In Cold Blood (15 page)

That was the plan, of course. She knew well enough that plans tended not to stand up after the first contact had been made, but it was as good a place to start as any. She would adapt on the fly once things kicked off.

She thought of Joshua Joyce.

He was just a stone’s throw away from her. Number Ten. Ex-SAS, one of the government’s most dangerous assassins. He hadn’t fired the shot that had killed her husband, but he had been in the house and that made him equally complicit in her eyes. Equally guilty and equally deserving of her justice. He had rabbit punched her from behind. He had kicked her while she was on the floor, slamming his boot into her ribs until she stopped moving and made her promise that she would do whatever it was that they wanted her to do. She had shot him in the leg in the melée that followed, but that was just a down payment on the retribution that she was here to deliver. She raised her arm so that she could look at the fresh tattoo, the ink still vivid, almost luminous.

Johnny Ink had asked her whether she was still going to get the whole sleeve done.

Definitely.

Leave room for more.

IT WAS perfectly dark. Pope looked up. Here, out on the ocean, miles from land, there was little pollution to dim the stars and they sparkled with an unusual brightness. There were millions of them, spread out across the vault of the heavens, and they cast plenty of light. The moon, too, was vivid, and neither were in Rose’s favour. Far better for her if the sky was clouded. It might have bought her a small advantage and, the way Pope saw it, she was going to need all the advantages she could get.

The welldeck opened out at the stern of the ship and there was an observation walkway that ran around the top of it. Pope made his way there and leaned against the railing directly above the churn of wash several metres below. The welldeck had been flooded with seawater and the ramp had been lowered. The Mark V Special Operations Craft was loaded and ready to go. The SEALs were seated in the cabin, all eighteen of them, and the two assault craft that they would use to complete their trip to shore were tethered to the sloping deck of the SOC.

Lieutenant Commander McMahon joined him.

“You ever do anything like this?” he asked.

“Plenty of times.”

“I still remember that feeling in the pit of my stomach.”

“Adrenaline.”

“If your asset is still in town, she wants to keep her head down. It’s going to get interesting at,” he looked down at his watch, “about zero one hundred hours.”

Pope agreed with the sentiment, but he knew that keeping out of the way was not in Beatrix Rose’s nature.

The sailor on the walkway opposite Pope took a green flag and waved it.

The mooring lines were released and the boat edged forwards, passing through the aperture and bobbing down into the deeper water beyond. The senior chief petty officer looked up from the boat and raised his hand. McMahon returned the gesture.

The big jets kicked in and it jerked away sharply, carving quietly through the ocean.

Pope watched.

There they go.

No stopping it now.

SHE HAD ALLOWED herself to sleep. It would only be for a few hours, but her body badly needed it. It was expending energy fighting the cancer and she was barely resting to recharge. When she finally awoke it was much later. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes and looked at her watch.

Zero zero ten hours.

Shit.

She had been sleeping for too long.

Something had woken her.

A noise.

Chanting.

She pressed herself up against the wall and slowly moved across it so that she could look out of the window.

There was activity at the front of the house. Beatrix watched from her hiding place as the main door was opened and a dozen armed men exited. The chanting got louder.

Allahu akbar.

Allahu akbar.

Allahu akbar.

They were dressed in similar fashion to the men she had taken down on the road outside Barawe. They had ammo belts and AKs and RPG-7s, red and white chequered
kufiyas
hiding their faces. Beatrix counted fourteen of them.

Another man came out with a digital camera equipped with a powerful light. He went to the front of the group and took up position, making preparations for what Beatrix knew was about to happen. Three more men came outside: two dragging a third, struggling and protesting for all he was worth.

Beatrix hurriedly examined him through her field glasses.

It wasn’t Joyce.

The man was hauled in front of the semi-circle and forced to his knees. He fought as hard as he could and, for a moment, it looked as if he was going to be too difficult to subdue, but then one of the group stepped forwards and cold cocked him in the back of the skull with the stock of his AK-47. The man’s head jerked forwards violently and then hung still.

She put the glasses down and traced her fingertips over the MP-5. The gun didn’t have the range to be accurate from here. An excellent sniper rifle wouldn’t have been much more helpful, either. She would have been able to plug two or three of them before they got into cover, but she would betray her position and the element of surprise that was critical to the success of her mission. If she intervened now, there would be no way to get to Joyce. He would be lined up with the other hostages and shot.

That was unacceptable.

She picked up the glasses again. A man stepped before the camera. He was holding a long machete, its blade glittering darkly in the light from the camera. He started to speak.

“Praise be to Allah who created the creation for his worship and commanded them to be just and permitted the wronged one to retaliate against the oppressor in kind.”

She turned away from the window. A single scream rose into the night, bracketed by fervent chanting to Allah.

She picked up her
kukri
and the whetstone and settled into a repetitive stroke and counter stroke, sharpening the blade.

TWO OF the Manage Risk soldiers were watching at the ventilation bricks. Joe couldn’t. He just couldn’t. But he could hear Farax’s words, his sermon, and that was enough.

“
Peace be upon he who follows the Guidance. People of America, this demonstration is for you and concerns war and its causes and results. We fight because we are free men who don’t sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to the nations of Islam all around the world. So shall we lay waste to yours and to your people. “

They had come down to the basement ten minutes earlier. Farax had seen Torres, dead on the floor, and had asked what had happened. Joe had just shaken his head.

What else could he have said?

The others, too, had been cowed by what had happened. Farax must have known what had happened, but he did not take action. He wanted Joe to tell him. Why? Perhaps it was as simple as a battle of wills. The American captain, with his money and his influence, against a poor and pious holy man. Perhaps he wanted to see Joe crack. Perhaps he found a perverse sort of pleasure from the situation, putting a good man in a position where he had to chose between his morals and his survival. Was there pleasure in watching him as, slowly and incrementally, the instinct to survive took charge?

