Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

Time slowed down. Luke felt like he’d relived a thousand times the moment the RPG hit the Land Cruiser. But, sickening though the memory was, it was not nearly so sickening as the thought of Stratton’s rantings. In his head he replayed the desperate conversation on the Gazan rooftop. He remembered someone telling him once that psychopaths were often to be found in the corridors of power, but it was more than that. He’d been quoting the fucking Bible at Luke, at least that was what it had sounded like — the sort of shit you’d expect from some nutter with a sandwich board walking down Oxford Street predicting the end of the world.

To the end there shall be war.

The memory of Stratton’s words chilled him, but he couldn’t get the bastard out of his head.

The Book of Daniel. It tells us it is here that the End Times will start.

Was he really saying that? Was he really saying that the end of the world was coming and that he had something to do with it? Had he really tipped over the edge into genuine insanity?

But then Luke recalled the few moments he’d spent that morning looking at his ops officer’s laptop. The US naval fleet advancing across the Med; the coalition forces grouping in the plains of northern Israel; troop movement along the Iranian border; even Yemen was mobilising. When it came to orchestrating wars, Stratton had form. Just look at Iraq. And so far as Luke could tell, he was orchestrating this one like a fucking maestro, with Maya Bloom — ruthless and without pity — as his accomplice. If Stratton wanted the world to burn, all it needed was a spark. And if everything Luke had heard was right, that spark would be lit in Jerusalem.

Hanukkah. The first day of the celebrations. One hour before midday.

He thought back to the briefing they’d had at Hereford. The ops officer had mentioned Hanukkah. What had he said? Three days from now. Luke did the maths. The first day of Hanukkah was tomorrow. And at 11.00 hrs something big would be going down…

Nobody would believe him, of course. Not once Stratton had filled everyone’s ears with shit. Nobody would believe a simple Regiment sergeant over the former Prime Minister. Which narrowed his options. He had to get to Jerusalem. Catch up with Stratton. Catch up with Maya Bloom. Stop them, somehow…

17.00 hrs. The guards who burst into the holding area and took him to the ops room were less than gentle. There were just two people in there: B Squadron’s ops officer, O’Donoghue, and the OC, Dawson. They were standing in front of O’Donoghue’s laptop as Luke entered.

‘You — ’ the ops officer indicated the guards ‘- out. You — ’ he pointed at Luke ‘- here.’

The guards left quickly and Luke approached the computer. The three men were silent while a piece of black and white camera footage played on the screen. There was no sound. At the bottom right-hand corner was a time code, and the footage had clearly been taken by the camera of the Apache that had chaperoned the Puma towards Luke and Stratton’s position on the rooftop in Gaza City. Although the helicopter was moving quickly, its height gave the impression that the city was slipping away slowly underneath. After a minute or so, however, it started to descend. The rooftops became sharper and twenty seconds later the camera was focusing in from a distance on one in particular.

At first it was difficult to make out what was happening, but it took only a few more seconds to become clear. A man was face down on the roof. A second figure had his knee pressed into the man’s back, and a weapon pointing directly at his head.

O’Donoghue turned to Luke, his face a mixture of fury and astonishment. ‘What in the name of…?’ He was so angry he couldn’t even finish the question. ‘Jesus!’ he spat finally, shaking his head. ‘We’d better hope this never gets into the wrong hands. It would be the fucking money shot for Wikileaks.’

‘It’s not what it looks like,’ Luke muttered.

‘Really? So what were you doing there? Offering to clean the fucking wax out of his ears with an HK53? Christ, Luke, Stratton’s on the warpath.’

‘You can say that again.’

The ops officer ignored the comment. ‘He says you lost it on the ground. Says you opened up on a crowd of locals and that’s why I’ve got three dead men on my hands and God knows how many Palestinians. Have you got any fucking idea what a shit storm this is going to cause? Stratton says…’

‘I don’t give a toss what Stratton says.’ Luke’s outburst silenced the ops officer immediately. ‘He was going nuts out there.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘ Totally nuts. He was spouting scripture at me…’

‘I’m not fucking surprised, Luke. He was in the middle of a riot and you were sticking a weapon to his head. He probably was praying..’

‘How long have you known me, boss? Do you really think I lost it down there? Do you really think I put the lives of my unit at risk? Do you really think that?’

‘What I really want you to do, Luke, is explain why I’ve just been looking at footage that shows you…’

Suddenly the door burst open. A short, tanned man around sixty, with thick white hair, an expensive but crumpled suit and bags under his eyes, stormed in.

‘Who the fuck is he?’ O’Donoghue demanded of Julian Dawson.

‘I,’ the man said, ‘am the British ambassador to Tel Aviv. You ’ — he waved his right hand at the three men in general — ‘are in ten tons of shit.’ He looked from one to the other before his eyes settled on Luke. ‘Is this the man? I want him transferred to Tel Aviv. There’s a high-security unit there with an SIS presence. We need to make sure nobody can look back on our decisions and say we…’

‘He’s not going anywhere.’ The ops officer’s voice was firm.

A pause.

‘I hardly need to remind you,’ the ambassador said, dangerously quietly, ‘that I am the representative of Her Majesty’s…’

‘He’s under my command. He’s not going anywhere.’

‘Don’t be a bloody idiot…’

O’Donoghue had turned away from the ambassador in mid-sentence. He walked up to Luke and stared at him for a full thirty seconds. He looked like he was deciding on the best course of action.

At last he spoke. And if Luke had been encouraged by the way he’d stood up for him in front of the ambassador, now was the time to change his mind. O’Donoghue sounded fucking livid. ‘I don’t know what the hell you were thinking of, Luke,’ he said. ‘Frankly, there hasn’t been a fuck-up like this since Libya. I’m putting you in solitary.’

‘Boss, you’ve got to…’

‘Forget it, Luke. I haven’t got a choice. Wait here.’

The ops officer marched out of the room, leaving Luke alone with the OC and the ambassador. ‘This isn’t the end of it,’ the ambassador announced. ‘I won’t be steamrollered like this.’

Dawson ignored him. All his attention was on Luke and the look he gave him was bitter. The look of an officer who’d just lost men and was taking it hard. ‘Hope you didn’t have anything planned for the next ten years, Mercer,’ he muttered. ‘You’re doing time for this.’

Luke didn’t reply. There was no point, not with the footage from the Apache.

He eyed the door. His 53 had been taken off him while he was in the Puma, but his Sig was still strapped to his ankle. That at least was something.

At that moment O’Donoghue returned, along with four members of B Squadron that Luke recognised but didn’t know well. It only took one glance at them to realise word had spread that Luke had lost it — that everyone in that room thought they had a madman in their midst.

‘On your feet, Mercer,’ Dawson instructed, before turning to the four Regiment men. ‘Get him out of my sight.’