Zero 22, p.4
Zero 22, page 4
part #8 of Danny Black Series
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.
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.
‘You don’t,’ Sturrock said. ‘Turgenev is very far from being our principal target.’
Danny remained stony faced. ‘Speak for yourself,’ he said. ‘How did the Wagner Group know we were coming?’
‘Does the name General Frank O’Brien mean anything to you?’ Attwood said.
‘Rings a bell,’ Danny said.
‘He’s American. Five-star general. Popular with the men, thorn in the side of the guy in the Oval Office.’ Attwood glanced at the other two men in the room. Danny could tell he was about to deliver some sensitive information. ‘It’s obvious that the Russians received information about your movements from someone with inside knowledge. The CIA believe that person is O’Brien.’
Danny did not think he could dislike Sturrock any more, but at that moment the spook proved him wrong. A self-satisfied smirk crossed Sturrock’s face. Danny wanted to grab him by the throat, pin him to the wall and ask him exactly why he found the death of thirteen Regiment men so amusing.
He restrained himself. He just said: ‘Something funny?’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Sturrock. The three men stared at him. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘For the Americans to have a Russian mole at that level is a matter of extreme embarrassment to them. You wouldn’t understand if you didn’t work in the service. Back in the fifties, Kim Philby was our principal liaison with the Americans. He was exposed as a Russian spy. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the CIA have been holding that episode over our heads for the past seventy years.’
‘They should get a life.’
‘Administrations have long memories, Black. MI6 has an ill-deserved reputation for being leaky. But a five-star general passing operational information to the Russians? That’s bigger than Philby. For all we know, O’Brien’s been sharing classified information for the past two decades. Our transatlantic cousins are eating some humble pie just at the moment.’
‘How do you know it’s him?’ Danny said.
‘It’s him,’ Sturrock replied, as if that ended the matter.
‘The Yanks have shared their intel with us,’ Attwood said. ‘Look, if they hadn’t withdrawn from Syria, it would have been them picking those Kurds up from the prison. Truth is, we were extracting those guys at the Americans’ request, so there were elements in the American military who knew what you were doing that night. O’Brien was one of them.’ Attwood picked up a tablet from the table in front of him. ‘Three nights before the Zero 22 operation, O’Brien was in Crete on holiday. He was staying in a hotel outside Chania. Turns out there was another guest there by the name of Dmitri Poliakov. Poliakov is a known FSB agent.’ Attwood held up the tablet and showed Danny a picture. It looked like a still from a CCTV camera and showed two men sitting at a bar. One of them was well built, with a straw Trilby hat and a tropical shirt. He had a flamboyant cocktail in front him. The other was much skinnier, with short dark hair and a sober sleeveless shirt. He wore dark sunglasses and his lips were pursed. In front of him was a small coffee cup. ‘O’Brien and Poliakov having a cosy little chinwag.’
‘And let’s be clear,’ said Sturrock. ‘They weren’t discussing the temperature of the pool.’
‘We know what they were discussing?’ said Danny in a tone of disbelief.
Attwood looked at him. ‘It’s a fairly busy bar. Lots of smartphones around. You don’t need me to tell you that the CIA have ways of remotely accessing data on these devices. Video snippets intended for social media. Voice assistant recordings. They’ve managed to piece together bits of their conversation. It’s not the whole thing, not by any means. Just a patchwork really. But it’s enough. They supplied us with the recording. This is the transcript.’
He handed Danny a piece of paper, stamped TOP SECRET.
O’BRIEN: . . . we shouldn’t be seen together . . . blow everything apart . . .
POLIAKOV: . . . I need to know that you mean what you say . . .
O’BRIEN: You don’t need to worry about that . . .
. . .
O’BRIEN: . . . fourteen men . . . night-time raid . . . Zero 22 . . .
. . .
POLIAKOV: This is the biggest operation we’ve worked on. We need to be careful we don’t make a mistake.
O’BRIEN: I need to be careful nobody points the finger at me . . .
Danny let the paper drop to the table. He felt sick. ‘You have this on tape?’ he said.
They nodded.
‘Where’s the General now?’ Danny asked quietly.
The three men shared another glance. ‘We’ll come to that, Danny,’ said the CO. ‘You want some water or something?’