Farax had asked about the sniper again.

Joe looked at the floor. He broke. “I don’t know which one it was,” Joe said. He raised his arm and pointed, still looking down. “But those are the soldiers. One of them.”

Joyce had cursed at him, but there was nothing he could do. Farax called up the stairs and another two men appeared, each of them armed with an AK. There were four of them now and they raised their rifles at the Manage Risk operatives and penned them at the far side of the room, away from the others.

“These men will stay with you now,” Farax had explained. He had pointed at Torres’ body. “This must not happen again.”

“That’s what you wanted,” Joe said to him. “Right? Can we go now?” He begged. He had almost fallen to his knees. He knew how pitiful he sounded.

Farax beamed a big, white smile, and clasped Joe on the shoulder. He looked into his face and told him that he had done the right thing, but that he should have said so earlier, when he had asked him for the first time, and maybe none of this would have been necessary.

He reached out to rest a hand against Joe’s cheek and then took it away to point at Barry Miller.

“Him.”

And now Joe closed his eyes, but he couldn’t shut out Farax’s voice:

“No one except a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes himself believe he will be secure. Whereas thinking people, when disaster strikes, make it their priority to look for its causes, in order to prevent it from happening again.”

Miller had struggled, but he had been overpowered. Two of the fighters had dragged him outside. Three had stayed: two had aimed their rifles at the soldiers and the other one had covered the crew.

“Your security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn’t play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security. And Allah is our Guardian and Helper, while you have no Guardian or Helper. All peace be upon he who follows the Guidance.”

No-one was going to move.

The resistance had been beaten out of them.

IT WAS just after two in the morning when Beatrix finally knew that they were coming. They were approaching the beach, lights out, and it was the engines that she heard first. A high pitched whine that lowered in frequency as it drew nearer until it was recognisable as two powerful diesel engines. She scanned the water with the night vision glasses until she found them: rigid inflatables with outboard motors, coming in fast. They would have started the mission aboard a warship and then transported from that ship to closer in aboard a bigger Mark V that would now be waiting for them out in deeper water. Each raiding craft looked to be around five metres from bow to stern and she counted nine men on each. Eighteen men in total. That was in line with Pope’s intelligence. They were sending a whole platoon to get the job done.

It was a stealthy infiltration, but now it was going to get hot, and quickly.

The beach was deserted. The two boats raced up and slid onto the sand. The platoon vaulted onto the beach, moving with the assuredness of men who had conducted infiltrations like this many times before. They split into two units of nine men each, approaching the compound through the streets from the east and the southeast.

Beatrix had an excellent view.

The men moved low to the ground and fast, with bulky silhouettes due to the heavy bags they were carrying. They ranged in front of the building in overlapping arcs, moving silently, communicating with hand signals.

She caught a flash of light in the corner of her eye. She looked at the house. The guard she had seen yesterday was outside again, holding a flame to the cigarette that was clasped between his lips.

Bad timing, she thought.

He strolled around to the front of the house, right in front of the SEALs.

One of the Americans was hiding behind a waist-high wall. The
mujahideen
was on the other side of the wall, less than a couple of feet away from him.

She held her breath.

They held their fire.

The man turned and wandered slowly back around to the rear door, dropping the cigarette.

He had only smoked half of it.

He had seen them. He was bluffing them.

Hand signals from the SEALs.

Two of them advanced.

She heard a shout, close, from the house, and then the first rattle of gunfire.

Now
.

The first volley merged with another and then another. The fighters were firing out of the ground and first floor windows with AKs and semi-automatics. It was impossible to say how many of them were still inside, but there had to be at least a dozen.

The two SEALs in the vanguard dived into cover. The others were taking heavy fire, too, and, as she watched and assessed, they returned fire even as they retreated into a more defensive alignment.

Now
.

She shrugged the rucksack over her shoulders, ran down the stairs, vaulted the fence and then the wall, and dropped down into the compound beyond.

JOE HEARD the clatter of gunfire from the floor above them. The expression on the face of the three guards changed from surly confidence to confusion and then fright.

McGuinness went to the ventilation bricks and tried to look out.

“Back!” one of the guards yelled, waving his rifle. “Back!”

“What is it?” Joyce asked.

“The cavalry.”

Joyce pushed himself to his feet and rolled his shoulders. He turned to the guards. “Things are about to get interesting for you.”

If they understood his English they didn’t show it.

“Back!”

The guards were panicking. They jabbed the AKs towards them, shouting at Joyce and McGuinness incomprehensibly.

Joe watched as one of the other men, Bloom, edged away from the wall, opening up the group so that it was more difficult to cover all four of them.

“Sit down, Joyce!” Joe shouted. “They’ll shoot us!”

The guard watching over them shouted at him to be quiet.

None of the guards had covered Bloom.

“What are you going to do, boys?” Joyce taunted. “You know who that is? My guess is that’s Uncle Sam. It’ll be a full SEAL team with a full combat load. Hell, boys, it’s one of the most violent things man has ever created.”

“Quiet! Back, back!”

“My guess, you’ve got a few minutes left to live.” Joyce mimed that they should lay their rifles down. “You put them down and maybe I can help you.”

Bloom kept moving, trying to flank them.

McGuiness took a step forwards.

“Stop! You back!”

They were distracting them.

A big risk.

“
You back!
”

Joe closed his eyes.

Gunshots.

ONE OF the mujahideen emerged from the back entrance, fumbling a magazine into his AK. He was going to try and flank the SEALs.