Who Dares Wins Read online

  And then, from nowhere, the sat phone crackled into life again. ‘Yankee Delta Three, we have a location.’

  Sam nodded at Jacob who pulled out a battered GPS screen of his own, fiddled momentarily with it, then handed the device round. It showed a map of the area and a small dot which indicated where the fizzy-drink can had come to rest. From where the car was parked they had to head east, turn left then third right. The can would be outside the house they were to hit. They memorised the position. No one said a word. They didn’t need to. The unit was operating almost on autopilot.

  Sam spoke into the sat phone again. ‘This is Yankee Delta Three. We’re going for a stroll.’

  ‘Enjoy the countryside, Sam,’ the voice came back. ‘Air support turning and burning, ready on your order.’ Reassuring words. It meant that back at base, an American-flown Black Hawk was already in a holding pattern, preparing to fly to their location the second they received word that hostages had been secured. A minute to get here, a minute to extract. Those choppers were every soldier’s favourite asset.

  They climbed out of the car, each of them switching on their comms as they did so. ‘I’ll go first,’ Jacob announced. ‘I’ll stake out the front. Sam, take the rear. Mac, the street. RV back here in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  They left at thirty-second intervals – Jacob first, then Mac and finally Sam, his dishdash flapping around his legs and his carpet-wrapped Diemaco C8 held nonchalantly under his arm – to avoid attracting unwanted attention. Sam followed his mental map and in less than a minute he was turning into a broad, tree-lined street. The houses here were grand, some with ornate columns on either side of the door that wouldn’t have been out of place in Mayfair. But there were other things you wouldn’t see in London: as Sam walked down the street he noticed bullet marks along one of the walls. AK rounds, he thought to himself. Maybe a scar of the invasion; or maybe they had been there before. In Baghdad, everyone had a gun. There were plenty of people in the street, but they all walked in a hushed, hurried manner, avoiding each other’s eyes.

  Sam had walked about thirty metres when he saw the drinks can carelessly discarded in the street. Nobody paid it any attention – it was just one of any number of bits of litter. He glanced up at the house outside which it was lying. It was a big place, more like a compound, with a large whitewashed wall surrounding it and a vaulted gate with iron spikes at the top and a heavy padlock. As he sauntered past, Sam collated all the information he could about the place. There was a large courtyard at the front. The main door looked like it was made of heavy, thick wood – difficult to force down with the limited weaponry at their command. The roof was flat, with plain little turrets at each corner. As he glanced up Sam couldn’t see anybody on it, but he had no doubt that if Sadiq was right and this place really did house the man the unit was after, they would be there. There were two low, shuttered windows on the ground floor, but none further up. His eyes flickered around looking for Jacob. He saw him fifteen metres away, leaning against a tree. They acted as if they didn’t know each other.

  The house occupied a corner plot and Sam turned into the small road that went alongside it. On this side of the house there were first floor windows, three of them, but he could not see any further down because of the high external wall. At the back of the house was a smaller street, on the opposite side of which was another dwelling place. This house was much less grand; indeed it looked deserted, as if it had been the scene of fighting in recent days or weeks. Sam slipped into the house and up the stairs onto the roof. The fierce sun beat down on him as he kept his head low and approached the front wall. Here there was a lattice of holes in the brickwork, allowing him to look through and onto the roof of the other house.

  It didn’t take him long to see movement. Two people keeping guard over the back of the house; no doubt there were at least two more on the other side. Below them was a garden of sorts – palm trees and even a patch of rough grass and some flowers, a strange sight in the middle of a war-torn city. The back wall had a wooden door. It was flimsier than the one at the front, easier to break down; but he wouldn’t want to do that while it was overlooked. Still, that was their most likely point of entry. All they had to do was make sure there wouldn’t be a welcoming party when they came knocking.

