Ultimate Weapon (14 page)

‘And I’ve given you a fair warning as well,’ barked Stonehill. ‘Now get the fuck out of my sight.’

Nick slammed a fist into the man’s stomach. He took the blow hard in the ribs, and Nick could feel his muscles absorbing the blow. He swung his right fist hard up towards the side of Nick’s jaw, but Nick had readied himself for a predictable response, and had already ducked. The blow landed in the air, temporarily loosening his balance. Nick slammed up his right knee, crunching it into Stonehill’s balls. Should have worn iron underpants, mate, thought Nick grimly.
It’s going to be a couple of weeks before you’re bothering the tasty-looking brunette in the picture.

Stonehill was staggering back clutching his groin. ‘You fucking bastard, I’ll bloody throttle you.’

Mistake, pal, thought Nick. This is not a moment for conversation. Talking saps your strength, and weakens your concentration. With his head still down, he slammed his skull straight into Stonehill’s stomach. The air emptied out of his gut, and he started choking. His body collided
hard with the wall, and one of the pictures crashed to the floor, sending shards of glass across its surface.

Nick straightened himself up, and then slammed his fist hard into the side of Stonehill’s face. He could feel his knuckles digging into the jawbone, sending ripples of pain up through his arm. He smiled. It was the kind of pain that told a fighter he’d landed a telling blow.

Time to finish you off, pal.

He slammed his fist hard down again, this time aiming for the nose. But Stonehill showed an unexpected turn of agility. His face ducked out of the blow, letting Nick’s fist crash into the plaster of the wall.

Stonehill jerked his right knee upwards, catching Nick in the third rib. It was a powerful blow, expertly struck, and Nick reeled backwards. His chest was shuddering under its impact. Another knee flew up, this time catching Nick on the chin, jerking his jaw hard upwards. He could feel the muscles in his neck stretching, and he was struggling to breathe. Stonehill was already scrambling to his feet, and Nick was struggling to match his agility. Suddenly he was above him. Both his fists were clasped together, and in the next instant they smashed down like a hammer into the back of Nick’s neck. He grunted, then fell to the floor. It felt as if an axe had just been thrust into him. He was lying face down, his mouth barely an inch from the carpet. If this is the way you want to play it, pal, that’s your choice, he thought.
Let’s make it interesting.

He rolled on his side, and kept rolling until he’d put five yards between himself and Stonehill. He leapt to
his feet. His back was still aching, and the throbbing from his ribcage was starting to spread out across his chest. Ignore the pain, he told himself.
You can deal with that later.

‘Now get the fuck out of my office,’ shouted Stonehill.

Nick looked at the man. Sweat was pouring off his face, and there was a trickle of blood down the side of his mouth. But his eyes were still strong, and his expression determined. There’s plenty of fight left in the bugger yet, thought Nick.

‘I’ll die here if I have to,’ said Nick. ‘My daughter’s bloody vanished, and you know something about it.’

He rushed forward, his body fuelled by an angry mixture of adrenalin and fear. He was about to bring Stonehill down to the ground, but his opponent was prepared for him, and a glancing blow smashed into the side of Nick’s face, followed by a foot crashing into his stomach. He was hurled backwards, colliding with the desk, taking a nasty hit to the spine, then falling to the floor.

‘If you’re not out of here in one minute, by God I’ll fucking kill you,’ said Stonehill.

Nick reached across the floor. A shard of glass from the picture was lying close by. He picked it up, and gripped it tight into his palm. He could feel it cutting into his skin but ignored the pain. Advancing slowly, he could see Stonehill edging away from him. With one swift lunge, he threw himself forward, stabbing at Stonehill’s shoulder with the glass. The shard cut through his shirt, then sunk into his flesh, cutting it deep. A spurt
of blood shot out, and a howl of agony erupted from the man’s lips. Nick let go of the glass, then took a step back. Blood was dripping from his own hand. He curled it into a tight ball, slamming it into the side of Stonehill’s face. He staggered sideways. Another blow, then another, both of them to the jaw. Stonehill fell to the ground, his face and shoulder a messy pulp of blood and sweat. Nick crashed his foot down into his chest, then pinned his arms down to the floor. He leant his face downwards, so close that Stonehill could feel the fury on his lips.

