Authors: Alan McDermott
He knew he would have to be quick,
though, as having five friends die within a year would be seen as too much of a
coincidence, especially when these five knew something that could cause serious
embarrassment to the government. The deaths of Barker-Fink and Bennett
would arouse little suspicion on their own, but when Baines and Smart disappeared
along with Grant he was sure Campbell and Levine would begin asking
questions. This made their demise all the more critical, so he went to
his computer, entered his password to open the secure file and began reading up
on the preparations for their deaths.
He knew that Campbell had booked a
holiday in Florida for himself, his wife and his three children and would be
leaving in nine days, so he was the priority target. The surveillance
operation had noted a few of his most common habits, including the darts night
at his local pub, the Wheatsheaf, every Wednesday evening. He also went
jogging at seven o'clock every morning, and these two opportunities were the
ones the team were currently working on. The last updates to his file
were his U.K. team's three suggestions for the take-down. Dismissing the
first two — a hit-and-run accident and a common pub fight — as too obvious and
risky, he pondered the third option. They wanted to fake a burglary and
kill him in the process. A man of his nature would surely try to defend
his family, the team suggested, and they could kill him when he tried.
Farrar wasn't so sure. If Campbell
didn't resist and just let them take his possessions, the team would have no
reason to kill him. If they did kill him under those circumstances, his
family would surely know that he was the real target and they would have to be
silenced, too, which was something he didn't want to contemplate. Not
yet, at least.
Adding a note to the team to come up
with some other options by the end of the day, he closed Campbell's file and
moved on to the next one.
Levine, too, was a creature of
habit. Twice a week he went skydiving at the local airport and the team
had managed to get one of their number into his Tuesday evening sessions.
Like Levine, their man was an ex-paratrooper and through that common bond they
had become friends over the last four weeks. Their report said he was now
in a position to gain access to Levine's rig with a view to sabotaging
it. Farrar didn't understand the intricacies of how they intended to rig
the parachute, but they assured him that both the main and reserve would fail
to operate on the last dive of the day. Their man would cry off that last jump,
claiming to have a prior engagement, and as he had used a false name —
belonging to a real ex-para he'd served with — and the licence plates on his
car were also false, there was nothing but a description to link him to the
death. Once he'd shaven off the full beard and had a haircut, the
authorities would be searching for a ghost.
Farrar was satisfied with the plan and
gave the go-ahead to implement it the following week.
Another few days, he thought, and he
could finally get a proper roast beef dinner. For now, though, he had to
be satisfied with a half-decent shepherd's pie from the local English pub.
Chapter 7
Wednesday 18th
April 2012
Sam Grant woke as yet another mosquito
helped itself to a drink from his exposed arm. Instinctively he tried to swat
it, and that was when he remembered the handcuffs. They had been produced
as the sun fell the previous evening, and he had been shackled to a tree and
left to sleep in a sitting position. When he asked what he was supposed
to do if he needed the toilet he was simply told to hold it until the
morning. With that, his vision of a night escape had vanished, leaving
him with not only dented optimism but also a very full bladder.
When one of the guards stirred close by
Grant called out to him.
“
Ihi
ako
,” he said, letting the man know he was desperate for a
piss.
The guard rubbed his eyes and then dug
into his pocket for the keys, and as he ambled past Grant he dropped the key by
the base of the tree and continued on to answer his own call of nature.
After a little fumbling Grant managed to free himself and stood up on legs
filled with pins and needles, a product of his awkward sleeping position.
Still, he managed to move a few steps to the edge of the clearing and finally
relieve himself. The thought occurred to him that he was losing a lot of
fluid and not taking much in, and if he didn't change the ratio soon he was
going to start feeling the effects.
However, that wasn't the most troubling
thought rattling around in his head.
The previous evening, in line with
Muslim tradition, the bodies of Jonjon and Abel were buried as soon as was
practical. Grant and the others had been given the task of digging the
grave while the Abu Sayyaf washed the dead and shrouded them in hammocks, these
being the only white material they had.
With the bodies laid to rest, their
heads pointing towards Mecca, the pace of the march had picked up considerably
and the beach was no more than five hours away: they would reach it long before
Sonny and Len could get into the area. His only hope was that they would
lie up close to the shore and wait until nightfall before boarding the boat,
but that was far from guaranteed.
