Dark Horizon, page 19
‘No,’ he told her, the single word warning her that her clumsy attempt to fight back would not be tolerated. ‘No.’
Hamid deliberately applied hard pressure on Breeze’s bandages and a new wave of searing fire washed over her. It hurt so bad that she couldn’t even scream, her mouth locking open to emit a strangled rasp, tears streaming from her eyes. She lost her grip on the scissors and they tumbled away from her nerveless fingers.
One instant of that would have been enough to make his point, but the man kept on going, past the point of punishment and into brutal, deliberate torture. He glared at her and Breeze was lost in the dark fire of his gaze, left with no other choice but to hang on until, at last, he relented.
As she gulped for air, he rocked back and wiped his hand on his prison jumpsuit. ‘That is only a taste of what you feed to my kind in your black sites.’ He looked like he was about to spit in her face.
Breeze had to work to find her voice again. ‘Eat shit, Hamid.’ She shook her head, dizzy with it. ‘Hamid. Not Yusuf. You were never Yusuf, yeah? He died in that house in Amsterdam. I should have fuckin’ known. But I was right about one thing.’ She stared at him. ‘Knew you were lying to me from the start.’
‘What did that gain you?’ Hamid cocked his head. ‘No victory. Only a grave loss.’ He considered that for a moment. ‘You should have had them execute me. Your people will never get such an opportunity again.’
Behind him, Finn was back on his feet, and he let out a low moan as he used the heels of both hands to reset his broken nose. He sat heavily on the edge of an empty seat and fixed Breeze with a baleful glare, sniffing back blood-pinked snot and spittle.
‘Bitch,’ he managed.
‘Wanker,’ she retorted, deliberately choosing the British insult.
The aircraft trembled again, and Breeze caught up to the notion that their flight had suddenly become a lot less smooth. As if she were reading her mind, Kate called out from the flight deck, her voice carrying down the aisle to them.
‘Good news, we’re still alive.’
‘Bravo.’ Breeze bowed her head forward, sagging in her seat.
‘Hold your applause,’ continued the pilot. ‘They missed us, but barely. We’ve taken damage from the detonation.’ She let the statement hang.
‘Can you maintain altitude?’ Hamid took a few steps toward the front of the cabin.
‘For now,’ Kate called back. ‘I’m keeping us down on the deck. And, for what it’s worth, we’ve crossed into Algerian territory. We’ll be over the coastline of North Africa in about five minutes.’
‘They won’t come after us now,’ insisted Finn.
‘They should not have come after us at all,’ said Hamid. ‘The pilot turned off the transponders. How did they track this aircraft?’
‘I don’t know.’ Finn eyed Breeze coldly. ‘I destroyed her sat phone.’
She tried to keep a poker face but the pain wasn’t going to let that happen. Finn saw something in her eyes and stormed back towards her, his hands tightening into fists.
The secondary tracker, her back-up, wasn’t much bigger than a small coin, and Breeze had been able to secrete the little thing in a pocket when Finn had first searched her. Now she grabbed it and cupped it in her hand, intending to swallow the plastic-coated disc as an additional ‘fuck you’ to the hijacker, but fatigue made her slow and Finn was on her before she could do it.
He pried open her fingers and took the tracker, then smashed the device into fragments with the butt of his pistol.
‘Well, shit on this,’ muttered Breeze, and with a hollow sigh she finally passed out, slipping into unconsciousness.
The hatchet-faced Sikh with the submachine gun was a menacing presence around Miles, never letting him move more than a few steps around the hangar before leaning in to make it clear how little freedom he really had.
The MI6 operative cast around, eyeing up the other black-jacketed mercenaries orbiting at the edges of the building. The patchy rain, making itself known again, rattled harshly off the metallic roof overhead.
The noise made it hard for Miles to pick up what was being said over by the CIA’s mobile unit. He tried again to slip in that direction, but the merc saw him and shook his head.
‘Don’t muck about,’ warned the Sikh, one hand resting on his gun.
