The Kill Zone (36 page)

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Authors: Chris Ryan

BOOK: The Kill Zone
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Jack jutted his chin out. ‘There’s a special-forces backup unit on its way,’ he said. ‘Any minute. You’re fucked, Khan. It’s over.’
‘He’s lying,’ Caroline interrupted. ‘They interrogated me. They knew nothing about what was going on here . . .’
But Khan had raised one hand to silence her, and Caroline’s voice petered out. He stepped a few paces closer to Jack and Siobhan, then eyed them carefully, as if he were examining an item for purchase. His face grew shrewd and eventually he shook his head. ‘No,’ he breathed. ‘You would not be here with a mere woman if it were in an . . .’ He searched for the words. ‘An
official
capacity.’
‘They’re chancers,’ Caroline raged. ‘They don’t know what they’ve stumbled upon.’
‘Perhaps,’ Khan said. ‘Perhaps not.’
‘What’s your target, Khan?’ Jack demanded. ‘London? New York?’
Khan remained silent, but a mysterious look crossed his face. He turned and walked back towards the flight case.
Suddenly Siobhan’s voice echoed off the metal walls of the building. ‘Where is she, Khan?’ she asked.
Khan stopped, then turned again. It was impossible to read his expression. ‘Where is who, my dear?’ he asked.
Siobhan’s eyes were burning. ‘Lily Byrne. I know you’ve got her and she’s all we want. Where is she?’
An agonising pause. And then, slowly, Khan’s lips creased into an incredulous smile. ‘You have come all this way for
her
?’ he demanded.
Jack felt his insides crunch up. Khan wasn’t even denying it. Everything else faded into the background – Caroline, the device, everything. ‘
What did you say?
’ he hissed.
Khan looked from one to the other, his eyes cruel and bright. ‘You thought I would bring that girl to
this
place? You have followed me just for
her
?’
‘Don’t listen to them,’ Caroline interrupted. ‘They know about the device. They’re just trying to—’
‘
Quiet!
’ Khan approached Siobhan and inclined his head. ‘And why are you so interested in my pretty white whore?’ he whispered.
Jack couldn’t help himself. He went for Khan, but instantly Khan’s guards stepped forwards, their guns trained on him. Jack stopped and raised his hands.
‘I am astonished,’ said Khan, ‘that anyone would risk their lives for that wretched creature.’
‘You’d be surprised just what I’d do for her,’ Jack said.
‘Then you waste your time. Western women, with their appetites and their needs, are little more than animals. Like bitches on heat. But she is worse than most. Worse than a dog.’ His eyes shone as he taunted them. ‘She is dirty,’ he gloated. ‘
Filthy.
She
begs
me and my soldiers to favour her in return for the drugs that she cannot live without.’
Jack felt surrounded by a hot haze of rage.
‘Where is she?’ he breathed.
‘Imprisoned,’ Khan smiled. ‘Alone. If she isn’t dead now, she will be soon. I do not plan to return to her.’ He stepped closer to Jack. ‘Perhaps you don’t believe what I say about white women,’ he breathed, his lips thin with contempt. ‘Perhaps you require a demonstration?’
He turned again and walked away from them, then barked an instruction in Arabic. The two guards standing by the main door stepped inside and approached the flight case. One of them picked it up and walked out with the device, while the other stuck close to him, his weapon primed. Khan continued to speak to the remaining guards. Five of them nodded with unpleasant grins on their faces; the other three closed up around Khan.
‘Professor Stenton,’ he announced. ‘Please join our friends by the wall.’
A look of confusion crossed her pained face. ‘But I’m coming with you—’
‘
Now!
’ Khan said, and to reinforce his instruction one of the men approached and pushed her over towards Jack and Siobhan. She fell to the ground between them.
‘What’s going on?’ she demanded.
But Khan and his guards were already moving towards the exit. As he stood by the door, he looked at Jack. ‘I have places to be. These men –’ he indicated the five Somali guards who were left ‘– have served me well. I have instructed them that they may have their fun with the girls before they kill you all. They are simple men, after all – but they too have appetites. I don’t know what Lily Byrne is to you. I don’t really care. But think of her while you watch, because it is no more than what she does back in London. I hope you enjoy the spectacle.’
