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  Two metres from the open door, his senses were hit by a musty smell. There was a chilling silence. If the High Commissioner and his aide were inside, they were keeping very still. Danny found himself holding his breath as he stepped over one of the dead bodies and used the door to shield himself from the entrance.

  There was a good chance of enemy shooters inside the block. Danny couldn’t present himself as a target in the doorway. Not without a distraction. He pulled a flashbang from his ops waistcoat. It would put the shits up the hostages, but they’d get over it. More importantly, it would give Danny the crucial seconds he needed to take out any enemy targets.

  He switched on the Surefire torch fitted to his rifle’s rack. Then he pulled the pin on his grenade, stretched out his arm and chucked the flashbang inside.

  A two-second pause, then an ear-cracking explosion split the air.

  Danny swung round, his huge form filling the door frame. The light from his torch pierced the smoke that had billowed into the dark room. Danny scanned the length of it, searching for figures, his finger resting lightly on the trigger.

  There were no militants. No gunmen. No threats.

  But there was something at the far end of the building, to Danny’s right. A strange, shapeless mass lying on the ground. It filled him with apprehension, even though he didn’t quite know what it was.

  Danny stepped towards it, the beam of his torch cutting through the gloom and the curling tendrils of smoke, lighting up this unknown object at the end of the room.

  When he was ten metres away, he stopped. He had suddenly realised what he was looking at.

  He was sickened by what he saw.

  EIGHT

  It was a body, and it was in two pieces.

  The legs and torso were naked, apart from a pair of soiled underpants. The head was resting, on its side, on the corpse’s bare torso. The tendons of its severed neck glistened. The wooden floor around the victim oozed with fresh blood. The victim was, quite clearly, newly dead.

  Danny took another five paces towards the grisly scene. He tilted his head so it was aligned with the victim’s, and shone his torch directly at it. The eyes were open, the grey hair bloody and matted. But there was no mistaking the features: Danny recognised them immediately from the photograph he’d seen of the High Commissioner back in Lagos.

  ‘I’ve located Target Red,’ he said into the radio. ‘He’s dead. Beheaded.’

  Tony’s voice: ‘Any sign of Target Blue?’

  ‘Negative. Target Blue still missing. The op is still a go. We need to find him.’

  A moment’s pause, then Tony’s voice cracked like a whip. ‘We’ve got movement! A car engine’s just started up. Get out here!’

  Danny turned his back on the dead body and sprinted out of Block North. Tony and Ripley were already running east, past Block West towards the road. He could hear the high-pitched screeching of a car engine accelerating fast.

  Tony and Ripley disappeared from view behind Block West. It took five seconds for Danny to catch up with them, by which time they were on their knees in the firing position, ten metres apart at the side of the road. The open-topped Land Rover that they’d seen from the high ground was already a hundred metres from their position, past the sandbag blockade, surrounded by a cloud of dust as it sped up the incline to the south of Chikunda, back in the direction from which the unit had arrived. Whoever was driving the vehicle knew what they were doing. Its trajectory veered slightly from left to right: an erratically moving target that was harder to fire on.

  Ripley and Tony both discharged a couple of rounds in quick succession. Danny saw three of them ricochet off the Land Rover’s chassis, but none found their intended mark in the vehicle’s tyres. The Land Rover was 130 metres away now. The terrain dipped slightly, hiding the lower half of the vehicle from view.

  ‘We’ll never hit it!’ Danny shouted. ‘Ripley, find Caitlin. Finish your sweep of the village. Tony, follow me.’

  Without waiting for a response, Danny sprinted back to the open area between the three rectangular buildings. The two discarded motorbikes were still lying there. He and Tony reached them at exactly the same time, and there was no need for them to discuss their next move.

  The bikes had obviously been left in a hurry: their keys still hung from the ignition. Danny and Tony flicked their safetys on, slung their rifles across their backs then took a bike each, hauled them upwards and started the engines. In less than two seconds they were screeching back to the road, where they swerved sharply to the south, following the Land Rover.