Danny shook his head. Water was the last thing he wanted. Sturrock cleared his throat. ‘Clearly,’ he announced, ‘something needs to be done about O’Brien.’
‘Something involving a nine-millimetre round and his skull,’ Danny said. ‘Delta will deal with it like that.’ He clicked his fingers.
Sturrock gave another bland smile. ‘There are good reasons for keeping Delta Force well clear of this,’ he said. ‘Like I said, General O’Brien is popular with the men. Particularly with the special forces. Fights their corner when the liberals start making noises about war crimes. Sending in an American SF force to deal with him would be high risk.’
‘They’d do what they have to do,’ Danny said.
‘Forgive me, Black, but you yourself are walking proof that special forces operators are not entirely averse to going off-piste.’ He raised a sarcastic eyebrow.
‘The Yanks have passed it over to us,’ Atwood said. ‘They’re dressing it up as a favour, giving us the chance to hit back at the guy responsible for our boys’ deaths. It’s bullshit, of course. O’Brien’s a big problem for them, but they want to keep the solution at arm’s length. Ordinarily, we’d leave them to clean up their own mess. But the PM’s been informed of the situation and he doesn’t see it that way. Politically, it suits him to do the Yanks a favour. Brexit and all that. When a big US–UK trade deal’s on offer, it helps grease the wheels if we can remind them how we helped out with their little problem.’
‘We don’t need to worry about the politics,’ said the CO. ‘Frank O’Brien as good as killed thirteen of our guys, Danny. Nobody gets away with doing that.’
‘You want me to nail him?’ Danny asked.
There was a moment of silence.
‘We want you to help someone do it,’ the CO said.
‘I think I’ve got the skillset.’
Attwood gave a bleak smile. ‘No doubt,’ he said.
‘So why don’t I just do it.’ The thought of avenging his mates was a comforting one.
‘That’s one possible plan,’ said Attwood. ‘But there are several reasons why it might need a little . . . tweaking.’
‘Like what?’
‘O’Brien’s not easy to get to.’
Danny pointed at the transcript on the table. ‘Poliakov managed it.’
‘Of course. But that meeting would have been set up by the General himself. In the normal course of events, he has a ring of steel around him. Bodyguards wherever he goes. Special forces, mostly. And especially in the next few days. He’s attending a summit in Jordan, laying down the basis for a peace deal between the Turks and the Kurds. O’Brien’s the main event. Like we told you, he’s a popular fellow, very charming, very diplomatic. He’s well liked by certain elements high up in the Turkish administration, and the Kurds trust him. If he’s there, the warring parties will at least come to the table.’
‘You want to take him out in the middle of a peace conference?’
‘Of course not. We want to take him out before the conference even starts. We know he’ll be staying in the Hotel Grand in Amman for two days before the conference begins, prepping for the talks.’
‘What about the peace deal?’ Danny said. ‘You take him out before it happens, the Turks are going to carry on butchering the Kurds.’
‘It’s a good job,’ said Sturrock, ‘that men like you are set to fighting rather than thinking. The man’s a Russian agent, for heaven’s sake. Isn’t it obvious that he’ll simply do what he can to destabilise the peace talks? The Russians are quite happy for the Kurds to be wiped out. There’ll be no peace agreement while O’Brien’s involved.’
‘He’s right,’ said Attwood. ‘We can kill two birds with one stone here.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Actually, perhaps we can kill three.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Danny.
‘O’Brien will be well guarded in the hotel, but he has a weak spot. It’s about six inches long and hangs between his legs. It’s a common enough flaw in these people.’
‘We all remember Petraeus,’ Sturrock muttered.
‘O’Brien’s cut from the same cloth. Can’t keep his dick in his pants. He’s got a reputation for picking up girls in hotel bars when he’s abroad, even on work tours. Everyone hushes it up because he’s so respected. Of course, it’s going to be hard for you to get close to him because you don’t have blonde hair and big tits. But if you hook up with somebody who does, all of a sudden we have a strategy.’
‘Except you need a blonde with big tits who you can trust to kill him.’
Another silence. Another long glance between the three men.
‘We believe we have someone who fits the bill,’ said Sturrock. Danny had never heard him sound more weaselly. Sturrock moisturised his hands again. There was an unpleasant slippery sound as he did it. ‘Show him,’ he said.