Movement near his foot caught his eye
and he saw a six-inch long black millipede slink past his toes. He followed
its path and watched it crawl inside a fallen tree trunk, where he noticed the
particularly sharp remnants of a branch that had been snapped off, probably
when it was felled. The stub of the branch gave him an idea, and he knew
what he had to keep an eye out for.
He rejoined the group, most of whom were
already awake and preparing for another day in the jungle. Halton in
particular was in good voice.
“Who's Dina?” Vick asked, catching Grant
totally off guard.
“What made you ask that?”
“You were saying the name over and over
in your sleep,” she said. “You must have been dreaming.”
Grant knew which dream she was referring
to. It was one he had at least three times a week and it never
varied. He is in the car with Dina driving and Daniel in the back seat,
all three of them heading towards the beach for a mini break. He is
enjoying the beautiful sunshine and Daniel’s singing when the song suddenly
stops and the sky darkens, thundery black clouds blotting out the sun. He
looks in the back seat and Daniel is flopping from side to side, his eyes
lifeless. He turns to tell Dina but she is removing her seatbelt, foot
planted on the accelerator and their speed building with each passing
second. He tries calling out to her, telling her not to do it, to stay
with him, but her focus is on the approaching bridge spanning the
motorway. He screams her name again and she is smiling now, not at him,
but at the bridge support looming large. He tries to reach across to her
but his own seatbelt is so tight that he can’t move a muscle.
“DINA!”
With that final scream the dream ends, a
split second before they crash headlong into the concrete pillar.
“Dina was someone I knew once,” he
said. “It was a long time ago.”
“The name's familiar,” she said, curiosity
once more etched on her face.
“It's not that unusual. I went to
school with three girls called Dina,” Grant lied. He could see Vick
racking her brains for a glimmer of recollection but he wasn't about to help
her. Instead he stood and did some stretches to try to eliminate of some
of the muscle knots he had accumulated during the night. In the distance
he heard the sound of a light aircraft, and moments later his captors began
shouting for everyone to move to cover. Grant followed everyone's lead
and jogged into the trees. He squatted down, head up in search of the
plane. It passed over a minute later, a single-engine Cessna T41-B.
“They fly over every few days,” Moore
told him nervously.
“Yeah, and every time they fly over we
get attacked a few hours later,” Halton added.
Grant ignored the morale officer's
whining and considered how he could turn this to his advantage. In the
undergrowth he searched around for something that could be used as a weapon and
found the perfect item — a twig the thickness of his thumb with a point at one
end where it had been cut from a tree. It even had a growth on either
side, so his hand wouldn't slip down the shaft when he used it. He
slipped the eight-inch shiv into his sock and pulled his pant leg over it for
concealment, careful to make sure no-one noticed his movements.
Once the sound of the engines died away,
Bong instructed everyone to get up and start packing away, seemingly desperate
to leave the immediate area. Even though trees had been cut down to make
the clearing, they were only the younger plants — the canopy overhead remained
in place, just as it had in the other camps they had forged. Grant thought it
unlikely that they would have been spotted from the air, but the others
obviously had differing opinions and their eyes scanned the jungle as they
stuffed possessions into their packs, weapons always close at hand.
Within ten minutes they were on the move
again, and Grant tried to keep pace with Dindo while at the same time trying
not to make it too obvious. It meant Halton had to move at the same
speed, which did nothing for his demeanour.
Grant found it unnerving that now and
again Vick would turn and look at him with a puzzled expression, and he
wondered how close she was to guessing his true identity. Given the
current situation it might not be that big a problem, he thought, especially if
she didn't make it out of the jungle. However, if she managed to secure
her release and shared the news with others, he knew Farrar would make him
disappear again, but this time permanently.
After five hours they were within
smelling distance of the sea and Grant thought his wish was going to come true
when Bong ordered everyone to make camp. Through a gap in the trees he
could see the beach about half a click away, a sheltered cove with a golden,
sandy beach. He was thankful that there was no sign of a boat, adding to his
hope that they would wait until dark to transfer to the next island.