  Danny opened the throttle fully. Dust and small stones stung his face as he surged south, swerving to avoid the barricades that the Boko Haram militants had left in the road. In his side mirror he saw that Tony was just a couple of metres behind him, skilfully maintaining single file so they didn’t present a broad, easy target for any shooters. The bike shook violently as Danny negotiated the road, whose shitty state was much more of a problem now they didn’t have the good suspension and all-terrain tyres of the Range Rover.

  The vegetation on either side of the road was a blur of green in Danny’s peripheral vision. He kept his eyes forward, but the Land Rover had disappeared from sight. All he could do was burn up the road as fast as he could.

  As the road started to undulate, Danny almost came off the bike. But his balance was good as he flew over the dips in the terrain. The road continued at an upward incline for thirty metres. Danny flew over a sharp brow. The bike skidded as it hit the ground again. But now Danny slammed the brakes on. The bike spun ninety degrees as it came to a sharp halt, and Danny heard – but did not see – Tony doing the same thing behind him. He let the bike fall, then quickly knelt down into the firing position, every sense tuned in to the scene that had unfolded in front of him.

  The road ahead was perfectly straight. At first it dipped. Then, after about fifty metres, the gradient turned sharply upwards, leading to the brow of yet another hill approximately 110 metres from their position. On the brow of the hill were two figures, one directly in front of the other. Danny zoomed in through the sight on his rifle, then described what he saw out loud for Tony’s benefit.

  ‘I’ve got eyes on the Chinese guy. He’s armed with a pistol, and he has his weapon aimed at the head of a guy I don’t recognise.’

  By now, Tony was next to him in the firing position, also viewing the scene. ‘Target Blue?’ he asked.

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘Can we drop him?’

  Danny gave it a moment’s thought. There was no wind, but the Chinese guy was too well shielded by his hostage to present a big enough target at this distance. ‘Negative,’ he said.

  Five seconds passed. Standoff.

  ‘You’re the boss,’ Tony breathed. Danny thought he detected a slightly malicious edge to his voice. ‘What the fuck do we do now?’

  Two seconds later, the decision was made for them.

  The retort of gunfire echoed from the brow of the hill. Two shots. Through his sight, Danny saw the momentary muzzle flashes. Target Blue hit the floor. Pure instinct kicked in. Danny realigned his weapon just a fraction, hoping to take a shot at the Chinese militant. The retort from his own rifle filled the air, but the round flew uselessly as his target dived, then rolled back over the brow of the hill.

  ‘Fucker shot our guy,’ Tony shouted. ‘Shoulder and leg. He’s probably still alive.’

  ‘Get to him!’ Danny barked.

  It was obviously a tactic to delay the two soldiers, but it was a good one. They’d lost Target Red, and Danny was fucked if they were going to lose Target Blue as well. The two Regiment guys jumped back on to their motorbikes. They floored it south, across the open ground, and accelerated up the sharp incline to where the hostage was lying on the ground. Fifteen metres from the brow of the hill, Danny could hear the hostage shouting in pain, even above the manic scream of the motorbikes’ engines. They skidded to a second halt alongside him. Danny immediately let his bike fall again
and knelt down beside the patient. He had scruffy, shoulder-length hair and a several days’ worth of stubble. His face was caked in dirt. He was wearing blue jeans and a dirty check shirt, and blood was seeping dramatically all down his right sleeve, and even worse over his right trouser leg. He had a wonky nose – it looked like the Boko Haram fuckers had broken it at some point.

  ‘We’ve lost the Chink!’ Tony shouted, but all Danny’s attention was now on the hostage.

  ‘Hugh Deakin?’ Danny shouted.

  There was just a pained whimper from the hostage.

  ‘We should fucking go after him!’ Tony urged.

  ‘Is your name Hugh Deakin?’ Danny shouted. The blood loss was heavy – he needed to keep his guy talking.

  The hostage nodded, his breath coming in short, shaky gasps. Danny ripped his bloodied shirt in two to reveal the gun wound. Bad. The round had entered his upper arm about three inches below the shoulder blade. Two-inch entry wound, exit wound not much smaller. The humerus would be entirely shattered. But the leg shot was even more of a worry: if the femoral artery had been severed, the blood loss would be catastrophic.

