Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

Danny hesitated. The man had very broad shoulders and he’d just noticed a scar on the right-hand side of his nose.

‘Why didn’t my mummy come with you?’ he said.

‘Her car broke down on the way.’

‘I have to tell my teacher.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said the man. ‘We’ll get soaked if we don’t get back to my car.’ He pulled a mobile phone from his pocket. ‘We’ll call your mum, shall we?’

‘Okay,’ said Danny.

‘I’m parked just down here. Want to hold the umbrella?’ He handed it to Danny, who had to walk on tiptoes and hold it aloft in order to cover them both. The man offered Danny his free hand.

‘I thought you were going to call my mummy.’

‘I’ve got her number in here somewhere,’ the man said, swiping the screen. He took Danny’s hand in his and started to walk away from the school. There was a firmness to his grip and Danny found he had to walk quickly to keep up. The man showed him the phone as if to indicate that he’d located his mum’s number then put it to his ear. They turned a corner at the end of the street, into a tree-lined avenue with cars parked on both sides. ‘She’s not answering,’ said the man. ‘We’ll try her again in a minute.’

Danny stopped. ‘Where did you get her umbrella from?’ he said.

‘She lent it to me. Didn’t want you getting wet. You know what mums are like, hey?’

‘She keeps it in the car,’ Danny said.

He might only be six, but he wasn’t stupid. He could tell the man was lying. He tried to release himself from his grip, but he couldn’t. The big hand enveloped his and the man was too strong. Danny wriggled. ‘Let go of me!’ he said. And then he shouted it: ‘ Let go of me! ’ The noise of the rain against the umbrella was loud and the nearest person was on the other side of the street. He knew nobody had heard him.

The man didn’t reply. He put his phone back in his pocket and gripped Danny’s hand a little harder. Danny tried to stop walking, to drag his heels. It made no difference to the man, who walked faster, pulling Danny along the pavement. Danny tried to hit him with the umbrella, but the man simply grabbed the umbrella back.

Danny started to cry. He wanted to scream, but suddenly found he was too scared to do it. It was like someone had punched him in the stomach. He could barely catch his breath through the sobs. He looked back over his shoulder, hoping somebody might see them. But nobody did. There were very few people in the street. Those that were had their heads down and their umbrellas up. Danny was invisible to them.

Up ahead, there was a white van. The rear windows were blacked out. As they approached it, in the side mirror Danny saw the reflection of somebody watching in the passenger seat. The door opened and the person stepped out. He looked similar to Andy. The same broad shoulders. The same thick neck. But he wasn’t smiling. He closed the passenger door and banged against the side of the white van with a clenched fist. The rear doors opened, by which time the new guy had grabbed Danny’s other arm. Danny wriggled and writhed even more strenuously. He even managed to shout out despite his breathlessness. But he was completely overpowered by the two men. They lifted him from the pavement while Danny’s kicks simply bounced off their shins. They manoeuvred him over a puddle of water that had collected by the kerb and towards the back of the van. Through his tears, Danny saw two more men in the vehicle, but it was gloomy in there so he couldn’t fully make out their features. All he heard was a gruff voice saying: ‘Get him in!’

Danny knew he only had one last chance. He screamed as loudly as he could, then raised his legs and struck Andy with all the force he could muster. He obviously hurt him, because Andy said, ‘Little shit!’

One of the guys in the van said, ‘Just throw him in!’

The two men hurled him into the van. Roughly. He caught his foot on a lip in the doorway. It caused his body to twist and he hit his head hard, once on the side of the van and a second time on the floor.

And that was the last Danny knew of his abduction.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ said KitKat.

They called him that because he only has four fingers on his right hand, like the chocolate bar. His thumb was missing in action, last seen spinning through the air when his SBS team were providing a training package to a group of rebels in the DRC. He’d been demonstrating how to use a Russian landmine as a booby trap when it went off prematurely, earning him not only a nickname, but also the loss of sight in one eye and a career henceforth limited to carrying out the SBS’s donkey work. Work like this, abducting a six-year-old kid.

Nobody joined the SBS to abduct six-year-old kids.

‘Fuck’s sake !’ KitKat repeated. What were they playing at? There was nothing to the boy. Why did they have to throw him in so hard? KitKat winced when he saw the kid’s head hit the side of the van. His neck had jarred to the right and there might even have been a crack, he wasn’t sure. He lurched forward to catch him, but too late. The boy had gone limp and his head slammed hard against the floor.

The kid lay there, still as a corpse. One of his feet was still poking through the door opening. ‘Get him in!’ said the guy outside. KitKat grabbed the kid’s shoulders and pulled him further into the van as the doors slammed shut and they were plunged into darkness. Rain hammered on the roof and the engine turned over. By the time KitKat had pulled his Maglite torch from his pocket, the van had pulled away. He shone the torch at the kid and rolled him over on to his back.

Every special forces operator is well trained in field medicine. The training kicks in when it’s needed. Automatic. Instinctive. KitKat reached out with his good hand and placed his index and middle fingers against the kid’s neck. He knew he wouldn’t find a pulse. When you’d seen as many corpses as he had, you learned to recognise the signs. The rictus of the mouth. The heavy stillness of the body. KitKat went through the motions, blowing rescue breaths into the kid’s mouth, performing chest compressions. But he knew it was hopeless. The kid was dead. Roughed up by a four-man SBS unit whose instructions had been to abduct him and keep him safe.

‘ Fuck’s sake! ’ he said for a third time as he gave up on the CPR. He turned to his mate who was watching from the corner of the van. ‘He’s a fucking goner,’ he spat. ‘And we’re toast.’

He slammed a fist against the inside of the van in frustration. The van accelerated. KitKat switched off the torch. He didn’t want to look at the boy’s pale face any more than was necessary.

THREE

Back in the day, when Danny Black had first joined the Regiment, an old-timer told him that there were two kinds of SAS men. The ones whose minds gave up before their bodies and the ones whose bodies gave up before their minds. Danny was beginning to think that he was the latter.

That wasn’t to say he slept easy. How could anyone do that, when they’d seen the things he had? The Zero 22 debacle was a week old and it stuck with him. The image of Bullethead’s burned face kept returning. He’d visited Dougie’s missus. He’d put on a clean shirt and even shaved. His face had felt naked after months of wearing a beard on ops. There’d been no sign of Dougie’s daughter, but Danny couldn’t help noticing the precious new iPhone that had so worried her dad. It was sitting on the kitchen table in a Hello Kitty case.

But there was no doubting that his body was sore and tired, much more so than it would have been during his early days in the Regiment. His shoulder still ached where the Russian had hit him. The bruising on his face had only just started to fade and his ears were still clogged. Back at base, they’d offered him a little R and R, but he’d turned it down. He preferred to keep his fitness sharp, his strength and endurance at their peak. It wasn’t his style to put his feet up.