Spider Shepherd 10 - True Colours (37 page)

‘OK,’ continued Shepherd. ‘So we take him out to the New Forest, we do it there and we bury him where he’ll never be found. That’s the key to getting away with this. With no witnesses and no body, there’ll be no investigation. Thousands of adults go missing every year and unless there are suspicious circumstances no one cares.’

‘What about his daughter?’ asked Shortt. ‘She’ll report him missing.’

‘Adults go missing all the time,’ said Shepherd. ‘Unless there are signs of violence, he’ll just go on the list. If the body never turns up, there’s no crime to investigate.’

‘The New Forest is miles away,’ said Harper. ‘There’s plenty of places closer.’

‘We want to be out of the Met’s jurisdiction,’ said Shepherd. ‘And if it is ever found, the farther away the better. It’s driveable in ninety minutes or so and the roads are good.’

‘Makes sense,’ said McIntyre.

‘So, logistics,’ said Shepherd. ‘We need a vehicle, ideally something untraceable, to transport Khan from the pick-up point to the New Forest.’

‘I’ll get the car sorted,’ said Harper.

‘A van would be better,’ said Shepherd. ‘No one pays attention to vans. But it can’t be traced back to you, Lex. We’ll clean it afterwards but that’s no guarantee there won’t be DNA or something left behind.’

‘Give me some credit, Spider,’ said Harper. ‘I wasn’t planning on going to Hertz. I’ll pick up a second-hand one for cash and won’t bother registering it.’

‘Then clone a set of plates because these days London is awash with mobile CCTV, not to mention the static cameras. And you’ll need somewhere safe to keep it.’

‘I’ll sort out a lock-up,’ said Harper.

‘We’ll need something to bind him. We can knock him out but there’s no guarantee of how long he’ll stay out so we need duct tape and something to gag him with, and something to wrap him in. A carpet. Tarpaulin. Something like that.’

Shortt raised a hand. ‘I’ve got stuff like that in the garage.’

Shepherd shook his head. ‘No, it all has to be new. And bought from different shops in different areas. And paid for in cash.’

‘No problem, I’ll do it,’ said Shortt.

‘So far as the guns are concerned, we do it with the automatics so that if the body is ever found then the rounds will suggest a Russian or Afghan connection. But they’re automatics so we need to pick up the shell casings afterwards. And I can’t tell you how important it is that we clean every part of the guns, inside and out. Rounds and clips, too. Clean as a whistle.’ He looked over at Harper and grinned. ‘Whatever that means.’ He sipped his coffee again. ‘I plan to do it after dark in the New Forest, so hopefully there’ll be no one around to hear the shots. But even so I want suppressors on the Makarovs.’

McIntyre held up his hand. ‘I can do that,’ he said.

‘Doesn’t have to be too fancy,’ said Shepherd. ‘They’re not overloud in the first place.’

‘Pop bottle, cardboard baffles and Brillo pads,’ said McIntyre. ‘And Robert’s your father’s brother. But I’ll need somewhere to do it.’

‘You can use my garage,’ said Shortt. ‘Providing the wife’s out. I’ve plenty of tools there, too.’

‘Perfect,’ said Shepherd. ‘And we’ll have Jimbo’s duct tape to attach them. Now, assuming we get Khan out to the New Forest and slot him there, we’ve got to dispose of the body. We’ll need a hole digging and we’ll need that done in advance. It’ll need doing at night, the day before the shooting.’

‘The missus isn’t happy if I’m out at night,’ said Shortt.

‘If I’m doing it then I’ll need Jock on my job,’ said Shepherd. He looked at Harper. ‘You and me, Lex?’

‘Sure,’ said Harper.

‘I’ll get the spades. Can you get a throwaway mobile with GPS so that we can find our way back to it?’

‘Consider it done,’ said Harper, with a grin.

‘So we take Khan out to the New Forest, we do what has to be done, we drop him in the hole and we fill it up. Then we need to dispose of the guns and anything else left over. The duct tape, the suppressors, whatever we use to wrap the body in. Plus the spades, the phone we used to GPS the grave. Everything.’

‘We could just leave it all in the van and torch it,’ said Harper.

Shepherd shook his head. ‘That would draw attention and they’d have SOCO all over it,’ he said. ‘Anything not completely burned could be traced back to us. So you should sell on the van. Or leave it somewhere it’ll get stolen. I’ll take care of the guns and the ammo.’