  ‘Give him a morphine shot!’ Danny shouted. ‘I’m going to apply tourniquets.’

  Tony was staring south along the road, his face full of frustration. ‘I can fucking get him, Black!’

  ‘No!’ Danny shouted. ‘We deal with the hostage first.’ And with his hands covered in the young man’s blood, Danny pulled two tourniquets from his med pack. He had to stop the blood loss, no matter what. He wrapped one a couple of inches above the leg wound, the other above the arm wound, and pulled them both very tight, blood pissing between his fingers and all over the hostage.

  As he worked, a clearly reluctant Tony activated his radio. ‘We have Target Blue, repeat we have Target Blue. Ripley, Caitlin, report your status, repeat, report your status . . .’

  Now that the buzz of Danny and Tony’s motorbikes had faded, the centre of Chikunda was ominously silent. Ripley went about the quick, efficient business of checking that Blocks North, West and East were empty. Block East contained an impressive arms cache – four grenade launchers, a rack of AK-47s and several wooden boxes of ammunition. But no militants. Block West had clearly been an accommodation block: ten thin, dirty mattresses were dotted around the floor, with tangled piles of clothes next to them. Still no militants. And Block North contained nothing but Target Red, his head resting grotesquely on his torso. The sight left a dry, bitter taste in Ripley’s mouth, but he knew there was no point wasting time on a dead man. Boko Haram could still be hiding out in the village. His job was to hunt them down.

  He edged carefully towards the central road, sweat trickling from his forehead into his eyes. From the protection of Block West, he looked north then south. The road seemed to shimmer into the distance with the heat haze. Through the sight on his rifle he studied the burned-out area to the north-west. The only sign of movement was a bird that flew in and rested on the partially demolished wall of what must have once been a house, approximately two hundred metres away.

  Ripley’s earpiece crackled. Tony’s voice: ‘We have Target Blue, repeat we have Target Blue. Ripley, Caitlin, report your status, repeat, report your status.’

  Caitlin: ‘Keeping eyes on the route into Chikunda from the north.’

  Ripley clocked in. ‘I’m going to clear that enclosed compound with the three huts.’

  The radio voices fell silent.

  Ripley edged north, twenty-five metres along the road, until he came alongside the wall of the enclosed compound. It was made of solid breeze blocks, and was a good five metres high. Unscalable without any extra apparatus. He followed the wall for forty metres, then stopped behind a wooden gate, three metres high, two wide, cut into the blocks. A sturdy, well-fitting door which was, weirdly, locked from the outside with a large padlock.

  Ripley considered that for a moment. It didn’t make much sense. If Boko Haram had established a secure compound like this, why had they been keeping their hostages in the relatively insecure confines of Block North? Maybe they had been keeping the prisoners in here originally, and had only moved them out to conduct the execution. Or maybe they were hiding something else in the compound. Another arms cache, maybe? Ripley wanted to find out.

  It would be an easy lock to force. Ripley found a rock on the ground the size of a large orange. He struck it hard, several times, against the bolt that the padlock was holding. The wood behind it splintered, and the soft metal dented and warped. Ripley had it off in thirty seconds. He engaged his rifle again and carefully kicked. The door’s hinges creaked as it swung open.

  ‘Keeping eyes on the route into Chikunda from the north.’

  ‘I’m going to clear that enclosed compound with the three huts.’

  Caitlin was lying on her front, on a patch of raised terrain thirty metres from the road, camouflaged by a patch of low brush. The heat was like a hammer on the back of her head. The biting frustration of hearing Target Red was dead was only slightly softened by the news that Danny and Tony had located Target Blue, albeit badly wounded. She had to suppress her desire to make someone pay for what they’d done. An itchy trigger finger wouldn’t do anybody any favours. Her job was simple. Watch the road. If reinforcements came in from the north, inform her unit mates.

