Firefight

FOUR

The room seemed to spin.

Will was barely aware of the other two men as they stood there, watching him intently, checking to see what his reaction would be. The photo in his hand seemed to fill all his senses, to bring back all the grief like a sharp shard of glass slicing right through him. He found that he was biting on his lower lip, so hard that he could taste the hot, metallic flavour of his own blood, and without a word he stood up. The picture fell to the floor as he did so, but Will didn't bother to pick it up. He had no need of a photographic reminder of that scene. It was etched on his brain and would be until the day he died.

'You bastards,' he whispered.

The two men remained silent.

'You fucking bastards!' he shouted. 'Why didn't I know about this before?'

'It wasn't necessary, Will,' Pankhurst replied calmly.

'I'll decide what's fucking necessary!' he yelled. 'They were my family. Not a couple of pawns in your fucking game.' His body was shaking now and he felt violent. He wanted to hit them, to make them feel his pain; but something stopped him, paralysed him. He looked from one to the other and their blank gazes infuriated him even more. In the end, he simply turned and left the office, slamming the door. Neither Pankhurst nor Priestley tried to stop him.

His blood running hot in his veins, Will half-walked, half-ran through the corridors of Thames House. He didn't wait for a lift to get to the ground floor; instead he used the stairs, taking in several steps at a time. It felt better that way, as though he were putting distance between himself and the information he had just learned. People turned to look at him as he tore past them and at the exit two security guards stood in his way, clearly suspicious of him. He barged through them and out into the streets.

It was cold out. Icy cold. Will drew several deep, shaky breaths and relished the feeling of the freezing air piercing his lungs like an icicle. He looked around him, then hurried down the road and randomly round a corner, soon finding himself lost in the area around the back of Millbank. He knew what he was looking for and it wasn't long before he found one.

As he entered the Morpeth Arms, a warm fug of air hit him; but the sensation gave him no comfort like it once did. He was in here for a reason. He approached the deserted bar and beckoned the bored-looking barmaid. 'Vodka,' he told her. 'Double. No ice.'

The first drink warmed him up slightly, but it didn't calm him. Nor did the second. Only when he had downed three large vodkas in quick succession did he even begin to feel remotely soothed after the shock he had just received; and it was only after the fourth, handed to him by a now slightly alarmed looking barmaid, that his hands stopped shaking.

It was all too much to process. In the past hour he had been forced to relive his family's murder; he had looked upon the face of their killer; and he had been handed the opportunity to seek retribution.

But retribution wasn't what he wanted. It wasn't what he needed. He needed oblivion.

He ordered himself a pint and set about trying to forget.

Don Priestley looked at the Director General of MI5.'That was a shitty thing to have to do, Lowther,' he said.

Pankhurst shrugged, as if what had just occurred had barely affected him. 'Nothing like as bad as what will happen if we don't get our hands on Ahmed. We can't have another 9/11, Don. London won't tolerate it. I won't let it happen.'

'You really think this guy is our best bet?'

'I've done my homework, Don. I've spoken to people, asked around. When Will Jackson was in the SAS, he had a reputation. He was the soldier everyone wanted. You've seen the missions he's led — Iraq, Sudan, crucially Afghanistan. You've heard of Gray Fox?'

'Yeah, thanks, Lowther. I've heard of Gray Fox. 'Of course he had. Formerly known as the US Army Intelligence Support Activity unit, Gray Fox was headed up by Delta Force, but worked closely with the Seals, the SBS and the SAS. And he'd read about Jackson's exploits with the unit in Iraq. According to his file, they'd received intelligence that a group of six suicide bombers were planning a hit in Baghdad. Jackson had led a surveillance team, dressed up in Arab gear, that had followed all six bombers back to a house in the Iraqi capital and all the information they had pointed to the likelihood that they would be strapping up and getting ready to leave within the hour. Raiding the house would have been a dangerous option, because all it would have taken was one flick of a switch and both the bombers and the Gray Fox team would have gone up like a bonfire. Yet they couldn't risk letting them back out into the capital.