Khan’s eyes flashed – the eyes of a madman. He strode out of the building, his three guards surrounding him, while the others kept their guns trained on Jack and Siobhan. ‘Habib!’ Stenton shouted. ‘
Habib!
Don’t you dare . . . How could you . . .’ Nobody paid her any attention. From outside, there was the sound of a vehicle moving away.
And then silence. Both outside and inside the building.
Jack immediately started working out his options. His snubnose was still secreted round his ankle, but that only gave him six rounds. And even if he went for it, they’d mow him down in an instant if they saw him move. They were outnumbered and out-armed. He exchanged a glance with Siobhan. Unless they could raise some kind of distraction, they didn’t stand a fucking chance . . .
Stenton was shaking. ‘Let me go! Let me out of here!’ The five Somali guards ignored her. They were all dressed similarly: ragged jeans, dirty T-shirts, black and white keffiyehs wrapped round their necks. One of them stepped forward. He had sallow, sunken eyes, a dead expression and a rank smell. He looked first at Caroline.
Then he looked at Siobhan. He smiled.
It was Siobhan whom he selected.
The sallow-eyed man pointed his gun at her, then flicked it to indicate that she should walk to the end of the room where the dead bodies lay. She gave him a hateful look. But her only option, for now, was to comply.
Siobhan moved slowly to the end of the room, the gunman right behind her. He gave a harsh-sounding instruction. She stopped and turned to him. Anyone who saw her would think she was scared. No doubt she was. But Jack knew her well and saw something else. Her palms were open; her legs were slightly apart to keep her balance. And when she glanced briefly at him, he understood and nodded imperceptibly: she was choosing her moment carefully, and he needed to be ready.
The other guards still had their guns trained on Jack and Caroline, whose body was shaking, although it was impossible to tell if this was a result of the pain in her finger, Khan’s betrayal or fear at the agony and humiliation to come. Their attention, though, was elsewhere. They were watching to see what would happen at the end of the room, in anticipation of their own turn . . .
The sallow-faced gunman used his firearm to prod Siobhan’s breasts. She gave him a defiant stare, and he looked over his shoulder to leer at his companions.
That was his mistake.
Siobhan moved like lightning. With one hand she yanked the firearm upwards, then lifted her right leg to knee her would-be rapist in the groin. He groaned and bent double just as he discharged his weapon. A burst of fire echoed around the building – first the noise of discharge, then the tinny sound of the rounds ricocheting from the metal roof. The remaining guards looked at each other.
It was that second that gave Siobhan and Jack the time they needed.
Siobhan crooked one arm round the neck of her man, then spun him round so that he was facing the others. He was still carrying his weapon, so she stretched out her free arm and pulled his finger back against the trigger. Rounds sprayed across the room, hitting one of the guards in the chest, and forcing another to run for the door.
Jack hit the floor, rolling the couple of metres over towards the man Siobhan had downed just as a spray of rounds hit the wall behind him. Caroline wasn’t so lucky. She screamed as a stray round caught her squarely in the thigh, spraying blood over the floor. The remaining guards didn’t bother finishing her off. They knew Jack was the threat. They were a couple of metres apart, five metres from Jack and bearing down on him.
Jack pulled his snubnose from his ankle just as a burst missed him by inches as he rolled away. It took less than a second to aim the revolver and fire two rounds, both entering the foreheads of the two guards and killing them outright.
Jack tried to take everything in. There was screaming from Caroline; the remaining guard was leaving the building; but there was also scuffling from the back of the building, and he knew what that meant. He pushed himself up to his feet, spun round and saw Siobhan struggling with the sallow-faced gunman. She still had her arm round his throat and his eyes were bulging; but he was clearly stronger than he looked and had managed to move his weapon so that it was almost pointing over his shoulder.
