Chris Ryan - Who Dares Wins

He passed stalls on the side of the street. They were small, rickety things manned by small, rickety stallholders. Some sold watermelons, others sold different kinds of fruit. At one there was a pig roasting on a spit. The smell was almost enough to make Jacob swoon, but the look he received from the owner didn’t encourage his patronage. It wasn’t that Jacob was scared of these people. He just didn’t want to make a scene. As far as he could tell, there was only one actual shop. It was distinguished from the other buildings by virtue of a curved frontage and steps leading up to the entrance. Painted on the white, curved wall in bright yellow letters was a sign, but as he didn’t read the Kazakh language, Jacob couldn’t tell what it said. He stepped inside anyway.

It was gloomy in the shop, and bare. A fat woman sat behind a makeshift counter. She glowered at Jacob as he entered, keeping guard over a tawdry collection of items many of which Jacob could not tell what they were – tins, mostly, with indecipherable writing and pictures of disgusting-looking food. A few wizened vegetables in a couple of crates. Among the junk, however, some familiar packaging jumped out at him: Western chocolate bars and fizzy drinks. He checked in his back pocket – there were a few crumpled notes. Not enough to buy very much, but it would keep him in sugar-rich instant energy for a day or two. He grabbed a couple of handfuls of chocolate and some cans of Coke, then returned to the counter where the woman wordlessly accepted his money.

He was ravenous. On the steps outside he devoured two of the chocolate bars and a can of drink. That made him feel a bit better. The remainder he jammed into the pockets of his trousers and jacket, then he continued to walk around the village.

Still the flat looks came. Flinty and disagreeable. Jacob ignored them. He was busy with other things. Busy looking. There weren’t many vehicles and what there were did not inspire much confidence, being mostly tiny, Russian run-arounds. Towards the western edge of the town, however, he saw a dwelling place on one edge of a square that was bigger than most. It had a low wall topped with spiky railings running around the outside and a set of heavy, metal gates. Beyond the wall was a rare patch of green and, unusually, the building itself was two storeys high. Its shutters were painted electric blue. To the right of the wall, but clearly still part of the same compound, was a small garage.

Jacob pulled another can of Coke from his jacket and loitered. This looked a likely place. He sipped nonchalantly from the drink and started to stake it out. Thirty metres away there were children playing in the street with a football. They didn’t approach; indeed they cast him the same mistrustful looks that he received from everyone else. But a few of them, he noticed, had a game of kicking the ball close to him, a kind of unspoken dare. Pushing the boundaries. Boys will be boys.

Movement at the front of the house. Two men exited. They were big and wore unfashionable denim jackets that bulged in such a way as to suggest they concealed firearms. Behind them was a much smaller man. He had olive skin, a moustache, and tightly wound black hair. He walked behind the bigger men, but it was obvious that he was in charge. In charge of the men and, in his own mind at least, in charge of everything.

One of the bodyguards opened the gate. The kids stopped playing, grabbing their ball and bunching up together on the far side of the road. They jabbered quietly, but Jacob couldn’t understand what they were saying. He just watched as the three men walked towards the garage.

One of the kids, presumably as the result of a dare, took the football and kicked it. The men paid no attention. One of them, though, noticed Jacob, who put his head down and walked quickly away. Only when he reached the corner of the square did he glance round. He saw the garage open to reveal a truck. Nothing fancy, but a sturdy, elderly four-by-four that would suit his purposes perfectly.

He wasn’t followed.

On the outskirts of town, far from the road, he took shelter in a ditch. It was, at least, dry and there was nobody about so he didn’t worry about being seen. The hot afternoon waned slowly. He took the opportunity to rest and plan the rest of the day’s activities. The guy with the two stooges, he surmised, was most probably the local hemp baron. Not the kingpin – his place wasn’t nearly flush enough for that; just some kind of middleman who the real drug lords would stamp on in an instant if it suited them, but who until then was content to swan around the town like he owned the place. Jacob knew his type – he’d seen them in all parts of the world where people made their money harvesting narcotics.

It took an age for night to fall; an age during which Jacob could do nothing but wait. And think. In his mind he replayed the events of earlier that morning a thousand times. There was a weird kind of symmetry to what had happened. All his life it had been Jacob looking out for Sam. That was just the way it was – Sam had been the kind of kid that needed looking out for. Constantly. Now the tables had been turned and it was Sam who had saved Jacob’s neck.

He felt himself getting angry as he always did when he thought about his family.

The silvery moon rose before it was fully dark. It was already bright, though: it often was in this part of the world. He had watched many of these moons rise and fall. With the onset of full darkness came the stars. Heaven was full of them, amazingly bright. There was very little ambient light in the Chu Valley. It made the sky look like a Christmas card.

It was past midnight when Jacob eased his way out of the ditch. He ate some more chocolate and then began tramping his way back into the village.

The streets were deserted, but the moon was so bright it was almost like midday. He found his way with ease. Having memorised the layout of the network of streets, he avoided the road in which the hemp baron’s house was located, coming upon it from a more circuitous route.

In the night air an animal howled.

He stepped gingerly into view of the house. A guard stood at the gates. One of the guys from earlier? Perhaps. From this distance he couldn’t tell. He was leaning lazily against the wall, with a rifle in one hand. Jacob could see the orange spot of a cigarette glowing like a firefly in front of his face. He stepped back into the shadows again and considered his options. If he was to proceed, the guard needed to be out of his way. But how was he going to do that? The guy had a good field of vision. It didn’t matter how quickly he ran towards him, he’d still be able to raise his rifle and have a go…

Jacob retraced his steps. The guard was in position to stop anyone getting into the compound; so the last thing he would expect was for an assailant to be there already. He approached the house from the back. The wall was not high – low enough to scale, certainly. Jacob pulled himself up and held on to the large spiky railings, a little taller than he was, to peer into the compound. All was dark. He heaved himself up. His feet clattered slightly against the metal railings, causing a hidden animal somewhere nearby to scuttle away; but he managed to get one foot in between two of the spikes and push himself over, landing heavily on the ground below.

He kept minutely still for a moment, waiting for the clump of his landing to dissipate and listening for any signal that he might have disturbed someone; but there was nothing, just the recurring howling of the animal in the distance. Jacob got to his feet, grabbed his handgun and crept silently round to the front of the house.

The guard was still there, in front of the gates, and still smoking – Jacob could see the smoke rising above his head. He crept towards the gate, his handgun outstretched. Within seconds he was standing right behind the unsuspecting guard.