Stephen Leather - The Hunting

‘We don’t have time to piss around!’ shouted Jaffar.

‘Bruv, you need to calm down and take your finger off that trigger,’ said Sid.

Jaffar gritted his teeth as he stared at Sid, but then he relaxed and slid his finger out of the trigger guard. ‘We need to get back to the camp, Sid. Our guys are dying.’

‘I hear you, but we don’t kill people for the fun of it, bruv.’

‘It wasn’t fun, I was showing him we’re serious.’

Raj’s ears were ringing from the gunshots and the cordite was stinging his eyes. Jaffar took a step towards Eloias’s patient and raised his gun. ‘Bruv, don’t!’ Sid shouted, but Jaffar ignored him and sighted on the patient’s chest.

‘No!’ shouted Raj. ‘I’ll come with you.’

Jaffar turned to look at him. ‘Good call,’ he said. He lowered his Kalashnikov and grinned at Sid. ‘See, now he sees sense.’

Raj put down his scalpel and tweezers and stepped away from the table. ‘Can I at least change?’ he asked, taking off his mask and gloves.

Jaffar shook his head. ‘We’ve got clothes in the camp,’ he said. He gestured with his gun. ‘Outside.’

Raj took off his gown and dropped it on the table. He threw Eloias a last worried look, and they headed out. The three armed men took him down the corridor and into the main reception area where a fourth man had herded a dozen patients into a corner and was covering them with his gun.

‘Bring painkillers and shit,’ Sid said to Raj.

‘We need all our medicines here,’ said Raj. ‘We don’t have any to spare.’

Jaffar levelled his AK-47 at Raj’s stomach. ‘Bruv, I’ll quite happily put a bullet in you now and see if your colleague can follow instructions without mouthing off.’

‘Okay, okay,’ said Raj. He grabbed a backpack and went along to the supply room. He grabbed a selection of painkillers, then threw in some bandages and dressings.

They went outside where a rusting pick-up truck was waiting, its engine running. Another armed man stood by it, his Kalashnikov at the ready. ‘Get in,’ said Sid.

Raj climbed into the back of the truck. The armed men got in after him. The guy who had been waiting for them got into the front passenger seat and the truck drove off in a cloud of dust.

CHAPTER 12

There were forty men in the hangar, chatting and joking, the buzz of their conversations echoing off the metal walls. They were all wearing military fatigues but without any markings. They had handguns and tasers in holsters and most had Heckler & Koch carbines in their hands or on their backs. They fell silent as the man leading the operation walked in. His name was Colin Bell and he had served in Delta Force for almost two decades before losing a hand to a sniper’s bullet in Afghanistan. His left hand was replaced by a prosthesis or a more serviceable hook, depending on his circumstances. Today he had installed the hook. He walked over to three whiteboards at one side of the hangar, which was part of Incirlik Air Base, thirty kilometres inland from the Mediterranean Sea in the city of Adana. The airbase had a single three thousand-metre runway and hardened aircraft shelters and was where America stored tactical nuclear weapons in case they were needed in the region. There were about five thousand US airmen at the base, but the men in the hangar didn’t work for the military. They were all contractors and their CVs covered many of the world’s most dangerous spots, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

Bell surveyed them with his cold blue eyes, then flashed a tight smile. He wasn’t a man to waste time on small talk or preamble and he got straight to the point. ‘You will be working in ten groups of four, with call signs Alpha through Juliett. Each group of four will have two men with tasers. The aim of this operation is to bring the eight targets out of the camp and back here. There are more than a hundred men in the camp, but we will be there in darkness with full night vision gear so we will have the advantage.’

He walked over to a satellite map of the area which had been taped to a whiteboard, and tapped it with his hook. ‘There is a hill behind the camp. Day and night there are sentries on the hill, keeping watch. There are four and they do three-hour shifts. They stay in the same places each night and they do not have night vision gear. Groups Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta will have one sniper each and they will approach first to take out the sentries. Once the sentries have been neutralised the groups all move in.’

He went over to another whiteboard where there was a hand-drawn map of the camp, with the main buildings labelled. He pointed at four small circles on the periphery of the camp. ‘There are no fences or walls around the camp, but these four sentry placements define the perimeter. They are manned day and night and need to be taken out with silenced weapons or knives before we move into the camp itself.’

He tapped a square on which had been written ‘ADMIN’, the hook making a loud click that carried across the room. ‘This is where the leaders stay most of the time, and it also serves as a medical facility and weapons storage area. We’ve no interest in a softly-softly approach there. Hotel and India groups will take out the occupants of this block, with no need for tasers.’ He pointed at another, larger square. ‘This is a barracks and is probably where our targets will be. There are two entrances, front and back. We haven’t been able to see inside but at night there are eighty or more men in there. We don’t know if they have beds or bunks or if they sleep on the floor. Echo, Foxtrot, Golf and Juliett are to take this block. It’ll be sixteen against eighty but it’ll be pitch dark in there and we’ll have the element of surprise. Once those teams are in, Alpha through Delta can join them. Use tasers to take them down, zipties to bind them and once the block is secure, separate the wheat from the chaff.’

One of the men raised his hand. ‘What about the chaff, Colonel? What do we do with them?’ Even though Bell had left Delta Force five years earlier, the men who had worked with him still used his rank.

‘Leave them bound. We’ll be picked up by the chopper so they won’t be a threat. But remember, these are hardened ISIS fanatics; there’s no need to use kid gloves and no one will care about casualties on their side. This is not a military operation, it’s not about racking up bodies, we just want the targets. Do you all have the cards?’

The men nodded. Several held up sets of small plastic cards on which were printed the faces and details of the men they were after. There were eight in all. On the back of each card was the name of the target and any details that might help identify them.

‘Seven of the men are the standard ISIS profile – young, male, brown-skinned and bearded,’ said Bell.’ A few have scars, which are mentioned on the cards. One is Caucasian. His real name is Gary Wilkinson but he now goes by the name of Mohammed Siddiq. Just to be clear, this isn’t an intelligence-gathering operation, so don’t bring anything other than the targets. No phones, no belongings, just the men. Don’t answer any questions they have, keep all communication to a minimum. Once we have the camp under our control I will call in the chopper to evacuate us back here. Any questions?’

He was faced with shaking heads and shrugs. ‘Excellent.’ He looked at the rugged Breitling on his wrist. ‘Right, the night is darkest between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. and the camp is a ninety-minute flight from here. Our drop zone is eight kilometres downwind of the camp so they won’t hear us coming. I’m assuming that even in the dark and over rough terrain we’ll cover the distance in about ninety minutes, so we’ll be leaving here at twenty-two hundred hours. In the meantime check all your equipment over, paying particular attention to the batteries of the tasers and the night vision goggles. And just to remind you, this mission is one hundred per cent covert. No selfies, no trophies, and when it’s over, no war stories. You’ve all signed non-disclosure agreements, I know, but if anyone starts blabbing, it won’t be lawyers you have to deal with.’