Jackson's solution had been high-risk. He and his team had staked out the place, posting Regiment snipers all around the house. If a single sniper had been compromised — a distinct possibility in that hostile territory where, if just one Iraqi passer-by had suspected something, the alarm would have been raised — the bombers would have known they were there. Moreover, the shooters had to hold their nerve until all six bombers were out of the house and in their sights.

Against the odds, Jackson's team had managed it, killing all six men at the same time before they could warn each other or go out and do their bloody work. They'd made a little piece of SAS history that day. Priestley had heard that even Delta Force had a grudging respect for the success of the operation and that was like praise from Caesar.

But that was in the past and from what he had seen, Will Jackson wasn't the same any more. 'Lowther,' Priestley said. 'I agree that back in the day he was the man. But now? He's a mess. Has he got any fight left in him? Christ, I don't blame the guy. Look what's happened to him. But you can't put someone like that into the field of war. If you can't trust any of your guys, why don't I just get Washington to send Delta Force in?'

Pankhurst's lips went thin. 'You'll excuse me for pointing out, I hope, Don, that the last time Delta Force and the SAS were on active service in Afghanistan, it was the British special forces who fared rather better.'

Priestley fell silent.

'Will Jackson was in Afghanistan in the summer of 2002,' Pankhurst continued, implacably. 'He led a four-man unit behind enemy lines and reconnoitred there for two weeks, sending regular updates on al-Qaeda positions. The day he was called back to base, the unit was spotted by two scouts, who shot and badly wounded one of the unit. Will Jackson hunted them down before they could report back, killed them, hid their bodies where they wouldn't be found, then single-handedly carried his wounded colleague back to base in the midsummer heat. You might think he's a mess, but he's skilled, well-trained, resourceful and — most importantly — he has a reason to find Faisal Ahmed.'

Pankhurst let that sink in before continuing.

'He reacted to the news about his family much as we thought he would. I'll concede I didn't expect him to walk out, but I've had psychometric reports done by three of our top analysts. He'll come round. He wants to find Ahmed just as much as we do; he just doesn't know it yet. If I'm wrong, you can bring in your people. You'll have my full support. But I'm not wrong, Don. You'll see.'

Priestley looked unconvinced. 'I sure hope so, Lowther,' he said with a sigh. 'I sure hope so.'

The afternoon passed in a blur of booze and self-loathing. Will swallowed pint after pint, but the more he drank, the more the images from the morning flashed before his eyes. His wife and daughter, cold, dead. Faisal Ahmed, his unfeeling eyes staring confidently out. Part of Will wanted to hunt the guy down, to look him in the face, then put a bullet in his head. But another part of him — the greater part — wanted to run away back to Hereford. Back to the graveyard, where he could weep and be alone with his grief.

The pub started to fill up. He was on his fifth pint — or was it his sixth? — when he noticed the woman who had taken the bar stool next to him. She wore a smart grey business suit, had a drink in front of her and was toying nervously with a cigarette.

'Bloody smoking ban,' she smiled at him.

Will grunted and took another sip from his pint.

'Just been stood-up,' she said, before adding, rather quickly, 'Not by a boyfriend. I was meant to be interviewing someone. I'm a journalist.'

'Right,' Will replied, a bit ungraciously.

She smiled at him again. A pretty smile. 'I'm Catherine, by the way,' she blurted out. 'Kate. My friends call me Kate.' Her hair, Will noticed, was cut into an attractive brown bob and it flickered appealingly over her cheek as she put her head to one side. Nice, but his instinct was to keep himself to himself. It was almost inbuilt in him to be immediately suspicious of anyone talking to him without a reason.

'Look,' he said, 'I don't want to sound rude, but I've had a bit of a weird day and I don't really feel like shooting the shit.' He gulped at his drink.

