Zero 22, p.33
Zero 22, page 33
part #8 of Danny Black Series
‘You’re wrong. We can sort this . . .’
‘You think I’m mad?’ she said.
Danny shook his head.
‘I’ll tell you what madness is,’ she continued. ‘Madness is performing the same action and expecting a different result. I let you go once before, and you turned up again like a bad penny. I’m not crazy, so I won’t be doing that again.’
‘Put the gun down, Bethany . . .’ Danny started to say, but he knew there was no point. He could tell when somebody had made the decision to kill. There was a unique flatness in the eyes. She was going to do it. ‘Bethany, I can sort things for you . . .’
‘Don’t lie to me!’
‘If you shoot me now,’ Danny said, ‘you make it harder to see your son again, not easier. I can make it happen, Bethany. You know I can.’
There was, for the briefest instant, a flicker of doubt. She glanced at the General, then bit her lower lip, as though pondering whether she’d made a mistake. But she didn’t lower the weapon. Her hands didn’t tremble. And when she looked back at Danny, he sensed that her determination had doubled.
He felt a sickening ball of heat in his stomach. She looked like she was going to do it.
Somewhere outside the building there was the sound of a police siren.
Bethany’s lip curled contemptuously, but she glanced sidelong, clearly registering the siren.
‘Sounds like someone’s already phoned in the sound of gunshot, Bethany,’ Danny said carefully. ‘The police are on their way and chances are they’ll be putting in a cordon on the roads round the apartment. Our faces are all over the news networks. We don’t know what instructions they’ve been given if they see us. If you want to see your son again, you need to stick with me. I’m your best way out of this.’
‘You make me sick,’ Bethany spat. ‘I don’t need your help.’
There was another roll of thunder that caused the lights in the apartment to flicker momentarily.
Danny grabbed his chance. He dived to the ground in the half second of darkness. He heard the retort of the Glock, and the familiar splintering sound of bullet against glass. He rolled behind the cover of a sofa as the lights returned. He heard Bethany hiss with frustration and prepared himself for her to appear and take a second shot.
But she didn’t.
He heard her footsteps as she sprinted out of the apartment. Had the siren spooked her? He didn’t know and didn’t have time to think about it. He pushed himself to his feet. Ran to the table to grab his Sig. He was no stranger to death, but the sight of the General slumped and bleeding over his laptop angered him. A good man trying to do the right thing. And Danny had let him down.
He sprinted from the apartment. On the landing, he took a second to consider whether Bethany would have gone upstairs. He decided not. In two minutes, this place would be full of police. She knew that. She wouldn’t risk it. He hurtled down the stairs, his feet thumping heavily on the treads as he took them four at a time. The front door to the house was open. The rain was still falling heavily. It stung his face. He looked left and right. No sign of her. But to the left, neon lights. Sirens. Would Bethany have run that way to double-bluff him? No. She was too careful. The risk was too high, especially when she was holding the gun that had just committed a murder, and her face had been on national TV. She had turned right. He was certain of it. He sprinted after her. He tried to calculate how far ahead of him she would be. He estimated he had left the apartment twenty seconds after her. He was fitter and probably faster. A hundred metres? He peered ahead through the rain as he ran. Visibility was poor. He couldn’t see her.
He upped his pace, half closing his eyes to stop the rainwater blinding him. The sirens were screaming behind him. His feet slapped against the wet path. He kept looking straight ahead. He could see a street crossing, one at right angles. Distance, seventy-five metres. And in the yellow light of a street lamp, which illuminated the rain pelting at an oblique angle, he saw a figure turning the corner to the right. A small frame. A glimpse of blonde hair. It was her.
Rain everywhere. In his mouth. Down his neck. It saturated every thread of his clothes. It seeped in between his palm and the handle of his Sig. He wiped it from his eyes with a soaking sleeve as he reached the corner and turned right. It was another residential street, almost indistinguishable from the last. Townhouses loomed on either side. Parked cars lined the road. And there was the flashing neon of police lights, too. Danny had been right about the cordon. They blocked the road, 150 metres distant. Danny scanned through the rain and the glare, searching for Bethany. There was no sign of her, but she couldn’t have simply disappeared. She would be avoiding the police lights. She would be hiding somewhere between his position and theirs.