  Sam looked at his watch. Nine minutes had passed; RV in six. He slipped back downstairs, out into the street and round the other side of the house. As he walked back to the car he could see Mac up ahead. He controlled his natural urge to catch up with his friend; keeping his head down, he wove his way through the people in the street and a minute or so later was back at the RV point. The Toyota had gone – no doubt Sadiq had picked up his car and got the hell out of there – but Jacob and Mac stood where it had been. The three of them took shelter in the doorway of a closed-down shop.

  ‘Front gate covered from the roof,’ Jacob stated, his voice brisk and businesslike. ‘Three of them at least, maybe four. Two snipers in the front yard.’

  ‘I clocked two more on the roof at the back. Good point of entry. Wooden door. Flimsy.’

  The two brothers looked at Mac. ‘No obvious lookouts in the street,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ Jacob replied. ‘We need that chopper to extract us the moment we’ve apprehended the target.’ His eyes flashed. ‘It’ll be Yankee scran for our man tonight.’

  ‘Fuck of a sight better than the filthy Iraqi stuff he’s used to,’ Mac observed. ‘We’re practically doing the bastard a favour . . .’

  ‘Shut up!’ Sam barked.

  The other two looked at him in surprise. Sam was holding his palm out towards them, indicating that they should keep quiet. He had dialled HQ on the sat phone and there was a noise of confusion at the other end. Panic at the Farm. Clearly something was going wrong.

  And then the instruction came. ‘Yankee Delta Three, hold your mission! Repeat, hold your mission! Do you read?

  ‘Yeah,’ Sam snapped, ‘I fucking heard you. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Black Hawk down,’ came the curt reply. ‘Small arms fire. Fucking Iraqis. All helicrews diverted to assist. Sorry, Sam. This is going to have to wait for another day. You’re ordered back to base.’

  A crackle and then silence.

  ‘Shit!’ Sam hissed, thumping his hand against the wall.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Chopper down. We’ve got no support. They’re scrubbing us.’

  ‘How many we lose?’ Jacob demanded.

  ‘Didn’t stay. Still, they’re not going to be queuing up for sticking plasters, are they?’

  Jacob and Mac both turned away, silently cursing. Sam felt himself sneering as a hot surge of anger ran through his veins. The Regiment had taken a hit. He was damned if they were going to return to the Farm with nothing to show for it.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.

  The others looked round at him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mac demanded. ‘If we can’t . . .’

  ‘Listen – the moment the Yanks know we’ve got this bastard, you can bet your boots they’ll have someone along to extract him. And if they don’t . . . fuck it, he’s only one guy. We just have to make sure everyone surrounding him goes down.’ Somewhere deep inside, Sam knew he was being reckless. But he also knew they had a chance. He looked at Jacob. His brother’s dark eyes were unreadable. ‘We just need a distraction, J. Something to draw everyone out.’

  The two brothers stared at each other. Jacob’s eyes narrowed as he considered the suggestion. ‘We’ve got our own distraction,’ he said finally. He inclined his head slightly before dipping once more into his bag. He fished out a small device, about the size of a mobile phone. Just a black box with a small switch. ‘I gave the Coke can a bit of extra sugar.’

  Sam could sense Mac tensing up next to him. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? I thought it was just the tracker.’

  Jacob nodded. ‘The tracker, yes. And a bit of plastic explosive, just in case. Enough to ge
t our friends running to the front of the house when it blows to see what’s going on.’ His demeanour became instantly more serious. ‘Sam, you and Mac take the back. I’ll fire a few rounds to disperse the civilians, then explode the device and start picking the guards off when they come to check out the fireworks. Reckon it’ll give you enough time to gain entry?’

  Sam gazed at his brother. Mac was right to be pissed: if Jacob had this planned, he should have shared it with them. But his brother always did like to pull the cat out of the bag. Or in this case, the C-4 military-grade explosive out of the tin.

  ‘Yeah,’ Sam replied grimly. ‘It’ll give us time.’ He looked at Mac. ‘You good with that?’

  Mac clenched his jaw – a momentary expression of his disapproval – before tugging at his half ear again.

  Jacob flashed him a smile. ‘You’re a long time looking at the lid, mate,’ he said.

