Chris Ryan - Osama

The queue was short, but slow. A single booth, with a dark-eyed official scrutinizing every passport thoroughly. There were only ten passengers ahead of them, but it was still fifteen minutes before he and Conor approached the booth. He handed their passports over silently, squeezing Conor’s hand a little harder as he did so.

The immigration official started on the boy’s passport, examining every page, looking back and forth from the document to its owner. Joe looked straight ahead, past the two guards standing five metres beyond him, AK-47s strapped to their bodies, towards the shop fifteen metres beyond them advertising duty-free goods and ‘Gift Articles’.

The official spoke. ‘Mr Conor?’ he asked, in a dead, unenthusiastic voice. He looked at Conor, one eyebrow raised. Conor looked back.

‘He won’t answer you,’ Joe said quietly.

The man looked unimpressed. He placed Conor’s passport on the counter in front of him before turning his attention to Joe’s. Opening it, he immediately found the five 100-nakfa notes Joe had slipped inside. He removed them without shame, placed them in a breast pocket of his uniform and continued examining the passport as if nothing had happened.

After thirty seconds he spoke again, his voice slow and ponderous. ‘Are you coming to Eritrea on business,’ he asked, ‘or pleasure?’

Joe looked at him, but it was not the official’s face that he saw.

He saw Caitlin, her eyes pleading in the moments before she had died.

He saw Eva and the knife twisted further. Poor Eva, who had risked everything for him and expected so little in return. He saw her sitting by him at the bandstand. Lying motionless on the beach. Staring through the fire, half her hair burned away, seconds before the flames had consumed her.

And he saw the face of a man of Middle Eastern extraction, with a hooked nose, stooped shoulders and black hair streaked with grey, responsible for the death of these two innocent women. The women that, each in a different way, Joe loved. In Joe’s imagination the Middle Eastern man was struck dumb with terror as he, Joe, held a .38 snubnose to his forehead. The weapon that would kill him just as soon as Joe had tracked him down.

Joe blinked. The customs official was waiting for a reply.

‘A bit of both,’ he said.

AQ: Al-Qaeda

ARU: armed response unit

CO: commanding officer

DEVGRU: United States Special Warfare Development Group (SEAL Team 6)

DOD: US Department of Defense

EST: Eastern Standard Time

HE: high-explosive

HEI: high-explosive incendiary

HESCO: flat-packed containers filled with dirt or sand to create a protective barrier

ICOM: intelligence communication

IED: improvised explosive device

JPC: jumpable plate carrier

klick: kilometre

L Detachment: a territorial unit attached to 22 SAS, under the command of E Squadron

LZ: landing zone

MIT: murder investigation team

MRAP: mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle

MRE: meal, ready to eat

OC: officer commanding

PIRA: Provisional IRA

plate hanger: armoured operations (ops) vest

PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder

REME: Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers

RTU: order to return to unit

RV: rendezvous

SOCO: scene of crime officer

SOP: standard operating procedure

SUV: sport utility vehicle

UAV: unmanned aerial vehicle

Knightsbridge, London, UK. 1738 hours.

His name was Hauser and he moved down the corridor as fast as his bad right leg allowed. The metal toolbox he carried was heavy and exaggerated his limp. He paused in front of the last door on the right. A yellow sign on the door read ‘WARNING! AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY’. He fished a key chain from his paint-flecked trousers and skimmed through the keys until he found the right one. His hand was trembling. He looked across his right shoulder at the bank of lifts ten metres back down the corridor. Satisfied the coast was clear, he inserted the key in the lock and twisted it. There was a sequence of clicks as the pins inside jangled up and down, and then a satisfying clack as the lock was released.

Hauser stepped inside the room. It was a four-metre-square jungle of filing cabinets, cardboard boxes and industrial shelves with a tall, dark-panelled window overlooking the street below. Hauser hobbled over to the window. An electric pain shot up his leg with every step, like someone had taped broken glass to his shins. He stopped in front of the window and dumped a roll of black tarpaulin he’d been carrying under his left arm. Then he set the toolbox down next to the tarp and scanned the scene outside. He was on the fourth floor of an office block adjacent to the Lanesborough Hotel at Hyde Park Corner. The current tenants were some kind of marketing agency who, he knew, were badly behind with their rent. They’d have to relocate soon. Shame. From that height Hauser had quite a view. The pavements were packed with commuters and tourists flocking in and out of Hyde Park Corner Tube station. Further in the distance lay the bleached green ribbon of the park itself.

Yep. It was quite a view. Especially if you wanted to shoot somebody.

Hauser was wearing a tearaway paper suit that had been vacuum-packed. The overalls came with a hood. He also wore a pair of surgical gloves. The suit and gloves would both prevent his DNA from contaminating the scene, as well as protecting his body from residue such as gunpowder. Now Hauser knelt down. Slowly, because any sudden movement sent fierce volts of pain up his right leg, he prised open the toolbox. It was rusty and stiff and he had to force the damn thing apart with both hands. Finally the cantilever trays separated. There were three trays on either side of the central compartment. Each one was filled with tools. Hauser ran his fingers over them. There was a rubber-headed hammer, tacks, putty, bolt cutters, a pair of suction pads, a large ring of different-sized hexagonal keys and a spirit level.

There were two more objects in the bottom of the main compartment of the toolbox. One was a diamond cutter. The other was a featureless black tube ten inches long and three and a half inches wide. Made of carbon fibre, it weighed just 300 grams, no more than a tennis racquet. Hauser removed the tube. There was a latch on the underside. Hauser flipped this and a pistol grip flipped out, transforming the tube into a short-barrelled rifle.

Hauser cocked the bolt. The whole operation had taken four seconds. Four seconds to set up a selective-fire rifle effective up to 300 metres.

Hauser set the rifle down and took the diamond cutter from the toolbox. Moving with speed now, he ran the cutter around the edges of the window until he had cut out a rectangle of glass as big as a forty-inch TV. Then he took out the suction pads and, with one in either hand, pressed them to the sides of the cut-out sheet. The glass came loose easily. Hauser laid this down on the floor with the suction pads still attached. Then he took the black tarp, hammer and tacks and pinned one end of the material to the ceiling, allowing the rest to drape down over the opening. Seen from the street below, the tarp would give the appearance of reflective glass. If anyone looked up at the window, they wouldn’t see shit.

Going down on one knee, Hauser tucked the stock tight into the Y-spot where his shoulder met his chest. His index finger rested on the trigger, then he applied a little pressure. He went through the drill he had practised thousands of times before.