He slowed to a jog. Advanced along the street, scanning left and right. He didn’t really think she would be hiding between parked cars or in the porch of a townhouse. Too easy to see, but he checked those locations anyway. No sign of her.
The flashing lights didn’t move. The police vehicles were stationary at the end of the road. Twenty metres ahead, Danny saw a side street leading off to the right. More of an alleyway, really. Narrow: no more than six metres wide. He put himself into Bethany’s head. Police in front of her. Danny behind. No other place to hide. She wouldn’t know if the alleyway had an exit, but it looked like her only option. He stopped at the corner by the black railings in front of the end of terrace. Listened through the pounding rain. Raised his weapon two-handed.
Turned.
She was there. Fifty metres away.
She wasn’t running. Perhaps she had realised that he would catch up with her eventually. But Danny didn’t understand what she was doing. There was a high brick wall on either side of the narrow alleyway. There seemed to be an exit route at the far end, but the rain was too heavy for him to see it clearly. Bethany herself was crouching on the ground to the left-hand side of the alleyway. The slope of the road was such that a rush of rainwater was streaming towards her. She seemed to have one hand in the stream. She held her gun in the other and was pointing back down the alleyway towards Danny.
There was no way she could fire reliably from that distance. Danny advanced, his own weapon raised. There was a clap of thunder, then another flash of lightning. It illuminated the wet hair plastered to her pale face. Even from a distance, she looked desperate. Crazed.
Distance to Bethany: twenty metres.
Fifteen.
What was she doing? Why was she crouching there?
Ten metres, and Danny understood. The stream of rainwater was gushing into a drainage grate. He could now see that Bethany was holding the memory stick over it. Ready to drop it. And if Danny took her out, her grip would immediately loosen and it would be lost.
Stalemate.
Rainwater streamed down Bethany’s face. Danny couldn’t be certain that there weren’t also tears. They stood in silence, weapons pointed at each other, for a full thirty seconds. Danny knew he had to choose his words with great care. He had to talk her round. He had to be persuasive. He took a single step towards her.
‘Don’t move!’ she screamed.
He froze. Kept his weapon raised. Evaluated his position. He knew she was right-handed. She was holding her weapon in her left hand. She was in a heightened state of emotion. Her chances of an accurate shot at this distance were low. His chances were pretty high. How far would the sound of gunshot travel? With the cacophony of the rain pelting the ground and the rooftops, not far.
‘We can sort this out,’ he shouted over the hammering of the rain. ‘Put the weapon down. Give me the memory stick.’
She shook her head. He saw that she was shivering.
‘If you don’t put the weapon down, this only ends one way,’ he shouted. ‘Work with me, I can get you out of here.’
Another shake of the head.
‘We can deal with the General,’ he shouted. ‘We can say he was killed by the guy waiting for us in the apartment. They’ll believe me even if they don’t believe you. We can fix it.’
He risked another step.
‘I said, don’t move!’ Bethany screamed. She waved the weapon threateningly and put her fingers into the gaps in the grate, so the memory stick was out of sight. ‘I want to speak to my son!’ she shouted. ‘I want to see him. Get him on the phone. Otherwise this footage is gone.’
Danny didn’t move.
‘Don’t you understand me?’ Bethany shouted. ‘I don’t care about anything else. I don’t care about this footage. I don’t care about the terror attack. I don’t care about you. I just care about my son and I want to speak to him right now.’
Danny heard sirens. A glimpse of blue neon as a police car passed the opening to the alleyway forty metres behind him. What are my options? He could continue trying to talk her round. But she wasn’t in the mood to be persuaded. Or he could do what she asked. Get the kid on the phone. It would give him the opportunity to approach her. Get close. And when he was close, he had a much better chance of overpowering her.
Decision made.