‘I’ll take the burnable stuff to the quarry I used to use for shooting,’ said Shortt. ‘Get a little bonfire. It’s well away from London.’

‘Excellent,’ said Shepherd. ‘Now this is important. Everything you’re wearing on the day has to be run through a washing machine or destroyed. No arguments. If for any reason our names are in the frame SOCO will look for traces on all our clothes and footwear and if there is anything they’ll find it. So immediately afterwards you put all your clothes through a washing machine, twice. Wear trainers and dump them or burn them. And we all shower. Twice.’

‘Not together, though,’ said McIntyre. ‘I’ve had bad experiences with Jimbo in the shower.’

Harper laughed. ‘Where’s the soap?’

All four men joined in, laughing louder than the poor joke merited. It was a way of releasing tension, Shepherd knew. On the surface they all seemed calm and collected with no reservations about what they were planning. But taking the life of a human being was never done lightly and Shepherd knew that they would all be worried about it at some level or another. He waited for the laughter to die down. ‘Footwear is the most likely to carry traces, so no short cuts there. Don’t just throw them in the rubbish. Burning is best, or soak them in bleach and toss them, but again not in your household rubbish, somewhere miles from home. Same with any clothing you decide to throw away.’ He looked at Harper. ‘The van will need cleaning, too, inside and out. Best to use bleach on the inside, then take it to a car wash. Make sure the wheels are well clean because if they do get the van they’ll be taking a close look at the tyres. They can pretty much match mud in the way that they can fingerprints and DNA. So twice through a car wash, then up to you. If you want to sell it on, do it outside London. If you want to torch it, same applies.’

Harper nodded. ‘Sounds as if you’ve got all the bases covered.’

‘It has to be this way, Lex. The smallest thing can follow you around the world. A speck of DNA is all they need. And the phone we use to track the hole, I’ll dispose of that and the SIM card. And remember that your own mobile phones always give your position away. I know Lex is covered, but the rest of you, you need to get pay-as-you-go throwaway mobiles. We use them for this operation and then we ditch them. And whenever you’re out, you leave your identifiable mobiles at home and switched on. Got it?’

The three men nodded back at him. Harper slapped his hand down on the table, hard enough to rattle the mugs and whiskey bottle. ‘The bastard has had it coming,’ he said. ‘He’s finally going to get what he deserves.’

A
hmad Khan and the three paratroopers drove most of the way to the site of the rendezvous in silence, punctuated only by the terse directions that Ahmad gave them and the Paras’ radio transmissions back to base; if they failed to send the correct signal every thirty minutes, the alarm would at once be raised.

The road climbed steadily towards the mountains, its surface increasingly rough and pitted with crudely repaired craters where shells, mortar rounds or IEDs had blasted holes. Their progress was slow, but after driving for an hour and a half they reached a dead-end valley flanked by steep-sided hills. There the road dwindled to not much more than a narrow dirt track, running alongside the bed of a river that a few weeks before had been a roaring torrent of meltwater but was now just a dried-up jumble of rocks.

Ahmad told the driver to slow down still more as they approached the site of the RV with his men, and his keen gaze raked the road ahead and the hills on either side, alert for any danger, anything out of place. As they crested a low rise, he saw ahead of them a group of men wearing Afghan robes, standing at the side of the road in the shade of a clump of pine trees. He frowned. He was an hour early for the rendezvous, but his men were already there.

His frown deepened as they got closer to the group and he realised that most of the dozen or so men were strangers. The only face he recognised was Ghulam, his second-in-command.

One of the men held up a hand in greeting, but Ahmad felt the rising tension from the three Paras and heard the metallic click as the man alongside him slid the safety catch off his M16. ‘It’s all right, drive forward slowly,’ Khan said, but just as the words left his mouth he caught a brief flash of reflected light from the hillside out of the corner of his eye. His heart began to race. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. He reached inside his shirt, undid his money belt, and shoved it down the back of the seat behind him until it was out of sight. Ignoring the questioning look from the soldier alongside him, he told the driver to stop.

They were still some fifty yards short of the group of men, who emerged from the shade and began to walk towards them as they saw the Land Rover pull to a halt. ‘Wait here,’ Khan said. ‘Let me do the talking.’

He got out and walked up the road, calling out the traditional greeting, ‘
Salaam alaikum
’.

Ghulam returned the greeting. He was smiling but his eyes were hard and Khan began to fear the worst. He stared at Ghulam’s face, trying to get a read on the man. Ghulam was tense; that much was obvious.

