He estimated that it would take forty minutes to return to the village. He tried to work out what kind of response Holroyd could muster in that time. He was almost certain the RMP man wouldn’t venture after Danny by himself. Would he get Tony and the guys to accompany him? Probably not. Holroyd was out to nail the Regiment and he seemed to think he was doing God’s work. It would be too big a blow to his pride to ask for their help. If he wanted ANA support, he would probably have to wait until morning. Any NATO troops active in the area would need to be pulled off whatever ops they were engaged in. Chances of them doing that at the request of the RMP? Not good. But possible. Danny couldn’t be complacent, even if it was unlikely anyone would expect him to return to the scene of the crime. In any case, he reckoned he had to be in and out before daybreak. That gave him approximately five hours.

  He’d been driving for twenty minutes when the last batch of painkillers started to wear off. The pain was sinister. Cold. It felt like it was spreading from his wound all the way down his arm and torso. He stopped to neck a couple more of the pills he had taken from the med centre. They took another twenty minutes to kick in, by which time Danny was shivering hot and cold. He was also approaching the outskirts of a village, which, if his memory of the maps was correct, had to be Gareshk.

  Turning the vehicle off road, he juddered over a patch of stony ground towards a line of trees. He drove the Hilux into the treeline and killed the lights. He figured that this must be the wooded area at the north of the village. He exited the vehicle and took a moment to search it for anything that might be of use. There was a jerrycan of fuel in the back, and a torch in the glove compartment. He pocketed the torch and then, clutching his stolen Glock, crouched down by the front wheel and listened hard for a full minute. There was every chance that the village would be on high alert in the wake of their attack the previous night, but Danny heard no sound to indicate that his arrival had been noted. He breathed deeply, wiped some sweat from his brow and advanced silently through the trees in a southerly direction. Fifty metres later he came to the edge of the forested area and realised that he was looking out on to the northern edge of Target Blue’s compound, from the same position as he’d viewed it the night before with the rest of the unit.

  He took a moment to watch and listen. Somewhere in the distance a dog was barking. Apart from that, nothing. The occupants of Gareshk had clearly decided that it was safest not to be outside. Clutching his weapon in his good hand, Danny advanced.

  The previous night, he had entered through the southern entrance of the compound. But as he skirted round the perimeter, he saw that the entrance in the western wall – the one through which the rest of the unit had said they were leaving – was ajar. Danny approached it carefully, his handgun raised.

  He listened hard.

  Nothing.

  He stepped through the doorway.

  This northern half of the compound was unfamiliar to him. Last night he’d been confined to the southern section. They looked similar, however. A low-roofed room spanned the wall directly opposite the entrance, with a door to Danny’s ten o’clock. Three metres to the right of the door, hanging from the wall, was the exterior fan of an old air-conditioning system, not currently working. The courtyard itself was littered with junk – rusted oil barrels, a metal trench against one wall for feeding animals, an old motorcycle propped up next to it. An ancient electrical generator was propped against one wall. It was switched off, but a greasy stench of fuel hung in the air. There was nothing to indicate that this had been the scene of a hit, or a police investigation, just the previous night. However, the door to the low-roofed room was half open, suggesting to Danny that the place was deserted.

  But he was not going to take that for granted.

  He crossed the courtyard silently. The crescent moon was bright enough to cast a short shadow on the ground as he moved. When he reached the open door, however, he realised he’d have to make use of the torch he’d found in the Hilux. He didn’t like doing it: holding an illuminated torch made him a target if there was anyone inside. But his options were limited. He painfully raised the torch in his bad hand, held it firmly under his handgun, then swung round, entered the room and switched on the torch. He pointed the beam to the four corners of the room, directing the pistol’s barrel with it, his finger resting lightly on the trigger, ready to fire at the first indication of a threat. Only when he was satisfied that the room was unoccupied did he examine it more carefully.

  There was no immediate evidence that an execution had taken place in here. There was an unmade bed against the left-hand wall. Danny examined the sheets, looking for blood. There was a little, but not enough to indicate a bullet wound. There was a prayer mat rolled up on the floor next to the bed. It was pristine. Danny wasn’t surprised. Tony had told Holroyd that he and the others had chased the target north. Maybe that was true. But if it wasn’t, the unit wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave obvious evidence of the hit here.

  So what was Danny looking for? What kind of evidence did he expect to find? He didn’t really know.

  He carefully shone the torch around the room. There was an old wooden table, empty. A rucksack propped against the wall. The interior mechanism of the old air-conditioning system with its vents half open. Opposite it, an ancient, heavy wardrobe, its doors open and evidence that a locking latch had been tampered with. Inside, the wardrobe was empty.

  Danny swore. Without a SOCO team, what chance did he have of working out what had really happened in this room?

  He turned to leave, but as he swung round, something caught his eye: a security camera, above the door.

  It looked completely out of place – too modern for this Afghan compound that felt as if it hadn’t changed much for a hundred years. Danny examined the camera closer. Someone had tampered with it. The power cable had been cut and a compartment on the side of the housing was open. This was clearly where a digital tape was supposed to be, but someone had removed it. Danny could hazard a pretty good guess who that had been. Standard operating procedure, Tony would have told anybody who’d asked. Unacceptable to have hostile documentary evidence of our operation.

