Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

‘What do we do with that?’ Bethany said, pointing at the pallet.

‘We take it with us,’ Danny said. ‘Dump it somewhere else. If anybody comes across it in this location, chances are they’ll start nosing around and find where I’ve buried the chutes.’

‘How are we going to carry it?’

‘ We’re not going to carry it,’ Danny said. ‘ You’re going to carry it.’ He climbed off the quad bike and took the night-vision gear from one of the day packs. ‘We’ll be driving blind,’ he told her as he fitted one set of goggles to her helmet. ‘No headlamps. The moon’s pretty bright, but we might need these.’

Bethany pulled the goggles over her eyes, looked around for a few seconds, then raised them and stared at Danny. ‘They suit you,’ she said.

Danny ignored her. He loaded the day packs on to the bike. ‘Get on,’ he said.

Bethany mounted the bike. Danny lifted the pallet, upended it and handed it to her so it was positioned vertically with one edge resting on her lap. He took the driving seat again. ‘This isn’t easy to hold,’ Bethany complained.

‘I guess not,’ Danny said. He checked the quad bike’s GPS unit. It was set to night mode, so it gave off very little light. The coordinates of their destination were pre-set, and it gave them an estimated journey time of three hours. That meant they would hit the Roman ruins just before dawn, assuming they didn’t encounter any problems on the way.

They moved off, slowly at first but with increasing speed as Danny got a feel for the terrain and the level of light. The moon was sufficiently bright to cast a faint shadow from the quad bike, which trundled quietly over the rough ground. Only after they’d been going for five minutes did Danny stop and allow Bethany to discard the pallet. It broke up a little as she threw it to the ground. Danny drove off again immediately.

His senses were keen. He scanned the horizon as he drove, aware of Bethany watching to the side and behind them now that she no longer had to handle the pallet. There was something strangely reassuring about her manner. Bethany was a difficult, dangerous woman, but Danny had almost forgotten what a capable operator she was. At least as capable as many of the guys back at Hereford. He respected her, in a peculiar way.

He drove without the aid of his NV goggles for twenty minutes. But then a bank of cloud drifted across the moon, severely limiting his vision. He lowered the goggles and viewed the world through a green haze. The NV gave him a good sense of the detail of his surroundings. Small undulations in the terrain became more distinct and he could make out straggly patches of low brush. The use of goggles for extended periods could be tiring on the eyes, but right now it was necessary.

Half an hour passed. In the distance, maybe three hundred metres away, there was a road heading east-west. Danny’s preprogrammed GPS route took them that way, but they had to stay clear of the road itself, dressed and tooled up like this. Danny turned right a hundred metres before they met it, then followed the road’s direction without getting any closer to it.

The road was deserted, which made sense. It was a minor road leading straight to the Israeli border and into the West Bank. Any normal person wanting to travel in that direction would be safer taking a properly policed main supply route. A journey into that territory could go either way. It just depended if it was one of those days when the Arabs and the Israelis were taking chunks out of each other. But deserted or not, Danny kept to the unmade desert. There might be Jordanian police vehicles in the area. There might be Hezbollah militants. There might be ordinary citizens. None of them would react well to the presence of two British operatives. Much better to remain unseen.

Danny raised his NV goggles to relieve the strain on his eyes and allow some of his natural night vision to return. The moon was hazy but not completely obscured. There was just enough light to see by. He focused on the ground ahead. It had become slightly bumpier and required more of his attention.

Which was why he didn’t see the threat until Bethany alerted him. ‘Over there!’ she hissed.

Danny brought the quad bike to a sudden halt and killed the engine. Bethany was pointing up towards the road. They had been travelling parallel to it, but now it was curving round to the south. If they continued on the same trajectory, they would hit it in about 200 metres. Danny cursed himself for his momentary lack of awareness. Parked up by the road were several vehicles: at least three, perhaps more hidden behind those he could see. A saloon car. Two heavy trucks. There was movement of personnel around the trucks. Danny raised his night sight and surveyed the scene.

Something was going down. The men moving around the vehicles – Danny counted four of them – were armed. Two had rifles. Two had something heavier – RPG launchers, Danny guessed, though it was hard to be certain. Shamags covered their heads and they were facing away from the vehicles, out into the desert, in Danny and Bethany’s direction. They were obviously guarding whatever was in the trucks.

And they had just as obviously clocked the quad bike and its two passengers.

They started shouting at each other. Hoarse, curt instructions in Arabic that travelled clearly across the still desert air. Danny recognised the tone of these shouts, even if he couldn’t discern the words. He knew that he and Bethany were about to come under fire. He swore under his breath, twisted round and, with all the force he could muster, pushed her from the bike. Danny grabbed his C8 as she fell to the ground, leapt off the other side of the bike and crawled quickly away from it. ‘Keep down!’ he shouted, pressing himself as closely as possible to the ground. ‘Get away from the bike! Contact!’

The distant fizz of an RPG launch was a sound Danny knew well. Every time he’d heard it in the past it had given him the same sensation: the bite of anticipation and fear, not knowing how or where the grenade would land, or what damage its shrapnel would inflict. Tonight, the fizz triggered a specific memory. He was back in north-eastern Syria, with eyes on an abandoned prison, and his team were unexpectedly under fire from a Russian ambush. For the briefest moment, he saw not the enemy before him, but a flashback of his burned and mangled unit mates, encased in coffins of twisted metal. He saw missiles hurtling through the air. He saw himself crouched in a cramped culvert as an earth-shaking fast air strike detonated above him.

He was there, and not here.

An explosion returned him to the present as the RPG hit the quad bike. The impact shook Danny from his moment of inattention. He felt a sour wave of self-loathing at his lack of focus as shrapnel showered around him and a second RPG flew towards the quad bike.

His training kicked in. Instinct. Situational awareness. He didn’t know who these people were or why they had engaged him and Bethany. He didn’t know if they had been expecting them, or if they were simply in the wrong place or the wrong time. But none of that mattered. All that mattered was the fight, and right now Danny was at the wrong end of it. That had to change. The second RPG hit the quad bike, knocking it back. As another shower of shrapnel fell, he heard the unmistakeable bang of an exploding tyre. The quad bike was fucked. But it told him one thing: the enemy targets were focusing on the bike. It suggested that they couldn’t see Danny and Bethany. Here, exposed and in open ground, that was their only strategic advantage. He had to make use of it, and quickly.

‘Stay down!’ he told Bethany. ‘Don’t move! If you move, they’ll see you!’

There was no response from Bethany. He couldn’t see her and had no idea if she was hit. He suspected not. He knew how a person screamed when they’d been injured by hot shrapnel. Not even Bethany, cold-hearted and self-controlled as she was, would be able to suppress that kind of pain. And if she had been hit? There was nothing he could do. Priorities. He had to deal with the threat first.