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JEREMY WINDSOR, once with the 22nd Regiment of the Special Air Service and now a member of MI6’s Expeditionary Research Branch (code name E Squadron), is squatting in a corner of a dirt-floored farmhouse, wrists handcuffed behind him, rope tied around both ankles, waiting.
He hates waiting.
His head, back, and arms throb from the beatings he and Oliver Davies received after their quickly dug-out foxhole did little to delay their capture. Now he and Ollie are in this stinking room, alone.
Jeremy gives his spotter a reassuring smile. Like him, Ollie has let his hair and beard grow, but Ollie’s blue eyes are darting around the interior of the small room. Their clothes are dusty, torn, and soiled. Like him, Ollie came to MI6 via the 22nd Regiment.
“Guess our intelligence boys fouled up,” Ollie says. “I never thought we’d get captured.”
“Occupational hazard,” Jeremy says, wishing he could say more to comfort his mate. “We’ll be all right, just you wait and see.”
“Too bloody confident, aren’t you?”
“Somebody has to be …”
From its smell and shape, this room has been a storage area for seed or grains. A couple of rough muslin bags sit in a corner. Two high, small windows—open to the air but barred and covered with chicken wire—allow light in.
When he and Ollie had been sent to work with the CIA paramilitary group, Jeremy initially said no. A bird leading two sniper squads into the field? But he had seen Amy Cornwall’s records, saw that she had been one of the few women to pass the U.S. Army’s grueling two-month plus Ranger course—and thought,Well, she might just work out.
And she had done exactly that on their two previous missions.
Jeremy was a pro. So he shut his mouth and went along.
But even professionals have a bad day.
“Cheer up, Ollie,” he says, once again wishing he could say more to his fellow shooter and friend. “It’ll all get sorted soon.”
Ollie smiles, but there’s a flicker of uncertainty in his face. “Remember the bagging drill?” says Jeremy. “This will be nothing in comparison, I promise.”
His spotter’s smile widens, and Jeremy recalls all too well the secret and highly illegal bagging drill: being suddenly and quickly stuffed into a large sack by your SAS trainers, then dumped in the barren hills surrounding their base in Hereford, leaving you to find your way back without being noticed or requiring anyone’s help.
“If you’re right,” Ollie says, “I owe you a pint at Berber’s.”
Jeremy is about to say, “Make it two” when the door is unlocked and flung open.
Five men enter, and Jeremy takes a moment to eye each one. All of them save one are carrying an AK-47, and he has a memory flash of a particularly rugged exercise one rainy day in the Shetlands—and God, the rain could get cold up there—when their trainer, Burke, a scar-tissued and rugged old Scot who had served behind enemy lines from the Congo to East Germany, had made a pronouncement.
Some of you wee ones have fantasies ’bout going back in time and killin’ Hitler,he had said.If I’d my way, I’d go back an’ kill that Russkie bastard Mikhail Kalashnikov. Every would-be revolutionary and rebel piece o’ shite loves to kill innocents with that bugger’s invention.
The man in front seems to be their leader. He has on dark boots, gray wool trousers, and a khaki jacket. In his filthy hands he carries an AK-47, and around his thick waist is a weapons belt stuffed with ammo magazines, a Russian Tokarev pistol, and a long knife. He has a thick mustache and stubbly cheeks, with a checked kaffiyeh around his head and neck.
Three other men in the group look like they could be his brothers or cousins, for they are similarly dressed and armed. The fifth man is unarmed, older, filthy, and wearing a black robe, cotton trousers that may have been white at one time, and a black scarf around most of his face. He hacks up mucus and spits it on the floor, then goes to the wall next to the door, squats down, and starts fingering a string of dark brownmisbaha,or worry beads.
This group bunch had been part of a much larger group that ambushed and pursued them; the five had then split off to take Ollie and him to this stinking little farmhouse.
The lead man turns and whispers to the older man, who just shrugs and spits again on the floor.
Now he’s looking at Jeremy.
In Arabic, Jeremy says,“As-salamu ?alaykum. I apologize for my friend and I trespassing on your lands.”
The lead man smiles widely. His teeth are brown. In return he says, “Wa?alaykumu as-salam.”Then the strong voice switches to English.
“You are British, correct?”
Ollie keeps quiet, and Jeremy says, “Yes, we are British.”
He speaks quickly in Arabic—“Get them both up, now!”—and two of the men sling their AK-47s over their shoulders, come forward, and gently help Ollie and Jeremy to their feet.