He released his left hand, while keeping the Sig raised in his right. Felt inside his jacket for his phone. It told him that the time was 21.00 hrs. Beads of rain collected on the screen, making it unresponsive as he swiped. He had to try a few times. But he accessed his encrypted calling app and dialled the access number into Hereford before putting the phone to his ear.
It rang. Bethany stared. He was sure that it wasn’t just rainwater welling in her eyes.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Get me the CO.’
‘Say again. The line is bad.’
‘Get me the damn CO!’
‘Wait out.’
The line went silent. Danny’s focus moved to other sounds. The distant sirens. The boom of thunder. The rain fizzing all around him.
‘Black?’ The CO’s voice sounded curt. ‘What’s happening? You’re all over the fucking news networks . . .’
‘I need Bethany’s kid,’ Danny said. ‘On the line. Right now. Video call.’ He judged the level of his voice carefully. Clear enough to be heard over the line. Not so loud that Bethany could hear him.
Silence.
‘Boss? Did you hear me?’
‘I heard you,’ the CO said. ‘Black, I don’t know why you’re asking this, but it’s not going to happen.’
‘It has to. Bethany has the memory stick with the footage. She’s going to destroy it if she doesn’t see her kid.’
More silence.
‘You have to find another way,’ the CO said.
A crack of thunder. A flash of lightning. It lit Bethany’s face up again. There was a kind of hunger in her expression. She looked wild. Desperate.
‘There’s no other way,’ Danny said, and he meant it.
‘There has to be. Don’t you get what I’m saying? The kid can’t get on a call. It’s impossible. His getting-on-a-call days are done. He’s dead.’
Danny could almost taste his revulsion. It was bitter and acrid. It made him sneer. ‘How?’ he said.
‘The team that picked him up got heavy handed. We couldn’t tell you. Not when he was all the leverage we had with her. You get that, right?’
Yeah. Danny got it. He got that he was on the side who would think nothing of using a dead kid to their advantage. He killed the call and lowered the phone.
‘Well?’ Bethany demanded. ‘Are they going to do it?’ Her voice was shaky. It had turned hoarse. ‘Are they?’
Danny didn’t know what it was that communicated the truth to her. The crease of his frown, perhaps. The self-loathing downturn of his mouth and eyes. Maybe it was the way he distractedly failed to raise his left hand up to his weapon again, as he should have done. Or maybe it was simply his silence. His inability to say anything, for fear of revealing the one fact he knew he had to conceal.
All he knew was that she understood.
She shook her head. The faintest shake. More of a twitch, as though she couldn’t quite believe the truth that had just struck her. Her lips moved. Danny could tell what she was whispering to herself. Her child’s name, perhaps. She closed her eyes briefly. Danny experienced a curious sense of time slowing down. He saw raindrops splash in slow motion from her eyelashes. Then she opened her eyes again and it was as if she was a different person. Everything about her had changed. She was not the Bethany White who had been on ops with him over the past days: ruthless, certainly, but calm and in absolute control. It was the Bethany White he had seen back at Brize Norton, caged in the guarded Portakabin, raw aggression and fire.
She screamed. It was pure emotion and it cut through everything: the sirens, the rain. He could tell that instinct and fury had taken over her. He knew she was going to fire.
He hit the ground just as she released her round. And as he dived and rolled on the wet pavement, he fired his Sig. The two retorts followed each other in quick succession. It was only after Danny released his round that he felt a sting in his right arm and realised Bethany had clipped him. The impact had compromised his own ability to shoot straight. His round had hit her in her right forearm. She screamed again and pulled her arm up. The memory stick fell from her grasp, into the grate, washed away with the torrential flow of rainwater. Danny clasped one hand to the wound. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. It felt like there was some blood loss and the arm was shaky. Bethany was on her feet. Her own arm hung loosely by her side and rainwater washed off the blood that dripped on to her hand. She staggered back and fired again, but the bullet went loose, Danny didn’t know where. She turned to run towards the far end of the alleyway. The exit was about thirty metres away and, so far, there was no indication of a police presence there.
