Ultimatum, page 33
Silence, just the whisper of the pre-dawn breeze. Then he heard it again. The revving of an engine and a vehicle travelling at speed, growing fainter. He hoped to God Tannaz hadn’t done anything foolish, like trying to follow him. No, with that ankle she was immobile.
He waited another minute and, hearing nothing, began to retrace his steps back to the palm grove and Tannaz. Stepping into the clearing where he’d left the pick-up, he froze. The Nissan had gone, and Tannaz with it.
Chapter 93
Under Iranian waters, off Qeshm Island
THE COLD. IT crept up on you, seeped into your bones, made you shiver inside your drysuit. Even after all the training – whether in Poole, Cornwall or Norway – the cold took Chris Barkwell by surprise. This Swimmer Delivery Vehicle, the black, underwater minisub, might look like it had come straight out of a James Bond movie but the reality was a lot less glamorous. His assault team – ‘the swimmers’ – were mostly big men and the compartments, comprising four pairs of seats, one behind another, sealed in with a sliding overhead hatch, were tiny. Barkwell felt numb and cramped and he knew it would be just as bad for the others – there was barely enough room for them, let alone their kit. And to make matters worse, there was the perpetual fear of detection. Crawling along at eight knots, just above the seabed, they would be a sitting target if Iranian coastal defences picked them up. At least there were no air bubbles to give them away – the boffins had thought of that. Each man was using a ‘rebreather’ device, his expelled air contained and recycled. It did not taste good.
Barkwell checked his watch for the third time. Fifty-four minutes since they had emerged from Astute: they must be getting close now. He spoke through his mask microphone to the pilot sitting up front on the right. ‘How long?’
‘Ten.’ The answer crackled back, picked up by the whole team on their underwater headsets. Poised and ready, Barkwell ran through his action plan for the hundredth time. Did he have all the assets he would have wanted for this mission? Absolutely not. Could it still be done? He knew not to ask himself that because they were way past the point of no return now.
At 0535 hours it was still dark as the pilot brought them up to periscope depth and steadied the minisub against the current. There was a console between Barkwell’s knees and he used it now, extending the minisub’s periscope and making a 360-degree scan through its infrared optics. Behind them, there was nothing but ocean. Ahead, however, a sheer escarpment towered over a rocky beach and a line of low foliage. He held his breath. He could see no thermal signals bouncing back, no sign of life. He breathed out. Thank God. It looked like the intel prep was spot-on: the beachhead was deserted.
Barkwell gave the order and the pilot put the minisub down on the seabed just ahead of the shoreline, settling onto the sand and shale. Each of the hatches slid open and the team emerged as one, feeling their way with gloved hands in the dark, negotiating their way out of the submersible, the bulky rebreathers on their backs, weapons sacks in their hands. Barkwell checked each man was ready, then gave the signal to move off, kicking out with their fins just below the surface, dragging their bulky flotation sacks behind them.
Barkwell was first onto dry land. Like some primordial creature emerging from a swamp, he hauled himself ashore and immediately flipped down his night-vision goggles to check the beach was clear. Dawn was approaching. Within a minute the whole team was ashore and drysuits were being peeled off, cached beneath rocks or buried alongside their heavy rebreathing apparatus, fins and masks. Sitting back on his heels, Barkwell checked his GPS. He heard his signaller squat next to him and proceed to set up the team’s encrypted communications with Bahrain. They were in dead ground, hidden from detection by the sheer sandstone escarpment, but with dawn approaching they needed to move fast.
‘Any word on that agent, callsign Victor?’ Barkwell asked him. The intelligence agencies had promised to have someone in place to guide them in. So where the fuck was he?
The signaller shook his head, still listening through his earpiece, then clamped a hand over his ear.
‘Boss! We’ve got trouble. There’s an Iranian drone airborne. It’s nine K out and it could be heading this way.’
Traversing the dawn sky high above Qeshm Island, the Iranian Navy drone’s all-seeing infrared eye scanned the terrain below. Down on the beach, Tash, Barkwell’s radio operator, looked at him with concern. ‘Bahrain say it’s a Shahed. It’s wings clean.’
Barkwell knew what that meant. US Navy 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain had confirmed it as a Shahed-129, one of their pilotless aircraft reverse-engineered by skilled Iranian technicians from a US drone downed on the Afghan border. ‘Wings clean’ meant it was unarmed, which was of little comfort to Barkwell if it meant their mission was about to be compromised.
