James Deegan - John Carr

Then he walked back up the beach.

Abdullah el Haloui met him halfway, a sardonic smile playing on his lips.

‘Did you have to do that, zaeim ?’ he said, his hands relaxing on the AK, which was slung from his neck across his chest.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said the Chechen. ‘I couldn’t risk him talking. And he is a martyr now. He should be grateful.’

‘I guess so,’ said the young Moroccan, with a chuckle. ‘But how do you know I won’t talk?’

‘I don’t,’ said Shishani, raising the FNP to other man’s chest.

The smile dropped off el Haloui’s lips in an instant.

He went for the pistol grip of his AK, but it was a futile move and the last thing he would ever consciously do.

Shishani fired two rounds, point-blank, into him.

The first clipped the top of his heart, and took his legs away. The second hit him in the throat as he dropped, smashing through his larynx and exiting the back of his neck, taking a chunk of his spinal cord with it.

The body hit the ground with a dead thud; this time, there was no need for any coup de grâce .

It was a moment or two before the Chechen could bring himself to look down at the fallen man.

Abdullah had played an invaluable role in the operation, from the moment when he had tailed the Morgan girl and her friends from the airport at Málaga to their hotel, to his glorious actions on the Spanish beach earlier this very day.

But this was no time for sentiment. If they were to succeed, then their mission had to be sealed off from the outside world.

Hermetically .

Not to mention, Abdullah was a true believer, utterly pure in spirit, and might well have caused trouble later.

‘I am sorry, brother,’ said Shishani, with genuine regret. ‘But I cannot bury you.’

He glanced up into the trees.

All three women were still lying face down, not daring to look around.

He bent down, pulled el Haloui’s weapon from his dead grasp, and walked back up the slope, looking at his watch.

Soon, soon.

‘Get up,’ he said. ‘We must walk. And if any of you does not do as I say she will die here and now.’

The three women stood up and walked into the forest along a sandy path, the heady scent of cypress filling their nostrils.

35.

AS THE MOROCCAN night darkened, the headlights appeared.

Five minutes later, two Toyota Land Cruisers rolled and swayed along the undulating dirt road, and stopped.

A man got out – a giant, dressed in a grubby, blue gandora thobe and sandals, with a bushy, greying beard.

He beamed at Shishani, and the two men embraced and kissed each other on both cheeks.

‘Oh, it’s good to see you, Argun!’ said Khasmohmad Kadyrov, in Chechen. ‘When was it last, brother? Now Zad?’

‘Khan Neshin,’ said Argun Shishani. ‘I believe.’

‘So it was,’ said Kadyrov. ‘So it was. And today you have done a wonderful thing. Let me see her.’

‘Surely,’ said Shishani, and he led the other Chechen ten or fifteen yards into the trees where the three women still lay, face down, petrified.

At the sight of their bikini-clad bodies, Kadyrov’s face grew dark.

‘They’re dressed like whores,’ he spat. ‘What is this insult?’

Shishani raised his palms in placation. ‘I’m sorry, brother,’ he said. ‘We had clothes for them but they were left on the boat by mistake.’

‘Which one is she?’ said Kadyrov.

‘The middle one.’

‘Wait here.’

Kadyrov returned to his Land Cruiser. In his left hand were a couple of black sheets; in his right, a digital video camera.

He dropped the sheets and handed the camera to Shishani.

‘The middle one, yes?’ he said.

‘Yes, she…’ said Shishani.

‘Give me that,’ said Kadyrov, pointing to the still-silenced pistol in Shishani’s waistband.

Shishani handed it over. Kadyrov stepped over to the women.

‘Get up!’ he said.

They stood, fearfully, not daring to meet his eye.

‘You,’ he said, pointing at the woman on the left. ‘Name?’

‘What?’ she said.

‘What is your name?’

‘Martha.’

‘ Martha ,’ he repeated, rolling it around his mouth. He nodded. Then he looked at the woman on the right. ‘And you?’

‘Emily.’

He chuckled softly.

‘Well, well,’ he said, and looked at Shishani, eyebrows raised.

Shishani nodded.

‘Thank you, ladies,’ said Kadyrov. ‘Everyone stand up, come with me.’

He grabbed Emily Souster roughly by the shoulder, turned her around, and pushed her forwards. The other women followed as he walked them back twenty, twenty-five metres, to the overhanging branches of the trees.

‘Kneel!’ he snapped.

‘Please,’ said Emily. ‘What are you…?’

He raised the pistol, placed it against her forehead, and said, quietly, ‘Kneel.’

She did as instructed.

‘You two kneel either side of her,’ he said.

‘Emily…’ said Charlotte Morgan.

Kadyrov slapped her in the face. ‘Be quiet, woman,’ he said, ‘and kneel.’

The three women knelt in the sand, Charlotte and Martha held in position by masked men.

Kadyrov pulled on a black balaclava and stood behind Emily Souster.

‘Turn it on,’ he said.

There was an electronic beep as Shishani clicked the video camera.

‘Begin filming,’ said Kadyrov.

Shishani nodded.

The harsh glare of the light from the camera illuminating him, Khasmohmad Kadyrov looked into the lens and spoke, in heavily-accented English. ‘Oh, Britain!’ he said. ‘This is a warning from us, the Warriors of Jihad. A taste of what is to come.’

He placed the pistol to the back of Emily Souster’s neck, and she started and looked up at Shishani.

‘What’s he doing?’ she said. ‘I didn’t…’

‘Silence,’ said Kadyrov, sharply. He looked into the camera. ‘We have the daughter of the British Prime Minister. You can see her here. Now you will see that we are men of action.’

Somewhere overhead, an owl cried out.

The huge, masked Chechen pulled the trigger of the pistol.

The shot was aimed slightly to the right of Emily Souster’s spinal column, and was designed not to kill her immediately, but to cause pain and suffering, and to increase the horror of the footage.

The round exited her throat underneath her chin and sent her sprawling forward, her eyes wide with shock as her body tried to draw in air through the ruptured airway. The noise of her dying gasps filled the otherwise silent air, as her lungs filled with blood.

From somewhere, Charlotte Morgan heard a high-pitched scream; she only realised that the scream was her own when the man holding her punched her in the back of the head, sending her face forwards into the sand.

Shishani kept rolling as Kadyrov leaned over the dying Emily and casually dispatched her with another shot to the head, as a hunter might destroy an injured rabbit.

The giant Chechen turned back to the camera.

‘We will be in touch with your government very soon,’ he said, placing the pistol back in its holster.

‘Perfect, Khasmohmad,’ breathed Shishani, before clicking the camera off.

Kadyrov pulled off his balaclava.

‘You will transmit that to our friends in the Ivory Coast, for them to disseminate?’ he said. ‘Along with our message?’

‘I will upload it as we drive,’ said Shishani.

‘And we’re a hundred per cent sure it’s secure? They won’t trace our location?’

‘We’ve been using these systems for long enough now, Khasmohmad. The encryption is superb.’

‘Designed by American nerds and made available for free to the world,’ said Kadyrov, shaking his head and chuckling. ‘It must drive the CIA crazy.’