Shuttleworth stood by his earlier defence of Furey to Fraser. What worried him now was that his two best men — Tom and Nick Roberts — were both out of the game. According to Bernard, poor Nick was dead, and Shuttleworth wondered if he had been caught in the sort of honey trap that had clearly taken Tom’s eye off the ball the night before Greeves was abducted. They were his best, but there was no doubt they had been found wanting. If it went well, if Greeves was brought out alive, then Tom might have a shot at keeping his job if not his rank.
There were lessons for all of them in this fiasco, but they were also lessons taught in basic training.
The SAS signalman raised a hand in the air, his other pressed to his headset. ‘They’re feet dry,’ he said, indicating the assault force had landed on the beach, ‘in case you want to ring the PM back.’
Shuttleworth grimaced. Perhaps he should call the sergeant’s bluff and call Number 10 back. What harm would there be in the Prime Minister’s office thinking he had a key role in the rescue? In for a penny, in for a pound. He picked up the laminated sheet of paper with all the key phone numbers on it, snatched up the satellite phone he had just been using and rang the number.
‘Downing Street situation room,’ a woman said.
‘Get me the Prime Minister. It’s Chief Inspector Shuttleworth, Metropolitan Police.’
Jonathan Fraser was in the lead boat and the first of the raiders to touch the sands of Mozambique as the Zodiac shushed its way up the sandy shore. It was a small detail, but one he hoped might be remembered.
He had his MP-5 out and pointed ahead of him as he ran, bent double, towards the dune line. Off to his right the South African had extinguished the lights of his four-wheel drive. There was not another soul to be seen on the beach.
Ahead of him he saw a small light. Furey was using his cigarette lighter. It was like something out of a World War Two movie, but the prearranged signal was effective enough. With Chalky behind him and the rest of the assault force now dragging their boats into the moon shadows in the lee of the dunes, he strode towards the two police officers.
‘Jonathan Fraser. Nice to meet you in person,’ he said, shaking Tom’s hand, though the greeting was hollow. Something else for the record. He smiled at van Rensburg as he shook her hand and she introduced herself. Very nice to put a face to that voice, which sounded sexy even over the sat phone. Fraser hoped she would be around for a debriefing in South Africa. ‘Any noise from the house?’
‘No, we’re too bloody far away,’ Furey pointed out. If he was one of his men, Fraser would have dressed him down for his insubordinate tone. The copper had made it plain that he wanted to keep his eyes on the target house. Fuck him, Fraser thought. This was his show and the plods were baggage now that they’d pointed to a pathway through the dunes.
Fraser keyed his personal radio. He had already made contact with Forsythe, the captain heading the blocking force. ‘Dagger one, this is Dagger niner.’
‘Dagger one.’ Forsythe sounded calm in his earpiece.
‘We’re at the base of the dunes. Moving to the FUP now.’
‘Roger,’ Forsythe said. ‘We’re in position, boss.’ Fraser knew Forsythe would be passing the information on to the sniper teams now, letting them know that their own men would be moving into the hollow in the dunes to the south of the farmhouse — the forming-up point — in the next few minutes.
Fraser turned to Tom. ‘You two stay here and watch our backs. We shan’t be long and I’ll call you up once it’s done. All right?’
‘No, it bloody well isn’t all right,’ Tom whispered. Van Rensburg shook her head in support of him.
‘We’ve got more than enough firepower to do the job,’ Fraser persisted. This wasn’t about politics. He simply didn’t want two extra bodies wandering about the dunes while he had men in motion and sniper teams in overwatch.
‘No deal, Fraser. I told you on the phone that Sannie and I are in on this thing until the end. Greeves’s safety is my responsibility until I’m relieved.’
Sooner rather than later, Fraser thought. Still, he had neither the time nor the inclination to dally on this beach when there was a job to be done. ‘Very well. S’arnt Major?’
White moved to Fraser’s side. ‘Sir?’
Fraser knew that his use of White’s formal rank would alert his friend and chief head-kicker to the fact he was not happy about the orders he was about to issue, but he also knew Chalky would jump off a cliff if he told him to. ‘As well as your other duties in this op, I’d like you to escort Detective Sergeant Furey and Inspector Van Rensburg.’
‘Pleasure, sir,’ White said, and there was no mistaking how he felt about his new job. ‘Stay close to me and we’ll all be going home with ten fingers, ten toes and two eyes.’
Sannie thought Fraser was a windgat, a windbag. No matter what Tom may have done wrong, he didn’t deserve the treatment he was getting at the hands of the army guys, and neither did she. She had hated the way the smarmy major had looked her up and down. The man should have been thinking about his job, not getting into her pants. White, however, seemed like a decent oke, even though it was clear he resented having to shepherd her and Tom.
Sannie was excited. She couldn’t deny it. Despite the jealousy and penis-fighting that often occurred whenever two armed organisations got together to do a job, she was genuinely looking forward to seeing the much-vaunted SAS in action. How many people, she wondered, could say they had seen a terrorist stronghold taken down?
The tactics interested her: the placement of snipers, the methods of entry they would use. She wondered how much experience the individual soldiers had. She imagined they had fought in one or more wars — probably Afghanistan or Iraq — but she privately doubted that any of them would have entered as many buildings in pursuit of armed offenders as she had in her ten years on the job.
As a uniformed policewoman she had fired her weapon three times, wounding offenders twice. She had very nearly been killed in one of her first raids. They had been following up a tip-off about a drug dealer whose neighbours had complained about him after he killed a local boy in an argument over a lost heroin delivery. Sannie had been the junior member on the team of uniforms backing up the detectives. She had actually been outside the block of flats where the man lived, standing by the police bakkie when the raid went in. The man was living in a first-floor apartment and when the sledgehammer took his door off its hinges, the man ran through to the back bedroom and jumped over the balcony railing, landing hard on the ground not ten metres from where she was standing. The man was holding an American forty-five automatic, a canon of a gun, and he aimed it right at her chest as he dragged himself to his feet. Sannie fumbled for her own pistol, which was still holstered, and the man pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
Her partner, a sergeant approaching retirement who had been assigned to look after the new girl, was faster than she on the draw and put the dealer down with two bullets in the chest.
Sannie remembered the shock of the incident, of how she had fought off the tears all day until she had gone home and crumbled in Christo’s arms. She had thought about giving up her job, but her husband, then also still in uniform, had told her she must be blessed. She didn’t think of herself as bulletproof, but the gangster’s misfire had taught her always to be ready. She and Tom trudged up the dune behind the sergeant major.
‘Please, God,’ she said to herself, ‘let this work out okay for Tom and for Robert Greeves. Tom deserves this. He’s a good man.’