‘What’s its status?’ he demanded.
Tash spoke briefly into the mic then gave him the thumbs-up. ‘Bahrain says she’s moved on,’ he relayed. ‘We’re clear to proceed.’
Another glance at his GPS, then Barkwell signalled to the team. A last-minute check of their weapons and kit, and the patrol moved off, their boots making little sound on the damp ground. They followed a route prepared by geospatial cartographers back at Task Group HQ at Poole, enabling them to take maximum advantage of dead ground so they wouldn’t be seen.
‘One K to the caves,’ Barkwell told them. He was worried now. Only three hours left before the ultimatum expired: it would soon be daylight, and with it, they’d lose the key element of surprise. With Chaplin’s life hanging in the balance, he knew that every minute counted.
They’d barely gone two hundred metres before Tash tapped Barkwell on the arm and passed him the headset. ‘Boss. They need to talk to you. Bahrain are patching through callsign Victor.’
It was the SIS man, the ‘agent’ they’d been promised to guide them in. Good. About bloody time. He’s probably spent the night in a comfortable bed while we’ve just flogged halfway across the Gulf. Barkwell kept moving, holding the headset close to his ear with his left hand and cradling his rifle with his right.
‘Go ahead,’ he told him.
‘I’m in position. Four hundred metres south of the objective,’ the SIS agent replied. ‘You’ve got two Bravos guarding the entrance. Light weapons. Two vehicles.’
‘Roger that,’ Barkwell replied, his voice low. Two enemy sentries should not be a problem. ‘Can you take them out?’ he asked.
‘Negative,’ the agent replied. ‘They’re armed. Looks like Tondar MP5s. I’m armed with fuck-all. What’s your ETA?’
Barkwell paused to check his GPS. ‘Six minutes. I was told you’re working on a distraction plan. You’ve got one local friendly with you?’
‘Did have. Codename Elixir. She’s been taken.’
Chapter 94
Qeshm Island
LUKE LAY BACK against a boulder and silently cursed himself. That one bastard phone call. That was all it had taken. Whatever Tannaz had said to her father in those few seconds had been enough for them to find her. The palm grove was the only obvious cover for miles around. Karim Zamani must have dispatched his goons to come after her in that jeep. Her father was a cruel and vindictive man – it had said as much in his file. He shuddered to think what would happen to her now. Zamani was running a ruthless kidnap operation here in these caves and Luke had to face up to the fact that his distraction plan had failed. So much for using Tannaz to separate Zamani from his team. All he had achieved was to make the mission more complicated.
Luke was beyond angry with himself. He felt sick with guilt. The teams back at Vauxhall Cross and Cheltenham – Angela, the targeting officers, the analysts, the codebreakers – had invested so much in this moment. And then there had been the time away from Elise, the false identity, the lies and the subterfuge. Never mind the disastrous trip to Armenia and the chase through the frozen gorge, the risks he had taken in Iran, the checkpoints, the near escapes, the betrayal, going on the run through the swamp. And there were those who’d risked so much for him – like gentle, dope-smoking Farz and, of course, Tannaz. And all for what?
But he needed to snap out of it. Self-pity wasn’t going to help Chaplin or Tannaz. He checked his watch: 06.05. No sign of the incoming SBS team yet and it was getting dangerously light. Peering out from behind the boulder, he could just make out the entrance to the caves on the other side of the valley. Nearby a truck and a jeep – the one that had snatched Tannaz? – were parked. There was no sign of her. In fact, there was no sign of anyone other than the two guards patrolling the area. The minutes passed agonizingly slowly. Then, from across the valley, he heard an engine cough into life. He could see movement at the caves. The jeep was on the move. And it seemed to be heading straight for him.
Chapter 95
SBS Headquarters, Poole
ANGELA SCOTT WAS worried. Nail-bitingly worried. Just before midnight she had been summoned, along with the others, to the ops room at the Special Boat Service base down at Poole. It was now 02.45, the rescue mission was about to go live, and officers from MI6, the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office, GCHQ and Joint Intelligence had been squeezed into a small room in a well-guarded camp in Dorset. One of the wall-mounted monitors linked to the SBS Commander, Chip Nuttall, at his forward-mounted headquarters in Bahrain. Another showed the control room onboard HMS Astute, while a third live-streamed a satellite feed from the RAF Sentinel spy plane patrolling the skies just south of Qeshm Island. On the largest screen, eight green dots moved jerkily across a murky landscape, each dot a member of the SBS team as they moved inland.
