‘My dear chap, your reputation precedes you. Marcus Cadogan. MI6. I’ll be running you from here.’

  Danny nodded and Cadogan gave a bland smile. ‘Apologies for bringing you out of your way. One would rather be in the thick of it, but we can’t run Spearpoint on the QT if our American cousins and the Afghans are sniffing around like truffle hounds. Hence these delightful environs. And I do think it’s important to put a face to the name. We’re going to be working hand in glove, as it were—’

  Cadogan was interrupted by a soldier with bright ginger hair. ‘Boss, we’ve just received a communication from our asset in Panjika.’

  ‘That’s Caitlin,’ Hammond muttered to Danny.

  ‘Go ahead, McLean,’ Cadogan told the soldier.

  ‘She has two potential targets. The names we have are Abu Manza and Abu Noor.’

  Danny noticed an instant sharpness in Cadogan’s eyes, quite at odds with his bumbling exterior. ‘Splendid. Do they cross-reference with any other intelligence source?’

  ‘Negative,’ McLean said. ‘It’s the first we’ve heard of them.’

  ‘Did our asset provide locations?’

  ‘Roger that, sir. Two separate compounds in the village of Gareshk.’

  ‘Do we have drones available?’

  ‘Limited, sir. It’ll take a couple of hours to fly one into the area, and that’s if I can wrestle it off an SBS operation.’

  ‘Make it happen, old thing. Get cameras above one of the targets at least. I’d like to know their movements in detail.’

  ‘Roger that, sir.’

  Cadogan looked over his shoulder at Danny. ‘All hotting up here, as you can see. You’ve been fully briefed?’ As he asked the question, he gave Hammond a meaningful look. Hammond nodded quietly. ‘Excellent. Good. Well, best get on. Happy landings, Black.’ Almost as an afterthought, he said: ‘Oh, and do a fellow a favour, would you? It’s a rum business, being on the Spearpoint team. It can mess with a chap’s head. Any sign of that happening with the rest of the team, you’ll let us know? All off the record, of course. Mum’s the word. All right? Excellent. Now if you’ll excuse me? With any luck, we’ll have a target pack ready by the time you land.’ He cocked his head, just as Danny heard the distant sound of a helicopter outside. ‘Sounds like your lift’s arrived.’ He returned to his station.

  ‘This way,’ Hammond said. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s time.’ He led Danny across the ops room to a secure door on the far side. As Hammond opened it, Danny looked back over his shoulder towards the ops room. He caught Cadogan leaning on his walking stick and staring at him, an intense but uncertain look on his face, as if he didn’t quite trust Danny. But in a fraction of a second he’d turned away again and was looking at one of the big screens.

  The door led directly to the exterior of the building, which was guarded by another soldier.

  ‘Is that guy for real?’ Danny jabbed one thumb over his shoulder to indicate Cadogan, but he had to raise his voice. Thirty metres from the building there was a helicopter landing pad and, accompanying the noise of the rotors, Danny saw the bright lights of a Sea King coming in to land.

  ‘I told you. Don’t be fooled. The posh idiot thing’s an act.’ He pointed at the chopper. ‘Right on time!’ he shouted.

  They stayed clear as the Sea King touched down. Only once it had landed and one of the side doors had opened did the two Regiment men run towards it, heads down, approaching it from the front so they kept well clear of the tail. A loadie ushered them in and, as they took their places inside the chopper, closed the doors again. The Sea King rose. It couldn’t have been on the ground for more than a minute.

  ‘I don’t think me and Holroyd will be going for a beer any time soon,’ Danny shouted over the noise of the chopper.

  ‘Holroyd doesn’t go for a beer with anyone. Teetotal. He’s suspicious of all of us, not just you. He’s no different from the rest of the Special Investigation Branch in that respect. They’d love to get a piece of the Regiment. I don’t need to tell you that.’

  He didn’t. It was well known that the modus operandi of the SAS was a constant challenge to the RMPs. The Regiment represented everything that the military police loathed. They made their own decisions. They called their own shots – literally. They were answerable only to themselves. It drove the Royal Military Police crazy that the Regiment considered themselves above the law, because as far as the RMPs were concerned, nobody was – except of course themselves.

