Stephen Leather - Hot Blood

As the body armour rode up to his waist, the Sniper’s bullet smacked into the base of his spine and ripped through his gut. Manwaring fell forward, on top of the now screaming boy, blood pooling around them. The AA12 fell from his grasp and clattered on to the road.

The Sniper smiled as he watched the Americans run for cover. ‘ Allahu Akbar,’ he whispered. God is great. The man’s name was Salam, but he no longer answered to that name. He was Qannaas, the Sniper. He had killed two hundred and thirty-seven Americans in less than three years, every one with a single bullet.

The man next to him also smiled. ‘ Allahu Akbar,’ he echoed. He was the Spotter. He had been with the Sniper for two years. Before that there had been another, but he had been shot by the Americans when the car he was in hadn’t slowed for a roadblock on the outskirts of Baghdad. In a perfect world the Sniper would have chosen to work alone. But the world wasn’t perfect and a sniper always needed a spotter. A sniper could be so focused on his target that he would no longer be aware of what was going on around him. And while the Sniper was concentrating, the Spotter could keep an eye on the wind. A palm frond swaying, a flag fluttering, a column of smoke dissipating gave clues to the direction and strength of the wind. The Spotter would whisper his estimation of its characteristics and the Sniper would adjust his aim accordingly. A good spotter meant the difference between a good shot and a perfect shot, and so far all two hundred and thirty-seven of his shots had been perfect. Two hundred and thirty-seven shots, two hundred and thirty-seven kills.

The Spotter waited by the Sniper’s side to see what he would do next. Sometimes the Sniper would shoot once, then move on. Sometimes he would wait and select a second target. They were on top of a building overlooking the street and it was clear that the soldiers, frantically seeking cover, had no idea where the shot had come from.

The Humvee had stopped but the men inside stayed where they were. The children were running down the street, screaming in terror, but the Iraqi civilians just stood and stared at the dead soldier. The Iraqis knew they had nothing to fear. The Sniper only shot Americans in uniform.

He slotted another round into the breech. He had decided to wait for the second shot. At some point the soldiers would go to retrieve their fallen comrade and that was when he would make his second shot of the day. His second shot and his second kill. He pressed his eye to the rubber cup of the telescopic sight and waited.

Driving into Central London was a pain at the best of times but early evening meant tackling the rush-hour and Shepherd was in no mood to be sitting in traffic. He caught a Central Line train at Ealing Broadway and read the Daily Mail as he headed east. A former general turned military commentator had been given two pages to detail the problems facing the coalition forces in Iraq. His line was that while it had been a mistake to invade Iraq in the first place, it would be an even bigger mistake to pull out before democracy had been established. That would lead to only one thing: all-out civil war in which hundreds of thousands would die. Shepherd wasn’t an expert on military affairs, but he agreed with the former general’s conclusions. He had always felt that invading Iraq had been a huge mistake. Saddam Hussein had been a tyrant, who had maimed and murdered his people, but Shepherd figured that other countries should be left to work out their own problems. If America felt justified in invading Iraq because it disagreed with the way the country was being run, what was to stop China deciding that they could do a better job of running America than the President?

The decision of President Bush Senior to go to war against Iraq to liberate Kuwait had made perfect sense, politically, morally and legally. His son’s motives in invading made less sense to Shepherd, and he was even more bewildered by the British Prime Minister’s decision to commit British troops to the fight. If Shepherd had still been in the SAS when the war had started he would happily have gone to Iraq. He was a soldier and a good soldier obeyed orders, even when they knew that those orders were wrong.

Shepherd left the train at Notting Hill Gate and flagged down a black cab. He had it drop him a couple of hundred yards from the shopping street where Button wanted to meet. He spent fifteen minutes checking he wasn’t being tailed, then headed to the high-class butcher’s whose window was full of organic beef and free-range chickens. On the way he spotted Sharpe, sitting in a coffee shop and pretending to read the Evening Standard. Shepherd slipped in through the door and moved cautiously behind him. He was just about to put a hand on Sharpe’s shoulder when Sharpe spoke without looking around: ‘Don’t play silly buggers,’ he snarled.

‘Just checking you were on the ball. How long have you been here?’

‘An hour,’ said Sharpe. ‘Her Majesty went in fifteen minutes ago.’

‘And you’re waiting for what, exactly?’

Sharpe put down his paper. ‘Always arrive early, you know that.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

‘I’ll take her a tea,’ said Shepherd.

‘You didn’t bring teacher an apple?’

‘I want a coffee so I’ll take her a tea. It’s not brown-nosing. If we were meeting Hargrove in a pub we’d buy him a drink.’ Sam Hargrove had been their boss in the days before their undercover unit had become part of the Serious Organised Crime Agency. He had always preferred to hold his meetings in pubs or at sporting events. Unlike Charlotte Button, who had moved to the unit from MI5, Hargrove had been a career cop with almost thirty years in the job.

Shepherd went to the counter and ordered. ‘I’ll have a latte,’ said Sharpe, at his shoulder.

Shepherd paid, the girl behind the counter slotted the cups into a cardboard tray and Sharpe took it from her. ‘Least I can do is carry them,’ he said.

He followed Shepherd across the road. The door that led to the offices above the shops was between the butcher’s and a florist. There were three brass nameplates at the side of the door and an entryphone with three buttons. Shepherd pressed the middle one and smiled up at the CCTV camera that monitored the entrance. The door buzzed. He went in and climbed up with Sharpe to the second floor.

Charlotte Button had the door open for them. She was wearing a white jacket over a floral dress and looked as if she had just come from a christening. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked.

‘I brought you a tea,’ said Sharpe.

‘Razor, that’s so sweet,’ she said, and took the paper cup from him.

Sharpe looked at Shepherd and winked. Shepherd mouthed an obscenity at him.

The office was lined with filing cabinets and volumes on tax law. There were four desks, one in each corner, and a door leading to another office.

‘Through there,’ she said. The two men stood aside to let her go in first.

A single large oak desk dominated the interior office, with a high-backed executive chair behind it. A large whiteboard stood beside it, with a couple of dozen photographs stuck to it, head-and-shoulder shots and surveillance pictures taken through a long lens. They were all of Asian men in their early twenties to mid-thirties. From the street backgrounds Shepherd decided that they had been taken in the UK, but he couldn’t identify the locations. Sharpe handed him his coffee.

‘This is going to be a joint operation with SO13, the Anti-Terrorist Branch,’ said Button, coming up behind them. ‘They’ve been running a long-term penetration of an Islamic terrorist cell in the Midlands and need a weapons connection. They made an approach to SOCA and, as luck would have it, you two are already up and running. You can continue your covers as May and Lomas.’