'Weird day?' Kate gabbled. 'Tell me about it. I woke up this morning, and — ' She faltered. 'It's no good,' she said. 'I've got to have a cigarette. Fancy one?'

Will looked at the packet of fags on the bar. He hadn't smoked for years, but all of a sudden he found he had a craving for it. 'Yeah, all right,' he murmured.

A small smile of satisfaction flickered over Kate's face and it didn't go unnoticed by Will. She put her coat on and he escorted her to the door.

They stood outside in silence, tobacco fumes billowing from their nostrils in great clouds. Kate stamped her feet against the cold and she finished her cigarette long before Will. They were just turning to go inside when there was a shout. The alcohol had made him woozy, and Will didn't catch what it was, but he certainly understood its implication. Before he knew it, three men in their twenties — brash young city types, clearly drunk, still wearing their suits, but with their ties loosened as much as their tongues — were jostling around Kate, laughing lewdly. All the confidence Kate had shown in the pub seemed to disappear, and she shrank away.

Will acted almost instinctively. He stepped in front of Kate, putting his bulk between her and the three men.

'Leave her alone, lads,' he told them.

The men looked at her and laughed. 'Who are you?' one of them goaded him. 'Her pimp?' The three of them creased with laughter once more, just as the repressed anger Will had been feeling all afternoon welled up in him.

The man who had insulted him didn't even see Will's fist as it flew through the air with such speed and force. But he knew when he had been hit. His cheek cracked and his nose exploded in a shower of blood. He hit the ground with a thump.

'Jesus, you fucking psycho!' one of his friends exclaimed as they bent down to see if he was OK. 'What the hell did you do that for?'

Will looked at the smear of blood on his fist, disgusted with himself for having lost his temper so easily. It was the drink, he told himself. He wanted, more than anything, to be away from this place, but he couldn't leave the girl.

Will kneeled down and grabbed the man who was looking after his friend by the scruff of the neck. 'Take your mate,' he whispered threateningly, 'and fuck off out of it.'

The man gave him a hateful look, but he nodded his head, picked up his friend, who was still bleeding profusely from the nose, and the three of them hurried away.

My God, Will thought to himself. Has it come to this? Roughing up drunken yuppies on the streets of London. The ex-SAS man felt sick with himself and all of a sudden the alcohol-induced wooziness returned. He turned to Kate, who had a shocked expression on her face. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'd better go.' He plunged his hands into his pockets and walked down the street. If he got the right train, he could be back in Hereford in a couple of hours.

'Wait!' Kate called. She fell in beside him, having to trot in order to keep up. 'Look, er… thanks. For back there, I mean.'

Will shrugged as he walked, then pulled out his hand and looked indifferently at the other man's blood on his skin.

'Oh my God!' Kate said. 'Are you all right? Are you hurt?'

'I'm fine.'

'No you're not,' she said decisively. 'Come on, you've got to get cleaned up.' She tugged on his sleeve to slow him down, then lifted her hand and hailed a black cab that was passing. How it happened, Will didn't know — his mind was still scrambled by the events of the day — but before he knew it, he was being hustled into the back by this woman he barely knew and twenty minutes later he was walking up a narrow flight of stairs to her flat in North London.

It was warm and comfortable. Will waited in Kate's pristine kitchen — such a far cry from his own — while she found him dry towels and a dressing gown, before showing him to the bathroom. He mumbled a few embarrassed words of thanks, then closed the door, stripped off his dirty clothes and turned on the shower. The water was hot and it felt good as it seared his skin, washing away the blood and the grime and the effects of the alcohol he had drunk. He closed his eyes and allowed everything to wash over him. Seemingly from nowhere, the words Pankhurst had spoken flashed through his mind: 'If a military man stops his career before the time is right, he risks wasting away into nothing.' Was that what was happening to him? Was he becoming a shadow of his former self? Was the old Will Jackson dead? He found himself frowning at the thought. What would his wife have said? 'Get yourself together, Will. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.' He could almost hear her voice.