As a fire was prepared and rice thrown
into a pot he realised how hungry he was, but was more intent on scanning the
surrounding jungle for signs of anyone approaching. Whether it was the
AFP or his two friends, he wanted to be close to one of his captors when it all
kicked off. Dindo unwittingly obliged, drawn to the group by the allure
of Vick's beauty. He stood off to one side of her, glancing her way now
and again, and both Grant and Vick knew that he was trying to get a glimpse
down the front of her tattered T-shirt. Vick did nothing to obscure his
view, lest he become embarrassed or angry. The last thing she needed was
to lose her only real supply of nourishment, so she leaned forward a little,
giving Dindo a better view of her cleavage while she chatted to Moore.
Grant judged the time to be about
midday, which meant it would be another few hours before Sonny and Len were
likely to turn up. With that thought still in his head, his heart sank as
he saw a large banca appear at the mouth of the cove and throw out its anchor.
Bong ordered everyone to prepare to move out and the guards starting packing
everything away. The rice which was bubbling away in the pot was dumped
unceremoniously onto the fire, extinguishing the flames while at the same time
dealing yet another blow to the hostages' morale.
Grant frantically sought a way to avoid
boarding the boat, but the only way he saw that happening was if he was dead,
so he stood when ordered to and took his place in the line as they marched the
last few hundred yards to the beach. A small motorised inflatable had
been dropped over the side and was chugging towards the shore when they reached
the sand and the first of the hostages were ordered to climb aboard, which they
did awkwardly with their legs tied together. When the first four were in
they were joined by two guards who ferried them to the banca, then they
returned to escort the next lot across. Grant, Vick, Moore and Halton
were the last hostages to climb into the dinghy and Sam wondered if it would be
possible to overpower the crew once onboard, but again his idea was dashed as
he climbed onto the larger vessel and saw four more armed men watching over the
group of hostages already aboard.
Resigned to the journey, he sat down
next to Halton and prayed they had a well-stocked galley on board.
Chapter 8
Wednesday 18th
April 2012
Sonny gazed out of the tiny window at
the sea far below and wondered what the fishing would be like in those
waters. The island of Jolo was just a few minutes away and yet another
glance at his watch told him that it was approaching seven in the
evening. The return journey from Farrar's office to the airport had been
as torturous as the initial drive over, and once they'd passed through the
diplomatic channel the news had been broken that the plane was suffering a
technical fault in the avionics. The resulting delay meant they didn't
arrive in Zamboanga City until five in the afternoon, by which time Farrar had
been in touch with the latest developments.
“I got the call from Abu Sayyaf but they
didn't use Sam's phone, so we have no way of updating his current
position. However, he did manage to tell me he was on a boat heading
south-west, which means his most likely destination is Jolo.” He'd
pronounced it 'Ho-lo' just as the locals did. “Once you touch down in
Zamboanga you can catch a connecting flight to Jolo. Be warned, though:
there is a U.S. base close to the airstrip and I don't think they'd take kindly
to you turning up armed to the teeth. Once you arrive, flash your new
credentials, bribe them, do whatever you have to, just get the hell out of
there before the military take an interest in you.”
With that advice ringing in his ears,
Sonny had booked them two seats on an AirPhilExpress DHC-8 for the thirty-five
minute flight.
The plane touched down on the single
airstrip and taxied to the gate, where any concerns they had about customs
inspections proved unfounded. Once outside they flagged down a battered
taxi and asked to be taken to the Bud Dajo trail.
Bud Dajo is a volcano rising out of the
centre of the island to a height of just over two thousand feet. Its last
eruption was over a hundred years ago, and while it was considered active there
was little chance of it going off in the next few days.
It was dark by the time they reached the
beginning of the trail, and as expected there were no other visitors to worry
about. They paid off the taxi driver, who insisted he would be happy to
wait for them, but Sonny declined the offer. He even offered his services
as a guide up the mountain but Sonny insisted they knew the way and he
reluctantly drove off into the night.
Once the headlights had disappeared they
began changing, swapping their tourist clothes and comfortable shoes for field
uniforms made from Disruptive Pattern Material, and sturdy hiking boots.
The DPM had an IRR (Infra-Red-Reflective) coating, which made the wearer less
likely to be spotted by anyone using night vision devices aimed at detecting
infra-red signatures. Donning their own night vision goggles and cradling
their suppressed MP5SDs, they set off up the trail, maintaining a moderate pace
to ensure they didn't alert anyone to their presence.
