Zero 22, p.26
Zero 22, page 26
part #8 of Danny Black Series
‘What do you know about a fourth of July terror hit?’
Turgenev opened his eyes again. ‘America,’ he whispered. And he managed a grin. The same grin he’d given Danny in the Syrian desert. The same grin he’d worn in the picture they’d shown Danny of him holding the decapitated heads of two SAS men. Danny wished he could waste him right then, but he held back.
‘I’m going to give you some pain relief real soon,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got to tell me everything you know first. What’s happening on the fourth of July?’
Turgenev’s grin became even broader.
‘The fourth of July,’ Danny pressed. ‘What’s happening on the fourth of July?’
‘Not the fourth of July,’ Turgenev rasped.
‘What do you mean, not the fourth of July?’
‘They changed it.’
Danny looked up at the General. O’Brien had a sick expression on his face. ‘When?’ he said
‘Today,’ Turgenev said, and his grin became a sneer of complete contempt.
‘Where?’ Danny said. ‘Where’s it happening, Turgenev?’
Turgenev looked from Danny, to the General, back to Danny. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Just shoot me now.’
Danny nodded slowly. He stood up. ‘We’ve got everything we’re going to get out of him,’ he said, but the General didn’t even seem to be listening any more. He looked stricken. Panicked. Danny stared down at Turgenev who was still grinning madly at him. Then he bent down again and mustered all his strength. He needed it to roll Turgenev towards the burning Nissan. He had to grip the huge man’s clothes and use his feet as well as his hands to move him. Two rolls would do it, he reckoned. He grunted and Turgenev struggled, but the grenade wound had sapped his strength and he was now no match for Danny, who grimaced against the heat of the flaming car as he manoeuvred Turgenev closer to it. When Turgenev was just a metre from the car, Danny had to jump back because the heat was too intense.
Turgenev started screaming again, in Russian this time, so Danny had no idea what he was saying. He didn’t care. He watched with grim satisfaction as Turgenev’s clothes caught alight, followed by what remained of the hair on his head. Turgenev writhed and shouted. He tried to wriggle from the flames, but now he was the flames. His whole body was burning. The scarred skin on scalp shrivelled and smouldered. His face seemed to melt. The open wound on his leg, wet and fresh, was the last to burn. His screams faded and though there was still some movement in his body, he was as good as dead. Danny didn’t need to see any more.
He turned to the General, who was watching Turgenev in horror. He seemed to shake himself out of it. ‘I thought I had plenty of time before the hit,’ he said. ‘We need to get the deepfakes out there.’
‘You have to tell me where the footage is.’
‘I already did. Washington DC.’
‘That’s not enough. Not now. Exactly where is it?’
‘I’m not going to tell you.’
‘Why the hell not? You heard what he said.’
‘I have my reasons.’
‘They’d better be damn good, because people are going to die.’ And before the General could point out that they were standing in the middle of a bloodbath, he added: ‘Civilians are going to die.’
‘I can still get there in time. They’re seven hours back.’
‘Tell me where it is, we can get someone there right now.’
‘Not going to happen, soldier.’ The General’s face glowed in the light of the flaming vehicle. ‘I tell you, you tell your superiors, this goes all the way up to the highest level of government, and you’ll forgive me for being suspicious about the motivation of governments, right? Your prime minister is in no position to stand up to my president. This thing will get swept under the carpet. I’m not going to let that happen.’
Danny knew determination when he heard it. It crossed his mind that the General might need a taste of the medicine he’d just given the Wagner Group, but he instantly dismissed that thought. What he needed was the General’s trust. He wasn’t going to buy that with violence. ‘Get your clothes off,’ he said.
The General raised an eyebrow.
