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  Joe fired once more. The suppressed round, hardly audible above the sound of the raid, entered the man’s right eye, blasting a chunk from that side of his head. He dropped immediately. As his body fell against it, the gate boomed like an oil drum and creaked open a few more inches.

  Joe sensed movement over his shoulder. He turned quickly. A figure was approaching, halfway between his position and the observation house. He was only a fraction of a second short of dropping him when he realized it was Ricky. Joe cursed. What the fuck was wrong with him? Couldn’t he follow the simplest SOP – stay where he was and cover his mate?

  Ricky had his personal weapon engaged and was alternating the direction of its aim – first one way along the track, then the other – with every step he took.

  Joe no longer heard the roar of the choppers in the compound. He just saw Ricky, and now that he was only five metres away, he could see the sweat on his brow.

  Ricky said nothing. He strode past Joe, stepped over the dead body and disappeared into the darkness beyond the partially open gate. Three seconds later the corpse slid into the compound as Ricky dragged him back inside. What the hell was he doing?

  Joe felt the acrid taste of bile rising in the back of his throat. Ricky was about to fuck things up good and proper. He cursed under his breath and scanned the area. There was no sign of any movement along the road. Inside the compound, the air was filled with the roar of the choppers.

  He had to make a decision. Ricky was alone in there. If one thing had been drilled into him from the very first minute of his very first selection weekend, it was this: never try to do anything by yourself. Either he was with his mate, or he was against him. Put like that, the decision was made for him.

  Joe stepped over the threshold and pulled the gates shut. They closed with a rattling clang, then he became aware of the sounds of battle: the choppers turning and burning and the occasional burst of precise, targeted gunfire.

  His first thought was for Ricky. Joe could make out his silent silhouette five metres ahead, weapon in the firing position as he hugged the left-hand wall. They were standing in the shadows, but he could just make out Ricky’s eyes as his mate looked at him over his shoulder.

  They were in a corridor open to the sky, some three metres wide and lined by two five-metre-tall walls. Twenty metres ahead, Joe could see where the SEALs had blasted through these walls: there was a cloud of smoke and dust, illuminated by a beam from the right that he assumed emanated from the downed Black Hawk. Silhouetted figures passed from right to left, obscured by the dust. He counted six men. Seven. He saw the outline of a sniffer dog, then another two human forms. Nobody was heading towards them. They were moving swiftly into position from the LZ to the compound’s accommodation area.

  The thunder of the Black Hawks’ rotors took on a different quality – a slightly higher pitch. The undamaged chopper was rising. Then it appeared above the right-hand wall, huge and threatening, and continued to rise until it was about fifteen metres in the air. Looking up, Joe could see that the Yanks had decided, now that everything had gone noisy, to use the helicopter as a weapons platform. He could see a door-gunner aiming a Minigun down into the compound, plus three other soldiers with their assault rifles pointing downwards. The guys in the Black Hawk showed no sign of being able to see him or Ricky. If he could just persuade his mate to get back to the entrance . . .

  The dust was settling up ahead. Peering in the darkness, Joe could make out two piles of rubble, each a good couple of metres high, by the blast site. There were no longer any SEALs moving towards the house. He could hear evidence of their activity, though. There were screams: not the constant, bloodcurdling screams of a massacre, but the occasional shouts of women and children, obviously very frightened. And, punctuating the screams, the dull knock of suppressed weapons. Joe counted them. One. Two. Three. The clinical sound of individuals being deliberately picked off. There were more people screaming than being shot, which meant the SEALs were being selective. They knew who they were after. But even though the Yanks might not be greasing everyone, Joe knew exactly what he would do in their shoes if he unexpectedly came across two men as heavily armed as him and Ricky.

  ‘We’re surplus to fucking requirements, mucker,’ Joe whispered. ‘Let’s get the hell out . . .’

  Ricky’s only response was to go on another five metres. He was halfway towards the rubble now, and still advancing. Joe ran after him.

  A shout from the other side of the wall. An American voice, clearly a SEAL commander, instructing two of his men: ‘Guard the main entrance. No one enters, no one leaves.’

  Joe froze.

  He looked back towards the gate. Fifteen metres. To get there, re-open the gates and extract? Fifteen seconds. Too long. But the piles of rubble were only five metres away. The light shining from the choppers through the gap in the wall meant the vision of anyone passing through there would be compromised.

  He could sense Ricky making the same calculations.