He slowed as he saw that there were two men among the group who weren’t his followers. One he recognised as the commander of another Taliban company. His name, Wais, meant ‘Night Wanderer’. The name suited him well, for he was a dark and elusive character, at home in the shadows and on the margins, seeing everything, saying nothing. The other man was a stranger, but the AK-74 he carried, including a laser sight, and the way the others deferred to him as he stepped forward, suggested he was a powerful figure. ‘
Alaikum salaam
, Ahmad Khan,’ he said. ‘I am Piruz.’

‘And what wind has blown you here?’ Khan said.

‘We heard that you were bringing friends with you,’ said Piruz, waving an arm towards the assembled men. ‘We wanted to meet them. Will you not introduce us?’ He began walking slowly along the track towards the Land Rover.

Khan’s brain was racing. He glanced towards the Paras, who were showing increasing signs of agitation. ‘The
faranji
are no friend to any true Afghan,’ he said. ‘But just the same, they may have their uses sometimes.’

Piruz showed his teeth in a smile. ‘Then let us see what use we can make of them.’ As he neared the Land Rover, he raised his hand in greeting. ‘Welcome, English,’ he said. ‘Please lower your weapons, you are our guests and we mean you no harm.’

The gazes of the three soldiers flickered between Piruz and Khan, clearly uncertain what they should do. Still smiling and affable, Piruz leaned into the back of the Land Rover, resting his arm on the back of the seat that Khan had vacated. ‘You use the M16, I see,’ he said. ‘Do you find that …’ His voice was drowned by the roar of his weapon. Blood and brains sprayed into the air as the soldier in the back slumped over the side of the vehicle. Without a pause, Piruz swung his AK-74 through a short arc and shot the front-seat passenger through the back of his head. The windscreen shattered as the rounds smashed through it and Khan saw the blood-red smear from what was left of the soldier’s head as it slid down the windscreen.

The engine roared as the driver stamped on the accelerator in a frantic attempt to escape, but Piruz’s rifle barrel was already swinging towards him and the next shot hit the driver, punching a hole through the back of his seat. The Land Rover swerved and crashed nose down into the ditch at the side of the road, and though the driver, badly wounded, managed to stumble out of his seat, another burst from Piruz killed him stone dead before he had taken three steps.

As Khan brought up his own weapon, he felt a gun barrel in the small of his back and heard a voice hiss, ‘One more move and you will be as dead as those
faranji
scum.’ His weapon was taken from him and the next moment blows, kicks and rifle butts began to rain on him. As he sank to the ground, he was dimly aware of Piruz standing over him and he heard him say, ‘Hold his arms.’

There was a momentary pause and then an agonising sensation in his cheek and he smelt singeing flesh as Piruz forced the end of his gun barrel – burning hot from the rounds he had just fired – into Khan’s face. ‘That’s enough for now,’ Piruz said. ‘There will be time later to deal with the traitor as he deserves, but we need to get away from here before the
faranji
troops come looking for vengeance, and we need him to be able to walk.’

Khan was pulled to his feet and his wrists were bound tightly behind him with electric cable which bit into his flesh. Most of the Taliban group moved away from the road, heading up into the mountains and dragging Khan with them, but he saw that a few men were remaining behind, some digging an IED into the ground alongside the Land Rover, others running out a command wire towards a copse of wind-stunted acacia trees a hundred yards away, while still others tracked them, brushing dirt, leaves and gravel over the wire to hide it from view. Khan saw no more as two Taliban fighters took his arms, forcing him along the path that climbed the ridge towards the next valley.

He stumbled on, filled with despair. Even if British or American troops turned up and even if he wasn’t killed in the ensuing firefight, the Westerners would assume that he had deliberately led the soldiers into the ambush that killed them all.

He was dragged through the mountains, half conscious and disoriented. They climbed one ridge and descended into a rocky valley only long enough to begin scaling the next ridge beyond. Night had now fallen but still the forced march continued and at every pause along the way Khan was subjected to a fresh beating.

They eventually stopped, an hour before dawn, and laid up to rest for the day in a pine wood near the head of another desolate valley. Through the tree canopy high above him, Khan caught occasional glimpses of the vapour trails of military jets etched across the skies, and once there was the distant clatter of a helicopter’s rotors, but the noise grew no louder. He looked around for Ghulam but his friend was keeping his distance. If he was his friend, of course. Khan had no way of knowing for sure.