‘We need to put your clothes on one of these bodies,’ he said. ‘Your ID tags too. It won’t fool anybody for long, but if the Russians think they’ve nailed you, it might make them look in the wrong direction.’ He turned his back on the General and looked at the bodies strewn around the clearing. The guy with the butchered face was closest in build to the General. He was wearing khaki trousers and a black T-shirt, both torn and blood-spattered. There was a bad smell about the body where it had started to leak fluid from its various orifices. Danny removed the garments. The corpse was heavy, the process fiddly. When he turned, he saw that the General was down to his underwear again. They swapped clothes and Danny went about the even more cumbersome business of re-dressing the corpse. It took a couple of minutes, by which time the General had put on the dead man’s clothes. They were a tight fit, and a mess, but they would do. ‘Give me your tags,’ Danny said. The General unclipped the necklace with his military ID and handed it over. Danny put it round the corpse’s neck. Then he grabbed it under its arms, hauled it to its feet and manoeuvred it on to his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. He and the General turned to face the copse.
‘Jesus!’ the General whispered.
Danny froze.
Bethany was standing at the treeline, facing them. Her right arm was extended, pistol in hand. She was pointing the gun in their direction. The two men stood side by side, Danny with the corpse still over his shoulder, as she strode towards them.
‘What the—’ Danny started to say.
Bethany was ten metres from them when she started to fire. Five shots in quick succession. Danny was aware of the General looking down at his chest, as if expecting to see bullet wounds.
But there were none. Danny realised a moment later that she was not shooting at them. She was shooting beyond them, and he quickly turned in time to see one of the Wagner Group guys who had been put down in the original blast. He was a mess. His face was burned and blistered and one arm was hanging off. But the other was raised and he had a handgun aimed at Danny.
Not for long. Bethany released another round and it slammed straight into the hostile’s chest. He slumped heavily to the ground and there was an immediate, heavy silence.
The General was breathing heavily. Danny too. ‘Thank you,’ he muttered.
Bethany glanced calmly around the Roman ruins. The burning Nissan. The butchered bodies. The corpse on Danny’s shoulder. ‘And they say I’m sick,’ she said. ‘If you boys have quite finished playing, do you think we should get out of here?’
Danny ignored the sarcasm and surveyed the scene. He had the strange sensation of seeing it for the first time, as though a mist of rage and determination had fallen over him prior and was only now clearing. The Roman ruins were a death site. The state of the corpses was shocking. Turgenev was a smouldering husk. Bethany was right that they needed to move quickly. If the sounds of gunshots and grenade explosions didn’t attract people, the plume of black smoke snaking up from the Nissan certainly would. ‘You want to finish your job?’ he said.
Bethany displayed no qualms about delivering precautionary headshots to each of the remaining dead men. She made an uncompromising sight, silhouetted by the moonlight, arm straight, head slightly inclined. The retort of each gunshot clapped across the terrain. Each corpse juddered slightly. The stench of Turgenev’s burning body filled the air as she quickly went about her work. ‘Maybe it’s not such a bad thing she’s still with us,’ the General said.
‘Maybe,’ Danny said. He turned his back on the ruins. The Wagner Group were no longer his concern. He knew that word would get back to their paymasters of what had happened here. Maybe they would think twice before putting the Regiment in their sights again. He thought of the Zero 22 crew and felt a moment of grim satisfaction that he’d done right by them.
Bethany and the General followed him back to the copse. Back behind the treeline, where the Dragunov was lying on the ground, he dumped the body. It fell on to its back and stared at the treetops, mouth grotesquely open. Danny examined the face. The hair was burned away and the skin scorched down to tissue. Yet it somehow still retained a whisper of its previous features, and those features were not the General’s. He drew his Sig and aimed at the face. Fired two rounds directly into it. The retort of the shots clattered loudly around the copse and across the desert. The bullets did their work well. Even Danny, no stranger to such sights, was repelled by the sight of the gouged flesh, exposed skull and bleeding eyeballs. He didn’t linger on it.
The General was standing behind Bethany, grimy, sweating and blooded in the corpse’s original clothes. He looked at her, then at Danny, a questioning look on his face. Danny made no response. ‘Pick up all the gear,’ he said, indicating the sniper rifle and the ammo. ‘Get it back in the truck. We’ll take that to the pick-up point.’
Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed a couple of ammo crates and turned his back on the ruins. The glow of the burning Nissan cast his shadow long into the trees, which faded as he walked back to the lorry.
TWENTY
The children had never stayed in a hotel. Every aspect of it delighted them. The ice machines in the corridors. The foil-wrapped cookies on the coffee tray in their twin room. The bouncy single beds and en-suite shower room. The interconnecting door that led to their parents’ double, and which Rabia insisted must be propped open at all times. Hamoud didn’t mind. They hadn’t been intimate since his return from Guantanamo. It was impossible for him, and she was very patient.
The hotel was vast. A triangular mirrored building with calming lakes in the grounds. Hamoud knew it was not the most expensive hotel in the resort. It was separate from the parks themselves. They would need to catch the free shuttle bus each day. But that was alright. The truth was that he shared his children’s excitement. He smiled as he watched Rabia examine the miniature bottles of shampoo and body lotion in their own en suite. She wasn’t accustomed to luxury.
There was no hope of staying in the rooms for long. The children were desperate to head straight to the parks, even though it was gone six in the evening. Hamoud found their passes in the FedEx package and, before Rabia could even unpack their suitcase, they walked to the bus stop outside the hotel that would shuttle them to the Magic Kingdom. ‘I’d like to go on Space Mountain,’ Malick said quietly as they walked. He tugged gently on his sleeve.
‘Me too!’ Melissa agreed, more buoyant than her brother as usual. ‘Me too!’ Hamoud and Rabia smiled at each other and held hands as Melissa chattered happily. She fell silent once they reached the bus stop, however. There were three other families waiting. White, American families. They sat in the early evening sun, all baseball caps and Mickey Mouse T-shirts, all chewing gum and sun-kissed skin, and they stared at Hamoud and his wife and children as they approached, and shuffled further up the bench to avoid having to sit too close to them. No words were spoken. They weren’t necessary. The difference in skin colour between Hamoud’s family and the others said it all. That and the overt expressions of distaste on the faces of the American holiday-makers. Hamoud’s children sat silently between their mum and dad. They understood, perhaps without even knowing why, that it would be unseemly of them to make an exhibition of themselves. Hamoud wished he could persuade them otherwise. But that would be hypocritical, because he and Rabia shared their discomfort and their reticence. How could they not, when they received this treatment wherever they went? Hamoud felt self-conscious about his beard. The scar on his face, which made him look so suspicious and unsavoury, throbbed in the heat. They all sat in silence, Hamoud scratching his palms, as they waited for the bus.
The back seats were free. The family settled into them and soon the children became animated again. They could see crowds congregating around the entrance to the Magic Kingdom and the turrets of the Cinderella Castle peeping into the sky. They held the children’s hands firmly as they stepped off the bus. There were hundreds of people here, all bustling to pass through the entrance turnstiles. It would be very easy to get lost.
There was music playing. A brass band. Hamoud couldn’t see it but the jaunty, happy music made him smile again. The family stuck close to each other as the momentum of the crowd swept them towards the turnstiles. Hamoud fumbled one-handed for their passes. He experienced a moment of anxiety. What if they didn’t work? What if it was all a con? But the turnstiles allowed them through and suddenly there they were, inside the park, the crowds dispersing around them, his children trembling with anticipation. They could see the castle directly up Main Street. The brass band was louder and, up ahead, there were people in character costumes waving and greeting all the new arrivals. Donald Duck put his arms around a delighted toddler. Mary Poppins, complete with umbrella, was surrounded by young girls. Captain Jack Sparrow held aloft a wooden cutlass.
Hamoud turned to his children. Their cherubic faces stared up at him. ‘Where first?’ he asked.
‘Space Mountain!’ they squealed. ‘Please, Daddy!’
‘Let’s go then!’ Hamoud laughed. ‘I bet you’ll scream more than I do.’
Malick cocked his head and gave him a queer look. ‘Dad,’ he said, ‘you’re never like this.’