‘Who you with, bruv?’ Miles studied the other man. ‘Hawkeshead? Aleph? Rapid Line?’ He searched his memory for the names of the ask-no-questions private military contractors known to be favoured in certain quarters of the intelligence community. ‘They paying you good?’
‘Better than government wages,’ said the mercenary.
That reply spoke volumes, and Miles seized on it. ‘The way you said that – I reckon you served, didn’t you?’ Only someone who had been an underappreciated servant of the Crown could be that salty about being paid what they were worth. ‘Before this, what was it? Army?’
‘Piss off.’
‘Royal Marines then.’ Miles had guessed Marines right away, but he deliberately threw in the Army suggestion to get a reaction to confirm his theory. ‘You like fetching and carrying for the Yanks?’
‘A client is a client.’
Miles gave a nod. ‘I get it. No code, just cash, innit? Dollars tucked in your G-string.’
The mercenary’s eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t know when to keep quiet, do you?’
‘It’s been said.’ Miles pressed his point. ‘You think you’re actually gonna get paid when it turns out matey boy over there shot down a plane with a civvie and two British agents on board?’ He jutted his chin in Knox’s direction. ‘You really want to let me call this in, man. Let me contact Vauxhall Cross. If not for this, then at least to warn those poor coppers you sent off.’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘Because you and your pals aren’t the only dogs out and about tonight, are you? Someone else has people roaming around, up to no good, and those plods are walking right into it.’ Miles held up three fingers, one for John Price, his wife and his child. ‘Three murders tonight so far. You wouldn’t want someone thinking that was your crew’s work.’
‘Shut your gob.’ The mercenary retorted, his expression becoming a frown. He reached for the radio mike handset clipped to his lapel, and Miles knew he had planted a seed of doubt, enough to split the man’s attention. ‘You stand there, you don’t move.’
The mercenary walked away to get some privacy and spoke quietly into his radio, something about ordering a check-in. When his back was turned, Miles used the opportunity to draw closer to the CIA vehicle. Careful to stay out of sight, he focused his attention to catch wind of the conversation going on inside through the half-open tailgate.
‘That’s confirmed,’ the technician was saying. ‘Secondary tracer has gone dark.’
‘So that’s it?’ Knox demanded. ‘The jet’s down?’
Miles stiffened at the question. If the Hawker had been destroyed, that meant Finn and Ray were definitely fish food – and he would be the only operative from Six on this job still breathing. If the CIA decided to roll up the loose ends connected to tonight’s misfortune, there was nothing stopping Knox from making Miles disappear as well.
But then the tech’s reply gave him a ray of hope. ‘That’s a negative. Yard Dog could not confirm a kill on the target. They had to turn back the drone before it crossed the line of demarcation.’
‘Damn it!’ Knox spat out the curse and Miles heard a dull thud as the American punched something in frustration. ‘You know how many favours I had to call in for that hit, and it still didn’t work?’
‘What now?’ Breeze’s guy sounded beaten down by the whole sorry enterprise. ‘I mean, we lost the tracer and they’re not on radar.’
‘We reconfigure,’ said Knox. ‘I need a best guess to where they’re headed.’ The vehicle lurched as the American shifted inside it, moving to the half-open door. His momentary burst of anger was gone and he was stone-cold again. ‘Contact signature interpretation in Langley, give ’em the jet’s last-known position, speed and heading. They may know something.’
Knox climbed out of the vehicle and came face-to-face with Miles, catching on quickly that the MI6 agent had likely heard every word he’d just said.
‘That pilot up there has the luck of the devil,’ he said, after a moment.
Miles met the man’s gaze and shook his head. ‘Trust me, bruv. No one is feeling lucky tonight.’
The hunters were good at this game.
At first, Alex chose to take the direct route, the faster path as the crow flies, across the common behind the houses and through the woodlands. Keeping his son close to him, he guided George into the overgrowth, across a fallen tree and down along the lines of muddy ditches. They stayed in the deepest parts of the darkness, going as quickly as they dared.