‘If you don’t start talking to me this minute, I’m going to fucking kill you, then I’m going to go round to your house and kill your wife and kids,’ he said.

There was a silence for a moment. Nick could feel the man’s breath, and he could see his eyes darting from side to side. Blood was still seeping from his shoulder, and although the wound wasn’t serious, if it wasn’t bandaged soon, he was going to lose a lot of blood – and that could be serious. He can’t hang around, thought Nick. He knows what’s going to happen to him.
If he doesn’t talk to me soon, he’s going to die.

‘Keith Merton was on our payroll,’ said Stonehill.

The words were hardly more than a whisper.

‘Following me?’

Stonehill nodded.

‘Who’s paying?’

Stonehill took a deep breath. ‘Let me bind up the wound, then I’ll tell you.’

Nick pressed hard into his chest. ‘Talk to me first,’ he spat. ‘Who hired you to follow me?’

‘An outfit called the Lubbock Group.’

‘Who the fuck are they?’

‘It’s an informal grouping of all the big oil companies,’ said Stonehill. ‘They meet in Lubbock, Texas, once a year. It’s very secret, because those boys aren’t meant to be forming cartels. They discuss issues that affect them all – technology, security, the works. And they pay a few guys a lot of money to look after their interests. That’s who the job was for.’

‘So why they hell are they interested in me?’

‘They’re not.’ Stonehill paused. ‘They’re looking for your daughter, Sarah.’

‘They kidnapped her,’ shouted Nick. His fist was hovering just inches from Stonehill’s face, and he could see the man start to grit his teeth in anticipation of the blow. ‘If they lifted her, I’m going to kill the buggers. By hand. One by one.’

‘They haven’t kidnapped her. They’re looking for her as well,’ said Stonehill.

Nick stayed his hand. ‘Why the hell would a bunch of oil industry guys be interested in Sarah?’

‘Her work,’ said Stonehill quickly. ‘She was working on something in Cambridge. Some science to do with energy. One of the things they pay us to do is to keep tabs on a few scientists whose work might be interesting to them. Tap their phones, keep an eye on the emails, that kind of stuff. They were interested in Sarah all of a sudden.’

‘Why “all of a sudden”?’ said Nick.

‘I don’t bloody know,’ snapped Stonehill. ‘I know fuck
all about the science. They just give us the names, and we keep an eye on them.’

‘So where the hell is she?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Stonehill. ‘She vanished over a week ago. You know that already. We reported that back to the Lubbock Group, and they went apeshit. I’ve never seen them get themselves in such a state. They told us we had to find her. Money no object.’

Blood was still trickling down the side of his mouth, and Stonehill paused to spit it away from his lips. ‘So we followed you. It was about the only lead we could think of. If she re-emerged, or got in contact with anyone, then it would be you. When that happened, we wanted to know about it.’

Nick relaxed his grip on Stonehill’s chest. He’d seen men lie under torture before, and he’d seen them tell the truth as well, and he reckoned he’d learnt to tell the difference: you could sense when the fear had got to them, when they knew there was no point in hiding anything, and you could hear an edge of pleading in their voice. Stonehill was telling the truth, he felt sure of it.
If he was lying, he’d come up with a better story than that.

‘So I’m looking for you because you might tell me where she is, and you’re watching me because you think I might know where she is,’ said Nick. He grinned, but there was no warmth in the smile. ‘We’re going round in bloody circles. We could have saved you a cleaning bill if we’d figured that out at the start.’

He unpinned Stonehill’s hands and stood up. His jaw
and ribs were aching, and there was a smattering of blood down the front of his blue denim shirt. Stonehill got uneasily to his feet.

‘Maybe we should work together.’

Nick stared at him. ‘I’m not working with you tossers. You’ve no business following my daughter, and you’ve no business tapping my phone and sending a couple of clowns to watch my house. So stay the fuck out of my way.’