  But why was the camera there in the first place?

  Danny checked which way it was pointing. Directly at the old wardrobe that looked as if it had been broken into. Why, he wondered, would anybody want to keep surveillance on a wardrobe, unless it contained something important?

  He walked back over to the camera, wincing as a sharp pain ran through his left shoulder. Examined it again. Inside. Underneath. On top. Shone his torch behind. It was empty. There was nothing. He looked back to the camera.

  Something wasn’t right.

  The camera was too blatant. Too obvious. Easy to disable, should anybody want to. Tony and the others had shown that.

  What would Danny do, if he wanted to put in surveillance on a location like this? There was no question. He’d use the double camera trick.

  He raised his torch again. Shone it round the room, looking for secondary hiding places. Almost immediately, his beam fell on the air-conditioning unit opposite the wardrobe. He narrowed his eyes. If the air conditioning wasn’t on, why were the vents half open? One handed, Danny dragged the little table across the room, climbed up on to it and examined the unit. Shining the torch into the vents, he immediately saw what he was looking for. A second camera.

  He examined the fascia of the air con unit. It was old, and the screws on either side were loose. He had it off in under a minute and immediately saw that the hidden camera was of a different order of sophistication to the one above the door. It was wireless – no tapes or hard drives – and had night-vision capability. It was not, as far as he could see, switched on. But it was a serious piece of kit. A high-end, covert surveillance device capable of uploading a live feed to a remote server.

  Danny carefully replaced the air-con fascia. Moved the table back to its original place. Killed the torch beam and, standing in the darkness, analysed what he’d just discovered. There had been something of interest in this room, most likely in the wardrobe as the second camera was also pointing towards it. He didn’t know what, but he was certain that Tony and the others had found it. He was equally certain that, in their haste, they’d failed to consider the possibility of the double camera trick. Which meant that someone, somewhere, had footage of them in this room last night.

  But who? And where? Danny had no idea, and his leads had run dry.

  Other thoughts crept into his mind. Had they put Danny out of action because they didn’t want him to know what they’d found? Had they made that decision independently, or was it an officially sanctioned operational move? Either way, he knew he had to stay dark. He had no evidence. Only suspicions. And suspicions would never be enough to get Holroyd off his back.

  Danny froze. There was a noise. Outside. It sounded like the entrance gate creaking.

  Slowly, and in complete silence, Danny moved to the door. Weapon raised, barrel pointing up, he stood by the door frame, back to the wall. Listened hard. There was definitely movement in the courtyard outside.

  Scuffling.

  Then silence.

  Danny gave it thirty seconds. The sound had definitely stopped. He carefully swung round the door frame, aiming his weapon out into the courtyard.

  He had company. But it wasn’t human.

  A dog stood between Danny and the exit. For a horrible moment he thought it was Dexter’s Malinois. But it was clearly a wild animal: lean and unkempt, its haunches bony, its hackles raised. Danny was a dog guy and he knew an aggressive beast when he saw it. This was one.

  He directed his weapon at the dog. Stepped forward. The dog gave a low growl and flattened its back.

  Danny didn’t want to fire. The Glock he’d taken from the Afghan guard was not suppressed. If he released a round, he’d announce his presence to everybody in the village. But he was in no state to fight a wild dog with his bare hands.

  He glanced to his left. The door leading to the southern half of the compound where Danny had been the previous night was open. He edged towards it. The dog followed, keeping low. Its eyes glinted in the moonlight. Danny couldn’t turn his back on the animal. If it pounced he would have to shoot. So he moved backwards through the door that divided the compound, checking over his shoulder that nobody was waiting for him.

  The courtyard was empty and silent. The welding gear was still propped up the tree that grew in the middle of the courtyard. The fire pit looked untouched. The bicycles were still leaning against the wall. It looked exactly the same as the previous night.

  The dog was still following him. Prowling, but keeping a distance of five metres. Danny could smell it: a rank stench of God knows what.

  It was baring its teeth. Danny continued to step back, heading towards the room in the south-western corner where he had stood guard over the wife and kids. The door was a few inches open.

  This was where the atrocity had taken place.

  He was five metres from the door when the dog suddenly stopped. It raised its nose and sniffed. It had clearly caught a new scent and its focus was no longer on Danny. It loped towards the room, poking its nose into the gap between the door and the door frame, and slinking inside.

  Danny knew he should leave. Get out of there. Now. But something drew him to the room. He removed his torch, raised it along with his weapon, then advanced to the door. Standing in the door frame, he switched the torch on.

  The bodies were no longer there, of course. The only living thing was the dog. It had pulled a bloodstained sheet from one of the beds and was gnawing hungrily at it. Momentarily, it looked towards Danny, its eyes shining in the torchlight. But the morsel in its mouth was too tempting. After a couple of seconds, it returned to its feast. A quick glance of the other bloodstained sheets told Danny that there would be no shortage of nutrition for the dog.

  Danny hurried back to the northern half of the compound and exited the same way he had entered. He ran back through the treeline towards his stolen vehicle. Here, he swallowed down a couple more painkillers – the wound was throbbing – and gave himself a moment to consider his next move.