'You all right in there?' Kate shouted from behind the door.

He turned off the shower. 'Fine,' he said, before climbing out, throwing on the towelling dressing gown and roughly drying his hair. The mirror was steamed up, so he wiped his hand over it to get a look at himself. Why was he doing that? he wondered to himself as he ruffled his dark hair into position. He glanced down at the clothes on the floor. Should he put them back on? Imperceptibly he shook his head. Will knew where this was leading.

I shouldn't be here, he told himself. It isn't right. But then he thought of his own flat in Hereford. Bland. Unwelcoming. He had gone to the pub to forget his troubles, but who would blame him if he tried to find oblivion in the arms of this woman who seemed to be making her intentions perfectly clear.

It had been a long time. A very long time. He took a deep breath and caught a glance of himself in the mirror once more.

When Will finally stepped out of the bathroom and looked down the corridor, Kate was waiting for him, framed in the doorway to her bedroom. She had changed clothes: gone was the business suit, replaced by a pair of tightly fitting jeans and a sapphire blue top that accentuated the curve of her hips and her breasts. She leaned nonchalantly against the edge of the doorframe, a mischievous smile playing on her lips.

Will took a step forward. That unfamiliar trembling of anticipation washed over him and suddenly it was all he could do not to run towards her. 'Do you pick up a lot of hooligans in bars?' he asked lightly.

Kate arched one of her eyebrows. 'Are you a hooligan, Will?'

'When I want to be.'

'Well, I might start bringing home a few more, if they all look like you.'

'They don't,' Will replied. 'Mostly they look like that bloke with the broken nose.'

'Ah,' Kate replied, and Will thought he heard a slight tremble in her voice. 'In that case, I think I'll stick with you.' She turned and stepped into her bedroom.

It was dark outside by now and Kate had dimmed the lights. She stood at the end of the bed, her smiling eyes looking widely up at him as he walked in. Will approached and put one arm round her, against the small of her back. She needed no encouragement to press herself against him and as he felt the warmth of her body and the hotness of her breath against his, a world of stress and worry seemed to fall from his shoulders.

They kissed — tentatively at first, but with increasing passion. Will's free hand slid up her top and she took in a deep gulp of pleasure as his fingertips brushed her breasts. She pulled on his dressing-gown cord, then lightly placed her hand on his chest muscles, before taking a step back and removing her top in one deft movement.

Will approached her again, then pulled her roughly towards him, feeling that long-forgotten thrill surge through his body. She looked up at him with undisguised longing in her face and their lips met again. The kiss was more passionate this time, more serious, and Kate moaned with pleasure as their lips met, digging her well-manicured nails firmly into his skin. Will pushed her on to the bed. She gazed up at him, then closed her eyes with an expectant smile as he lowered himself eagerly on to her body.

The basement of his safe house was illuminated only by a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Below it was a large, square, wooden table at which he sat, the constituent parts of a disassembled Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun spread out in front of him. A small, oil-filled radiator on one side of the room emitted a surprising amount of warmth, so despite the cold outside he wore nothing but a pair of jeans and a vest that displayed the contours of his biceps. His beard was neatly trimmed and his dark skin shone in the lamplight.

On the corner of the table was a television. The sound was muted, but the images showed the British Prime Minister and the American President shaking hands and smiling for the cameras. Ahmed's lip curled and he reached over to switch off the set. There were some things he couldn't bear to watch. Instead, he went back to his work.

