They split up. Davenport and Andrews were despatched to reclaim Craven’s body. Webb and Tyler went to retrieve the freefall rigs. Cullen was sent to the road. This was where the Hercules would come in to land, but they needed to ensure that no civilian vehicles would be on that stretch when the plane touched down. Perhaps the dope farmers who inhabited this part of the world would put their hallucinations down to overenthusiastic consumption of their own crop. But perhaps not. The tough little Scot took a supply of stinger spikes with him, sharp metal road blocks that would deflate the tyres of any car that went over them. He would use the spikes to cut off a stretch of road at both ends, while they waited to extract. The dope farmers would no doubt be distinctly miffed by the shredding of their tyres, but it was better than being crushed by the undercarriage of a Hercules.
Sam and Mac remained at the camp. Mac called the air team with instructions to prepare to extract, while Sam went through the buildings yet again with a small but powerful digital camera, taking a visual record of the deceased.
It was a grisly job. During the hit, Sam had not been aware of the rank smell of all these men living together with little in the way of facilities. Now that his senses had more time to absorb such things, he realised just how bad the stink was. But of course, there was another smell for his senses to deal with now. The smell of death. They had not been long dead, but already that familiar stench was leaching pungently into the air.
In all he counted eighteen of them. Eighteen young, British corpses, assassinated by their own government. Many of them had been hit in the face. Their faces had caved inwards from the impact of the round, noses sunk in, mouths collapsed. It was like someone had taken a giant hammer to their skulls. Sam took their pictures anyway. Some of them had been rolled onto their fronts by the force of the rounds. More than once, as he turned their still-warm bodies over, blood gushed out of their wounds like a fizzy drink foaming from a bottle. As they had been expecting, all the faces were Caucasian. White by race, white by death and white by the bleaching effect of the camera’s flash as he systematically recorded the gruesome evidence of their night’s work. In some corner of his mind he wondered if the dead men really were British, as they’d been led to believe. Why were they being protected by a Spetsnaz unit if that was the case? But on the wall by one of the men he came across a centrefold from a pornographic magazine. The model had her legs wide open and by her head there was some writing. He read enough of it to see that it was English before moving on, quickly, racing from bed to bed like some demonic paparazzo desperate to get to his next subject.
When all the photos were taken, Sam slipped away – checking first to make sure he hadn’t been observed – up to the shed. The dead dog lay outside in a pool of blood. Sam ignored it. He took a deep breath, opened the door and stepped inside.
It was a tiny space, just enough for a low camp bed and a few square metres of standing room. Although the bed was unmade, showing all the signs of having been abandoned in a tearing hurry, the rest of the bunk area displayed a military neatness, the few belongings tidily and precisely squared away. Sam looked over his shoulder to check that nobody had entered, then opened a small cabinet by the bed and rummaged inside.
There was very little there. A few clothes – it was difficult to tell what in the gloom – some chocolate and a bottle of water. He found what felt like a small piece of card; pulling it out, he realised it was a photograph. An old one. With a pang he recognised his mother and father in the early years of their marriage. It was surreal, seeing that image of his father out here, miles from home, when in fact he was wasting away in a Hereford hospital. He stuffed it in a pocket. Back in the locker, his fingertips came across something else. Something hard. Rectangular. He pulled it out and examined it. It was a laptop computer. Sam reached into his backpack and pulled out his torch so that he could look closer at it. The thing was well-worn and scuffed, though the case was hard and durable. He gave half a moment’s thought to opening it up and seeing what was inside, but he quickly decided against it. If any of the guys found him doing that, they’d start asking questions; and he wasn’t sure he wanted to answer them…
Sam stuffed the torch and the laptop into his pack, before hurriedly returning to the centre of the camp.
As he jogged back outside, to his surprise, he found himself thinking of Clare Corbett’s words. ‘Those people at the training camp. Are you really going to kill them, Sam?’ It crossed his mind that he should feel some sort of sympathy for these dead men. Pawns in some game they didn’t understand. But he didn’t. Or rather, he couldn’t. His mind was too preoccupied. There were too many things racing through it. The adrenaline rush of the mission. Craven, dead. The need to extract quickly.
And Jacob. Above all, Jacob. His brother’s perplexed, frightened face. His mysterious words. Sam pictured him even now racing away from the camp, not knowing if he was being followed or why the Regiment had been sent to kill him. Not knowing what the future held. It seemed wrong that Jacob should be so close to him and yet so far from Sam’s help now. What had Jacob meant? Things aren’t what they seem…
‘Damn it,’ he whispered to himself as he hurried back to the centre of the courtyard. ‘You can say that again.’
Mac was waiting for him, alone. He switched off his comms and indicated that Sam should do the same. ‘Well?’ he said finally when they knew none of the others could hear them.
‘Well what?’
His friend raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you find him?’
Sam avoided his eye. ‘No,’ he lied. He didn’t know why. It just felt like the right thing to do.
Mac cast him a level gaze that did nothing to hide his suspicion.
‘What?’ Sam demanded. He felt himself jutting out his chin, a sudden heat running through his veins. ‘Fucking what?’
‘Sounded like you went dark for a couple of minutes back there, Sam. Sure you didn’t see anything?’
He started squaring up to Mac. ‘What the hell are you saying?’
They had barely ever argued before, let alone fought; but Sam was seeing red and for a heated moment he didn’t know how long that record would last. If Mac felt threatened, though, he didn’t show it. On the contrary. He drew himself up to his full height and stared Sam out.
‘I’m not saying anything, Sam. Just remember how much I’m risking staying quiet about this, hey? Just remember that.’
Sam didn’t reply. His eyes continued to be locked with Sam’s for a few further uncomfortable seconds, then he turned and walked away.
Davenport and Andrews were the first to return. They carried Craven’s corpse with them in a field stretcher – little more than a body bag with poles along the side for ease of transport. Davenport had Craven’s weapon; Andrews his backpack. Moving quickly to the side of the truck where Sam and Mac were waiting, they gently eased Craven’s body down to the ground, then straightened themselves back up with the heaviness of men who had been carrying a mental load as well as a physical one.
‘It was a clean kill,’ Matt Andrews said quietly, the troop medic’s black skin shining with sweat in the moonlight. ‘He wouldn’t even have known what hit him.’
‘Suppressed AK-47 round, that’s what,’ Sam said. With everything else that had happened, he realised he hadn’t shared with the others his information about the welcoming party. ‘The shooters were Russian. One of the guys I nailed was packing a GM- 90.’