Chris Ryan - Who Dares Wins

20.19. Forty-one minutes to go. It would only take him ten to get there, but he didn’t want to be late. He tugged the hood one final time down over his face, then left his tiny bedsit, making very sure to lock the door behind him as he went.

Sam paced.

He’d lost count of the times he had walked through the darkness of the safe house, checking each observation point and receiving nothing but curt responses from the watchful guys. They could sense he was on edge. That much was clear.

Back in the main room, the two Georgians were arguing. About what, Sam didn’t know. Their voices sounded harsh and guttural. Davenport was looking at them like they were mad; when they saw Sam, however, they quietened down.

‘Anything?’ Davenport asked.

Sam shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ the ambassador announced. ‘Nobody knows where we are. How can anybody find us?’

Neither of the SAS men replied. But Sam could tell from the look Davenport gave him that he was thinking a similar thing.

And maybe he was right.

Sam looked at his watch. 20.36. Damn it, he didn’t even know what he was waiting for.

Thoughts collided in his brain. He tried to organise them. Jacob had told him to stay away. You can’t stop it. It’s in motion.

Think, Sam , he told himself. Just think.

Davenport was looking at him again. So were the Georgians.

His brother wouldn’t let this fail. Sam knew him too well. He was clever. Just because he was dead – and the very thought twisted inside him – it didn’t mean he hadn’t trained his red-light runners to think like him.

You can’t stop it. It’s in motion.

Sam tried to think what he himself would do. But as he stood in that room, his mind was suddenly flooded with other things: images of his brother. As a kid, playing. As a young man, joining up and persuading Sam to do the same.

A fizzing sound. Davenport had opened a can of Coke. He downed it, looking at Sam over the can as he did so.

Sam blinked. Then he stared. Not at Davenport, but at the can of Coke.

The shadow on the edge of his memory had suddenly grown more distinct.

He saw Jacob again; but this time it was in Iraq, six years ago. The day when it all went wrong.

Suddenly Sam was in the Al-Mansour district of Baghdad again. He, Jacob and Mac were preparing to storm a house, to apprehend a wanted Ba’athist. Their tout had dropped a tracking device outside the house in question, hidden in an old fizzy drink can, so they knew where it was. But they needed a diversion. Something to distract the guards while they raided the building.

Standing in that room, with Davenport and the Georgians, Sam heard his dead brother’s voice as clearly as if he was right there with them. Tense. A bit self-satisfied. The very words he had spoken that day so long ago.

I gave the Coke can a bit of extra sugar.

They’d needed a diversion outside the house. Thanks to Jacob’s forward planning, there was an improvised explosive device already there.

An IED, already there.

‘Jesus,’ he breathed. ‘We’re fucking sitting on it.’

Davenport looked alarmed. ‘What’s wrong, Sam?’ But Sam didn’t answer. His eyes had fallen on Beridze’s assistant, Gigo. Jacob had mentioned him, but why? Bland’s analyst had assumed he was a target, like the ambassador. But he was a nobody. Why would they target him?

Like a balloon being burst, the shadow on the edge of his vision disappeared and Sam saw clearly. His assistant. Jacob had been trying to tell Sam something. At the moment of his death, he’d been trying to warn him. The assistant was the shooter. He strode over to the younger of the two Georgians and with one tug of his clothes yanked him to his feet before pressing him against the wall.

‘Where is it?’ he shouted. ‘Where’s your fucking weapon?’ He pressed the gun up against the man’s head.

Gigo’s eyes bulged. He tried to speak, but was mute with fear.

From behind him, Davenport’s voice. ‘For fuck’s sake, Sam, what are you doing?’

Sam hurled the assistant into the middle of the room. ‘Take your clothes off,’ he said. Then, over his shoulder at the boss, ‘ Tell him to take his fucking clothes off! ’

Davenport started to say something, but Sam waved his handgun in his colleague’s direction. ‘Shut up,’ he said.

Commotion over the comms. ‘What’s going on?’ Sam didn’t answer.

Gigo was stripping, slowly because of his shaking body. ‘Hurry up,’ Sam barked at him. He went a bit faster, then stood wearing nothing but his underpants, a pair of gartered socks and a humiliated, incensed expression. He was fat, with a hairy stomach. But there was no concealed weapon.

‘What the hell’s going on, Sam?’ Davenport demanded. Sam’s breath came in short, nervous gasps. He looked around. He was missing something. Damn it, he was missing something.

And then his eyes fell upon the briefcase, still on the floor where Gigo had been using it as a seat. He felt a cold sickness oozing through his body. ‘Open it,’ he told the stunned assistant. ‘ Open it! ’

Gigo walked over to the briefcase, unable to keep his eyes from Sam’s gun. He bent down and fumbled with the clasps. When it was open, he stood back.

Sam approached. It looked perfectly ordinary: a few papers inside, nothing more. Gingerly, he picked it up and upturned it. The papers wafted to the floor like autumn leaves, leaving him with nothing more than an empty box.

‘You need to calm down, Sam.’ Davenport’s voice. Tense. Urgent.

Sam looked back at the assistant. His expression was still horrified. But confused too. Gigo obviously didn’t know what the hell was going on.

‘You sure this is his briefcase?’ he demanded of the ambassador.

‘Of course it is his briefcase,’ the ambassador replied. ‘For God’s sake, what is…?’

He didn’t finish his sentence. He just watched as Sam ran to the weapons cache, pulled out a knife, then cut into the lining of the briefcase. Two slashes, then he dropped the knife and started using his hands.

I gave the Coke can some extra sugar.

Moments later, the extra sugar was revealed.

A thick penetrating silence. Sam held the briefcase in his hands. He stared at it.

Taped to the inside shell of the case was a mobile phone. It was on, but it had been tampered with. From the back of the handset led a wire, connected to several blocks of plastic explosive. A bomb, and a remote detonator.

The world slowed down. He turned to Davenport, whose wide eyes showed that he quite clearly knew what he was looking at. Davenport’s voice: ‘ Jesus, it could blow at any second! ’

And then Sam yelled.

‘ GET OUT! GET OUT OF THE FUCKING HOUSE! EVERYONE … NOW … GET OUT! ’

20.59 hrs.

Jamie Spillane waited outside the phone booth, his head bowed and his features obscured by his hooded top. Booths like this were scarce in these days of mobile phones and he had scouted out this one days before. And he had been here earlier. Twice. To check it was operational and that nobody had vandalised it.

He looked at his watch. It was time.

Stepping into the booth, he pulled from one pocket his fifty-pence piece and from another a slip of paper. On it, he had scrawled the number of the mobile phone which he had used to create the detonator. The one inside the replica briefcase he had swapped over just a couple of nights before. Vaguely he wondered where it was now. Near? Far? He shrugged. It didn’t matter to him. He just kept thinking of his instructions. This is an important job for the British government. Don’t get clever. Don’t start improvising. Just do what I’ve told you and everything will run smoothly.