Ultimate Weapon (50 page)

A shot rang out, its explosive noise echoing through the mountainside. Salek staggered backwards. A bullet had landed in his right shoulder, just a few inches from the existing wound. The impact of the blow had chewed up the flesh and bone: his arm was dangling from his shoulders by just a narrow thread of bleeding muscle, and if you looked closely, you could see right through to the bone.

‘Zarba,’ he cried. ‘Zarba.’

He was swaying, struggling to hold his balance. His foot had been taken off Jed’s wrist, but he was still holding on to his gun, switching it from his right to his left hand.

As Jed glanced around, he could see Nick running towards him. He was thirty yards away and limping badly, but he was closing in on them fast, his own Browning handgun gripped in his right hand. How he’d managed
to hit Salek at a distance of almost fifty yards while he was running, Jed couldn’t tell. Either it was a lucky shot.
Or else he was bloody good.

As Nick covered the last few yards separating them, Jed rolled around, pushing himself the final few inches he needed to reach his own gun. His hand shot out, grabbing hold of the Beretta. Salek was looking at him, then back up towards Nick. There was a trickle of blood running down from his mouth, and his eyes were starting to glaze over. His left hand started to rise upwards, with the Viper still nestling in his palm. He was desperately trying to steady himself and to get some sort of an aim on Nick. He fired off one bullet, than another. Nick was swerving as he ran, making himself a harder target to pin down.

One bullet smashed uselessly into the ground. But the second winged his leg, just above the knee, ripping out a chunk of flesh like a snake taking a bite of its victim. Nick roared in agony, but kept moving, suppressing the pain, finding the reserves of strength within himself. He fired the gun, once, twice, then three times, the bullets punching through the air, hitting Salek in the chest, the neck and groin. In the same instant, Jed steadied his grip on his own Beretta, straightened his arm and squeezed the trigger hard. The first bullet missed, but he’d already adjusted his aim, and the second struck Salek in the left shoulder. The force of the impact knocked the Viper from his hand. Jed fired again, then again. Leave nothing to chance, he told himself.
Kill him once, then kill him again, just to make sure the bastard doesn’t ever crawl back out of hell.

Salek slumped to the ground, a torn and mangled corpse. His head crashed against the stone, splitting open, and as he closed his eyes, his breath had already stopped.

Nick glanced down at Jed. ‘You OK?’ he muttered.

Jed started to lever himself from the ground. The pain in his shoulder was murderous, like having a knife continuously twisted into his raw flesh. ‘I’ve been better,’ he said.

‘We’ve all been bloody better, mate,’ he snapped. ‘Where’s Sarah?’

Jed looked towards the next set of stones. The last time he’d seen her, she had been twenty or so yards away, hiding out of sight. During the fight with Salek, he’d lost track of her. If she had any sense, she’d have kept her head down, and stayed well clear of the bullets.

‘Over there,’ he said, nodding towards the stone.

He stumbled as he got to his feet. Nick grabbed hold of his arm, helping him to steady himself. His head was spinning, and his legs were weak: it was hard to keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time. The Beretta fell from his grip, and used his hand to try and staunch the bleeding from his shoulder, but he was losing blood badly. He reckoned he’d lost at least a pint. Maybe two. That was enough to make a man lose consciousness. Another couple of pints and he’d be dead.

‘You sure you’re OK?’ said Nick.

‘I’m bloody fine,’ said Jed.

They started walking. Jed pointed towards the thick rock, twisted like a giant tree stump, where he had last seen the women in the black burka. It was twenty yards,
but both of them were so badly wounded, it was heavy going covering the distance. Nick was limping badly on his wounded leg, and there was fresh bleeding where he had taken the second bullet. They were inching forwards, propping each other up, but Jed could tell there wasn’t much fight left in them. Their number was about to be called. Let’s just hope we can find Sarah first.

‘Sarah,’ Nick shouted. ‘Sarah.’

No answer.

Only silence.

