0558 hours.
The gulls that had flocked on the flat, sandy beach had predicted the arrival of dawn. Their chorus had lasted for a full half-hour. There hadn’t been a particular moment when night had become morning. The sky had just grown almost imperceptibly lighter. The marksman lay very still, watching, waiting. There was a weak offshore wind. It blew the safety flag almost exactly in the marksman’s direction. He checked the direction of the spray, to make sure it matched up with the wind direction further from the ground. It did. He would wait until his target was positioned on a straight line between the rifle and the flag. It would make the shot more accurate because he would then not have to adjust for the altered trajectory of the round.
It was the gulls, too, that announced the arrival of the target. The marksman became aware of crowds of them flocking up from the sands at the northern end of the beach, shrouded by the mist and screeching loudly.
The figure came into view at 0600 hours exactly.
At first he was just a vague darkening of the mist 200 metres to the north, the shapeless form gradually developing a human frame as the gulls screeched and flew away from him. He was walking slowly, his head bowed, his hands stuck into the pockets of his hooded top. His frame was bulky – barrel-chested, almost – and although the hood he was wearing obscured his features, the marksman had the impression that his gait was slow and ponderous. Almost as if he knew he was walking to his death.
‘Do not underestimate him,’ Ashkani had said. The marksman didn’t. He examined every facet of the man’s movement. Something wasn’t right. Why was he not looking around? If he was here to see his son, why was he not searching for him?
Perhaps he was not so impressive as Ashkani had predicted.
Or perhaps he thought that if he sacrificed himself, his son would be set free. A foolish thought, but the marksman knew that, at times of stress, a person’s decision-making could lose clarity.
The figure continued to walk at a slow, steady pace. He was ten metres from the line of fire.
Five metres.
Three.
The marksman’s fingers brushed the cold metal of the trigger.
Two metres.
One.
The target stopped.
He turned round, peered out to sea and stood there immobile. Some of the gulls he had disturbed had settled on the sand again, and he was surrounded by them. The marksman experienced a moment of doubt. If this man was here to find his son, why was he not looking around? But he put that thought from his mind – Ashkani’s instructions had been very clear – and adjusted his line of fire by the fraction of a degree necessary to get the target in the centre of his sight. The edge of his body was slightly ill defined because of the mist, but he placed his cross-hairs over the centre of the target’s back: a location as deadly as the head, but broader and therefore easier to hit.
He heard a whimper from the boy: the first sound that had escaped his lips since the marksman had taken possession of him. It was almost as though he knew his father was about to die.
Which he was.
The marksman squeezed the trigger.
The retort of the rifle echoed over the vast expanse of sea and air. The gulls that had congregated on the sand flocked up into the sky with a single mind, and a sudden, frightened squawk.
And the target crumpled, instantly, to the ground.
The gunman watched the body. He didn’t know why. Something told him he should. Its head was pointing out to sea, and as the waves swelled towards the beach, the water lapped against it. A seagull settled on the body, and then another. To them, the corpse was clearly as still and solid as a rock.
The marksman lowered his gun. His fingers felt for the satellite phone at his side and, for the first time since arriving at the firing point, he rose to his feet. He stood a metre from the edge of the cliff, looking out to sea. Without the aid of the sight on his rifle, the body on the beach was just an indistinct lump. Further out, he could see the grey outline of an oil tanker. The breeze was a little stiffer now, and it blew his black hair away from his face as he called a number, which rang only once before it was answered.
‘Well?’ came Ashkani’s voice in Arabic.
‘It’s done.’
‘Good. See to the boy and do not contact me again.’
‘Wait!’
‘What is it?’
A pause.
‘Allahu Akbar,’ said the marksman.
‘Allahu Akbar,’ Ashkani replied.
The line went dead.
The marksman stared at the digital display for a brief moment. He thought of Ashkani. Thought of what he was about to do. ‘You would not wish to deny the Lion his final roar?’ he had said. No indeed. A picture rose in his mind: a thin, weak old man, wrapped in a blanket as he watched television in a shabby room in a compound far away in Pakistan. That was the image his killers wanted to present of the Sheikh al-Mujahid, but his last act would strike fear into the heart of the West.
Then he saw the briefest glint of something reflected in the screen.
He had no way of knowing what it was. No way of recognizing the checked lumberjack shirt or the expression of purest menace. And no way of defending himself as the figure marched relentlessly towards the edge of the cliff, his arm outstretched, a handgun in his fist as, having located the marksman, he strode close enough to ensure a single round from that weapon would serve its purpose.
The marksman closed his eyes. The flicker of a smile played across the corners of his lips. He had been beaten. He did not mind. He had always known that Paradise would come earlier to him than to others who did not fight the jihad.
He heard the gunshot from three metres behind, and felt the round enter the back of his neck and become lodged in the gristle at the front of his throat. He felt the sudden impact pushing him forward. He might not have toppled quite so soon if the heel of a shoe hadn’t jabbed him hard in the small of his back. As it was, he experienced the sudden weightlessness of freefall less than a second after he had been shot. As he fell, the breeze that had blown his hair back from his face slammed his body against the side of the cliff and it was the impact of this that finally knocked the life from him. He was dead seconds before he crashed onto the rocks below.
Joe watched him fall.
The sound of the body’s final impact did not reach him at the top of the cliffs. There was just the wind in his ears and the hissing of the waves against the sand. From the back pocket of his jeans, Joe pulled the American passport in the name of Mahmood Ashkani and threw it after its owner. By the time it had hit the ground, he was kneeling next to his son, untying the ropes that bound him and rolling him over onto his back.
‘Conor?’ he breathed.
The boy’s face, pale and bruised, stared back blankly.
He checked Conor’s vital signs. His pulse was weak, his breathing shallow. Every limb was trembling. There was a cut on his lip that looked like it had become infected. But it wasn’t his physical state that made fear rise in the back of Joe’s throat. It was his mental condition. It wasn’t just that he didn’t recognize his own father: he didn’t seem to be aware of anything at all.
Joe scrambled the three metres back to the cliff?’s edge. His eyes narrowed as he saw the motionless form of Eva down below, wrapped in Kevlar and body armour and wearing the clothes Joe had stolen along with the bike.