Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

‘Oh sure,’ the General said. ‘Two birds, one stone. The President gets to put in a puppet to control the army, the Russians get to control the conflict in the Middle East. Lot of good reasons for sending a hot chick with a razor blade into my hotel room. Doesn’t mean they know I’m on to them about the deepfakes.’

‘Where’s the footage?’ Danny said. ‘Have you uploaded it somewhere?’

‘I guess there’s a reason you’re a soldier and not a software engineer,’ the General said.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘He can’t store it on the cloud,’ Bethany said. ‘Not something like this. The FSB, the NSA, they’d be all over it.’

‘Your little lady’s right,’ said the General. ‘Only time to put that material on the internet is when I want to make it public. And that has to be at a time of my own choosing. Poliakov gave me the footage on a memory stick, and that’s where it stays. I don’t transfer it to any computer or any device connected to the internet.’

‘So where’s the memory stick?’ Danny asked.

The General didn’t reply.

‘You’re going to have to tell us sometime,’ Danny said. ‘Sooner or later. You know we’ll get it out of you if you don’t.’

‘You threatening me, soldier?’

Danny didn’t reply. Another silence filled the car.

‘It’s back in DC,’ the General said finally. ‘Safe.’

‘Where in DC?’

‘You’re persistent, Black,’ the General said. ‘I like that in a soldier. But you might as well stop asking me that question. It’s somewhere safe is all I’m saying. And before you make any more veiled threats of enhanced interrogation, remember that as soon as you deliver me up to your superiors, this ceases to be your problem. I’m still a five-star American general, and right now your bosses are working out how to stab each other in the back and shift the blame for ordering an assassination attempt on me. They’re not going to make a bad situation worse.’

Danny thought of Sturrock and he knew the General was right.

An overhead road sign directed them towards various suburbs of Amman, including As-Salt, which told him that they were heading in the right direction: north-west. Time check: 20.58 hrs. Seven hours till they needed to be at the pick-up point, which Danny estimated was still thirty miles away. There were tenement blocks on either side of them, but the road ahead was clear, and he had just increased his speed from thirty to forty when it happened.

The vehicle was a BMW X5. It had been on Danny’s shoulder in the other lane of the dual carriageway for no longer than thirty seconds. But in that moment, every instinct he possessed shrieked at him. Everything was wrong. The X5 was accelerating up the inside. Its windows were tinted and, as it sped up, the rear passenger window was sliding down. ‘ Duck! ’ Danny shouted. ‘ Now! ’

Both Bethany and the General reacted quickly. Bethany slumped in her seat. The General crouched. Danny had only a fraction of a second to strategise. He could accelerate further, but the X5 was the faster vehicle and would surely catch them up. Better to slam the brakes. Force the X5 to overtake at the moment of Danny’s choosing. It would put them momentarily and unexpectedly in the line of fire as the two cars came alongside each other again, but the shooter would be disorientated and the shot would be almost impossible. Danny checked his rear-view mirror. The car behind – a white hatchback, no indication that it was hostile – was twenty-five metres away. He allowed the X5 to creep closer in the adjacent lane. Its nose was in line with the back of his vehicle. In his wing mirror, he could just see the muzzle of firearm protruding half an inch from the open window, preparing to take the shot when they came alongside.

He hit the brakes hard. The tyres screeched on the road and the handling became loose. The X5 whizzed past. Danny caught sight of the shooter: shaved head, leathery skin. Not Arab. More than likely a Wagner Group Russian. He had a long-barrelled pistol, suppressed. Then he was out of sight ahead of them and all Danny could see was the firearm protruding from the rear passenger window. A muzzle flash as it fired, too late, across the road.

There was the sudden, urgent sound of a horn increasing in volume from behind. The white hatchback was closing in fast. He yanked the steering wheel to position the vehicle into the other lane, behind the X5. The white hatchback shot past, its horn still blaring. The X5’s brake lights lit up. The distance between the two vehicles quickly closed from fifteen metres to five. The shooter was leaning out of his window, now aiming backwards towards Danny’s vehicle, weapon raised, ready to take a shot directly at the windscreen.

There was an exit up ahead. Thirty metres. Danny yanked the steering wheel again, manoeuvring his vehicle to the exit. He saw another muzzle flash in his peripheral vision and this time the pistol’s bullet was not harmless. It slammed into the windscreen of another small car that had innocently found itself behind the X5. As Danny accelerated towards the exit, he saw the windscreen shatter. The small car veered sideways and collided with another vehicle. A third car smashed into the back. A pile-up was happening on the dual carriageway behind them, but Danny couldn’t focus on that. The driver of the X5 had realised that Danny was making for the exit. He was swerving too, heading for the same exit. But he was too far ahead. He couldn’t cross the traffic to make the exit in time. Danny could. As he left the dual carriageway, he half-watched the X5 speed out of sight, away from the pile-up. Then the exit road twisted round to the left and Danny had to brake heavily to avoid a collision of his own with another vehicle in front.

‘What the hell?’ the General shouted. ‘Won’t you keep a handle on this goddamn vehicle?’

Danny didn’t answer immediately. His ears were filled with more horns sounding at him as he brought the vehicle back down to a safe speed while checking ahead, back, behind for any more threats. They were on a much narrower road now, which was winding uphill into one of the busy districts on the outskirts of Amman. They were heading south-west, which took them in the opposite direction to their route out of the city centre towards the RV point. Sweat was collecting in the nape of Danny’s neck. His mouth was dry. He inhaled deeply to bring down his pulse, forced himself to think rationally. Only then did he speak.

‘They know which vehicle we’re in,’ he said. ‘They’re tracking us somehow.’

‘A tracking device on the car,’ said Bethany. She sounded a damn sight calmer than the General.

‘It’s possible. Even if there isn’t, they know our registration number. We can’t guarantee they don’t have contacts in the Amman police.’

‘What do we do?’ Bethany said.

‘We need a different car,’ Danny said. ‘And we need it now.’

EIGHTEEN

Cincinnati, Ohio. 13.30 hrs, Eastern Standard Time

Hamoud and his family were not used to airports.

They stood close to each other as if for protection. Almost touching, but not quite. Even Melissa was quiet. They had a single shabby suitcase between them, the only one they owned. Rabia had carefully packed it with the family’s clothes, old but clean and neatly pressed. They each wore more layers of clothing than they really needed, to save space. Hamoud himself had eschewed the robe he normally wore to prevent his scars hurting, in favour of three tops and a jacket. They were all too large for his bony frame, as were his jeans. He would be much too hot when they arrived in Orlando, but the concourse here at Cincinnati Airport was air-conditioned and he was so thin that he sometimes found it difficult to keep warm. For now, he was glad of the extra layers.