Wallace looked as though he was in two minds whether to respond. ‘Look, Mason,’ he said finally. ‘I know you think this administration is a bit wet, but times have changed. America can’t afford to boss the world around in the same way any more—’
‘You start taking any flak,’ Delaney interrupted, as though Wallace had said nothing, ‘I’ll give you what you need. We got DNA samples, we got eyewitness accounts… damn, we’ve even got bin Laden’s daughter who was in the same room as him.’
A knock on the door. ‘Come!’ Delaney called.
The door opened and a young man appeared. He was extremely handsome, with lustrous black hair and well-defined cheekbones. Preppy – like he should be wandering the lawns of Princeton. He stood in the doorway without saying anything, but the anxiety on his face was evident as his eyes flickered between the two men in the office.
‘Scott,’ Delaney greeted him, blatantly – and lasciviously – eyeing the young man up and down.
‘Mr Delaney… we, er…’ Scott Stroman’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat again. ‘Mr Delaney, I need a word.’
‘Mr Wallace was just on his way out, Scott.’ Delaney held out a chubby hand, which the Chief of Staff shook. ‘So long, Jed,’ he said.
Wallace nodded and, without another word, left the room.
Stroman stepped inside, closed the door behind him, then stood with his back to it.
‘We’ve got a problem, Mr Delaney.’
Delaney wandered over towards his desk. ‘Go ahead.’
No answer. Delaney stopped and looked back at his young colleague. ‘Go ahead, Scott.’
But Stroman shook his head. ‘I think you need to come and see for yourself, sir,’ he replied, in what was little more than a whisper.
Delaney could see that he meant it. The two men left the room, Delaney locking the door behind him.
The corridors of CIA headquarters were alive with people. They all knew Mason Delaney – he was as much a part of the place as the enormous presidential seal on the floor of the main entrance – and they all knew that today was his day. He lost count of the number of congratulations he received. He did notice too that his colleagues, for once, did not appear to be suppressing knowing smiles at the sight of his pretty male assistant. But as they descended into the basement, the number of passers-by diminished until finally they were walking by themselves along a deserted narrow corridor with pale grey walls. And at the very end of the corridor was a door with a numerical keypad next to it. Scott punched in a number and there was a faint click. He opened the door and they both entered.
It was a small room – no more than five metres by five – and it appeared even more cramped on account of the large quantity of audiovisual equipment it contained, including four daisy-chained screens and two sets of reference speakers. Scott sat at the comfortable chair in front of the screens and pressed a green button. The same silent moving image appeared on all four screens. At first it was dark, blurred and indistinct.
‘What is this?’ Delaney asked, a hint of impatience in his voice.
‘Camera footage from the Black Hawk leaving Abbottabad, sir,’ Stroman replied.
And as he spoke, the image started to make sense. Delaney could see the ground receding, and in the top-left corner of the screen he could make out the dark shape of the compromised chopper. The Black Hawk rose higher. Now they could see the high compound walls, and the uncovered corridor that led from the main security gates.
And movement.
‘Who’s that, Scott?’ Delaney asked, his voice dangerously level.
Stroman shot him a glance that said ‘This is what I wanted you to see,’ and pressed a red button. The image froze. The young man spun a dial and zoomed in on that part of the picture which showed two shadowy figures. Delaney fancied he made out an assault rifle strapped to the body of one of these individuals.
Without waiting for an instruction from his boss, Stroman started the film again. The Black Hawk rose sufficiently for the perimeter of the whole compound to be visible. A shudder, and an explosion of orange light, as the compromised chopper exploded down on the ground. The compound receded from view as the chopper banked; when it straightened up again, Delaney could see that it was outside the perimeter of the compound.
Stroman hit the stop button again. He pointed to the bottom right-hand corner of one of the screens. Two figures again, both crouching and watching the departing chopper. Both holding their faces directly up to the camera. Stroman zoomed in again. The level of magnification caused the faces to appear a little pixellated, but it was still possible to determine their features with some accuracy: the long hair and dark skin of one of them, the full black beards of both; as well as the weapons they were carrying.
‘Facial recognition?’ Delaney asked.
‘I’ve already run it, sir.’ Stroman pressed another button on the console. The image on two of the screens was replaced by a portrait of an Asian-looking man with shoulder-length hair and a thin scar along the left side of his nose where the dark skin was slightly lighter. The remaining two screens showed a different man: Caucasian, no beard in this picture but thick eyebrows that met in the middle, unruly hair and dark bags under the eyes which looked like no amount of sleep would chase away.
‘Introduce me to these handsome young men, Scott,’ Delaney breathed.
Stroman pointed first at one, then the other. ‘Richard Singh, Joe Mansfield. British SAS. Records show they were part of the unit holding the cordon.’
‘Have any of our guys reported making contact with them?’
‘No, sir.’
‘And you’ve been in touch with Hereford HQ?’
‘Of course, sir. They deny there was any breach of SOPs.’
Delaney closed his eyes, removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘So, tell me, Scott. Tell me this. If they were supposed to be holding the cordon, and there was no breach of SOPs, what in the name of fuck were they doing running out of the compound in the wake of the raid?’
Stroman looked at his knees. ‘I don’t know, Mr Delaney, sir. I just don’t know.’
A thick, uncomfortable silence fell as the two men stared up at the faces on the screens.
‘Do we know where they are now?’ Delaney asked.
Stroman nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Of course we do.’
FOUR
Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. 1700 hours local time.
The Chinook that put Joe’s team back on the ground didn’t close down. It was needed elsewhere. Joe barked at the Doctor’s wife and their three daughters to get off the transport. The old woman gave him a look of loathing – she hadn’t liked the abrupt way Joe and his mates had manhandled her family out of Abbottabad without looking for her husband. Joe reckoned he could live with that. He worked for the British Army, not Thomas fucking Cook. He pointed towards the tailgate to indicate she should take her daughters and get out.
The rotors were kicking up a massive wall of brown dust as the unit lugged their gear off the plane. One of the kids was crying because the sand was in her eyes. He saw Ricky help the little girl out of range of the downdraft. His mate hadn’t said a single unnecessary word to him since they’d left the vicinity of the compound. The way Joe was feeling, that suited him just fine.
The tailgate closed; the chopper lifted; the dust swirled around a larger area for a few seconds. Only as the dust settled did the peaks of the Hindu Kush that filled the horizon come into view. Joe had stopped being impressed by the sight. The snow-capped mountains were just another obstacle in this dog turd of a country. Closer to hand, the LZ was surrounded by a sea of cargo containers – impossible to say how many, but in the hundreds. Some of them were covered with camo-nets; others were just scratched and exposed. Bagram – all six and a half square miles of it – was an important staging post for the Americans. A large proportion of the goods necessary to keep the US’s show on the road in Afghanistan passed through here.