Jack launched himself, swinging his legs over the metal table and running towards them. The man’s eyes widened and he moved his rifle forward again. But before he could fire at Jack, Siobhan yanked him to the right so that his bullets again sprayed against the metal wall.
And then Jack was on him. He put the snubnose to the Somali’s head, and fired. There was an explosion of red blood, white bone and slushy grey brain matter that spattered over Siobhan, Jack and the picture of Adebayor on the wall.
Outside there was the noise of another truck starting. ‘He’s getting away!’ Siobhan shouted. Jack was halfway across the room before the dead man had even slumped to the floor. He ignored Caroline’s howls of pain, but by the time he was outside, the technical was twenty metres away. Jack got down on one knee and into the firing position. He had three rounds left, but only needed two to take out the back tyres of the vehicle.
Siobhan’s voice from the door: ‘We need him alive, Jack! He can lead us to Khan!’
He was already on it, bearing down quickly on the technical, his revolver arm stretched out in front, a single round left. The final Somali guard, however, scrambled quickly into the back of the technical where a GPMG was mounted on a sturdy tripod.
Jack was ten metres away. The GPMG was loaded and the guard was pointing it towards him. Jack hissed with frustration. He had to take him out, now, otherwise he was a goner.
He squeezed the trigger and the snubnose fired; but at that moment – more by luck, it seemed, than by design – the guard moved out of the way and the round flew harmlessly into the air beyond him.
Jack froze. The guard was grinning, his teeth as yellow as his eyes. He clearly knew he had the upper hand. Even if Jack dived or ran, the spray from the GPMG would follow him.
A burst of fire. Jack felt the rounds – not hitting his body, but whizzing only a couple of inches away from his shoulder. And they weren’t coming from the gimpy, but from behind. They caught the guard on the side of the head and he slumped into the back of the technical with the groan of a dying man.
A deadly silence filled the air. Jack looked back. Siobhan was at the entrance to the building. Still pressed into her shoulder was one of the guards’ AK-47s. She lowered it, then joined him.
‘Nice shot,’ Jack said.
Siobhan didn’t reply. They stood there for a moment, breathless, bloodied and shocked. And then the quiet was shattered by a terrible scream. A scream of pain. Without saying a word, they ran back into the building where they saw Caroline, her face contorted. She was on her side, clutching her thigh. Siobhan knelt by her and lifted up her robes. The bare leg was pissing blood. Jack had seen a lot of bad wounds in his time. This was one of them.
‘She needs treatment,’ Siobhan said abruptly.
‘Fuck it,’ Jack replied. ‘She doesn’t need the kind of treatment I want to give her and we don’t have time. We can make it back to the airfield if we leave now.’
‘Holy mother of God, Jack,’ Siobhan muttered, and she removed her jacket.
‘Get away from me!’ Caroline shouted, but Siobhan ignored the instruction. Instead she wrapped the sleeve of her jacket round the patient’s thigh.
‘This is going to hurt,’ she said without emotion, then instantly tightened the makeshift bandage and pressed down on the bleeding wound. Caroline’s scream was barely human, but Siobhan’s face remained unmoved, as though she hadn’t even heard it. She kept the pressure on, ignoring the blood that was seeping around the leather of her jacket and through the gaps in her fingers.
Jack stood over them. There were plenty of loaded weapons in the building, and all he wanted to do was unload them into the professor.
Caroline saw the look on his face. She closed her eyes and started muttering something. Jack strained to make out what it was. ‘
Allahu Akbar . . . Allahu Akbar . . .
’
‘Don’t even think about it Jack,’ Siobhan hissed.
‘You don’t know what she’s responsible for.’
‘I don’t
care
what she’s responsible for.
Think!
She’s our only link to Khan. We need to find out what she knows.’
Jack scowled. He knew she was right. He checked his watch. 22.36 hrs. ‘I’m going to recce,’ he said. He walked outside and started prowling around the area. The technical was fucked. He climbed up into the back and over the body of the dead guard to examine the machine gun: it seemed to be in working order, but there was only a single ammo belt. It would give them a few bursts of defensive fire if they needed it. But with blown-out tyres, the vehicle was as good as useless.

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