Jed pushed himself forwards, fighting to control the pain. Just another ten yards. He took a deep breath, trying to get as much oxygen into his lungs as possible. The wind was blowing down harder from the mountain now, whipping around his body. He was starting to shiver: with less blood in his veins, he had less to protect him from the cold. There were patches of ice and snow covering the rock, and Jed was taking each step carefully, grimly aware that one slip in his current condition could well prove fatal. Stay upright, and you’ll stay alive, he told himself, through gritted teeth.
For long enough anyway.

He approached the rock. It was at least fifteen feet tall, and a dozen wide: a huge, ugly slab of granite that twisted and curled in on itself. Nick let go of him, and started to walk to the left. Jed rested one arm on the rock, using it to help hold himself up, and walked slowly to the right.

The woman was standing stock-still behind it. She was dressed completely in black, with a burka covering her face. It was as if she’d been frozen in ice. Petrified,
thought Jed. She’s so scared, her muscles have seized up. ‘Sarah,’ he whispered quietly, his words carried on the gusts of wind blowing up behind him. ‘It’s OK, it’s us.’

Nothing.

She remained silent.

‘Sarah,’ said Nick from the other side.

Nothing.

Nick’s expression changed. ‘Sarah?’ he repeated. His voice was rougher this time.

The woman started to flinch.

Nick reached out, and lifted the burka away from her face.

She was about thirty, with dark, delicate skin, and round eyes that appeared smudged with tears. Her skin was dark and flawless, her hands smooth. She looked up at the two men, with tears in her eyes. Her lips were trembling, and her hands were shaking with fear.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Nick snarled.

She shook her head, baffled, with the look of a woman who hadn’t even understood the question.

‘Who are you?’

His voice was louder, more aggressive this time. He reached out for her shoulder, shaking her. She drew away, leaning against the stone, and started to say something in Arabic. The words tumbled out of her, accompanied by tears streaming down her face. ‘Leave it,’ snapped Jed. ‘It’s not bloody her, is it?’

‘Then where the hell is she?’

Nick looked straight into the woman’s eyes. ‘Where is she?’ he shouted. ‘Where’s my daughter?’

Jed could feel his head spinning. He was clutching the side of the rock to stop himself from tipping over, and his left hand was trying to keep a grip on his shoulder to stop it from bleeding too much. No matter how much he tried, he could neither focus nor concentrate. He could hear Nick shouting at the woman, but the sound was fading in and out. Only one thought kept repeating in his mind, like a tape stuck in a loop: Sarah’s not here, Sarah’s not here.

We’ve come all this way, risked everything, and we still haven’t found her.

Behind him, Laura was running up the mountain-side, approaching the circle of rocks. She arrived panting, her face covered in sweat and dust. ‘It looks like a butcher’s shop down there,’ she said. ‘What the hell’s happening?’

‘There’s no sign of Sarah,’ said Nick, pointing towards the terrified Iraqi woman.

Jed noticed the hint of despair that had crept into his voice.

‘This is the woman Salek was protecting,’ he said pointing towards the woman. ‘And now the bastard is
dead, so we can’t even ask him where she is.’ He ground his fists together. ‘We’ve bloody blown it.’

Laura stepped up to the woman, gripping hold of her shoulders, and shaking her violently. ‘You speak English?’ she snapped.

The woman cried, and mumbled something in Arabic.

‘The Englishwoman,’ said Laura. ‘Where is the Englishwoman?’

She shook her head, scrunching her hands into her tear-smudged eyes. ‘
Ibna
,’ she whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘
Ibna
.’

‘It’s his daughter,’ said Jed, recognising the word from his Arabic lessons with the Regiment.

‘This is bloody useless,’ said Laura. ‘We’re getting nowhere.’

‘It’s finished,’ said Nick. ‘We’ve bloody failed.’

‘She must be here somewhere,’ said Laura angrily. ‘She was with Salek. I
know
she was.’

Nick spread his hands out wide. ‘Do you bloody see her then … ?’

Jed slid down the rock. He needed to sit, to try and preserve his strength. His eyes closed, trying to rest for a brief second. If we are going to find Sarah now, we’ll need all the strength we possess, he thought.
Maybe more.