In one hand he held a rag doused with cleaning solvent from the small pot by his side and he meticulously, thoughtfully, rubbed away at the grey metal of the barrel. He liked the smell of the cleaning solvent. There was something comforting about it. Warming. Even before the Americans had trained him, when he was just a boy, the importance of cleaning your weapon had been impressed upon him by his mujahideen instructors. Indeed, he had barely been a teenager the day he first saw the horrific results a poorly kept weapon could have on the user. They had been firing guns in the wasteland on the edge of his village — just target practice. An older man had been laughing, bragging about what a good shot he was. He took aim at a pebble placed on a rock some twenty metres in the distance and fired. The gun exploded in his face, shredding his skin so that he appeared like a piece of meat. His howls echoed far and wide as, blinded, he was taken back to the village. The women had attempted to care for him, but the wound soon became septic and he had died only a few days later. A miserable, painful death.

The men had said that it was because he had not cleaned his gun. Even as a boy, Ahmed doubted that — it was probably a faulty, cheaply made weapon — but he knew then that he would never take the risk. At that young age he had decided on two things: never brag about how good a shot you are, and always clean your gun.

Back then, in Afghanistan, they had used something different — a thick oil that stuck to your fingers and stained your already dirty clothes. He had liked that smell too, just as he had enjoyed stripping down the weapons — mostly AK-47s in those days, taken from dead Soviet soldiers or supplied by the Americans.

He stopped for a moment and sneered. He really had thought the Americans were their friends back then, when they gave them money and ammunition. But not now. No, now the Americans had shown their true colours; shown exactly what the life of a Muslim was worth to them. He snorted heavily to himself and continued to clean the gun barrel.

No one would ever find him here, of that he was certain. The first thing he had done when he arrived in England was establish a number of safe houses — places he, and only he, knew about. He would never tell anyone where these safe houses were, no matter how close they were to him or how much he trusted them. That was the rule: these were places where he could disappear utterly, for weeks, even months at a time. They were chosen at random, so that nobody could second-guess where he would be staying; and they were always rented under false names — names that could never be tracked back to Faisal Ahmed.

The gun barrel was clean. He held it up to the light and looked through it. The shiny curve of its interior pleased him. Ahmed placed it back down on the table, picked up another piece and continued to polish and clean another of the satisfying metallic components.

When the cleaning process was finished, he clunked all the pieces together in order, grunting in satisfaction when the last one slotted in. He caressed the gun momentarily, as if caressing a woman, then scraped his chair back, picked up the MP5 and carried it to the side of the room. Along each wall were rows upon rows of metal shelving, firmly bolted together. The shelves were packed from floor to ceiling. Boxes of Semtex, G60 stun grenades, lined up neatly like toy soldiers. A couple of bulky Claymore mines with their long reels of detonating cord. There was an abundance of guns, too: a C8 carbine and grenade launcher, a Remington 870 with RIP tear-gas rounds and a selection of handguns. Faisal Ahmed knew that no amount of weaponry, ammunition or explosives were a substitute for his own clear thinking and tactical awareness; but the time would come when he would need firepower and it was good to know that everything was in place.

He put the MP5 where it belonged on the shelf, then turned his attention elsewhere. There was a sleeping bag and a rolled-up foam mattress. He unfurled them on the floor. Then he checked that the door to the basement was locked, before taking a small handgun from the shelf. He slotted a loaded magazine into it, rested it by his makeshift bed and turned off the light. In the darkness he clambered into the sleeping bag, but it was a long time before he fell asleep.

Sleep never comes easily, he found, when you know that someone wants to kill you.

The first time they made love it had been frenzied and quick. Kate had continued to dig her sharp fingernails into his back, noisily and vigorously responding to his enthusiasm. When it was over, they didn't speak a word: they simply lay there, her arm draped over his chest, her leg hooked over his. How long they lay like that, Will couldn't have said; but after a while he felt her hand moving gently over his torso and she was snuggling up meaningfully to him. It felt good. He rolled her over and pinned her down by her arms; Kate closed her eyes and groaned in anticipation as he kissed her.

It lasted longer the second time, but was no less passionate. When they had finished, they both fell into a deep, satisfied sleep.

