The Kill Zone (54 page)
Authors: Chris Ryan
Jack felt his lips thinning. ‘I want to see her.’
‘Not yet.’
‘Damn it, boss.’ Jack exploded.
Carver raised his voice. ‘Get to the car. It’s an order, Jack.’
Jack felt the muscles in his face tensing up. ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘Let’s go.’
In the car, Jack didn’t hold back and Carver didn’t say a word until he’d finished. Even then he was silent for several minutes as he digested it all. ‘You’re telling me that Habib Khan was Farzad Haq’s brother, and they’ve been planning this whole spectacular together?’
Jack nodded. ‘It was an ambush, plain and simple. If the dirty bomb went off, all well and good. But the main thing was to force the President into the kill zone, and then . . .’ He inclined his head slightly. ‘Did they get Haq?’
Carver shook his head. ‘By the time we got to the Stinger launch area, he’d got away. Every set of eyes in the country is looking for him, but—’
‘They won’t find him,’ Jack said quietly. He didn’t know how he knew. He just knew.
‘The suits will be at Hereford before you know it,’ Carver told him. ‘British and Yank. We need to work out what you’re going to tell them.’
‘Fuck it,’ Jack replied. ‘I’ll tell them the truth.’
‘You killed O’Callaghan and Khan,’ Carver said sharply. ‘And if they want to put Caroline Stenton on you, they’d do it in an instant. They’ll say you knew who Khan was before we mounted the op and that you withheld the information. The Yanks would love to pin all this on a rogue SAS agent. Takes the heat off them.’
Jack shrugged. ‘Fine.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Jack. They’ll chew you up.’
Jack turned to his boss and gave him a dark look. ‘Let them try,’ he said.
‘No,’ the CO said. ‘I won’t. And if you want to see your daughter again, neither will you.’
A pause.
‘Jack,’ Carver said finally. ‘Nobody else is ever going to say this, but well done. London owes you.’
‘Is that an official backslap?’
‘You know it isn’t.’
They sat in silence for the rest of the journey.
There was no time to rest. Carver and Jack headed straight for the CO’s office where they sat down and worked on Jack’s story. No lawyers, no nobody. Just the two of them. They excised all mention of O’Callaghan and Caroline Stenton and tweaked the rest of it so that Jack came up smelling not of roses, but less strongly of shit. And then Carver had done the official debrief. On tape. On the record.
They’d only just finished when there was a knock on the door. ‘Visitors, boss. Secret Service. CIA. The lot.’
Carver gave Jack a cool look. ‘I’ll deal with them,’ he said. ‘You need to leave.’ He took a piece of paper and scribbled an address on it. ‘I think you’ve got somewhere to be.’
‘Yeah,’ Jack replied. ‘As it happens, I do.’
‘Then go. Now.’
Jack stood up. But before he left, he turned to Carver. ‘Thank you, boss.’
‘Go,’ the CO repeated.
In the corridor, he heard American voices. They were abrupt and accompanied by footsteps. Opposite the CO’s office was a briefing room. Jack slipped inside and put his ear to the closed door. The footsteps grew closer and then he heard Carver’s voice. ‘Come inside, gentlemen.’
He gave it a minute, then left the room. He could hear conversation inside the CO’s office, and he stopped for a moment to listen.
‘. . . I am responsible for the men under my command, and I will debrief them. If you’ve got a problem with that . . .’
Jack didn’t need to hear any more. He hurried down the corridor and minutes later he was slipping silently out of RAF Credenhill. He didn’t know when, or if, he would return.
The scrap of paper Carver had given him carried the address of a hospital ward deep in the belly of University College Hospital. Jack drove to London at full speed, but it was still the slowest and saddest journey of his life.
The ward was a small room, with only enough space for four beds, each of which was sectioned off with frayed floral curtains. The whole place stank of hospital food and disinfectant. The young police officer who had escorted Jack there nodded at a female doctor in a white coat and half-moon glasses. The doctor approached. She had a serious, thin-lipped expression.
‘You need to brace yourself,’ she said. ‘She’s in a bad way.’
Jack nodded, and the doctor led him to one of the sets of curtains. She peered behind it, then held it open for him to approach.
The girl in the bed looked pale and desperately thin. There was a saline drip hanging from a stand and attached intravenously to the back of her hand, and an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. Her eyes were closed and the skin on her face was purple and mottled. It was a face that had taken repeated beatings; the bruises extended down her neck and below the collar of her hospital gown. Her mousy hair was greasy and scraggly. She looked human, but only just.
‘Lily,’ Jack breathed.
Her eyes opened. At first there was nothing behind them. Just a blank, unknowing expression. But after a few seconds they widened, and their red rims started to ooze tears.
‘Dad?’ she asked. Her voice was weak.
There was a seat by the bed. Jack sat down and took his daughter by the hand. The skin was dry and cold.
‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ Lily said. ‘I thought I was going to die. I thought he would . . .’
‘You don’t need to worry about him any more,’ Jack said. He thought of Khan, falling dead from the Agusta. There was no satisfaction.
Lily closed her eyes. ‘They made me do things . . .’ she breathed.
Jack felt he should say something, but the words stuck in his throat. He squeezed her hand a little tighter.
They sat in silence together. Father and daughter. The world could burn around them. It had already started. So what.
He knew she would ask the question sooner or later. It came sooner.
‘Where’s Mum?’
The words were like daggers. Jack hung his head. He took a deep breath. And then he looked his daughter in the eye, and told her.
FactDuring the Second Gulf War, a compromised SBS unit abandoned a stash of equipment, including a number of Stinger missiles, which are thought to have been stolen by enemy forces.FactAt the time of writing, it is estimated that each year approximately seventy sources of radioactive isotopes, suitable for acts of radiological terror, go missing in Europe alone.
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