‘We can’t get any backup out here,’ said Laura. ‘You guys will have to beat the information out of the bitch.’

Nick waved a hand at her. ‘She doesn’t bloody know anything,’ he said. ‘And we’re soldiers, not sodding gangsters.’

He turned away, his face reddening with anger. Laura
was saying something, her voice hoarse and raw, but although Jed was listening to her, he was watching Nick. He was just looking at the mountain ahead of them, not as a soldier might, studying it for hiding places and defensive positions, but looking instead at the shape of it, the way a geographer might. There was a strangely detached expression on his face, as if he was trying to figure out the answer to a riddle.

But what is it? Jed asked himself.
What the hell has he seen?

He cast his eyes up towards the mountains. From where they were sitting, the next peak seemed to soar above them, rising another hundred feet or so into the air. There were some low-lying clouds, and the ground was covered with snow. There was a dip on the left-hand side of the mountain, where the rock seemed to fade into the cloud to create a shape like a crescent. But beyond that, Jed could see nothing. Just a barren empty stretch of rock, capped by a dusting of pure white snow.

‘She’s up there,’ said Nick suddenly, pointing towards the dip in the mountain. ‘Right there.’

‘Where?’ said Jed.

‘Right there,’ said Nick, pointing towards the crescent.

‘What makes you think that?’ said Laura.

Nick paused. His expression was calm and determined. ‘She’s my daughter, I just know,’ he replied.

Jed started to pull himself up from the ground. He could feel the strain in his legs, and his spine was creaking as he tried to move. ‘I’m coming with you,’ he said.

Nick looked at him. ‘You can’t move,’ he said. ‘You’ve taken a bad wound, mate. Rest it, and there’s a chance the doctors will get that lead out of your shoulder and patch you up.’

‘I’m coming,’ Jed snapped.

If Sarah was up there, he was determined to find her.
I can’t lose her now …

Nick knelt down, gritting his teeth to control the pain in his own wounded leg. ‘Leave it,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll go.’

‘You’re in no better state than me,’ said Jed.

‘Listen, there are moments when even the best of men walk away from a fight, and moments when they walk straight into one,’ said Nick. ‘When you get to my age, you realise that. If you get to my age …’

He turned round, struggling to power himself forward. His wounded leg was hurting badly, and each step was visibly agonising.

Jed tried to stand, determined to follow him. But his head was too dizzy, his eyes were closing, and it was impossible to focus. As his eyes shut, he could see Laura taking out a satellite phone and starting to press its buttons.

Nick looked up towards the dip into the mountain. It was only another hundred yards or so. He could clearly see an opening that must lead into another network of caves. Up here, there was at least a foot of snow covering the ground: hard, thick snow that had settled on these mountains last autumn and was turning into blocks of solid ice now that spring was almost here.

As he glanced back, he could see flecks of crimson spreading out across the pristine white surface of the ground. My own blood, he thought grimly. I must have lost at least a pint of it climbing up here.
And I’ll shed the other seven if I need to.

Laura was about twenty yards behind him. Even without any wounds, she was still finding the going harder than he was. In the Regiment, Nick had led several courses in snow and mountain fighting, and he’d done a year in the Alps as a ski instructor before the business fell apart. He knew more than most men about how you ploughed your way across heavy snow: Laura was just an amateur.
If she thinks you can just walk up this mountain, she has a lot to learn.

Nick turned round and gritted his teeth. The pain ripping through him was excruciating. Every step required a new effort of will: each one sent a fresh bolt of pain jabbing up through him, as if he was walking across burning-hot coals. He could feel his leg turning rotten as he pressed on. He’d found a broken branch from one of the few trees that managed to grow this high up, and had turned that into a rough staff, using it to take some of the weight off his leg as he dragged himself painfully forwards. But you didn’t need to know much about medicine to know that putting this kind of pressure on a leg that had taken as much punishment as this one had was precisely the wrong thing to be doing. Jed was right. He was only making it worse. The chances of saving the leg now were less than zero.