  Making contact with Cornwall was out of the question, even if he had the equipment to do it. Tony had been spreading fake news about Danny, and Danny had no idea how widely that disinformation was being believed. Which left him with two options.

  Option one: go into hiding. His Regiment training meant he could go off grid and stay dark for as long as was necessary.

  Option two: find out who was at the other end of that covert camera. If he could do that, he could work out what Tony and the others were up to.

  But how? He was alone in Helmand Province. Wounded. Under-equipped. Hunted. Friendless.

  With one exception.

  Danny Black got behind the wheel of the Hilux, turned over the engine, reversed out of the treeline and hit the road.

  CHAPTER 14

  Spearpoint HQ, 21.30 hours GMT

  ‘What do you mean you’ve lost him?’ Marcus Cadogan’s voice was incredulous and the six other members of the Spearpoint personnel in the ops room were silent. ‘He was fresh out of surgery and under armed guard. How the devil can you lose him?’

  The three-way video link between Spearpoint HQ, Hereford and Camp Shorabak was grainy.

  ‘This isn’t a wet-behind-the-ears green army squaddie we’re talking about,’ Ray Hammond said from Hereford. The rings around his eyes were noticeably a shade darker than the last time Cadogan had seen him. ‘If they’d wanted to keep Danny Black incarcerated, they should have upped their game.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Holroyd’s voice was scratchy over the line. ‘We have enough evidence of his activities to start legal proceedings whether we have him in custody or not.’

  ‘Legal proceedings?’ Hammond asked lightly.

  ‘Against Black, against Spearpoint and against 22 SAS.’

  ‘You’re quite a piece of work, Mike. When are you going to understand that the work of the Regiment is above your pay grade?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that, Hammond.’

  ‘I’ll talk to you how the hell I want. Is it not enough for you that you walked away when those men in your platoon died in Iraq. On your watch, wasn’t it? Now you want to fuck things up for the rest of us?’

  ‘How dare you—’

  ‘Give it a break, Mike. You’re on a damn crusade against my men. Jesus.’

  ‘I’ll thank you not to blaspheme when you’re talking to me. And if I’m on a crusade against your men, it’s no more than they deserve.’

  Hammond’s lugubrious eyes flashed. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no idea of the conditions, the expectations, the pressures—’

  ‘They’re sin—’ Holroyd stopped himself and the word ‘sinners’ died on his lips.

  There was a silence. Hammond looked away, shaking his head, muttering something. Holroyd’s nostrils flared – he plainly knew he’d gone too far. Cadogan forced himself to remain expressionless. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘May I suggest we do our best to keep calm in what are, after all, very difficult—’

  ‘Don’t tell me to keep calm!’ Holroyd cut in. ‘My duty is clear. You people have considered yourselves above the law for far too long now. Atrocities like these are the natural conclusion of that kind of attitude—’

  ‘You’re simply prejudiced against Danny Black,’ Hammond said.

  ‘Prejudiced? I certainly am prejudiced. I’ve seen what he did.’

  ‘I want to speak to the rest of the unit,’ Hammond said.

  ‘That’s not going to happen. They’re my witnesses and they’re prepared to go on the record in return for immunity.’

  ‘Each one of those men has signed the Official Secrets Act,’ Hammond said.

  ‘Like I said,’ Holroyd countered. ‘Immunity. I’m informing you about Danny Black’s disappearance as a matter of courtesy and because I do things by the book. But make no mistake, if he’s still alive he’s going down and he’s taking the rest of you with him. Now if there’s nothing else . . .’

  The screen showing Holroyd went blank.

  There was silence in the Spearpoint ops room. The eyes of all personnel were on Cadogan.

  ‘Options?’ Cadogan said.

  ‘Limited,’ Hammond replied.

  ‘My dear chap, you do realise that if the press get hold of this, the SAS go from being the heroes of the Iranian Embassy to the villains of—’

  ‘I understand the implications.’ Hammond was not charmed by Cadogan’s flowery speech.

  ‘This Danny Black,’ Cadogan said. ‘I only met the fellow for a few minutes. Hard to make a judgement, but . . . he didn’t strike me as the type?’

  ‘He’s not. There’s more to this than meets the eye.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ Cadogan said, ‘our best course of action may well be to . . . how should one put it . . . let him take the rap. A one-off. A rogue element. Swiftly dealt with.’

  ‘You’re suggesting we get into bed with the RMPs?’

  ‘I’m suggesting that sometimes one must take a pragmatic approach. Our pious friend seems very determined.’

  Hammond shook his head. ‘Black has a family. He’s one of us. I need to speak to him before we make any decisions.’

  ‘Not easy, old boy,’ Cadogan said quietly. ‘We don’t know where the fellow is.’

  ‘We’ll find him,’ Hammond said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘We have a unit operating north of Kabul. I’m going to give the order for them to redeploy to Helmand. They’ll start the search. If Black leaves a trail, they’ll find him.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’

  ‘Then they’ll be there to provide support if and when he puts his head above the parapet. Can everyone in the ops room hear me?’