  ‘They’d have a fucking field day with Tony,’ Danny said.

  ‘They’d have a field day with any of us if we let them. Which we’re not going to do. We can deal with Holroyd at this end. Just be aware that there are a few of the fuckers hanging around the Stan. Tony and the team know to keep out of their way. Shame that the closest they’ll ever get to a war zone is out there trying to nail the boys who are actually doing the work, but there we have it.’

  Danny told himself to forget about Holroyd. He had bigger problems than that. In a few hours he’d be face to face with Tony Wiseman. Loathing brought a knot to his stomach.

  But as Hammond had said: suck it up. It was what it was. Get used to it.

  Danny rested his head against the webbing on the side of the chopper and closed his eyes. After several years with the Regiment he was used to resting in some uncomfortable shitholes, and he’d decided to get some sleep.

  He had the feeling he was going to need it.

  Spearpoint HQ was alive with activity. Radio operators were talking over their headsets in urgent tones. Interpreters were furiously translating documents at their laptops. A drone operator was barking instructions to unseen technicians thousands of miles away.

  In the middle of it all stood Marcus Cadogan. He leaned heavily on his walking stick as he looked up at a large screen. It showed, through the rainbow colours of a thermal imaging drone camera, an Afghan compound somewhere in the heart of Helmand Province.

  ‘Which one is this?’ he asked McLean, the young soldier with ginger hair standing by his side.

  ‘Abu Manza,’ McLean said.

  ‘Have we found anything on him?’

  ‘He was subject to a full body search by members of the Afghan National Army approximately two months ago. The paperwork is a little vague. I’d say it’s been doctored.’

  ‘Our friend Abu Manza has been bribing the Afghan army?’

  ‘I’d say so, sir.’

  ‘Rather blots his copy book, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  There was movement on the screen. ‘What’s that?’

  McLean went over to check with a drone operator. ‘Movement of personnel, sir.’

  ‘You sure about that, old thing? It’s not a dog?’

  ‘No, sir. Definitely a human signature.’

  Cadogan checked a clock on the wall that showed the time in Afghanistan: 01.10 hours AFT. ‘Switch to NV.’

  The screen changed from the rainbow of thermal imaging to the green haze of NV. Cadogan watched carefully as their target exited the compound and climbed into a vehicle. ‘Shall we follow him, sir?’

  Cadogan gave that a moment’s thought. This was Abu Manza’s compound, but it wasn’t necessarily Abu Manza they were watching. However, they were on the lookout for incriminating activity and that was unlikely to happen in the compound itself. So whoever it was, it made sense to follow them. ‘Go ahead,’ he instructed.

  Cadogan and McLean watched the screen as the drone followed the vehicle south out of the village.

  ‘How long before we get a drone up on target two? What was the fellow’s name?’

  ‘Abu Noor, sir. About an hour.’

  Cadogan nodded. Without taking his eyes off the screen, he said: ‘That Danny Black chap. What did you think?’

  ‘Not much between the ears. But we don’t really want brains on the kill team. We just want someone who’ll follow orders and not ask too many questions.’

  ‘Quite,’ Cadogan muttered. ‘Quite.’ But although he’d met the other guys on the team and they were just as the int officer described, he wasn’t so sure about Danny Black.

  He rapped his walking stick on the floor to get the attention of everyone in the room, then pointed at the screen. ‘Keep watching this fellow. I want to know his every movement. Understood?’

  ‘Understood, sir,’ said McLean without taking his eyes from the screen.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Sea King touched down at Northolt at 23.00 hours BST. A uniformed RAF guy was waiting to escort Danny directly from the chopper to a Hercules stationed one hundred metres away across the tarmac.

  ‘That thing Cadogan said,’ Hammond shouted over the roar of chopper’s rotors as they took their leave of each other. ‘About keeping an eye on the others. That wasn’t a blank cheque for you to get Tony sent home, you get that, right?’

  Danny didn’t reply.

  ‘We have skeleton personnel at Kandahar,’ Hammond continued. ‘A handful of green army guys to guard the Spearpoint cordon. Your watchkeeper is Harry Isherwood. He’s your liaison between the unit and any regular forces in the area.’