Hamoud understood what his boy meant. That he was never happy like this. His innocent observation made Hamoud catch his breath. He crouched down so that he was at his son’s level and put one hand on his cheek. He said nothing, but realised he was experiencing a moment of clarity, of lightness, that had eluded him for years. For the first time almost since he could remember, there was no feeling of anxiety, or dread, or paranoia in his chest. There was just gladness and optimism, and he made a pact with himself to try to keep hold of those feelings.
But they didn’t last long.
As he stood up, he saw another character standing by a kiosk that sold Coke and corn dogs. Hamoud only knew that the character was called Goofy because the kids had watched him on TV. Goofy was alone. None of the other punters had approached. There was something about this character that kept people away. Hamoud could feel it. He had comedic, oversized white gloves. He had removed one of them and was clutching it under his other arm. With his free hand he held up a cell phone. Hamoud had the unnerving feeling that this man was taking his photograph.
If that was true, it was done in a second. Goofy dropped his phone into the front pocket of the waistcoat he wore. Then he slipped the glove back on to his hand. He made no obvious attempt to get away immediately. Instead, he did the opposite: he stood his ground and waved enthusiastically at Hamoud and his family. The children waved back. Goofy threw back his head in a gesture of hysterical laughter. He rubbed his ribs as though deeply tickled. Then, with another wave, he skipped off, and disappeared into the crowds.
‘Did you see that?’ Hamoud asked Rabia.
‘See what?’
Rabia’s expression stopped him. Please don’t do this, it seemed to say. For the children’s sake.
He looked back after Goofy, but the character was nowhere to be seen. His son was pulling him by the arm, desperate to get started. ‘Nothing,’ Hamoud said. ‘It was nothing. Space Mountain!’
The family made its way further into the park.
The smugglers’ lorry handled the desert terrain far better than the Nissan had. They sat in a line at the front, Danny at the wheel, the General next to him, Bethany by the passenger window. The atmosphere had changed. Bethany, who up until now had been engaged and proactive, was distracted. She once again held the GPS unit, and occasionally gave Danny an instruction to alter his direction of travel. Other than that, she gazed out of the window and said nothing. Danny guessed she was thinking about her boy, and when she might next see him. Until this evening she’d had a road map: kill the General, escape Amman, get home, see the kid. That plan had been blown apart. No wonder she was pensive. She would be wondering what was going to happen next. If she would be allowed home. Danny had quickly briefed her about the intel they’d extracted from Turgenev. She had listened intently, but he suspected she was merely calculating how it affected her. She couldn’t know that the change in circumstances had led to a change in her own fortunes. Danny wasn’t going to waste her now that the nature of the mission had changed. He would wait until his orders were updated.
The vibe between Danny and the General had changed too. There’s a closeness you only get from fighting alongside someone. It wouldn’t make them friends for life. Nothing like. Danny was a Regiment grunt, O’Brien was top brass. Different people, different worlds. But there was a bond of sorts. A wary camaraderie. They had respect for each other, even though it was not articulated. Danny didn’t agree with the General’s refusal to reveal the location of the deepfake footage. But he knew he wasn’t going to change the old guy’s mind and, deep down, he couldn’t deny the General had a point. Leaving a job like that to the politicians was not a way of making it happen. Some jobs you just had to do yourself.
The glow of the burning Nissan soon receded from the rear-view mirror. Danny once more negotiated the desert terrain by moonlight. He estimated that it was forty-five klicks to the drop zone where they could expect their pick-up. Two hours drive, off road. It was 01.30 hrs. It would get them on target with thirty minutes to spare.
‘Why would they move the date of the attack?’ the General said after they’d been driving in silence for half an hour.
Danny had no answer. Who could guess why people who would dream up a plan like that did anything?
‘It’s a common strategy,’ Bethany said. ‘If you bring forward the date of an attack at the last minute, it mitigates the risk of an information leak.’
‘Either that,’ the General said, ‘or they knew I was on to them.’
‘Maybe,’ Bethany said.
‘We still don’t know where, who or how,’ Danny said.