It was still dark when Will awoke suddenly. He glanced over at the clock by the bedside. Half-past four. He laid back and stared into the blackness. His throat was dry and he would have liked to get up and find a glass of water; but he didn't want to wake the slumbering form next to him. So instead he remained still, with only the darkness and his thoughts for company.

Was it wrong, what he had just done? It felt strange, being with a woman other than his wife. Had he been sober, had he been thinking straight, perhaps he wouldn't have done it the first time. But as he lay there, he found that he didn't feel bad. He didn't feel he had betrayed anyone.

Betrayal. That one word brought to his mind the image of Faisal Ahmed. You can tell a lot from a photo, he thought to himself. An awful lot. Ahmed was a good-looking man. His eyes were calm. He seemed at peace with himself. At peace with what he had done.

And then Will thought of the churchyard. The cold, lonely grave where, thanks to that man, his family lay dead.

In the darkness, something became clear to him: wasting the rest of his life was no way to honour his family. Their death was only worth mourning if life was worth living. Strange how it had taken a night in bed with someone he barely knew for him to realise that.

Strange, too, how something else was perfectly clear to him now. The two men at Thames House, unwittingly, had offered him a lifeline. A way out of his bland existence. They might want Faisal Ahmed dead for the best of reasons, but in this moment of honesty Will knew one thing: he wanted him dead so that he could avenge his family. Avenge them, and move on.

As quietly as he could, he slipped out of bed. Kate stirred, but did not wake, as he groped his way out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, where he turned the dimmer light on low. His clothes were still on the floor; they felt dirty and greasy as he dragged them on. He was just pulling the belt buckle tight when the door opened. Kate stood in the doorway, naked and dishevelled. She eyed him seriously.

'Are you going?' she asked.

'I have to,' Will replied. 'I'm sorry.'

Kate inclined her head. 'I won't see you again, will I?'

Will hesitated. 'Probably not,' he answered, honestly. 'It's best this way, I promise.'

'Another woman?'

Will smiled affectionately. 'No, Kate,' he said,'not another woman. Just something I have to do.' He stepped forward and kissed her on the cheek. 'You take care, Kate,' he said kindly. 'And be careful who you take home from the pub next time. They're not all like me, you know.'

'I wouldn't know,' Kate told him. 'That's the first time I've done it. The last, probably.'

And with a half-smile, she watched as without any further word of farewell, Will descended the steps and let himself out of the flat.

It was freezing outside and Will had a raging hunger. It took him twenty minutes to find a café that was open. An inviting yellow light spilled out on to the street from the misted-up shop windows and inside it was already nearly full of workers guzzling down hot drinks and plates of fried food. Will ordered the works and sat on his own, gulping down mouthfuls of sweet tea and ignoring the tabloids strewn over his table. When the food came, he devoured it, then ordered more tea and prepared to sit it out until nine o'clock.

At quarter-past, he was striding up to the front entrance of Thames House. A security guard instantly stopped him and Will realised he must look a state in his dirty clothes; but that didn't prevent him saying what he had to say.

'I'm here to see Pankhurst,' he announced flatly. 'My name's Will Jackson. I imagine he's expecting me.'

Within minutes he was being ushered up to the same office as yesterday.

Pankhurst was by himself now, sitting behind his big wooden desk. His suit was immaculate and not a hair was out of place. He did not look at all surprised as Will was shown in and once they were alone he indicated that Will should take a seat.

'I'll stand,' he told the Director General.

'As you wish. I take it you've given some thought to our discussion of yesterday.'

Will looked at him with intense dislike. He had only known this man for twenty-four hours, but already he loathed him. Loathed his self-satisfied demeanour. Loathed the way he had manipulated him. Loathed the fact that they had the same aim now. Different motives, but the same aim. Like it or not, Will Jackson and Lowther Pankhurst were on the same side.

'What is it you want me to do?' he asked.