They’d found cover just in time.
Two SEALs ran from the courtyard into the corridor, heading for the security gates. Joe didn’t move. His mouth was filled with the dry taste of dust, and the sharp edge of the concrete was digging into his right arm. Through a foot-wide crack in the otherwise undamaged part of the wall, he could see into the central courtyard. It was about twenty metres by twenty. The main house – two storeys with a two-metre-high privacy wall around the first-floor balcony – showed no signs of occupation. The lights were off, the windows shut.
Joe counted six SEALs in the courtyard, the nearest of them about twelve metres away, kneeling down in the firing position, their weapons trained on the house. They all had thick beards like his, and were wearing JPCs in the latest Crye Precision multicam. This was the same get-up Joe and Ricky would have been wearing if they hadn’t been in civvies, with the exception of the small Velcro patch on the Americans’ body armour bearing the stars and stripes insignia.
Lying on the ground, no more than four metres from Joe’s position, was a dead body, clearly an enemy combatant. He was wearing underpants and a vest, and had taken a round to the chest – the vest was dark and saturated. The corpse’s head was twisted so that it was looking almost directly at Joe.
A flash of phosphorescent light filled one of the windows, followed by a sharp crack.
Another scream, almost lost under the thunder of the choppers.
The retort of a rifle. It sounded like it came from the first floor of the house.
And, stuck in that cramped, uncomfortable space, barely daring to breathe and cursing his friend for getting them into this situation, Joe Mansfield couldn’t help wondering if that was the gunshot the world had been waiting for.
The White House Situation Room. 1510 hours EST.
‘What the hell’s happening?’
The National Security Adviser is the first to ask the question Todd sees on everyone’s face. The room has been silent for ten minutes, its occupants’ eyes fixed on the screen.
Only there’s nothing to see. Just darkness. The occasional shadow. Every minute or so, the picture crackles – a reminder that these images are being transmitted halfway around the world. It’s quiet as well as dark. The occasional shout, a barked instruction, the sharp rapping of a firearm. There’s no way the watchers can know whether this is American fire or enemy fire.
Todd senses movement behind him. He looks over his shoulder and sees Mason Delaney pull a silk handkerchief from his top pocket. He dabs a bead of perspiration from the area of his forehead just under his parting, before neatly replacing the handkerchief. When he sees that Todd has been watching him, he gives the photographer a little smile. ‘We should sell this footage on a DVD in Wal-Mart, Mr President,’ he announces in his piping voice. ‘Pay off the deficit.’ Delaney smiles. Nobody else does.
There’s movement. The head-cam footage on the screen judders as the soldier whose view is being transmitted to the White House runs along a short, dark corridor, two other SEALs in front of him. The corridor ends in a flight of stairs, which they start to mount. They are halfway up when Sagan stands. He has one hand to his ear and an expression of concentration – or is it alarm? Todd wonders – as he listens to his information feed.
Suddenly all eyes are no longer on the screen, but on Sagan.
Sagan’s eyes widen. A smile spreads across his face. ‘Geronimo EKIA… enemy killed in action…’ He turns to look at his commander in chief. ‘We got him, Mr President. We got the son of a bitch.’
A few seconds of silence. The President closes his eyes. His face visibly relaxes as he kicks back in his chair and punches his palm in a gesture of triumph. It’s as if the whole room has exhaled after minutes of holding its collective breath.
A quiet buzz of excited conversation. The President shakes hands with his deputy, before inclining his head appreciatively at Mason Delaney at the other end of the table. When Todd looks back at Delaney, he is put in mind of a cat preening himself. The CIA man’s lips glisten with barely suppressed delight and he straightens the bow tie that doesn’t need straightening.
The President then turns to congratulate his chief military adviser. But Sagan doesn’t appear interested in congratulations. As he sits down at the table again, he urgently directs the President’s attention to the footage with a sharp jab of his forefinger.
There is a hallway at the top of the stairs. A number of people are there, kneeling, their backs against a dirty wall and with an armed SEAL standing over them. It’s impossible to say how many, because they only appear on the screen for a fraction of a second. Five? Maybe six? They are all women and children, their hands secured behind their backs with cable ties and their mouths covered with packing tape. Their lives are being spared, but not their dignity.
The head cam turns away as its wearer jogs along another corridor, stopping after five metres at an open door to his right.
‘This could be ugly, Mr President…’ murmurs Sagan. But he doesn’t suggest that anybody looks away.
The head cam looks into the room. For ten seconds the soldier wearing it is as still as the politicians observing him, as they all stare at the scene it reveals.
It is a bedroom – shabby, untidy. There are two beds – a small double, and what looks like a single camp bed to one side. On the opposite wall there is a window with frayed blue curtains, and along the right-hand side of the room a wardrobe that is little more than a rail holding a collection of white robes. The floor is covered with a patterned rug. The whole place has an air of neglect, as though it is an unloved room in the cheapest and most neglected of temporary accommodation.
But nobody is really looking at the wardrobe or the curtains or the rug. They are looking at the body lying on the double bed.
The face is instantly recognizable, despite the devastating gun wound the man’s head has sustained. The gaunt cheeks, the beard flecked with grey and, now, red. His left eye is closed. His right eye is no longer there. It’s just a bleeding, gaping abscess, around which a flash of skull is visible. The untidy sheets of the bed itself are saturated with blood in the area around the head. There is spatter elsewhere, and a streak of scarlet on the garish rug.
The women in the Situation Room, and some of the men, avert their eyes. At the same time, the head cam turns to the right. The corner of the room becomes visible. There are two Navy SEALs. They have boom mikes at the edge of their mouths, goggles perched on the top of their helmets and head cams attached to the fronts. They hold their weapons with the light confidence of professionals. But the figure at which they are aiming them is not a threat. It’s a little girl. She is wearing a nightgown and is crouched in the corner, her head in her hands, weeping.
‘Surely they’re not going to—?’ says a female voice in the Situation Room.
But Sagan interrupts her. ‘His daughter,’ he states, having been briefed by his information feed.
Several of the people sitting round the table recoil as one of the SEALs steps towards the girl. He doesn’t hurt her, but neither is he gentle. He pulls the kid to her feet and for the first time the occupants of the room see her face. The image might be blurred and scratchy, but the look of terror it conveys is almost as distressing as the grisly vision of the girl’s dead father.
‘Get the kid out of here,’ instructs the second SEAL. His companion drags the girl towards the door. As she passes her father, though, she wriggles free and runs to him, ignoring the bloodied rug she’s treading on, and flinging herself at his corpse. She manages to hold on to his thin leg for a fraction of a second before the soldiers pull her away. The head cam steps back and the body disappears from view, to be replaced by the landing once again. The SEALs bind the girl’s wrists behind her back and throw her in the direction of the other women and children. She wails as she stumbles to the ground, and shouts something in Arabic. But her distress doesn’t seem to affect the soldiers. ‘Get him bagged up,’ one of them instructs.