Having studied a Google map of the
island, they'd agreed that the most likely landing place for Sam and the others
would be the north end of the island, and from there they would most likely
head inland, so the plan was to get to high ground and from there make a night
sortie to try to locate their friend. Should that fail, they would wait
until they got an update the following afternoon and close in on the latest
location.
It was midnight by the time they got to
within a hundred feet of the summit and found a good location for their Lying
Up Point. After snacking on sandwiches they'd purchased at the airport
they cleaned their weapons and set off back down the side of the conical
volcano, this time heading north. With their M4 assault rifles slung over their
shoulders they walked slowly, Sonny on point with his Heckler & Koch at the
ready. Ten yards behind him Len scanned the area to their sides,
occasionally turning to check their six. An hour into the search they
came across a building and stopped twenty yards short to check it out. It
was built on stilts, with the floor raised three feet off the ground.
There appeared to be no sign of movement. After a ten minute wait, Sonny
edged closer while Len covered his advance. It took another few minutes
to cover the ground, then Sonny popped his head round the corner and returned
to signal the all clear. Len joined him and saw that they'd come across a
storage hut, piled a couple of feet high with coconuts. With no sign of
any targets they took a quick drinks break before Len took his turn on point.
For a further two hours they snaked
their way through the jungle without coming across anything larger than a
cockatoo and finally they agreed to head back to their temporary camp and get
some shuteye.
Daylight was barely four hours away, and
they took a more direct route back up the mountain, little realising that at
one point they passed within two hundred yards of Sam as he once again tried to
get some sleep with only a tree for a pillow.
* * *
It had taken just over six hours for the
boat to cover the one hundred and fifty kilometres from Basilan to Jolo. When
they arrived at the deserted beach just after dark they were again transferred
ashore using the inflatable. If the banca had a galley on board Sam and
the other hostages were not on the dining list, and once they began the march
into the jungle he knew it would probably be the next day before they got
another bite to eat. All the while he kept close to Dindo in anticipation
of an AFP attack, hoping he could take out the young Muslim with his hidden
shiv and grab his weapon to aid his escape. Unfortunately, no such attack
took place, and at around eleven in the evening they arrived at yet another
temporary camp, but one which was vastly different from the others he had been
in.
The first difference was the number of
terrorists he saw, close to two hundred by his estimate. There were also
boxes galore and all of the weapons on view looked like they'd just come from
the factory. As they entered the camp they passed a huge pot of rice and
a selection of cooked meats, although he couldn't tell which animal they'd come
from. Given his current hunger he wouldn't have cared if it had once been
a horse's arse, and their spirits were raised when they were told to sit and
bowls of rice and meat were handed round. It wasn't exactly a banquet but
he could see from the smiles on the faces of the other hostages that it was the
best they had eaten in a long time.
Grant was watching a group of men who
were gathered around a box deep in discussion, torches masked with red tape
illuminating a drawing of some kind. It looked to him like one of the
many Chinese parliaments he had taken part in while on operations, when his
small squad would evaluate a situation and all offer their opinions, regardless
of rank. He popped another piece of horse arse into his mouth just as the
group broke up and started to walk towards the huddled hostages, causing him to
stop mid-mastication.
Two of the men were taller than the
others, their attire different and their features Arabic. Grant's entire
body froze as he started at the face of the man he'd been researching for the
last nine months, the man who had effectively ended the life of Tom Gray.
After he'd left his hospital bed in
Subic Freeport, the first thing Grant had done was get Internet access.
Farrar had agreed to it and had provided the laptop, but only after reminding
him that his old life was over and he shouldn't try to contact anyone from the
past. Having learned a lesson from the Tom Gray saga, where communication
had been done with dead-drop emails — those that were written and saved as
drafts but never sent, therefore never leaving an electronic signature — Farrar
had set up security privileges on the machine so that it refused to load the
websites of any email providers. Grant also suspected it contained a key-logging
program, which would record every stroke on the keyboard. Unfortunately,
his knowledge of computers wasn't advanced enough to check for such software,
and searching for help online would just alert Farrar to his intentions if any
were installed. Instead, Grant had worked on the assumption that
everything he did was being monitored.