Alex started to hope that maybe they were going to succeed, even as the mercurial rain came back and chilled the air. The path they were on led them right to the edge of a B-road pointing toward a local village, and once there he planned for the pair of them to seek sanctuary in the pub and call the police.
George saw the hunters before his father did. The boy froze and grabbed his dad’s hand, squeezing it tightly. Alex skidded to a halt a few metres from the edge of the tree line and dropped into a crouch. ‘What’s up?’
George didn’t speak, he just pointed.
Alex blinked. His eyes had become dark-adapted as they moved through the woods, but now, short of the well-lit road, he’d momentarily lost some depth perception. Looking carefully, what he’d thought were shadows cast by a huge, overhanging oak tree were actually the shape of a parked car, its engine off, its lights out.
He recognised the vehicle. A black BMW, the same one that had been parked out across the street from the house when the man called Matvey had come knocking on the door with his story.
Alex felt foolish. He’d been so caught up with the adrenaline rush of escaping, convincing himself he’d done the right thing, he hadn’t stopped to consider how cunning these men might actually be.
As he watched, a tiny red ember of light – the tip of a lit cigarette – moved around inside the car like a trapped firefly. Then he heard footsteps, the scrape of boots, emerging out of the background mutter of the rain. The sound was close, on their side of the road.
He felt George push in on his side and Alex tried to make himself smaller – to make the two of them nothing more than a blob of indistinct, unremarkable shadow. Through the wet grass, he saw the man called Luka walking slowly up the roadside, his head turning left and right as he scanned the woods for movement.
There was a moment when Luka stopped and looked right at them, and Alex swore that the thug could see them clear as day, but then the man moved on, continuing his patrol.
They knew, Alex thought. We fled, but they knew where we were going to go.
It was obvious now that he thought about it. If he had been able to figure out the path of least resistance, the hunters coming after him could figure it out too and get there first.
Alex glanced back over his shoulder in the direction they had come. He could make out the gardens of the houses on the far side of the mile or so of woods and common, and he wondered if they could turn around and slip away. Double back to the house and phone for help? Would they have left someone there, lying in wait?
There were three of them, at least. Alex pictured their faces. The one who seemed like he was in charge, Matvey. Luka, the one up there on the road, with a feral, rat-like face. And the third who hadn’t spoken, the one Matvey sent back to the car. Could there have been a fourth in the BMW? Or maybe another car entirely?
Alex sucked in a breath and forced his train of thought to slow before it ran away from him. They had no way of knowing exactly what they were up against. All Alex Walker could be sure of was that these people were willing to employ violence and coercion to get whatever they wanted.
His gaze drifted up to the islands of dark cloud and the night sky that cut around them. He thought about Kate and his chest tightened.
He knew she had secrets in her past that had left deep scars on her. He’d never once pushed her to reveal them. Alex had told Kate that he would listen to anything she had to tell him, that he would give her all the time she needed to find her way. But now he was afraid, not just for his son and himself, but for Kate and whatever this mess was about. Matvey and his thugs wanted to hurt them to make Kate do what they told her, and as long as Alex and George were in jeopardy, she was trapped as much as they were.
He closed his eyes, wishing he could gather them both into an embrace and carry them away, far from the danger.
‘What are we going to do?’ George whispered the question into his dad’s ear.
Alex didn’t have an answer. On a shout, with a raging fire right in front of him, he would know exactly what to do. But here and now, he had no solid plan of action.
‘We need help.’ He cast around, suddenly disoriented, grasping for a solution. ‘Down by the main road, the junction. If we go that way, we might be able to flag someone down.’ Alex started moving, but George dragged on his arm.
‘Dad, no.’ The boy pulled him in the other direction. ‘It’s this way.’
‘What?’
George pointed up at the sky. ‘You were going east and we need go west. That’s where the junction is.’
Alex looked up again and saw the bright glow of the North Star his son had pointed out only hours ago. ‘Right. Polaris.’ In his rush to act, he’d almost sent them the wrong way. He gave a rueful smile and a trace of hope returned to him. We might still get through this yet, he thought.