  It didn’t take long for professionalism to overcome Mac’s irritation.

  ‘Bring it on,’ he said.

  *

  Sweat trickled down the side of Sam’s face next to the unfurled bit of carpet he had used to conceal his weapon. The midday sun scorched the back of his neck as he lay flat on the roof facing the back of their target’s house. Mac lay five metres away, his Diemaco C8 loaded and at the ready. Through the brickwork lattice they could see the guards on the opposite roof – a distance, Sam estimated, of thirty metres. One of them was smoking a cigarette; the other was fiddling with his weapon.

  Sam checked his watch.

  ‘Contact in sixty seconds,’ Jacob’s voice came over their comms earpiece.

  ‘Roger that.’

  They waited.

  The hard, angular contents of his ops waistcoat dug into his ribcage.

  Thirty seconds.

  Fifteen.

  The distinctive crack of rounds being fired. The smoker dropped his cigarette and sprang to his feet, immediately rushing to the front and out of sight. Sam and Mac waited for the second man to disappear. Moments later he did.

  Sam steeled himself for the noise of the explosion.

  When it came, it sent a brief shock through his body. Sam’s experience had taught him to judge the size of any explosion he heard, and it sounded big. It didn’t stop him from moving, though. He got to his feet while Mac stayed in the firing position, ready to cover him. Instantly, however, there was a shout. ‘Sam! Get down!’

  He immediately fell back to the ground. The second sniper had reappeared, ten metres to the right of the first. His AK-47 was ready to fire and he had noticed Sam. Two rounds hit the top of the roof in quick succession.

  They were the last two rounds the Iraqi guard would ever fire.

  Mac’s aim was unerring. As he pressed down on the trigger, Sam could tell that his friend was totally in the zone. He could almost visualise the cartridge stirring to life in the chamber, the propellant gases expanding and exerting pressure on the bolt, creating a calculated delay that permits the projectile to exit the barrel, the gas pressure dropping again once the projectile has been released.

  The MP5 round hit the guard straight in the face. There was a flash of red before the sniper fell to the ground and out of sight.

  ‘Go!’ Mac urged.

  Sam sprinted, knowing he was covered. It took him no more than fifteen seconds to hurtle down the stairs and across the ten-metre-wide street before firing several rounds at the handle of the door. The wood splintered and broke – one good kick and it was open. He scanned the back garden for hostiles, his eye zeroed in on the sights and his finger resting lightly on the trigger. Convinced that it was clear, he looked up at the roof where Mac was covering him. ‘I’m in,’ he stated over the comms, giving his friend the thumbs-up sign, then directing his gun once more into the back garden of the house.

  Mac was there within seconds. They nodded at each other as Mac covered the entrance, allowing Sam to push on inside. There was no one here – it looked like Jacob’s strategy was working.

  It was less than a minute after the initial explosion that the two of them gained entry into the house. Out front they could hear the sound of shots, a distinctive loud, sharp crack, then the rounds nicking against the walls and ricocheting into the ground. Sam steeled himself against the image of his brother being fired at. His instinct wanted him to join in the firefight, but Jacob was a big boy. Older than Sam and more experienced. He could take care of himself. But just to reassure himself he asked the question. ‘You okay, J.?’

  ‘Walk in the park,’ came the reply, followed by another round of fire.

  Sam and Mac swept the ground floor in under a minute. Empty. Mac took the lead up the stairs. These were pressed up against one wall with a solid banister on the other side. They led up to a balcony-style landing with a metre-high wall looking over the ground floor. Sam covered Mac from below. His friend disappeared from sight. There was the sudden, brutal sound of two rounds in quick succession: Mac had double-tapped someone. Sam sprinted up the stairs in time to see an Iraqi with half his head missing slide down the whitewashed wall, leaving a brushstroke of red where the fatal wound scraped against it.

