Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

Even so, he was surprised to get the call.

He’d clocked in to base early, ready for a morning on the range. One of the clerks who manned the Kremlin – the inner sanctum of RAF Credenhill, where the CO and all the other Ruperts had their offices – approached him outside the B Squadron hangar and told him his presence was required in briefing room C at 09.30 hrs. He made his way there alone, ignoring the looks from the administrative staff that followed him as he went. Word of the Zero 22 op had spread. Of course it had. The loss of thirteen men on a single mission was a wound the Regiment would carry for a long time. Danny knew that those inquisitive glances masked many different questions. Was Danny Black the hero of the hour for making it out alive, or was he in some way responsible for the death of the guys in his troop? Could he have done more to save them? Had he just saved his own skin?

Danny ignored those glances. They weren’t posing any questions he hadn’t asked himself. He was comfortable that he’d done all he could. Like he’d said in his debrief, they’d been ambushed by a heavily armed force that hit them hard and fast. He’d reported his suspicion that the enemy had been Russian. Maybe the Kurds had set them up. Who knows what impenetrable alliances existed in that part of the world. Bottom line: Zero 22 had been played by someone.

He knocked on the door of briefing room C. A suit with a funereal expression opened it, looked Danny up and down, then opened the door wider and indicated that he should enter. Danny stepped in. Aside from the suit who had opened the door, there were three other men in there. His CO, Mike Williamson, sat at a round table dressed in military camo. He had a handsome, leathery face and a pale scar on his chin. Danny liked him. To his left was George Attwood, Director Special Forces. Grey bushy hair, sparkling blue eyes. He had his hand over his mouth and Danny saw the old bullet wound that had scarred the space between his thumb and forefinger. Danny liked him too. To the CO’s right was a gaunt, skinny man with yellowing eyes and thinning black hair. An immaculate suit and a neat tie in an Oxford knot. His fingertips were pressed together and he watched Danny from over them. This was Alan Sturrock, Chief of MI6. When a patronising politician had suggested that the victims of Grenfell Tower had lacked common sense, Danny had shared the public’s distaste. At the same time, he had thought of Sturrock. That was the sort of thing he would say. Danny loathed him.

Danny felt a sense of déjà vu. Barely six months earlier, these three men had briefed Danny in the matter of Ibrahim Khan. It had led to an op with an MI6 agent called Bethany White, who had turned out not to be quite who she seemed. On the outside, an MI6 agent and single mother. On the inside, a killer of SAS men. Had Bethany White not been in possession of intelligence that could have deeply harmed MI6, and Alan Sturrock in particular, Danny would no doubt have received the order to kill her. But she had, and he hadn’t.

Danny would have preferred never to lay eyes on Sturrock again. Now here he was, giving him a smarmy smile as he opened a small bottle of lotion and started to moisturise his hands. ‘My dear chap,’ said Sturrock. ‘You’re looking very well, all things considered.’

Danny ignored him and addressed the CO. ‘You wanted to see me, boss?’

‘Sit down, Danny.’

‘I prefer to stand.’

‘Sit the fuck down, will you?’

Danny inclined his head and took a seat opposite the three men. Sturrock nodded to the suit at the door. He left the room. There was a moment of silence. Then George Attwood spoke. ‘I’m not going to sugar-coat it, Black. Questions are being asked about the Zero 22 clusterfuck. Plenty of bleeding-heart liberals in Whitehall think Hereford is a drain on the public purse. They’d love to use this as a reason to shut us down.’

‘Tell them I’m sorry my unit mates chose to die for their country before they’d earned out,’ Danny said.

‘I’d love to, Black. Believe you me, I’d love to.’ He glanced at the CO and Sturrock before continuing. ‘Zero 22 was compromised. Somebody knew you were coming. They were expecting you.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Danny replied.

‘I’m about to. That photograph of the enemy combatant that you took. We’ve had some people look at it. We think we have a positive ID.’

‘Russian?’ Danny said.

Attwood nodded. ‘Leonid Bogatov. Former Spetznaz . Retired in 2013 to join the Wagner Group.’

‘You’re aware of the Wagner Group?’ Sturrock asked.

Yeah, Danny was aware of the Wagner Group. It was a private military company, several thousand men strong, run and in part manned by former special forces agents. Except of course, like most PMCs, it wasn’t really private. The Wagner Group was in practice an extension of the Russian administration, called in to bolster their armed forces and to perform deniable operations. It existed to carry out the whims of the Russian president, and to cover the trail leading back to him.

Danny nodded.

‘We have a high degree of certainty that it was the Wagner Group who hit you,’ Attwood said.

‘Why?’

‘Two reasons.’

‘I’d have thought the first was obvious,’ Sturrock cut in. ‘You were extracting high-level Kurdish personnel. The Syrian regime wanted them dead and for us to lose our taste for defending them. The Russians are Syria’s de facto protectors.’ He gave Danny a thin smile. ‘Are you keeping up?’

Danny was more than keeping up. His mind was racing ahead. How could the Wagner Group possibly have known the details of Zero 22’s arrival? It was a secret SAS operation.

Attwood and the CO were watching him carefully. It was almost as if they could see his line of reasoning as it unfolded.

‘What’s the second reason?’ Danny said.

Sturrock held up a photograph. Danny caught his breath. The photograph showed a huge man standing in front of a sand-coloured Jeep with a desert background. He wore a camouflage jacket with the sleeves cut off. He had a black mohawk and prominent, grotesque scarring on one side of his shaved head, almost as if his veins and capillaries were on the outside of his skin. He was holding up the heads of two men by their hair. Their necks were cleanly severed, and the skin was not yet waxy, which told Danny that they were freshly executed. He recognised the man, of course. It was the guy he had fought in Syria. He recognised the victims too. They were young SAS men – Hal Robbins and Tommy Evans – who had been reported KIA some months ago.

‘Friend of yours?’ Sturrock asked.

‘That’s him,’ Danny said. He had described the man in his debrief.

‘His name is Alexander Turgenev. He’s a self-appointed colonel in the Wagner Group. He has quite a CV. Putting to one side the fact that he was responsible for the deaths of two SAS men—’

‘Fifteen SAS men,’ Danny interrupted him, ‘if you add the Zero 22 guys. And if it’s all the same to you, I don’t think I will put that to one side.’

Sturrock continued as if Danny hadn’t spoken. ‘He was a Spetsnaz operator for seven years, very highly prized despite having a criminal record as long as your arm. The unofficial record suggests he has a history of the extrajudicial killing of gay men in Chechnya. He was discharged from Spetsnaz for gun running – they didn’t have a choice about that – but the Wagner Group welcomed him with open arms. Our working theory is that he was coordinating the Zero 22 ambush.’

‘If he’s the guy you saw,’ Attwood said, ‘it’s the smoking gun that puts the Wagner Group in the right place at the right time.’

‘He’s the guy,’ Danny said. ‘No question.’ He stared at the picture and remembered the devastation of the op, and the fight that followed, and the two SAS patches on Turgenev’s jacket, and his taunt. SAS scum. I killed two of your comrades with my hands. You will be an easy third. ‘When do I get to waste him?’ Danny said. He was trying hard to keep his voice level.