  Harry had never worked with Isherwood before, but knew him by sight. He’d come up through the ranks in the Regiment and was on his way to a commission. He’d recently done his knife and fork course, where NCOs were taught how to eat, talk and behave like an officer. A posting like this was the standard next stage on his career path.

  ‘Yeah,’ Danny said. ‘I’ve seen him around.’ He glanced towards the Hercules, whose tailgate was lowering. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Nothing. Get going.’

  Danny gave the ops officer a curt nod and followed the RAF guy towards the Hercules. Danny boarded and made his way to the flight deck, where he introduced himself to the 47 Squadron crew.

  ‘I’m going to sling my hammock and get my head down after I’ve had some food,’ he told the pilot, before returning to the main cabin. Within five minutes, he was airborne again. He got some food and hot coffee into his system, then tried to sleep as the lights of western Europe slowly gave way to the oil fields of the Middle East.

  But his mind was filled with images of Tony Wiseman. He saw Tony’s sweat-covered face on a burning oil rig in the Gulf. On a migrant boat in the Med. In the forests of Norfolk, holding his gun to the head of a terrorist who had information that Danny wanted. Needed. It was that image that stuck with Danny most of all. It made his throat hot with bile. A voice in his head told him he needed to put his anger in a box for another time. Other guys in the Regiment looked up to Tony. No doubt the rest of the unit out in Helmand would be the same. Danny needed to take a chill pill. But another voice wondered whether he would ever be able to do that. Danny genuinely did not know what would happen when he saw Tony in just a few hours.

  Flight time Northolt to Kandahar: 8 hours 30 minutes. It seemed to pass in a quarter of that time. Danny felt he’d only just boarded when he realised they were catching up with the sun. Dawn was breaking over the familiar desert landscape of the Middle East, staining the sky and the sand the colour of blood. Danny expected a steep descent into Kandahar. Low-flying aircraft were well within the range of militants with ground-to-air missiles. Better to stay high as long as possible, and start your descent close to the military base at the last minute. He felt his stomach lurch as the Herc suddenly lost height. The aircraft banked sharply to the right, and Danny caught a glimpse through the window of Kandahar base in the distance: a huge, sprawling military city, surrounded by miles of flat, parched desert. There were mountains on the horizon: bleak, imposing cliffs that Danny knew had been, and probably still were, the hideouts of all manner of militants, and the scene of fierce fighting. The sky was cloudless and, as they swooped in to land on the runway that cut through the centre of the air base, a shimmering haze across the parched landscape told him it was furnace hot outside. As the wheels touched down, he saw dust billowing up through the window: a reminder that Afghanistan was a hard place to operate.

  As the Herc taxied off the runway, Danny saw a khaki Land Rover pulling up and figured that was his escort. He was right. Stepping down on to the tarmac, where he was almost knocked back by the brutal heat, a British soldier with a familiar face approached, hand outstretched.

  ‘Harry Isherwood,’ he shouted over the noise of the Hercules’s engines powering down. ‘I’m your watchkeeper. I’ll be looking after you while you’re here, providing liaison with ANA and NATO troops in the area. Good to meet you properly.’

  Danny nodded at him, then followed as Isherwood led him towards the khaki Land Rover. He took the passenger seat, and Isherwood swung the vehicle round in a semicircle that kicked up more dust from the airfield, then accelerated hard.

  ‘You won’t have much time to get settled in, I’m afraid,’ Isherwood said. ‘I’ve had word from Cornwall. They’re compiling target packs as we speak.’

  ‘I’ll be ready,’ Danny said. He was sweating heavily as they sped through a car-parking area only half full of old, dust-covered vehicles. They passed a line of aircraft hangars that contained a varied collection of fast air and workhorses. To their left was a vast area of living quarters – khaki-coloured tents arranged with military geometry, enough to house a couple of thousand men. But these were Afghan quarters. He knew the Spearpoint unit would be located well away from them, so it was no surprise that his driver was now weaving his way past sanitary blocks and a line of shops for the troops in camp, past refuelling stations and engineering units. A couple of mechanics had a sand-coloured Husky tactical support vehicle raised above the ground. It had clearly been hit by an IED: the massive front wheels were blown off and the chassis mangled. The mechanics were removing the axle, perhaps in an attempt to get the vehicle running again. Good luck with that, Danny thought, as they continued to an area on what Danny judged to be the eastern side of the base.

