Chris Ryan - Who Dares Wins

And it sickened him to think about his brother. He didn’t doubt that Jacob was the shooter. The whole scenario had his fingerprints all over it. The ribbon. The decoy. It was the way his mind worked. Sam knew that better than anybody.

And better than anybody he knew what a mess he’d made of things. He should never have got Mac involved. Dolohov’s death was just the beginning. Jacob’s red-light runners were planning something. Something big, but he didn’t know what and he was no closer to finding out. Go to the Firm now and they’d stick him in the deepest hole they had. They’d be panicking. They’d know they had to find Jacob and they’d know Sam was their only link. Half the fucking service would be out there looking for him. Anywhere they thought he might be – his flat in Hereford, Clare’s place. And of course, he couldn’t show his face at SAS headquarters. His passport would be flagged and his mobile phone bugged.

All this because of his brother.

Jacob’s dark features flashed before his eyes. Jacob was a real soldier , his dad had said.

‘We’re all real soldiers.’ Sam muttered out loud the reply he had given his father. We’re all real soldiers, and sometimes we do things we’re not proud of. He thought of the red-light runners in Kazakhstan, turned from unknowing stooges to cold corpses at the squeeze of a trigger. In the darkness of the night, when it was just Sam and his conscience, he knew he would be haunted by those young men. He was a soldier, but he wasn’t without feeling.

Jacob was a real soldier.

Was Jacob proud of what he had done? Was his own conscience pricked? Was he without feeling? Could he kill one of his closest friends and not be haunted by it for the rest of his days? Or was he too far gone for that?

Sam felt himself sneering at the thought, the anger welling up in him once more. Half of him wanted to see his brother; the other half didn’t know what he’d do when he caught up with him.

He looked over at Mac’s bag once more. Solitary. Ownerless.

Jacob was a real soldier.

His dad’s voice echoed in his head.

Sam stopped. His brow furrowed. Through the fog of his tired mind he remembered the last time he had seen his father. It had only been a few days ago, but it seemed like half a lifetime. Fragments of that conversation seemed to float in the air around him.

Jacob was a real soldier.

You know what those bastards are like. Jacob was an embarrassment to them. We both know how easy it is to get rid of people who are an embarrassment.

He always looked out for you, Sam.

You talk about him like he’s dead.

If your brother was still alive, what’s the one thing he’d do if he knew I was cooped up in this shit hole, pissing into a pipe and wasting away to a fucking skeleton? What’s the one thing he’d do?

Sam hadn’t answered. He hadn’t had the heart. He knew too well that nothing would have kept Jacob away.

Nothing would have kept Jacob away…

Nothing would have kept Jacob away …

And suddenly, in that dingy hotel room, it was crystal clear what Sam had to do. He looked at his watch: 3 a.m. The night was slipping away. He only had one chance to catch up with Jacob. If he missed that, he knew, without any doubt, he would never see his brother again.

His ops waistcoat was on the bed. He strapped it to his torso, secreted the Browning pistol into it, then covered himself with his hooded top. He looked around the room. Nothing to take. Just Mac’s bag, and he didn’t need anything from that. It would only slow him down. He left it there as he slipped out of the room and surreptitiously left the hotel. In the hotel car park, he felt as though a million eyes were watching him. He ignored them. They were imaginary. Kill the paranoia, Sam. You haven’t time for it. He started examining the cars on offer. Nothing modern, he told himself. Nothing with an alarm or immobiliser. Get your collar felt by the Old Bill now and you’ll have some serious explaining to do.

He walked. He kept alert.

It was an old Fiesta that caught his eye. A dent on one side, with rust creeping round it. A shabby, unkempt interior. Sam looked around to check that he was alone. Nothing. Nobody. He walked round to the passenger’s side where, with a sharp jerk of his elbow, he smashed the window in. The glass shattered onto the passenger seat. Leaning in, he stretched out to open the driver’s door, then walked round and climbed in.

The vehicle belonged to a woman or a short-arsed man – he had to move the seat fully back in order to sit properly. His fingers groped for the panel under the steering wheel and, with a sharp tug, he pulled it off. With both hands he felt for the wires underneath; in less than a minute he had hotwired the engine into life.

Another time check: 03.15. Assuming the car’s owner awoke no earlier than six, Sam had three hours. It was enough. In three hours’ time he would be long gone.

In three hours’ time he would be back in Hereford.

Hereford, May 25. 04.55.

Max Redman awoke.

His room was dim, almost dark, with the morning light just beginning to bleach the air. As always happened, it was the confusion that hit him first. Where was he? What was this place? And then the pain. The dull, insidious ache that weakened his thin limbs and reminded him, with a shock that never grew less brutal through familiarity, that he was imprisoned – both by his illness and by the four walls that surrounded him.

He groaned, then lay there listening to his own rasping breath. It was only gradually, and with a creeping sense of unease, that he realised he wasn’t alone.

With difficulty, he moved his head to one side. A figure by the door. The old man couldn’t make out who it was. He squinted, but it was no good and he felt the anxiety of the infirm.

‘Who’s that?’ he asked, his aggressive voice neutered by his weakness. ‘It’s too early for breakfast. I’m not fucking hungry.’ Deep down, though, he knew it wasn’t someone bringing him food. He struggled to stretch his thin arm out for the control that would move his hospital bed into a sitting-up position. His fingers touched it, but it slipped from his grasp. He swore and tried again. By that time, however, the figure was moving. Stepping towards him. And the closer it got, the clearer its features became.

Max Redman’s weak limbs became weaker. His breath rasped all the more. The figure stood by his bedside and looked down. Neither man said anything.

It was Max that broke the silence. ‘My God, Jacob,’ he breathed. ‘What’s happened?’

His son’s face was ravaged. There were deep, dark bags under his eyes and a frown on his forehead that reminded Max of when Jacob was a little boy and had been scolded. But his eyes themselves had the thousand-yard stare, that look of numb shock that Max knew from the battlefield.

Jacob didn’t reply. He just continued to look down on his father.

For a brief, irrational moment, Max wondered if he was being visited by a ghost; he wondered if his own eyes looked as haunted as his son’s. Max Redman was not a man who was easily scared; but he felt fear now, creeping down his spine and making his extremities tingle and burn. If this wasn’t a ghost, why would Jacob not speak?

‘What’s happened?’ he repeated. His voice sounded unsure. Max would never have been anything other than dominant in conversations with his sons, but now the tables had turned. He was frightened of Jacob. It took courage for him to stretch out his hand towards his son’s, an unprecedented gesture of timid affection. Their skin touched.

And then, slowly, like a man in church preparing to pray, Jacob lowered himself to his knees. He looked to the floor and allowed his father to place his thin hands on his head. They stayed like that, father and son, for nearly a minute. They might have stayed longer, had they not both been disturbed by the faint sound of wheels screeching in the car park outside. Jacob stood quickly. His eyes had narrowed, but his face had lost none of that troubled expression. He walked backwards until he was halfway across the room and his face was once more shrouded by the half light. Then he turned and walked to the door.