He wanted to shout, to rave, to attack the two men who’d come to take her from the stinking hut they’d been locked inside for a week now. But the men were armed with AK-47s, and besides, he was weak. Each day they gave them a bucket of brackish water and a bowl of rancid rice mixed with some dubious vegetables. It was not enough to survive on, not for any length of time. He reasoned it was deliberate; starved and weakened captives caused less trouble. They were in an isolated Somali village. He estimated it was ten miles from the coast, far enough inland to prevent a surprise landing by any rescue party. Day after day they waited for news of what would be their fate. Now, they were beginning to find out.

  “Mom!” Suzy screamed.

  “Leave my mother alone,” Toby shouted at them. He tried to pull her free, but one of them cursed him and kicked him in the stomach, sending him reeling away, gasping for breath, but he came back to clutch at his mother. Another man entered the hut. He carried a pistol in his hand, a battered old Russian Makarov. He pointed it at Toby.

  “Tell your son to back off, Mister. Otherwise, I’ll shoot him.”

  “Toby, come here. We can’t do anything, not right now.”

  Disconsolately, he let go his mother’s arm and watched as they led her away. They waited in fear of what new horrors they had yet to face. And then the screams came.

  “What are they doing to Mom?” Suzy asked. Her face was screwed up in terror.

  “You don’t want to know darling. It’s not nice.”

  “Are they killing her?”

  “No, they’re not killing her.”

  No, they’d want her alive, to use her, to abuse her body. She was being gang raped, that was obvious. These men are animals. They’ll take her every way they can, and cause her as much pain as they deem appropriate to satisfy their perverted lusts.

  “We have to do something, Dad.” Toby shouted abruptly when the screams were at their height. “We can’t let this go on.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “We have to escape. We need to get out of here and get help.”

  “Toby, we’re unarmed, locked into hut in a secure compound, surrounded by barbed wire and a horde of armed Somalis. They watch us day and night, and even if we did get out, where would we go? They control the entire area for dozens of square miles. We’ve no food, no maps, no compass, no weapons, nothing. We have to wait. There’s no alternative.”

  “Wait for Mom to be hurt even more?” his son replied in a scathing tone.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, Son. I just don’t know.”

  He sat in a corner of the hut, thinking, trying to ignore his wife’s cries. They were no more than a whimper now. Sometimes he heard her pleading with her tormentors. “No, no more. Please, don’t do that to me.” His anger grew and grew. Toby was right. They had to do something, but what? Maybe he could grab a weapon from a guard. But they always came in twos, sometimes three and all heavily armed. Except that right now, they were having their sick fun with Judith. Was this the moment? It was worth a try. Anything was worth a try; anything that would put a stop to this.

  “Suzy, lie on the floor. You’re going to pretend to be ill. Strip off some of your clothes, and take off your top.”

  “Dad!”

  “It’s the only way. I have to divert their attention. I’m going to gamble that while they’re hurting your mother, there’ll only be one guard on duty outside our hut. When he comes in, I’ll jump him. Toby, when I give the word, shout out loud and say your sister’s ill.”

  His son nodded. Sam looked around the floor for a weapon. All they had was the slop bucket they used as a lavatory. Feeling sick, he emptied the contents onto the ground and held the stinking metal bucket tightly. Suzy was ready. She’d taken off her blouse and bra, and her firm young breasts were on show. He felt even sicker at what he’d asked her to do, but he had to do something. His wife couldn’t take much more of whatever they were doing to her. Already, her cries were fading to a series of low groans. She may have little time left.

  “Okay, Toby. Give it everything you have.”

  “Help! Help! My sister, she’s ill. It’s bad. You have to help us, or she’s going to die!”

  Sam nodded his approval; it sounded convincing. They waited a few seconds, and the key turned in the lock. A single guard stepped cautiously into the hut, his eyes screwed up in suspicion and his AK-47 pointed at them, ready to fire.

  “What is this? Who is ill?”

