welcome on board HMAS
Anzac
.’

‘Briefing room?’ Danny asked.

‘This way.’

They ran across the deck of the frigate, wind howling in their ears, and through a heavy metal door which led to a cramped, winding steel staircase. Their footsteps rang out as they headed down below and through a network of low, narrow corridors. After thirty seconds they turned left through another door and into a decent-sized room, about fifteen metres by fifteen. Benches along the walls held several laptops plugged into comms sockets, showing a mixture of GPS coordinates, satellite imagery and naval mapping. There was a white-noise crackle from a radio unit in the corner of the room. There were another four Australian SAS guys here, dressed identically to their mates. A fifth guy – Danny took him to be an ops officer – wore multicam trousers but no life jacket. A sixth man wore dark naval uniform. He stepped forward, hand outstretched. ‘Captain Enston,’ he said. ‘I hear you have an Aussie with you?’ His eyes picked out Caitlin. ‘I’ve set aside a separate female berth for you, Major Wallace, if you need it.’

‘I don’t think there’ll be any time for that, Captain,’ Caitlin said.

‘I’ve told my men to leave you fellas – and lasses – alone. But you need anything – food, drink, anything – you just shout.’

Danny shook the captain’s hand and nodded his thanks. He was already turning his attention to the ops officer when the captain added: ‘Oh, one other thing, fellas. I’ve just had a communication that an MI6 liaison officer is on his way to the frigate. ETA about two hours. I’ll show him down here when he arrives.’