  They sprinted towards the rubble. A rectangular block of concrete – about two metres long by a metre high and with a crack running its entire height – was resting at forty-five degrees against what remained of the left-hand wall, with other chunks of debris littered around it. Joe wormed his way into the gap, fully aware that Ricky, with his back against a metre-high boulder of concrete alongside the wall on the right, was less well hidden.

  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, befo
re 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.

  ‘I don’t think we need to see any more,’ interrupts the President. Sagan nods and presses a switch in front of him. The images disappear from the screen. Silence falls in the room.

  Todd raises his camera.

  Snap.

  Abbottabad, 0130 hours local time.

  Joe’s heart hammered in his ribcage as he kept watch on the courtyard from the darkness of the pile of rubble. How the hell had they got themselves into this situation? What was going on with Ricky? How was Joe going to get them both out unseen?

  Five minutes passed.

  There were still six SEALs in the courtyard, kneeling in the firing position, clearly waiting to bring down anybody attempting to flee the building. They didn’t flinch when the front door of the house opened and a line of people emerged. They were women and children. Joe counted seven, all of them cuffed and blindfolded. Two SEALs followed, and they directed the captives to the right-hand side of the house before making them lie on the ground face down.

  More movement at the doorway. Another two SEALs emerged. They were carrying a body bag, one man at either end. Joe had seen enough body bags in his time for it to be an unremarkable sight. Somehow, though, he couldn’t keep his eyes off this one. He knew he was watching the SEALs extract the corpse of the most wanted man in the world.

  The two SEALs were about five metres out of the house when he saw yet more movement at the doorway. Another two appeared, carrying a second body bag. Both pairs of soldiers were moving with grim purpose across the courtyard. They stepped over the underwear-clad corpse four metres from Joe’s position, each body bag scraping over the dead man’s bloodied vest as the SEALs carried them past the pile of rubble – less than a metre from Joe’s position – through the demolished walls of the open-topped corridor and into the rubbish-burning area that doubled as an LZ.

  The movement of the body bags was like a signal. US troops spilled out of the house. Two men were carrying crates – Joe assumed that these contained materials they were confiscating from the compound – and they were preceded by a tracker dog whose silhouette Joe had already seen. Joe recognized it immediately as a Malinois, a variety of Belgian shepherd – intelligent and highly aggressive – that the Regiment’s own dog handlers used as both sniffer and attack dogs. It was wearing a harness that suggested the troops had been intending to winch it down to the ground from the chopper, and had a small IR camera, the size and shape of a Smarties tube, fixed to its side. It scampered ahead of them, clearly unfazed by the noise and stopping only when it came to the dead body near Joe, which it sniffed, paying particular attention to the are
a around the bullet wound.

  The dog looked up. With a sensation like cold ice sliding down his spine, Joe realized the animal was looking in his direction. It tilted its head and scampered over the body. Two seconds later it was inches from Joe’s hiding place, its wet nose worming its way into the crack in the wall. He could smell the rank stench of its breath.

  The dog sniffed.

  A low growl escaped its throat.

  Joe’s hand moved slowly to the holster on his chest rig, his fingertips feeling for the Sig.

  A harsh voice. American. ‘Cairo! Cairo!’

  Joe saw a hand grab the dog’s collar and pull it away. Its handler came into view. The SEAL looked young, most likely no more than twenty. He had a lean face and pronounced cheekbones, but there was a small scar on his upper lip, which looked slightly out of shape – a harelip that had been fixed surgically, Joe reckoned. The soldier pulled Cairo out of Joe’s field of view, which meant he could see the whole courtyard again.

  The six SEALs were standing but kept their weapons trained on the house while another eight soldiers started to extract, as did the two who were guarding the main security gate. Thirty seconds later the final six hurried from the courtyard. Joe could hear the undamaged Black Hawk returning to the ground, ready to lift them out.

  Joe was drenched in sweat, and not just because of the heat. He remained absolutely still for thirty seconds after the last SEAL had passed by him. Only then did he creep out of his OP. Ricky was still hidden, fully obscured by the darkness, his back up against the concrete slab behind which he had secreted himself. Joe edged towards the opposite side of the corridor, and peered round the damaged wall. He squinted as the choppers’ lights blinded him, but he was able to make out the second of the two body bags being loaded into the unharmed Black Hawk. Three SEALs were running from the compromised chopper to the intact one; ten seconds later the LZ was deserted and the frequency of the helicopter’s engines became a little higher as it prepared to take off.