  And then he looked down, and his mouth opened in surprise and pleasure at the sight of Suzy’s pale, naked breasts, smooth and creamy white against the dark filth of the floor of the hut. He gasped and took a step forward, his intention obvious. He’d help himself to the girl, ill or not. And Sam hit him with the bucket, smashed it down on his head, using all the force he could muster. The stinking metal container made a dull ring as it connected with his woolly head, and the man went down as if he’d been pole-axed. Suzy leapt out of the way with a small cry when he almost fell on top of her. Sam checked he was out and scooped up the AK-47. He snatched out the clip and checked the load. It was almost full of heavy 7.62mm rounds. It was enough. He chambered a round, and the former Coastguard reserve officer snapped out orders.

  “Suzy, get your shirt back on fast. We’re getting out of here. Toby, check the guard. See if has a knife, or anything else useful on him. We could do with another weapon.”

  Toby found a narrow clasp knife in the man’s pocket, a folding version of a fish-filleting knife. Once, in happier times, these people would have been fishermen; before they made careers of kidnap, rape and murder. He unfolded the blade, which glittered with a recent sharpening.

  “What are you going to do about the men who have Mom?” Suzy asked.

  “I’ll take care of them, darling. Just follow me and stay close, no matter what happens. This isn’t going to be pretty. You’ll just have to try and shut out the worst of what you see.”

  Until I get them home. They’ll need a long time in therapy to get over this. How many kids have had to wait and listen while their mother was raped and tortured by animals like these?

  It wasn’t difficult finding the hut where they’d taken Judith. They followed the low whimpering and pain-wracked groaning she was making. The hut was close to the gate, some kind of guardroom. Sam peeked inside and looked away, forcing down the impulse to spew his guts on the ground and run inside to tear them to pieces. His wife lay on the floor on her stomach. A man was anally raping her while three other men looked on and smoked what smelled like marijuana. Ganja weed, he imagined. At least it meant they’d be high. It was a small advantage. He went back to the kids, waiting a few yards away, and spoke in a whisper.

  “I’m going in to get her. You two wait here, and be ready to run the second I bring her out. There’ll be some shooting, but don’t worry about it. All you have to do is be ready to run, and we’ll need to help Mom too. She’s been hurt.”

  “We’re ready, Dad,” Toby whispered bravely. His face was pale with anger, his eyes screwed up in determination. “What do I do if someone comes along?”

  “Kill the fucker!” Suzy said, and he had to put his finger to his lips to quieten her.

  “Suzy, keep it down. Anyone comes, keep out of sight. Now stay here.”

  He crept back to the hut and put his hand on the door. It wasn’t closed properly. The wood creaked slightly as he entered, and one man looked around, casually at first. Then he scrambled for his assault rifle.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Sam snarled. “All of you. Put up your hands, or I start shooting.”

  They stared at him as if he was mad. And then they smiled.

  What is this, what’s wrong? They shouldn’t be smiling at a man confronting them with a loaded AK-47.

  And then he knew, as he felt the cold steel of a heavy pistol barrel against his neck and heard the cultured, mocking tones of Joshua Nkebe.

  “How about you put up your hands, Mister? After you’ve put down that gun you stole. Carefully now, I wouldn’t want to think you were going to try something stupid. Or would your kids like to see a demonstration of my .50 caliber handgun?”

  The man spoke in the calm, flat voice and measured tones of a psychopath. Sam put the AK-47 down and raised his hands.

  “Very good, Mister. If you’re wondering about your kids, my men are holding them outside. Maybe I should punish them for being so bad. But you, that’s a different matter. You should have known better. I think while you’re here, you might as well stay.”

  Sam felt a crushing blow to his head, and he fell to the floor. Nkebe shouted an order, and his men bound his hands tightly with thin wire.

  “Now, Mister, as you’ve come to visit us, you may as well watch the rest of the show.” He shouted to someone outside the hut. “Bring the kids in. It’s time they learned what happens to prisoners who try to escape.” He looked at Sam again, his gaze dispassionate. “There is no escape from here. The only way out is when the ransom is paid or when you die.”

  He chuckled as a man with an AK-47 brought Toby and Suzy inside.