NINETEEN
The Hawker spoke back to Kate through the controls, the warning lights and the quivers through the flight yoke, and what it said was ‘I am wounded’.
She was still trying to get her head around the notion that the Hellfire that had come snapping after their tail hadn’t blown the jet into scrap metal. There was nothing like being shot at to concentrate a pilot’s mind wonderfully but it wouldn’t gain her anything to question whatever thin streak of luck was keeping the bird airborne.
As the dark ocean beneath the wings gave way to the rocky Algerian coastline, Kate went around the board double-checking the jet’s systems. Electrical power and batteries appeared nominal, as did the ailerons and the control surfaces. The Hawker’s two engines remained in the green but her fuel was markedly lower than expected – likely an accelerated burn due to the unexpectedly violent manoeuvres the pilot had employed to shake off the missile attack.
What worried her were the intermittent warning lights from the Hawker’s hydraulics. The jet’s sluggish response on her gentle pedal turns was troubling. If the conduits carrying vital fluid to the flaps, the air brakes and undercarriage had been holed by fragments from the Hellfire’s detonation, it would put them in serious jeopardy when it came time to land.
If the fluid leaked away, if the flaps seized up or she couldn’t get the landing gear down and locked, Kate would be looking at something every pilot dreaded. A controlled crash. And unlike the Tornado from her combat flying days, Kate didn’t have the option of banging out of the cockpit in an ejector seat.
She heard movement behind her and half-turned to see the man in the prison fatigues walk back on to the flight deck. Yusuf, she thought. But no, that wasn’t his name, was it? His name is Hamid.
Was he really one of the men responsible for multiple atrocities throughout Europe and Asia? Was it him who had given the word to bomb the military base at Akrotiri?
He handed back her headphones, sat down in the co-pilot’s chair, then slipped on the other headset hanging off the arm so that they could speak privately over the cockpit intercom. ‘Where are we now?’
Kate gestured at one of the video screens on the control panel. ‘We’re close.’
Hamid leaned forward and scrutinised the display, tapping at the digital terrain shown until it zoomed out to present a narrow slice of the coastline. There was an indicator on the map, programmed in from the coordinates Kate had been sent by the men holding Alex and George hostage. ‘This is our destination?’
She nodded. ‘You recognise it?’ Kate had little or no idea what would be waiting for them on the edge of the wilderness.
‘I know of it,’ Hamid allowed. ‘It was once an outpost belonging to the Algerian Air Force. It fell into disuse and we claimed it.’ He paused. ‘It is remote. Finn told you to land there?’
‘No, the men threatening to kill my loved ones did that.’ She made no attempt to hide the bitterness in her tone.
‘The runway is short,’ he continued, ignoring her comment. ‘You will need to take care.’ Then Hamid smiled thinly, the change in his expression fleeting. ‘I have confidence you will manage it. Your skill in avoiding the drone was impressive.’
She shot him a look. ‘If you want to thank me, tell your friends to let Alex and George go.’
‘Alex and George.’ He rolled their names around. ‘A husband and a son?’ Hamid glanced at her hand. ‘Or not. You wear no wedding ring.’ He sniffed disdainfully. ‘You live with a man and a boy but you are unmarried. It is unseemly.’
‘I don’t give a toss what you think about who I’m shacked up with,’ she retorted. ‘I want them to be left alone!’
Hamid looked away. ‘I have no control over that.’
‘Bullshit!’
He glared at her. ‘If you were my wife, you would lose your tongue for such foul language.’
‘You’re squeamish about a woman swearing at you but you’re happy to let innocent people be hurt or killed? Your moral compass is fucked up.’
Hamid gestured angrily. ‘All this, everything that has happened since we took off? I am afraid I am just along for the ride, like you!’
Kate had the immediate sense that he had let something slip in his annoyance, and she concentrated on that, struggling to put aside her fears for the safety of Alex and his son. ‘You know what? I believe you. You’re as much in the dark as I am. You didn’t even know where we were going until a moment ago.’
