Stephen Leather - The Hunting

After prayers they had been taken to the tent where the food had been put out on rugs, and they had been waiting almost half an hour.

‘What do you think they’ll get us to do next?’ asked Mohammed Siddiq. Siddiq was the only white member of the group. He had sandy brown hair, and a soft blond fuzz around his cheeks and chin, his best attempt at cultivating a beard. Mohammed Siddiq was the name he’d been given by the imam at the west London mosque where he had converted, though most people called him Sid. He had been christened Gary Wilkinson. His father was an Amazon delivery driver and his mother sold health supplements online from their home in Kilburn. His parents had disowned him after he had become a Muslim in his late teens, and had gone as far as reporting him on the terrorist hotline. MI5 had put him on their watchlist but by then he had already left the country, heading initially to Pakistan where he had crossed the border into Afghanistan and been accepted into an ISIS group.

‘Bloody hell, Sid, we’ve only just got back,’ laughed Amer Qasim. Amer had been in the camp in Afghanistan with Sid, and was also from London, and the two men had bonded immediately.

‘We need to keep the momentum going,’ said Jaffar. ‘Strike while the iron’s hot. Come on, bruv, you know I’m right. Look at all the kafirs we killed and we don’t have a scratch on us, Allah be praised.’

‘It was wicked, no question,’ said Erol. ‘I got fifteen. Ten men and five bitches.’

‘You were counting?’ asked Sid.

‘Fuck, yeah. Weren’t you?’

Sid shook his head. ‘I was just firing you know?’ He mimed putting an AK-47 to his shoulder and firing, bang-bang-bang .

‘I was counting,’ said Abdullah Rarmoul, a lanky Somalian with a shaved head and a baleful stare. ‘I got nine.’

‘Only nine?’ laughed Erol. ‘What the fuck were you doing?’

‘They were running by the time I got my gun out of my bag,’ said Abdullah. ‘Running like the dogs they are. And by the time I got to the hotel everyone was dead. It was only when I got up to the second floor that I found kafirs to shoot and then I ran out of ammo.’

‘It is not a competition, brothers,’ said Faaz. ‘We were a team. And we were a successful team. That is all that matters.’

An old man with a straggly grey beard and a knitted skullcap on his head appeared at the tent entrance. He was wearing a grey-and-white-striped kaftan and was holding a chain of Muslim prayer beads. Faaz leapt to his feet and the others quickly followed. The imam smiled and embraced Faaz. ‘ Subhan Allah , Alhamdulillah , Allahu Akbah ,’ he said. ‘Glory to Allah, all praise belongs to Allah, Allah is the greatest.’

‘We are honoured to serve Allah in all his glory,’ said Faaz.

The imam patted Faaz on the cheek. His eyes were burning with a fierce intensity. ‘This is only the start,’ he said. He hugged Faaz again, and then the imam embraced the other seven men in the tent one by one. ‘You have done Islam a great service,’ he said. ‘You have killed the infidels and shown the world the power that men of pure heart can wield. You should take pride in what you have achieved, and know that you will be blessed by your actions.’

‘We want to do more,’ said Jaffar. ‘Send us out again. We’re ready, we’re as ready as fuck.’

Faaz held up his hand. ‘Brother, you need to contain your enthusiasm.’

The imam smiled and patted Faaz on the shoulder. ‘That’s all right, Faaz,’ he said. ‘You are all excited, I understand that. Your mission was a complete success, a perfect victory. The adrenaline will be coursing through your veins. But yesterday was a success because it was planned to perfection. It was perfectly executed, true, but the planning took months. We will not rush into another mission because when we rush, we make mistakes. Another mission is being planned, and trust me brothers, you will not be waiting long. We want to punish the Europeans for helping the Americans murder our people and you will help us to do that.’

Jaffar punched the air. ‘Yes!’ he said.

‘And while we wait we will continue with your training. We need to widen your expertise. We shall be showing you how to construct explosive devices, for example.’

Erol grinned. ‘Cool,’ he said.

‘We also need you to pass on your knowledge to the others about how you were so successful in Cyprus. There are always lessons to be learnt and you have much to teach.’

The men nodded respectfully.

‘I will leave you to your meal now, brothers,’ said the imam. ‘You have earnt it.’ He smiled, revealing yellowed teeth and gums speckled with small sores, then turned and left.

Jaffar sat down, grabbed a lamb kebab and began to gnaw on it hungrily. The others also sat down and began reaching for food.

‘You know what I really want?’ said Abdullah.

‘KF fucking C,’ said Salmaan Yousif, who was Abdullah’s cousin. Both men had been born in war-torn Somalia but had Dutch passports and had lived for many years in London. Salmaan – known as Sal – was shorter than his cousin and his left cheek had a wicked scar running from his eye to his jaw. ‘It’s all you ever fucking want.’

‘KFC is halal so I don’t see why they can’t sell it in Syria,’ said Abdullah. ‘The food here is shit.’

‘We’re not here for the food, Jaffar,’ said Mohammed Elsheikh. He was a Pakistani but travelled on a Belgian passport. ‘We’re here for jihad.’

‘I know that, Mo. I’m just saying, would it kill them to open a few KFCs?’

‘We’ve got chicken,’ said Faaz, pointing at a dozen or so cubes of white meat on a tin plate.

‘How do you know that’s chicken?’ asked Abdullah, squinting at the plate. ‘That could be cat or dog for all I know. Have you seen any chickens in the camp? Because I haven’t.’

Faaz sighed. ‘We have proper cooks here, they would not serve us cat or dog.’ He picked up a piece of meat, popped it into his mouth and chewed it.

Sal grabbed a lamb kebab. ‘At least I know this is lamb,’ he said, and took a bite.

Sid barked like a dog and everyone except Abdullah and Faaz laughed.

‘Brothers, you should not be making fun of the food we have been given,’ said Faaz. ‘It is disrespectful.’

The men stopped laughing and concentrated on eating.

‘Where do you think they will send us?’ asked Sid.

‘They will not tell us until the last moment,’ said Faaz.

‘Sure, but he said Europe,’ said Mo. ‘He doesn’t mean England does he?’

‘It would be harder to get the guns in the UK,’ said Jaffar. ‘I think mainland Europe is what he meant. The south of France, maybe. Lots of tourists there, easy pickings.’

Amer shook his head. ‘Spain,’ he said. ‘It’ll be Spain. Marbella. Full of rich white kafirs, and Morocco is only a few kilometres across the sea.’

‘Gibraltar’s even closer,’ said Jaffar. ‘And it’s British.’

Faaz held up his hand. ‘Brothers, it is not for us to predict where we will be used, it is our role to carry out the tasks we have been given to the best of our abilities.’ He waved his hand at the food. ‘Eat, we will need our strength for what is to come.’

Amer grabbed another lamb kebab. He took a bite and then frowned. ‘The imam said we’ll be training with explosives. What do you think he means?’

‘The stuff that goes bang,’ said Jaffar. He mimed an explosion with his hands.

‘Yeah, but what sort of explosives is he talking about? We’ve already done loads of training with bombs. Does he mean suicide vests?’

‘That’d be wicked,’ said Erol. ‘Fucking blowing kafirs into the next world.’