Chris Ryan - Osama

The OC stormed out. Joe could feel the eyes of everybody in the hangar staring at him. He could also feel his hand shaking again. About ten metres to his left, he saw JJ approaching warily. He didn’t want to talk. Not to JJ, or anyone. He followed the OC’s lead and strode out of the hangar.

Thirty seconds later he found himself half walking, half running through the maze of bunkhouses, not knowing where he was heading for, his mind spinning.

And thirty seconds after that, he realized he was sitting on the ground, his head bowed and buried in his hands. He didn’t remember dropping down there, but that hardly mattered. It was all he could do to concentrate on breathing slowly and deeply. On getting air into his parched and dust-filled lungs.

Bristol, UK. The following day, 0900 hours.

‘Bastard Coke’s gone flat.’

‘I can’t believe you want to drink Coke first thing in the morning, man,’ said a drowsy voice, barely awake. ‘That’s sick, you know? Sick, man.’

‘Who left the top off ? Was it you, Rak? It was you! I can’t believe you left the bastard top off.’ Narinder Kalil, whose yellow teeth made him look like his mother had lactated Coke, slammed the two-litre bottle down on the grubby carpet by his camp bed, emerged fully dressed out of his sleeping bag, sat up and looked around the room.

It was gloomy in the first-floor bedroom. The thick curtains were drawn, and only a little light peeped through from a tiny triangle where the corners met the rail. It shone a beam onto the table in the middle of the room and last night’s KFC Bargain Bucket – Narinder, Rakesh and Adi could put one of those away in a matter of minutes. Next to it was Adi’s pot of aqueous cream that he rubbed into the eczema on his neck half a dozen times an hour, and enough orange Semtex to turn not only this one but all the terraced houses in the street into a pile of rubble. Narinder stood up and glanced hopefully into the KFC bucket. Nothing but a mess of chicken bones, soiled napkins and empty ketchup sachets. He’d finished the Cheerios yesterday morning, and nobody had been to the shops since. ‘I’m going for a cigarette,’ he announced. No reply from Rak or Adi. ‘Bastard lazy, you two,’ he muttered as he walked to the door. And then, a little more loudly: ‘Don’t touch the shit, OK? OK? ’

Snores. Narinder shook his head in disgust and left the room.

The three of them had been living in this house for just two days, and had met for the first time the day before that. None of them knew who owned the place, only that the key Narinder had received at his gran’s house had fitted the lock, and that the sea of pizza delivery slips behind the door suggested nobody had been here for some weeks. It had the air of rented accommodation: threadbare carpets, no furniture except the old brown sofa downstairs and the table and three camp beds in their room, a cooker that didn’t work and a kettle that tripped the fusebox for the whole house if you tried to make a cup of tea.

The door of the only other bedroom upstairs was locked. They’d tried to look through the keyhole, but someone had stuck a piece of tape over the other side, and something told them it wouldn’t be a good idea to puncture it with a pencil – which had been Rakesh’s first suggestion. Now Narinder padded downstairs in bare feet, opened the front door and sat down on the step before rolling a cigarette and lighting up. Of the three of them, he was the only one who smoked, but he hadn’t left the bedroom out of consideration. He’d left it because although he didn’t think a flick of cigarette ash could detonate the plastic explosive, he wasn’t sure and this was not, he decided, a good area for experimentation.

The house was in Easton, one of Bristol’s dingier inner districts. Narinder, who had lived in the city for all of his twenty-three years, had never been here. At first he’d worried that keeping the bedroom curtains closed day and night would attract attention, but you didn’t have to spend more than a few hours in Crown Street to realize that at least half the windows in the road were permanently covered. The house opposite was derelict, with boarded-up windows and a steel security door. The squatters had still got in, however. Narinder had realized this on the first night, when he’d seen light seeping from cracks in the boards, and he couldn’t help wondering why the house he and his companions were in hadn’t been taken over. Maybe the squatters knew something about the person who owned it. Certainly nobody had given Narinder any aggro. Apart from an old lady who walked past three times a day with a shopping trolley, everyone else he had seen had been black or Asian. That suited him fine. It meant he, Rak and Adi were just three more faces. Nobody even questioned their presence.

It took him no more than a minute to suck down his first roll-up, stub it out under his Reeboks and roll a second. It was just as he was licking the Rizla that he noticed he was being watched.

He started, and jumped up to his feet. A tall man with a slight stoop was standing three metres away, where the pavement met the litter-strewn front yard. He wore a waxed green raincoat – the sort of garment, Narinder thought, that an English country gentleman might put on for a day’s shooting. But this was no English gent. He had dark skin and thin, floppy black hair. He was staring at Narinder with an expression that was impossible to read.

‘Who the bastard hell are you?’ Narinder demanded, silently cursing himself for taking a step backwards.

A frown of disapproval flickered across the stranger’s face. Narinder found himself stammering. ‘I mean… who… who are… ’

‘You must be Narinder,’ said the stranger. He opened the gate and started walking towards the door. ‘You’ve made yourself at home, I hope?’

Narinder nodded.

‘I’m pleased.’

He stopped. Narinder didn’t move.

‘Well?’ said the stranger. He was standing just half a metre away. ‘Are you going to let me in, Narinder? It’s a crisp morning, and I’d rather not spend it standing outside.’

Narinder shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I ain’t supposed to let anyone…’

The stranger smiled. ‘Your grandmother is in good health?’

Narinder’s eyes widened as he recognized the pass phrase by which he would know the man they were waiting for. He nodded, as though the newcomer was really interested in the well-being of his relations, hastily shoved his unlit roll-up behind his ear, and kicked the door open with his heel before standing aside to let him enter. Once he was inside, Narinder walked in too and closed the door behind him. He followed the man along the hallway, suddenly full of questions. ‘What’s your name, mister? This your place, is it? I don’t want to make a fuss or nothing, but you could have left us some bog roll. We had to use the Daily Mirror first day we got here.’ They were walking up the stairs now, Narinder three steps behind the man. ‘They’re still asleep, Rakesh and Adi. Bastard lazy, them two. Dunno where you found them, mister. What you say your name was again?’

They had reached the landing now. The older man stopped and turned. He had a patient look on his face. ‘My name is Mr Ashe,’ he said quietly. ‘Narinder, have you and the others started work?’

‘Course. We’ve been here three days.’

‘So you have.’ He glanced towards the door of the locked bedroom. ‘You’ll excuse me, I hope? I’ll be pleased to meet the others when they’ve caught up on their well-deserved sleep.’ He turned and, pulling a key from the pocket of his coat, approached the door. ‘You’re happy with their abilities? Rakesh and Adi, I mean.’