‘We’ve a lot of resources at our disposal,’ said Stonehill. He was wiping some blood from his cheek, and clutching on to his jaw as if he had lost a tooth. ‘We might be more effective together.’

‘I work alone,’ snapped Nick, heading for the door. ‘It’s the only way I know.’

The noise of the chopper, flying in at no more than thirty feet from the ground, was brutal. Jed sat close to the doorway, letting the cold night air rush over his face. He’d been keeping his eyes peeled to the ground during the one hour they had been flying upcountry from Kuwait, but now they were approaching Baghdad there was a sprinkling of lights. Once the war kicked off, they’d impose a blackout, but right now it was lit up like Oxford Street.

Five minutes, he thought.
Then we get a chance to kick off this war single-handed.

At his side were Matt, Steve and Rob. From Brize they’d flown straight to Kuwait where the Regiment had established a makeshift base about a hundred miles back from the border: choppers were ferrying the troops up from Kuwait airport to the base. It had supplies in place, some QMs handing out kit, an armoury, a barracks, ammo pallets and a cookhouse. As Jed set eyes on the place, he remembered how he’d seen Tony Blair on TV as they left talking about the ‘last chance for peace’. As you looked at the Regiment’s base, it was clear that chance had long since passed, and he must have known it.

When they checked into the base, they had a few hours to eat, prepare their kit and pick up on the local intelligence: Iraq was in turmoil, according to the steady stream of defectors making their way across the border, with the army concentrating on how to minimise its casualties in the upcoming war, and the people already braced for the plotting that would start after Saddam’s inevitable defeat.

For the mission ahead, none of them were taking any more than essential supplies. They were wearing plain clothes to stop them from drawing attention to themselves: black cheap slacks and boots, made in Syria, and loose nylon sweaters underneath which they had fitted lightweight Kevlar bulletproof jackets. Inside their packs were the MOPP suits to put on before they went inside the compound. They were carrying black-market AK-47s with two hundred rounds of ammunition each, plus six hand grenades, the same number of stun grenades, five pounds of Semtex and two detonators. For handguns they had brought Browning BDA 380s with silencers: they were small reliable pistols, with wooden handles, and a semi-automatic firing mechanism that could store twelve 9mm or thirteen 7.65mm rounds. They were carrying popular mass-produced weapons that were available anywhere, so that if they were captured, they could try to pass themselves off as freelance mercenaries. Their orders were to deny they were working for the British government no matter what happened.

For food, they had a supply of camping meals, and,
most importantly of all, they had five hundred dollars in ten-dollar bills to bribe any locals, plus sixteen ounces of gold in unmarked coins. Dollars and gold were the universal currency inside Iraq. With that kind of money, you could buy yourself out of most forms of trouble.

‘Get ready to land,’ shouted the pilot into the radio, his words instantly transmitted into the helmets of the four men sitting behind him.

The Black Hawk was flown by experienced US Air Force pilots, experts at special forces insertions. It came in low, to make it impossible for the Iraqi radar to lock on to them. That made for a choppy ride, as the machine soared above electricity pylons, then dropped down to hug the surface of the terrain again. Talking was banned inside the Black Hawk: there was too much risk of the Iraqis picking up the signals.

Jed braced himself. He’d been in combat before, and had learnt to recognise the mixture of excitement, fear and anticipation that overtook him every time a battle started. It was OK once you were in there. The action overwhelmed your senses, and the will to stay alive kicked in, making it impossible to think about anything else. It was the moments beforehand that made Jed uneasy: it was then that the doubts started to creep in, when you started to wonder whether you were going to live through the next few days. Forget it, Jed told himself. Just get the job done, then get home and find out what’s happened to Sarah.

The Black Hawk flew fast into Baghdad and Jed could see the lights of the city spreading out ahead of him.
The slums to the east and the west of the city generated almost no lights at all: most of the people were too poor to keep the electricity running through the night, and after a decade of economic sanctions half the power stations didn’t work properly anyway. The centre of the city was brightly lit: you could make out the big blocks of the main government buildings. Over to the north, he could see the runway of Saddam Hussein airport.