  She got back to scanning the road with her handheld scope. Her position was directly opposite the burned-down part of the village, and she couldn’t stop herself from focusing in on those ravaged, demolished houses. She found herself picturing what it must have been like for the villagers when these Boko Haram bastards arrived. She saw smoke rising from houses that had stood there for years. Kids and women screaming. Men trying to defend their families, only to be mown down by assault rifles. She focused on what remained of one of those buildings. It was just a dilapidated wall, black with smoke scars.

  She drew a sharp intake of breath. Lying at the bottom of that wall was a figure. A body. And something about it wasn’t right. She zoomed in a little closer. The body was lying on its back. She had to keep her hands very still to keep it within her magnified field of view, but after examining it for a few more seconds, she was certain of something: this wasn’t a Nigerian casualty. This corpse’s skin was white.

  An uneasy feeling grew in her chest. Who the hell was this?

  She double-checked her surroundings. There was no sign of anyone. She spoke into her radio. ‘I’m crossing the road to the western side. I’ve just seen something I want to check out.’

  ‘Roger that,’ came Danny’s reply.

  Caitlin pushed herself to her feet and started jogging towards the burned-out area and the unexpected corpse.

  The tourniquet was in place. Tony had injected morphine into the casualty’s leg. It seemed to have helped, but only a bit. Target Blue was in a shit state. Fresh wet blood all down the wounded arm. It had dried on his right hand and coagulated under the fingertips.

  ‘We’re British Army,’ Danny told the young man. ‘We’re going to get you out of here.’ He stood up and spoke to Tony. ‘Go get our vehicle,’ he said. ‘We need to get on the radio back to base, call in a casualty evacuation, even if it means getting the Nigerians on board. He’s not going to make it otherwise.’

  Tony nodded, but the frown on his face told Danny he was fuming that Danny had overruled him about going after the Chinese guy. Without another word, he turned and started jogging back along the road.

  Danny crouched down again. ‘Listen carefully,’ he said. ‘You and me, we’re going to keep talking. You got that? We’re going to keep on talking . . .’

  Because Danny knew that if the kid allowed himself to fall asleep, chances were he’d never wake up again . . .

  ‘I’m crossing the road to the western side. I’ve just seen something I want to check out.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  Ripley was only half aware of the conversation going on in his earpiece as he edged into the compound, his senses attuned for the slightest so
und or movement. He didn’t know why, but the extraordinary stillness of the village was unnerving him.

  Inside the enclosed compound, his brain registered everything before him in a fraction of a second. The ground was unusually free of rubble or any other random junk, as if it had been cleared out on purpose. As they’d seen from the satellite imagery and from the high ground, there were three circular huts here, each of them about seven metres in diameter. They had roughly thatched conical roofs, mud walls and wooden doors. Like the compound itself, each door was locked from the outside.

  No movement. No sound. The compound still seemed empty. But Ripley could smell something. Just faintly. Something rotten.

  His rifle, the butt dug into his shoulder, followed his line of sight precisely as he crossed ten metres of open ground to the first hut. This time he didn’t bother with a rock. He just kicked the door in with a sturdy strike of his heel.

  The hut was empty, with the exception of a pile of white overalls against the wall to Ripley’s two o’clock.

  He stepped outside, his rifle still following his line of sight, crossed to the second hut and kicked the door open.

  In the centre of the hut was a wooden crate, with Chinese lettering imprinted on one side. The lid was lying to one side. The crate itself was empty. Ripley left the second hut, and approached the third.

  Caitlin picked her way across the rubble, assault rifle engaged. This whole area still stank of burning. She moved, sickened, past the bodies of two Nigerian children, face down in the earth. She didn’t know if they’d been killed by bullets or by fire, and she didn’t really want to find out. She tried to put them from her mind as she focused on her objective: the white body. It was fifteen metres ahead of her, its back slumped against a wall, facing out towards the road. She now saw that the body had a gunshot wound to its chest. It was wearing a lightweight sports jacket and pale trousers, although both of them were now spattered with mud and blood. Short blond hair, fairly clean-shaven. She had the impression that he had died much more recently than those Nigerian kids.