  They were in a corridor-cum-landing. To Sam’s right the low wall overlooking the ground floor. There was a door at either end and one in the middle. It was this door that the Iraqi had been guarding, so they immediately took their positions on either side of it. Sam plunged one hand down the top of his dishdash and pulled a flashbang from his ops waistcoat, then nodded at Mac who held up three fingers, then two, then one. Mac kicked the door in, before aiming his weapon into the room and allowing Sam to rip the pin from the tennis-ball sized grenade and hurl it inside. As soon as it was in, Sam braced himself, clenching his eyes slightly and waiting for the explosion.

  One second.

  Two seconds.

  Impact.

  The moment the sonic boom arrived, Sam and Mac appeared in the doorway to take stock of the situation.

  It was smoky and dusty, but not so much that they couldn’t see to work. There were four men inside. They were all suffering temporary blindness from the grenade; one of them had a thin streak of blood seeping from his ear. Three men were clutching their AK-47s, waving them dangerously around the room despite the fact that they were totally disorientated. The fourth, an older man with a face Sam thought he recognised, cowered in the corner. That was him, he thought to himself. The target. It had to be. And even if it wasn’t, their next move was clear. The Iraqis carrying the weapons needed to be plugged before they blindly opened fire and got lucky.

  Three shots. Three direct hits. Each round produced a satisfying whump as it crashed into human flesh, hot lead burning a neat, perfectly round hole into the body, the round then ricocheting off bone and muscle, ripping through organs and severely fucking up the target. The men fell dead to the floor, with bits of bone and thick clumps of brain around them.

  Sam entered the room. The fourth man – massively fat and with a scraggly beard – was groping blindly. As Sam grabbed him he started shouting, his voice harsh and full of authority. What he was saying, Sam had no idea. He just used one hand to pull his Iraqi hostage out of the room, his other hand outstretched and pointing the Diemaco in front of him. The man stumbled as Sam dragged him into the corridor. He continued to bark harshly in Arabic.

  ‘Target attained,’ he said curtly into the comms. No reply. ‘Repeat, target attained. I’ve got him. Over.’ Still nothing. He cursed. The fucking comms were down. Sam looked up at Mac whose nod told him he was experiencing the same problem.

  They needed to get this guy out of the house as quickly as possible. A quick look at the stairs, however, told him that getting out was going to be a problem.

  There were four of them, positioned at intervals along the staircase. Their AK-47s were raised and although Sam could tell at a glance from the way they held their weapons that they were not well trained, he also knew that he and Mac were in a world of trouble. In an instant he grabbed his hostage and used his body as
a shield before aiming the Diemaco directly at his head. From the corner of his eye he saw Mac hit the floor. His friend was shielded now by the low internal wall that looked over the ground floor. Sam followed suit, pulling his hostage with him.

  The two SAS men were breathing heavily. Mac took up position, crouched down on one knee, the butt of his gun pressed hard into his shoulder as he aimed towards the top of the stairs.

  Stalemate. The Iraqis knew they couldn’t advance; neither could Sam and Mac leave the protection of the wall while the enemy were on the stairs. The first person to put their head above the parapet would get it. There was a tense silence.

  ‘What the fuck now?’ Mac asked under his breath.

  Sam sensed that his hostage’s sight was returning. He was looking at Mac with an animal snarl and had started to struggle. Sam dug his weapon into the fleshy part of the man’s neck and felt his muscles freeze.

  A figure suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs. He was stepping sideways, facing Mac and Sam, his gun already pointing in their direction. Mac didn’t hesitate. His first bullet hit the guard in the chest, knocking him backwards.

  ‘Take that, you cunt.’

  The Iraqi’s AK-47 discharged a round harmlessly into the air above them before Mac’s second shot hit him in the head. He slumped heavily to the ground. Sam’s hostage looked in horror at the sight of the shattered bone and brain matter that had burst from the dead man’s head. His limbs started to tremble.

  Another silence.

  And then it was broken. Not by the guards this time, but by something quite different. A voice, down below. Urgent and bellowing.

  Jacob.

  Sam pictured him on the ground floor below, just by the back entrance with his weapon pointed across the hallway up towards the stairs.