Sir Adam Keeling had been patched through and was listening in. The PM had gone to bed, asking to be informed the minute there was any news.
Inside the tense ops room Angela stared at the spot on the monitor that showed Luke’s last-known position – just over four hundred metres from the entrance to those bloody caves. By now he was supposed to have joined forces with the incoming SBS assault team to enter the caves together. So where was he? His last transmission had said Elixir had been taken. By whom? And why the hell hadn’t he got them both out of harm’s way in time? But for Angela, the worst thing was that no one else in the room seemed to give a damn. The assault team were on the ground and steaming in to execute the rescue of the Foreign Secretary. That was all anybody cared about. She had shared her concerns with Trish Fryer, to no avail.
‘I’m sure he’ll be fine,’ Trish had replied breezily, without even taking her eyes off the screen. ‘Probably just run out of battery. I wouldn’t worry about him, Angela. That boy knows how to take care of himself. Ah,’ she said, pointing at the screen. ‘Looks like they’re nearly at the cave.’
Chapter 96
Namakdan Salt Caves, Qeshm Island
LUKE CARLTON WAS in considerable pain. His arms had been yanked behind his back and his thumbs tied together with white plasticuffs. His left eye was swelling where they’d hit him and there was a dull ache in his midriff where he’d taken another blow to the stomach from a rifle butt. Worst of all, there was the vomit-inducing nausea caused by having been kicked right in the balls. The bastards had waited until his arms were immobilized behind his back before delivering the coup de grâce.
Special Forces operatives were trained to go to extreme lengths to avoid capture. And that training had kicked in the moment Luke had spotted the jeep heading in his direction. He’d taken evasive action but there had been nowhere to hide. The palm grove was the first place they’d come looking for him so he had chosen a different course. Moving fast and low across the sandy, rock-strewn terrain, he had stayed close to a protective ridge. He’d thought he might have made it. His mistake was to raise his head to take a look, only to find himself staring down the barrel of a sub-machine-gun, so close the man with his finger on the trigger wouldn’t have failed to miss. Luke had run out of options.
After that things had happened with terrifying speed. He had heard a noise behind him, then taken a crippling blow right between the shoulder blades as something hard – probably a rifle butt – knocked him down. Dazed, he’d tried to rise, but he’d felt a knee pushing into his spine as his arms were pulled up behind him and his thumbs secured. Hauling him to his feet, Zamani’s thugs had enjoyed softening him up, then dragged him to the waiting jeep. A short, jolting ride at breakneck speed, still with a machine-gun pointed at his head. Arriving at the caves, hands had grabbed Luke and pulled him from the vehicle. A gun barrel prodded him in the back, and he stumbled towards the dark, gaping maw of the entrance. After the beating, his body ached with every step, but he tried to think clearly. Why hadn’t they blindfolded him? That was odd. Because they’re not planning on me coming out of here alive. That must be the only possible explanation.
Pushing, pulling, prodding and jabbing him with the muzzles of their weapons, the two guards propelled Luke down an ever-narrowing tunnel. The only light came from the torch held by the man in front. He felt the drop in temperature and a dampness that clung to his skin. There was a cloying, unhealthy smell in his nostrils. Jesus, what was this place? The moving torch beam gave glimpses of dripping stalactites of white rock. Salt? Calcium? He looked around as they propelled him deeper into the cave system, looking for escape routes and hiding places even though his situation appeared hopeless. It’s never hopeless, remember that. You haven’t come this far just to die in a cave. Keep working on a plan.
He could hear voices ahead now, getting closer, and there was a dim yellow light, the sort given off by hurricane lamps. He shivered as the temperature dropped. They turned a corner, his feet slipping on the slimy surface, and Luke found himself in an underground chamber. His eyes searched for a sharp edge that he could use to cut the plasticuffs that bound his hands behind his back. Keep thinking, keep planning. Suddenly there seemed to be a lot of people around him, all armed, all bearded or stubbled, some in military uniform, some in scruffy civilian clothes. As he was pushed through the throng, someone ruffled his hair and said something in Farsi and they all laughed. Then a space cleared in front of him and his eyes settled on an old cage, its bars rusted brown with age, and inside – hunched on a filthy mattress – a dishevelled, grey-haired figure nursing a bandaged hand. Jesus! Beneath the dirt and grime he recognized his country’s Foreign Secretary. It was Geoffrey Chaplin.