  This area was cordoned off by a four-metre high wall constructed of sand-filled crates – opaque, impenetrable and sturdy enough to withstand small arms fire. An armed British soldier, his hair already damp with sweat, guarded the entrance. Isherwood pulled up in front of him, but made no attempt to alight. He just leaned out of his open window and called to the guard: ‘This is our new Spearpoint package. He has full access.’ He turned to Danny. ‘I’m late for a sit-down with the Afghan camp commander,’ he said. ‘Make yourself at home.’

  Danny glanced at the grim, military cordon of the Spearpoint base. How could he do anything but? He climbed out of the Land Rover. Isherwood was driving off almost before Danny had shut the door behind him. The green army guy was already opening the gate for him.

  ‘The rest of the unit here?’ Danny asked before stepping inside.

  ‘Roger that,’ said the soldier. ‘Sleeping, I wouldn’t wonder.’ He sniffed. ‘Them lot have sleeping pills in the day and ephedrine at night. Keep different hours, if you know what I mean.’

  Yeah. Danny knew exactly what he meant. ‘Thanks, buddy,’ he said. He entered the cordon, and the soldier closed the gate behind him.

  There was nothing about Spearpoint’s Kandahar ops centre that gave any clue as to the true nature of its occupants’ business. It comprised four grey Portakabins, set in a line, whose windows were covered with steel sheeting. Beyond them was a comms satellite and a concrete sanitary block. The block was thirty metres away, but Danny could still smell it. And beyond that, two larger breeze-block buildings. A couple of sand-coloured MWMIK Jackal armoured vehicles were parked up by the gate, and by one of the walls there was an electricity generator with a thick black cable snaking into one of the rear breeze-block buildings. There was no sign of personnel.

  Danny stood for a moment. On the edge of his hearing was the sound of another aircraft coming in to land, but he wasn’t really paying attention. He was wondering which of these Portakabins contained Tony.

  His question was answered thirty seconds later.

  The door to one of them opened. A figure stepped out. He wore khaki trousers. No top, no shoes. Aviator shades. His arms and torso were muscular, his hair dishevelled. He walked to the end of the adjacent Portakabin, stood with his back to Danny, and pissed thunderously against the bleak, grey structure. A puddle of urine dribbled between his feet across the hard-baked sand as he made a big show of shaking himself off. The liquid steamed in the heat. With his back still turned to Danny, he rapped on the exterior wall of the Portakabin. And only then did he speak. ‘This is yours,’ he said.

  Danny forced himself to breathe deeply. He knew Tony’s ways. He knew he was only trying to get him to rise. He wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

  Tony turned, his bare feet slapping in the puddle as he walked towards Danny. His shades glinted in the early morning sunlight. He had several days’ stubble and a distinct sneer on his lips. He stopped when he was a metre away, then removed his sunglasses.

  Danny was shocked by what he saw. In appearance, at least, this was not the Tony he remembered. His eyes were bloodshot. Raw. There were deep bags that almost looked as if they had been painted on.

  They stood, face to face, for several seconds. Tony put his sunglasses back on. Danny saw his own reflection in the mirrored glass. He looked tired. Older than he expected. Worn.

  ‘I heard Spud got what was coming to him,’ Tony said.

  Danny felt his jaw setting.

  ‘He was a fucking spare part,’ Tony continued. ‘Always amazed me that the cunt lasted as long as he—’

  It happened like lightning. Danny raised his right hand, the middle knuckle protruding, and went for the soft flesh of Tony’s bare neck. But Tony knew it was coming. His left arm shot up and grabbed Danny’s wrist. There was no difference in strength between the two men. Their arms locked. Their muscles strained. But the explosion of violence was quelled, for a moment.

  ‘If we’re not on ops, I don’t want to speak to you,’ Tony breathed. ‘I don’t even want to see you. The guys on the team? They’re my guys. They’re not your guys. I’ve warned them about you and they know what to expect. We sent the last one home because he wasn’t up to the job. I don’t expect a pussy like you to last more than a week.’