The first search string he had entered
into Google was “Tom Gray”, and wasn't surprised to see the search engine's
announcement that there were “about 3,500,000,000 results”. His first
port of call was the BBC news website where he first discovered the name of the
man suspected of attacking him. Abdul Mansour had also been suspected of
killing a pensioner in a near-by village as part of his escape plan, although he
had spared the lives of an ambulance crew he'd taken hostage. According
to their testimony, it was so that they could let the world know who had been
responsible for the attack. Grant then did a search for Abdul Mansour and
judging by the number of search results returned, Grant guessed he'd gotten the
message across. He found reports on Mansour's background, from growing up
as Ahmed Al-Ali in Ladbroke Grove, London, to his reported activities in
Afghanistan and Pakistan both before and after the attack in Sussex.
Grant immediately recognised Abdul
Mansour and had to use all his willpower not to stare at him as he came to a
stop and surveyed the hostages. His whole body was tense, not with fear
but with the rising anger he felt at meeting the man who had tried to kill
him. He'd anticipated this day would come, but not under these
circumstances. He'd expected to be the hunter rather than the prey, or at
least be armed with more than a pointy stick when they met.
Mansour stood over the group and played
the light over them. His eye was drawn to Grant.
“We have no more need for these people,”
Assaf said. “Guarding them will be a waste of men, and we no longer need
the money they will bring us.” He gave some orders and his men moved in.
“Not so hasty, my friend,” Mansour said,
holding out his arm. “They have more than just a monetary value.
After we attack the base on Friday night, the Army will come at us in numbers,
but they will be handicapped if we still have these hostages. They put a
high value on human life and that is a weakness we will exploit.”
“Besides...” He was staring at Grant,
who saw the same look Vick Phillips had been giving him for the last couple of
days.
“What’s your name?” Mansour asked.
“Sam.”
Mansour searched his memory for the name
but came up blank. “You look familiar.”
“He gets that a lot,” Vick said, but her
comment was ignored.
There was something about this man that
had Mansour looking back over the last few years, yet nothing would come to
mind. He gave up the mental search but took a moment to weigh the man
up. By the look of him he must have been picked up quite recently, and
many in that position were usually still in a state of shock at this stage, yet
he had an air about him, something that said he wasn’t too uncomfortable in
these surroundings.
“What do you do for a living?” he asked
Grant.
While his new looks might hide his past,
Grant knew that his voice would be the one giveaway and he tried to keep his
answer as short as possible.
“I make websites.”
There! That voice! He recognised
it from somewhere, but just exactly where, he didn’t know. He asked a few
more questions but each time Grant answered in as few syllables as possible,
and Mansour guessed there was a reason for this, but what? Had they met
before?
The more he stared, the further away the
truth seemed to be, so Mansour walked away. He was sure the answer would
come to him, but if it didn’t arrive soon he would have to do something about
this “Sam”.
Once he’d gone Vick inched closer to
Grant.
“Tom,” she whispered.
Grant turned to face her and immediately
realised what he’d done.
“I knew it! You’re Tom Gray!”
Grant gestured for her to keep her voice
down, knowing that denying it would be futile.
“Oh, my God! I thought you were
dead!”
“That was the plan,” Grant said.
“How did you know?”
She took a moment to compose herself,
still shocked at the discovery she’d made. “I may be a travel writer but
in order to pay for my trips I write for several publications. When you
released your justice bill last year I was one of those opposed to it, and
wrote an article explaining why it was a non-starter. I did a lot of
research on you, including watching your appearances on the news over and over
again. That’s where I knew your voice from.”
“That’s it?”
“No, the voice was only part of
it. When you saved me from that bullet I knew you were no ordinary
business owner, and I saw the look on Abdul Mansour's face when he walked up to
you. I think he's close to recognising you, too. Maybe it’s a good
job the explosion altered your appearance somewhat."
“You know who he is?” Grant asked.
“Are you kidding? After he
attacked you his face was all over the news. He’s more notorious than
Osama Bin Laden.”
“Look, you have to forget about Tom
Gray. I mean, you have to forget about me being Tom Gray. It’s
complicated, but if you tell anyone I’m alive, they'll kill the both of
us. Now eat your food.”