Luke tried to pull away from his captors. He wanted to rush over to Chaplin and tell him he’d be okay, that the hostage-rescue team was inbound right now, that all he needed to do was keep his head down when the shooting started. But he felt an iron grip on his shoulder as he was forcibly turned around. The cavern fell silent but for the hiss of the hurricane lamps. An unshaven, bespectacled man was looking up at him. Luke knew exactly who this was. He was looking into the face of Karim Zamani, his nemesis. And he had a terrible feeling that Zamani knew exactly who he was.
Chapter 97
Qeshm Island
SPREAD OUT EVENLY, at ten metres apart, moving softly and silently on their rubber-soled boots, the eight members of callsign Quebec moved quickly up the gully. They were travelling light by their standards. No mortar team to give them fire support, no heavy breaching equipment, only the most basic survival rations and enough ammunition for a single sustained firefight. Their orders were explicit. Go in covert, go in fast, locate the hostage, eliminate the threat and extract to the shoreline as fast as possible. Avoid getting into a firefight with regular Iranian or IRGC forces at all costs. The hostage-takers – and the hostage-takers alone – were the only ‘hostiles’ who should be engaged. As soon as news got out that Britain had mounted its own rescue mission on Iranian soil things could spin rapidly out of control.
Such a geopolitical fallout was not Captain Chris Barkwell’s concern. His more immediate worry was that there was no sign of the agent supposed to guide them into the caves. Callsign Victor had fallen silent.
‘Fucking spooks,’ he said to Tash. ‘Try to raise him again.’ Hidden from sight of the caves, the team had reached the rendezvous point now and the MI6 man was nowhere to be seen.
‘Nothing?’ he asked Tash.
‘Not a thing, boss.’
Too bad, no time to waste, they needed to crack on. Barkwell made a snap decision. ‘Smudge.’ He spoke into his head mic and waved over the sniper with the CheyTac Intervention rifle. He pointed to a slight rise above them. ‘Get yourself into position up there and be ready to take out the two sentries.’ Then he turned to his signaller. ‘Tash. Time to jack up the ECM. On my command.’ The world of electronic counter-measures had always been a mystery to Barkwell but never, for one moment, did he underestimate its importance. Jamming the enemy’s comms at exactly the right moment had the effect of electronically blinding the opposition. He knew it could mean the difference between success and failure.
The CheyTac M200 was a very different weapon from those carried by the rest of the team. With its telescopic sight, its bipod at the front and extendable stock at the rear, it was significantly larger and more powerful than their lightweight C8 assault rifles. Back in Oman, Corporal ‘Smudge’ Thompson, callsign Quebec’s sniper, had carefully wrapped the rifle in camouflage netting, disguising its distinctive form and metallic sheen. Not a single centimetre of its surface would reflect the light and give away their position. It took him a little under two minutes to get himself into the right firing position. Clear line of sight to the target, no silhouetting to reveal himself to the enemy, plenty of cover on either side.
When he was ready, he turned and nodded at Barkwell. On the officer’s reply, Smudge chambered the first round into the breech and tucked the weapon tight into his right shoulder. The M200 was a high-tech, high-velocity, long-range precision gun but it was operated with an old-fashioned bolt action and a magazine that held just seven rounds. But they were big rounds. At .375 in calibre, the projectiles could take off a man’s arm at two kilometres out. At just 420 metres range, Smudge was confident he was not going to miss. He squinted through the scope, controlling his breathing, and when the moment came, he didn’t hesitate. The first round hit Zamani’s sentry square in the centre of his chest, blasting a fist-sized hole through his back and slamming him against the side of the truck. He died instantly. The other man had no time to react. Smudge’s hand was a blur of speed and controlled motion as he worked the bolt to load the second round and squeeze it off. The rest of the assault team heard the muffled cough as the muzzle suppressor did its work, and for a second time the buttstock recoiled into Smudge’s shoulder. With a supersonic muzzle velocity of 884 metres a second, the bullet hit the second sentry just above his right eye, removing the rear part of his skull on the way out.
