‘With respect, the question is whether or not your man is still alive,’ said Howell, who was keeping the drone in a gentle left-hand turn some twenty thousand feet above the building.
‘Do try to be a bit more optimistic, Phillip,’ said Yokely.
‘They’ve hit him on the head twice, hard,’ said the pilot.
‘They’re thick-skulled, the Brits,’ said Yokely. ‘How are we doing for fuel?’
‘Thirteen hours or so,’ said Howell.
‘What’s the plan now?’ asked Slater.
‘We see if they move Shepherd on or keep him there.’
‘You’re thinking of going in?’
‘I want all my bases covered,’ said Yokely.
‘Richard, we’ve got a problem,’ said Nichols. He pointed at the GPS monitor. ‘Do you see that?’
‘Yeah, I see it,’ said Yokely. The flashing cursor that showed the position of the transmitter had moved. It was now almost a mile from the house.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ asked Howell. ‘Is one of those guys your man? And if it is, why did he get into the car willingly?’
The Major’s mobile rang. It was Yokely. ‘We’ve got a problem,’ said the American. ‘According to the GSM, Shepherd’s on the move, back to the first place he was being held.’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ said the Major. ‘They were passing him up the chain and there’s no reason for him to go back.’ He cursed quietly. ‘The boots?’
‘I guess so. I think the original kidnappers have gone home with their ill-gotten gains, leaving Shepherd in the house without the transmitter.’
‘How’s the visual?’ asked the Major.
‘All we have is the infrared so we’ve no way of knowing what’s going on inside. We don’t know if that’s the place where Geordie Mitchell’s being held or if it’s another half-way house and they’re planning to move Shepherd on again. The infrared doesn’t work in buildings and if we’ve lost the transmitter we’ll have to rely on the visual to see if they take him out.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ asked the Major.
‘We need to know what’s going on inside the building,’ said Yokely. ‘If that’s where they’ve got Geordie, we can get ready to move in. But if it isn’t and it’s just another link in the chain, we have to wait and see.’
‘And I’m sure you want to know if Wafeeq’s in there,’ said the Major.
‘The two are connected, Allan. Let’s not forget that. Look, the Predator can watch the building and we can track the GPS, so at the moment there’s no panic. I’m going to pay the original kidnappers a visit.’
‘To what end?’
‘Information retrieval,’ said Yokely. ‘It’s what I do best.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ said the Major.
‘They can tell me what’s happening inside that building. For all we know they’ve already put him in an orange jumpsuit,’ said Yokely. ‘The three guys who took him off the street are heading home. We can interrogate them and keep them in cold storage until it’s over. I don’t see a downside.’
‘Okay,’ said the Major. What the American proposed made sense, but he was starting to feel that stable doors were being locked after horses had bolted.
‘I’d like to take Armstrong and Shortt with me,’ said Yokely. ‘I’m loath to bring in the heavy guns at this stage. If it becomes a full military operation, alarm bells’ll ring.’
‘Agreed,’ said the Major.
‘I’m about thirty miles away from them so I’ll get a lift out there. Can you call and tell them to expect me?’
‘Roger that,’ said the Major. He ended the call and twisted around in his seat to Muller and O’Brien. ‘It’s got a bit more complicated,’ he said. He could tell from their faces that they had gathered what the problem was.
Shepherd pushed himself backwards on the mat until his head touched a wall. He rolled over and sat up. His head was aching and his captors had given him only one drink of water since they’d taken him out of the car boot so his throat was dry. He listened but couldn’t hear anyone else in the room. He had no way of knowing if they were keeping him in a basement or upstairs, or what was outside the building. ‘Is anyone there?’ he asked. His voice echoed round the room.
Shepherd wiggled his fingers. He couldn’t tell what they had used to bind his wrists together but it was way too tight.
He pushed himself up against the wall and stood, breathing heavily. The floor was hard under his feet. Not wood, concrete maybe. That he no longer had his boots was a worry – a big one.
He moved sideways, keeping his back to the wall, trying to get a sense of how big a space he was in. His hands were so numb that he couldn’t tell if it was bare plaster or wallpaper that he was touching. He rubbed his right foot along the floor. Through his sock he could feel the rough rasp of concrete. He reached a corner and started along the second wall. After half a dozen sideways steps he found a door. He groped for the handle and found it but couldn’t grip. He clenched and unclenched his hands, but couldn’t even feel if his fingers were moving. Three more paces took him to the next corner. The wall had been about six metres long.
He started along the next wall, rubbing it with his shoulders as he moved. It was blank and featureless. He reached the next corner in seven sideways paces. About four metres.
Midway along the fourth wall he found a window. He tapped it with the back of his head and felt the glass rattle. He’d lost all sense of time and the hood was totally lightproof so he had no way of knowing if it was day or night. He doubted they would have left him in a room with a window so he guessed that there was a shutter on it, or bars. He turned to face the window and pressed his forehead against it. Was there a shutter, he wondered, or could he be seen from outside?
The door crashed open. ‘Down on the floor!’ shouted a man. ‘You stay down!’
Shepherd dropped to his knees. ‘I need water,’ he said.
A hand slapped his head and his lip split. ‘You stay down or we will kill you.’ The man grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, dragged him across the floor, then pushed him down on to the mat. ‘You will stay here,’ said the man. ‘You will not move until you are told to.’ Shepherd felt something hard press against his neck through the hood. ‘You know what this is?’ hissed the man.
‘A knife,’ said Shepherd.
‘Yes, a knife. And I can cut your head off as easily as I can kill a chicken. You know that?’
‘Yes,’ said Shepherd.
The man pressed the knife harder against Shepherd’s neck. ‘I can kill you now.’
Shepherd said nothing. There was nothing he could say: his life was in the man’s hands. The one thing he clung to as he felt the knife bite into the hood was that there was nothing to be gained from killing him there and then. If they were going to kill him they’d do it on video so the world could see.
‘Maybe I will. Maybe I will kill you now,’ hissed the man.
‘ Inshallah,’ said Shepherd.
Shepherd felt the knife move away from his throat. ‘What did you say?’ asked the man.
‘ Inshallah,’ said Shepherd. ‘If Allah wants me dead, then you should do what you have to do.’
‘You think I will not kill you?’
‘I think if it’s Allah’s will that you kill me, you will kill me.’
‘You speak Arabic?’
‘No, but I’ve read the Koran.’
‘The Koran is in Arabic,’ said the man.
‘I read a translation,’ said Shepherd. ‘It was in English.’
The man stood up and left the room. He returned two minutes later, raised Shepherd’s hood and thrust a plastic bottle of water between his lips. He drank. The man allowed him to finish it, then took it away and pulled the hood down.
‘Thank you,’ gasped Shepherd.
‘Stay on the floor,’ said the man. ‘If you get up again, I will kill you.’ He left the room and slammed the door.
Armstrong heard the helicopter before he saw it, a sixty-four-foot-long shark-like Blackhawk, twin turbines
