The Kill Zone (52 page)

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Authors: Chris Ryan

BOOK: The Kill Zone
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Jack made a quick hand gesture to indicate that three of the team should move round to the other side of the cabin. He waited two seconds for them to get into position, then, still crouching, he crept round to the entrance of the cabin. He removed a flash-bang from his ops waistcoat, and held up three fingers to his opposite number on the other side of the door.
Two fingers.
One.
Jack pulled the pin, pushed the door open and hurled it through. A sudden, ear-blistering crack and a flash of light – enough to disorientate anyone who wasn’t used to it. Jack and his team
were
used to it, though. By the time the grenade had exploded, Jack was inside, moving through the cabin with all the force and anger of a tsunami.
His eyes zeroed in on Khan. The fucker might have shaved off his beard, but Jack would recognise that face anywhere. As he stormed towards him, his MP5 pointing directly at his enemy’s head, he felt a sudden burst of anger and hatred surging through his veins. He wanted to roar, to make him feel tenfold every ounce of pain he was carrying with him on account of Siobhan’s death. To make the bastard
suffer
.
Khan must have seen that in him. Or maybe other things were going through his twisted mind. Either way, in the split second it took for Jack to be upon him, a fierce, insane look burned behind his eyes. He was standing over a metal flight case – Jack recognised it easily enough. It was open, and Khan’s arm was hovering over it.
He lowered his hand.
Jack launched himself through the air. Khan crashed to the ground, his thin body crushed by Jack’s enormous bulk. Jack put the MP5 against his skull, and was a nanosecond away from firing it and spraying the cunt’s brains all over the interior of the cabin. But at the last moment he stopped himself. He looked over his shoulder. The second member of the crew was on the floor with three of the team suppressing him. The remaining two SAS men were hulking above Jack, MP5s trained on Khan.
‘
Target secure!
’ he spoke into his comms. ‘
Target secure! We’ve got the device and we’ve got Khan. Send in the choppers to extract!
’
And then he looked down at Khan.
The man was gazing up at him. There appeared to be a flicker of a smile on his lips, like he was too crazy to know what was happening. It was too much for Jack. Rage took hold of him. He dropped his MP5 on the ground, and started to pummel Khan’s face with his fist until the bastard’s nose was broken and his features were mashed and bloody.
And even then the fucker wouldn’t stop smiling.
He grabbed him by the throat. ‘You’re going to tell me where the girl is,’ he hissed. ‘
Now
.’
Khan did nothing but smile, so Jack squeezed at his jugular.
‘The girl,’ Khan croaked, ‘is not important.’
‘She’s important to me. You’ve got ten seconds to tell me where she is.’
Khan stared at him. There was something calculating behind his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘Go and find her. Kane Road, Tottenham. House number sixty-seven. In the basement.’
Jack immediately spoke into his radio, repeating the address. ‘Tell Carver,’ he instructed. ‘Tell him to send a team in now . . .’
He turned his attention back to Khan, but found he couldn’t look at his face any more, so he turned him on to his front and Plasticuffed his hands behind his back. ‘If you’re lying to me, Khan, I swear to God you’ll wish you’d never been born.’
‘I think,’ Khan replied, ‘that is most unlikely.’
Jack paused, his eyes boring into the back of Khan’s head. The man sounded like he knew something. He stood up and put a boot on his neck, then looked around. The inside of the boat was strangely still.
Strangely calm.
It was over. They’d captured Khan. They’d captured the device. London was safe. A team was on its way to get his daughter.
Why, then, did Jack feel that something wasn’t quite right?
Thames House operations room. ‘
Target acquired, target acquired. The dive team have Khan. The device is secured. Bomb disposal on their way.
’
A cheer went up. High fives from the technicians. David Colley’s voice above the hubbub: ‘Keep your minds on the job, damn it.
Keep your minds on the job!
’
But nothing he said could dispel the atmosphere of relief that had suddenly descended on the room.
It took about two minutes before one of the Agustas was hovering over the boat. Jack pulled the Plasticuffed Khan by the scruff of his neck, then forced him out of the cabin and on to the deck. The dirty water of the Thames sprayed over them in the wake of the chopper’s downdraught; Khan faced the spray with his eyes open.
A rope tumbled from the Agusta. At the end of it were two blue harnesses with metal links. Khan didn’t even put up a fight as Jack strapped him into one of them; and as the loadie in the chopper winched them both up, his body remained limp and submissive.
As soon as they were in the body of the chopper, Jack unclipped them both, then looked out to check that everything else was happening as it should. The second Agusta was getting into position to winch up the boat’s skipper; and he saw three RIBs cutting their way through the Thames towards the vessel – bomb disposal guys, no doubt, there to work their magic with the device.
He turned his attention back to Khan, put one hand on his shoulder, then kicked him in the right knee so that he collapsed like a house of cards in a hurricane. The Agusta veered off to the right. Jack didn’t know what their destination was: a facility somewhere, he supposed, where Khan could be questioned. No good cop, bad cop routine for him. It would be bad cop all the way, and Jack hoped he’d get the chance to ask a few questions of his own.
Fly was on board. Apart from him, just the pilot. Jack’s colleague gave him a look. ‘Easy, Jack. He’s not going anywhere. They’ll want him in one piece when he lands.’
Jack barely heard him. He knelt down where Khan was lying, grabbed his hair and whispered into his ear. ‘It’s over, Khan. You’re fucked.’
And again, a smile played around Khan’s lips. ‘It is not over, Jack Harker,’ he whispered. ‘It has only just begun.’
‘What’s he saying, Jack?’ Fly shouted over the noise of the aircraft.
Jack held up one hand. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked sharply.
