‘We live in a very disposable world, don’t we,’ Downs said as he watched the glider go up in flames.
Stratton didn’t answer, going to the edge of the small plateau to look down the slope at the glowing wood.
‘I wish I’d gone for the black outfit myself,’ Downs said, comparing Stratton’s fatigues with his own. ‘You’re anxious to get down there, aren’t you?’
‘Sabarak will be on the run.’
‘That’s the idea. Our job is to take out the missiles. Someone else’ll get Sabarak, one day if not today.’
Stratton wasn’t interested in another day. Only in this one. He looked back to see if the others were ready to go.
‘But that’s the bit that pisses you off, hey, Stratton. You want to be the one who does him in.’
‘I owe him.’
‘We all owe him. Hopper was my friend as well.’
‘You didn’t have to kill him!’ Stratton said angrily, immediately regretting the outburst.
Downs couldn’t remember ever seeing Stratton that upset about something. He decided to leave it alone. He also decided to keep an eye on his friend. He wasn’t himself and they were about to step into a very hostile location.
Stratton stepped off the edge of the plateau and began down the slope that had turned into sludge in the rain.
Downs looked back for the rest of his men. ‘Come on, you lot!’ he shouted. ‘There’s a war on, you know!’
The men hurried over to the team leader as another glider burst into flames.
‘We’ll see you in the wood, Smudge,’ Downs shouted.
‘Roger that,’ Smudge called back, dumping an incendiary into another glider and hurrying off to the next one.
The rain continued to fall in buckets. Stratton felt soaked to the skin but it meant nothing to him. He carried his Colt at the ready as he passed the redoubt he and the girl had hidden behind only two days before.
When he walked into the clearing on the edge of the wood, he stopped to look down at the spot where Hopper had knelt when he shot him. The ground was muddy with water pooling everywhere.
He heard Downs and the others coming up behind him. They spread out as they approached the trees. Fires still burned within the wood. They could see no movement. It was like all who had survived had scattered.
Milton, one of the non-pilots, stepped beside Downs with a video camera attached to a head cage that allowed him to look through the lens but keep his hands on his weapon.
‘Oscar Zero, that’s Tango One Foxtrot at Sierra Two,’ Downs said into his radio.
‘Roger, that’s Tango One at Sierra Two,’ came a reply.
Downs looked at the others either side of him to see if they were ready to move in but Stratton set off without waiting for the command.
‘So used to working on your own, ain’t you,’ Downs quipped as he walked off after him.
They didn’t have to walk far into the wood before they came across the first dead fighter. A fresh depression in the ground a few metres away and his missing leg suggested he had been killed by a mortar.
Milton stood over the body to film it for a few seconds. Downs and the others set off deeper into the trees.
By the time they reached a group of huts that appeared to be the centre of the camp, they had seen only a dozen or so dead. If there was a similar ratio throughout, Stratton estimated there could be no more than forty all told. Which was a small portion of the total numbers encamped in the location. It reminded all of them that they needed to do what they had come to do quickly and get out of there. If the jihadists regrouped and pressed a counter-attack, things could quickly go wrong for the teams.
They heard a moan from within a clump of bushes. A fighter lay on the wet ground, the rain dropping on to him from the branches above, his leg badly mangled. He stared pathetically at the faces looking down on him, as much in shock to see them as from his wound. He had no weapons and looked harmless enough. The operatives walked away, just left him. They didn’t have the time or the equipment to be humane. The truth was, after so many years fighting the jihadists, the men didn’t have much humanity left either. It wasn’t something to be proud of, and if asked, most would have admitted that. But it was an easy fault to live with, or at least justify to a degree. If the jihadists caught a Western soldier, they wouldn’t give him the finest medical treatment available and three square meals a day or leave him with the hope of one day seeing his family again.
The men understood why they had to be humane but they couldn’t always maintain it.
Stratton walked to one of the wooden huts and pushed in the door. A fighter lay inside on the floor, killed by a piece of shrapnel that had blown through the thin plywood wall and hit him in the chest. A ceiling-high stack of long green boxes took up half the room.
Stratton knew instantly what they were. He unclipped the lid of one and opened it up. Inside he saw a brand-new HN series Chinese ground-to-air missile.
Downs stepped in behind him. ‘Are these what it’s all been about?’ he asked.
‘Most of them,’ Stratton replied. ‘Not all.’
‘I wonder how many of the ones they’ve already shipped have been offloaded.’
‘I expect London is trying to figure that out right now.’
Downs exhaled heavily. ‘Right. Milton! In here. Film this lot before we burn it.’
The cameraman stepped inside along with a couple of other men.
‘Make sure you get as many serial numbers as you can,’ Downs ordered. ‘Smudge, when he’s done I want this lot done to a crisp.’
‘We’ll certainly take care of that,’ Smudge said.
Stratton walked outside and looked around, unsatisfied. He stepped to the next hut. Nothing but dead bodies. The same with the one after. He stalked through the camp inspecting any dead he saw. The odds were against any being the Saudi but he had to check. He couldn’t bear the thought of that low-life escaping. If the man did manage to get out of Somalia, London had only a slim chance of ever finding him. You only had to look at bin Laden. If that guy could stay hidden, then Sabarak surely could for a fraction of the price.
Stratton walked to another pair of huts, built out of wood just like the last. One had been partially destroyed but the other appeared untouched apart from a few shrapnel holes in it. The door stood open and he could hear movement inside. Voices.
Then two SBS operatives stepped outside and looked around like they were deciding where to go next. Stratton immediately recognised the bigger of the two. It was Matt.
Matt saw Stratton at the same time and stared at him.
Stratton had no interest in the man and turned away from the hut since it had obviously been cleared.
‘Just another wounded in there,’ Matt said to Stratton.
‘No guns,’ Matt’s partner said. ‘He speaks English. Asked if he could light a lamp. I told ’im ’e could set fire to ’imself if ’e liked.’
Stratton looked back at the hut. The only Somali he had heard speaking English during his visit was Lotto.
And Sabarak.
He walked up to the door and pushed it open. Sitting on the floor in the darkness next to a desk was a man holding a kerosene lamp. He struck a match along the side of a box and when it lit he touched it to the wick of the lamp. The flame glowed to expose his face.
It was the Saudi.
He sat with his legs outstretched, one of them bloody, disfigured by a gruesome wound on the thigh.
Sabarak raised his head to look at the new visitor. When he saw who it was his expression turned grey. When the glider attack had first begun and a mortar had struck the shed next door, sending a piece of shrapnel through the wall and into his leg, he had thought his end had come and had sat on the floor waiting for his executioners to arrive. When the two SBS operatives walked into the hut, Sabarak had fully expected them to shoot him. But they had simply looked around and checked him for a weapon. Sabarak had decided to risk communicating with them. It hadn’t surprised him that the men spoke English. He knew the attack had to have been carried out by either the British or the Americans. When they left him on his own, Sabarak realised he was going to survive. The British were not bloody executioners. They had come for the missiles.