Chris Ryan - Who Dares Wins

Toby Brookes. Of late, MI6 had taken to encouraging all manner of people into the service. Brookes, however, reminded Bland of himself as a younger man. A little too eager to please, perhaps. But a good worker. Conscientious. Able to see the bigger picture. Heaven knows, Bland thought to himself, in these troubled times that was an important attribute.

‘Something’s been flagged up, sir,’ Brookes said efficiently. ‘Clare Corbett. I thought you’d want to see it.’

Bland sniffed. He allowed himself one final glance at the river, then turned to face his young assistant. ‘Be so good,’ he asked mildly, ‘as to shut the door, would you Toby?’

Brookes did as he was asked before speaking again. ‘It might be nothing,’ he said in his slightly nasal tone of voice. ‘But I thought I’d bring it to your attention.’

‘That’s most kind of you, Toby,’ Bland murmured.

‘The Met carried out a search,’ Brookes continued. ‘A billing address for a mobile phone number registered in her name.’

Bland remained silent.

‘Like I say,’ Brookes continued, suddenly sounding a little less sure of himself. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

‘When was this request processed, Toby?’

The younger man examined a piece of paper in his hand. ‘Tuesday night,’ he said. ‘Forty-eight hours ago. I guess it took a while to come through the system.’

Bland turned once more to look out of the window. ‘Do you know who the police officer in question is who requested this information?’ He watched Brookes’s reflection as he once more looked at his sheet.

‘A DI Nicola Ledbury.’

‘I see.’ Bland furrowed his hairy, eagle-like eyebrows. ‘I wonder, Toby, if I might ask you to invite Miss Ledbury to come and have a brief word with us.’

‘Of course.’

He turned again and allowed a friendly smile to spread across his lips. ‘Tonight, Toby. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.’

Brookes nodded and gave his superior a look that showed he understood.

‘Thank you, Toby,’ he said quietly. And as the young man slipped out of the room, he returned to his place at the window, surveying the splendour of that scene as he calmly slotted this new piece of information into the jigsaw of his mind. It worried him that he could not yet see the whole picture.

Bagram airbase. Midnight.

Before the off, the unit spent every spare moment checking and rechecking their rigs. There was no banter; there was hardly any conversation at all as they went about the business of getting kitted out. Sam approached the runway knowing that his freefall rig was firmly strapped to his body. He had checked the chute several times and strapped his weapon to his side. As he carried his rucksack and helmet away from the aircraft hangar in the company of the rest of the unit, he couldn’t help but feel the familiar sense of tension that always preceded a HALO jump.

It was the little things that could go wrong. At thirty thousand feet there was very little oxygen and the temperature was freezing. Any slight malfunction of the rig and you’d pass out. Problems like that you could predict and prepare for; others you couldn’t. During a high-altitude jump over the Syrian Desert, his mate had hit Sam’s rucksack from one side as they dived from the aircraft. The rucksack had shifted, changing Sam’s centre of balance. He’d started to spin; and once the spinning started, it didn’t stop. Freefalling at one hundred and fifty miles per hour it hadn’t taken him long to black out. He’d have been a goner if it weren’t for the HALO rig’s automatic opening device that kicked in at four thousand feet. When he regained consciousness, the capillaries in the whites of his eyes had burst, his inner ears were fucked and he was too dizzy even to walk, let alone continue the operation. He put that thought from his mind. Burst capillaries or not, nothing was going to stop him from completing what he had to do on this op. Nothing at all.

‘We need to talk.’

Mac had started walking alongside him. His friend put a firm hand on Sam’s arm and forced him to a halt, while the others carried on walking. Sam’s body tensed up.

‘What do you mean?’

Mac stared straight into his eyes. ‘You think I didn’t recognise him?’ he murmured.

Sam felt suddenly trapped.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he spat. But even as he spoke, he felt his hand move almost involuntarily to his weapon.

Mac glanced down at Sam’s gun hand. ‘Christ’s sake, mate,’ he hissed. ‘If I was going to stop you, do you think I’d have waited till now?’

The noise of the airfield around him retreated. In that moment there was only Sam and Mac.

‘I couldn’t tell you before, Sam. Not till we were here.’

‘Why the hell not?’ Sam was suddenly angry with his old friend. He didn’t know why. He just couldn’t control his emotions.

‘Think about it, Sam. Something about this whole operation stinks. The Regiment sent out to kill one of their own? And fuck knows what sort of surveillance we’re all under. You and me start having cosy little confabs, it’s going to send up warning signals for someone, isn’t it?’

Sam thought about that. He realised that of all the people he couldn’t trust, Mac was the most trustworthy.

‘I don’t think Five know he’s there,’ Sam said quietly. And then, in response to Mac’s sharp look, ‘Or whoever it is who’s behind this. If they did, they’d hardly be sending you and me on the op.’ He took a deep breath, quickly wondering whether he should tell Mac everything he’d learned – the letter, Clare, the red-light runners, what they were really being sent to Kazakhstan to do – and just as quickly deciding not to. It didn’t change anything. It didn’t change what he had to do. ‘I’m not going to let anyone kill him, Mac. I don’t care about the other targets, but I’m not going to let anyone kill my brother.’

‘And you think I am? Jesus, Sam, he was my friend. God knows what he’s got himself mixed up in, but…’

A shout from up ahead – Tyler, his Cockney voice rising above the noise of the airfield. ‘Havin’ a mass debate, you two?’ he barked lewdly.

Sam and Mac looked towards him, then started to follow the rest of the unit, but slowly.

‘Maybe we should tell the others?’

Mac shook his head. ‘You can’t, Sam. You’ll only get them all a stretch in the nick for disobeying orders. You know J. better than anyone – you think he’d want us to do that on his account?’

Mac was right. There was one thing Jacob had always insisted on, and that was fighting his own battles. ‘So how we going to play it?’ he demanded.

Mac walked silently for a moment. ‘When we get to the camp,’ he said finally, ‘We’ll need to make some noise, let J. know someone’s coming…’ He let the sentence trail off, clearly aware that it wasn’t much of a plan.

‘What if Jacob comes out shooting?’ Sam asked.

But Mac didn’t answer. They had caught up with the rest of the unit.

‘Nice of you to join us,’ Cullen said darkly.

Mac smiled at him. ‘Well,’ he said, his voice suddenly much brighter than it had been only seconds ago, ‘we didn’t really want to miss the party.’

There were two C-130 Hercules aircraft waiting for them up ahead; a refuelling lorry was just driving away. The two aircraft would fly in convoy over a commercial airline route until they reached the insertion point. Once the unit had jumped, one of the Hercules would refuel the other in midair before returning to base. The remaining plane, its fuel stores replenished, would circle at a high altitude until they received the radio signal from the guys on the ground that they were ready to be picked up.