Khan just smiled again, a smile that filled Jack with such fury that he unclipped his MP5, then pulled Khan to his feet and hauled him to the still-open door of the Agusta. Jack pushed him so that he was teetering on the brink of the helicopter, then placed the MP5 against the back of his head. ‘The safety’s off and it’s fully loaded,’ he roared as the river snaked beneath them. ‘Tell me what you’re talking about!’
‘
Go ahead and shoot me!
’ Khan yelled above the wind. ‘
It is all you can do, and I woke up this morning expecting to die!
’
Jack felt his finger twitching. He wanted the satisfaction of feeling the rounds pump into the fucker’s body; of seeing him fall dead into the river below. But something stopped him. He pulled Khan back again, then whacked his weapon against the man’s face. A satisfying crack of breaking bone; a flash of blood; Khan fell to the floor once more. Jack could sense that Fly was unsure whether to restrain him or not; but for now, his fellow soldier was giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Khan’s blood was flowing freely, but still he seemed unmoved. ‘Without your gun,’ he smirked, ‘you are nothing.’
Jack felt fire in his veins. He beat Khan’s head once more with the metal of his MP5. More blood. This time, Khan’s eyes remained closed and he took a deep breath, as though absorbing the pain. Finally he spoke again. Jack had to strain his ears to hear him. ‘Without your gun,’ he repeated, ‘you are nothing.’ Another deep breath. ‘A long time ago, my grandfather taught me something. It is with your weapon that you win the battle, he said, but with your mind that you win the war.’
Jack stared at him. Khan’s words seemed to glow like coals in the air, and his smirk grew wider.
‘What did you say?’
‘You think that with your weapons you can do anything, but you do not use your
minds
,’ Khan hissed.
Jack continued to stare.
The fire in his veins had turned to ice.
Khan’s words had taken him back. It was only days previously, but it seemed like a lifetime. He was imprisoned in a dark room, having been captured in the heart of enemy territory in Afghanistan. A man was talking to him. He stank of greasy sweat, wore desert camo. And he was missing a finger on one hand. In his mind, Jack could see him as clearly as he could see Habib Khan in front of him. And he could hear his voice, too.
When I was very small, my grandfather told me something. I have never forgotten it. It is with your weapons that you win the battle, but with your mind that you win the war. And that is why this war, for you, is already lost.
Farzad Haq’s words echoed in his mind as the helicopter swerved again. Jack looked in horror at Khan. At the smile of satisfaction that remained on his head even though the blood continued to drench it.
And then he was elsewhere. The ops centre in Bastion. That goon Willoughby showing off his intel.
When the Iraqis invaded Iran later that year, Haq’s younger brother was killed by Saddam’s forces . . . he’s obsessed with our American cousins. Blames them for supporting the Iraqi regime that killed his brother. There’s a videotape somewhere in the archives of him promising to eliminate any American he comes across, just like they killed Adel.
Adel . . .
A long time ago, my grandfather taught me something . . .
Farzad Haq’s younger brother wasn’t dead at all. He was very much alive. And he was lying on the floor of the Agusta as it continued to speed through London airspace.
Jack looked at him.
‘Your name is Adel.’ It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact.
Khan’s eyes opened. He blinked rapidly because of the blood flowing over his brow. ‘You’re too late,’ he hissed.
But Jack’s mind was racing ahead. Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that had been floating around in his head suddenly started dropping into place.
O’Callaghan’s importation line. The old man had admitted, just before Jack dealt with him, that Khan had sent a number of packages into the country that weren’t related to the O’Callaghan drugs operation.
Boxes. I don’t know what they are. Nothing to do with me. I just see that they get shipped where he wants them.
Jack was hitting the Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan, fast-roping into the compound where Haq had held him captive. But he hadn’t been after Haq himself. He’d been after something else.
‘
The Stingers . . .
’
A look of triumph in Khan’s eyes.
‘
Jack!
’ Fly shouted. ‘
What the hell’s going on?
’
Jack’s brow was furrowed. A final memory shunted through his brain. He was in a helicopter. Not an Agusta, this time, but a Black Hawk. It was making a fast extraction, away from the kill zone in the Helmand desert, north above the cliff that was home to the cave system they’d just hit.
But on top of the cliff there were enemy.
Waiting for them.
Lying in ambush.
Ready to bring the chopper down.
These were Haq’s tactics. This was the way he fought his wars. And he was doing it again.
Now.
Time slowed down.
Jack pushed himself up on his feet. He turned to face the front of the chopper. The pilot was wearing a helmet and headphones. Jack switched his radio on. He didn’t know who was listening in, but he shouted anyway.
‘
TURN THE CHOPPER ROUND!
’ he yelled at the top of his voice, feeling his throat rip as he did so. ‘
IT’S AN AMBUSH. IT’S A FUCKING AMBUSH! TURN THE CHOPPER ROUND! THEY’RE ABOUT TO TAKE OUT THE PRESIDENT!
’
29
It was not in Farzad Haq’s nature to smile often. But he did so now, like his brother – a brief flicker as he gazed upwards.
There were few people enjoying the evening air in Hillingdon Park – just a couple of dog walkers and, loitering around a litter-strewn bandstand about 200 metres from where he was standing, some youths smoking cigarettes, or more likely something stronger.
Haq himself was standing next to a battered white van that was parked just by an old cricket pavilion. The numbers on the scoreboard were faded; some of them hung at an angle by only a single hinge. There was obscene graffiti on the wall. It was clear that nobody had used this pavilion for months, perhaps even years. Which was why it had proved to be the perfect hiding place for the missiles once they had completed their long journey from Helmand to the southern tip of Ireland and into the UK. Adel had set things up well. Very well. Farzad felt a sense of pride in his younger brother.

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