  “Good, we’re all here. You men, carry on with the woman. You can do anything you want to her, but don’t kill her. Not yet, anyway. But if the ransom isn’t here soon, you can finish them all then.”

  They endured two hours of the most horrific torture, a torture both physical and mental. Nothing could be worse than the sickening assaults. Sam was beaten senseless and beaten again when he recovered consciousness, and they continued to inflict their cruel perversions on Judith Meers. Afterwards, they were dragged to a new hut and thrown inside. It was smaller than the first prison they’d been held in, yet this one was already occupied. In the darkness, they could see people packed inside shoulder to shoulder; there must have been twenty people in the tiny space. Sam Meers tried to comfort his wife. She was weeping with pain and despair. The air was foul, fetid, and thick with the stink of sewage and sweat. And fear. Nkebe looked at them just before the door was closed, smiling at their obvious terror.

  “It’s not the most comfortable place, I’m afraid. But you won’t be here long. Either they pay up, or you’ll be dead.”

  The door slammed shut, and the Meers family fought to suck in the stale air in the suffocating confinement of the crowded cell. There were even two dead bodies on the floor, and they realized there was something worse than what they’d already had to witness.

  * * *

  Talley cast his mind back to when they’d arrived at the military airfield outside Riyadh, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They’d landed at night, the C-130 had taxied to a quiet corner of the airfield, and they’d walked stiffly down the ramp. The night air was still warm, too warm. There was no breeze, and he’d started sweating immediately. A convoy of Humvees was parked with two military personnel waiting nearby. Even across the darkened airfield, he recognized one of them immediately. Surprised, he realized it was Caitlin Walker. She walked forward, her hand held out in greeting. She gave him a smile.

  “Lieutenant Talley, welcome to the Kingdom.”

  “Captain Walker, Ma’am,” Talley nodded, taking her hand.

  “Please, there’s no need to stand on ceremony, not out in the field. It’s Caitlin.”

  “I’m Abe.”

  She nodded. “You didn’t expect to see me out here, I guess. I’d better introduce you to the new commander of NATFOR.”

  Standing next to her was a uniformed British officer, an Arab.

  “This is Colonel Ishaq Hakim. He’s the direct replacement for Admiral Alexander. The Colonel is British, transferred from their Military Intelligence branch. Colonel Hakim is also their resident expert on Somalia affairs.”

  Hakim came forward and they shook hands. Talley was trying to hide his surprise at having an Arab as a commander. So the burnouse he wore on his head was not just for effect, he hadn’t gone native. He WAS native. Hakim’s expression, his skin, his eyes, they reminded him of the face of the enemy that had gazed at him over the barrels of assault rifles during his previous missions to the Middle East. Hakim was very tall, with piercing, dark brown eyes and had a body that was whippet-thin. He wore the olive green uniform of a senior officer of the British Army, bedecked with three rows of medals. He was also quite elderly, for a soldier. Talley estimated he must have been not far off his sixtieth year.

  “Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant. NATO decided I might make some modest contribution to NATFOR, especially with my experience of Arab affairs, so here I am. I’ll do my best to make sure you get everything you require.”

  Talley took his hand.

  “Intel is what we need right now, Sir. We don’t need another debacle like the one in ’93. Somalia can be a pretty complicated country.”

  “Indeed, I’ll ensure you have everything you need.”

  His accent was cut glass English upper crust, and that was not encouraging. In Talley’s opinion, the military needed people who won promotion on merit, not from ancestral family connections. And yet his slim, tough, upright, military bearing hinted at rather more than a gin-soaked desk warrior. He looked for all the world, like an ancient Arab warlord. Except for the uniform, and that was British Empire.

  Tactful!

  “Colonel Hakim has spent a lot of time in the Horn of Africa, Abe, so he knows his way around. Until recently, he was assigned as military attaché to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

  That explained the full uniform. It was the norm for military attaches in foreign embassies. He remembered Admiral Alexander telling him the man had been British Military Intelligence.

  “Where will you be based for the mission, Sir, here in Saudi?”

