Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

Malick cocked his head and gave him a queer look. ‘Dad,’ he said, ‘you’re never like this.’

Hamoud understood what his boy meant. That he was never happy like this. His innocent observation made Hamoud catch his breath. He crouched down so that he was at his son’s level and put one hand on his cheek. He said nothing, but realised he was experiencing a moment of clarity, of lightness, that had eluded him for years. For the first time almost since he could remember, there was no feeling of anxiety, or dread, or paranoia in his chest. There was just gladness and optimism, and he made a pact with himself to try to keep hold of those feelings.

But they didn’t last long.

As he stood up, he saw another character standing by a kiosk that sold Coke and corn dogs. Hamoud only knew that the character was called Goofy because the kids had watched him on TV. Goofy was alone. None of the other punters had approached. There was something about this character that kept people away. Hamoud could feel it. He had comedic, oversized white gloves. He had removed one of them and was clutching it under his other arm. With his free hand he held up a cell phone. Hamoud had the unnerving feeling that this man was taking his photograph.

If that was true, it was done in a second. Goofy dropped his phone into the front pocket of the waistcoat he wore. Then he slipped the glove back on to his hand. He made no obvious attempt to get away immediately. Instead, he did the opposite: he stood his ground and waved enthusiastically at Hamoud and his family. The children waved back. Goofy threw back his head in a gesture of hysterical laughter. He rubbed his ribs as though deeply tickled. Then, with another wave, he skipped off, and disappeared into the crowds.

‘Did you see that?’ Hamoud asked Rabia.

‘See what?’

Rabia’s expression stopped him. Please don’t do this , it seemed to say. For the children’s sake.

He looked back after Goofy, but the character was nowhere to be seen. His son was pulling him by the arm, desperate to get started. ‘Nothing,’ Hamoud said. ‘It was nothing. Space Mountain!’

The family made its way further into the park.

The smugglers’ lorry handled the desert terrain far better than the Nissan had. They sat in a line at the front, Danny at the wheel, the General next to him, Bethany by the passenger window. The atmosphere had changed. Bethany, who up until now had been engaged and proactive, was distracted. She once again held the GPS unit, and occasionally gave Danny an instruction to alter his direction of travel. Other than that, she gazed out of the window and said nothing. Danny guessed she was thinking about her boy, and when she might next see him. Until this evening she’d had a road map: kill the General, escape Amman, get home, see the kid. That plan had been blown apart. No wonder she was pensive. She would be wondering what was going to happen next. If she would be allowed home. Danny had quickly briefed her about the intel they’d extracted from Turgenev. She had listened intently, but he suspected she was merely calculating how it affected her. She couldn’t know that the change in circumstances had led to a change in her own fortunes. Danny wasn’t going to waste her now that the nature of the mission had changed. He would wait until his orders were updated.

The vibe between Danny and the General had changed too. There’s a closeness you only get from fighting alongside someone. It wouldn’t make them friends for life. Nothing like. Danny was a Regiment grunt, O’Brien was top brass. Different people, different worlds. But there was a bond of sorts. A wary camaraderie. They had respect for each other, even though it was not articulated. Danny didn’t agree with the General’s refusal to reveal the location of the deepfake footage. But he knew he wasn’t going to change the old guy’s mind and, deep down, he couldn’t deny the General had a point. Leaving a job like that to the politicians was not a way of making it happen. Some jobs you just had to do yourself.

The glow of the burning Nissan soon receded from the rear-view mirror. Danny once more negotiated the desert terrain by moonlight. He estimated that it was forty-five klicks to the drop zone where they could expect their pick-up. Two hours drive, off road. It was 01.30 hrs. It would get them on target with thirty minutes to spare.

‘Why would they move the date of the attack?’ the General said after they’d been driving in silence for half an hour.

Danny had no answer. Who could guess why people who would dream up a plan like that did anything?

‘It’s a common strategy,’ Bethany said. ‘If you bring forward the date of an attack at the last minute, it mitigates the risk of an information leak.’

‘Either that,’ the General said, ‘or they knew I was on to them.’

‘Maybe,’ Bethany said.

‘We still don’t know where, who or how,’ Danny said.

‘That’s why it’s so important I get to DC. If I expose the deepfakes before they happen, there’s no way they can go through with it.’

Danny put his head down and continued to drive.

He would never have recognised the drop zone at first. It was just a featureless patch of flat desert terrain. Hard-packed earth with a few scraggly weeds struggling their way through the cracks. Once they’d disembarked from the smuggler’s lorry, however, he noted the wadi where they’d dug in the chutes and he knew for certain they were in the right place. He scanned the surrounding area with his night sight, checking for threats. But there was nothing. The drop zone had been chosen for its isolated location, and it had been chosen well.

‘When they get here,’ Danny said, ‘they’re not going to want to stick around. They’re sending in a stealth chopper, so my guess is they’ll have breached Israeli and Jordanian airspace without permission. They won’t want anybody to get a whiff of what’s going on. Be ready to board as soon as the skids are on the ground.’

The General leaned against the front of the lorry. He stared at his shoes, his eyes narrowed, his face calculating.

Bethany said, ‘Where will they take us?’

‘My guess would be Cyprus,’ Danny told her.

‘They’ll put me on a flight home from there?’

‘That’s up to them. Not my call.’

‘You’ll tell them that I was going to do what they wanted?’ For a killer, she sounded weirdly vulnerable. ‘You’ll make sure I see my son again?’

‘I’ll tell them what happened,’ Danny said. They fell into silence.

Danny didn’t expect to hear the chopper until it was almost upon them. The stealth capability of a Black Hawk kept the noise of the rotors to an absolute minimum. He saw it, though, a black ink spot against millions of stars, flying low towards their position. And gradually, the sound became audible. The flight crew selected an LZ approximately thirty metres from their position. As the chopper touched down, Danny could discern the pointed, angular shape that allowed it to cause minimum radar splash. The side door was closed, of course. That was necessary for the stealth capability. It opened the instant the chopper was on the ground, by which time Danny, Bethany and the General were jogging towards it. Two members of the flight crew in camo gear ushered them urgently into the aircraft. If they were surprised by the sight of this mismatched trio – Danny still in his battered, dirty business suit, Bethany dishevelled in her once glamorous two-piece, the General in the bloodied gear they’d stolen from the dead Wagner Group guy – they didn’t show it. They simply secured the chopper again. By the time Danny and the others were seated in the dark interior of the Black Hawk, they were already airborne and speeding west out of Jordan.