Danny took another shot. But she was a moving target and the graze on his arm affected his aim. He cursed as his own bullet missed his target. He steadied his hand. Fired again. But Bethany was running fast, at an angle from his line of fire, and she was beyond his effective range.
He pushed himself to his feet, ready to chase her. But then he heard voices and he looked back. Blue lights flashed at the entrance to the alleyway behind him, no doubt drawn to the sound of gunfire. Silhouetted figures moved in front of them. Four, maybe five. Armed? This was America, so yeah, armed. He couldn’t tell what they were shouting through the noise of the rain, but he could guess.
Decision time. The footage was lost. Bethany was gone. Those American police officers would be trigger happy, especially if they recognised his face.
He had to get out of there.
He ran in the same direction as Bethany, towards the far end of the alleyway. Fast.
TWENTY-FIVE
Five past nine and the park was so busy. Much busier than during the day. Everyone was here for the fireworks at nine fifteen and the streets were packed. It was difficult to move through the crowds. But Hamoud did it. Rabia and the children struggled to keep up.
Every now and then, he caught a glimpse of the man with the long face. Or at least of his back, and the Donald Duck baseball jacket. The sighting never lasted more than a few seconds before the crowds closed around him. Hamoud was aware of Rabia calling at him to slow down. He couldn’t. He was drawn to this man, desperate to see his face again, desperate to identify it. Maybe it was someone from his past. He had to know.
He stopped.
He had reached the edge of a large circular fountain that blasted water twenty metres into the air, lit up by lights of all colours. On the far side was a set of steps leading up to a cafe. A crowd several people deep enclosed the fountain. Hamoud’s children cupped the water in their hands and naughtily splashed each other. Rabia was giving him her concerned look. Hamoud was staring over at the steps. The man with the long face was there. He was almost at the top, so he was visible above the crowd. He was scanning it, as though looking for someone. The baseball jacket really did look too big for him, and he was muttering to himself and absentmindedly touching his face, as though he was somehow unfamiliar with it.
Hamoud blinked and realised what he was seeing.
He was seeing a man unaccustomed to being clean shaven. A man used to wearing a beard. That thought made Hamoud touch his own beard, and it made him envision what the man with the long face would look like if he had one.
And then, instantly, he knew.
Hamoud closed his eyes. He pictured himself back at home, sitting at the table, opening up the box of newspaper clippings that he kept on the top shelf of the bookcase, and which Rabia wanted him to throw away. The clippings about former Guantanamo Bay prisoners Hamoud had never met or even seen, but with whom he felt a connection. One of them was a man with a long face and a long beard. In his picture, he had looked friendly and appealing. Hamoud had found himself wondering if in another life they might have been friends.
He opened his eyes. Superimposed a beard on the man’s face. It was him. There was no question. Only he didn’t look friendly and appealing now. He looked nervous and dangerous. Nausea flooded through Hamoud’s gut. He thought of the man and the woman who he’d seen on TV. How he’d told himself not to be too quick to judge. And he realised he had been misjudging the man in the clipping. Perhaps he was not innocent, like Hamoud. Perhaps his case was not a miscarriage of justice.
And it was suddenly, strikingly, horribly clear to Hamoud why the man’s jacket was oversized, and why he had shaved his beard. He was absolutely certain that if he looked under the man’s clothes, he would discover that he’d shaved his body hair too. He remembered the urban myth that had come to him the previous night, that the fireworks coincided with a spike in gun crime nearby. Was that true? Perhaps, perhaps not. But there was no doubt that the best time to set off an explosion was when everybody’s attention was on the sky, not on those around them.
The man walked down one step towards the fountain. He was still muttering to himself, as if praying. Why could nobody see what Hamoud could see?
Dizziness almost overpowered Hamoud. He had to grip the edge of the fountain to stay upright. He couldn’t hear anything. The people in the crowd were a blur, with the occasional face suddenly crystallising into absolute clarity. A young woman with a shaved head. A black man with his son on his shoulders. A couple of teenagers kissing. All of them unknowingly seconds from horror.