  Hakim smiled. “Goodness me, no, that would make life very complicated. Your government has allocated me space on an aircraft carrier currently on patrol in the Arabian Sea. We’ll be flying out there shortly, and I’ll brief you more when we get there. It’s all been laid on, everything you need for the mission, from the boats to put you on the beach to unmanned aircraft to give you support.”

  Caitlin intervened. “We need to get aboard the aircraft. We have to fly out as soon as possible and get this mission running. Those people don’t have much time. If you’d follow me, your transport is waiting.”

  He hadn’t noticed the two Bell Boeing V-22 Ospreys standing on the tarmac, silent and with their black hulls almost invisible in the darkness. Talley and his men followed Hakim and Caitlin up the ramp. Almost immediately, both pairs of giant Rolls-Royce Allison Liberty turboshafts began spooling up, shutting out the normal airfield noise with the gigantic roar of the powerful engines, two on each aircraft. The ramps closed with a whir of hydraulics and the huge, lumbering aircraft climbed straight up into the night sky. Talley looked around the dark fuselage. He could see Hakim, resplendent in his Arab burnouse, but there was no sign of Caitlin in the noisy darkness of the cavernous interior.

  An interesting girl, and very pretty too. If she wasn’t married, I’d like to get to know her socially. He smiled at the thought. Be honest, Talley, you mean you’d like to get her into bed. Now wouldn’t that be something?

  With an effort, he dismissed the thought, wondering how she’d cope with the mission. In his experience, women often made damn good mission controllers. Except when things went wrong; when they’d been know to fall apart on occasion. The engine noise altered. When they’d climbed high enough, the pilots rotated the engine nacelles, and the Ospreys increased speed as they transitioned to fixed wing mode. The door to the cockpit opened, and a crewman came into the cabin.

  “Lieutenant Talley? The skipper asked that you come forward to the flight deck and go over some of the mission details. We’ve been given to understand that time is critical.”

  “You got that right. These ragheads are planning to execute some of our people. At most they have only a few days to live.”

  The man nodded. “That’s what I heard. Bastards.”

  “That they are.”

  He followed the crewman, and just before they reached the cockpit door, Lieutenant Domenico Rovere came alongside him.

  “If you’re going into the cockpit, I’d like to join you. This is my first trip in one of these things. They are an interesting aircraft, are they not?”

  The crewman nodded. “Be my guest. I don’t know if ‘interesting’ is a word I’d use.”

  “No? How would you describe the Osprey?”

  “Well, Sir. They sacked a Lieutenant Colonel, relieved him from duty in 2001 after he told his unit to falsify maintenance records to make the V22 appear more reliable. That’s because it was anything but reliable. You can make up your own mind why he felt the need to do it. I guess it was pressure from the brass. Time Magazine wrote at the time that the Osprey was unsafe, overpriced, and inadequate. Oh yeah, in case of engine failure, they can’t autorotate like a normal helo.” He grinned. “Apart from that, it’s a pretty cool aircraft.”

  “You enjoy flying in it?” Talley asked him.

  “Nossir.”

  Rovere chuckled. “Like I said, they are interesting.”

  Talley heard the crewman mutter something about, ‘an overpriced flying coffin’, but he decided he could have been mistaken. They went onto the flight deck, and the pilot twisted around. Talley grimaced. Captain Caitlin Walker, US Air Force, was flying the aircraft.

  He recovered quickly and took the proffered headset from her. When he plugged it into the console, he could hear her.

  “Abe, is this your first time in an Osprey?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Right, so you know your way around them. That’s good.”

  “But this is my first time in this type of aircraft,” Rovere shouted over the noise. He had a bright smile on his face. “Perhaps you will find time to show me around.”

  She gave him a cool glance and dismissed him. “I’ll ask one of the crewmen to help you.”

  She turned back to Talley. “We’re heading for the USS Abraham Lincoln. She’s currently steaming into the Arabian Sea, and we’ll meet her two hundred klicks off the coast of Somalia. They’re planning to infiltrate your men by fast RIB.”